Tag Archives: Apps

RPGs

GitHub Project For G+ Links In Blogs

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Bloggers who use Blogger were given the biggest disappointment yesterday when all the G+ comments for all Blogger blogs were deleted by Google. I have a blogger account, but it is just a link to my blog and lists each post from this blog. I never used blogger for my RPG blogging.

Those of us who don’t use Blogger still have time to preserve our G+ comments.

Thankfully, I only had two comments from G+, both from the same person. I used the Internet Archive to make an archive of his G+ page. I then added a note at the end of the two articles involved:

[EDIT: Google is deleting all G+ comments to non-blogger blogs. Below is one of two G+ comments on my blog I want to save. 02/06/2019]

  • I then pasted in the comment,
  • The Date,
  • The Commenter’s name,
  • and the link to the G+ site.

I left the link text as the original G+ page, but I used the Internet Archive URL for the link. (See the Internet Archive page in this repository.)

G+ Links

All bloggers, including those using Blogger, still have time to handle those G+ links that still exist on their blog posts.

Internet Archive

The Internet Archive, AKA Wayback Machine, has a way to request that a public URL (link) be archived.

https://web.archive.org/save/

Where the above link is modified where the link to archive is used in place of <URL>

For example, the G+ page for Follow Me, and Die! would look like this:

REQUEST LINK: (The following should be one line.)

https://web.archive.org/

save/https://plus.google.com/+Followmeanddie

RESULTING LINK:(The following should be one line.)

https://web.archive.org/web/20190206103057/

https://plus.google.com/+Followmeanddie

Each time you use a request link, you get a new resulting link, that has the data and time as part of the URL. You do not need to generate a new request if the page has not changed since you last generated it.

GitHub Project

I am by no means a master coder, but I know SQL, and I know how I want to handle the issues with my blog. I like to help others, so I am sharing my process and inviting anyone who wants to participate to step up. Anyone who is a better and faster scripter than I is welcome to build a script to do this. NOTE: I am looking for cross-platform solutions, i.e. a single solution that will work on any Operating System (OS)

Here you can find my minimal, in-progress project that I started this morning before work.

RPGs

Good Luck If You Linked To Anything On G+

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I have a BA in history, which means I have training on how to do research and cite my sources.

Following along with my training, even RPG blogging, I link back to my sources online.

When writing about RPGs, especially “OSR” topics, I found a lot of great ideas, discussion, and all around inspiration on G+.

It occurred to me a couple of days ago that I should see how many things I linked to on G+ and try to copy those things and add the source to my blog posts, so the information is not lost to the mists of time.

I use an extension on my blog that lets me do a search and replace on things across my entire blog. It has an option to do a “dry run” and for the free version show how many instances of a given phrase it finds before it replaces it.

Great . . . .

I searched for the key part of the URL for G+: plus.google.com.

Here are my results for a few of the tables:

  • Comments – 2
  • Links: 4
  • Posts: 867!

Comments

The comments are from the same person and link back to his G+ page. I copied the long text in the about page and the graphic to a google doc. That was easy!

Links

The links are to the Follow Me, And Die! G+ page. OK, I can screenshot it or something and provide a nostalgia page or something.

The other three are to the Metamorphosis Alpha, the Swords & Wizardry, and Tenkar’s Landing G+ community pages. I can use G+ Exporter to grab those and post to a page or site for historical purposes, but that’s a whole other ball of wax.

Posts

The 867 posts are links in 157 actual posts. Counting this post, I now have 780 posts.

I can go into the database and search for the unique links and go from there.

I’ve got some ideas of how I can hack together a crude solution. I’m not the best script coder, but I plan to do my best to copy what’s on the other end of all these links. But first, just in case, I’m going to grab my favorite G+ discussions that stand out in my mind

Unfortunately, trying to preserve this background history of my RPG life during my time on G+ is going to sidetrack me from other things.

Conclusion

Unlike blogs and websites, there is no archive of all of G+. Google is just going to delete it. It would be really cool if Google and The Internet Archive could work out a deal.

If you have a favorite G+ discussion, get it now — if you can find it.

[UPDATE: I just found that if you use the Evernote web clipper and tell it to use the default option of Article, it will save the entire G+ thread. NOTE: It is literal about what is copied. Be sure to unhide all comments with the view x previous comments link, if any.]

