So you wanna write a RPG blog? Part 5: Then What?
In the last 2 weeks, I wrote a primer about starting a new RPG blog. While I knew it wasn’t going to be all that original, I thought that would-be RPG bloggers could benefit from it. It turns out they did as I’m already seeing a few new RPG blogs cropping up (Here’s one and here’s another).
This last part is about dealing with the future of your newly minted blog. Let’s fast forward a few weeks/months and discuss what will likely happen with your shiny new RPG blog. I want to discuss a blog’s success or failure as well as likely motivational slumps. I’ll end this series with links to other people’s articles you might find interesting as further reading and a request for more!
Success!
So you’re getting a few comments per post, you got a few links by other bloggers and the overall feedback is good (or bad, it that’s what you’re after) and you feel full of energy and pumped! You spend too much of your work day checking your emails for notifications.
Yup, it has started! People read your blog and have started to react. Congratulation you’ve made your first step out of the huge pile of unread questionable content that is 90%+ of the blogsphere.
If growth of your blog is among your goals, now is the time to resist the easy lure of safe comment baiting. Don’t try to mimic what gave you a few comments but think of expanding your range of subjects for new posts.
The cliché that content is king, is true. While the tips I gave about networking and linking to other bloggers will bring about curious onlookers, it’s fresh content that will turn visitors into regular readers.
One reaction I see frequently among bloggers with burgeoning readership is jealousy/insecurity vs other bloggers. I read more than one comment, usually in jest, in the likes of ‘Don’t come and steal our 5 readers’. I also keep seeing bloggers selling themselves short by mentioning how ‘no one reads this post’, or ‘if you feel like loosing time, please read the following’
This is nothing more than those inner demons rearing their ugly heads again. It’s fear of inadequacy, of not being able to cope with success and the good old impostor syndrome (“Oh Noes, they’ll soon discover I’m nothing but a hack that got lucky”).
Please don’t let the demons win. Any defensive and/or self-defeating reaction on your part (in posts, comments, Instant messages and emails) is a warning sign to readers that you’re not comfortable as a blogger. Don’t sell yourself short, ever!
Success should not be scary. Humans get used to everything, that’s why we don’t go insane because we hear a clock ticking. Success is nothing more than getting recognition for the hard work you poured in your website. Take it in strides, you’ll get used to it… eventually.
As the success of you blog increases, it will translate to more and more comments on your posts. You’ll have to decide how you wish to react to them. Following comments is extremely time consuming (especially trying to respond to all of them) and may very well threathen your day job’s performance.
Let’s be honest here, most readers and your response to comments are done during regular buisness hours. If you have a job that allows you the liberty to follow your blog, fine, but be careful to keep your priorities straight. Unpaid successful blogging can become way more rewarding than your day job and therin lies the danger.
I suggest that you disable email notifications and check on your comments at specific periods of the day, where you can afford to spend time on them (I’ll get to that with my own blog… eventually).
As mentioned in the ‘Who?‘ part of this series, you might also think about leaving your commenters to fend for themselves and visit only a few times a day to read and comment when your input is needed.
After a certain point (more than 10-20 comments or so), the discussion often becomes self-sustained and you can enjoy the ride without the fear of insulting your readers by not showing up all the time.
Bottom line: Success is fun, take it in stride and make sure you won’t lose your job because of it.
Failure
So you’ve been spending a few weeks writing your heart out. You comment on forums (with a link to your blog in your signature) and on other people’s blogs and no one ever comments on your blog.
That’s not fun for sure.
Try to find a reason for that, chances are it’s not because the RPG blog readerships is made of tasteless jerks, it isn’t. They’re an interesting, spirited, opinionated, but usually nice bunch.
There’s a good chance you’re doing something that keeps readers from “getting you”:
- Is it because you make too many mistakes or post huge walls of texts with no paragraphs?
- Is it because your ideas are all jumbled up and the text is hard to follow?
- Is it because you are an emotional person and you post vehemently about things that bug you about RPGs (This can work, just not all the time and with limited amounts of venom)?
- Is it because your subject range is to restricted or you revisit the same subject too much?
- Are you the blogging equivalent of that guy that always talks about his character?
- Is it because your blog is written in pale blue over a yellow background?
- Is it because readers have to register and fill unreadable Capchas to comment?
If it’s any of these reasons, you should try to change a few things to make the experience better for the readers. Chances are, they’ll eventually start coming.
However if, after all the effort, you just don’t have that much to say about RPGs or writing is just too much effort for you, maybe blogging is not your cup of tea.
As I said before, that’s okay too, you can always try later when inspiration hits or if you develop your creative writing skills through other outlets.
Bottom line: If no one will read you, don’t blame others, check what you may be doing wrong and change. Maybe blogging might just not be for you.
Hitting a slump/Blogger Burnout
Somewhere in the first few months of blogging you will hit a wall. Blogging will start feeling like work. You’ll feel you have to post something new. You’ll feel all your posts end up saying the same things. Worse still, Writer’s block will set in.
Much like a gym membership, you’ll start to rationalize why you’ll skip the next post and you’ll feel guilty about it.
When this happen you need to pause and reflect on the reasons why you blog and the true goals you set for yourself. Ask yourself some questions like:
- Do you have to post that often?
- Do you post to please a crowd?
- Have you ventured in a series or a blog project that does not interest you anymore?
- What would you need to do to make blogging fun again ?
If you forge on through this without some reflection you’ll eventually go through blogging burnout and most likely quit for an extended period of time.
One good way to get out of the slump is to take a short break. Don’t worry, your readers will come back, that’s what RSS feeds are for (I’ll take good care of them…. he he he).
During that break, revisit your blog’s theme and plugins. Brainstorm for some new types of posts. If you focused on campaign logs, how about posting some house rules (we all have them) or giving your players some questionnaires to post online? If you are artistically inclined, start a RPG themed webcomic or post some of your art.
One thing you should not do during a slump is posting about how sorry you are for not posting or how down you feel. While you can occasionally share your feelings when life takes a turn the wrong way, your readers’ tolerance for melodrama is not infinite.
I mean, I used to love the Megatokyo Webcomic, but I stopped reading the artist’s Angst-ridden ‘woe is me’ posts a long time before I stopped reading the strip.
A slump is a signal that your motivations are no longer aligned with your original reasons for blogging. Heed that signal and see what needs to be changed. If you do, you will likely bounce back…
I did, at least twice, in the last year. As you can see, I’m still here, on a nearly daily basis.
Bottom line: A slump is a signal that something’s wrong. Stop and reflect. Change something and bounce back!
Where to go from here?
My work here is mostly done, like Yax said, I made a one post idea into a 8 000+ word epic.
If you want to learn more about blogging in general, I suggest that you give a visit to some of the blogs that focus on writing.
My good friends James and Harry at Men with Pens and Bob from The Writing Journey have written many posts on the subject. Here’s a Chatty’s special selection:
Men with Pens
- The Art of Blogging: Starter Tips
- 20 Resources For Better Writing
- Never Write Alone
- How to Write About Old News and Be Original
- 7 Decisions to Make About Your Posting Frequency
- Feed Reading and RSS for Dummies (Like Us)
Finally, during my writing of this Series, Trask, of Living Dice wrote an interesting post about Search Engine Optimization for RPG bloggers. Ninetail of A Butterfly Dreaming also chimed in with a very useful post about hosting your blog on a hosting service.
Edit:
My good buddy Bartoneous just linked me to another blog doing a similar series, only she’s tackling Niche blogging as a whole, have a look.
Reader Ravyn, owner of Exchange of Realities posted about dealing with the crunch we feel when we get too close to a writer’s deadline.
Your turn, the E-Book project
Seeing how popular this series became, I’m thinking seriously about making it into a free PDF book.
In order to make it more useful, I would love for your RPG bloggers to chime in with posts on RPG blogging of your own. Maybe you think I missed something or that something could be expanded upon.
Post the articles on your respective blogs and tell me about them. We can then discuss how to make them into chapters of the book (With credits and links top your blogs).
The book would be built shortly after Gen Con and I’d love to get some nice art, professional layout and editing. I’m going around you guys by email asking for help.
Thanks so much one and all for reading and commenting!
Now time for a vacation!
3rd Party D&D GSL/OGL Publishers
Since there have been two major updates in the past day, here’s the list of companies that I know of (and let me know if there’s any I’ve missed, I’ll try to add them) that have or specifically have not signed the GSL. I’ve also tried to source them in some way.
- Necromancer Games: Staying OGL/Pathfinder. (A big shame, since the head of the company is very pro-4e and had some good stuff planned. Also, their front page still says they are going 4e.)
