Hello all!

And so we have come to the end of another year here at Canonfire!. There are many new faces around, and some old ones returning too, and that is plain great to see. Like the phoenix, Greyhawk, and the Greyhawk community, renews itself again and again. Some might not be aware of how immensely Canonfire! has grown since its humble beginnings. Over the years, many people have put in an immeasurable amount of their time and effort into making the site what it is. Many have contributed to the continuing success of Canonfire! this past year, and as I have not made a post like this before, it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge, and give thanks to, the Greyhawk community as a whole, as well as the many people who have contributed to Canonfire! over the years(many, but not all, being mentioned HERE).

While all of those people and more have contributed to things behind the scenes, it has been the Greyhawk community itself which has really shined. Even with the demise of Living Greyhawk in December of 2008, the Greyhawk community is more than just barely alive and kicking. Canonfire! is as strong as ever, this past year having had nearly 2.7 million page views, meaning that 2011 has been the busiest year for the site ever. This is ten times the amount of traffic that the site experienced in the year in which this statistic was fully tabulated for the first time, that year being 2002(the site launched in 2001 however). Canonfire! has expanded the most in just the last four years. For me, that pretty much says it all- despite the demise of Living Greyhawk, Greyhawk is not only alive and well, but thriving(not that we don’t also notice how the setting continues to be mined by WotC either). ;)

2011 has been a pretty good year, but there is more yet to come. Here are some of Canonfire!’s plans for the future. There are two main projects that have been in ongoing discussion for a while now that we would really like to jump on and get going for 2012, and recently a third one popped up. Here they are:

• The development of a pictorial Greyhawk product database. What? Canonfire! is a Greyhawk-specific site, and yet it doesn’t have a nice write-up on every single Greyhawk product ever made, and picture of what it looks like?! Insanity!!! Well, Canonfire! does feature a list of most Greyhawk products, but this is one thing we would like to improve upon, and looking at the proposed format for this feature, it looks like literally the entire community will be able to help make it a reality. More on that later as I can pry it out of PSmedger. By all means, PM him about this topic until he has messages overflowing from his Inbox if you wish(squeaky wheel and all). No, really, I do not think he will mind at all. >:D

• Launching a fully realized “Canonfire! Chronicles”(working title) special features format PDF specifically for featuring fully contained Adventures, select Article collections, Postfest! compilations, map collections, and similar things.As a part of getting this put in place, it may be that The Oerth Journal will be re-tasked, similar to what happened with Dragon Magazine when Dungeon Magazine came onto the scene.As such, The Oerth Journal would be more like Dragon Magazine, featuring all of the varied special interest articles that The Oerth Journal has mostly been known for.Lengthy adventures, really large gazetteer-style offerings that literally could stand on their own as a supplement book, and anything not really fitting the format of The Oerth Journal all that well would be relegated to being featured in Canonfire! Chronicles.

There has been much discussion on this, and some conceptual work has also been done, but nothing has been set in stone as of yet. To really get this going, we need as many volunteers with graphic design skills as we can get. Few people can devote a lot of their time to accomplish this, so what we apparently need is many people willing to put in a little bit of time. The more the merrier I say.

• Perhaps expanding the Forums themselves to cater more directly to both Living Greyhawk Regions/Metaregions material, and to general Regional/Metaregional discussion as well. This has only recently been brought up for discussion, but I think that it may be something that people will very much like. Not only would such forums serve as an arena for ongoing discussion and development, but potentially serve as a repository of Living Greyhawk information in general. There are a few important things that need to be taken into consideration with regard to IP, so some more thought needs to go into exactly how this would be handled and what will be allowed, if it gets implemented. Let us know what you think about this idea, and any ideas of your own that you might have, HERE.

So, those are some of our plans for the coming year. As for myself, I will be stepping back a bit from certain managerial aspects of the site, which means that somebody will be coming in to take over some of my duties. We have decided to go with THE lightening rod of controversy, THE biggest bastard of the bunch- Mortellan! I would say that there would be a hazing period, but I guess that has been ongoing since around 2003, so it will just be a continuation of things. Mortellan will be taking over Postfest!, and shortly the posting of submitted Articles. I will still help out as needed, but I will turning my focus more to working on some of the new things we have planned, and hopefully finding some time to write some articles myself again.

One final thing I would like to mention. As it has been in the past, the entire Greyhawk community is encouraged to submit their own articles to Canonfire!, and to The Oerth Journal as well. It seems to be a popular misconception that only the work of a few people is published in The Oerth Journal in particular, but that is simply not true. Anyone can submit their writing to The Oerth Journal, or to Canonfire!, and the same can be said of Canonfire! Chronicles once it is launched. And don’t forget Postfest! too, as that is a great avenue for getting one's feet wet. That's how I started off myself. Little did I know what I was getting myself into, but don't let that put you off from doing so! :D

And so, all the best to your and yours as we head into 2012. Happy New Year to everyone! I am betting 2012 will be a great one...if the world doesn't end. :D

---Cebrion