12 months in

Wow. It's been a year.

Twelve months ago now I posted my first post to 19 Sided Die. It was a reddit post I put together more or less on a whim, and once I posted that it just kept flowing. I couldn't stop writing. After the first post I jotted down a list of all the ideas that came to me and I still have some of those original ideas left.

But it's slowed down in recent months. At least one person has asked me why - that person being Toast over at Scrolls from the Toaster, who recently celebrated his 100th post and shouted me out. The feeling is mutual, Toast. Our side-by-side growth has been very encouraging for me.

As for why: nothing is wrong, I've just been writing less. I reached a point where I had to tell myself that was okay, after I missed my first weekly post in over nine months. Since mere weeks after I started this blog, I've had a son to look after. That means he's almost 1 and my spare time has only been shrinking as he's increased in both mobility and appetite. Because of this, I've had to be choosy with my hobbies - especially those involving sitting in front of a screen.

I don't always get a couple of hours spare time in a week to write a post, and my backlog ran out a while ago. I still have plenty of material to work with though, so if anyone else is out there waiting for me to post each Wednesday, stick around.

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In December I started what I called the blog100 challenge. Out of the series of 100 questions by d4 caltrops I completed 9 before falling off the wagon. Along the way, at least 3 others started their own blog100's. I'll consider that a success - although I really should get back to it!

I'm still struggling to answer that tenth question. It's one of the few that doesn't feel relevant to me, but I'll find a way to do it. These posts may move from the Sunday slot to the Wednesday slot in order to keep a weekly pace if that works out better for me. We'll see.

I also recently came to learn that Throne of Salt did something similar in January, independent of the challenge, by answering all 100 questions across four posts. Very cool!

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Six months ago I talked about the goals I set when starting this blog and how it felt to stick to those goals. In as much time again, I had double the readers with far less effort. I'm not sure what the lesson is there, if there is one. I'm happy to be taking it more casually than I was, but at the same time I miss the schedule and the regular discourse. I'm glad people are still around, reading my stuff. In fact, within just the last few months I began to hear back from players who had actually used some of my classes - in particular the Ranger (whose skills have received some reworking) and the Dragon. On that note, the Dragon might be the most polished thing I've put out there, so it's nice to see it continuing to get some attention.

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What's next for 19 Sided Die? I dunno. There's a lot on the backburner. Tell me if any of this sounds neat.

• OD&D has been a fixation of mine for a while. I want to talk about a lot of OD&D related stuff.
• That list of ideas from the beginning still has a dozen topics remaining, and I've jotted down about three dozen since. Each of these is at least a post's worth of content, some of them have expanded beyond that.
• One of those topics, I could fill a book. This isn't a promise - if anything, it's the opposite. Scope creep may just kill this one.
• Another one of those topics feels like it should be in zine format. This one is more likely to see the light of day.
• Anybody interested in Obsidian related content? I've used it to prep and keep session notes since before beginning this blog, but I've really only just recently taken the deep dive into what it can truly do. For here I'll most likely keep it to the TTRPG space, but Obsidian for TTRPGs is a whole beast of its own.
• Send help, Obsidian is taking over my life.
• A ton of old posts that need to be revisited.
• Downloadable PDF versions of my content.