- Goodman Games: Using the OGL to produce 4e material for GenCon, then signing the GSL for the October date.
- Kenzer & Co: Producing 4e material through fair use copyright, not signing GSL.
- Paizo: Making Pathfinder, of course.
- Green Ronin: Not signing GSL, going all OGL, likely to focus on its own OGL systems.
- Adamant Entertainment: Producing 4e material through fair use copyright.
- The Inner Circle: Signed the GSL.
- Mongoose Publishing: Signed the GSL for at least one game line. Probably will produce other OGL content through other game lines.
- RedBrick Limited: Signed the GSL (making Earthdawn 4e.)
- Open Design: Patron adventures yes for 4e, Kobold Quarterly no.
- Paradigm Concepts: Not signing GSL, producing OGL products.
- Expeditious Retreat Press: Signing the GSL for one game line, producing other OGL products
If the goal by WotC was to get the big name 3rd parties onboard with the GSL… well, that goal clearly has failed or in the case of the fair use users, downright backfired. If they wanted a lot more control over the license and to stem the tide of products, that seems to be the end result.
Rage, Song, and Shapeshift are all coming back
ENWorld is reporting, via the WotC 2009 catalog sent to retailers, that you’ll see the return of some familiar faces in PHB2:
the Players Handbook 2 will include Druid, Barbarian, Sorcerer, Bard, and Swordmage classes (eight in all). New races will include the gnome, the half-orc, and the goliath.
Cynics can now engage their “only delayed those things to make money” while others of us will continue to claim that it was a good move to delay things until they had them ready.
And here’s some background on the Goliath (assuming they keep to the 3.5 fluff.)
(Edit: Swordmage was, in fact, an error, and will just be out in the FR Campaign Setting in September. Thanks to Rob Heinsoo for the correction!)
"Free comic like instant courage — only find it on Internet."
A few pieces of random Watchmen mania (Watchmania?)
First of all, this is genius.
Second, a Chip Kidd-designed Watchmen extras book is awesome.
Finally, while playing around with my new video iPod, I came across a Watchmen “motion comic” on iTunes. Only the first episode is up, but it’s free, so I checked it out. I expected to hate it- it’s kind of like Watchmen as a combination flash animation and audiobook (with one guy doing all the voices.) But it’s all there, including Dave Gibbons’s art, just… moving in slightly awkward ways. But the first time Rorschach’s mask moves around, you can see why someone thought this was a good idea. The first episode contains the entire first issue… so check it out for yourself if you’re a Watchmen fan who has tolerance for adaptations. (Here’s the link that opens in iTunes.)
We be Chatty Geeks
So 24 hours (and about 80 comments) after publication, a lot has been discussed about yesterday’s post.
I don’t want to spend more time on this. I feel it’s time I put my money where my mouth is and leave discussion about the D&D edition transition behind me and start focusing on the near future (Gen Con!) and the period after that (New Campaign!)
I will however point to other people’s post that linked to it.
Sean K Reynolds mused on letting D&D 4e live on its own merit instead of being compared to the previous edition.
(Yeah, I’ve been having chain-geekouts on my side of the screen these last few weeks with all these industry people I admire dropping in for a quick comment or three…)
Greywulf also took the occasion to revisit his Dungeonmaster’s Creed and how D&D 4e stacks up against it.
Dungeon grrrl linked to the post (warning, some of her LJ avatars are NSFW ) to point to the possibility of having a cordial online discussion about such an emotionally charged subject. She also has a funny post, poking at WotC’s Gleemax issue, right here.
If I missed any (I’m sorry), feel free to inform me and I’ll update this post.
Have a nice evening, I.now.must.sleep.
Why You Shouldn't Watch Firefly
Many, if not most of you, have already viewed Joss Whedon’s Firefly series and the follow-up film, Serenity. This article is not intended for you; however, let me say that I’m sorry. I now feel your pain, because some supposed “friends” convinced Bart and I to view the series. I had many reservations about it, and many reasons for those, but I finally made the mistake of giving in. No, I write this article for the uninitiated (if there are any of you still left out there). I want to get the warning out, loud and clear, to prevent further hurt – DO NOT WATCH FIREFLY. What follows is a cautionary tale, read at your own risk.
