2020 Report

2 minute read

The year 2020 was a disaster in so many ways. Before I go any further with this wrap-up of how Unpossible Journeys fared, I hope you and yours were able to weather the storm (and fires, and pandemic, and economic disruption, and political insanity) without much long-term ill effect.

From the start of the pandemic I was focused on work and family. While I did continue my Friday night gaming, prepping for that usually consumed all the creativity I could muster, and I only published ten blog posts over the course of the year. I even took a hiatus in late summer/early fall from even thinking about UJ. I was frustrated with the fact that I didn’t have the energy to update the site’s content or update the design (which I’ve wanted to do for a long time).

Upon reflection I realized that the process of preparing for and publishing content in UJ is the reward. And the more I focused on the site’s shortcomings, the more I hamstrung my own efforts. So for 2021 I’m going to worry less about the outcome and just enjoy reading and thinking and writing about tabletop roleplaying games. After all, I already have one job. I don’t need another.

The Numbers

In 2020 fewer people visited UJ and there were fewer sessions and page views. This is not surprising. Unlike a forum-powered site, UJ’s traffic relies primarily on new content. There’s a weekly baseline of about 100 sessions/day (driven primarily by Google searches) with occasional spikes generated by new blog posts (and the occasional jump in interest around a given page). Because new content wasn’t being created as frequently, and because I was making less of an effort to spread the word, there were fewer spikes and they weren’t as big.

Visitors, Visits, and Page Views were all down in 2020

There were no big surprises in content popularity, but I was happy to post these outstanding guest posts: Gunsmile’s A New Player’s Guide to Degenesis, Erwan Redout’s Gamemastering with Airtable, and Wouter F. Goedkoop’s actual play review of Tales from the Loop. In 2021 I want to publish even more high-quality guest posts. So if you’d like to write a guest post, let me know.

Speaking of communicating, the Unpossible Journeys Discord server has been going for a few months now. While membership is still small, it’s a relaxed, welcoming, low-stress place to hang out and discuss tabletop RPGs and related topics. Check it out!

May your 2021 be safe and fruitful.

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