Patreon Exclusive: 2024 Prismatic Retrospective
Added 2024-12-31 20:15:10 +0000 UTC2024 Prismatic Retrospective
Year-end retrospectives are a rare blogging mismatch in that they are important for the blogger to write but typically of little interest to readers. However, the real blogging sickos (I count myself in that grouping) do gobble these types of things up with interest. So here I basically lay bare my analytics on everything from the past year just for my most dedicated sickos, my beloved Patrons, as a thank you for your support in 2024.
Adventures Released
Most of my work this year has been on ongoing, as-of-yet unreleased projects. However, I did quietly put out two very small adventures, which have done numbers you might expect from putting out projects quietly instead of loudly. However, I think both are pretty fun, so the numbers don’t fully reflect their value to me:
Trouble in Paradisa: 58 purchases of PDF, 12 physical purchases, 173 itch downloads
Wonky Willie’s Authentic Interactive Extravaganza: 12 purchases of PDF (PWYW), 9 physical purchases, 364 itch downloads
There were probably some sales on DriveThruRPG, but I can’t be arsed to log in and look over there to find out. Thanks to everyone who has left ratings on these on itch! (or DriveThruRPG, but no one will ever know if anyone other than the 3-star-bandit has visited those titles).
Blog Postings
In 2024, I put out 29 blog posts, my second most in a single year (the most was 35 posts in 2021). This was mostly due to some end of year burst of productivity, especially around Halloween. This is probably a good rate for me, especially adding in my goal to do lower effort weekly link roundups I’ll be doing on my substack. Below are my top 30 posts of the year by clicks, with posts that were actually published in 2024 (16 of the 30) listed in bold:
Hexcrawl Checklist: Part One (16,954) from 2022
The TTRPG Cooking Minigame (7,421)
Doppelgänger Dos & Don’ts (6,362) from 2022
Hexcrawl Checklist: Part Two (5,331) from 2022
Rehabilitating the To-Hit Roll (4,241)
D20 Tabletop Roleplaying Game Gift Ideas that Aren’t RPG Books or Dice (4,211)
In Defense of Ability Scores (3,292) from 2023
The Keep on the Borderlands is Full of Lies (3,289) from 2021
Encounter Checklist (3,219) from 2022
Shrödinger’s Chat 2: Amended & Restated Quantum Language Rules (2,741)
Overloading the Damage Die (2,451) from 2021
Wizard Diss Tracks (2,381)
Do Fear the Reaper (2,291)
My Weird Wizard Show (2,274) from 2023
Posters, Posers, and POSR(s) (2,259) from 2023
The Basic Procedure of the OSR (2,127)
Exploding the Encounter Die (2,021)
Wizards Playing Telephone (1,947)
We Live Again (1,892)
Shopping in D&D is Garbage, And How to Fix It (1,860) from 2023
Megadungeon Malls & Collaborative Caverns (1,829) from 2021
So Many Free Taverns for Your Games: Barkeep Jam Retrospective (1,772)
Potion Clues (1,726)
Endangered in Dungeons (1,721)
Which Sacred Cow Doth I Kill? (1,718)
Familiars: A Witch’s Best Friend (1,713)
Apolitical RPGs Do Not Exist (1,627) from 2021
One post from this year that didn’t hit this list (landing at 31), but which I think people are absolutely sleeping on, maybe because I posted it on a sleepy black Friday weekend but maybe because it has only had a month to catch up, is It’s the Barter Economy, Stupid. I packed a lot of neat ideas into this one and I’m proud of it.
In terms of posts with at least 7k views all time (not just this year), here is how the years rank, though 2024 may end up picking up a few more in the long run. Looking at this, it may be the biggest predictor to how many posts with that many clicks I have is just time. But probably none will surpass Hexcrawl Checklist Part One with 56k views on its own.
2024: 2
2023: 4
2022: 7
2021: 7
Fellow Bloggers
I wish I had metrics on how many new blogs started this year because they were inspired in part by reading my blog, but I only have anecdotes that it is a non-zero number. That is one of my proudest accomplishments this year. What I can track is which blogs sent the most readers toward the wasteland (aka my fabled blog leaderboard on my sidebar, if you visit on a desktop). I am updating that now but here are the numbers just for this year, which differs somewhat.
These are my ten favorite posts from other bloggers this year. This isn’t a MySpace top friends list (sorry for the incredibly generation-specific reference, zoomers and boomers), so I am going to order these not in order of preference but in chronological order. I was going to do one each month but there were two I just really, really liked in October. Consider this an endorsement for these if they make it into next year’s bloggies!
DIY & Dragons: Xandering is Slandering
Gem Room Games: The Monster’s Implied Adventure
Jay Dragon: Rules Are A Cage (and I’m a Puppygirl)
Luke Gearing: Reputation Tables
Knight at the Opera: Mothership: Engine Malfunction
Rise Up Comus: Information Architecture in The Castle Automatic
Benign Brown Beast: Thermodynamics for Game Design
Traipse: 1, 10, or 1000000
Goblin Punch: Monster Checklist
Mindstorm Press: Baseline Worldbuilding
State of the Blog
Here are some other metrics from 2024 for the Prismatic Wasteland blog:
107.6k Visits (+19% over 2023) and 192.5k Views (+16% over 2023). The two months with the most views were April with 22.5k views, November with 19.8k views, and January with 19.4k views. The lowest was September (my son was born at the start of that month so I didn’t post at all and also rarely slept) but it still had 10.5k views.
49% of visitors are on mobile, 51% are on desktop.
Top Ten Search Keywords:
Prismatic Wasteland (951 clicks, average position of 1.002)
Barkeep on the Borderlands (560 clicks, average position of 2.351)
Doppelganger (484 clicks, average position of 4.325)
Mausritter Review (142 clicks, average position of 3.784)
Hexcrawl (134 clicks, average position of 6.432)
How to Get Rid of Doppelgangers (134 clicks, average position of 4.475)
Can Doppelgangers Kill You (121 clicks, average position of 5.067)
Keep on the Borderlands (120 clicks, average position of 9.766)
Overloaded Encounter Die (120 clicks, average position of 1.862)
3d6 (101 clicks, average position of 5.132)
Top Ten Searches using Prismatic Wasteland’s Search Bar:
Hexcrawl
Hex
Overland
Encounter
Dungeon
Bloggies
Blackjack
Boot Hill
Lore
Luka
54.8% of my readers are from the United States, 7.26% from Canada (how many are just Ty from the Mindstorm blog?), 6.79% are from the United Kingdom, 3.15% are from Germany, 2.95% are from Brazil, 2.94% are from Australia, 2.23% are from France and the rest are from places that aren’t those aforementioned places. Exactly 6 clicks each from the Isle of Man, Ecuador, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Probably looking up how to get rid of pesky doppelgängers.
My mailing list grew marginally by net 108 subscribers to a total of 1,661 subscribers. I also started a substack in Novemberwhich has 278 subscribers.
