Posts tagged with keywords "Irish-Gaming"
There is an interesting discussion going on right now over on the igaming mailing list (and cross-posted to LiveJournal), but one I’ve consciously chosen not to comment on. The people involved have much bigger stakes in it than I ever have and I’ve had my share of being on the virtual battleground but I have little to add on this.
So I guess I’m doing it here. If you take the time, read the original post. It’s roughly about now in the year that some argument occurs (though the last few years have been quiet). The discussion is about how scenarios, or rather TableTop RPGs, are run at Irish Conventions. Apparently we do it differently to everyone else and one of the “old hands” in the scene has strongly suggested that cons change the way they do things.
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Two friends I know from the Irish gaming community (and someone else I don’t know) have gone off and setup a podcast about the Irish Gaming and Roleplaying scene: The Adventuring Party. (I’ve already added it to the Planet Irish Gaming feed).
I haven’t listened to it myself yet, mostly because I don’t normally listen to podcasts and I don’t own an ipod, but I think I’ll have to make an effort for this.
I’ve been regularly roleplaying with Liam for a while and so I know he’s a good guy and fun to game with. He’s involved in the Irish gaming scene on the ground more so than I ever was and was activiely involved in STOCs and Sillicon when it he was in DCU.
Shane is another STOCs head and while, oddly, I’ve never played a game with him but we have on occassion discussed gaming and roleplaying. While having different opinions about it, he always has some good points to make. If you follow his livejournal, I think irishgaming.com describes him pretty fantastically:
The martial artist, RPG writer, paramedic, snowboarder, LARP writer, ex-online-RPG-pundit, James Bond afficionado and wearer of a fine selection of Hawaiian shirts Shane O’hUid
So best of luck guys and to everyone else, get listening! 
Thats what I’ve been spending my non-work non-family energy on recently. This is what I posted to the igaming mailing:
Inspired by the relaunch of IrishGaming.com v2 by Nick last month, I
decided to give Irish Roleplaying and Gaming Wiki [1] a big spring
clean (not a relaunch). I’ve changed hosts, upgrade the software,
gotten rid of all the spam and other malicious edits, re-did the
front-page (more to do there) and allowed file uploads. I hope people
take a moment to have a look and see if anything important to them is
up to date.
I have also updated Planet Irish Gaming [2], brand new spanking
software, tons of Irish Gaming sites, its actually very busy compared
to the old planet. There are also features to create a post directly
to the feed and the ability to submit new feeds.
During my spring cleaning, I found a number of articles about groups
and websites of which I have no idea of the state of them:
http://irishgamingwiki.com/wiki/SaneSpotting
http://irishgamingwiki.com/wiki/DU_Gamers
http://irishgamingwiki.com/wiki/Gamers_Realm
http://irishgamingwiki.com/wiki/White_Elephant
http://irishgamingwiki.com/wiki/D15_Gamers
http://irishgamingwiki.com/wiki/Fabled_Games
http://irishgamingwiki.com/wiki/STOCS
http://irishgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Red_Branch_Guild
http://irishgamingwiki.com/wiki/Vaticon</a>
http://irishgamingwiki.com/wiki/Forgotten_Legacy
Anyone able to give an update on their state or current
web-location/presence of these things?
Also the http://irishgamingwiki.com/wiki/Convention_Calender has died
a death quite a while back. Is there another resource that’s actively
used? I know there was one for a while on the IGA/Gaelcon site but
that seems to have disappeared.
[1] http://IrishGamingWiki.com
[2] http://IrishGamingWiki.com/planet
Someone has since updated the Convention Calender, which is cool. There is a lot of work still to do on the wiki, but for the moment I’m content to watch over it and if someone starts the initiative, I’ll help and finish it. For example, I’d like to have “templates” for conventions, retailers, groups and organizations. Right now they are all done sort of ad-hoc and the current status of a lot of them, I don’t know.
Anyway, if any of the readers of this blog know of something on the wiki they might care about, please take a moment to update it or even better if you know something about the Irish Gaming and Roleplaying community that <i>isn’t</i> on the wiki, please feel free to add it! And if you have any feedback, you can drop a comment here, or on igaming or the wiki itself. Those three methods are the best way to get a message to me about the wiki.
