More WotC shakeup: Novel lines canceled
Over at ENWorld, author Ari Marmell laments another change in WotC policy: they are discontinuing their novel lines that do not relate directly to D&D or Magic.
A number of posters both on Wizards own boards and on ENWorld have noticed a distinct lack of activity from WotC Staffers on the messageboards in the past few weeks (especially compared to how prolific they were prior to 4e being releaed.) I’d say this does not bode well in a few ways, and all bets are off at this point. We’ll try to keep you updated.
Gleemax is dead?
ChattyDM pointed this post out to me:
Gleemax Farewell
By Randy Buehler
Wizards of the Coast has made the decision to pull down its Gleemax social networking site in order to focus on other aspects of our digital initiatives, especially Magic Online and Dungeons & Dragons Insider. We continue to believe that fostering online community is an important part of taking care of our customers, but until we have our games up and running at a quality level we can be proud of, it will be the games themselves that receive the lion’s share of our attention and resources. [Read the rest of this article]
Someone Broke the Brain's Jar
This blog is not about breaking news, others are better suited to do it.
Regardless, I got an email a few minutes ago by a fellow reader (confirmed by Propoagandroid) that informed me that Gleemax, Wizards of the Coast’s Social Gamer network, will close down for good in September.
While Propagandroid makes a good case about the human impact this will have (People possibly losing jobs), I can’t help but see that Wizards is moving toward fixing what I complained about in my Open Letter.
As Randy Buehler, a person I have great respect for, puts it:
Anyway, all of that is what led me to be such a passionate evangelist, pushing to move Wizards in a more digital direction. It remains clear that gamers are moving online and if we’re going to preserve everything that is special about Wizards of the Coast—and the hobby gamer culture in general—then we have to move online too.
The mistake that I made, however, was in trying to push us too far too fast. I still think the vision for Gleemax is awesome: creating a place on the web where hobby gamers (or lifestyle gamers or thinking gamers, or whatever you want to call us) can gather to talk about games, play games, and find people to play games with. But I’ve come to realize that the vision was too ambitious. We’ve made progress down about ten different paths over the past eighteen months, but we haven’t been able to reach the end of any of them yet.
The correct strategy at this point is clear: we need to focus. We’re not going to abandon the vision, but we are going to put large chunks of it on the backburner until we prove that we can succeed at the most important pieces. Those pieces are Magic Online and D&D Insider.
I’m not going to say “I told you so”, my letter underlined something that was obvious from a customer’s perspective and I’m overjoyed to see Wizard’s stepping up to the plate, admit that mistakes were made and proposing an alternative plan to make their vision come true.
Magic Online “V3″ is up and running, but it took us a long time to get here and it’s by no means perfect. We have a lot of ideas about what we can do now to make the game better and we’ll be devoting significant resources in future months and years to doing precisely that.
They are aware of the problems and will address it. That’s promising.
D&D Insider functionality has started to roll out, but we’re still behind where we wanted to be.
That is an understatement, but I’m willing to extend extra goodwill for the admission.
Dragon and Dungeon magazines are promising. As for the Rules Compendium, what I really want to see is a monster Stats generator that will allow to cut and paste formatted monster stat cards in my adventure notes.
Until I see the results, I will move in the cautiously optimistic, somewhat skeptic crowd.
Inq. of the Week: Monster Brawl
The Dark Knight dominated its second weekend, but who is surprised by that with competition like the way late X-Files movie sequel and Will Ferrell’s latest movie Step Brothers? It raked in $75 million on its second weekend, which is very impressive and left the second place movie way behind at $30 million. Last week Dave asked, quite poignantly, which Batman characters should appear in the next / third ‘new’ Batman movie. The results are that 36% of you would like to see Catwoman in the next movie, with a whopping 30% considering the Riddler as a good fit to take on Batman after the Joker and Two-face. Rounding it out was Superman with 20%, Poison Ivy with 19%, and somehow 14% of you voted for the Penguin. Come on, seriously? Have you SEEN the penguin? I suppose Nolan’s creative takes on the characters so far could translate to a very interesting villain with the Penguin, but compared to Mr. Freeze? I won’t even get into the 11% that voted for Robin showing up…
Fresh off of a weekend chock-full of D&D, Dave ran his game on Saturday and I ran mine yesterday, we’re ready to solve a debate about which epic Dungeons & Dragons monster would win in an all-out fight with the other classic / hilarious monsters that have shown up over the years to terrorize high level characters and destroy worlds.
