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2019 Hindsight / 2020 Vision

My travels are coming to a close and, as such, my hiatus will be lifted in early 2020. This past year has seen a few false starts and this column reflects on both what’s happened in terms of my writing and upcoming thoughts for the new year.

Three Years… Almost

My momentum was strong when the site launched in 2017. Even during a cross-country move from the Midwest to the Pacific Northwest I was able to keep a weekly schedule (the move itself provided me with topics). For the most part, the momentum continued in 2018, though there were a couple weeks with missing columns. As 2019 continued, columns became harder to write. While I saw traffic to my site, overall engagement had declined (feedback, discussions, etc.).

I launched a TTRPG blog so that I could write more often and more regularly. Writing, in whatever form, is an important outlet for me and I had written too little prior in the years following my webcomic and prior to 2017. I’m almost always thinking about tabletop gaming, so that focus seemed like an easy option. But, as much as I write “for me,” there’s still an effort it takes to think of interesting and varied topics within a singular (if still broad) focus. And, by mid-year 2019, I was experiencing some burn-out.

When I decided to participate in NaNoWriMo, I thought I could keep my site going and write. But as I entered November all I wanted to do was focus on the world of my fiction. And I didn’t want to convert that to a game world… at least, not until the fiction itself was done. I learned some lessons when working on my fiction, but with holiday travels, pet issues, and the RPG-writing burn-out, I closed up shop for December. I took an almost complete break from writing during the last month of the year. The month has also been absent of RPG-playing.

As 2020 begins, I plan on writing tabletop RPG content again, but with some changes. More on that in a bit. Let’s continue with 2019.

Bag of Nails

I started a monthly, local Call of Cthulhu: Down Darker Trails campaign in early 2019 titled “Bag of Nails.” (“Bag of nails” being Old West slang for everything going wrong at once.) At least, the intent was to be a monthly game. The difficulty with a monthly game is that it still takes scheduling and when a game is canceled it leads to more than a month without gaming. The table gained and lost some players though the year but the campaign is still going, with a pivot in how the campaign is run (a lot more personal, a bit more dangerous, and a little less episodic) for 2020.

I’ll continue to write and post session summaries as each game is run. Should the group decide to play something else, I’ll pivot to session summaries for whatever game I’m running. (I still have ideas for a Star Wars Sith Empire game set in the Old Republic era, using the FFG rules.)

Seed Tracks

In July, I attempted a new feature for the site: writing an adventure or character idea for every track in a particular album, usually based on my own listening tastes. These columns took a lot more work than I expected and instead of being a shot in the arm for the site, contributed towards my overall writing burn-out. I was hoping that the injection of music would lead to more discussions and overall engagement, but given the amount of work for a 12-track album (each track could take 30 minutes to an hour) and the lack of visible response, I’m shelving the concept as a regular column for 2020. I may still write the occasional Seed Track as the mood strikes, but will no longer force the work.

The Scrap Pile

Some of the missed column Mondays in 2019 were due to me trying to make a concept work and getting stuck, finding a playtest issue I couldn’t work through, or just unable to find the desire to put in the effort for the topic. Some notable columns that were scrapped include:

Starfinder Archetype: Celebrity Chef
I attempted to create a Celebrity Chef archetype for Starfinder twice; once in 2018 and once again in 2019. In both attempts I ran into issues with the scale of what I wanted to do. It would require developing rules for ingredients, cooking, and custom buffs/de-buffs. The level of effort required was out of scope for the simple column I wanted to write. Despite the lack of the new archetype, I did find something to write about and produced A Fantasy Feast and Starfinder: Iconic. So, while the Celebrity Chef and all the rules required may not be written by me, it wasn’t a wasted effort.

Starfinder Alien: Plasmoid
Another Starfinder creation I attempted was a new playable alien. The Plasmoid was intended as a gestalt entity that could morph as needed, or temporarily split into multiple creations. As it was physically damaged, it would lose stats instead of hit points, essentially losing part of itself as it was hurt. Not only did this require an overhaul of rules, the alien was simultaneously too powerful and too unplayable until it healed. I may still use a similar concept for an alien race, but not as an option for player characters.

Bearport: The University & Outer Bearport
Bearport was the fictional Portland city for a supers game that never got off the ground. Without a game to sustain it, writing the city components was always a difficult task and every time I stared at the half-filled page of notes for the city, I couldn’t work up the effort to continue writing what would have been the final component. I did end up writing two of the villains I created for the campaign: Blank Paige and Four Eva. While I’ll probably never write about Outer Bearport (unless I run a game set in that location), there are a few more villain concepts I’ll likely complete as future columns.

Call of Cthulhu: Radiation Vibe
I was reading about radioactive quackery and thought there might be a way to use that as the base of a Call of Cthulhu scenario. I couldn’t quite make it work as an adventure, so thought to use it as a column for things that could affect a character within the CoC setting, either adapting the BRP poison rules and/or the “Mother’s Gift” rules from the published “Blackwater Creek” scenario. What I wrote ended up being only slightly longer than this paragraph and was more links than substance. I canned the base idea and wrote an In Nomine demon: Mairya, Demon of Quackery.

Social Media Exodus

I tried creating a custom AttercapNet twitter account specifically for the site at the start of the year. The idea was to post anything RPG-releated to that account and anything personal/political on my @attercap account. This divide ended up muddying the waters of what I should post and where. My site isn’t a business and separating my “brand” from my personal posts just didn’t work. It ended up being a mess of cross-reposting from each account. I decided to shutter the site-only account and closed it at the start of December.

On a personal level, I’ve also begun leaving a lot of other social media sites. This is due to a combination of privacy, personal, and political reasons. This includes Facebook. As I’ll no longer be on Facebook to manage my page, the Facebook AttercapNet page will be going offline in January.

I’ll still be on twitter and tabletop.social for the foreseeable future, and it’s possible I’ll join a new social environment as I’m not anti-social media. But I want to make sure it doesn’t become a timesuck or too much of a distraction from my other work and hobbies. My RSS feed will also remain in place.

Into the Future

Hiatuses, canceled and unfinished work, leaving social media… it might almost seem like I’m giving up on the site. I’m not. I still plan on writing a column almost every Monday for 2020. But I’m not going to beat myself up if I do need to skip a week for whatever reason. This two month break has helped rejuvenate me and reminded me that this is supposed to be what I do for fun and as an outlet. It’s not a job and I’m not asking for any monetary compensation (but I do ask for your feedback if you want to give it). My goal continues to be consistent in my weekly writing to maintain (and grow) my audience, but I’m hoping you’ll forgive me those weeks where the site may go un-updated.

Wishing you all a happy holiday season and a dice-filled 2020!