Tag Archives: Blogging

RPGs

Farewell to the RPGBA

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The RPG Blog Alliance, of which my blog belongs, is shut down at the end of April. There is a G+ replacement for the RPGBA site, here.

Time will tell how long RPG bloggers keeps going and if they ever become automated or quick to respond. I scheduled this posting for 45 days after I submitted to the RPG Bloggers site, many have said that they have waited a year or longer.

It arose to give an easy and quick method for RPG bloggers to get the word out about their blog, due to the RPG Bloggers site requiring manual entry of the RSS feed information. It served a purpose, but I find, like many that G+ and its communities make getting the word out about a blog very simple. In fact, many people are relying more on G+ and not so much with blogs. For me, I have a blog that I control, so I always have access to my notes and ramblings.

Not all the RPG blogs I follow post in the G+ RPG related communities that I follow, but do use RPG Bloggers. I don’t follow RPG bloggers regularly, because I don’t have a dedicated RSS reader, other than one I have on an old computer as an add-on to Firefox. Yahoo and Google dropped support for RSS, that was a nail in its coffin. I liked and used RSS, and losing it changed how I interact with communities and forums that I have been involved in since the email only days of sharing information, back in the 90’s.

FB keeps changing their algorithm to hide stuff you want to see, and it is nearly impossible to find something more than a day or two old.

G+ is easy to use, and far from a wasteland. If you find a community that focuses on something you are interested in, whether it is RPGs or anything else, you can find active communities with lots of posting. Some communities have a lot of noise and spam, but I tend to sever my connections to those communities that don’t have good information or helpful and courteous members.

Just like in my early days of being connected to the world with email, I have connections with people around the globe. For someone who grew up prior to such instant communication, it is like the world has shrunk in my lifetime. Even more cool is to find that some of the people I interact with online are in my area or relatively close, and we can get together for regular play, or meet up at local and regional conventions.

As long as I have a way to interact with others for actual online play, or for getting interesting ideas, maps, and so forth, the internet will continue to be a place of benefit to me and RPG fans.

RPGs

400th Post!

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It took a long time to get to 300 posts, but the last 100 posts seemed to just fall together.

I’ve had this placeholder post in my drafts folder for a few weeks.

While trying to catch up on posts with reviews of products I have purchased, I hit 399 published posts a few days ahead of schedule.

I still have ten scheduled posts. There are 16 draft posts only one of which is a review. I have two other reviews that I don’t have a draft post placeholder yet.

I am going to go ahead and post this as I move on to finish checking out my new goodies so I can write about them.

These review posts need to be done before I put more energy into my ideas for White Star. I have started 4 or 5 ideas for White Star and they each need time to germinate and be crafted before I share them. Working on something different is always a good way to work on them in the back of my mind. I’m not sure why that works, but it’s pretty cool.

I think that I’ll mark my 500th post, 750th post, and 1,000th post, and then every 500 or thousand after that.

RPGs

2015 A to Z Challenge Reflections.

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I planned to write a follow up on my A to Z experience this year, and a survey that arrive just before midnight alerted me to a Reflections Post, that needed to be done by May 8th. I am doing catch up on articles and clearing a backlog of things to review, on this rainy, thunderstorm laden weekend.

This was the second year that I participated in the A to Z Blogging Challenge to write a post every day, except Sundays, in April. As with last year, 26 blog posts is not difficult for me. I had most of them done and scheduled before April. Also, like last year, I only had time to keep up with the blogs in the (GA) category. This year, I read most of the posts.

For me, the hardest part of the challenge is a theme that I feel good about. This year, I wrote about different aspects of planning a city, whether it is a living city or an abandoned/lost city. Once I had a topic, I came up with 26 topics. I then scheduled each topic for the appropriate day and wrote on the topics that interested me.

I had most of my topics written with at least a few paragraphs or notes of things to be sure to mention. I dug in and wrote several posts in a marathon session, so that I only had to let them sit to do cleanup before they posted. A few topics seemed a bit harder to write, and I got a bit repetitive when some topics had overlap.

I did not come up with as many tables and generators as I had hoped. I did get some ideas for building them. Once those ideas have sat for awhile, I will gather them and see about making a more coherent PDF to share.

My goal of a system to randomly generate parts of a city did not materialize. I think because of the all the dice table in Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad #1, that +Adam Muszkiewicz showed me. It touched on most of what I was after. I don’t really need all the details I think I do, I just WANT them.

Since I scheduled each post, I had no problem posting on the correct day.

I am currently on the fence as to whether or not I will participate next year. I like that I used it to help me clarify and flesh out ideas for my own use. If I participate again, I will have to use it to do something helpful to my own needs and desires as a GM; whether it be a module, series of new creatures, a collection of maps, or NPC’s, it will have to be something that serves a dual purpose.

This year, there were twelve blogs with the (GA) tag for games. Of those, one was geared towards game books and not directly RPG related, that I could tell. Perhaps it was just not my thing.

Nemo’s Lounge gave up doing custom NPCs with a drawing after 16 posts. Both the drawings and NPC’s were great!

Wampus Country was doing a town a day and got up to E when it stopped. He had some interesting ideas, that I enjoyed while it lasted.

Others missed a beat here and there, but most of us managed all 26 postings for the month.

Tower of the Archmage had a great series of vignettes of a party of adventurers. He often included a map. He hiked the Appalachian trail and was gone for the whole challenge, so he wrote and scheduled all of his postings before he left. This series would make a neat short story and/or a module/dungeon.

Tim Brannon at The Other Side did vampires, as he promised he would last year, after doing witches. Who knew there were so many vampires in different cultures. He began with A for Aswang, which I not too long before learned about from watching Grimm. When White Star came out, he even did an A to Z special with a Space Vampire, modeled on the one from the 80’s Buck Rogers TV Show.

Mark Craddock of Cross Plains reviewed his favorite things about D&D.

Keith Davies of In My Campaign built several mythologies/pantheons and had a system to help him build them.

Sea of Stars had a series of NPC;s.

Spes Magna Games did a series on the “Boogie Knights Of the Round Table”. I have not seen the movie, Boogie Nights, but I got the reference. What if King Arthur and his knights where in the age of disco? He kept it going until the last few days, but did all 26 posts.

Another Caffeinated Day did a series of NPC’s,

The Dwarven Stronghold did NPC’s and magic items.

If you need NPC’s, items, maps, images, vampires, or city planning suggestions, there is a lot of good stuff collected in these posts, check them out.

RPGs

My Take On Blogging About RPGs

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This is as much for myself as for others.

Take up blogging for your own reasons. Whether you think it sounds like fun, or just to help you get your ideas for running your own games, or creating your own games or game materials.

Not all of your ideas are good ones. It is OK to write a crappy article -and just save it as a draft for later. That way, you have it and can go back to it later. Some partial and half-formed ideas are OK to publish without being fully formed. Sometimes this sparks a creative moment for someone else that is then shared with the community. You can also revisit the idea later in a follow up post to flesh it out.

Be gracious and thank those who share and give back. Share your own efforts and give back. Be inviting and encouraging.

Limit your non-RPG postings to non-RPG circles. I prefer to separate my politics, religion, and other activities from my RPG activities. Be who you are and do your own thing, but I blog about RPG things from my perspective, and don’t use it as a soapbox to convert others to my views on other things, or rant about how I can’t believe someone else believes or does X.

As Wil Wheaton has said, “Don’t be a dick.”

Be careful with the written word. Without the face to face interaction to gauge tone and body language, it is easy to miss sarcasm, hyperbole, satire, etc; or to read into it something other than what was intended. Don’t assume that something someone else has written in a blog post says what you think it says. Some may not spell check their work or have good grammar usage, or just messed up and left out a key word or phrase. See above where I said be gracious. Before flying off the handle and flaming or trolling someone, take a deep breath. Is it really necessary that you respond to everything you read online? If you really have to, write your blasting comment off line, and then set it aside. This gets it out of your system and allows you to move on.

When others leave comments on your blog, wall, or page and it feels like an attack. Stop, take a deep breath and look to see if they are just seeing a poor word choice in a quick blog post. Do you see how someone could come up with something totally different than your intended meaning? Is it something you can let roll off, or would you sleep better if you made a clarification? Don’t let it ruin your day. Mean people suck. Don’t be a mean people back.

Learn the capabilities of your chosen platform and use their strengths to help you.

Build up a buffer of posts. If you want to be a daily blogger, don’t immediately publish every idea that comes to mind. If you have ten ideas today and publish all of them today, what about tomorrow? Publish the first idea today and schedule the others to post over the next nine days. That gives you nine days until you have to think of something else to write about. As you think of ideas, schedule them to post the day after your last scheduled item. It is also OK to post on topics of the moment when they come up. Posts and ideas for posts that are not fully formed can be saved as drafts to craft them until they are ready. I find it useful to get all my ideas on various scraps of paper, or electronic notes into an appropriate article in draft form, so it is already in the process of being published on my blog.

Share your blog to the appropriate G+ communities. Note to self: Remember to use the LINK option instead of just copying the link into the text field….

Have a variety of types of things you blog about. Play reports, game ideas, tables, current events in the RPG world, maps, art, etc. If you have something that is your trademark, or your own way of presenting something, keep at that thing until you hit your stride.

Use your blogging to help you build a campaign, module, setting, table or other idea that you can use at the table. Collect those ideas that you know can be something, but that you just need to flesh out. Sometimes others have similar ideas that are close to what you want or need and can help you craft something for your needs.

Make it fun and make it interesting.

Don’t take yourself too seriously.

Review your articles before they post. After an article sits for a few days, when you re-read it, you find spelling and grammar mistakes that can make it hard to understand or follow, or you may think of something to add to it. I find typos of words that are spelled correctly, but are homonyms, so thus the wrong word, or other words that are spelled right, but don’t make sense.

I made sure to enable spell checking in my browser, so that anything I post online is spelled correctly.

Use tags and/or categories to tie together similar topics. If you write on something more than once, or have a prior related topic, use the search feature of your blog and link back to that topic. Periodically review your blog for new tags and categories that might be needed or go back and add them to older posts.

If you have a certain type of post that build up to a substantial amount of writing on a particular topic, make a PDF of it and make it available as a download on your blog. For example, a collection of tables, or an adventure you built over time on your blog. If it is particularly well done, you could put it up for sale on DriveThruRPG or RPGNow as a pay what you want or for a small amount. Be sure to acknowledge those who gave you ideas and suggestions. See above about being gracious.

Announce your blog posts on relevant pages. I prefer Google Communities, those seem to be easier to review over time than Facebook. Don’t overdo it. Some people post everything to dozens of communities.

Read and make helpful comments on other’s blogs and pages.

Constructive comments or constructive criticism are good things. Give and receive them graciously. If you tell someone what is weak, lacking, or needs improvement in what they write, be sure to point out what they did right. Don’t assume that they understand that you are only pointing out the problems, and if you don’t mention other things that they are perfect. Most people don’t see it that way. If it is important enough to point out the bad stuff, it is also required that you point out the good stuff. If you receive only indications of your failings, be sure to ask what you did right. If the person is a jerk and can’t find anything constructive to say, then don’t take their input too seriously. You might point out to them, with grace, that they are really good at pointing out other’s failings, but they need to work on pointing out what others do well. Model the behavior you expect from others.

Just because you don’t get a certain specific RPG or genre or setting, or don’t like certain things in RPGs does not mean that you need to mention it. Or if you do mention it, does it need mentioning every posting or every time that topic comes up anywhere? Speak to what you know or want to know more about. If you have to mention something you don’t like, do it in such a way that it is clearly your take and experience, and not a condemnation of everyone who enjoys that particular aspect of RPGs.

Remember that RPGs are _GAMES_ and that games are supposed to be FUN! If you are blogging about games, it should be fun! If you lose the fun, then it is hard to make it enjoyable for you or others. Remember my rule [-1], if you aren’t having fun, you’re doing it wrong.

RPGs

Professor Purrman Meowvilles Dice Tonic for Better Rolls

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TableTop Game & Hobby, on the Kansas side of the Kansas City metro area, has a new product. ->

Professor Purrman Meowvilles Dice Tonic for Better Rolls

Check out Phil’s website, and if you live in the area or are passing through, check it out.

Phil was a couple of years behind me in high school and always said that he would open his own game store, and he did. Last year was the 20th anniversary, and I wrote about it here.

NOTE: Because I am not getting a cut of the proceeds, I am unable to recommend this product.
IANAL, YMMV, ROLMAO, IOU, FYI, SYL, TL;DR, TNTSHNMA, TANSTAAFL, etc., i.e., e.g., XYZ, PDQ BACH, ABC
RPGs

Wall of Text

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I am guilty of writing massive posts that fall under the heading of Walls of Text.

I think I have some good ideas in there, and since I tend to write stream of consciousness usually with as few notes as possible, I end up with a massive wall of text.

I came up with an idea to have fun with this.

There is a massive wall of text and the adventurers need to find the key of TL;DR to surpass it.

I first had this idea in February of last year, but did not get the graphic put together until recently. My Gimp-fu and Inkscape-fu aren’t up to executing the image in my head, but it gives the idea. My freehand drawing skills aren’t there either. I imagine a giant wall with text filling each brick/stone/block in the wall, with a big and imposing presence.

I had thought of making this my entry in the 2015 One Page Dungeon Contest, but I need a better graphic, and a better idea for the adventure, so that this could be a real submission.

RPGs

RPGBloggers – Application Submitted

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I just click send on the email to apply for the RPGBloggers site. The similar site with an automated sign up, the RPG Blog Alliance, of which my blog already belongs, is shutting down at the end of April.

Yahoo stopped supporting RSS feeds of Yahoo Groups a couple years ago, and Google dropped support for it’s feed reader. RSS seemed to serve a need, until things like social media sites like FB and G+ made management think that the established ways were not good enough. Instead of the format of RSS where you can pick and choose and easily filter, you have social sites that have their own rules for how you see what you want to see, and then they keep changing the rules, so you never know that you aren’t seeing something you want to see, and are flooded with things you wonder where they came from.

I’ve had spammers manage to inject crap into my RSS feed, and it was a pain to figure out how to fix it so that I could retain that feature on my blog.

I have heard that it takes a long time to get a response to an application. I know about the controversies surrounding the site a few years back when there was a big blow up among different RPG bloggers about a topic not directly related to RPGs, and the handlers of the site changed.

It may not make a difference to my blog’s traffic, but I had a goal of applying for a couple of years now, I figured that since the RPG Blog Alliance (RPGBA) is going to fade into the aether, I figured that would apply to RPGBloggers, with 49 days until RPGBA shuts down. Call it a little race to see if I get approved on the one site, before the other shuts down. I’ll post an update once either I get approved, or May arrives, whichever happens first.

If May arrives, and I’m not approved, I will post an update if I ever do get approved.

 

RPGs

Slower Signups by RPG Bloggers to this Year’s A to Z Challenge

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For last year’s A to Z Challenge I made a group of links of RPG bloggers that signed up for the 2014 A to Z Challenge. There were a lot of them, twenty-one by my count.

So far, there are nine RPG bloggers, counting me, signed up for the 2015 challenge. Will there be a slew of last minute sign ups, or will the trickle until the deadline be it?

I can see that this is not for everyone.

I find it a good way to get the creative juices flowing as it forces you to think. Coming up with a coherent theme even more of a challenge. As with the rest of my blogging, I use it to share my ideas, and to gather and organize ideas for my campaign(s).

Players don’t always appreciate or get to see all the details. Blogging helps to get the ideas out there and to distill them to the bare essentials needed for presentation in actual play.

Also four years of college note taking and three years of grad school note taking ruined my handwriting. If I’m not careful when I write, even I can’t read it. I used to get A’s in penmanship. So typing makes it easier for me to go back and read what I wrote.  :/

RPGs

300!!

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How can I not mention the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae?

While 300 blog posts is not as impressive as the feat of those long-dead Spartans, as someone with a BA in history and a big interest in ancient and medieval history, I could not help it, nor did I try.

Someone posting daily for a year can easily accomplish 300 posts with over two months to spare. In my case, I started in July of 2009, almost six years to get to 300 posts. That’s only 50 posts a year. In 2014, I hit 100 and 200 posts. In 2014, when the weather got nicer, I had a lot fewer posts. When the weather got cold my output increased until November, when I participated in NaNoWriMo, Tenkar’s Landing, UCon, and in late December decided to GM for the first time at a con with Marmalade Dog 20 the first weekend in February.

It isn’t that I wasn’t writing or wasn’t being creative in some way, it just wasn’t on this blog.

I don’t have enough ideas, or the time and energy to post as often as some do, or to have the consistent quality of others. This is not my 300th written post for this blog, it is the 300th posted for this blog. I have an article ready to post for the next nine days, plus what I have started for the April, 2015 A To Z Challenge.

I will post as often as I can and strive for good ideas.

This is merely a navel gazing post, so other than mentioning Spartans that many seem to think are only a movie, or a movie based on a comic book. Few seem to know it is a real event that occurred long ago. There was a movie about the 300 in the 60’s. The acting is not good and the special effects were not outstanding, but the movement of troops give the general idea of how it must have been.

I have mentioned my character Griswald, a 10th level cleric, 10th level fighter, 11th level wizard half elf. I once estimated, based on the area of effect spells and other offensive spells he has that in a narrow area, he could kill over 500 orcs, perhaps more, by the time they got close enough for him to have to use his sword. That was assuming optimal results in his favor. Who would face such a man? One who can call down the power of his god, or evoke the mysteries of the universe, or beat you by martial skill? As long as there are hundreds or thousands of orcs more scared of their chiefs and sub-chiefs than they are scared of Griswald, that’s who.

I have yet to have a character drive a stake in the ground for a final stand. I have thought about it and planned how it might happen, but never actually played that scenario. I thought I might be playing that scenario when Griswald’s town was under siege, but they left. They will think long and hard before they try it again.

Have any of you had a character perform a rear guard action and fight to the death so that other characters could escape or defeat the bad guy?