12 YEARS OF DADDY ROLLED A 1 (BLOG ANNIVERSARY)

It's been 12 years since I made my first post here at Daddy Rolled a 1. It's amazing to think it's been more than a decade since I jumped into a communications form that I knew very little about other than having read some other old-school gaming blogs, and without much forethought or plan. I just decided to pay a friend to design a logo based on a funny comment a friend had told me right after my daughter was born ("you should write a blog called Daddy Rolled a 1..."), read an article on how to start a blog on blogspot, and off I went. 

While my nature is to plan, and to fret over every detail (my career is in advertising media planning, in which you have to plan things out to the smallest detail), I've found that my quest to know all the ins-and-outs of something before doing it means that I often don't even start. As Churchill said, "Perfection is the enemy of progress." 

I've found this to be true time and again for my hobby-related stuff, as I've delayed things to make sure they're "just right." I delayed starting a D&D campaign for my daughter and her friends for years because I wanted to make sure it was good enough. I've put off publishing a book about Expert & Specialist characters for the B/X version of D&D for nearly two years now, and even that was technically a delayed version of a book I began writing for the 3.5 system way back in 2005 but which I never finished due to constantly wanting to do more research to make it better. 

All that has been changing lately, as I've begun to realize that I really just need to jump in and get this stuff done. I recorded a video last summer, eight months ago, of a product unboxing but only just posted it two days ago, because I didn't have a current YouTube channel, I wasn't sure how to set it up, and I'm making all the graphics for things like thumbnails and end cards myself. My daughter had offered to help me, and I told myself that I just needed to wait until she had time, but it's been eight months and it's not really a priority for her (which is fine - I understand; she's got a ton of school work and other things to take care of). So, I just went ahead and put the video up. It might not be perfect, but it's at least done. 

I sent the new final draft of my Experts and Specialists book to my layout designer; all that needs to be finished now are some maps, which a friend is already working on. Once that's done, I'm going to Kickstart it to try to make back all the money I paid for the art and layout. I have no idea how to run a Kickstarter, but I'm going to just figure it out and move forward. At least the book is done so there won't be any delays getting it to people.   

As far as the past twelve months, other than setting up my new YouTube channel, I've been putting a lot of time and effort into the Daddy Rolled a 1 "brand" as far as continuing to push my designs at my shop on t-shirts, hoodies, mugs, posters, and more. I've increased my Twitter presence substantially over the past year as well, growing my account by 56%, from 1.7k followers to 2.7k. I've kept active on both Facebook and Instagram as well. As I mentioned last year, until I decide to set up something like a Patreon or start selling RPG supplements on DriveThruRPG or elsewhere, the best way you can show your support for Daddy Rolled a 1 is to buy something from my shop. 

Also over the past year, I was interviewed a few times, but a variety of folks including Steph C of the TTRPGKids blog, Logar the Barbarian of Wobblies and Wizards, and Todd Leback of Third Kingdom Games. And I was a judge once again for the One Page Dungeon Contest, still one of my favorite things that's come out of me starting this blog.

One thing you won't see is the amount of time I've spent writing and creating. I'm working on a book that will include a separate chapter for each of the "D12 Subclasses" posts I've written here on the blog. I'm changing the name to "D12 Class Concepts" to help distinguish them from 5E subclasses. Each chapter will include some creative ideas for running adventures in that particular genre (wilderness, city, naval, etc.). Here are a few screen shots of my current writing so you can see the ideas. 

I've also been adding a lot more to my "Weird Character Ideas" series beyond the seven characters I included here on the blog. I've written weird ideas for Bards, Barbarians, and Druids, and am about halfway done with Paladins and Rangers, and I have notes for Acrobats, Assassins, Knights, Monks, and Warlocks (to help cover classes from both Old School Essentials Advanced Fantasy as well as 5E Classes, since the ideas are all edition/system-neutral). 

Samples from me D12 Class Concepts book.
Text and layout are not final. 

On social media, I've been posting a whole series of weird ideas, including Weird Goblins, Weird Goblin Skins, Weird Alchemical Effects, Weird Weapon Qualities, Weird Forests, Weird Gems, and a really fun crowd-sourced list of Weird Eyes. You can find all of these on Instagram or Twitter. 

