UESTRPG 2021 Wrap Up

It has been ... a year. Another long year in a very strange time. I think everyone has been dealing with something over the last two years, and even if things have been pretty easy, everything just seems to get amplified with all that is going on. But, even with all the distraction of real life, we've managed to create an unbelievable amount cool stuff this year. When I look back at all that has been accomplished, it really blows me away.

One thing that stands out for me is the amount of new content that has been posted on a weekly basis this year. This post marks the 72nd post of the year. Which, that alone gives me pause. Previously, I was putting out one or two a month, but this year, it has consistently been at least one each week, with quite a few bonus posts. That is enough for me to say this year was a success, but there has been so much more to celebrate.

Going forward, I do expect this to drop off. As long as there is content to post, it is good to continue, but keeping up with that kind of pace can be exhausting, and it's good to leave room to breath once in a while. I expect to see around 40 posts next year, which is an estimate with very little thought put behind it, but having a few extra weeks to keep working on a task or tinkering deeper on a particular mechanic will be good. There's also a good chance I'll give out a couple of keys to the website to allow others to write their own posts, giving me some of that time back.

72 blog posts

3 books

402 pages published

233,706 words

Late in 2020, the content for Legionnaire's Guide to Cyrodiil started getting posted for review, and that continued full force in the new year, along with the announcement of Shadows Over Skyrim, which would become the community project of 2021. Monster of the Month continued on with some really memorable characters, like Pelinal and Cyrus. We even saw a couple of short adventures come out for review with The Songwar, a non-combat performance based story, and A Beacon in the Dark, featuring the familiar Ayleid ruins of Cyrodiil.

April surprised even me with the release of Terrors of Tamriel vol.1, a collection of the previous year's Monster of the Month's. May marked the start of the next collection for MotM with the Adoring Fan. All the while, a ton of content for LGtC was getting previewed, commented on, and adjusted. July had another surprise with previews showcasing the entire content of the upcoming Anthropology Companion volume 1, the very first project initiated and written by a member of the team that isn't me. Juan did an amazing job putting together usable content that a lot of people had been looking for. I'm hoping to get a downloadable collection for this ready to go in 2022.

In September, the long awaited Legionnaire's Guide to Cyrodiil finally was ready to download—though it was only the first part. Over 400 pages of content has been written for LGtC, and only half of that has been released so far, which is still very impressive and the largest book so far. I am so proud of this book. The quality and care put in to it makes me think this could be found on bookshelves next to professionally created content. It's important to send a shout-out to Crimson for all his work, easily putting the vast majority of writing forward. It's also important to mention Abe, Juan, Mini, George, Vile, Gugu, and the White Guar for all their hard. And of course, every single person who left a comment, allowing us to make it the best it could be. While all these fine people were writing a good chunk of the content, I was able to focus on setting up a style for the books to set it apart from the typical 5e books while still giving it a familiar but unique look. Gugu created the amazing class icons that I think is a small touch that makes a huge difference to how everything looks. This book has been my proudest achievement yet, and it was made possible only because of the hard work of so many people.

September was a big month because it also was the first time the content for Shadows Over Skyrim started to get out there as previews. The work that went in to that happened over the course of the year, but there was a flurry of activity around the Discord at this stage while things started to come together. We had a goal of having something ready to show for November 11, in honor of the anniversary of TESV: Skyrim. This was a really cool project, because my involvement was minimal. And I mean minimal. Gugu took the lead to make sure everything happened on time and getting it all set up in layout. Swampy jumped in to make sure all the content was done, creating a 140+ page book in a manner of a few months. We even had a few new creators involved, with Jason Hunter, Naevaro, and Sam Bertolli helping make this be as awesome as it is. It was definitely a moment of pride when that book came out on that meaningful day.

But it doesn't even stop there. November was also the first time we had a chance to look at the next big thing, the next set of the revised rules finally has something to show. Since November—which is only last month—we've already seen the Priest class, the Crusader class, and some revised Shout based subclasses. The next update is generally known as the upcoming 1.5 version of the Basic Rules, but it will be a bit more than that. It's really more like a 2.0. Grabbing a new name, Delvebound, it will feature a similar look like we first saw in LGtC. I've had a bunch of help already with many of these updates, collecting feedback from the past few years, and I really hope that this will become an amazing book that we can all use.

From a personal side, this year has been hard. There have been some really good highs, but also a few really low lows. Some of this might get a bit intense, so if you're struggling with your own stuff, especially at this time of year, it might be best to skip ahead to the next paragraph. My first dog was diagnosed with cancer late last year, so we knew that was something we were going to deal with. She lived exactly as long as was predicted, and we said our goodbye's to our lovely chihuahua, Zombi, in June. A few months later, during the Thanksgiving long weekend (the Canadian one), my mother died. She had a stroke shortly after the pandemic began, which made it really difficult to see her, and her lack of mobility and ability to speak made it really hard to talk to her at all. She had been struggling for years with a variety of health issues, but the stroke just made everything so much harder. Because we live so far away, I barely had a chance over the last year to spend any time with her, spending more time with her after she passed than when she was still here. I think the pandemic has given many of us a perspective change about what is important.

At the same time, I have been building a stronger connection with my father, and with my in-laws. I've been doing a lot of introspection (again, I think we all have) lately, and have been feeling like I've been making some good progress on being a better person. My free time has been increasingly diminished as my daughter gets older. She has been so much fun and we spend most of the evenings playing stories. Lots of Shopkeeper, Mom's & Dad's, and other make-believe games. I think she's gonna be an awesome RPG player. With LGtC out (mostly), I've also been allowing myself to slow down a bit and enjoy some time with my wife. We both are busy professionally, with our daughter, and with our personal projects, so getting some time to actually hang out together has been nice. And lastly, I am so thankful for the friendships I've gained from this project that will stay with me for a life time, long after the project is gone and we've all moved on to new things. The Discord is a great place to talk about RPGs and TES. It's honestly one of the best things I do each day, even if I don't have the time to join in. The fact that there are people interested in this project blows me away, and that there are people who willingly put an unfathomable amount of time into making the project better is something I never could have expected.

For the new year, there is so much we just didn't quite get out this year that we wanted to. We are ambitious, which is good, and there is still a ton of content for us to create. I have personally been wanting to dive into a small Fargrave book, but I know my focus is best kept on Delvebound and LGtC 2. We have other great things planned for 2022 that I'm not really quite ready to talk about, with some things coming very soon*.

Thank you all for helping make this the best year of this project yet, and I can't wait to see what happens next.

-Teluusa