thedeadone.net » Blogs

The RPG Blog Alliance

Mark Cunningham — Mon, 30 May 2011 09:30:48 +0000

So last week, I added my blog (well the roleplaying related posts at least) and my lost heroes dev blog to “RPG Blog Alliance”.

I saw a number of fellow bloggers/twitters joining up and thought I’d be in good company. But as of writing, it’s up to 131 members. That’s 131 blogs about roleplaying. 131 active blogs about roleplaying.

The feed is syndicated to twitter via @RPGBlogAlliance. And now my feed is constantly filled with new blog posts about roleplaying, from learning to GM to geomorph tiles to development blogs of new games. New content, all the feck’in time!

And there was me lamenting the decline of the roleplaying hobby. In just the last week, it’s gone from a manageable list of blog posts that I can read to avalanche of information I can’t digest in a timely manner, or at least before the next blog post comes in. That’s quite cool.

Forgetting about it and moving on!

Mark Cunningham — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 13:37:15 +0000

You probably don’t know this about me, you probably don’t care, but I don’t like gangster movies. I’m not saying I think gangster movies are bad movies at all and I really shouldn’t have to say that either. It’s just my simple opinion, which is generally meaningless in the sea of opinionated blogs.

Now if I said I’ve never watched the Godfather and really am not bother to do so, what do you think now? I mean, I said I don’t like gangster movies, but now we’re talking about the Godfather. A modern classic. I said I didn’t like gangster movies, I’m not interested in them. You probably think I’m weird but hope you would leave at that. My tastes do not mean the Godfather is a bad movie, I suspect it’s great movie. And certainly Francis Ford Coppola wouldn’t give a crap about my online opinion. (BTW I loved Apocalypse Now).

I generally try to keep the inflammatory stuff to a minimum, I don’t have the energy to exercise on flames and trolls and it does tend to burn my sanity. And if possible, forget about it and move on. Patrick of SinisterForces blog decided to post about it and forget that way. Each to his own. But which provoked me to write this post…

Part of what he’s complaining about was because of the reaction his blog post and my comment on it caused. Both of us were just sharing our tastes, not criticising any particular product or the people who make them. I think Patrick got the brunt of the mini-twitter-shit-storm, simply because he was online at the time. I was sick in bed and only got it hours later, where it seemed to have already burned itself out. I made the mistake of reading back through it when I did get back online and it didn’t make me happy. Normally I just “walk away” as defending or justifying yourself and throwing accusations only makes the matter worse and lowers you. And really, in the big picture, it’s only a blip. But it’s hard to hold back or divert the web-fury anger that this sort of thing creates.

All I can say is, please remember that the internet is a public place and saying something in a public forum like a blog or the comments on a blog, or on twitter etc. can be read by anyone. I’ve certainly learned this, because I thought only Patrick and few others would have read my comment. It again has re-enforced the idea that you have to be careful what you say. I don’t hold anyone to blame or have any grudges against anyone (and hope the same is true of anyone that knows me). But sadly, it adds a few things to the list of things I won’t enter into discussion of when online. In the end it’s destructive to the (roleplaying) hobby.

(For those who need a little context, here is the original blog post on sinisterforces.com, my comment is still there for the moment: Why Haven’t I Bought The Dresden Files RPG Yet?).

Getting at it, even my mind won’t leave me alone!

Mark Cunningham — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:22:31 +0000

I’ve read a number of books on how to write and on the creative process of writing and the one piece of advice I’ve kept with me is that you should cultivate the things that inspire you and avoid the things that demotivate you. The trick is identifying what inspires you and what has the opposite effect. For example, a badly written book can be a great inspiration because after reading it, you think “hey, I can write something ten times better then that.” But for me, I find myself becoming demotivated when I read reviews of roleplaying books and blogs of prominent roleplaying designers and writings. I feel I can’t reach their standards and so it discourages me from writing my own roleplaying game/book.

Last night I finished a large section of Lost Heroes RPG, but I started thinking: “whats the point? I can’t write as well as the guys behind XYZ or that blogger over at that online community”. I literally fell asleep beside the laptop then, my body and mind saying, enough is enough, stopping pushing yourself, you’ve got a cold, you’re tired, life sucks, kids are asleep, give up. But I had to rouse myself and get the kids bags ready for tomorrow. Oddly this activity is even more depressing, my mind wanders as I’m getting everything in order, as if my higher level functions are not really needed for the chore at hand so they are free to evaluate and drift among my memories and feelings and I find myself getting even more down about my writing.

I woke up this morning, physically worse than I went to bed. Nose is clogged up and running, my head is aching and I had to get up twice during the night to take care of the baby so I had a distrubed sleep. But at the back of my mind, I was working through some system-design aspects of Lost Heroes RPG, unrelated to the writing I finished last night. I was getting thoughts and ideas and spent much of my work morning, writing up notes, when I should have been coding.

I finished V for Vandetta last week for the first time. (Not as good as Watchman, but still excellent. I’m spooked by the futuristic vision of Britian that the English government are so deseperatly trying to make happen… like this “for your own protection”). There was an article at the back of the graphic novel by Alan Moore about his creative process for V for Vandetta and he described the experince of knowing that you have something but you need to get at it and work it to get there. Waking up with those thoughts about the system design of Lost Heroes RPG was exactly that, my subconsiousness saying, “hey, you got something here so get off your arse and finished it.” It’s not mind-blowing and my subconsiousness failed to convince that I have something amazing, but at least I’m going to keep working on it.

It seems to be a slow process and the current volume seems gigantic compared to previous revisions. Maybe I should start putting pieces of it up as I go though I had hoped to get someone to read over it before I put it online. The website is certainly sitting there, waiting to be setup.

Is this a good idea: a livejournal “friends” page on my wordpress site?

Mark Cunningham — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 17:16:53 +0000

I keep meaning to reinstate my blogroll on thedeadone.net, but I just haven’t gotten around to it yet. But then I hit on an idea, have a “friends” page on thedeadone.net, like on LiveJournal, that shows the latest posts from blogs I read (including LiveJournal ones). It’s easy to do: FeedWordpress will grab the posts from my friends’ blogs’ RSS feeds and then use Advanced Category Excluder to prevent the posts appearing on the frontpage and RSS feeds. Along with a blogroll, this would be a much better way of promoting blogs I read.

What does anyone think? Would you like your blog prompted on my site this way?

thedeadone.net » Blogs

The RPG Blog Alliance

Related Posts:

Forgetting about it and moving on!

Related Posts:

Getting at it, even my mind won’t leave me alone!

Related Posts:

Is this a good idea: a livejournal “friends” page on my wordpress site?

Related Posts: