Seventeen Years of Dice Monkey

Every year when Dice Monkey’s anniversary rolls around, I’m struck by how much the landscape of tabletop gaming, and the internet around it, has changed. When I hit “publish” on the very first post back in 2008, I never could have imagined the journey this little blog would take.

Back then, the RPG Bloggers Network was in full swing and blogrolls were the lifeblood of our community. Some of the blogs that inspired me are long gone, digital ruins scattered across the internet. But somehow, Dice Monkey has kept rolling.

Dice Monkey started as a way to share my homebrew ideas, GM advice, and the occasional bit of gaming news. There wasn’t much polish, just enthusiasm. The blogosphere at the time was alive with scrappy creators throwing ideas out into the void. We weren’t chasing SEO or social media algorithms, we were just excited to talk about elves, dice mechanics, and that weird magic item we’d come up with on a Saturday night.

Those early years built friendships that shaped my gaming life. Collaborations sprang up. Guest posts turned into long-term projects. And some of those fellow bloggers went on to become published designers, just as Dice Monkey grew into more than I ever planned.

Over 17 years, the ways we talk about games have changed dramatically. Podcasts, YouTube, and now Twitch actual plays have taken center stage. Social media lets us connect instantly, but it’s also ephemeral; yesterday’s hot take vanishes down the feed by tomorrow morning.

Blogging can feel old-fashioned in that world, but I’ve come to value it even more. A blog post sticks around. It’s searchable. You can stumble across something I wrote in 2010 and still find it useful for your campaign today. Dice Monkey has become an archive of ideas, reviews, and musings that mark not just the growth of the hobby, but my own growth as a gamer and a writer.

Tabletop gaming itself has gone through waves. When I started this blog, Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition had just launched and was stirring debate. Pathfinder was the new kid, offering an alternative. Indie games were niche curiosities you ordered from a single website if you knew where to look.

Fast forward to now: D&D has become a cultural juggernaut, streamed games draw millions of viewers, and indie RPGs are thriving thanks to crowdfunding and community support. We’ve seen the rebirth of old favorites like Warhammer: The Old World, the rise of solo RPGs, and the blending of wargaming and storytelling in ways that once felt impossible.

Through it all, Dice Monkey has been my place to dig in, sometimes reporting, sometimes opining, sometimes just celebrating the weird, wonderful corners of this hobby we all love.

What keeps me going after all these years is you: the readers. Whether you’ve been here since the early blog network days or only stumbled onto Dice Monkey recently, your comments, shares, and encouragement have kept the dice rolling. Every time someone tells me they used an idea from the blog in their own game, or that an article inspired them to try something new, it feels like a critical hit.

I’m also grateful for the community of creators that continues to push this hobby forward. The indie designers, the streamers, the artists, the tinkerers, we’re all part of a larger conversation that makes gaming richer. Being a small voice in that chorus has been a privilege.

So where does Dice Monkey go from here? Honestly, the same place it’s always gone: wherever curiosity and enthusiasm lead. There will be more articles about RPG systems old and new. More wargaming experiments. More editorials about the state of the hobby. And yes, plenty of oddball ideas pulled straight from my home table.

The blog might not be the center of the RPG internet like it once was, but I like to think it still has a role to play. Dice Monkey has always been about sharing the joy of gaming, whether that’s dissecting a classic system, reflecting on industry news, or just marveling at how fun it is to roll a handful of dice and see what happens.

Anniversaries are a time to celebrate, but also to reflect. Dice Monkey has been around long enough to watch the hobby change, splinter, grow, and thrive. It’s been a constant companion through my own projects, campaigns, and experiments. And it’s been a place to connect with all of you who share the same love of imagination and storytelling.

So here’s to another year of gaming, writing, and rolling with whatever adventures come next. Thanks for being here, whether you’ve read one article or a hundred. Dice Monkey is still going strong, and I can’t wait to see what the next chapter brings.

Because as we all know: once you start rolling dice, it’s hard to stop.