Since Thursday was the 2nd anniversary of the blog, I thought I should take a poke at the site stats and see what they can tell me. Over the two years I’ve seen well over 300,000 hits (you can get the exact count on the lower right hand side of the sidebar), and a slow evolution of the blog from a focus on characters for every RPG to a blog that is mostly B/X D&D focused. I still love (and play) a lot of RPGs, but the fact is that I get the most feedback for my D&D material and it is the game I run the most and put the most work into. That and every time I pick up a point-buy or complex game to make a character for the blog in… I end up bogging down. I’ve done characters for most of my “easier” games, and keep wanting to get back to making more (after all, the goal is still 400 characters for 200 games), but finding the time to create a cool GURPS or Living Steel character just seems impossible these days.
The most fun I had making a character for the blog wasn’t even a character really. It was Cruar’s Cove – a city I generated using the rules in Mike Mearl’s “CityWorks” published by FFG. A project that took me four posts to complete but ended with a city I used in one of my recent games.
But at the same time, my most popular posts by sheer hit-count are topped by a non-D&D post; 5 Truly Worthy Post Apocalyptic RPGs (May 2009). Something about this article draws in the search engines. Most readers don’t stick around from this page, so it seems they are probably looking for CRPGs like Fallout. Nonetheless, this one post has over 15,000 hits since it was posted. It also has never been stumbled, reddited or otherwise linked to from other blogs, making it so most of the hits are from google.
Not surprisingly, the next most popular posts are some of my older downloads – My D&D Character sheets and Goblin Gully. The surprise newcomer is the Dyson’s Delve page that I put up to compile the levels of the Delve as I posted them week – to – week which has now drawn over 4,000 hits (and the delve itself has been downloaded over a thousand times, nearly as many as my character sheets!)
Somewhere along the way I dropped the Top 5 lists that I tried to publish each weekend. I don’t remember actually dropping them, but I found them to be becoming more and more difficult to put together. At the same time, I do miss them. Maybe I’ll revisit them soonish.
One of the latest additions to the routine of the site, the Random Thursday posts, haven’t been drawing a lot of traffic, but they do seem to draw a lot of commentary. And I post them because I use them – I love random tables and use them a lot when setting up my games (although quite rarely in actual play – I typically don’t even roll on them, I use them for inspiration – picking and choosing what tickles my fancy for this week’s game).
Finally we come to the latest addition to the blog – my zine. The work on the blog has been a lot of fun for the past two years, but the zine has been incredibly rewarding to me personally – just to be able to print out my favourite articles in digest-sized booklets for my own use. It is something I’ll definitely try to keep going with, and hopefully I’ll keep it up long enough that I’ll be able to put together an annual compilation that can be published through LuLu.
So, what do you like about the blog? What needs to change?
Dyson's Dodecahedron 
I have to confess, despite the name of your blog, I don’t read the posts of characters for non-D&D games. However, I love everything else. I am surprised the random tables haven’t been more popular, but then I love random tables. It’s been an inspiring journey reading your blog and I can’t think of anything that needs changing. Looking forward to the next two years. Thank you Dyson.
I like all the useful stuff you produce, but I do miss the characters.
Your maps are always impressive, as is your consistency. I also appreciate the clear layout and organization. I’ve experienced a similar slow creep from all rpgs, to a focus on B/X in my blog as well. I think you’re right about the simplicity of the system and B/X generation.
Your blog has been an inspiration for me to create more original content rather than just write long-winded posts, so now I do both. Keep up the good work!
I don’t know that anything needs changing. I read the blog because you’re sharing quality stuff, whether it’s characters, character sheets, dungeons, or rules variants. I think part of the appeal for me is the variety, too.
To pick a recent example, I loved the series of Basic D&D “prestige classes” based on the seven secret crafts of Glantri. It’s a great twist on a mechanic from what is probably my favorite Gazetteer. I didn’t post anything, just quietly saved the variants you came up with for use in my game, but I appreciated them. I’ve been meaning to create some of my own: they’re a great way to personalize a character class for a particular setting, and in retrospect, applying them to more than just wizards is a really good idea.
I quietly file away and use a lot of stuff from your blog — probably more consistently than any other blog I follow — including maps and character sheets.
So I guess I’d say just keep doing what you’re doing. It’s working.
Most of all I like the maps.
I came to the site because of Goblin Gully (well, probably – it was over a year ago now and my memory is a bit fuzzy). That module is still one of my favourites and I’ve run it 3 times with 3 different groups using 3 different systems (Pathfinder, WHFRP3, and B/X).
After seeing that module, I was hooked! Your sketchy cross-hatched mapping style is perfect and puts me in the perfect mood to get dungeon inspiration. It is almost embarassing how much of your material I use in my current Pathfinder game – I’m mixing up two of the published APs, but pretty much all your published dungeons are scattered across the wilderness and the players have been exploring a few for more sandboxy fun. As your new maps come out I pop them on my map somewhere and key them up if it looks like they might be explored.
I love your geomorphs and have been excited by the other sites jumping on the bandwagon and making them easier to use, but I haven’t found the best way to implement them in my game yet.
Beyond the maps, I love your character sheets. I “remixed” your old-school B/X sheet to use with Pathfinder and gave those out to my players’ delight.
The Random Thursdays are pretty cool, but I don’t get as much use out of them. Like you I find it awkward to use random tables during play, so I just read them when they come up on the blog and get some inspiration from them.
The least useful thing to me, ironically, is the Character for Every Game aspect. Before your redesign it was a bit of a slog trudging through your archives to find the goodies (the maps!) hidden among stuff I couldn’t really use.
Finally, Dodecahedron – great stuff! I use stuff more often if it is printed off and in my binders than if I have to go looking for it, so your zine is a great new way to present material I might not use otherwise.
Keep up the great work and here is to another 2 years!
I check in daily now (use to be a few times a week, but the postaday has dragged me in more regularly), I enjoy getting flashes of inspiration or things I can directly steal for my games.
I actually play GURPS myself in a fantasy settling, so I tend to just convert things in any other format, which is easy enough to do. I love the d12 random tables, the d12 needs more love, and they’re very rule loose which eases the work needed for stealing.
It was the maps that bought me here first though, the ‘Geomorph Mapping Challenge’ was interesting and useful, I miss them now they’re gone. I can’t say the character sheets have much direct use for me, the characters themselves sometimes inspire converted NPCs though, mostly they’re worth an overview to see how that particular game handles character creation – so I appreciate the detailed step by step process which reveals some of that.
Overall I wouldn’t change much, the variety keeps it fresh and although I don’t make use of everything I’m sure someone else does. As I personally prefer the houserules, random d12 tables and interesting variants on old monsters the most, as well as the odd map for emergency use – more of those will always be welcome!