Countdown Pt1

This Bastionland Editorial was originally sent as a reward to all Patreon supporters, and is released freely on this site a week after its original publication.

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Is it too early to be talking about end-of-year posts? This has been my second year of working full-time on Bastionland Press, and I'm pleased to look back on a successful Kickstarter campaign and a nearly-finished miniatures game that I'll be handing off to another publisher at the start of next year. Not to mention a whole lot of video content, a podcast series, and of course blogposts. 

The latter is always good fodder for some reflection. In particular, I thought it would be interesting to look back at the ten post popular blogposts over the last year. To clarify, this includes posts from previous years, but I'm always interested to see which posts people are actually reading. 

#10: 100 Interesting Magic Items: The First Half

Guess I was tempting fate with that name. There was never a second half, but I did replace the idea with something else (see #4 when we get to it). This has the honour of being the oldest post in this countdown, now past its 12th birthday. Suppose you could look back at this list as the starting point for what would become Arcana and Oddities. I feel like most of them hold up well enough, but I'm definitely happier with my later item design. Here are a few highlights that I'd still like to use:

Crystal Ship: This miniature ship is beautifully crafted and valuable, but if it is ever taken on board a ship that ship will sink before its voyage is completed.

Death Drum: Anyone that bangs this drum thirteen times or more will die.

Map of the Head: The holder of this map may look over it when trying to remember something they witnessed while carrying the map. Within a minute of looking at it they will remember, even to the smallest detail.

 

#9: Rules Heavy - Worlds and Classes 

This is the highest ranking post from this year that actually contains game content, rather than some form of announcement. Why did I even bother writing all those articles eh? Apparently I peaked around 2018. 

Coming off the back of a series of Ask the Stars based posts, this is the migration of that idea into that whole Primordial thing that's still floating around in my head and various unfinished documents. Here's hoping 2022 is the year I actually put all that mess to use. 

#8: Into the Odd Announcement 

Ah, clickbait at its finest. No real content or information, just a boring, legally-sound announcement. As so many people guessed, here I was bound by secrecy about Into the Odd Remastered, and wanted to give people a fair chance to pick up the original version, while making it clear that the game wasn't going away. Hopefully nobody felt too cheated by that whole announcement.

Although the midnight announcement sort of fell into place, it's one of my lasting memories of this year. It was an awesome feeling watching the chat as I aired the ITOR Trailer without any introduction. Don't think I could do that for every project, mainly because I'm so bad at keeping secrets, but who knows.

#7: The ICI Doctrine: Information, Choice, Impact 

I recently had a friend ask me for some advice. They were running D&D for the first time, with 5e being their first ever game and having a few months as a player under their belt. I gave them some pretty rambling advice, but later realised I should have just linked them to this post. If there's one post that I still keep in my head when I'm running a game, this is it. 

#6: Three Step Dungeons 

This one surprised me, but I guess people like these sort of processes for their prep. The blank page is terrifying, and anything that aids in getting the skeleton of a game session drawn out is a useful tool. 

Next week I'll look at the top 5!