I don’t know if they’ll be a reaction to my plans for the IrishGamingWiki.com but I certainly know that within the online community there are a few that have strong opinions (or use to have) but I also know there isn’t that much concern between projects or users about these things. To put it another way, I don’t know if people care what happens to the Wiki.
I hope people do because I’m certainly feeling guilty about letting it languish over the last good while. I couldn’t update the MediaWiki software without a bit of effort on my part and it got spammed heavily. But recently I did do an update and finally cleared out the spam and blocked users and IPs. (If spammers continue to be a problem, I’ll look at better spam-fighting techniques). The administrative and backend parts of the Wiki need some love, certainly some work on the webpage look and feel, updates to the RSS feed, etc. I even have a logo designed at home that I haven’t scanned in yet.
I haven’t set aside time to do this necessary work. I haven’t had the motivation at all. I did recently update and tidy up Planet Irish Gaming as I was briefly inspired after IrishGaming.com was kind of re-launched (IrishGaming.com has nothing to do with me in any way). But beyond that, my motivation is still waning. I’ve even been tempted to find someone or group who would be willing to take over the wiki because there is a lot of cool info captured there. No-one has shown any interest to me about it up until now and I haven’t see any group I’d trust with it (things for Irish Gaming have a tendency to appear and disappear with frequency online).
So what is my big plan? Change host for the IrishGamingWiki.com and stick Google AdSense advertisements in the side bar. That’s it.
If you’ve just shrugged your shoulders and thought “so what?”, I’d agree with you. I have AdSense ads running on my thedeadone.net and, to be honest, the income generated so far would indicate to me that it probably won’t cover the cost of hosting the website over a year (even though hosting it is relatively cheap).
However, payback in nearly any form is a great motivator. Certainly, while working on TDOMF, which is completely free, donations, gifts and ad revenue that I have received have been great motivators (though peoples’ feedback is by far the most rewarding). Without it, I don’t think I would have continued to support and extend TDOMF so far (and to think that came originally from the failed Game Crafter’s Guild of Ireland website). So hopefull I’ll be more motivated to put effort into maintaining it and doing work on it.
Anyway, comments, feedback, criticism welcome but name-calling will have you tarred!
I’m sure everyone is already aware that Gary Gygax, one of the co-creators of Dunegons and Dragons, passed away on Tuesday. Was never a fan of D&D but without it, I wouldn’t be playing Nobilis or writing roleplaying stuff today. Muted feelings really.
Also announced on Tuesday (before the news of Gary’s death): STOCs (irishgamingwiki link) one of the oldest running Clubs in DCU proposed “merging” with the Games Soc. STOCs is/was the gaming & roleplaying society in DCU and even though I’ve been long out of college, I still have strong ties to the club. The “merging” is rather actually being subsumed into the Games Soc which is oriented towards Computer Games (though originally the Games Soc was an off-shoot of STOCs, I’ve been led to believe). STOCs ran the small annual games convention Sillicon with it’s popular Pub Quiz (irishgaming wiki link). I’ve even ran and wrote games for Sillicon in the past. I do not know the fate of the future of Sillicon. This has saddened me.
Apparently, my last post on Fudge, got some people annoyed. Fred Hicks of EvilHat (Fate and “Spirit of the Century”) and Chris Helton of Seraphim Guard etc. both chipped on my blog to say they don’t believe Fudge is dead! (I didn’t know I was so popular). This weekend, on top of that, I got a message back from Brad at Now Playing that he is very interested in publishing Reboot as both a Fudge and Now Playing product. Sounds all good to me. So perhaps the “rumours of my demise have been greatly exaggerated”.
But I can’t shake that feeling of deja vu. I remember when specky caused a huge storm on the Irish online gaming community, things were shook up, events even happened. And then it seem to go quietly back to the mists it came from. Don’t get me wrong, the community is still there, particularly offline, but there is no cohesive online group. At best it is a distributed announcement list, at worse it’s just a pile of dead forums and mailing lists, still active because no-one has the heart to kill them off.