However, all of that has meant that I've sadly neglected the blog over this past year. Work on the Daddy Rolled a 1 "brand," as I mentioned, continued, but those efforts did not include updating the blog as much as I would have liked. The stats below bear that out. I plan to change that this year, with continued updates on the campaign I'm running for my daughter, including a post on the house rules we're using, and also a new campaign I'm setting up to run for friends I met at my favorite local pub who have encouraged me to run a game for them. I'm going to start putting my "Weird" ideas tables that I posted on social media over here on the blog as well to make sure everyone can see them. There will be more writing on the trials and tribulations of running a TTRPG campaign for teens. And, of course, I'd love to hear from you all and what you want me to write more about. Drop a comment below to let me know. 

And, if you're looking for a more historical retrospective about Daddy Rolled a 1, check out my 10th Anniversary post from 2021. 

Thank you all for your support these past 12 years. When I started doing this, I never could've imagined continuing it for 12 years and meeting all you fine folks and getting a chance to chat with you in the comments or on social media. 

Here's to another year at Daddy Rolled a 1. Cheers!

STATS (Feb 12 2022 - Feb 11 2023 compared to year prior)

• Page Views: 8,826 vs 15,217 (-42%)
• Average Pages per Session: 1.72 vs 1.77 (-2.76%)
• Average Time per Session: 1.19 vs 1.36 (-17.4%)
• Bounce Rate: 78.73% vs 76.54% (+2.86%)
• New Users %: 90.7% vs 87.4%
• New Users Total: 3,774 vs 5,652 (-33.5%)
• Location: 
• United States (69.09% vs 68.54%)
• United Kingdom (5.46% vs 5.57%)
• Canada (4.67% vs 5.15%)
• Australia (1.94% vs 2.67%)
• Brazil (1.31% vs 1.69%)
• Germany (1.31% vs 1.03%) (Went from #9 to #6)
• Italy (1.26% vs 1.22%) (Went from #8 to #7)
• Netherlands (1.1% vs 0.65%) (New Entry; bumped Sweden)
• Russia (1.05% vs 0.40%) (New Entry; bumped France)
• Spain (0.97% vs 0.79%) (New Entry; bumped Ireland)
• Top Referring Sites:
• Google
• Twitter 
• Facebook (all; desktop, mobile, etc)
• DuckDuckGo
• FollowMeAndDie
• Bing
• From the Sorcerer's Skull (this is odd!)
• "Other" (everything else)

My Top 10 Most Popular Posts Over the Past Year

I was really happy this year that, aside from the top two posts, the remaining eight in the Top 10 were all "new" posts made during the past year. 

• New Comics Wednesday: Revisiting My Post About Why People Do or Don't Read Comics 
• This has consistently been a top performing post since I posted it back on February 10 2016 
• Finally: A New Post (Updated Currently Watching)
• This one gets the #1 or #2 most views every year
• Playing D&D with Tweens, Part II 
• This was a new post from this past year
• Making Characters Weird: Halfling
• Another returning entry that was #3 last year
• Military Subclasses for Fantasy RPGs
• Another new post from this past year, posted in July
• New Blogs Added to the Blog Roll
• This one dates all the way back to the year I started the blog in 2011!
• Making Characters Weird: Clerics
• Related Genres: Animation - Max Fleischer Superman Animated Shorts
• Another one from early 2011
• GUEST POST: The Unique Joys and Challenges of Playing Tabletop RPGs with Kids (featuring TTRPGKids)
• This was a "blog post swap" I held with Steph from TTRPGKids this past summer 
• GUEST POST: Old School Essentials Campaign - Session 9 (My Daughter's Campaign)
• Another newer post, featuring a recap written by one of my players
• Open Game Content: Norse Subclasses for Fantasy RPGs
• Part of a series of making slight tweaks to old-school B/X character classes; the Norse ones seem to be among the most popular, as this is the second year in the row they made the Top 10

Hanging: Home Office (laptop)

Drinking: Coffee (black)

Listening: "Wrist Bands" by Paul Simon, from the album "Stranger to Stranger" (2016)