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Message: <blockquote data-quote="talien" data-source="post: 9543009" data-attributes="member: 3285"><p>According to the Chinese zodiac, 2024 was the year of the wooden dragon. The irony is not lost on me, and sure enough, the dragon set itself on fire a few times.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">[ATTACH=full]390655[/ATTACH]</p><h3>Keep Building the RPG Community (4 out of 5)</h3><p>I'm currently the Chair of the <a href="http://www.car-pga.org/join-us" target="_blank">Committee for the Advancement of Role-Playing Games (CAR-PGA)</a> so I think about this a lot. Of all the goals for the CAR-PGA, the most important is to continually grow our membership; last year, we increased our membership by 11. Not quite as high as I'd like (we'd like to reach 12 each year), but still a decent amount, and many of these members were guest speakers as well so hopefully we're doing something right. Our reach matters too: the CAR-PGA <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@car-pga" target="_blank">YouTube channel</a> got 387 views, had a watch time (in total) of 50 hours, and we gained 12 subscribes. Our LinkedIn group continues to thriveh with 124 members, 32 of which are active. We had 78 posts and 1,239 views. Our <a href="http://www.facebook.com/carpga" target="_blank">Facebook page</a> has 178 followers. We hope to increase the CAR-PGA's members by at least 12 members a year. If you're interested, <a href="http://www.car-pga.org/join-us" target="_blank">join us</a>!</p><h3>Teach Myself Layout Software (1 out of 5)</h3><p>Hahahaha. But seriously, I just don't have the time. I need to do it though. I'm not sure I'm even willing to put this on my goals for 2025 since I've whiffed this every year.</p><h3>Train an AI DM (4 out of 5)</h3><p>An interesting thing happened with AI; now that the latest edition of <strong><em>Dungeons & Dragons </em></strong>is out, it doesn't have the means of understanding the differences between Fifth Edition 2014 and Fifth Edition 2024. This makes AI a lot less useful in some ways for dungeon masters. And yet, I now regularly work with an AI team member in my day job (the latest version of ChatGPT, customized for work), and she's vastly increased my productivity. ChatGPT is still the gold standard, but Gemini's latest 2.0 Flash Experimental has unlimited turns and is able to take on very large tasks. I suspect in the next year or so, there's going to 1) be less free options to work with, and 2) there will be highly customized options in the future, including an AI assistant for every conceivable task, including DM assistants. </p><h3>Find the Perfect Player Number (5 out of 5)</h3><p>I had seven players in my group and sure enough, one dropped out. Six is perfect, with the assumption that due to illness or adult responsibilities we may lose one or two for a session. I plan to keep the group to seven going forward.</p><h3>Publish the Next Adventure in Welstar (3 out of 5)</h3><p>The game is still being play tested, so this wasn't feasible in 2024. Should be in 2025 though. Instead, I published <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/506970/5-5e-foes-italia-bestiary?affiliate_id=2047462" target="_blank"><strong><em>5.5E Foes: Italia Bestiary</em></strong></a><strong><em>.</em></strong></p><h3>Finish Our Podcast (5 out of 5)</h3><p>We wrapped up our podcast that I co-hosted with my wife, <a href="https://pod.link/1693423998" target="_blank"><em><strong>Fifty Date Night Screams (50 DNS)</strong></em></a><strong><em><strong><em>,</em></strong> </em></strong>on Halloween with a bonus episode, 51 episodes in all! We reviewed old horror and drama movies in the public domain and created 5E stats for each villain inspired by the film, compiled into <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/442134/5E-Foes-Gothic-Villains&affiliate_id=2047462" target="_blank"><strong><em>5E Foes: Gothic Villains.</em></strong></a></p><h3>Deal with the Open Game License (3 out of 5)</h3><p>After Wizards of the Coast's embarrassing seesawing between threatening to remove the license and then just giving up on it completely and <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/wotc-backs-down-original-ogl-to-be-left-untouched-whole-5e-rules-released-as-creative-commons.694850/" target="_blank">putting all of it into Creative Commons</a>, I've switched to the Creative Commons license. By all accounts this has damaged what little unity there was left around Fifth Edition, as many other publishers wisely decided to not hang their hats on whatever WOTC was doing. The latest version of the System Resource Document (5.2) <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/2024-d-d-core-rules-will-be-added-to-srd-in-2025.704057/" target="_blank">will be released in early 2025</a> after the <strong><em>Monster Manual </em></strong>is published. Whether or not using the new license will help sales remains to be seen (I've seen sales of all my products take a dip, but I'm not sure yet if that's "new edition blues" or a true downward trend).</p><p></p><p>Overall, I scored a 3.5 out of 5. Not bad, at least due in part to me finally setting realistic goals. Which is why the next article will be interesting because I'm going to have to make some tough choices.</p><p></p><p><strong>Your Turn: Did you achieve at least some of your goals in 2024?</strong></p></blockquote><p></p>

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