Return of the Dodo

— John Le Keux, 19th century

Unlike its avian namesake, The Dododecahedron is not yet extinct! This blog has now been dormant for nearly as long as it was active in the first place. But after a surprise inclusion as a Bloggies finalist, and with the blog’s one-year anniversary fast approaching, I figured what better time to bring The Dodo back? In this post, I’ll look back at 2023, discuss the Bloggies, and look ahead to 2024.

2023 Year in Review

I launched The Dododecahedron on January 14, 2023. I had low expectations; perhaps I’d garner a few dozen readers—perhaps even one or two hundred, if I promoted the blog widely. The warmth of the reception to my fledgling blog surprised me. One thousand readers visited The Dodo during the first two weeks of its existence, and my second-ever post somehow found its way into The Glatisant.

Since its inception, The Dododecahedron has attracted nearly 5,000 individual readers from about 70 countries. Many of them are even real live humans; I know this because they’ve shared my posts, left thoughtful comments, and even linked to my posts from their own.

In the months since my last post, readership had dwindled to a dozen or sometimes only a mere handful of visitors per day. Readership then spiked on Christmas and the following week, coinciding with Zedeck Siew’s call for submissions for the 2023 Bloggies. It was gratifying to know that remembered my blog fondly enough to dig through the archive of the dozen or so posts I published from January to July of 2023.

In addition to launching The Dododecahedron, I celebrated a few other gaming milestones in 2023. I played an OSR game in person for the first time at a local game store (Old School Essentials—and I wasn’t even the one running the game!) I playtested my own system, rewrote it, and playtested it again. I wrote and playtested an original dungeon. I began work on an expansive campaign setting for West Marches-style play.

And then life interfered, as it does. A lot happened in my life in the latter half of 2023. Much of it was good, but I found myself with little time to play and design games—let alone write about playing and designing games. Now that things have settled down, I’m excited to channel my pent-up creative energy. I have big plans for 2024, but more on that later…

The 2023 Bloggies

W.F. Smith of Prismatic Wasteland organized the inaugural Bloggies last year. I followed the proceedings but didn’t vote as I didn’t have a Twitter account. It’s a wonderful way to highlight the incredible, publicly available writing produced by bloggers in the OSR/NSR/POSR/DIY Elfgames milieu.

Zedeck Siew, winner of last year’s Platinum Bloggie, is hosting this year, and he’s moved voting off of Twitter and onto Google Forms. I’m a big fan of this decision, and I hope the 2023 Bloggies will see high participation in the voting process!

Voting is now OPEN for the Theory category (round of 4).

My post, “Toolbox Design,” has been selected as a finalist, and I’m just happy to be included! I was pleased to see many of my favorite posts of the year among the 64 finalists—including a handful I’d nominated. And I was thrilled to discover that over half of the 64 finalist posts were ones I hadn’t yet read! There’s a wealth of insightful, thoughtful, creative writing to be found across the four categories, and I’d encourage everyone to give them a read.

Dungeon Deep Cuts

My most recent post on The Dododecahedron was intended to mark the beginning of a “weekly-ish” series. Oh how naive of me. Not only did life get in the way, but I greatly underestimated how difficult it would be to find hidden gem adventures. In the weeks following the publication of Dungeon Deep Cuts #1, I read over 120 adventures. None impressed me enough to warrant a write-up in a subsequent installment of the series, though some came very close.

While I intend to continue the Dungeon Deep Cuts series, installments will be few and far between, as I don’t have the time to read dozens of adventures every week. I know that there are diamond-in-the-rough adventures out there, and I’m determined to find more.

Looking Ahead to 2024

I greatly enjoyed Ty’s 2023 Retrospective over at Mindstorm. I admire how he laid out actionable goals along with processes to achieve them. Here are some of my gaming-related aspirations for 2024:

• Publish original adventures. I’ve already written and playtested one adventure. Next, I’ll make revisions and conduct several more playtests. And then… we’ll see what sort of budget I can muster for art and editing. Keep an eye out for The Millennium Vault! (And hopefully more—I have other drafts in progress).
• Publish more blog posts. I published thirteen posts last year (albeit across a period of only seven months). I aim to publish at least twenty posts this year.
• Run more games! During the past few years, for the first time in my life, I’ve found myself participating in games more often as a player than as a GM. This year, I hope to run a consistent game. A West Marches-esque approach is the only realistic way I’ll make that happen, and I have an expansive campaign setting in the works.

That’s all for now! Thank you for reading. And thank you to everyone who commented on and shared my posts in 2023; it’s your engagement that’s motivated me to continue the blog.