15 Years of Daddy Rolled A 1! (Blog Anniversary)

Fifteen years!

On February 11th, 2011, I started this blog with no grand plan. I did not have a “brand strategy.” I did not have a content calendar. I just wanted a place to write about Dungeons & Dragons, old comics, science-fiction and fantasy movies and TV, weird ideas, and whatever else was rattling around in my head at the time.

Somehow that little corner of the old-school blogosphere turned into Daddy Rolled A 1.

The blog came first. Then all the various social media accounts that I try, with varying levels of success, to keep up with. Some of those have sadly faded away (RIP Google+). My YouTube channel came much later on February 9th, 2023. Then my merchandise. Then my supplement, Alchemy, Explosives & Inventions. Then Patreon. 

But this blog is where it started.

And even though I do not post here as often as I once did, I still think of it as the foundation.

This past year I only published three posts.

On February 24th, 2025, I released the “Warring States” mini campaign setting for use with Old School Essentials. That one was a labor of love. It is built around the rise and fall of empires, competing states, loyalty and betrayal, ambition and shifting power structures. It draws heavily from the Warring States period of Ancient China, with a touch of Ancient Rome and some of my own strange fantasy ideas layered in. I included twelve class concepts, my trademark “three things” to define the setting’s tensions, and a bunch of random tables for landmarks, philosophies, geography, and more. It was my way of giving something substantial and usable back to the community.

On August 14th, 2025, I published “From Gygax to Mourngloom Keep: Old School Geomorphs Reimagined.” That post came about because one of my YouTube viewers generously sent me the compiled TSR Dungeon Geomorphs, filling in a missing piece of my collection. Around the same time, another viewer asked if I would look at his Kickstarter for Mourngloom Keep. As I read through it, I realized how much design DNA it shared with those old geomorphs. Not fully written adventures, but tools and idea generators. That post ended up being as much about design philosophy as it was about specific products.

Then on September 22nd, 2025, I published “The System That D&D Lost: How I Use Henchmen and Hirelings.” That was a companion piece to my YouTube video on the history of henchmen and hirelings. The blog post let me get more personal and practical about how I actually use them in my B/X campaign for my daughter and her friends. The blog is still a good place for that kind of thing. Less history lecture, more “here is what I actually do at my table.”

So, just three posts, unfortunately. That was it. But that doesn't mean I wasn't busy on other gaming endeavors.

Most of my creative energy this year went into keeping up a weekly schedule on YouTube: researching, scripting, recording, editing, promoting. It is a lot of work, but it is work I genuinely enjoy.

Over the past year I did deep dives into the AD&D Monster Manual, Blackmoor Supplement II, Eldritch Wizardry, the AD&D Player’s Handbook and DMG, Moldvay Basic, Mentzer and BECMI, Chainmail, the 2E historical “green books,” and more. I covered modules like A1-4, B1-3, B4-6, and S1-4. I looked at campaign settings from Dark Sun to Hollow World to Masque of the Red Death. I explored other TSR games like Gangbusters, Indiana Jones, and Buck Rogers. I went down the Arduin rabbit hole and ended up talking about the California gaming scene and its influence on the hobby.

I made videos about the five most important years in D&D history, about house rules, about games for people leaving 5E, about hidden Easter eggs in early D&D. I did class deep dives across the TSR era for Fighters, Clerics, Magic-Users, Paladins, Monks, and Assassins. I revisited monsters, demons, devils, liches. I talked about alignment, level titles, mass combat, domain play, henchmen, race-class limits, saving throws, THAC0, early combat procedures, rulings not rules. I recorded my first livestream and my first unboxing video. I even did a tribute to Tim Kask and the importance of editing to early D&D.

That is a lot of words and a lot of hours.

Beyond the blog and YouTube, a few other milestones happened this year.

I moved my merchandise to Spreadshop (for t-shirts, hoodies,mugs, and tote bags) and Redbubble (for paper goods like stickers, posters, and notebooks) after my old provider failed to pay me for a year and a half worth of sales. That was not a fun discovery. But the new shops are up and running, and I debuted a few new designs including “Utanni Swings,” which mashes up Star Wars and Dodgers baseball in a way that probably only makes sense to me and a handful of other nerds.