Loading ...Everything is better with the addition of a Nunchuking Bear! Watch out, he’s a ninja!
So you wanna write a RPG blog? Part 4: Who?
Last week I initiated a series on starting and running a RPG blog based on my own experiences. It was supposed to be only one post, but I should know better by now, right?
I started with the ‘Why‘, then I tackled the ‘How‘ and the ‘What‘ of RPG blogging.
Today I’m going to talk about the ‘Who’, meaning who you write for, how to interact with readers and the RPG blogging community and how to advertise your blog.
Target Audience
I made ‘write a RPG blog for you’ a key theme of this series. However, you do post your stuff online so that others can read and comment on it.
I mean it’s the whole raison d’être of a Blog right? Otherwise you might as well just write in your word processor and leave the texts on your computer.
As (relatively) large as the RPG market is, only a small fraction of it actually reads anything about them on the web. What’s more, out of that small fraction, only a part of that population strays outside of their game’s official sites/forum.
A quick discussion with RPG bloggers has established the current potential audience of RPG blog readers at somewhere between 1000 and 2000 and growing slowly (I’m not sure if Email subscription and RSS Reader count double for the same ‘subscriber’).
There are more, but I’m willing to bet that a given blog’s content can hope to reach that number based on regular quality content. That’s not a huge reader base granted, but it also means that you should be able to handle the blog’s growth.
As a starting blogger you should not focus on getting to the top. As we covered in the “Why” part of this series, you write for your own reasons and trust that similar minded people will start reading you.
In fact the best tip I got from the readers of this blog is that you should be your own target audience. Write about things that you find interesting and you’ll eventually get readers who share your tastes.
As you develop your blogging skills, you’ll invariably start drifting in your content and style as you explore the medium. Hopefully that shifting will bring in more readers.
Plus maybe you’ll get lucky and you’ll create a new style of posts that will generate a new audience. My Trope Series did just that.
Bottomline: Write as if you were your own target audience.
Comments
Ahhh comments… How hard we hope for them to start coming in. How frustrated/discouraged we get when we get none. How blown away we are when complete strangers start responding. How panicked we get when they get out of control!
Getting comments, preferably positive ones, is such an addictive feeling. It’s the payoff of all that writing work and a sign that you’ve started to affect people.
Here’s the thing. Readers don’t usually comment. It takes a particular spark to get a reader to want to respond, and that spark must be strong enough to motivate the reader to go through the hoops of commenting on your blog (i.e.: Entering Captchas, email address, naming oneself and sometimes even registering).
My wholly unscientific observations seem to indicate that about one RPG reader in 10 comments on a blog. About 1/2 that do it frequently. So when you get your first comment from a stranger, chances are there are 9 others lurking on your site.
However do remember one thing, readers do not owe you anything. They don’t have to comment and they don’t particularily like behind asked or told to do so repeatedly. They’re being generous enough to actually take some of their time to read what you have to say, don’t press your luck, especially early in your ‘career’.
While I think it’s all right to nudge readers gently for feedback by asking open questions, just please don’t be that blogger that nags and sounds hurt/desperate that no one comments.
That’s why you absolutely must do everything you can to make commenting easy for the readers as I mentionned in my ‘how‘ post.
Lastly, when people do start to comment on your blog, please be cordial and try to answer rapidly. Not necessarily in the following minutes, but please do so in the next few hours. If you have nothing to add to the comment, at least welcome the reader and thank him/her for the comment. You might think that’s unnecessary, the reader won’t.
A blogger’s answers to comments is what makes readers want to comment again. It shows you care about what they have to say. I’ve left many comments on blogs that never answered. Said comments were left on posts where I was the only commenter!
I don’t visit these blogs anymore.
Blog communities are born out of that dialog. Content is the fuel, dialog is the fire that keeps the blog’s steam engine running.
The frequency and penetration of your response to comment depends on your free time and personal comfort discussing with strangers. Some bloggers answer each and every comments, others chime in on those that need a response. Others, especially on very high volume blogs, don’t respond anymore as the community has become self-sustaining and comments go in the hundreds within hours.
