Wednesday, December 31, 2025

2025 Year-in-Review

If the theme of my 2024 Year-in-Review was despondence, lack of direction, loneliness, and uncertainty, then the theme this year is one of hope, renewed purpose, community...and a bit of uncertainty still!

In 2024, I was discouraged because my blogging had slowed down, I wasn't sure how much I really had to say, if anyone cared, or if I was a "real" blogger, whatever that means. I wasn't getting the dopamine rush I wanted from posting. I wasn't sure how to promote my work. I felt embarrassed even trying to promote it. What was I doing?

In 2025, I bit the bullet and got on Bluesky, where the TTRPG scene seems much more robust and supportive than over on Twitter. I joined the Prismatic Wasteland Discord to stay in the loop on upcoming Blog Bandwagons. I put myself out there and shared my stuff, and people didn't just repost it and like it - they talked about it too. My thoughts were generating discussion. That's new!

I found my community. I got to engage with bloggers whose work I admire and respect. They shared my stuff. They talked about it. At PAX Unplugged, I got to actually meet some of these people, and play in their games. They asked me what was my blog and when I told them they knew what it was. I can say that this or that TTRPG on my bookshelf was made by so and so who I know and have played with. That's pretty neat!

My posts ended up all over the place this year, from Prismatic Wasteland's roundups to Carouse, Carouse!, the Explorateur, Shiny TTRPG Links, and even the Glatisant. I was so excited about the latter that I had to explain to multiple people who Ben Milton/Questing Beast was. According to Elmcat's ongoing Mapping the Blogosphere project, this blog is tied for 9th place on the list of "rising stars" in 2025, with 21 other blogs linking to mine this year. Maybe that sounds like small potatoes, but it's a big deal to me.

I authored 48 posts this year (49, counting this one), which is almost one per week, and 10 more than last year (many of which were play reports - not to suggest they are of lesser quality, but it does feel different).

The AD&D DMG has been a bolt from the heavens for this blog. It started with Stocking a Sandbox with the AD&D DMG, back in February. I love making little sandboxes in my downtime and coming up with new ways to populate them. I thought the AD&D DMG's Inhabitation table was pretty interesting, so I decided to give it a spin and write about my process. Little did I know that it would lead me down the rabbit hole wherein I'd be dissecting, analyzing, and often rationalizing One Weird Guy's specific, often controversial - but no less interesting - vision of this game.

For convenience, here is a great big collection of all of my AD&D posts from this year:

Of those posts, six are among my top 10 most-viewed posts of this year, and 14 are in the top 20. The other entries in the top 10 are The 100-Hex Sandbox (which uses the AD&D DMG, but which I don't quite consider part of the same series), The Village of Hommlet is Too Much: Minimalist Location Sketches for Sandbox Prep (more sandbox posting), Clerics Need Spellbooks Too, which was my entry in Prismatic Wasteland's Blog Bandwagon on clerics and religion in D&D (motivated by the pope's passing), and On Settlements (a post from the end of 2024 which benefited from renewed discussion about cities).

Other entries in this year's top 20 include On Initiative (a post from 2024 which has endured, likely because of its inclusion in Dwiz's master post) as well as Using Reaction Rolls to Determine Faction Relationships in the Sandbox (even more sandbox posting).

Six of my top 10 posts from this year are now also among the top 10 posts of all time on this blog, and one has even claimed the #1 spot.

I'm not quite sure why the AD&D stuff has resonated with people so much. Is it because AD&D is inherently of interest to people who read D&D blogs? Is it because people are interested in Gygax's odd design idiosyncrasies? Is it because AD&D is something of an impenetrable text and I do a good job distilling it? 

I'm not quite sure, but I've enjoyed the hell out of my time with it. I'm sure there will be more to write about AD&D in 2026, but I'm not sure how much more there is. I have a feeling that my time with it is coming to an end, but I'm not sure when, which brings me to the uncertainty.

What is the future of this blog? Lately, I've taken to Bluesky to share my thoughts while reading TSR-era modules. These are modules I've always wanted to experience myself, and discussing them in detail with others has been a lot of fun. They've also inspired some of my more recent posts (one of which even made it into the most recent issue of the Glatisant). These are not "reviews" so much as they are just my reactions to reading this stuff for the first time. I'm enjoying it and will probably continue making my way through classic modules.

I also started the year by reviewing modules I planned to play - Mörk Borg and Mothership stuff. These reviews didn't get much traction and were a fair amount of work, so I haven't done them since. 

One of my resolutions for this year was to play different games with different people, and to do less work when preparing for them - that means fewer wholly original D&D sandboxes with my regular group and more short prewritten modules with people I haven't played with before. I didn't really succeed at this goal. I played a lot of Mörk Borg (which was very fun!), but not much else. I played with more people than in 2025, but I wasn't gaming with everyone all the time like I had hoped to do.

I'm excited to take another crack at it this year. I can definitely get my Mörk Borg group to try some other games, and we've nearly exhausted what Mörk Borg content I have. I am also toying with the idea of running my B1 sandbox, whether it be in AD&D, OSE, or some other system entirely. I imagine I might want to do something similar with B2 and whatever other classic modules I read.

Overall, while I'm left with uncertainty about the future of the blog once again, that uncertainty is not an anxious one but an excited one. This has been my best year of blogging yet, and I'm eager to see where it goes from here.

One thing I've continuously learned this year is that the more you put into something (usually), the more you get out of it. I started playing rec league softball back in 2023. I had never played baseball in my life, so I was terrible. In the second half of 2024 we really clicked as a team, started practicing in the field, going to the batting cages, scrimmaging other teams, and the like. 

I put the time in and showed up. I got better. I started captaining my own team. I volunteered at youth clinics. The other regulars in the league started to get to know me. I made the All-Star team twice. I won an award for congeniality - not for being good at softball, but I'll take it! We won more games than ever this season and made it to the championship game before falling just short. Those people are my real-life friends now. I'm a lot better at softball now and I'm part of a community.

I share that story because blogging is much the same. If you show up, put yourself out there, engage with others, and generally make a consistent effort, people will notice. Before you know it, you'll go from feeling like you might give up on something to wondering what your life would be without it.

It's been a tough year for me personally, but I've gotten through it, and this blog and the greater community of bloggers has honestly been a big part of the reason why, along with my other hobbies and communities. I'm excited to see what 2026 has in store.

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