RPGs

The End of An Era

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Click here to listen to the podcast version.

Yesterday Google updated what is going on with the end of G+ and this afternoon, G+ pages started showing a yellow banner labeled: “Your Google+ account is going away on April 2, 2019. Learn more.“

I’m saddened by this. They come out and finally state it plainly that all of G+ will be gone. I and others were hoping that they’d just make G+ a read-only archive, like they did when they saved Usenet from the great bitbucket in the sky.

Even though I was a gmail user from the early days of the original beta, I didn’t get onto G+ immediately, but once I learned all the cool information your could find and the interaction one could have with all the other bloggers adn content producers on G+ I was hooked.

I am saddened that some of my favorite interactions and discussions on G+ will be lost.

This has caused me to be more regular in blog posting, adn I have plans to do more.

I’m sick of Google giving us something cool, not building or managing it well, then taking it away. If G+ made the kind of money YouTube makes it would be here as long as Google.

I just recently found a cool browser add on for sending website information to Google Keep. I guess I need to send all that data to a google doc and download it.

I’m a technophile and I will continue to use technology. I’m not jumping into anymore cool betas from Google or anyone else for that matter. I plan to find the tools that will let me do what I need to do online and stick with them.

I bought the G+ Exporter program for $20 and have backed up most of the communities I am a member of. It isn’t current as Google started the cat and mouse of blocking them. I did download the Holmes Basic community and made it available to Zach of Zenopus Archives. I’ll do the same for any other G+ Community I’m a member of.

I used it to pull down my own online groups for my old Metamorphosis Alpha campaign, and my AD&D game on Roll20, and the Wed Night AD&D Game and Sunday morning AD&D game.

G+ had some very nice features, it’s a shame Google didn’t do social networking well and lied to themselves as much or more as they lied to others.

There are lots of efforts to keep gamers in touch. Some went to FB, others to Discord, some to various other federated platforms, and a bunch went to MeWe. I’m getting tired of how busy MeWe the MeWe page is. I’m active on Twitter, Discord, MeWe, and a bit on FB, and now I’m trying to do more with Reddit.

I know that whatever I do, I need to keep my content under my control as much as possible, I need to do the backups, and I need to promote my content to the places of my choice. I’m still posting on G+. I originally said that I’d be posting til the lights go out. I’m not so sure now, but there are a few still on G+ also posting, so I guess I’ll keep it up. I’m about ready to pare back what I’m involved in on MeWe and reduce the number of Discord servers I’m on. I even have an unused Discord for my Patrons.

I need more focus to produce content and make it look presentable.

G+ was fun while it lasted, in spite of the occasionaly dumpster fire. Nothing shuts up the idiots, so block and ignore made my G+ feed pleasant. I pro-actively blocked those people on MeWe.

If anything changes about my online interactions, I’ll be sure to get the word out.

Google’s January 30th Update

Shutting down Google+ for consumer (personal) accounts on April 2, 2019
January 30, 2019

In December 2018, we announced our decision to shut down Google+ for consumers in April 2019 due to low usage and challenges involved in maintaining a successful product that meets consumers’ expectations. We want to thank you for being part of Google+ and provide next steps, including how to download your photos and other content.

On April 2nd, your Google+ account and any Google+ pages you created will be shut down and we will begin deleting content from consumer Google+ accounts. Photos and videos from Google+ in your Album Archive and your Google+ pages will also be deleted. You can download and save your content, just make sure to do so before April. Note that photos and videos backed up in Google Photos will not be deleted.

The process of deleting content from consumer Google+ accounts, Google+ Pages, and Album Archive will take a few months, and content may remain through this time. For example, users may still see parts of their Google+ account via activity log and some consumer Google+ content may remain visible to G Suite users until consumer Google+ is deleted.

You can read the full statement here:

https://support.google.com/plus/answer/9195133?hl=en&authuser=0

RPGs

G+ Exporter mini-review

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I purchased the G+ Exporter license for $20 to get unlimited downloads on December 22, 2018. While Google has the feature
Google Takeout, it has issues and does not easily do what one wants. It has a default option of HTML, but the HTML is far from W3C compliant. JSON is the other option, but it not available for all data types, and some settings in Google Takeout give errors that are difficult to decipher. In some cases, there is data exported, but there is no easy way to determine what is missing.