I set up my DriveThruRPG page to sell Alchemy, Explosives, & Inventions for those who missed the Kickstarter. Sales have been steady each month and the feedback has been very encouraging. Seeing people actually use something I wrote at their tables is still surreal.

In September 2025 I launched a Patreon. So far I have released three custom mini-adventures with exclusive maps and art by my creative collaborator Bill Green. I have also taken some blog concepts like Weird Cleric Traits and Weird Fighter Traits, expanded them, cleaned them up, and released them as PDFs for patrons. There are behind-the-scenes posts, polls, and even a timelapse video of Bill drawing one of the maps. If you find value in what I create and want to support it more directly, Patreon is one way to do that. No pressure, but it is there.

I am also working on my next supplement. I will be sharing snippets of it here on the blog, and more in-depth looks on Patreon as it develops.

And once again, I had the honor of serving as a judge for the One Page Dungeon Contest. I have been doing that since 2014, which makes me the longest-tenured judge at this point. Every year I am reminded how much creativity there is in this hobby.

As for the blog itself, here are the numbers.

STATS (Feb 11, 2025 – Feb 10, 2026 compared to prior year)

Page Views: 15,854 vs 10,688 (+48.3%)
Average Time per Session: 0 Min 45 Sec vs 1 Min 05 Sec (down -40%)
Bounce Rate: 88.27%. Google Analytics keeps moving things around and I don't use it often, so I can't find it for the year prior, but this seems to be much higher than it used to be a few years ago, which was around 75%.
New Users Total: 10,621 vs 5,766 (+84%)
Engaged Sessions: 1.4k vs 1.2k (+17%)

Top Locations:
This is very strange, at least to me, but the top countries and the top percentages, have completely changed year over year. Last year, the U.S. was my #1 with 77%. It's still #1, but has fallen all the way to just 37%. Singapore, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Israel, and Brazil all entered the top 10 along with China and Georgia. Last year, the United Kingdom was my #1 traffic source, with 7% of total views, but this year, it's fallen to 1.8%. So, lots of changes!

Top 10 Locations:

• United States: 37%
• Singapore: 14%
• Vietnam: 6%
• Hong Kong: 5%
• Israel: 4%
• Brazil: 3%
• Germany: 3%
• China: 3%
• Georgia: 2%
• United Kingdom: 2%
• All Others: 21%

Top Posts This Year:

• From Gygax to Mourngloom Keep: Old School Geomorphs Reimagined
• New Comics Wednesday: Revisiting My Post About Why People Do or Don't Read Comics
• Finally, a New Post (Updated Currently Watching)
• Making Characters Weird: Clerics
• All's Faire in Middle School: A Guest Review by My Daughter
• Warring States: A Mini-Setting for Old-School Fantasy RPGs
• Making Characters Weird: Halflings
• Fantasy Rome: A Mini-Setting for Old-School Fantasy RPGs
• How I Use Henchmen and Hirelings
• Open Game Content: Slavic Folklore & Fairy Tale Subclasses for Fantasy RPGs

My biggest takeaway continues to be this: even when I do not post frequently, people still find their way here. Some through search engines, some through Facebook or other social media, and many through YouTube. I mention the blog in every video, and my YouTube audience is now much larger than my blog audience ever was on its own.

In a strange way, the blog is no longer the main stage. But it is still a "workshop" for me: an archive and place where ideas can sit a little longer.

I do not want to post here just to post or fill a quota. I would rather write when I actually have something to share: a setting, a system, or a design thought; something that might be useful at your table.

Fifteen years ago I had no idea any of this would happen. I just knew I liked talking about old games.

Thank you to everyone who has read a post, left a comment, watched a video, backed a project, bought a book, worn a shirt, shared a link, or simply lurked quietly in the background.

Daddy Rolled A 1 started as a blog. And, it still is. But, it's also much more than that now.

As always, let me know what you would like to see me write about here.

• Hanging: Home office (laptop)
• Drinking: Currently nothing although I am on my way to the pub for my weekly lunch where I'll start with a beer of some sort. What's your favorite style of beer, if any?
• Listening: "Bill Evans: Portraits at the Penthouse (Live in Seattle)" by the Bill Evans Trio with Eddie Gomez and Joe Hunt.