Sixth Year Anniversary

They grow up so fast, don’t they? It has been exactly 6 years since I started to write for the blog and shared the first set of articles on the Core Set with the community. Back then, I had no idea how large the blog would grow and that we’d cross the 1 million views at all! But we’ve had a lot of milestones during those six years, through the ups and downs with the community. This birthday of the blog comes at a time when I really have to scrape the bottom of the barrel for quests left to cover, but with the introduction of fan-made content, I am sure we can keep this baby going for many more years to come!

That’s not to say that everything will be the same as it was back in 2018. A few changes are on the horizon to ensure that the blog maintains its quality of content, but not for the sake of my own sanity. I am no longer the student I was in 2018, with plenty of spare time. Just this month, I bought my own house and now have a dedicated gaming space to continue to enjoy this game and be inspired for more articles. But growing up does mean that spare time no longer comes as easy. Work is a lot of fun but requires a lot of screentime on certain days. And if I’m finally able to come home, I’d rather do something else than hopping behind the next screen and writing articles throughout the evening. So, I have been reducing the number of articles for the past few months, though I do feel a bit sad I can no longer keep up that “one article every other day” pace of the early years.

Instead, the focus will be on one or two dedicated articles by me every month, mostly covering the Nightmare scenarios that are still to be covered. I am being helped by other authors with these, so it won’t take 6 more years before we finally reach NM Shelob’s Lair or something. I’d also love to write some additional articles on miscellaneous topics, though the inspiration for those is difficult to find. I feel like I have covered most of the interesting topics over the past 6 years, but I’ll be happy to take any suggestions from the comments! Due to this decreased flow of content going forward, I will also be canceling the monthly update articles. I see no added value to them now that there isn’t much news to cover and not a lot of articles to recap. Should there be exciting news ahead, then I might do dedicated articles on those, covering how this would impact the community.

On a brighter note, I do hope to do something with all the income I have received from Patreon and selling the Field Guides over the last year. This is more than sufficient to keep the blog going for a while, and I like to give things back to the community for their support. I just despise the shipping ordeal and making sure every package arrives where it should. I have been lucky over the past years, doing all the shipping myself, but it is expensive and a lot of time wasted that would be better spent elsewhere. So, I will likely continue to design some knickknacks to give away at conventions and to thank the people supporting the efforts of me and the team. I have some really cool ideas already, but I will need to investigate if it is feasible to produce and ship. I am setting myself no deadlines on this, but it would be a nice break of pace in my evenings.

As for the coming year, I have set out some goals in my yearly recap article for 2023. I hope to further advance with the Nightmare quests and to bring some more fan-made content articles to the blog. I have also been in discussion with my co-writers, and they are starting to awake from hibernation. That means more varied content on the horizon and less stress for me, which is awesome.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has supported the blog up to this point. This includes the people supporting financially via Patreon and donations for the Field Guide’s PDF, but also the people who are sinking hours of their free time into writing and editing the blog’s articles. There’s no blog without you all! And of course, there has to be someone to read all the articles, which is you! So thank you for taking time out of your life to read about what I and some other strangers on the internet have to tell you about a weird little card game that got started many years ago. Together, we make the community better than it was when it first pulled us in!

So, I hope you’ll all join me for a piece of imaginary birthday cake and toast to the blog’s sixth birthday. I hope to make this last at least to the 10-year mark and perhaps even further beyond! Let’s hope FFG makes some more content for us to buy and report on!