I mentioned that I would be digging into G+ Exporter on G+ and sharing the results. I have had a few people ask me what I found, and here you go. This is not complete, but it what I managed to find out.

Disclaimer: I have done all of the WordPress testing today (December 30, 2018). It was rushed, as I don’t know how long until work slows down, as the next two weeks are the maximum workload of the year at work. It was also interrupted multiple times in both the testing and the writing of this post. I welcome comments from anyone who can shed light on the area where I don’t have a clear or good answer.

I liked the export feature. It lets you export to JSON, Blogger export format, and both the WordPress 4x and 5x export formats. The program is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

As Blogger is also owned by Google, and the idea is to avoid Google killing another product, I elected to export to the WordPress 5x format. I have used WordPress for my blog for years.

My plan was to install and run a local install or WordPress on my PC. I kept having issues getting it working. I don’t recall it being that difficult to get a local install working, but I haven’t done it in years.

I gave up on that as I kept being interrupted and losing my place in all the configuration files for the webserver, PHP, MySQL, and WordPress. At one time, I had a single package that combined all these pieces. I don’t recall the third party that put this together, or what they called it, or if it still exists. If you know, please leave a comment below.

Process

What I did was use the automatic WordPress functionality of my webhosting service to create a new WordPress installation with a new database. I then restored the backup file created by G+ Exporter for the G+ Community for the Wednesday night AD&D game from Roll20 that ran from March, 2014 to October, 2018 with 221 sessions.

G+ Exporter allows you to specify the size cutoff for how big a single file is. I believe the default for the full version is 5,000 posts. This file has 1280 posts. This file is about 8.6 MB.

I had to install the WordPress Importer plugin. It indicated that it has not been tested under the latest version of WordPress. Nevertheless, I was able to import the file. It appeared to hang a couple of times. I clicked the refresh button on the browser tab. After I clicked the second time, it showed me a page with all of the players and GM, AKA Community Members. It offered to import them all as Admin, if you didn’t want to import it under each member’s name. I had it import and keep each person’s name. It imported them as Subscribers with random passwords.

If you wanted to allow these users to edit posts or make new posts with those user names, you would have to deal with all the password re-sets. If you just want the data, you won’t need to worry about users editing their posts.

What I did not test was importing more than one G+ export file. There does not appear to be anything in the import file to allow distinguishing one file from another once it is imported.

This leads to the question of how to handle this. I see two options: first, use a multi site installation of WordPress with a separate database for each Community or G+ Exporter file. Second, restore a file, and use another method to export the data into a format less dependent on WordPress’s technical requirements.

If you want all of your G+ life preserved in one place, you can easily import all of it into one WordPress installation.

For the second option, one could use either wget or curl and download/copy the information to HTML files that are in a format that is easier to work with than the HTML files offered via Google Takeout. There are WordPress plugins that offer other options for exporting data, but I did not make time to research those options. I did notice that there is a JSON import plugin, so conceivably, one could use that to import the JSON format from either Google Takeout or G+ Exporter. (Yes, I know, there are those who don’t like the HTML option. It all depends on how tech savvy one is, and whether the format serves their needs.)

If you have a brand with a G+ Community, importing your G+ Export into a section of your WordPress site may have appeal.

Either researching a WordPress export plugin, or hiring a programmer to build a custom program to read your JSON or other backup file and present it in a usable way, may be an option.

Conclusion

If you were not a prolific poster on G+, or you are not worried about preserving your posts from G+, then you can save your $20. Infrequent posters to G+ may be served well by either Google Takeout or the free limited version of G+ Exporter. However, if you want a Community, G+ Exporter is the only clear way to get it, as Google has not made it clear one can download a Community via Google Takeout.

However, if you were a prolific poster, or an owner of one or more communities, and you want to maintain all that data generated over the years, this is for you. $20 is well worth it.

If you know how to get a WordPress site working on a self hosted location, or create a free WordPress site at WordPress.com, this method is relatively easy. Of course, you also have to ensure that you have backups in a safe location to avoid losing all the data once you have it. As WordPress is enhanced and has new versions, you will need to export again as a precaution, should you need to re-build your site.

