80% of a decade down, and things are about to get decidedly enneadic around here! 2024 has certainly been one of the years of all time, but how did we do around here and what might the future hold?

We published 2 Glimpses Into The Vault, 13 Crowdfunding Carnivals, 33 Editorials, 4 Indie Frontiers, 13 Level One Wonks, 1 Meet the Campaign, 3 Meet the Parties, 6 Solitaire Storytellings, 3 System Hacks, 2 System Splits, 6 Independents, and 50 Weekend Updates! Overall a slight uptick in indie and solo stuff, a metric I’d like to continue pushing.

We also released a two-part Cowboy Bebop actual play for Cannibal Halfling Radio! We’ve got another chit-chat episode in the works, and are talking about checking out Triangle Agency for Now Playing in the New Year.

Our most-viewed articles published in 2024, from least to most, were System Hack: Using Playing Cards, Rules-Lite Superhero RPGs Revisited: Part 1, Salvage Union Review, Deathmatch Island Review, Black Sword Hack and the evolving OSR,  Dragonbane Review, Cyberpunk Edgerunners Mission Kit Advance Review, A Survey of Rules-Lite Superhero RPGs, Tales of the RED: Hope Reborn – Cyberpunk RED Campaign Review, and Wildsea Review.

We were joined by a new contributor! In addition to those superhero RPG articles linked above, part of by far our longest editorial series, SabrinaTVBand brought us creator interviews and editorials ranging from itch.io business practices to how AI is harming the industry. An excellent addition to our roster by any measurement.

We actually published more articles and wrote more words than last year, but as Aaron talked about a bit last week 2024 was indeed a slower year for us for readership, by quite a lot – after ’23 came within striking distance of being our most-viewed year ever, ’24 dipped below 2020‘s numbers for visitors and views. Aside from those forces outside of our control – it’s been hard all over shouting into the void about games this year, see: any indie games outfit or bundle trying to get some eyeballs – I’d say I can take, er, credit for a big part of that. I haven’t kept steady, and I didn’t quite reach my goal for the year, and the fact is that if you aren’t pushing the wheelbarrow it isn’t going to move. I came pretty close though, and I’ve had a lot of great post-PAX Unplugged ’24 momentum (which was a large part of why I got as close as I got). I don’t intend to quite keep the pace of December ’24, but I’m hoping to keep it going into the 2025 at a steadier pace.

I also need to see if I can figure out better ways to practice the dark art of algorithmancy, if that’s even possible.

It was a very successful year for Seamus Conneely of Game Design, though! I did that Designer Meet & Greet at Unplugged, which was an awesome experience. Lost Among The Starlit Wreckage started getting sold through IPR and has been showing up in game stores and at conventions. No Map, No Plan got made for DTRPG’s PocketQuest 2024 game jam, and here at the end of the year it’s an Electrum Bestseller! I even managed to successfully slay the NaGaDeMon with a third entry in the increasingly unplanned mecha game trilogy, The Cog That Remains! Oh, and I designed a new, royal guest for Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast, but there are some related chapters that need to get written so I haven’t talked about that one much.

Game Design 2025 is mostly going to be about refining things. I want to get The Cog That Remains to a final, physical version – it may even get a supplement – and I want to finish that Yazeba’s project. Tales from the Cockpit got an update, but both it and A Stern Chase Is A Long Chase have yet to reach what I’d call a final form. I want to do PocketQuest and NaGaDeMon again, although as it stands right now I have literally no idea what I’ll be doing for them.

Kind of exciting, honestly.

Our octonary year might have been slower, but I’m ending it satisfied with what we all and I personally accomplished and feeling like it’s a solid foundation for us to jump off of as we head into our novenary one. We hope to continue to introduce gamers to new games, and in that introduce gamers to each other, as our archive grows ever larger. Thank you for reading, stay safe out there, play some games, and have a Happy New Year!