Adventure Rules Update: Things Are Lookin’ Up!

Well, today is the final day of the month of April. Right? Thirty days hath September, April, June – right, there it was, April. Thirty days. Today’s the last one. So today marks the end of a month, so I thought since it’s Saturday we’d have a chill day and just kind of talk about how things went over the past month.

First off, we managed to finish three different Fire Emblem Fates Guides, all of which work together to provide one in-depth children’s guide for the game. That’s been getting quite a few hits, well after each post was published, something that I have quickly learned is the real meat and potatoes of getting the blog to grow. Used to, if a post didn’t see a bazillion views the minute it was published, I thought of it as a failure. But since then, I’ve learned to see a lot more value in the articles that people come back to over time rather than the ones that get lots of attention one time and then are never clicked again. So my hope is to publish more slow-burn articles like that in the future, stuff that can really help readers with their gaming experience and that they’ll want to visit a lot.

Second off, this month saw the completion of a fanfic, which is always a big deal! That’s one month down towards the blog goal of getting three consecutive fanficitions done. Just two more to go and we’ll be able to consider that goal a success. I know that the fanfic on the site is not for everybody, but I want to say a big thank you to those who are enjoying it. I hope that you’ll continue to read even when I change styles and content in the month of May. But if you don’t, I’m sure that I will deliver another dark, twisted story sometime in the future, so just hold out for that one.

Third off, I’ve done quite a few reviews, and another one is coming out tomorrow. I can’t promise that these indie reviews are going to last much longer – I’m quickly burning out on these games, and the reader response has been less-than-stellar. I don’t do everything I do for the views, but when I’m putting time and energy into a whole series that is literally not getting looked at, it might be time to change some things around. So the indie review going up tomorrow will be the final one, and I’m going to go back to simply reviewing what few mainstream games I do get to play. Now I do have something special and a bit different coming up on the review front that you can expect in the early part of the month, so that’ll be something to look forward to.

Fourth off, April marked the beginning of the Triplelocke playthrough (called, for a brief period, the Dreadlocke). That’s been fun to try out and I will continue to play through that challenge during the month of May. It’s been slower going than my usual gaming endeavors – I tend to go all in with one game until I finish it – but it’s been kind of nice taking this slower pace. I’d say the recent pace of about one Triplelocke post per week will probably stick around until it’s finished.

Fifth off (I really need to stop this progression), the other day I announced the title for the Myers-Briggs RPG. This is a project I haven’t worked on for quite some time, but one of the blog goals is to at least have a draft done and ready for playtesting by the end of 2016. My goal is for Sixteen to be a fun, fresh game with interesting mechanics, a cool setting, and a focus on Myers-Briggs inspired characters that a lot of tabletop gamers seem to want. So while it has been awhile since I’ve said anything about the game, I am buckling down. I’m excited for the new direction of Sixteen and I am ready to tackle the challenges of making a tabletop game from scratch.

Finally, let’s talk about the success of the blog in general in the month of April. Ever since I started on August 31st, 2015, my goal has been for the blog to steadily grow and get better. That’s been happening in a small way throughout the past few months. September was really solid, October and November went downhill, but then January was a high point. After that, February went down a little and March even more so because of my month-long hiatus. Life happens, that was unavoidable. So when I returned in April, I expected that I would need to claw my way back up a bit.

Instead, April has surpassed anything that has happened on the blog before. As of the writing of this post, in April alone Adventure Rules has seen 73% of the views and 88% of the unique viewers that the blog received in 2015. Now I only blogged in 2015 for September through December, but that means that in just this one month, the blog has experienced almost as much success as it did in four months previously. Up until this month, my most viewed day had happened back on September 3rd – literally my fourth day of blogging. That record was broken twice in this month alone. This is all a really fancy way of saying that the adventurers really turned out this month. You all responded very positively to the new content, and that’s something that I greatly appreciate. Viewership? Unique people clicking on Adventure Rules? Those numbers aren’t something that I can control. That ball is in your court, and you guys dunked it in April. So thank you. This month’s success is really about you guys.

The extra cool thing about having so many new folks around, and having those new folks reading more than one article at a time, is that the blog keeps gaining new followers. One of the big goals for 2016 is for Adventure Rules to reach 100 followers across all four sites. Right now, we’re sitting at 97. Now I know for a fact that a number of those are repeats, and my guess is that our actual follower count is something more like 91. But we are right on the precipice of meeting that goal, and again that’s something that the adventurers are responsible for, not me. It’s your choice to follow. Your choice to reblog on Tumblr, or share on Facebook. Yes, I write the articles, but it’s thanks to you all that the blog continues to grow. I am 100% sure that we will meet the 100 follower goal in the month of May, and that’s because you chose to be a part of the adventurer community. So congratulations for helping it to grow and meet our goal.

So what’s in store for May, then? How are we going to follow up on this amazing month? Well, my plan is to continue with projects that are working and modify ones that aren’t. Fanfic Friday, Guides, Tabletop Tuesday, posts about ongoing projects like the Triplelocke and Sixteen – this is all going to continue. In addition to that, we’ll be finding new things to add in order to keep things fresh and help more people to enjoy Adventure Rules. I’m also going to do what I can to keep up with the social media sites more reliably this month. I’d love to be able to say that we’ve met two blog goals by the end of May, and being consistent on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr is a good way to achieve that.

If you’re reading this post and you’re wondering what an adventurer is, what these goals are that I’m talking about or what these series are that I’m referring to, I encourage you to stick around for a bit. Check out what Adventure Rules has to offer. A lot of the posts I’ve mentioned today – the guides for Fire Emblem, the fanfiction called Mario Party – have special categories on the sidebar here on the site. You can click on any category to find any and all of the posts sorted into it. Click through those, read some stuff to see what’s there that you might like. And if you like what you see, I encourage you to consider joining the ranks of the adventurers by following on WordPress, Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr. Who knows, you might even get the honor of being follower #100!

I want to thank you all one more time for your support. It is thanks to you all that the blog has been able to grow so much just in the course of this one month. So let’s capitalize on this momentum and push the Adventure Rules community to new heights. I’m excited for what May will bring, and I hope you are too.