I've been actively blogging since 2011 and a tech podcaster since 2006. That's basically 20 years of publishing content, of admittedly variable quality and esoterism, on the world-wide web and other online destinations (such as Gopher). This annual report looks at some trends and influences on what the heck I think I'm doing.
For the past couple of years, I've been posting one blog post every other day. That's approximately 182 posts over the course of the year, and most posts average 100 sentences, or 1300 words.
In my previous [bi-]annual report in 2023, I noted that my readership had grown by an order of 9,900% thanks to syndicating my posts on the RPG Planet feed. As far as I can tell, RPG Planet continues to be a driving force for my blog, because I can't think of any other source of growth. Unique views increased over the course of 2025, starting out in the 4,000 to 5,000 range until June, when the count jumped up to almost 9,000. In October the number jumped again to a little over 17,000.
The year total was 111,246. Of those, 1500 hits self-identified as bots, while I can trace another 41,000 back to undeclared bots, which leaves about 68,000 that could be real human readers. That's 5,600 unique visits a month, which feels great to me.
Back in 2022, I also started posting gaming content to Youtube. My subscriber numbers there that holds steady at a fairly modest 855, which is better than 8 or 85, but not good enough for monetization.
Some traffic to my blog comes from Youtube, but I don't do a great job of associating content from one to the other, and anyway I think the audiences actually are mostly unique. People who want to watch a video often don't want to read an article, and the other way round. At least, that's how I tend to be. If I'm reading, then I'm reading. If I'm watching videos, then I'm watching videos. It's 2 different mental processes, and I don't think it's very useful to try to bind them together.
I could be wrong, but I don't seem to be that interested in experimenting. I may not even continue posting to Youtube. It's a lot of work, and lately I've used it mostly as a way to share solo board game sessions, but I'm not investing in production value and I've been having more fun just playing games and writing up battle reports
In the Geek Native annual review of the best-selling releases on DrivethruRPG, Andrew Girdwood noted that "Gamers are buying books on how to play, not just what to play." Similarly, my most popular posts throughout 2024 and 2025 have been "meta" topics.
Quickstart guides for building characters proved to be popular blog posts and videos. My post about building a character in the Warhammer 40,000 RPG Wrath and Glory has been a popular post and video since it posted in 2024, and so have many of my posts about building characters in Shadowrun 5th edition. (That's an interesting data point for somebody, because Shadowrun is currently on its 6th edition!)
I also got lots of reads and interactions for lore content, in some unexpected ways. As a paid subscriber to Warhammer+, I have access to Warhammer animated series, and when I watch one I tend to post a review about what I just saw. My post about the Pariah Nexus series continues to get frequent reads, and so does my post about the excellent Angels of Death series.
My review of Starfinder's Pact Worlds also continues to perform well.
My highest performing video was about hexes and grids, which has had 8,794 and 18 comments since it was posted in August 2024.
Notably, in 2024 I discovered how to approve and respond to comments in the Youtube Studio interface, which means that for 2 years I was essentially blocking all comments. Probably not great for the algorithm! I blame Youtube entirely. I don't know how you're meant to know where comment moderation is located, and Youtube never gave me a friendly warning about me blocking one of the main influences over how it determines whether my content is popular.
I enjoy Youtube for the indie content, but I have no great love for the platform. I guess it's the best that we've got currently.
Happily, that's really all I was aiming for anyway, so while I appreciate the initial dopamine hit of 50k views, I'm very happy with a core audience of 20 to 30 people. Smaller connections feel a truer than big vague ones, to me, and anyway I'm not interested in monetizing Youtube, and from what I understand that's the main advantage of having a really big audience there.
My 5e-style character sheet for Pathfinder 2 remains my most successful post over all.
I probably need to update it, to be honest. Now that I've been running a Pathfinder 2 campaign for 2 years, I have some ideas about making what values get added together clearer on the character sheet.
This is the character sheet that got "borrowed" by a random user on Reddit with no acknowledgment that I was the original creator. My sheet is an unsanctioned remix of WotC's original work anyway, but now that I intend to update it, I feel bad that I can't update links on that Reddit post. There is strength in collaboration, but it's got to be a 2-way street, and this is a great example of why.
Another great driver of traffic has been my Space Station Zero expansion for extra gear. This is unofficial content, which seems ironically hypocritical after I've just said that the "remixer" of my Pathfinder 2 character sheet ought to have contacted me to collaborate so we could have a single source of truth.
In my defense, I have contacted Snarling Badger several times about the idea of publishing extra gear, and have to date gotten no response. I assume my emails have been auto-sorted to spam, because Snarling Badger seems like the type of guys to respond to email. Either way, lacking any confirmation that I could sell the extra gear list on WargameVault, I just published it for $0 on my blog.
It's interesting to me that this ranks as my second most popular download, because it's wargame content, and I would think that indie wargame titles would be pretty niche. Then again, I'm a niche blogger, so I guess the Venn diagram is a circle.
In addition to blogging, I published 2 products this year:
For me, 2025 ended up being about maximizing time spent with games I enjoy. I love exploring new games, but the reality is that I have limited money, limited time, and limited storage space. To be honest, there's a lot to be said for familiarity. I played a lot of Mansions of Madness, Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game, Dungeoneer, and Pathfinder 2.
I'll never tire of trying out new games, but just because I enjoy and respect a tabletop game, that doesn't necessarily mean I feel like playing it again and again would be time well spent. Reflecting back on 2025, I realise that I was frequently going back to games that made me feel that special mixture of simultaneous relaxation and excitement. I don't mind that.