Happy New Year! from Campaign Mastery
And so another year has either come to an end, or that end is nigh, depending on just where in the world you happen to be located at this precise moment.
I’m posting this earlier than usual to catch as many people in the middle of celebrating the changeover as possible – It’s been 2015 for just over 12 hours here in Australia, but in some parts of the world it’s still late in the 2014 year.
It’s been a year with a few challenges to be overcome, no matter where you’re from. International Crisis after International Crisis, the worst year for air travel in many, many years (if not ever), the threatened unraveling of the United Kingdom and the EU, an American Congress that seems locked into do-nothing-and-let-nothing-be-done mode, an Australian government that seems to have turned its back on everything that the Australian people pride themselves on through an unprecedented string of broken promises… in time, these will no doubt become fodder for contemporary-setting adventures, but at the moment most of them are too close to permit adequate perspective.
Closer to home, D&D’s 40th anniversary was not the love-fest that everyone hoped it would be, but the game remains the dominant single pastime within our hobby. I started the year reliant on an internet cafe for posting articles and ended it reliant on a second-hand laptop for posting articles, with my main computer still down for the count – due to a lack of time more than anything else. Unprecedented spam levels have threatened my ability to post on more than one occasion, and remains an ongoing issue that takes up to five hours a day to manage. All that, on top of health issues that are sometimes good and sometimes bad, but usually disabling to at least some extent…
But, through it all, there have been some great articles published at the end of the day. Ignoring those published in earlier years, the top ten most popular from the year were (in order):
- By Popular Demand: The Ergonomics Of Dwarves – Published May 9th, 2014
- Swell And Lull – Emotional Pacing in RPGs Part 1 – Published March 21, 2014 (My birthday!)
- Seven Circles Of Hell – Creating Politics for an RPG – Published August 29, 2014
- Growing Plot Seeds Into Mighty Oaks – Published May 20, 2014
- Pretzel Thinking – 11 types of Plot Twist for RPGs, Part 1 – Published December 02, 2014
- Ten Million Stories: Breathing life into an urban population – Published April 1, 2014, but not an April Fool’s Day joke!
- The Envelope Is Ticking: Insanity In RPGs – Published March 7, 2014
- Alien In Innovation: Creating Original Non-human Species – Published November 18, 2014
- Tie:
“I know what’s happening!” – Confirmation Bias and RPGs – Published November 14, 2014, and
Polished Loquacity: The Secrets of Stylish Narrative Part 1 – Published September 5th, 2014 – and I note that putting all the parts of this series together puts it in the top ten of all time here at Campaign Mastery. The compiled PDF is certainly the most popular download I’ve ever offered here, now approaching 200 downloads across both formats!
- Tie:
The Heirarchy Of Deceipt: How and when to lie to your players – Published January 21, 2014, and,
The Thinking Man’s Guide to Intelligence for Players and GMs – Published December 16, 2014
Overall, readership in 2014 was down about 20% on 2013 numbers, but it’s astonishing, encouraging, and deeply heartening to see that there are two entries from December and two from November on the list, given that the others have had between 3 and 24 times as long to accumulate page reads!
So there’s plenty to be cheerful and optimistic about, heading into a new year!
I wish all my readers Health, Comfort, Safety, Prosperity, and Happiness in the New Year, and bring on a fantastic 2015!
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January 5th, 2015 at 12:57 pm
Happy 2015 Mike!
Johnn recently posted..Left Hooks: 24 Plot Twist Ideas & Design Patterns
January 5th, 2015 at 1:58 pm
Thanks, Johnn – to you and your family, too!