Retrospect : Blogging in 2013

Another year of blogging has ended so it’s time for a look back on what exactly this year was all about. In my retrospect of 2012 I found out that despite the blog being about my RPG collection, I didn’t really post that much about it. For 2013 it has even gotten worse with just one measly collection update. Despite this, I’m actually quite happy with the direction I’m taking the blog.

Purpose

The purpose has always been to have a website about my RPG collection. I started out somewhere in 2011, trying to figure out how WordPress worked and putting blogposts in a website that was offline. Since I was creating content, I figured I could just as well put them online so I created a free blog on blogger.com and ditched the WordPress attempt. Then by July 2013 I registered Rpgames.be and started transferring the blogposts to the new site, and WordPress made another appearance.

As you will see below, it’s still not a website/blog about my RPG collection, but baby steps once in a while will get me there in the long run.

Content

The target was to have 1 blogpost a week (52 in a year) and while I rarely manage that, it remains my target in order for me to justify the website’s existence. In 2012 I had 40 blogposts, this year only 35. I stopped doing evening courses but I increased my involvement in volunteer work manyfold so this will remain a challenge. Especially near the end of the year I was working on a very big project for one of the NGO’s I volunteer at, so that ate up all my time.

So what did I blog about ?

• Collection update : 1 post (5 in 2012)
• RPG News : 16 posts (12 in 2012)
• Kickstarter related : 10 posts (12 in 2012)
• Campaign & Adventures : 6 posts (4 in 2012)
• Game Fair/Convention reports : 1 post (1 in 2012)
• Reviews : 1 post (0 in 2012)

The collection update category is pretty sad as the only post made was about my collection goals which also showed an overview of my collection. Other than that no additions to my collection were recorded on the blog. I have this wild idea about the collection updates but I’ll discuss that a bit further on in Wild Ideas.

The RPG News category is fine. Smaller news items will be shared on my twitter and Facebook accounts while the bigger items will also get a blogpost. At least one per month for RPG News should be doable for 2013

As we all know the RPG world has caught on to Kickstarter and many projects are being run through this crowd funding website. So far I’ve backed 24 Kickstarter projects and have received the items of 12 of them. In 2013 I backed 10 projects and have received only 1 so far. The most notable projects were Call of Cthulhu 7th edition, and Cthulhu Wars. In addition to Cthulhu Wars I backed another three board games : Shadows of Brimstone, Machina Arcana, and Pathfinder Dice Arena (which got cancelled). As I’m backing projects regularly, this will also keep generating a good number of posts for the blog.

Campaigns & Adventures remains my favorite category because it means I’m playing roleplaying games, instead of just collecting them or blogging about them. This is a category I hope to increase the post count of significantly. There’s a Pathfinder Society Organised Play now in the area that I live in, which organizes a monthly game which I hope to attend as much as possible. In addition to this I also want to have a Pathfinder Society home campaign. I’ll blog about that idea in a separate post, there might even be an adventure path I’ll be playing in. Besides session reports I’ve added adventure seeds and characters to this section as well. I only added one of each in 2013 but there’s more articles in the pipeline. I also hope to include player handouts, character sheets, and other things people can use in their games.

Convention reports saw one post, namely Spiel 2013. I should have posted 2 more as I also went to a science fiction/fantasy fair called FACTS, and I still need to add the Kraken 2012 report. I have been experimenting with video editing so I hope to include a small video segment about the FACTS fair once that post is added to the blog.

A new category is Reviews. Only 1 so far in 2013 but it’s something that I’d like to do more. The only condition is that I want to actually have played the product I review. So if it’s a module, I want to have played or GM’ed it before I review it. The Pathfinder Organised Play should give me plenty of scenario’s to review (2 are in the works), and the Pathfinder Society home campaign is pretty much being set up exactly for this purpose.

Statistics

Traffic to the website has been pretty slow so far as I haven’t really plugged it too much yet. If I look at the stats for the blogger.com site, the kickstarter related posts had the most views overall. Original content seems to score pretty well too.

The RPGames Facebook page currently only has 29 likes and has seen 100+ posts since 26th of July. Also here I haven’t really plugged the site yet. As the main site gets more traffic, I’m sure the Facebook page will continu to grow too.

The RPGames Twitter account has 427 tweets so far with 30 people following me and 191 people being followed by me.

I should probably add a very obvious ‘follow me’ widget somewhere on the frontpage of the site to increase traffic to both Facebook and twitter.

Targets

When I take a look at what I set up as targets for 2013, it seems I’ve actually managed to cover a number of them. I didn’t achieve the 1 blogpost per week target, but I did set up the actual website RPGames.be plus it’s own twitter and Facebook presence. More collection updates, nope. More campaigns & adventures and more original content, yup.

Targets for 2014:

• 1 blogpost per week
• increase followers on twitter and Facebook
• more original content (adventure seeds, characters, session reports)
• collection updates

Wildest Dreams

Well it doesn’t hurt to be ambitious right ? So what would be really cool if achieved somewhere down the line ?

• RPGames.be’s Youtube channel. As I mentioned I’m already working on a convention video, but I’d love to do some ‘roleplay-ish board games’ too in the vein of Will Wheaton’s Table Top video’s. Also Google Hangout interviews, and actual convention reports would be great too. 
• RPGames.be’s webshop. Sort of like the European Noble Knight Games. Hey, it’s a dream. It’s wild. It fits the category.
• RPGames Con. As there’s no conventions for roleplaying games that I’m aware of in Belgium, it would be great to organise one. Very small of course for starters. Who knows, maybe there’s people interested in this.
• Playtest Elder Godlike.
• A part of RPGames.be to be turned into a database of my RPG collection with pictures and information about all the books I have. This will most likely require extensive programming and cost a good sum of money since I can’t do that myself. I have started writing down a database structure though, and I have a pretty good idea of what the site should be able to do. Putting all that into practice however will make it a long term dream.

Memorable moments

Topping 2012 was going to be nigh impossible as I played in a game with Sandy Petersen and several games with Scott Glancy. It would have been topped only by attending the North Texas RPG Convention but that fell through unfortunately.

What was memorable though was the photoshoot for Island of Ignorance, the 3rd Cthulhu Companion and ending up with a picture of myself in the book as the soldier Hank Duncan. In addition to this, I met Sandy Petersen again when I attended the Spiel Convention. 

From a collection point of view I was able to get my hands on some very rare Pagan Publishing releases this year like the player hand outs for Walker in the Wastes and Realm of Shadows. And as a birthday gift I got one of the two limited edition Iron Kingdoms releases that we received way back when I was still working on the Buccaneer Bass website. We received both the World Guide and the Character Guide in a version that was made available only to the people who worked on the books. Privateer Press was really cool in sending one of each to the Buccaneer Bass Crew as a thank you for our work on the site. The World Guide is now in my collection, while the Character Guide remains in the collection of one of the other Bassers.

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