Joss and I have a mixed history. The first exposure I can remember came from seeing fellow nerd’s DVD collections and noticing a large amount of Buffy and Angel. Granted, I never gave either series much chance due to a large prejudice against what I felt was a silly concept, and WB or UPN or whatever network it was on. I was mystified by the devotion that people had for these series, but I never gave it too much thought. [Read the rest of this article]
Some Pleasant Overlap
I’ve noticed lately that there seem to be two groups of people who really enjoy 4e, and who are coming back to it after years of not playing D&D:
- WoW Players
- Eurogamers
Now, I think I’ve shied away from pointing this out because early on, these were used as derogatory statements against 4e. (I still probably haven’t gone a week since the game came out without seeing the phrase “WoW on the tabletop.”) However, I take the complete opposite view and call this a Good Thing. [Read the rest of this article]
(Not)Understanding The D&D Geek
I think everyone can agree that Wizards of the Coast has issues with 4e and it’s digital initiative.
Yesterday’s announcement of the demise of the Gleemax Gamer Social Network experiment and the continued fan backlash over everything 4e is eating up at Wizards’ reputation as the trustworthy keeper of two of the world’s most popular hobby-gaming franchises.
I think Wizards knows this and is taking steps to deal with this.
Yesterday a friend of mine posted on Twitter about how he hated to be told by some stranger how to run is business. While I can sympathize, this morning I realized that there are cases where a business should stop and listen to the best possible consultants: Paying clients.
Having been a RPG customer for more than 25 years (15 buying and playing D&D) and having developed a community voice in the last year, I think I’m qualified to offer my views on Wizard’s marketing strategies of the last year.
Know your geeks
The past, current and future clientele of D&D are mostly geeks. I define them as people who spend a lot of time and energy mastering and enjoying their favorite hobby. The inherent technical challenge of mastering said hobby being part of the geek’s appeal for it.
D&D 3.x was an ever changing system that was a challenge to master. Us committed geeks did. We bought countless books, we poured over them, we tinkered with the rules and we created awesome campaigns.
Yes, D&D 3.5 (and its predecessors) had warts and some less than stellar components. Still we mastered them. The more adventurous of us even opened the game’s hood and fiddled with the engine to get rid of the warts we didn’t like (Save or Dies comes to mind).
We spent ungodly amounts of time templating leveled monsters for our adventures. Some of us then saved time by trading them in the safe harbor that was the OGL and in the less safe, but unpatrolled waters of forums and fan sites. We even bought the later Monster Manuals and adventure paths to stop spending so much time on prep.
A geeky fumble…
Then came Wizards of the Coast with the much awaited (albeit not enthusiastically) announcement of 4e and the slew of designer blogs on Gleemax/pre-D&D Insider.
While I was eager to see the new game and the previews did turn out to be more promising than I anticipated, what was the key message I continually got from it all?
D&D 3.5 was too hard, broken in places, too complex! D&D 4e will be simple, awesome and easy! No more spending hours prepping!
Huh, excuse me…. Is that how you reward us for all those efforts we spent on your game in the last 8-9 years?
We all agree that D&D 3.X had issues. Hell we’ve been playing with them for so long, but we learned them! We tamed them or at the very least we learned how to circumvent them and still had fun. We even grudgingly followed through the dubious necessity of upgrading to 3.5.
I think the biggest gaffe of 4e’s release is how the geek clientele was treated by the various ‘Change Agents’ of Wizards of the Coast. There was something not quite patronizing, a bit ‘we know better’ and a lot ‘this is soooo much better’ in the corporate message
I think 4e would have been better received if the changes had been presented as a dialog (however one sided it needed to truly be) in the lines of:
“How about them Save or Dies huh? Do anyone hate them as much as we do? Here’s how we think we could address them”
“How do you deal with an underpowered PC that sits on the side while the Wizard nukes the Battlemap? We think it would be more fun for the average gamer if we proposed a more balanced apporoach for 4e!”
I’m sure people more versed in the transition from 3.x to 4e will chime in and say that’s what the 4e design/marketing teams tried to do.
Well I believe the message was not properly delivered.
Instead, I’m willing to bet that many geeks got the impression that the 4e team decided what was fun and kept pointing to the less than stellar parts of 3.5 to drive the points home, regardless of how much fun we actually had with those very same parts! (Don’t quote me out of context please… he he he)
Geeks on both side
I don’t blame the designers though, because here’s the thing, the D&D 4e designers are geeks too! If there’s one thing you can’t do is stopping geeks from talking about something they love and spent so long tinkering with.
