Paper or Plastic?

According to . . . somebody somewhere . . . first anniversaries are marked by paper (traditional) or plastic (modern) gifts.

I guess the book and the dice I got for Christmas will have to suffice.

Yep, it's time once again for a tedious, self-indulgent retrospective.

First, the numbers. According to Blogspot, RBE topped 52,000 pageviews in its first year, but I've learned that pageviews are functionally meaningless in aggregate, telling me next to nothing about whether or not I have an audience for what I'm writing. Random adware and Google image links bump up the numbers while having nothing at all to do with the content, and sometimes some oddball occurrence, like a link to one of my posts in a 'trouble ticket' at Big Purple, may draw eyes which really have no interest in the blog itself. The numbers for individual posts are a little more telling, and a typical post gets viewed about thirty to sixty times in its first full day and around a hundred times in a week, which is up from six months ago.

The top five RBE posts in terms of pageviews are as follows.

Random Encounters That Don't Suck
Frankengame
Grumbler
Using Mythic Game Master Emulator as a refereeing tool: two actual play examples
Lightly Armored Fighter

From my seat, it's a respectable list, and I can honestly say I'm glad they are among my most read posts.

Two series of posts, the first on the cape-and-sword endgame or 'domain play,' and the other on random encounters are probably the best things I've written this year, and they are certainly the posts I'm most proud of in my short time as a blogger.

I really appreciate the many comments I've received. Over eleven hundred comments were left on the blog, and even if you consider around half of those are my own replies, that's been very satisfying.

Okay, that's enough looking back. What's next? Well, the video feature Cinematic is done, replaced with The Pen and the Sword, with excerpts from cape-and-sword tales. There are presently forty posts in my draft queue, and I'm both happy and a little surprised that there remains so much to write about in the coming months. Looking back six months to my previous milestone post, my anticipated posts on criminal enterprise got bumped back - still a lot of research and brainstorming in progress on this one - but in the next week or so you can look forward to a tiny swashbucklers' ruritania, the village of Saint-Sidoine-aux-Puis, with the 'swashbuckling furnishings' idea morphing into a recurring feature with descriptions of standard rooms - a bedroom in a noble's townhouse, an armoury in a palace, and so on - to drop into your own campaigns.

It's been a good year, and since I haven't run out of things to say, I look forward to an even better one ahead. Thanks so much for hanging with.

Six Months in a Leaky Boat

Six months on, and a little self-indulgent reflection is on the menu.

First, a few numbers. The blog passed 20,000 hits in the last week of June, or about what Playing D&D with Pornstars gets on a slow Wednesday, I imagine. Most posts get between twenty-five and forty views in the first twenty-four hours, and between forty-five and eighty in the first week, and all kidding about Zak's blog aside, I'm pleased that there seems to be a regular cadre of readers who are - hopefully - getting something out of the blog.

Even more satisfying are the over six hundred comments. I'm never happier than when a post produces a dialog.

April's A to Z blogging challenge brought in around half of the site's hundred-plus followers. The hosts of the challenge recommended following blogs with less than a hundred followers to pump up their totals, and a lot of the bloggers who joined during that time were writers, not gamers. I admit I didn't reciprocate in very many cases; my blog roll is up around the three hundred max limit already, so there simply isn't room to add more. That said, I don't see followers as a measure of the blog's success or lack-thereof in the same way that comments are.

The most-often viewed post is "Grumbler," undoubtedly due to its inclusion in a thread at RPG.net. In fact, links on message boards, specifically RPG.net and theRPGsite, undoubtedly drive views of the blog, far, far more than the blog aggregator, RPGBA.

The experience of blogging reinforced something I already knew: I'm not a particularly good writer. Oh, I know how to turn a phrase, and I can, for the most part, organize my thoughts and present them, but getting the thoughts out of my head and onto the screen is an arduous struggle. I hoped that my alacrity with composition might improve a bit with trying to wite something every day, but it just hasn't happened; old habits not only die hard, they rise, ghoul-like, fastening their teeth and claws in me. As a result, I've pretty much settled into a routine of two substantive gaming commentary or content posts a week, two 'hey, take a look at this other thing that someone else is doing!' posts, and two 'features,' one of classic illustrators and one of swashbuckling videos.

Not too long ago, another gaming blogger posted that he doesn't like to simply post links to other blogs or websites. While I understand the impetus to add value by contributing additional commentary, I believe one of the most important functions the blogs provide is to share the many great gaming ideas floating around the intrewebs, so I'm happy to connect someone's else's work without adding a lot of blather to make it look like I'm working hard in bringing it to your attention.

One of the things about which I'm most proud on this site is "Cinematic," the weekly video clip featuring swashbuckling swordplay. When gamers talk about 'cinematic,' in my experience they're referring to over-the-top action. While that's certainly part of many cape-and-sword movies, I think it's important to recognize that movies like The Duellists and The Deluge also define 'cinematic' as well.

The one thing that's surprised me is that I still have stuff to write. When I first started this six months ago, I had about a dozen ideas for posts, and figured I'd wing it from there. As of this post, I have over twenty topics already in the queue in various states of completion, and easily another dozen broad topics outlined in my replacement notebook. Frex, once the endgame is series is done - probably next week, renovations permitting - I want to turn to the other end of the social spectrum with a look at swashbuckling rogues and criminal enterprise in the cape-and-sword game-world, build a Ruritania for Backswords and Bucklers, and list some swashbuckling furnishings, or, 'What can I do to the villain with the bed warmer the maid dropped when she fled the room?'

So, that's where things stand, six months on. I'd be remiss if I didn't end with a thank you to those who read regularly - or irregularly, for that matter - and especially for those of you who take the time to comment. Your feedback and questions are sincerely appreciated.