25k views and Things to Come

Within the last day or so, this blog crossed 25,000 views! Another milestone and source of encouragement. Thank you so much for reading and your comments. It really keeps me going.

I started this blog for me; I found myself stuck without a particular kind of resource I wanted to have handy, so I decided to start building that resource. That work continues! And I'm happy that it seems to be resonating with people. Based on the categories of Dungeon Rooms I've worked out, I am expecting to put out about eight more Room posts. You may have noticed that my pace has slowed--that's partly life and partly just hitting that part of a project where the initial "honeymoon period" passes and the remainder is simply work. It's harder these days to drum up sufficient inspiration, but I have no intention of quitting! 

It's hard to say how much longer the Index will take. A couple of weeks per room type would be a good steady pace, but that's more like a lower-bound then a promise. At this very moment I still haven't decided which of my remaining Room types to tackle next; once I do, the rest comes much more easily. (You can see the remaining categories on the Index Page).

Ultimately, the Dungeon Room Index is my main goal, and my highest priority. That said, I have been thinking about something else I'd like to do, and I want to share it with you! Initially, I had thought I'd better wait until the Index was done, but on reflection I don't think holding back is helping--instead, I hope this project will keep my energy up and my head in the right place to keep a steady pace on the Dungeon Room Index.

I am going to start work on what I'm currently calling the Wilderness Crawl Index, and My Cairn Bestiary.

The thing that makes another Dungeon Room post tricky is that I need to have enough ideas for a type to feel like I can mostly fill a page. I realized that if I was going to start a similar project, the framing would need to make it easier to put something out. I needed to break things down into smaller pieces.

My hope is that by doing it this way, I will be able to post things much more frequently. (And in doing so, find myself more frequently thinking about and working on the Dungeon Room Index as well.)

So here's the quick concept for each of these projects:

Wilderness Crawl Index. My intention for this project is for each post to be basically a landmark as you might find keyed in a hex-crawl. I hope to produce a simple piece of art (just some marker on an index card--the kind of thing that can go from concept to a rough finished product in about fifteen minutes), a small blurb about what's going on at this location, and perhaps some commentary on inspiration or usage. Of course, I'll compile these into a neatly organized page for bookmarking and looking up things as needed.

My Cairn Bestiary. The name isn't inspiring, but it's descriptive. Basically, I have quite a number of short blurbs/ideas for monsters in my back pocket, and I want to get them out. A post will consist of a simple piece of art (again, minimal, marker-ed, and on an index card--Index Card RPG really made an impression on me), a Cairn stat block, some flavor text, and some commentary on any relevant source of inspiration. These also will get their own tidy page for bookmarking and organization.

So there you have it! I'm really looking forward to working on these, and I hope some of you will be interested, too. At the end of the day, I'll be pleased to expand my collection of ready-for-the-table index cards, just as I'm increasingly pleased with my growing notebook of dungeon rooms (we're getting close to 400 individual rooms)!