2010: The Year That Was

Now that Christmas is past, it's time to start looking back on the previous year and looking ahead to next year. This post is going to be focusing on 2010, while next week's post will be my resolutions for 2011.

Unlike previous years, there are two categories of achievements: Those for the blog and those for the game itself.

The most popular blog entry this year (based on Google Analytics data) is How I Spent My Winter Vacation, my blog recounting my experiences at DunDraCon. Among the number of photos I snapped that weekend, I managed to snag a picture of a minor celebrity (other than Ken Hite). It turns out that this is not just any girl in a chainmail bikini, but is in fact the geek superstar Chainmail Girl. My fiancee, however, insists that she's the prettiest girl in that blog post. I'm inclined to agree.

The most actively commented blog for this year was Adventures in Oz Now Available! in which I announce the availability of the print version of the game.

My favorite blog post of this year has got to be Firing Characters (Out Of A Canon!). For one thing, I think the title was a pretty good joke. Plus the comments really got me thinking about the difference between tabletop gamers and what I called "fanfic roleplayers." I haven't drawn any conclusions yet, but some definite food for thought.

This was also the year I actually put out a podcast. I definitely enjoyed the experience and would like to do it again. I'm currently on the lookout for anyone or anything to talk about. If there's something you'd like to see covered in the blog or as a podcast, drop me a line at adventuresinoz (at) thegame (dot) com.

Now for the accomplishments of the book.

It looks like I'm closing out the year with 108 sales, with slightly over half of them being from the PDF market. But that's not whole picture. That only represents the people who paid me money for the game. About 30 print copies of the game have gone out to playtesters, artists and reviewers to get some goodwill and press for AiO.

And then there was the Doctors Without Borders fundraiser put on by OneBookShelf. Not only did a lot of money get raised to help flood victims in Pakistan, but around 2500 people downloaded Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road. To a certain extent, this was a good thing. While the fundraiser was going on, print sales over at Lulu surged (for a given value of "surged") and I got a nice little bit of good press. I am particularly proud of this review, not only because he gave me 5 out of 5 stars, but because he's someone whose books I own. Jason Levine is the author of GURPS Psionic Powers and the Assistant GURPS Line Editor over at Steve Jackson Games.

Blog 100!

Not only is this my last post of 2009, it is also my 100th blog posting!

Let's take a quick look back at the blog

Most popular post: The Indie Jones. I guess people like my take on indie RPGs. Not many seem to disagree with me, as that post still has no comments. Which leads me to my next milestone,

Most commented post: This is actually sort of a tie. The most commented post of 2008, my first year of blogging, was The Future Will Be Interactive! with 8 total comments. The most commented post of 2009 was Goodbye and Hello, also with 8 comments.

Now for New Year's Resolutions:

Publish something, for Pete's sake!: This is in progress. Just a few more hurdles await me. Mostly regarding getting art commissioned and paid for. Also, I'm confident enough that I should be able to publish two things this year. I'll be honest and say that I don't know what they are, but one of them will be Adventures in Oz.

I have entered an RPG design contest put on by Simian Circle Games. It will be something of an Iron Chef contest, in that I must design something during the contest that utilizes certain special ingredients. If you're interested in seeing how this game develops, I'll be posting updates here.

Get the word out!: I will be attending DunDraCon this year, and have volunteered to run a new Oz adventure "The Jaded City of Oz." This was written by my friend Kris and will be showing up in the AiO rulebook as a sample adventure. I would love to be able to attend Winkie '10, but at the moment, I don't think I can afford two conventions that close to one another. I do want to try for '11, though.

Podcast!: After Jared's interview and the Christmas podcast, I discovered that podcasting is something else that sounds intimidating, but really isn't that hard to do. My only challenge is coming up with fun things to say. Wish me luck!

Publish or Perish!

That is one of my big New Year's resolutions. The other is to marry this absolutely wonderful woman I've been in love with for the longest time, but that's a separate issue.

Now for a look back at the year that was:

Total amount spent on art: $300. My projected art budget: Around $1,000. If I can dodge unemployment this year, I might be able to make up the difference. I also have a potential investor, but I'm notorious for not counting my chickens before they are hatched.

Total blog hits: 850. This is only from about the beginning of August when I installed the hit counter. I imagine I'll hit 1,000 by February, when I tell you how DunDraCon went this year.

Total website hits: 329. This count begins from August 20, when I started using Google Analytics to track my site visits.

I have received hits from 35 states of the union and 23 foreign countries. Top hit-producing state: California (82 hits). Top foreign country: The UK (15 hits).

The worrying numbers are "Length of Visit" and "Depth of Visit." Nearly half of my visitors spent less than 10 seconds browsing my site and about 40% of visitors browsed only 1 page. Coupled with some other numbers that have been gathered, I'm figuring that the majority of these hits are actually from various "bots" scouting out my little corner of the internet. It will take some doing to tease out an exact number of these, but it's on my list of things to do.

Highest number of hits in 1 day: 10. This was November 6, soon after I posted an Oz thread on RPG.net.

Best hit getter: The YouTube video. The day it was posted, my site received 8 hits. Traffic to the site has stayed rather steady since then, with an average of 5 hits a day for the week immediately after. The RPG.net posting created a bigger spike, but had a much quicker dropoff. Given this success, I think another YouTube video will be forthcoming. Maybe even with music this time.

Art and Analysis

Here, as promised, is a piece of art done for the project from award-winning artist Bradley K. McDevitt. It's the Queen of the Field Mice from "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz." One of my favorites, since she's something of a litmus test to discover who's read the book and who's just seen the movie. This image is copyright Bradley K. McDevitt and used with permission.

I might not be able to get much more art from Brad. He has recently accepted a fairly steady gig from Goodman Games which will prevent him from doing as much freelance work as he had previously done.

If you know anyone who might be able to fill his shoes, let me know. Either comment on this post or email me at konradthebarbarian@gmail.com

As I was updating the site last week with the new character creation document, I also inserted the tracking code for Google Analytics. Although I have only a week of data, it's still fascinating stuff. Just like the hit counter I installed here, the big revelation is that I get traffic at all.

Also surprising is that nearly everyone comes looking for me, instead of simply stumbling upon me. Only one hit came from a search engine, and the search terms that were used indicate to me that the user was clearly looking for me. One hit came from a link I posted on wonderfulwizardofoz.net where I'm trying to start up a play-by-post RPG playtest. Every other hit was "direct traffic", people who came straight to the site.

Geographically, California is the top hit scorer this week, bringing in 5 out of 20 hits for the week. Runners up are Minnesota, Florida, Spain and the UK, all tied for 2 hits each. Yes, I'm getting international traffic. That surprised me, too. I'm just waiting until I get traffic from France, because someone there has published an Oz RPG and I'm curious how my project compares to it.

I should have the main rules section uploaded by next week.