I’ll touch on this in the next post of this series where I’ll discuss the handling of a RPG blog’s success.
Bottomline: Comments are the currency of a blog, you have to earn them, not beg for them. Once you get them, maintain them by interacting with the readers.
Networking…
Here we come with the key points I’ve been wanting to make all along (only 3000 words later… sigh).
The RPG blogging niche is a small one, but with a suprising number of bloggers doing it. Most of these bloggers are friendly, generous and passionate geeks that love to discuss and exchange on new ideas (at least I like to believe they are).
What you need to do to get your name out there is to comment on their blogs and enter, in the comment registration field, the URL of your blog.
Do it often and do it well. By that I mean add something to the discussion at hand don’t just say ‘QFT’ or ‘man that sucks’ or, heaven forbid, ‘First Post!’ and then leave, that’s spamming at best and trolling at worst.
If another’s bloggers post inspires you to write more than 2 or 3 paragraphs, I suggest you make your comment into a post on your blog instead. Make sure to link that post to the original post that triggered your reaction (I mean you have to generate content on your blog, not feed the other’s).
I guarantee this will likely bring the other blogger running to your site to see what you have to say about the original post.
If the points you make in your posts about other bloggers points of view push forward the discussion at hand, chances are that blogger will write a follow up article linking to your post.
Bingo! You just got a door opened to another blogger’s readership!
Just remember that they don’t have to do it. If they do, you should leave a comment thanking them (don’t gush too much) and move on.
Regardless if this happens or not, after a few back and forth, you should add that blog to your blogroll (gaining goodwill points from the other blogger) and possibly ask the other blogger to do the same for yours.
Feel free to send emails to the bloggers asking questions, giving feedback and generally being nice. Just don’t expect a warm and rapid response (if any) if you haven’t made your mark yet.
If you have the time, you may even offer to be a guest poster on another blog. It pays nothing in our niche (trust me, it doesn’t) but it gives you added visibility and authority.
All this is the best possible publicity you can hope to get. It’s free, it’s generated by peers and it fosters your feeling of belonging to a community.
I owe a lot of my current success to other bloggers and online publishers like Critical-Hits, Dungeonemastering.com, Stupid Ranger, Roleplayingtips.com, Gnome Stew (then Treasure Tables), and Twenty Sided and I’m happy to have felt welcome in these communities so early on in my ‘career’.
(See what I just did there? It’s worth the extra 5 minutes!)
… and Advertisement
Before I conclude, a short word on advertising your blog by more ‘traditional means’. I’ve rather little experience with it and I’m still unsure how efficient it really is.
Feel free to chime in if you can add to this (he he he… I’m shameless).
While buying some Google Adsense space, registering a banner with outfits like Project Wonderful and submitting your posts to services like Stumble Upon and Digg will give you page views and traffic spikes, I’m just not sure how many clickers ‘stick’ to the blog.
I’ve found that leaving comments and cross/guest posting is by far a more efficient strategy than advertising with banners and submitting posts to sharing services.
Your Mileage May Vary of course.
I mean I’m always happy to surf on a Stumble Upon wave, but once the wave is passed, the traffic usually isn’t all that higher.
Bottom line: Networking with other bloggers by linking to them (through comments, derivative and guest posts) is the best growth tool a RPG blogger can count on.
Up next will be my final post of the series. I’ll try to tackle how to cope with the slow growth, success or failure of a RPG blog project. Chances are I won’t write it before my vacations and Gen Con as I want to let this series to run around for a bit.
Thank you all for reading!
Clean up in Aisle 4!
Hey all,
Without getting into details (in order not to break my Golden rule of Blogging), the ‘big thing’ I was waiting for didn’t pan out.
I’m done with disappointment and I’m moving on to re-organizing my projects.
One of the things I’ll be doing over the next few days is to re-tag my whole blog to make it easier to navigate with the search box.
Also, I want to say that I’m sorry for the delay in the One Sentence NPC contest, my buddy Johnn Four is on vacation and should chime in soon with the winners from the drawing.
It was also brought to my attention that I might be skirting over the the edge of some provisions of the ‘fair use‘ doctrine with the various uncredited images I use to decorate my posts.Mostly that I don’t add value to the ‘borrowed art’ but rather use it as mere decoration.