They did, and I’m happy they did… only they could have reined in their geekiness to spare ours.
I think what went bad was marketing’s leadership (or lack of) about shaping the message to the geek clientele and from the geek employees.
I realize that there are countless variables I can’t possibly know about that led to this publicity fiasco (the word is not too strong). There was the obvious power struggle behind the license, there were IP issues and Hasbro’s lawyers to deal with.
Plus, let’s turn the mirror around for a minute, there’s just no WAY to please geek fans when a major change is in the air. Trying to do so is corporate suicide, some people had to be pissed off, that’s the price of change.
However, the path that was chosen ended up causing unnecessary damage.
Here’s to next time and hoping that the geek psyche is better understood. Have a look at Magic’s R&D’s web content (and the content of Starcitygames.com) in the Ravnica years/8th Edition years, that was transition well done.
Taking too much on one’s shoulders
I think that Wizard of the Coast has tried to be a Hydra with way too many heads and it’s collapsing under it’s own weight. By shooting all over the place with printed games, digital initiatives and mass/viral marketing campaigns they managed to fail in multiple places. This makes the company look unprofessional and fuel the online pundits that gleefully chime in with easy (but well deserved) ‘I told you so!’s
The recent mea culpa and refocusing of efforts might be a step in the right direction, but the specter of the post 3.0 mass layoffs makes me a cautious customer (i.e is it going to be better or are they just going to throw a lot of people out on theirs asses and hope for the best with freelancers).
It’s a shame because D&D 4e is a very nicely designed game that brings heroic fantasy roleplaying in a new, not all that unfamiliar direction.
Let Geeks/Fans do what they do best.
I don’t think it’s too late to make the game reach it’s full early-life potential, a change of the message and the underlining philosophy is however necessary.
I think that the designers/developers should start pointing toward the (maybe hidden) complexities of the new game instead of comparing them to their equivalent from 3.5 all the time.
For example, they should start to massively sell geeks on the lie that monsters in the Monster Manual are. They need to show us just how downright easy it is to create a thousand monsters by tweaking the MM ones. They need to flood us with examples of properly created Skill challenges and dare us to do better!
If this has already been done, I blame poor research. Regardless, the message needs to be stronger to balance out the pundits and critics.
Heck just look how much fan work has been invested in trying to ‘fix’ the Skill Challenges on Enworld. D&D 4e has now got it’s dedicated Geek Squad working at its rough edges (and its got some too, just ask Graham what he thinks of how character size interacts with weapon). This is an opportunity that needs to be grabbed much more vigorusly by Wizards of the Coast.
There’s a lot of potential fan/geek goodwill, just waiti to be tapped, to turn this thing around. Maybe enough to balance out the hate.
So here’s my suggestion to better sell 4e to the world:
The D&D Geek Manifesto
Wizards of the Coast, we ask you to do what the hobby has always done to make 4e a success.
Let the fans spread out the word, help US teach the game to others.
Make us some bitchin’ published adventures. Create non-RPGA gaming material that we, the fans, can use in cons and game stores*.
We, the current gamers, are your future livelihood. We will buy your supplements, we will teach the game to new players.
Don’t underestimate the power of the online writing community. RPG blogging is still in it’s infancy but its influence will rise.
We have the time and the energy to make a true, long term viral marketing campaign.
All we ask for, is your support and your help!
Continue making good games.
Hire more designers/writers.
Re-think your marketing campaigns.
We the fans will handle the rest!
Chatty DM
*I will be a DM in 2 of Montreal’s biggest cons in the next year, I’d love to have some exclusive D&D material for that!
Vote Today or Face a Red Dragon
Ennies award voting is up, and our buddy Yax’s Dungeonmastering.com is up for “Best Fan Product.” All it takes is an internet connection and a few minutes, so go vote today!
Yax is going to be our roommate at GenCon, and we don’t want him to unleash his red dragon on us if he loses. My reflex defense is notoriously low, and Bartoneus has a paralyzing fear of fire, so get to it today… not just for his sake, but ours.
YouTube of the Week: I am the niiiiiiiiight Edition
A funny/strange video of singing along to the Batman theme. I predict you will either love this or hate this.
