Using the power of python, I wrote a site scraping script that generates a feed of LiveJournal blogs that are members of the irishgaming LiveJournal blog i.e. an RSS feed of the friends page. It’s updated three times a day (which seems to be good enough for the rate of posts) but any post that doesn’t have comments enabled can’t be included (because the site scraping script can’t generate a permalink for that post). The link to it is here on Planet Irish Gaming and it’s included in the big feed. It’s pretty nifty.

I continued with my script-hacking and created a script that “fixes” the feed from irishgaming.com. There are some technical problems with their feed so that I couldn’t include it in Planet Irish Gaming. As far as I know, they were not going to get fixed any time soon. My script fixes them and generates a valid feed so now I can include the feed. Yea! :) 

Ah scratch that. I just checked both feeds and they have totally the wrong date. *hack* *test* *debug* *fix* … an hour later… fixed. It seems individual items in both of these new feeds were picking up the latest date rather than the last date the item was added. Should be working fine now.

Because I added the “fixed” feed from irishgaming.com to Planet, I saw this morning that they have added “ads” to irishgaming.com. So I guess I shouldn’t really have been worried about adding ads to the irishgamingwiki.com - not that it’s earned me much (if anything).

If you’ve been using the big feed from Planet Irish Gaming, you’ll know that it gets very busy. Quite a large number of posts per day. Mostly polite drivel from forums around the place, so much so I barely scan the feed. I thought that normal users might find it overwhelming. Well, thanks to the power of Wordpress, you can just grab a feed without forums (I’ve even added this feed link to the frontpage of Planet Irish Gaming) and that includes the new friends feed from livejournal so it’s pretty digestible.

Still though, even doing that, there isn’t really that much genuine roleplaying or gaming news in there. There isn’t really that much genuine Irish roleplaying and gaming content to be honest. The thought had occurred to me that I add a new category to the site (and hence a new feed) that contains only items that actually pertain to roleplaying and gaming. What I could do is add a “vote” like link to the other feeds and if an item gets a few votes it gets automatically added to this category, much like digg.com or reddit.com. However this would require users to interact with the site on some level and I’m not sure the effort I’d have to put in to implement this feature would pay off in terms of people using it. Anyone got any opinions on this?

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 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!

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.

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.

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!).

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…)

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.

Only a day spent in the warm waters that is the national gamers event called Gaelcon. I dumped my kid on her Grandmother and Auntie, grabbed my bag of dice, ever-present satchel and a few pens, (oh and my Nintendo DS Lite, don’t go anywhere without these days).

I only had a day. I choose Sunday. It was a hard choice. It was Gaelcon or a few movies at the Horrorthron in the IFI. But the lure of the “Indie Track” was too much. I had been dying to play Universalis since I’ve read it. It’s a pity I had to choose however. I guess being an older gamer means balancing time and commitments with gaming but having to choose against other events is plainly unfair. The Horrorthron deserves to be in the Halloween weekend… but does Gaelcon? I know there is the ever present Call of Cthulhu slot and some (not that many really) costumed players but is it really Halloween? I didn’t debate this on my early morning drive from Malahide to Clontarf Castle. I was going by myself. No plans, per say. That’s the way to do it.

The thing I’ve found with Gaelcon, when I’ve gone in the last few years, is that your time gets filled, there is always someone willing to talk (and even game) with you and you can never really plan your day. 2006 was no different.

I arrived; saw Liam and Clare briefly while I tried to book my events for the day. It seemed, as I scanned the schedule for Sunday, it was all going to be the Indie 1 hour games. Universalis, Spectres and maybe one or two others. Dorian was taking names for events. I’ve met Dorian many times; however we’re always acted like strangers when we meet. We have common friends, been at the same parties and even my wife has talked more with her. However I’m social idiot. I recognise this as one of my biggest limitations. But then I’m many things. The Indie track sign-up was not very organised. Nobody seemed to know the deal. Something was improvised and my name was first down for Universalis. I couldn’t book anything for the evening until after lunch. Frustrating.

Met Tom and Kevin, talked about Japan, Top Gear and LARPS. Wandered the retailer stands, planning on spending a fortune… sadly there were two obstacles. First there were only really two stores represented. Second. I hadn’t enough cash. Let’s rewind a bit to the day before when my wife, my daughter and myself were shopping for a new car seat for Alice. I passed every cash machine thinking that tomorrow I’ll find one on the way. I said it to Sophie, my wife, a few times too in my annoying “repeating yourself every 30 minutes” mode, which Sophie likes to remind me about. Then roll around Sunday morning, driving down to the Kilcoole village, both ATM machines down. Driving to Malahide, dropping of Alice and trying two petrol stations along the way, finding that both don’t actually have ATMs. Arrived with enough for one book. So I bought Riddle of Steel, an RPG on my list of RPGs to read for a long time. I wanted to pick up SLA Industries and Ars Magica 5th Edition but I didn’t have enough. Made mental note, head to local Spar at lunch time and get out cash. This assumed, I would have time for lunch…

Met up with Liam again and encouraged him to play Universalis, an hour to kill before it begin so we played the board game Metro with a girl I never knew the name of. She was going to play “It was a Mutual Decision” after Universalis and Adam, who happened by, said they need more bodies. And so that was that and “It was a Mutual Decisions” going to be my next game!

Universalis rocked. We played a “gritty gangster 2020 nova-hibernan steampunk” story that was only really getting underway when our 1 hour was up. The Ambassador is after the suitcase? But what’s in the suitcase? What does it have to do with the “Westies”? Who was that “Mysterious Figure” who watched Miranda from the alleyway? Universalis lived up to what I expected. Another face I knew too, Mark had been playing the previous Indie game and had moved over to join on us with Universalis.

Three of the players, including myself, joined in on “It’s a Mutual Decision”. Interesting game, playing through the disintegration of relationship with the girls controlling the man and us lads controlling the woman. With rats. When that finished it was suddenly *after lunch*. Spectres was about to begin! I hadn’t signed up. Mark and I rushed upstairs, signed-up, bought a sandwich and descended again. However, it dawned on me, I wasn’t going to get to go to Spar and get more money out…

Finally I met Geoff for the first time. It was good to put a face to the blog entries and emails. Spectres was fun. It felt slightly out of place with the other Indie games because it was more traditional type of RPG where you had one character per player. However it was good to get a taste for the setting.

After that, Geoff, Adam and myself chatted for a while. I discovered from Adam I could have jumped into the last Indie game of the day! Ah bugger. We talked about gaming in Ireland, the gamecraftersguild.com website, the future of roleplaying as hobby and Indie games in general. We didn’t make any final conclusions but I think most of us are on the same level. Geoff talked about going to the seminar at six (what it’s six o’clock already? What the hell happened to the day?) about “promotion of gaming in Ireland”. But with no agenda and with Nick being lumbered with it at the last moment, it didn’t sound promising. (Not that it was Nick okay! Only that nothing was prepared for it). I also had used up my allotted free time. My wife was calling me on the phone, wanting to know why I had said I was nearly finished two hours ago but I was still there. I didn’t have an answer. So I thanked Adam and Geoff and headed off.

I felt weird though. It was a good day, one that would encourage me to come back next year. But I couldn’t put my finger on it. The day had come and gone with out me noticing and it felt like it should continue. Yet my time had come and I had to leave it. It felt like I had made a brief excursion into a world I knew so well long ago but one that is now a distinct entity from my current life. Does that make sense or am I doing the “engineer-thing” my wife likes to remind me off, where I analysis and scope out problems when I don’t need to?

Gaelcon and me. 2006.

… and just a little soul draining. My last few entries on my blog have all been about the Game Crafters Guild website and mostly technical in nature. Here, here and here.

I thought the idea behind the GCG site was/is a good one. It would be something I would contribute to and participate in. So I made a new feature-rich version of it and it went live a little while ago. I didn’t just plug together some pieces of software, I wrote code to join them, tested it, created new themes and templates for and brought it all together. It works. It is alive.

However, it is barely shambling forward.

I only know a little about getting communities started. I believe I succeeded with the Redbrick Wiki, failed with Project Freebrick and Occult Wiki. The IrishGamingWiki.com is ticking over, at least more so than GCG. I’m only involved in running Redbrick Planet but that seems to be trickling along.

The Formula: People must want it, then you fulfil that need and off you go. Once you have three or four people who believe the idea other than you and start using it earnestly, things start to happen.

With GCG, I was under the impression that there were quite a few people who would be interested in it. But I guess I did the site upgrade in a sort of vacuum. No-one was calling for it. No-one was arguing about it. Just me, thinking it was a good idea. Still do. Still working on the site. But there was no “buzz” anywhere about it. It just happened. Perhaps I should start some flame war on igaming or irishgaming.com/forums… that would generate interest, polarise people for and against the idea…

It’s just frustrating that barely anyone has logged on. I can imagine more than few had a look at the site and went “hmm, that looks good, when people start using it” and then buggered off… not realising that we need to turn you lurkers into users. I feel like a cafe manager sitting in a brand new cafe, that’s totally empty with the staff constantly cleaning tables to look busy. People look in and see it’s not busy, so they’ll come back later!

Maybe I’m just coming down off my “creative” run with it. I did do a lot in a short space of time. Maybe I’m not patient enough, that it’ll happen in good time. Perhaps with the impending Gaelcon, people are too busy but after Gaelcon will start using it. Maybe. The worst thing is when your friends say, they like it and would use it and they’ll log on… and then don’t. They have good excuses and all that, I can’t fault them per say, but they all have excuses and reasons.

What do people who read my blog think about it? Is GCG a good idea? Would use it and if so, why aren’t you, what’s the thing its missing?

One of the more frustrating elements about it is that I put some other personal projects on hold to try and finish the site. In a sense, I got buried in code so I can’t contribute to the site as a user would, as I would if someone else had created the site. I have a project (mentioned here and here as “COG”) that I had planned to use the site to do something with for example but that’s paused right now. I had a few blog entries I wanted to write about too, which are now just empty drafts waiting patiently to be filled in.