It seems I’ve got to think about these things as my blog grows and garner’s more attention.
So while I mull over what to do with that (I’ve made a promise not to take any far reaching decisions prior to Gen Con) I’d like to ask you:
- Do the somewhat random images I find on Google Image add anything to my post?
- Would me stopping doing it lower the enjoyment value of the blog
- Should I stick to Creative Common images (which implies more work on my part to hunt down and credit)
- Should I stick with borrowing images from corporate products (book covers, Released art like Wizards’ galleries and so on)
- Do I keep doing the same thing, but make a little extra effort to site the source of the image (and use only 1st source images in that case).
- Am I over thinking this?
I’m also pondering doing a re-design of my site to make it more user-friendly (Bigger Rss buttons, easier Navigation, slight color shift). Now that I’m starting to get regular revenues from this blog, I intend to re-invest some of it into blog development so to speak.
So while I’m thinking about that and since the design has been around for some time now, I’d like to ask if any of you feel there’s something missing from the blog. In the same vein, I’d like to know if some things are annoying and/or unnecessary on the page.
My goal is to keep this blog casual, friendly and welcoming, and I’m not considering those 3 Columns/Square ads themes we see poping up.
Finally, going back to my initial goals of blogging, I had planned to blog for a year and then tackle National Novel Writing Month in November. Since I’ve developed a strong addiction to blogging, I’ve had this idea of creating another blog on chattydm.net. I’d post my daily NanoWriMo and open them up for comments, and critique”
It would also be a window into how an amateur author goes through the process of writing a first novel. Since I don’t have an aspiration to publish it yet, I wouldn’t mind posting it online.
Does that spark any interest in any of you? (Not that the response would influence my decision of doing it, I’m just curious)
I would need the advice on Copyrights about a few issues such as protecting the manuscript, allowing comments w/o getting accused of plagiarism if I get influenced by them and the implication of a possible publication from blog to paper. I trust I can resolve this before November.
That’s it for now, I’ve a few more Blogging/Guest posting/Review projects on the horizon. As usual, I’m not anywhere near running out of Ideas/material yet.
Speaking of Cleaning up, my nice buddies at ZeStuff are having a Clearance Sale.
Here’s what owner Pierre had to say about that:
We’re currently doing a massive clearance sale on ZeStuff where some of the items offered were ridiculously reduced. There’s definitively something in there for everyone. There’s over 20 models of t-shirts at $7.95, books, board games, card games and geek jewelry.
Additionally, until August first, all orders over $50 will be offered 5$ flat group shipping cost. This can be a huge saving for big orders or orders with heavy stuff.
That gives you a few days to save big.
Yes I get a commission for stuff you buy after clicking the ZeStuff links from here, so in essence you’re helping me support the growth of the blog through improvements and Prizes for contests!
GenCon Pros: Tell me about True Dungeon
So thanks to an old friend (and Killer DM), it looks like I will have a chance to play in a True Dungeon session. I’ve never been in one before, and it sounds like the session I will be playing in will be in Hardcore mode (whatever that means.) I’ve gone on to the website of True Dungeon and read the Player’s Guide, but I’d like to know more. Can anyone tell me more about True Dungeon, and how it works? And assuming that I’m bad at both hand-eye coordination and memorization, what’s my best bet of what to play?
Thanks in advance!
A Corpse, a Belltower, and Yog-Sothoth: Favorite RPG Moments
Bartoneus and joshx0rfz have started talking about some of their favorite RPG moments, and I was asked to share mine. I tend to GM much more than play, so mine are more about what my players have done than what I’ve done as a player. This story is always the first one that comes to mind when asked, and I present it here for your enjoyment.
Call of Cthulhu d20, which would become the first “Conspiracy University” game I ran. The setting was the college we attended, with everyone playing college students. Despite it being a CoC game, the party had been through a number of adventures together and no one had been killed or driven permanently insane.
I remember throwing together the adventure somewhat haphazardly- usually there was a lot more going on in each adventure, but this one was straightforward. The party discovered the ruins of an old Native American city beneath the steam tunnels of the university. Paintings and writings told the story of how the Miami tribe sealed away servants of “The Lord of Nightmares” who happened to be green, large, and have tentacles on his face. The images depicted these artifacts, which the party uncovered in the ruins. [Read the rest of this article]
I made it! Musings turns 1 and 400!
