1-Year Retrospective

On March 2 2020 I made my first post on this blog. It was the first of what was at the time the ongoing ‘Building Better Dungeons’ series. A short while after I did a 2-month retrospective, and around that time I also reached the end of the retroactive posting of content (as in, uploading old reddit submissions of mine).

It’s been a year since then, and I mentioned I don’t want to do these too often, but I feel it’s high time I did another.

Addressing The Elephant

You may have noticed some changes around here, most noticeably a rebrand. I’ve settled on a name under which I’ll produce all my D&D content moving forward: Apothecary Press.

This will also be the name used for the Patreon.

Since the blog’s inception I’ve mentioned a Patreon, and even brought it back up in a recent post here. That is still in the works, and I’m looking like I’m in the closing stages of having everything lined up. This has involved getting multiple artists on board to help with both Dungeons and Homebrew, which is a time-intensive process. Plus, I don’t want to go launching a Patreon and start asking for money before I’m confident that I’ll be able to produce regular content for it.

1 Whole Year Of Fresh Content

Since the last retrospective I’ve made 14 posts. It’s a far cry from the weekly posts I had been envisioning, but I’m really proud of all of those pieces. Each of these takes quite a bit of effort, and that inevitably means I can’t keep up that weekly pace. I have a job and bills to pay.

In fact there are 2 major gaps in my releases that I can identify. The first is from October-December, where I had to change jobs and took on something that was far more time-intensive. The second is from January-May, where I returned to that intensive job in the new year.

My employment situation has started to normalise, and the most exciting part of that has been the inclusion of earning some side-income as a DM-For-Hire. This has actually allowed me to dedicate more time to generating content for D&D as it makes me less reliant on a 9-5, 40-hour-work-week kind of job.

Changing The Scope

All this doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll start hitting that ‘1 post a week’ goal I’d set for myself. In fact I think that goal was never realistic even if this were somehow my full-time income. Again, these posts take time, and part of that time is actually running games where I implement the things I go on to discuss in my write-ups. I can’t very well write about Time Loops if I haven’t ever run one.

Instead I’m looking at maybe 1-2 uploads a month to the blog specifically. That being said, this isn’t the only content I’m looking to distribute. Naturally the Patreon will be another source of content, much of which will be resources I’ve developed over the years for my own campaigns (like settings, dungeons, etc)

Pride In My Work

I mentioned above that even though I’ve only released a small fraction of what I had hoped, I was really proud of what I had released. I want that to continue being the case.

I’ve managed to get a good rhythm of writing more pieces to distribute here. Running paid games has actually helped a lot with that, as it’s meant I’m running and playing more D&D than ever before. I can try more things, implement more ideas, and ultimately generate far more useful concepts to discuss here.

I’ve kept to one thing since the last Retrospective, and that’s been uploading every piece here in advance of posting it anywhere else. These days things tend to go here about a week before I post them elsewhere, and sometimes longer. To my mind this helps establish the benefit of following me here rather than trying to keep track of my posts anywhere else. It’s something I will be maintaining going forward.

The Road Ahead

I’ve already mentioned some of my plans for the future regarding Patreon. Aside from that I intend to continue writing high-quality content here, and will eventually be releasing exclusive pieces through that same Patreon.

I’m also looking to build out the side income I’ve begun to generate through being a DM-For-Hire so that I can eventually live decently off a combination of that and a part-time job.

Aside from that I don’t think I have anything else to say. I’m glad this blog is still around, and I’m glad you are too dear reader.

See you in another year!