Two Decades??

De-Gunking My Head Again.

I saw someone post that they've been blogging for years, so I thought I'd check the history here at the Gaming Den of Iniquity. And I took a step back.

Twenty Years? And almost a month.

But TWENTY Years?

Twenty Years Ago

On 29 July 2005, a Friday, I had a 2-month-old at home. I was self-employed, looking for contract gigs to pay the mortgage. My steady, 10-year-old D&D 3.5E game was going on permanent hiatus, because most of the group had newborns at home and thus higher priorities than gaming. I needed a game-oriented outlet.

So I started a blog. This one, right here. Go check the first two posts. I'll wait.

Stellar content, right? And then a veritable sporadic drip of content for the next 5-6 years. In my defense, I was busy trying to parent and pay bills and work full-time and be available to my family and keep the house from falling apart. I never strayed far from gaming, I just wasn't terribly public about it. I contented myself with board games, but the boards had edges. I had several campaigns in mind, but I didn't have the bandwidth to do anything with them.

Personal Revival And Retraction

I came back to blogging in 2011. Hard. I ran a week-long blog carnival (Winter Is Coming) which took all my time, but produced some pretty cool winter-themed content. I started editing game products. I did an OSR blog challenge and wrote a campaign over a month (interrupted by Winter Is Coming). I still need to compile and edit that into one big document. I scribbled ideas. I went to my first PAX East. I gave panels at PAX East.

I learned a whole lot in not much time, and I built a community. Then G+ went away abruptly, and keeping that community through the diaspora that followed proved too challenging for me. People slipped away into the different currents and eddies of life's river. I still don't know how to track down some of the people from those days. And that's OK. We had our time together, and maybe that's all we get.

I had a clear voice back in the twenty-teens. And G+'s absence silenced me for a while. Losing that tight-knit community hurt, and it made me afraid of investing that much of myself again only for it to disappear again. I coasted, writing some short fiction and trying the occasional blog challenge, but nothing really stuck with me until #city23 and #lore24. I had a singular vision focused on the city of Fellport, and I maintained the drive to write something every week, even if it was a little listicle of 8 rumors about the city.

And Now?

Lately I've been feeling really good about creating things. Being out of work for 20 weeks sort of helps that feeling in the weird way of "I need to do something for my sanity other than look for work", but with a rather large downside. I feel the mania of making things like it's 2011 all over again.

Last September I released Condensed Character Creation for Sword of Cepheus 2e (also on DriveThru RPG), which summarizes all the lookup tables needed to make a character in a single document. I finished Bolthaven Folios #1: Forge & Fate (also on DriveThru RPG), a zine that injects a little chaos into your creator PC's life. I already completed two game jams on itch, producing Echoes at the Edge of the World for the Appendix N Jam and Historia Obscura for the One-Page RPG Jam, and I've got at least one more Jam coming.

I'm blogging more about thoughts and ideas rather than filling the blog with snippets of fiction or details about people, places, groups, and items in a single fantasy city that lives in my head. I'm thinking more instead of panicking that I haven't written this week's Rumor Mill and casting about looking for a theme to hang ideas off of. I'm gathering a list of projects to work on--I've got 4 on my list right now, and I'll possibly add more depending how my time shakes out.

I'm making a little money with these Pay What You Want things, but I'm looking at expanding to a ko-fi and rehabbing my big cartel web store. I'm toying with running games for money at startplaying.games. I'm making Snack And Occasionally A Game PDF money, but I'd like to graduate to Hey I Can Pay The Electric Bill This Month money, or even Wow I Can Cover Mortgage This Month money. And keeping that rolling and growing to consistently covering part of life's expenses would thrill me.

Baby steps.

Make the thing. Do the work. Find the fans. Don't be a dick.

Here's to the next 20 years. Let's roll.