I labelled #RPGaDay2024 "Catechism RPGaDay" early on. Like Martin Luther's Catechisms, I looked at each prompt for many days and said out loud, "What does this mean?" I was relieved that when the Nerd's RPG Variety Podcast did a massive sit-down with multiple guests to do the entire month, there were a number of prompts where a good deal of the panel asked the same question.
Sometimes the basic questions we've gotten over the last decade are unexciting, but it suits a overall need this project provides to the community at large
Even in my "old-guy-yells-at-cloud" phase, I recognize the greater utility of a prompt like Day 13 "RPG with an Evocative Environment" versus a (probable) retelling of "Longest RPG Session You Ever Played" from the list a decade earlier.
Likewise, for those folks who incessantly wanted something more akin to alternative prompts, well good for you! Honestly, some of the regular prompts weren't doing for me some days, and it took a little extra brainpower to use the back-up list. While fun, the answers to the alternative prompts that I read didn't inspire me. I hope they did for you. To each their own. Thanks for participating.
Twitter still lives, regardless of what letter of the alphabet it identifies with nowadays. Threads can get just as scary as Twitter, and quite literally has one follower that uses it, and Mammoth has two authors I like and zero traffic.
The newest addition to my social media: Bluesky. I've been trying to figure out Robin Laws' new social media "bsky" on Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff for weeks now, and let me tell you, he chose wisely. The pinning function of RPGaDay was pretty sweet, and the participants on there are all the old faces from previous RPGaDay, and a fresh and diverse crew to supplement them.
As I updated my numbers from previous years' RPGaDays, I made the stunning realization that I not only put my blogging maintenance programs on hiatus for August, but I also didn't post any Actual Plays in previous years. I would push back my Gamma World episodes further, but current episodes we played this past week are already posting into next May, so let's not push episodes back even further.
And the numbers are in.
I'm a sad little stat guy, so I do track my views for #RPGaDay year-over-year. Give that any earlier year is updated to reflect to the present-day view count, it's been a great month sharing stories with one another. And even if I could explain the 25% average growth in views from 2023 to 2024 for all years of my posts, even moving half of that for bots, 5-15% growth overall for the other years is impressive.
Thanks again to all the organizers and all those folks who help them out. Of course I'll participate in 2025, but I won't press them using 2016 prompts from ten years ago. Those questions would make Martin Luther scratch his head.
While some of my favorite posts sadly didn't get much traffic, the busiest post of the month if I can’t hear it, there is no way start was Day 2 "Most Often Played RPG" and Day 23 "Peerless Player". For all the folks that need to design a new artifact, or develop a new race, or design mechanics for split-pea soup in Powered by the Apocalypse games, sometimes us gamers want to hear what each other is doing, whether its D&D, or Mothership, or Mage.
Gamers didn't want to hear about my character, but they did want to hear about what I've played a lot of, and they were interested in my player who hasn't played a lot of anything. This environment is the perfect time to do so.
Barring any usuals surprises, I'll be back to daily community sharing with the #CharacterCreationChallenge in January.
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