I have decided to keep going with the blog challenge thing, since I have the 40th Anniversary Blog Hop for February, 2014 done and scheduled to publish each day on the appropriate day. I always thought about jumping in when I saw other types of RPG blog challenges, but never did. After I bit the bullet for the 40th Anniversary Blog hop, I decided to just do it, to steal a marketing phrase.

I got a power start on the April blogging challenge. I made a title and copied each letter graphic for all 26 of the A to Z posts and scheduled them for the appropriate day. Now just to write each post before the scheduled day.   I am toying with different ideas, but I thought that I would wait until I see what other RPG bloggers are participating and what they might indicate they are doing. Will there be a theme or just each do our own thing, etc.

My suggestion to anyone who wants to do any kind of blog hop/challenge is to make a draft  with a placeholder title and schedule them for the appropriate day and add the tags you know apply. When you actually write for that day adjust the title and category tags as needed. I know I am not a regular blogger with tons of followers, but for me that gets the item out there. If it is not a challenge that needs something tomorrow, you can focus on the ones for which you have solid ideas. For the ones you aren’t sure about or have multiple ideas, you have a place to add your ideas. If you have enough ideas, you can split them off as drafts for future use for next year, or some other blog challenge. Doing the 40th Anniversary Blog Hop helped me come up with a ton of ideas and remember things I wanted to record for later. Instead of having 3 or 4 or more posts for one day, I realized this morning that I should have scheduled them so that I had one every day, so I’d be into next week by now.

To sum up, my suggestion is to let your tool, blogging software of your choice, do the hard parts. Put in a framework so all you have to do is flesh it out. I use WordPress and am self-hosted, so I know my suggestion works for WordPress users. I would imagine Blogger and other blogging tools would allow you to do the same.

I was interested, so I did a search on the list, last night there were 500 signed up, I am number 499. This morning, it is up to 513. Counting me, there are only four RPG bloggers; or only four that used the (GA) tag at the end of their blog name to identify them as a gaming blog. I will have to read through all the blog titles without a category tag to see if there are more.

So far, these are the four RPG blogs signed up for the April, 2014 A t X challenge:

181. d20 Dark Ages (GA)

296. The Open Hearth (GA)

341. Tower of the Archmage (GA)

499. Follow Me, And Die! (GA) (That’s me :D)

I will add any I find or that let me know they are participating, that don’t have the (GA) tag. I’ll keep my own little list, so I can follow along more easily. If you forget the tag, they can’t change it, so you are stuck without it.

[Edit] I found these without the  (GA) tag: