This is meant to be an intentionally vague and open question! A few thoughts from me.
- The Rolemasterblog has dropped a bit in internet RPG blog rankings from a few years ago. Now #59. https://blog.feedspot.com/rpg_blogs/ Is this as simple as we are writing less blog posts? Has the initial enthusiasm for the RMBlog or RMU or even RM dropping a bit? So maybe neither good nor bad.
- COVID. Here in Maine, we are experiencing another surge in the pandemic. This could lead to another “shelter in place” or business shut down. I haven’t been able to visit my father in Florida for over a year and my family can only meet up via zoom. Heading to bad.
- RMU. Things seem to be progressing, but I’ve lost track of the small minutia around the rules. There still seems to be enthusiasm, so that’s good!
- Shadow World. Over at the discord server there seems to be a concerted group effort to write a SW module. This has been tried before, but they appear to be making progress. That’s good.
- 50 in 50. Things have really slowed down, BUT, the quality of our work has improved I think. Peter is putting out solid small adventures rather than the basic adventure hooks we focused on in version 1.
- My SW stuff. Obviously, I don’t have support of an editor, help with artwork and don’t have the time or skills to do so myself. I find the lack of feedback, positive or negative, to be disconcerting! I try to skew as close to Terry’s tone and style as I can, base it on Canon, (but filling in between the lines whenever possible). Is this material helpful? Useful? Used by other people? I don’t know! I would really like a few more collaborators to help push the SW “secondary market” further.
- Roleplaying. I look on with some envy on the popularity of “critical role” and other D&D based pop culture phenoms. Personally I cannot stand the tropes of Humans, Dwarf, Halfing, Elf vs Orc, Goblin, Troll; fighting dragons or Gygaxian settings. I don’t want to fight skeletons, large rats or live in the hollywood version of Middle Earth. That’s just me. However, I certainly love the fact that RPG’s are reaping the rewards of a life of gaming, fantasy, creativity and literature. Yay.
How are you doing?
1. I suspect that the drop in position is due to a slowdown in output. Fewer blog posts mean fewer shares and all the sorts of stuff that they are using to measure and assign positions.
2. Where I am is nearly Covid free. Scotland has 5 threat levels. Zero is covid free, Four is near-stay at home lockdown. We are at Level One. One advantage of being a remote rural community is that social distancing looks a lot like normal life.
3. RMu does look like it is making progress and I also see the first green shoots of a marketing plan taking hold. This is good news.
4. There are two discord servers, an official one and an unofficial one. Discord can be a huge time sink. The emphasis of the unofficial one seemed to be very much Middle Earth, so I spend more time on the office server. I am not a part of the SW module writing effort. I have virtually no knowledge of SW.
5. Yes, this has slowed down, partly my fault. What I am writing is intended to be directly gameable. If you don’t want to use the adventure outline I create at least you get usable maps or locations. These take a little longer but I feel offer better value.
6. My writing is now turning towards Pilot RPG, the partner to Navigator RPG. It is going slower than I had hoped but it is still possible to get a public beta out during 2020.
7. There are some brave souls doing RM actual play videos. Search YouTube and you will find them.
Sorry for the slowdown; that has partly been my fault. This has just been an unusually busy semester. Thankfully, it is coming to an end, and I look forward to getting back to blogging!
I bet it has. We have seen a lot of changes for students over here (UK), some of which were not handled very well.