Year in Review: Most Popular Geekerati Newsletter Columns of 2024

Thank You for Joining Us at Geekerati!

It has been a good year for this newsletter. While there are many bigger newsletters in the pop culture and gaming space, I’ve seen amazing growth this year. The number of free subscribers to this newsletter increased by over 700% this year the average number of views for each of my newsletter releases is up approximately 500% and it looks like this trend is continuing as the newsletter moves forward. I cannot thank you enough for joining me and my guest authors as we share our love for geeky pop culture.

As you might have noticed, pretty much any geeky subject is a potential target for an article. I’m a huge role playing game fan, but I also love movies, television, pulp fiction, fantasy novels, science fiction, science, and I’m finishing my Ph.D. in Political Science. When I cohosted the Geekerati Podcast with Shawna Benson, Bill Cunningham, Wes Kobernick, and Eric Lytle, I used to say that “we’d geek out about anything” and that remains true. That you are willing to join me on this eclectic journey is an honor. As you will see this variety is highlighted in our top ten posts of the year.

1. The Beauty of the “Non-House” Role Playing Game Magazine

I love that this is the most viewed article posted by this newsletter in 2024 because the main argument of the piece was how the wide variety of content was what made these old magazines so great. This post was the introduction to what will be a series of articles (the first one went live yesterday) examining the content of those old magazines and reviewing the articles within them. Remember, these old magazines often included film and video game reviews in addition to covering table top gaming and so they formed the inspiration for this newsletter.

2. The Eye of Argon - or - When a Community Mocks its Own

I’m a fan of geeky stuff and a fan of geek culture over all, but sometimes we can be cruel. While many argue that “toxic fandom” is a new phenomenon empowered by the internet, it’s something that’s been around since Forrest Ackerman attacked a Clark Ashton Smith story in the pages of The Fantasy Fan in the early 20th Century. Yes, I’ll be doing a post explicitly on that topic in the future. The Eye of Argon article focused on how the convention running/attending fandom, the elite fandom if you will, mocked a person to the point that they abandoned creative efforts.

3. Three Unpublished Role Playing Games I’d Love to See Printed in Print on Demand

This article discussed three role playing games that were far enough along in development to get full solicitations published, but never saw the light of day. This article, in addition to being one of the most read, led to conversations between one of the authors of one of these games and a publisher that might eventually end up leading to a similar game being produced. The odds aren’t good as that publisher is also in the midst of a controversy regarding whether they actually want to focus on games or whether their focus is IPs. We’ll see what happens. Regardless, the designer is talented enough to pull it of by himself so I am semi-hopeful. The other two are likely lost forever.

4. October 25th’s Weekly Geekly

While this is a great example of the Weekly Geekly Rundown, I think it got a big boost from the meme image used in the Oddity section. Price, Price, Baby went a long way towards getting this Halloween themed rundown in the top 10. I’ll also note that this is the first, but not the last Weekly Geekly in the top 10. In fact, if I were to go to a top 20 there would be even more. These newsletters do particularly well and they best embody the spirit of what I’m trying to do here, build community and share awesome stuff I find around the interwebs.

5. Role Playing Games and Candy Land

This is one of a few newsletters I’ve published defending Candy Land as a game and in this case focusing on how it teaches young people how to play role playing games. Steve Jackson often says that Monopoly is a role playing game, and I argue that Candy Land is too. This isn’t a game review article, but it is a game culture article and those tend to be fairly well received and generate some interesting conversation here and on short form social media sites as well.

6. My Shadow of the Demon Lord Review

While the content on this newsletter is decidedly PG-13 in general, my most popular game review to date is about a game that is decidedly rated R. Shadow of the Demon Lord was written by Robert Schwalb and it highlights his talents as a game designer and setting creator. He recently released a “family friendly” alternative game (Shadow of the Weird Wizard), well as family friendly as Schwalb can get, that I’ll be reviewing in the new year. SotDL is one of three games that I believe highlight how good the design choices of 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons were as Schwalb incorporates many of them into this game.

7. Luke Y. Thompson’s Review of Skeleton Crew

It was nice to see Luke break into the top 10 here and even better that it was with his review of the new Star Wars inspired television show on Disney+. Luke worked hard to get a screener for this show so that we could release the review at the same time as the big pro sites and it was an honor to publish this here. I still have yet to watch the show, which is surprising to me given how big a Star Wars fan I was as a kid, but I am looking forward to watching it. It may be closer in many ways to Star Trek Prodigy and the kid friendly Warhammer Adventures books than traditional Star Wars, but it doesn’t seem to hate Star Wars fans.

8. My First 10 Must See Films Post

I’ve talked about how I’m not a fan of “The 10 Best” lists and prefer “must see” or “I like/love” lists because my tastes, like anyone else’s, can change over time. This list of films goes genre by genre to highlight films that are among my favorites. I cover choices for the Noir, French New Wave, Realistic Espionage, Realistic Science Fiction, Western, Horror, Fantasy, Action Espionage, Romantic Comedy/Romance, and Mystery genres. It’s not a list of films designed to be obscure, but it also isn’t a list of obvious choices. For example, if I wanted to do the obvious Action Espionage film I’d have chose a Bond film like Goldfinger or Casino Royale. Both are among my favorites, but I figure almost everyone has seen them. I wanted to choose films that would start a conversation like the original The Man Who Knew Too Much which is much more an action film than the remake.

9. October 18th Weekly Geekly Rundown

October was one of my most productive months with regard to the number of articles written and it shows in the number of articles in the top 10 and the number of new subscribers in the month. I’m pretty proud of this particular Rundown because the Oddity was a mini-game analysis article and the Across the Blogosphere and Substackverse section highlighted a lot of other interesting columns. As I’ve said before, the Rundowns are there to highlight cool stuff I came across and to offer my thoughts on it. It’s a curated “feed” of interesting things and this one has some interesting stuff.

10. Spooky Season Film Recommendations

This was my first “panel of authors” article and I think it turned out really well. My guest authors,

LYT Rules

and

Kevin Vasquez

, come from different generations and have different tastes in film and they shared films that make for great Halloween movie marathons. They tried to go for non-obvious choices, while I went with the very old school and recommended two films from the early 1970s and two from the 1960s. I only recommended one recent film, but it’s a film I’m very much an advocate of as it features my favorite (and most plausible in my opinion) final girl I’ve seen.

Concluding Thoughts

Those are the top 10 articles of the year. Due to the nature of Substack Newsletters and how internet algorithms work, most of these are in the final quarter or so but I think they feature what you all have enjoyed reading and why my reader base has grown.

What were your favorite Geekerati Newsletter columns this year?