Image Credit: Labareda (As a gift to me)
On July 24 2007, I wrote the first post of what was to become the biggest, most incredible project I ever tackled!
Yes, a few weeks behind Stupid Ranger and Dungeonmastering.com, Musings of the Chatty DM turns one today.
What’s more, true to the avatar I created for this endeavor, I managed to post on average more than once a day, for a whopping 400 posts! (Yeah I kinda timed that one, I’m big on symbols)
If we average each post at 700 words each, that’s 280 000 words, which roughly translates in more than 2 Harry Potter Novels!
I set out to prove to myself that I could post quality content on the net, to stop rambling in my gaming buddies inboxes and to become a better DM through introspection and discussion.
What I never expected was that it would make me into a better writer and actually get readers who weren’t in my game group or related to me!
I never, ever believed that I’d last a year, much less garner more than 550 subscribed readers from all over the world. Said subscribers, along with occasional/regular readers, drop for a visit here more than 45 000 times a month!
I also never believed I’d get to cross online path with the cool builders of my hobby, people like Monte Cook, Wolfgang Baur, Ed Healy and I even got an online visit by Mike Mearls.
Thank you all for making this pet project of mine the addictive bundle of satisfaction it has become.
What’s next for the upcoming year? I’m not sure. My professional life is undergoing an early midlife crisis and I’ve been in a holding pattern for something big for quite some time. The outcome of which will shape what happens here. I’ll keep you all posted, this I promise.
Now what I’d like from you all is gifts! Yay! Oh not money, I hope I never get to that point.
I’d like you to share with me (and the readers) one thing you are particularly fond of, something that made you smile, something you created or something you think others would appreciate.
Post it in the comments please.
For instance, it could be (please indicate if it’s not safe for work (NSFW)) :
- A funny Youtube movie
- A recipe you like
- An insightful Forum post
- Your best Blog post
- Someone else’s best blog post
- A link to a good free E-book
- A link to an awesome song
- It can be a shy hello from someone who never, ever comments
- Anything cool, nice, funny or fun!
It doesn’t have to be about RPGs, it should be a bit geeky, but you’re giving so I’m not complaining.
For those who have never created Hyperlinks here’s a quick formula you can copy and paste:
<a href=”url”>Text to be displayed</a>
Where “url” = the web address (inside quotation marks)
and “Text to be displayed” is a word to replace the link like ‘Best Cookie Recipe”.
Now don’t be surprised if my Anti-Spam eats your comment. It’s to be expected. I’ll manually approve all blocked comments every hour.
I thank you all profusely for being such wonderful readers and commenters.
Here’s to hoping I write a similar post next year!
The Most Mega of Men
Must…stop…hyperventilating! They’re coming out with Megaman 9, and some holiest of holies has inspired them to make it a retro game! Sweet mother of Christmas! It looks like it will be available for download for the Wii, 360, and PS3 for whatever amount of money equates to 1000 wii points. You should totally go read more about this game, as it looks like they took the Megaman 1, 2, and 3 engine and just made a new game with it. This pretty much instantly takes me back to the mental state of a 10 year old…except I’m pretty much always in that mental state so there’s not far to travel.
As someone who played Megaman and any Megaman game no matter which combination of numbers and/or letters were placed behind it, I can tell you with no ego that this game will rock your fucking socks off. They nailed the equation so well the first time around that even Pythagoras had to do a double-take. Chaos in civilized lands? Check. A grouping of six to eight robot masters causing all the trouble? check. Some big bad mo-fo with a terrible afro behind it all? Typically, check, though sometimes they tried to make him cooler but it ended up just being more lame than an evil doctor with crazy hair. This will only add fuel to my propensity for randomly including Megaman villains in everyday conversation.
It also looks like Capcom is selling t-shirts for the game with hilarious bad spoof artwork that mocks their screw up on the original game’s artwork. Also, if you’re visually inclined (sorry to those of you reading this in braille) then head over to AZM and watch the gameplay youtube. Did I mention that I’m flipping stoked about this? I hope it opens up the potential for tons more NEW retro games to be released on the virtual platforms.