The biggest challenge will be for those responsible for or wanting to download multiple Communities. As I have not attempted to import more than one into the same database, I can’t say if there is a way to distinguish each Community one imports. On the surface, it appears that this will necessitate multiple WordPress databases, which is best handled with the Multi-Site installation of WordPress. However, I have not installed Multi-Site myself to know all of its quirks.

If all you want is all your posts and don’t care to separate them all, you can just import everything.

It does group things by Category, so each subgroup (filter) of posts in a community becomes a Category in WordPress.

If you click on the author name, such as under the recent comments, it goes to the author’s G+ page.

If you click the author name on an article in WordPress, it takes you to all the articles (posts) by that person.

Google+ Exporter announced their latest features on a G+ post here.

It directs the user to the link to download/purchase here.

[UPDATE: January 4, 2019] I found that the WordPress import set categories, but it was not showing them correctly on the viewer side of things. I had to manually update the main category, which is the G+ Community Name. I was able to update 100 articles in a go using the bulk update functionality to set the category.

Subcategories for each G+Filter were on each post, but they didn’t show on the viewer side of things until I added the main category to them. This then updated the count for the parent category to the current number of posts I had added. It then also made all the subcategories show up on the blog side.

This must be some limitation of the importer. It is also not tested on the latest version of WP, so that may be the issue.

While doing this, I managed to lock up my database so I couldn’t finish the last few updates.

[UPDATE: January 5, 2019] Images will import into WordPress. A smaller import file seems to work better. I still had issues with it, but there are graphics in the WordPress database. My internet has issues, so it is a combination of that and perhaps the size of files imported across the net. If I could FTP the file to my web server and then import it, it would likely work better.

NOTE: WAMP or XAMPP are all in one packages for running WordPress locally on your PC for testing purposes. I’ll be configuring those for more testing once I have time.

[UPDATE: January 7, 2019] Google+ Exporter has an update that does a better job of downloading images. See this post for an explanation and other fixes mentioned.

RPGs

More on MeWe

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Matt Finch interviewed Jason Hardy, the product director, for MeWe on YouTube. I missed the start of the live stream, so I had to play catch up. This followed the panel discussion about what now for the OSR after the announced end of G+ in ten months. Full disclosure, I was one of the panelists.

I think it is helpful to look at both videos and consider what they mentioned.

I saw a couple of comments that the panel discussion sounded like an ad for MeWe. I don’t think so, as we pointed out all our concerns about it and what we knew would be changed. All of the questions raised helped inform the questions Matt asked during the interview.

The Panel

On the panel, we identified 3 types of users:

  1. Content creators, such as bloggers, You tubers, and publishers who want people to know about what they just did.
  2. Content consumers who want to read, watch, and obtain what content creators have to offer.
  3. Some use G+ combined with Hangouts to actually run RPGs. This is the crowd who wants a built in dice roller. 

I use Roll20 for online gaming. We started using hangouts until Google changed things, and we switched to Discord. I think Discord is ideal for this, and can do what users want without having to use Roll20 or other VTT. However, many don’t want to use Discord, and also refuse to use Facebook.

One panelist pointed out that Facebook can be made to do all the things G+ does, but not as smoothly, and has drawbacks that don’t exist on G+.

+Ben Milton of Questing Beast, pointed out that Reddit can do a lot of what G+ does, and made his argument for why it is a valid option. 

+E.T. Smith, creator of the G+ RPG Escape Rocket community was on the panel and like most of us, surprised at how MeWe quickly became the platform of choice. He expected a more reasoned approach with more time spent identifying choices and evaluating them. (E.T. also has a blog, TrollBones.)

+Brendan S another panelist pointed out that the younger demographic is focused on video and what Discord and Twitch can do with video needs to be considered. Both Discord and Twitch can be made to do the basic functions of G+, but no one thinks to use them that way. I have not even thought of Twitch being an option until this was mentioned.

So far, I have not had time to look into Twitch as an option. Discord can sort of do it, but the flow of constant chat on a busy channel on a server is a fire hose. Too much information. This is very similar to what one first encounters on MeWe. I don’t think MeWe was designed with the idea people would be in so many communities. Thankfully, there is one location to turn off all chat from popping up, so your screen doesn’t fill up. Every group on MeWe has a chat option. When you join a group, you can disable that on group by group basis, or use the global option.

The Interview

While MeWe has had early adoption, the panel was cautious. My big concern is that content on MeWe will not be discoverable by a public search. The upcoming feature of pages will only be visible to those with a MeWe account who are signed in. It did sound to me from tonight’s interview that phase two of pages may be public.

Pages will be here before the end of the year and will be a place for one’s followers to see things. It is basically like a personal group without all the options of a group. Pages will cost $2.99 a month. This is a small amount, I’d like to see what a page is before putting too much into it. 

Concerns about the business model are answered by micro transactions. Some features, like emoji packs are a buy once and done. Many asked about a dark theme, and it will be released soon for 99 cents. All the emoji packs at 99 cents. They have a Secret Chat feature that is free for the first 30 days, but it doesn’t tell you up front how much it is. I had to use Google to find the answer and found it on this tweet from MeWe that is it 99 cents a month or $5.99 a year. Another tweet from MeWe indicates that only the person initiating the chat needs to pay for it. It is fully encrypted end to end and MeWe can’t decrypt it.

Currently, the MeWe store is only in the app, but is slated to come to the website in the future. I didn’t catch a time frame on that.

Right now, there are two ways for sharing/viewing information the timeline and groups. Unlike Facebook, all followers see all of your posts. Each individual controls how they see information, either chronologically, or by latest post, so an old post with a new comment could rise to the top.

Groups allow one pinned post.

The answer to circles is in a future iteration of the site you will be able to group contacts and use a different profile picture for each. At one point it was mentioned that users could have multiple profiles, I’m not clear how that will work.

The answer to collections is hashtags. Their functionality is built around hashtags and that is the current way to do it. It was mentioned that perhaps group owners might get the ability to control the hashtags used in their groups. In a separate group chat on Mewe, one group was discussing what hashtags they would use, and one posted indicated that he verified that one can search on more than one hashtag at a time and that each is highlighted when found.

In addition to MeWe’s base features being free, Jason pointed out that for non profits and educational groups, MeWe Pro is free. Someone asked about organizations fighting against human trafficking that elicited this answer.

Takeaways

PROS

  • MeWe has most of the features of G+ we all love.
  • Some of the features we want are in the works.
  • The large number of early adopters got MeWe’s attention and they are interested in trying to understand and meet our needs.
  • Hashtags are key to emulating Collections from G+.

CONS

  • People not on MeWe can’t find the information they might be seeking.
  • There is no asymetric following. If you are not connected with someone on MeWe, you can’t read their stuff, unless they elect to pay for a page when it becomes available.
  • Those who paint the OSR with a broad brush will point to MeWe’s allowance of various types of groups and speech as a sign that the OSR people using it identify with those fringe elements. Which is like saying anyone who uses Facebook is a flat-earther or anti-vaxxer.

My thoughts

My work flow will have to consider MeWe like any other site that I share a blog post or link to my latest PDF. I need to make my blog the center of attention and activity for my online efforts. 

Prior to the G+ closure announcement, I had identified the need to post more on my blog. It was not as clear cut as it is now. As I mentioned at the end of Wednesday’s panel, I plan to re-work my blog roll and move it from the sidebar to a page of its own. There is a spreadsheet going around that encourages bloggers to add their blog to it. I plan to use that to add to my blog roll. I had plans to revise it as there are several new blogs I have enjoyed and need to read them regularly.

Alex Schroder announced on G+ that he is looking into reviving the Old School RPG Planet agregator. That prompted me to add blog/RSS aggregator to my own blog. I want to have the name of the blog and title of the current article. I also need to settle on on RSS reader. I had one I really liked, until Google, Yahoo, and other major web sites dropped support for RSS. (They did that because there was no way to monetize it.) 

While MeWe has the momentum and numbers behind it, I will keep an open mind. I will look at Mastodon and some of the others. I’m not sure they solve the discoverability issue. I know Mastodon only supports 500 word posts, which is far short of the long form G+ and MeWe allow.

