2018 State of the Blog

2018 is drawing to a close and I believe it is time to do a bit of retrospection about the blog.

Slow Start

I launched the blog with my first post on October 22nd, 2017.

Why did I all of sudden decide to blog about tabletop rpgs?

The answer to that was the inaugural Gauntlet Con that was held just before I started the blog. That weekend of gaming online in 2017 made me realize how much passion and love I have for this hobby.

I am not the most sociable person in the world. I am a person with a lot of acquaintances but not a lot of folks I would call friends. And those friends aren’t into playing tabletop games. Therefore, I had no outlet for the thoughts, feels, and creative instincts that role playing games gave me. Hence I started a blog.

After those initial posts in October of 2017, the reality of how hard it is to be a writer hit me. I finished that year with a whopping total of 4 blog posts.

This Year

As with many beginnings and resolutions, I started off 2018 with a bang. I churned out quite a few posts in the first few weeks, mostly centered around my Swords Without Master Echoes series.

But then I once again hit the doldrums. For months, I didn’t play in many games and I didn’t write another post until June. During June and July I did my best to post a bit more regularly but it was still at a meager rate. I began to doubt if I even had it in me to be a blogger.

#RPGaDAY2018

August was the impetus thanks to the #RPGaDAY2018 challenge. This gave me a months worth of prompts in which to create content. I created some blog posts and YouTube videos to answer these questions. So I give great thanks to Autocratik for creating something wonderful that bolstered my ability to create.

Afterwards, I maintained a somewhat regular schedule of posting and in turn saw traffic rise on the site although audience engagement is still non-existent and it is something I need to improve as I move forward on my blogging journey.

The Year Ahead

2019 is another opportunity for me to continue to create content. My goal is cut down on the amount of actual play reports and instead focus on creating custom content like adventures, assets, and monsters for varying game systems. I would also like to do more reviews on game systems and supplements.

In other exciting news, I will be broadcasting tabletop games on Twitch starting in January. We are set to begin a campaign of Shadow of the Demon Lord on Tuesday evenings (Eastern U.S.) and one-shots of story games on Saturday afternoons. If you would like to follow the action, my Twitch channel is here. I am super hyped for this.

Thanks

I want to give thanks to all of you out there that have visited Fictive Fun in 2018 and to all of you that offer me the encouragement to keep doing this for the foreseeable future.

Thanks to Jason and all the wonderful folks at The Gauntlet who have showed me that a tabletop community can be warm and caring.

Thanks to Epidiah for creating the game that brought me back into the hobby after close to 20 years of being away from it.

Thanks to all the players that have participated in my games and to all the GM’s who have put up with my story-gamer self-indulgence (I see you ASPAC crew) throughout the years. Without you, this hobby would be meaningless.

I wish everyone the best in 2019!

Much love,
Patrick