State of the Blog 2021

Executive Summary:
Congratulations, traveller! If you are reading this you survived 2020, which reminded us of the dangers of adventuring on a mid TL, balkanized world during a global pandemic.  Red Zone classifications exist for your safety and the safety of others. Here's hoping for critical success rolls to those with Science, Medical, and Leader skills so the IISS can lift the interdiction. I've got a starship mortgage to pay and you can't jump when travel is restricted. When this is all over let's meet at a seedy startown bar, divvy up our treasure and plan our next adventure.

The events of 2020 had a detrimental impact on the amount of blogging and content creating I was able to do. Hardly worth mentioning in a year racked by COVID-19, economic upheaval, social and racial unrest, the impacts of climate change, and political shenanigans. In an act of defiance and hope I spent Holiday (yesterday) commemorating the founding of the Third Imperium and drawing spaceships. A small act, meaningless in the big picture, but the blog is still here and more content will come.

The Boring Blog Stats:
Total page views: 333,724 as of today. Wow. That's a third of a million! Average monthly page views for 2020 jumped from just over 5,000 to over 7,000. Were you guys stuck indoors most of the year or what?
Not surprisingly, the most viewed posts continue to be the Starship Geomorphs books and the starship deck plans.
The primary source of traffic to the blog continues to be Google, with Reddit beating out Facebook for the first time for the #2 slot.
Visitors to the blog continue to come from all over the world, with the United States, the U.K., and Canada leading the charge. Oddly, Turkmenistan made its first appearance on the list, edging out "Other" for the #9 slot. So greetings to my new Turkmenistani friends! Sorry to hear about all the ethnic discrimination, religious zealotry, police brutality, and political corruption in your country. I'm glad I don't live in a place like that.

Highlights of the Year:
The release of the Starship Geomorphs 2.0 PDF was kind of nice and I appreciate the enthusiastic response from so many people. In particular I want to thank Shawn Driscoll for his YouTube shout out  and Jeff Koenig and Bob Loftin of SAFCOcast.com for their mention in Episode18. Your kind words help keep me motivated guys, so thanks.

In related news, a print version is coming (really!). Marc Miller did a test print of the pre-final version and I received this email from him in October: "I made a hardcover of your book. It looks beautiful." I just need to make a few minor tweaks for it to be ready for the the pubic. Soon.

I really enjoyed seeing the Traveller community come together virtually. For a hobby that was built around tabletop social interaction, it was great to see so many work together to make virtual tabletop gaming more commonplace. I'm also grateful for all those who took the time to convert my geomorphs into other graphic formats to make them more accessible to the virtual gamers. Thanks again, everyone.

In May I participated in the Traveller Charity Stream in Support of the Carcinoid Cancer Foundation, put on by Patrick Kanouse and hosted by David from High Shelf Gaming and Hugo from The Death Die Club. They ran the Classic Traveller adventure A Murder On Arcturus Station. It was a great event and fun to get involved with others in our community to do something charitable, not to mention an awesome way to celebrate May Day! Great job, guys! I'd love to see something like this become a regular May Day event.

Lowlights of the Year:
Let's give this one a miss this year, shall we?

What's in store for 2021 (and beyond)?
It's sad that I could basically copy/paste my response from the 2019 State of the Blog. Too many ideas for Traveller content and just not enough time to do them. I'd like to make a commitment to finish existing projects before starting new ones, but as many of you know, when the creativity bug bites you have to scratch that itch, and Traveller has a way of inspiring creativity.

Best of luck for a safe and prosperous 2021. Happy Travelling!