Facebook is not an option I am taking seriously. I don’t like its interface and can’t find stuff after it’s posted. If there is a way to find a post from last year, it isn’t obvious. I suppose a google search is in order for that.

MeWe has us scratching our heads about how to do things, and some have asked for someone to do a how to video. I’ve already got a lot on my plate, so not sure I can fit that in any time soon. I was planning to address the whole Roll20 public relations fiasco this week, and that got knocked off the table with the G+ announcement. When I saw the flood going to MeWe, I knew I had to jump in and figure it out. I may have been the first or only blogger to lay out what I did in Tuesday’s blog article. I’d be interested in knowing about others.

Finally, contrary to information I read about the name, and shared in Tuesday’s article, MeWe is pronounced “Mee-Wee”. I hate that name. 

RPGs

Software – Update Post

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I originally wrote about the software I use here, way back in July, 2009. While linking another article, I realized that I need to update where things are now with the software I use.

My old dual boot PC was replaced by a dual boot laptop, but the screen went out, not completely, but very hard to read. I could never get Linux to recognize the other screen, so I was mostly using it in Windows. I replaced it with the computer I have now. It started as Windows 7, and is now Windows 10. I intended to set it up to dual boot and use Linux, but I didn’t do it right away, so now I’m leery of messing it up. I just need a new PC dedicated to Linux.

I thought Windows 7 was a good step up from Windows XP. I avoided Vista like the plague after seeing what clients who used it had to go through. I tried the pre-release trial of Windows 8 in a VM and I could immediately tell it was not meant for desktop use. I had to google how to shut it down.

Once, I even had an encounter, at an airport fast food place, with a Microsoft developer. Before I knew who he was, he asked my opinion about Windows 8. I was honest, it was not built for people who needed to get work done on the desktop. I didn’t know of any of our clients that used a touchscreen monitor for their desktop, or who had the patience for such a radical change. I didn’t understand why Microsoft had to rename and hide everything in each new OS. I also complained about a change in office. It used to be really easy to do mail merge, and they moved it, so I looked like an idiot in front of a client because I couldn’t figure it out with them watching. I couldn’t find it in help either. I don’t like the ribbon. It is only because I know the shortcuts for things that I can do some of what I used to do. [The latest version of MS Office broke the shortcuts I use for some things. I only have to use it every day at work….] He then explained that he worked for Microsoft on Windows 8. He appreciated what I had to say. I think things like that lead to Windows 8.1.

I still use NoteTab, that I mentioned here yesterday.

Firefox was just too slow, so I switched to Chrome.  Since Chrome is by Google, it integrates with all the Google apps well. With the recent changes that are coming with G+, I’m not sure what changes I’ll see in the near future.

G+ was new and has become a place where I consume most of my game material. It allows for quick and easy interaction with others in the hobby. Losing events will be a challenge to be solved. It is very important to my online gaming.

Microsoft now has a print to PDF option, so even though I have CutePDF installed, I rarely use that option.

I switched from Open Office to LibreOffice for the same reasons many others did. Both are free and are a good replacement for MS-Office.

I re-read the entire article and more than just software and computers have changed. I mentioned my now ex-wife. It doesn’t matter what she thinks. I introduced the boys to AD&D after she moved out and we had a blast. We were playing almost every week for several months. I keep hoping things will work out to play more, but they never seem to.

I also mentioned playing table top RPG’s over the internet as something I didn’t think I could do. Now I am in a regular Wednesday night AD&D game on Roll20 that just has session 120 and is well into its third year. I have also ran my own Metamorphosis Alpha campaign, that I thought I would have gotten back to long ago.

I have been to six conventions since then, ran my first convention game and several others, met new friends in real life and online. I have two conventions planned for November, GameHole and UCon, and have my gold ticket for March’s GaryCon. I’m running four different games at UCon in November, and need to get the focus on them and get them done. In a couple of hours, I will finalize my registration for GameHole Con, my first time to check it out.

I got to meet a lot of the old guard from the early days at GaryCon 8 and I got a lot of autographs.

I also found a local group focused on DCC, but we are on a long hiatus.

Kickstarter’s aplenty have been backed. Which reminds me, again, that I have updates on those to post.

I jumped back into this blog with the 40th anniversary of D&D, and posted every day for several months and actually have people who ready my blog. That lead to my current involvement with Multiverse.

