[I am putting up a series of 'Top 10' posts in the lead up to my 2,000th post here at Monsters & Manuals. You can read the first post in the series here, the second here, and the third here.]
I am a British man of a certain age, so when I think 'Top 10', I still think of Bruno Brooks, Mark Goodier, Sunday afternoons, the feeling of having to go to school tomorrow, Led Zeppelin jingles, jumpers for goalposts, isn't it, hmm? - marvellous. Those who understand those references - my band of brothers - will appreciate the visceral wave of nostalgia that is now washing over them. Those who do not will be mystified. But nobody will be mystified at all by the basic premise of this post (see what I did there?): it lists the most popular posts EVER (so far) on the blog by page views.
Let me just make one thing clear, though, as an aside, before we commence - while there is a widespread perception that the OSR blogosphere is 'dying', I get more pageviews month-on-month these days than ever before - and indeed in both April and June this year I got twice as many pageviews as the previous most popular month in history. Monsters & Manuals is in rude health, god dammit - and you will prise this keyboard from my cold, dead hands.)
Top 10 Most Popular Posts EVER (so far) by Views
I have been writing posts here since 2008 and over those 16 years have discovered some immutable laws of the universe with respect to blogging: there are important day-of-the-week effects when it comes to pageviews (Friday and Saturday are the worst days for posting, Sunday is next worst, then Monday; Tuesday-Thursday are optimal); nobody is really interested in 'creative' content and would much rather read rants; if a post has not received 1000 views within a week it probably never will, but if it gets more than that the sky is the limit and its views will gradually tick upwards forever and ever amen; if you post about Warhammer you get several times as many views as you otherwise would even though your blog is ostensibly about D&D; there is no better driver of engagement than explaining why you hate something; if you specifically solicit comments you are less likely to get them than if you did not; and so on.
This will colour what follows, which I'm afraid is mostly controversial rants - which are not actually all that reflective of all the things that I have written about down the years. I must also make clear that I deliberately did not include some promos and things like that for Kickstarters, which would have been boring.
But anyway, without further ado, in descending order:
10. Against TV (20th Feb 2023) - in which I explained, well, why I don't watch TV and don't think you should either.
9. Questions Nobody Asked Me (31st December 2022) - in which I responded innocently to a quiz and apparently pissed off some nerds with my answers (this is the only reason I can come up with as to why it got so many views). This post is notable to me as being one of the few I've written in which I can actually still remember the circumstances of writing it - at the kitchen table of my in-laws in rural Japan while I waited for New Year's Eve dinner to be served.
8. Faking It; or, you'd better be Al Pacino; or, stop rolling the fucking dice (16th September 2011) - in which I explained why fudging dice rolls is a fool's errand.
7. Annoying Evil Idiot Fucks (27th December, 2021) - in which I encouraged Prince of Nothing and Patrick Stuart to stop fighting and be more like emperor penguins.
6. Would You Play D&D With Donald Trump? (19th March 2018) - in which I posted something which I thought would garner universal agreement, and discovered that it did not. Occasionally people still link to this post on Twitter or elsewhere as Exhibit A in my trial for being a negative influence on 'the hobby' etc.
5. Racism and Orcs (2nd February 2022) - in which I posted something about a controversial subject. I later semi-retracted it after giving the matter further thought.
4. Warhammer Goblins (28th February 2009) - in which I posted something about....Warhammer goblins. See what I mean about Warhammer?
3. Going is Easy but Returning is Not (17th October 2018) - in which I mused idly about competing translations of a famous Japanese children's song (I genuinely have no idea why this got, and continues to get, so many views).
2. For Old Times' Sake: LotFP is Worth Saving (17th July 2020) - in which I 'did a solid', or something, for somebody.
1. D&D Combat is More Abstract Than You Think (30th August 2013) - in which I said some vaguely defensible things about the nature of the combat round in D&D. It spawned a host of sequels, but the original still gets lots of hits and seems somehow to have taken on a life of its own (it has over twice as many pageviews as entry number 2 in the list).
This is post number 1999 on the blog. I imagine that the list is therefore good as far as the first 2,000 posts go. Who knows what the list will look like when I have written 4,000? Join me in 2040 to find out.
Returned to the older TV post as a result of reading this today and am astonished at how fresh it seems. My memory must be worse than I thought, or purhaps reading an opinion that I already agree with isn't as memorable in the long term as discovering something totally novel.
ReplyDeleteIt occurs to me upon reflection that television can also be appealing to our lizard brain by reinforcing our assumptions about the world in general and purchance reengaging with our fondness for old favorites in the form of reruns and restatements, confirmations in effect, of strongly held beliefs. I wonder how much "new learning" occurs as a result of watching television? (I would like to think that could be more than I suspect.)
Yes, there's a comfort blanket element to it that I have indulged in myself in watching reruns of old 90s shows I used to love. I don't do that anymore though - I now watch no TV at all.
DeleteJust reread the post on D&D combat being abstract - more so than we think. I imagine there is good reason for this being a popular read. One of my personal struggles with D&D combat is the vocabulary. In the post you mention "to hit" which of course implies a single swing, thrust, release of a missile, etc. "Damage" and "hit points", "cure wounds", "healing", all imply concepts that are at least slightly misleading or in consistent with the abstracted nature of the game. Other terms such as "infravision/see in the dark", "hear noise", "move silently", really most of the Thief's special abilities, can be misinterpreted. It sometimes amazes me that an author who has command of words like "perspicacious" chose such imprecise (and misleading) language to describe the game concepts. For better or worse, D&D has established itself as the default "language" of not only tabletop RPG concepts, but also video and computer games that derive from the tabletop ideas. Fortunately, we are armed with imagination and by application of a bit of thoughtful imagining we may still experience the game in a way that makes sense to us. Abstraction is a useful tool, but only if we make use of it.
ReplyDeleteYou're right - a lot of the problem lies in the terminology. Though, obviously, in practice people tend to get around these issues by just not thinking about them very hard (which in its own way may be the most sensible thing!).
DeleteI think blogging is pretty much alive, but I do feel it's harder to find new blogs to check. That mostly happen in the few times I click on a shared blog post in social media.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty much in agreement that I'm not very much interested in creative work. These days I'm much more interested in tangential topics of the hobby like culture, sociology, RPG design, old D&D statistical analysis. Your posts about why people read RPG books, the OSR, links to thinkers outside the hobby are why I still come here unlike places that only post tables and monsters.
Thanks very much - I've generally reduced creative content precisely for this reason. The ephemerality of blogging isn't suited to it.
DeleteI'm with you on Audience Participation - goodness knows that never gets the responses one might wish. My own top ten by views has some bizarre outliers, but in hindsight 'The Names of the Stars' might attract all sort of strange passers-by.
ReplyDeleteMy most Warhammery posts and the stuff that looks nearest to a rant don't seem to have taken off as other material - a mixed blessing, perhaps.