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State of the Frontier – May 2020

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I realized about halfway through the month that my April State of the Frontier post should have been the two year retrospective as that was the end of the first two years of the blog. Can I just say I can’t believe I’ve been going that long. This has been my most fruitful and long lived blogging streak. And it looks like it will be going for a while to come.

Since I missed the yearly retrospective last month, I think I’m just going to skip it for this year and try to remember to do one next year. There really isn’t that much to say. This is post 145 for the blog. Since we were at 72 at the end of the first year, we nearly doubled the number of posts in the second year which means I’ve been posting apace. And it seems that the audience is growing as the number of visitors, sessions, and page views grew by 45-75% depending on the metric. So more people are visiting the site which is great to see.

The focus of the blog has almost completely shifted over the past year from my original intent but the pendulum is starting to swing back now that I’m running a game again. More on that below.

Looking Back

This month was the first in a while that I didn’t have a new miniature model to share. With all the COVID-19 changes, I just haven’t had the time to sit down and work on models. I’ve actually been busier than before the pandemic.

We had the usual Detailed Frontier Timeline post at the beginning of the month which was followed by a two part article looking at the economics and logistics of starliners, first from a ship and passengers numbers perspective and then at the economics of a single ship. This kicked off an “Economics of Spaceflight” series that I intend to revisit occasionally in the future.

Behind the scenes I started up a new on-line game, “Skills for Hire.” This will be an episodic game with a different cast of characters each session to allow anyone available to play on a given night the chance to participate. The PCs are mercenaries working for Galactic Task Force, Incorporated and are assigned out to various jobs that GTF contracts for.

Which brings us to the last few posts of the month. Given the start of the game, I decided to showcase my game prep as blog entries, although after the game sessions are complete. To that end, I launched a series of posts with the “Skills for Hire” tag that will be outlining everything I’m creating and using for the game. I began with an introduction to the game and the impact it will have on the blog, then two creatures: the young sathodragon and the Pale mountain lion, and finally a write-up of the adventure and how it played out.

This will start a new style of posting going forward where there will be lots of little posts spaced out among the regular Tuesday posts. I may not post up all the write-ups of all the sessions, but I’ll try to get at least one in a month. And I’ll try to post the small bits like creatures, items, and locations. We’ll see how it goes. The write-up of the scenario was, I believe, the longest post I’ve done yet and it took a while to get it all written up.

Also behind the scenes I got the VM running my mail server moved over from the old server to the new one. So everything is now running on the new server and I can shut the old one off. Next up is to begin upgrading and improving the sites. Probably starting with my mail server as it is using a different technology (VMWare intead of Docker) than all the other sites and requires a bit more manual intervention in the case of a crash.

That was my month. Let’s look at what’s coming up.

Looking Forward

I’m hosting the RPG Blog Carnival in June. So there will be a post launching the month’s topic, Organizations, tomorrow on the first of the month so that all those participating in the blog carnival can get their cue for the month. This will take the place of the regular Tuesday post, which would normally be the first post of the month. Instead it will come the following week on the 9th. I’ll be talking about the True Yazira secret society in that kick-off post. Keep an eye on that post to links to other blogs taking about organizations created for their games and worlds. Most of the blog carnival posters write for fantasy settings and games but I’m sure the material created can be adapted to a sci-fi setting if you desire.

I’ve been asked about the stats and design of the HSS History’s Hope, so maybe this month I’ll whip up a more detailed description of that ship and post an updated map of their travels. They recently attempted a long jump and got lost again.

Beyond that, I don’t really know what I’ll be posting about. I’ll probably do a second organization to go with the theme of the blog carnival, probably on Galactic Task Force, Incorporated to go along with my game. And there will probably be several small posts related to the game and a scenario write up.

I’m planning on making the game sessions available as an audio podcast, and possibly videos, I just haven’t gotten everything in place for that yet so those will probably launch this month as well.

There are five Tuesdays this month with the last Tuesday being the last day of the month. That would normally be another one of these posts but since I’m hosting the blog carnival, that final post will be the wrap-up post for the carnival. I’ll do the State of the Frontier post on the first of July.

The other major thing happening behind the scenes is that June also means the start of editing on the next issue of the Frontier Explorer. I think a few of my blog posts might make it into the issue as articles this time around as they have been suggested by my co-editors. We’ll see.

There is also another FrontierSpace module in the works as I’ve been contacted about editing it and it’s almost about time for me to start writing my science nuggets for the Space Kids RPG.

Your Thoughts

Do you have any ideas or suggestions on things you’d like to see in the blog? Anything I’ve mentioned, you don’t want to see? Let me know in the comments below.

May 31, 2020 Tom

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RPG Blog Carnival – Organizations – True Yaziria Society → ← Skills for Hire – Lost in the Mountains

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