The RPGBA (Role Playing Blog Alliance) was a website with an RSS Feed of RPG Bloggers. It had a strong presence on G+. When the original owner of the site wanted to step away and had planned for it to just end, Scott Newbury of the blog of Dice and Dragons took over. When G+ ended the group moved to MeWe.
Even though RSS feeds took a big hit when the wonderful support built in to many browsers was taken away the RSS feed PGBA was still going strong.
As with the passing of G+ and the fading of Twitter as a go to for many TTRPG topics, so too is the RPGA going away. This includes shuttering the MeWe site. Since it is behind a login, all the posts there will be lost unless Scott decides to somehow archive them.
I considered for a moment stepping in, but I have myself spread thin already.
I checked the list of blogs and for some reason, mine isn’t there. I pulled the list and made a copy that I have posted on a page of my blog here. So many blogs have gone dark over the years. Sadly, several went dark and were never or not recently updated on the Internet Archive.
I encourage everyone with a blog to ensure their site is backed up on the Internet Archive. This page explains how to archive individual pages manually or with browser extensions, and there is an option to crawl pages you specify.
Prior Site
It should be noted that the RPGBA stepped in when another site for the same purpose ceased accepting new members and itself faded into the mists of time. Sadly, I don’t recall the name of that prior site. Like many others, I waited two plus years for my blog to be accepted, when it went dark.
Sad!
The internet 1.0 was and is an amazing place. The fact that it takes a little more work to consume than social media makes it even sweeter to me because it provides a barrier to entry for ne’er-do-wells.
Sadly, sphincters always seem to have time to cause trouble.
Good information being hard to find isn’t good in my opinion.
I wanted to stop by and thank you for pulling the membership list and working to keep it updated, and my apologies for you not being in the list! Unfortunately, most of the RPGBA work was done manually and as such often fell prey to me being interrupted in the midst of an update and missing something. I’ll be sure to point folks to your list in the future.
I’ll also be posting the OPML file of all the RSS feeds, so if any wish to follow in their own RSS Reader have the raw information to do so.
While the RPGBA may be closing down, I know that many of us will still continue writing and sharing, and I look forward to seeing what everyone posts.
May your dice roll well!
I get that, lots of changes over the years. Time to keep up with things on top of our own little space in the world can be too much after a while. I’m glad to keep a list. sorry to see that some have ceased to be. At least most seem to have a copy on the Internet Archive.
Thanks for all your efforts with this over the years!
You’re very welcome, and I was happy to do handle things for the time I could.
You are right, it’s sad to see so many sites have slid into the deep recess of the earth to never be seen again and yes, there are many in the Archive. I’ve been slowly working through my own site to fix the ones I can and update the RPG Blog Carnival Archive as several of those sites have gone dark as well (and some have new owners which are not gaming friendly).
My hope is to keep the Carnival going and bring some of the sites and resources that are out there to others. We still have folks like yourself who continue to put out great work, and I’m sure there are others we’re not aware of with work that we can also enjoy and learn from.
I was a member of both the Roleplaying Bloggers Alliance and it’s predecessor, the (as I recall) Roleplaying Blog Network. Today I wrote my first real blog posts in many years, and I’m hoping to keep it up this year: Kind of sad this comes as one of the last remnants of the first great wave of RPG blogging goes away.
I recall your blog. I’ll check it out. I hope you meet your goals for posting and find satisfaction from it.
I don’t read blogs like I did and likewise don’t write as many blog posts. Tech changes, life responsibilities change, energy and interest changes.