2024
See last year’s summary here.
2024 was busy! I traveled internationally to Iceland, Mexico, and Portugal. I played in campaigns of OSE, Fate, and weirder things. I finished projects and started more … and I got laid off, but really, it’ll be OK.
All the M&M candies I ate in 2024. Grouped by "fun-size" package, sorted by color.
The Numbers
In 2024, I published 47 posts, 23 of which were “recovered” from the old blog. Of all the visitors, 4653 were tracked (about the same as last year), and 11 left comments (4 more comments were my own).
The most popular post was Thermodynamics for Game Design, by far (551 tracked hits). I can’t say exactly why, except that I’m really proud of it and it’s weirdly personal, so I hope it’s because it’s good. It also came after a short pause in blogging and before a much longer one, so that could be related.
The next most popular posts were 10 Minutes and a Knife (245 tracked hits) and The Minideck (211 tracked hits), and then two of last year’s Bloggie nominees: Deeper Catacombs (209 tracked hits) and Models of High Level Play (156 tracked hits). In the middle of these was a recovered post, Two Flavors of Horror and Six Anomalous Media (212 tracked hits), which also came before a longer break in blogging, and had the good fortune to be scheduled for a Friday the 13th.
Some loose stats:
- As before, half of my tracked hits are from unknown referrers (48%).
- 7% are from Substack, because Questing Beast picked up a few posts. Milton has been in the hot-seat recently (and not without reason), but he does drive eyeballs.
- 5% are from Google and 2% from Yandex (up from negligible search-engine traffic).
- 3% are from Zedeck Siew’s tumblr, mostly related to last year’s Bloggies.
- 3% are from DIY & Dragons, as before. Anne is constant.
- When the blog was new, it was easy to say that incoming links were also new. In its second year, I can only broadly say where traffic originated, old and new, linked in text or blogroll. These sites included: Bones of Contention, Eldritch Fields, Explorers Design, Grave Robber’s Guide, Mindstorm Press, The Rod, Reel, & Fist itch page, Fail Forward, Foreign Planets, Stuffed Crocodile, Ostrichmonkey Games, Tales from the Sorcerer’s Skull, Spooky Action at a Distance, Was It Likely?, the Alternity RPG Forums, Trollish Delver, and uh, xxxDragonFucker69xxx.
- 23 tracked hits came from a Google doc, which I love knowing. There was also traffic from RSS readers, notes apps, and emails. No LinkedIn traffic this year.
Only 3% of tracked traffic came from Twitter, down from 17% last year. Some of this is on me: I slowed posting and ultimately deleted my account. Bluesky is OK, but isn’t obviously seamlessly replacing it. Mastodon also exists, I may see about migrating my account to a more relevant instance.
Bluesky is a set of open protocols as much as it’s a centralized website though, and Mindstorm Ty has repurposed it for a comments section. Cusdis is OK, but it’s feature-poor and feels secondary. I may see about migration.
Other Projects
Apart from the most popular posts, I also finished a number of projects in 2024 that I was particularly pleased with:
- The Search for SATOR-2, an exploration of word squares.
- Fishbones and All in Mail Never Clinking, an “exploded” quick-start version of Rod, Reel, & Fist.
- Palace Run Remastered, a physical zine of a 200-word RPG.
- Itinerarium Ashcan, a workable demo of a type of game I had dreamt about.
- Pastamancy, a full system of divination by thrown pasta shapes.
I mentioned The Minideck already, but I also want to highlight an application of it by Eldritch Fields. It’s always a joy to see someone else take up a thing you’ve made.
Bloggies
This year, two of my posts (the most popular two) were nominated for the 2024 Bloggies:
- Thermodynamics for Game Design (Theory)
- 10 Minutes and a Knife (Gameable)
Unsurprisingly, the bracket is absolutely packed with amazing posts. I’m finding new things and revisiting old ones. They’re all worth a look.
But, as with last year, several of my nominations didn’t make the cut.
- Choosing Fighter Means Choosing Violence by Jenx
- Lens Theory by Paolino
- Sci-Fi: Squishy Space by Skerples
- The Somata Engraver by Mindstorm Ty
- How to Monetize a Blog by modem
- Chuck & Noodles: A Tearjerking Game About Painful Goodbyes by Jonathon Greenall
- Blog Challenge: New (Year’s) Resolution Mechanic by Prismatic Wasteland
2025
In 2024 I played a lot of games. In 2025 I hope to get back to running them. I’ve also got a lot of old projects I might try to revisit. Perhaps I’ll blog slower.
Liliana and Sputnik.