70% of the way through a decade of doing this! Might as well keep going at this point through sheer inertia! Luckily, it’s not just inertia driving us on – it’s because we’re really making genuine accomplishments and reaching great milestones!

We published 3 Glimpses Into The Vault, 13 Crowdfunding Carnivals, 24 Editorials, 3 Indie Frontiers, 16 Level One Wonks, 2 Meet the Campaigns, 3 Meet the Parties, 3 Solitaire Storytellings, 2 System Hacks, 3 System Splits, 2 Table Fictions, 5 Independents, and 51 Weekend Updates!

We also released 4 new episodes of Cannibal Halfling Radio! There would’ve been a fifth episode, but, uh, the tech gremlins ate it. Yes, it was very painful. We’ve got another two in the pipeline and are revving up for a third already, though!

Our most-viewed articles published in 2023, from least to most, were System Hack: Cyberpunk RED Minions,  Adventures in Rokugan, Weekend Update: 6/17/23, Rolemaster Unified, Cyberpunk RED: Black Chrome, Basic Roleplaying, Candela Obscura Quickstart, “We Didn’t Touch Dice The Whole Session!”, Cowboy Bebop, and Fabula Ultima. A swing back towards review dominance compared to the top of last year, but that Weekend Update is obviously eyebrow-raising; there’s no way to predict if we’ll ever get another scoop like the Renegade C&D debacle again, but it’s a nice feather to have in the cap all the same. Overall, we came ever-so-close to this being our Most Viewed year ever, but a 2nd place slot of this caliber is nothing to sneer at.

We were nominated for a second ENNIE Award for Best Online Content! We didn’t win in the end, but we lost out to TTRPGkids and Lin Codega‘s reporting on the OGL fiasco at the start of the year – a glorious defeat if ever there was one.

So, overall: a great year for Cannibal Halfling Gaming!

Personally, I’m way more satisfied with how I did than I was this time last year. I didn’t quite make my two articles a month ‘minimum’ that I set for myself in the Six Years post, but again, I got real close. The flavor of those articles was also way different than I planned for.  I did manage some RPG reviews and some Soliatire Storytellings (some of which are in my personal favorites of all time re: my posting here), but otherwise I was all over the place – a splash of game design, some editorializing, card and board games, dice and tea, con reporting and reviewing-books-about-RPGs. In the end, I’m okay with that.

I was back on the convention circuit, insofar as that means visiting the iterations of PAX that are on the east coast. East itself was alright, but Unplugged was a return to form. I still have… seven or so articles in the pipeline that will have had their start there?

Outside of CHG, I once again helped run the National Game Design Month discord server and itch jam, and although I wasn’t a slayer this year myself it was still rewarding to play a part in the community. Part of the reason that I wasn’t able to slay the NaGaDeMon was that I played myself: I took a swing at DriveThruRPG’s PocketQuest over the summer and spent my idea for Tales From The Cockpit on that instead.

I took a stab at a spot in the Tiny Library‘s latest iteration with some Magic Behind The Bar, and I came up with an idea that was a stretch goal for the Far Horizons Co-Op’s Guide to Death. Neither, alas, ended up going anywhere but I’m glad I took my shot and they left me with a bit more experience and some ideas for the future, respectively.

Finally, I co-hosted the Ind of the Year 2023 Bundle, which ended up being a fantastic collection of creations from over the course of the year (still available for a few more hours, when this posts)!

Now, for 2024. I want to take both A Stern Chase Is A Long Chase and Tales From the Cockpit to a more complete form, maybe even a physical one. I want to pitch more ideas, and try to get into more collaborative projects. I want to succeed at the next PocketQuest, and slay 2024’s NaGaDeMon. I’m going to keep going to PAX, and keep running games with Games on Demand. Around here I’m going to reset that goal of one review and one Solitaire a month, because I think it’s a good one for me, but I’m okay bouncing around too.

Seven years down, time to start on the eighth! We’ll see you later this very week as we continue our work to bring games and gamers together, so stay safe out there, play some games, and have a Happy New Year