Readers, 2024 has been a good year for the blog – both in terms of me keeping to a (fairly) consistent posting schedule of weekly-ish, and in terms of raw stats. When I started this I was sure I wouldn’t look at visitor stats, but you quickly begin to pay them some mind – and 2024 already has a +54% increase on Views so far. And the help of numerous Patreon supporters, of course, helps pay hosting fees and keep me churning out content!

What’s this from? Well, see previous comment about posting more regularly; and also, as Unconventional GMs has developed, there’s been a useful synergy in producing two kinds of content. There’s more to be done there, I’m sure, but it’s helped me keep my gaming mojo warm throughout the year, even through holiday seasons when it can be hard to get a group together. I’m hopeful that the gaming community’s adoption of BlueSky will make it easier to promote things like this, as well.

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, the chance to request articles or content, and the chance to play in one-shot games, for a very reasonable backer level of £2 per month. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here. Telling people about the blog, and sharing links/retweeting is much appreciated also – thanks!

So, as I look back, here are five pieces of writing I’m proud of from this year – which I think show a fairly complete picture of the variety of stuff I post here.

Opinion Pieces

Back in January, in response to Ben Riggs’ piece, I wrote why I think that The Golden Age of RPGs has not even started. I still think this, and while it’s easy to be all doom-and-gloom about the dominance of Wizards and D&D, I still think the advantages of the exposure it gives us outweigh the negatives. 

If I seem to cast myself online sometimes as a defender of Hasbro and their shenanigans, but it’s only because there’s so many commentators that seem convinced that every release Wizards put out is terrible. D&D’s quite good, actually. And you don’t have to play it, and we all benefit from its popularity in terms of hobby recognition.

How To Run…. as a One-Shot

I’ve not done many of these (they used to be my bread and butter when I started the blog!) and it’s just because they take a lot of prep to get down. But I did produce one about running Dungeon Crawl Classics here, which is fast becoming one of my go-to convention games. I even followed it up much later in the year with a rare adventure review of a DCC Lankhmar module.

Ready-to-Play Modules

For the first time, I haven’t done a D&D one of these – although I do have another 1st-level one-shot sitting in draft form that I can’t rule out sharing before the end of the month! But I did release The Kowloon Knife-Kut Knoodle Katastrophe, which while a mouthful (of hot ramen) to say, is a lot of fun to run. Outside of the blog, getting to run Feng Shui 2 for its designed Robin Laws on channel was great as well, as well as appearing on a panel with him at Spring Kraken.

Superchargers

I posted a series of advice columns on how to Supercharge One-Shots in the summer – based on techniques you can add to adapt a published one-shot, or an already-prepped session, to make it better. There’s Sidekicks, Hexcrawl Plots, Deadline Fights, Montages, and Big Starts – I think these are all really useful advice pieces, and I still go back to them and use them myself.

Reviews

I’ve continued to pepper the occasional review through the blog. It’s not my main focus, and I’m committed to making reviews play-informed; I’ll have run or played the game at least once or twice before writing it up. This approach sacrifices some of the listing of the game’s physical form and construction in favour of how it actually feels at the tables, which makes some of them quite vibes-heavy. This one of DIE is one I’m proud of, as it’s a game that runs very much on vibes behind an illusion of a crunchy trad system.

So, that’s 2024 best bits. As always, it’d be great to hear in the comments if there’s one kind of post you’d be particularly interested – or not interested – in. And onwards to 2025!