I even jumped into NaNoWriMo a couple years ago, and got most of the novel idea  that I had way back in college into a first draft.  Sigh…. I still have 5 or 6 chapters to go to actually have a complete first draft. Too many things to fix around the house and not enough cash to pay someone to do it.

 

 

 

RPGs

GameFindr Plea For FLGS Information

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I saw this YouTube video about the GameFindr app beta and a request for feedback and going to thei FLGS page and adding all the local game stores you know about.

I thought that I would help out with this, but there is not way to verify if my FLGS is in their database, at least from their website,

I read further and at the bottom of the page where you enter FLGS information is states: “By submititng your information, you agree that GameFindr may use your data and showcase it in the offical GameFindr app. Additionally, you agree that GameFindr may contact you if deemed necessary to validate any information provided regarding your LGS locator application. Please allow 4-6 weeks for the approval process and for your store data to appear on the app. Thank you.”

Sorry, but I will not provide information that encumbers someone else for which I do not have the authority.

I shared the following comment on the YouTube video I mentioned above.

Interesting idea for an app.

However, I have the following issues:

1.) There is no search for LGS. It shows me stuff from Chicago about 200 miles away, in a different state. I have to scroll down the list. I realized that zooming in on the map let me look and my icon is the same color as other icons, are those gamers or LGS? I think they should be a different color. I also don’t like that it shows exactly where I live. It should be over the center of town. If I am the only one who can see my location until I accept a friend request, it is not obvious.
2.) I suggest that once you sign in that it take you to fill in your profile. It took me a couple minutes to find it.
3.) After watching the video, I was going to be helpful and go to your website and input my LGS, but I read at the bottom of the page that the person inputting the information gives your company rights to use the name and more of the LGS. I don’t have the legal authority to bind my LGS to those terms, so I will not make a headache for them.
4.) You have D&D as a game choice, but it defaults to ANY for version and won’t let me change it.

You asked [in the video] what it would take to give it five stars, this is my answer.

I think the idea of the app is a good one. It is still in beta, so I will check and see if anyone in the Kalamazoo area is on and interested in OSR games, esp. AD&D, Metamorphosis Alpha, or White Star.

I read through other comments on the YouTube video, and this app was funded by Kickstarter. It looks like they are on track for their project. Other than questions from backers wanting to not have ads, and the growing pains of what is consider proper development of a program now days, the Kickstarter portion seems to be well in hand.

I did have a few issues with the app itself. It took me a minute to figure out how to put in my information. I only get one match, and since they haven’t filled in their information, I don’t know what games they play.

A few days ago, they released this video explaining how to configure your Gamefindr profile, so people will click on you. As for me, I now have two matches, one is 8 miles away and the other 43 miles, but there is no picture and more importantly, no listing of what games they play. I won’t be friending anyone in this app without knowing what games they play.

I like that you can add games, but you have to use the website, etc. or it won’t let you submit them.

At Free RPG Day on Saturday at Fanfare, I mentioned Gamefindr and that the closest stores I noticed were in northern Indiana, and none in all of Michigan. Today, for some reason the two stores in Indiana are no longer showing. One of them was close enough I was planning to visit, but I did not make a note of its name or location. So now what? I have to google game stores in Indiana and hope I find it.

I know there are or were two game stores in Kalamazoo, at least one in Battle Creek, and several in Grand Rapids. It is free advertising, so unless there is some drawback I don’t understand, I think it’s a good thing.

Gamefindr has had 4 or 5 updates since I first installed it last week. They are making a big push to boost the number of users. Having more users only helps if people fill out their profile. If you haven’t managed to hook up with a local group of gamers, this might be one way to do it. But without more users in areas of less dense population, it won’t do much good. Chicago looks like they are packed. Detroit and Indianapolis don’t have much.

It’s a free app, if you can put up with the ads. I’ll do my part to help out and let others know about it. If you are looking for players or games for in-person gaming, this app could cut past all the limitations of online sites. The biggest limitation is remembering to check it every day. But no new area gamers, or no replies to inquiries is frustrating. However, just like the online sites, if no one knows about it, or those who use it don’t fill out their profiles, it is next to useless.