Is Fudge community going the same way? Fate seems to be super strong in terms of online presence. But it is not Fudge per say. It is a specific brew of Fudge, much like Now Playing and Seraphim Guard. People using Fate don’t come back to Fudge. The whole remaining Fudge community seems centred on the Fudge List which, doesn’t seem healthy as it’s part of a bigger site, the phoenyx which I really know little about. One of the people behind the software, seems to think Fudge is dead or at least the parts not in Fate (that’s certainly not good, no?). There are rumours of a “Fudge Planet” from GreyGhost that would be the place for Fudge publishers and fans… but it must be over a year since I’ve heard anything concrete on that. Why does it take so long to put together such a site? (I’d like to say, I’ll do a site next week! But I’m wouldn’t get the traction. I mean, “who the fuck am I?” to everyone else).
Deja vu. A community that feels like it’s crawling along. It’s still alive, but when you prod it, it kinda grumbles and turns to the other side. Fudge hasn’t changed. It can’t. Everything else has though: software, games, market, community-ethos… etc. I don’t think Fudge can die. From it’s burning embers, many things are still be crafted. That will go on for a long time. Is the community waiting for something or is that all it is now?
But you have to remember, an online community is just an online presence. The Irish online community is just a zombie, but there are still conventions every year, clubs and societies every where, the IGA still occasionally organise events, etc. It continues like it did before anyone claimed it was dead online. I think the same is true for Fudge. It will continue but by it’s nature, it’s buzz and community may not. People will produce Fudge games, re-discover Fudge, use Fudge in their own home brew worlds, etc. Fudge isn’t dead. It may be a bit of a recluse, but it has that “something” that brings people into it’s fold. If you put a positive spin on it, the success of Fate should allow you to recognise that Fudge still has something that appeals to modern-day gamers, not that Fudge is dead. IMHO, etc. etc.
My last post was about Planet Irish Gaming which is part of the uber-cool and useful Irish Roleplaying and Gaming Wiki. One of the biggest uses of the wiki was the convention calender, which is updated regularly enough by lots of people. Though this may now be superseded by a Google Calender yokey ran by TygerKrash but at least the wiki page is still free for anyone to correct the information.
Well, even without the convention calender, the wiki is certainly not dead. It’s regularly getting updates and this last little while a user called Oldfartgamer has been doing a tremendous job of doing lots of historic updates.
So I’m calling out for help in filling in lots of blanks. Oldfartgamer has added a number of stubs for people and has been trying to restore information about cons gone by like Gaelcon 1996.
If you “know stuff, like” about Irish gaming and roleplaying, which I’m sure you do, you can add to the wiki. If you’ve doing something in Irish gaming, such as shop or independently publishing games, check to see if you have an entry (and make sure it’s correct!).
Check out Planet Irish Gaming.
Yep. That’s the whole purpose of this post. Plugging Planet Irish Gaming. It’s something I setup a long time ago and it’s been running for quite a while, and I’ve been adding feeds as requested. I recently did some tidying up of it and added some new features (such as getting updates as emails!).
So if you’ve got a feed that you’d like me to included, please drop me a mail (or leave a comment). Anything related to Roleplaying and Gaming (nominally related to Ireland) would be welcomed.
(I guess I should I should add a feed from thedeadone.net…)
Specky, one of the founders of DiddlySquat, has given his personal account of the demise of DiddlySquat.
According to the Irish Gaming and Roleplaying Wiki:
Diddlysquat is an RPG publishing company founded by Geoff Moore in 2004 with the intention of producing a horror/sci-fi tabletop RPG called Spectres. The Spectres game was intended to be released as three prequels followed by the main game system.
But sadly DiddlySquat is no more and I guess we won’t be seeing Spectres as a full game (though the work will probably be made available via GCG).
When you read this kind of things it really makes you cynical about the communities involved (both online and offline). Sure I’ve argued and caused near-flame wars in the online half of the Irish gaming community, but I would hope that people don’t bare grudges and that they should realise that, sometimes, antagonistic nature of online discussion is actually healthy. But I don’t think that’s true. People do hold grudges for the slightest things.
So, here is a farewell to another doomed project of the Irish Gaming Community. I roll my dice to you (*sounds of all dice scattering across the table and getting lost on the floor* doh!) 
As an aside, I can’t help but draw some parrallels to this earlier history of other projects in the community too and the recent flop of the an Game Chef concept (see this comment). I guess I’m too old for this shit.