The Tek - December 2020

Ah, this is it: The Stats for December 2020. Now that I have enough data, I may post a whole year summary. I need more coffee. 

AD&D Character Sheet For Use with Unearthed Arcana: 1
Compass Rose Inn Minisetting: 4
Kobold's Folly: 4
Swashbuckler Character Class for D&D and AD&D: 2
These Old Games Presents: The Hex Pack: 1
Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners: 2

Downloads and sales were flat, but I can live with 14 total downloads per month. It's probably time to re-do, update and add to my DriveThruRPG offerings. 

Webstats were down a bit, almost 10%. But not horrible. 

Google Analytics Pageviews - 1,241
Google Analytics Sessions - 749
Pageviews per Session - 1.65

I've learned a bit in the middle of this pandemic. 

I have a whole year of data on my Rakuten Advertising ads. Many clicks, zero income. I am going to say goodbye to Rakuten. It is not aligned with my audience. There is a slight chance that I will keep one segment of Rakuten, The Lego Store. I may have zero people who will make a purchase, but I love the creativity of Lego and I will probably continue to link to the store. It's a content choice over marketing or advertising. It's nonsensical from a business standpoint, but I very much enjoy their photography and products. 

If you are looking for an advertiser that isn't aligned to games, then Rakuten is worth a look. It didn't work for me, but it does look like a useful tool. 

The clear winning Advertiser is DriveThruRPG. They brought in many times what I made in all other advertisers combined. Roughly, 7 times all other sources. It isn't a ton of money, but it is sufficient for me to pay for my site, to make some discretionary purchases and expand my offerings.  

My Amazon links are a conundrum. Virtually all funds from Amazon came in the last quarter of 2020, probably owing a loin's share to a single reader of this site. There does seem to be a correspondence between high quality posts with clicks and funds from Amazon. I do not receive a click by click rundown of commissions made, but I can see an incredible amount of clicks preceding those commissions. 

The Final Post of 2020

Hey, how about a respective post about 2020? Yeah, no. 

2020 was a dud. Today, I'll post a couple of images. Back when this s---show started, I pushed myself to practice drawing. 

I burned through pens and paper like crazy. Princesses, dragons, castles, knights, cat's, horses. I drew until I ran out of stuff to draw on and with. 

Thankfully, I resupplied in summer. And I'm still at it. 

This is a rough pencil drawing of a castle I'm working on. I've drawn it before and I'll probably draw it again. 

I wanted to work with my brush pen but it ran out a couple of months ago. 

This scratchy horse was done with a .5 sharpie pen. It was an iffy save. I figured I'd work on crosshatching if I couldn't do brush work. I don't know how I forgot that brush pen gave out and I never replaced it.

Ah, 2020. Kiss my... 

Green-5 Stats for WotC Star Wars

Green-5 is a unique droid to the Tarkeren Campaign. He has been on his own for far too long, Green-5 is suffering from corruption. He has taken on some traits that are not helpful. 

He has this obsession with turning speeders into fighters, which is less useful than it sounds. He has also taken on the idea he should know medicine. For a tactical droid, this is even more questionable than the thing with the speeders. 

T-Series Tactical Droid Statistics
Medium 4th-Degree Droid Soldier 3

Force Points: 2
Initiative: +6; Senses: Perception +7
Languages: Basic, Binary, Zabrak, Rodian

Defense:
Reflex Defense: 18 (Flat-Footed: 17), Fortitude Defense: 13, Will Defense: 13; Vehicular Combat
Hit Points: 30, Damage Threshold: 13
Immune: Droid Traits

Offense

Speed: 9 Squares (Walking)
Melee: Unarmed +1 (1d3)
Ranged: Heavy Blaster +2 (3d8)
Base Attack Bonus: +1; Grapple: +2
Attack Options: Quickshot (Heavy Blaster)

Base Stats:

Abilities: Strength 10, Dexterity 12, Constitution -, Intelligence 14 (Corruption. 10), Wisdom 14, Charisma 12
Talents: Battle Analysis

Feats: Armor Proficiency (Light), Armor Proficiency (Medium), Armor Proficiency (Heavy), Vehicular Combat, Weapon Proficiency (Pistols), Weapon Proficiency (Rifles), Weapon Proficiency (Simple Weapons), Point Blank Shot. 

