So I’ve come to decision time.

Temporary Hit Points is a website for the D&D Player. A need that I saw generally not being filled in a focused way on the internet which seems odd to me given that there are a lot more players than DMs. Things started really strong. We set a pace of at least one article a week. We had some great contributors and fantastic (and popular) one shots from industry guests. The site grew slowly but surely. It never went gang busters or got the attention that I thought some of the contributions of some of our writers deserved, but that first year is something I am extremely proud of.

The second year was less successful. The pacing started to flag to “an occasional article”. We brought in some GREAT new contributors, but the number of contributors started to flag in general (all for very good and reasonable reasons). David, specifically, has done some great things and I’ve been proud to have them on the site.

Now we are looking at the start of year three of Temporary Hit Points and something has to change…I’m not entirely sure what that something is going to be yet, but I have some ideas.

What’s more the gaming work of Jeff Greiner needs a change as well. I am currently spread very thin contributing to a lot of different sites and projects to some detriment. I end up barely contributing to any of them and that is pretty demotivating.

There are a few options I’m considering and I’m curious what you guys think. I may or may not go with the most popular choice, but the feedback you give me will definitely impact my decision making process.

Option 1: Keep things going the way they are. I can promise to try and pick things up, finish the player-design series (that I was enjoying but ran into a hefty one…and then D&D Next has me questioning the need at this point). David, and Jeff D. and former contributors would continue to be welcome to do their thing and I would put out the call to try to find more writers for the site. All that said, I can’t promise any of this would go anywhere and the result might be that the site continues to limp along.

Option 2: Turn THP into the Jeff Greiner Gaming Blog (not using that name). Instead of contributing to a dozen different sites barely and with constraints that I’ve created for myself I would re-brand and re-built Temporary Hit Points to become a place where I talk about gaming. I might continue some of the series I’ve started elsewhere and here but I would also feel liberated to be able to write about whatever I want to write about even it doesn’t fit a theme or series that’s been established. If there was something I want to talk about, this is where I’d do it. I’ve already talked to David, who is really the only regular contributor anymore, and I have ways to help him find a home. I refuse to let him stop writing because his stuff is great. This does abandon one of my goals when I started writing more about gaming, that being to organizing my digital life by creating a little corner of the internet for each thing I was trying to do. If I wanted to write about a certain thing and didn’t have a place to do it, I’d start a new project or start contributing to another site. In this option I would organize my life into: podcasting (The Tome Show), gaming stuff (THP), or non-gaming stuff (somewhere else). It should mean an increase in posting here as well.

Option 3: Just let THP die. If I want to go on to other things I can start something new or just use RPG Musings to house all of my stuff or something.

Option 4: Something I haven’t considered yet. Leave a comment, I’m open to suggestion.

So those are the things I’m thinking about. I’ve tried to talk to everyone directly impacted by this (contributors to this site as well as owners of sites I’ve been writing for) so no one who should be in the know should find this as a surprise. If I missed it, believe me, it was not intentional. But now it’s your turn…what do you think I should do? I’ll probably post next week to let you know where I’m going with things.

Give me your wisdom…