Daily Archives: January 1, 2023

Hey, it’s January! That’s an odd-numbered month, which means there’s not going to be a theme here. It’s also the start of the year and there’s going to be a bunch of stuff getting cleared out from 2022 so it’s not going to have a proper theme but it’ll definitely have something… themey.

What’s coming? Well:

• February is a month of Smooches!
• April is a month of Self Indulgence!
• June is a month of Pride!
• August is a month of Tricks!
• October is a month of Dread!
• December is a month of ‘Ween!

Then, each month, look forward to

• A How To Be article talking about a character in 4th edition D&D
• A worldbuilding article talking about building my setting of Cobrin’Seil, or building settings in general
• At most one article on 3.5 D&D, one on 4e D&D
• Each month I’ll show you at least one article on Magic: The Gathering, where I’ll show you this month’s daily custom cards, and well, we have a big special project for that, which we’ll talk more about soon.
• An article talking about an OC, usually from City of Heroes, but hey, wide open world.
• One piece of graphic design for a t-shirt, mask, or sticker
• A story pile article each monday, with at least one anime a month (loose target)
• A game pile article every friday, with at least one video a fortnight (harder target)

Each month I’m going to present at the end of the month, a summary of the game dev I’ve been doing that month, which is also going to be built out of articles posted on other social media spaces.

Ah.

Yes.

Other social media spaces.

You know, like Twitter, where I used to do this all the time.

I’m writing this back in December, of course. I don’t know what’s going on with Twitter. But I think it’s probably bad, and I think I’m enjoying not having to be on a space that predominantly is known for everyone on it screaming about how bad it is. So what I’m going to try and do going forward is do things like dev threads over on my Mastodon, which lets me do long-form threading with graphics, and search my own history. That’s what I really liked about what twitter gave me. I’ll also be presenting things on Cohost and Patreon to see what the audiences there want to say.

Basically, what you’ll find where:

• Drafted article ideas where you can comment and give me direct suggestions where I’ll be able to meaningfully engage? Cohost.
• Threads for showing ongoing progress on projects where I’m primarily taking notes on my own work? Mastodon.
• Places for answering polls and questions about the game development I’m doing where you get to provide meaningful input into things I’m doing? Patreon.
• Just the video articles? Youtube!

Each of these platforms is going to do a different job, and that’s important. I need to stop treating you as if you’re going to different sources for content firehoses. What I want you to do is come to my blog to look at the best of my material, and look at those other platforms as places you can go if you want more. This blog hosts articles. Those places are for social interaction, in different ways.

Particularly, this plays into the new way I’m approaching Brainstorm posts. Instead of having each month open with a post explaining that month’s game project, which can feel a bit like an open space, my intention is to present a link to the month’s brainstorming thread on Mastodon. Mastodon serves a purpose that the blog doesn’t necessarily, where it allows for lots of small additions, maintained in reverse chronological order, threaded on one another. At the start of each month, there’s going to be now, a post summarising that thread. This also stops cutting off a bit of extra time, where scheduling meant sometimes a month was more like three weeks of working on something rather than 31 days.

Below the fold, though, there’s some reflection on the history of this blog, why we have ten years of Press, and how I feel about realising this is now one of the longest ongoing projects I’ve ever had.