Skills: Initiative +6, Knowledge (Tactics) +7, Perception +7, History +6, Use Computer +7, Treat Injury +2, Pilot +1, Astrogation +1.

Droid Systems: Walking Locomotion, Heuristic Processor, 2 Hand Appendages, Internal Comlink, Vocabulator, Backup Battery. 

Possessions: Heavy Blaster, Electrobinoculars, Durasteel Plating (Droid Armor; +6 Reflex), Cape, Notebook, Pen.

Availability: Unique

Tankeren's Defenses

The Tankerenian armed forces are not really what they should be. They have aircraft like the ship below. I call it an H-Wing. In real world terms, it's like an A-10 or a SU-25. However, no conflict has reached the level of needing those machines. Unlike their real world counterparts, they owe their robustness to devolved fighter designs of the Republic. They are incidentally tough, but not as tough as a Y-Wing or B-Wing. 

The whole planet probably has 200 of them. Of those, 20 or so of them are outfitted for training, aerobatic groups and the odd civilian hobbyist. Of the remaining fighters, 30-40% are down for servicing at any given time. Tarkeren doesn't have much a fighting air force. 

They have evolved this ship into a space fighter. The lines are more angular, the engines are bigger and the wings much smaller. Since the planet has a tiny space presence, these little ships are hot rods. They go from ground to orbit when needed. They are on par with an A-Wing in terms of speed, but lack missiles and maneuverability. They do have one advantage over most fighters, the pipe like structures are sensors so each ship acts as control ship. Maybe they have 100 of them.  

I showed this air speeder in my last post. It is unarmed, but a purpose build speed machine. It uses advance technology to perform more like a spacecraft than a speeder. It can reach orbit, but this is more of a stunt than a capability. Citizens of the Republic or Empire would be terrified at the power of this commercial speeder. But like I said, it's unarmed. These speeders are ubiquitous on this planet. 

Green-5 has transformed this air speeder into a power space fighter. It has heavy ion cannons for battle against capital ships, space for an astromech droid and powerful lasers. It can match TIE fighters in speed, Y and B-Wings for armor and has better weapons than both. It does lack missiles and photon torpedoes as the planet doesn't have the ability to produce either. 

The downside of this ship is, it is modification from air speeder to spaceship. That's expensive. Every fighter is a custom job involving droids and humanoids, which means that each one is unique. Also, it requires a humanoid droid or live pilot which means that Green-5, defender of the planet, does not have direct control of them once in service. Not enough droids are available to fly them, they type of droid required is not anything the Trade Federation has, so he needs Tankerenian pilots. 

So far, Green-5 has convinced the Lord and Lady to make 30 conversions. Half of them are still being assembled. He knows he needs 100 times that number to defend the planet against the Empire. 

Over the next couple of posts, I will stat up these ships. I hope you enjoy them. 

Tankerenian Speeders and Aircraft

I penned up some aircraft which are unique to my Tankerenian Star Wars Setting. 

For a warmup, I did a couple of open top speeders which are pretty Star Wars standard. Tankerenians are weird, they like fast vehicles, so these would only be found in cities and towns. They are small enough to fit inside a cargo transport so they are everywhere as a secondary mode of transport. 

What they really like are their skyspeeders, something like a cross between a cloud car and a snow speeder. They are insanely fast for 7 or more person vehicle. 

The Tankerenians only developed a vague sense of warfare and they do have some horribly antiquated fighters. They are limited to in atmosphere flight and are totally outclassed by even the oldest Republic designs.