Monday, September 10, 2018

State of the Blog

Happy Monday! I always liked Mondays growing up, being a young nerdy introvert. I never really hung out with people on the weekends, so Monday was the day I could go back to school and learn. Unsurprisingly, the pressures of a day job have somewhat diminished this feeling.

I wanted to take an article to write up my plans for the blog, since I'm going to be changing things on here soon. I'm not deleting the blog, so as long as the internet exists you can check out the archives I've posted over the past two years. However, I am going to be starting an indeterminate hiatus.

At the end of October (or November 2nd, more likely), I'll be posting my final articles for a while. The reason for this is that, like many creative endeavors, the blog has become less fun and more work. I've gotten a lot of good feedback on the stuff I've posted, though, and many people have said they appreciate the work I've done. But coming up with articles, writing up tons of NPCs and Loot, and writing up recaps has started to become very chore-like and tedious.

I also find myself more interested in other areas of life, such as music and art, but writing the blog is taking up quite a bit of time in my week. I plan on continuing to write, but perhaps on more personal projects or as a side-project to make some cash. Certainly something less time-intensive than my current workload.

But the biggest thing that's making this blog difficult to maintain is that I feel like I'm running out of things to say.

There's plenty more that could be said about D&D and role-playing in general. I could talk more about my setting, different ideas for character builds, or even descend into the endless abyss of rule analysis. But I feel like that would move away from the core purpose of this blog: to provide stories, tools, and ideas for DMs about the game. I want to help people learn, maybe so they can get the same feeling when reading one of my articles that I got when I was younger and went to school on Mondays.

In this excellent interview, Bo Burnham talks about how artists are often constantly on tap due to the internet, and how they don't take time to develop their art in private. When I started this blog two years ago, I had a huge backlog of ideas, mechanics, and philosophy to share. Now, I feel like I need to re-fill my quiver of D&D ideas. I need to write games, not articles, so I can develop some good material to share in the future.

So, this hiatus will be indefinite, but I would like to return someday.I can't say if that will be in a couple months or in several years, but in the meantime I plan on running games and collecting cool things to share with you. I might jump on here to post an occasional recap, but that's about it.

So, please enjoy the next two months of articles, and thank you for reading everything!

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