Several readers commented on last week’s Inquisition to point out that the Eberron campaign setting for D&D doesn’t actually fit in that well to the Steampunk genre, but the results of our poll are an astounding majority (76%) of people who are interested in or like Steampunk. Only 7% actively dislike the genre, while the remaining 17% are either indifferent or don’t know enough about the genre to make a decision. Perhaps we should have some educational posts to enlight and convince that 17% to be more interested in the genre.
Well voting for the ENnies closed over the weekend, first and foremost I’d like to extend our thanks and appreciation to everyone who voted for us! No matter what you ranked our site compared to the others, they all help and hopefully we will be pleasantly surprised at the ceremony during GenCon. Being nominated for an RPG award for “Best Website” is an absolute honor for Dave, myself, and everyone else who contributes here. During the first two years of this site (2005-2007) I always took some pride in the fact that I first added the “Videogames” category to the site and for that period of time it was our biggest category. Since then RPGs has easily overtaken all of the other categories, which is not a surprise to us because 2007 is when we all started playing regular tabletop RPG campaigns again after several years of hit and miss attempts.
In an effort to always be looking and moving forward, this week I’d like to ask you all what kind of content you are most interested in seeing here at Critical Hits other than RPG and D&D related posts. Each of these categories includes reviews, editorials, previews, and everything else related to the topic that we can think of but if you have something specific in mind please share it with us in the comments. For example if you’d like to see weekly reviews of the coolest and best comic books each week (or month), then vote for comics in the poll and share the specifics with us in the comments. The one stand alone entry in the poll is “Original Webcomic”, for the few of you that have been reading the site for long enough might remember that I used to do a webcomic and post every week called Random Encounters for a few months, if this is something you’d be interested to see more of please let us know! You can vote for as many choices as you like, so feel free to vote for all of the categories you’d like to see us post more about in the future.
[poll id=”135″]
Of course, if you can think of something new that you’d like us to cover here, vote for the “Other” option and let us know in the comments!
I said board games because, while I love Board Game Geek for the discussion, I’d love to see them covered on a blog, especially one where I’m already sure of the quality. There’s something to be said for a more unified voice.
.-= Todd´s last blog ..toddster: @MKupperman Crap, now that’s stuck in my head. "Junk sailor wing OHHHH…" =-.
None of the above (stick to RPGs)
.-= Mark Caldwell´s last blog ..Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-08-02 =-.
I agree with Mark: stick with RPGs and things related directly to them, with an occasional rule-breaker if it’s really warranted. It is better to do less, and better, than try to do more, and do it poorly. Spreading yourself too thin will lead to the latter. Right now CH, I believe, is the best comphrensive RPG blog — I read all the new posts, and I use the Skill Challenges repository a great deal, too. I have made book-buying decisions based on your reviews, because your knowledge of the games is obvious, and therefore you are credible.
I used to really like dungeonmastering.com, too, but with the addition of those sorry cartoons and other non-game posts, I’m about to delete that feed (gasp! he deleted the RSS feed!!). They’ve overstepped the boundaries of their expertise, and have lost that all-important credibility – sure, the site is fat with posts, but where’s the quality? All that nerd-watching and geeks next door and such is fluff, and it has seriously detracted from that blog’s usefulness to me as a DM. Please don’t go the same route.
I think it’s important to recognize who you are, where you come from, and who your audience is, and in the highly diversified world o’ the web, stick with those things, seeking to grow in your area of expertise for the benefit of your target audience.
I started reading CH while it’s content was varied across the geekscape. There were things I didn’t read, like Comic Books, but I’m always open to see the Geeky youtubes, the Ultimate Showdowns, reviews on Movies and Videogames. Yes I prefer RPG content, but there are other things that I like too.
So write whatever the hell you feel like, I’ll stick around for the stuff that I want to see…
.-= The Chatty DM´s last blog ..Handling A Legion Of Padded Supermen =-.
Stick with RPGs. If you MUST branch out, movies/TV and videogames. I actually care about them, and good criticism (neither obsequious nor sneering) is very hard to find.
As much as I fear it will get me back into the hobby, I’d like to see more comic book/superhero content. I think it’s a natural addition, seeing as there are superhero RPGs.
.-= Kameron´s last blog ..4E Quests for Sunless Citadel =-.
I voted for Board Games and Video Games, as I feel they have potential overlap with RPGs (and I’ve seen their coverage before :p). While I’m not necessarily interested, I think the discussion of game design coming from other games could be interesting and relevant.
I also (and I feel kind of bad about this) voted for anime. I don’t feel anime is really appropriate to this space, but I selfishly would like a set of nice, intelligent people to talk about anime with :p So even though I voted for it, you shouldn’t do it–but if you did, I wouldn’t mind ;p
In general, I think this blog is awesome as is and I’d just stick with about the level you have now–occasionally talking about other content, but generally from an RPG angle 🙂
I’ve been reading CH for a long time. And while I am an avid RPG player I’m not nearly as big of a fan of DnD as I am many of the other subjects that you posted on with some more regularity in the past.
I think you guys have an excellent fan base for RPGS (DnD in particular) and that you supply insightful commentary and useful recommendations on the subject. Even as a non-foaming-at-the-mouth-barbarian I enjoy reading posts about how to make a good one.
I would love to see an occasional review on other subjects though. I miss posts on books and movies that were more prevalent in the past.
Perhaps you could limit these non-RPG posts to your name sake and only post on “critical-hits/misses” in genres.
That might find a happy medium for the folks who don’t want to see you spread too thin, but allow those of us who like a little spice to get good reviews on some other items. Also it wouldn’t force an unwanted “weekly” item.
By-the-by, I log on every Tuesday JUST to see your youtube selection.
My geek spheres include Anime, Comics, TV/Film and Webcomics…
I can understand people being afraid of you branching out to other subjects. Trying to cover as much as you can could lead to a decrease in quality, so why not just write about what you think is cool? That way you’ll instil some enthusiasm in your posts without losing quality…
I guess I don’t have a problem with you branching out for two reasons
1 – I have yet to hear of someone who never used something from another medium as inspiration to their game: watching an anime does help me with running Exalted and watching Blade (the TV series) helped me a lot with Vampire The Requiem…
2 – From what I’m reading, Critical Hits doesn’t have enough RPG to be anything more than a Dungeons and Dragons blog…
Thanks all of you so far for the input! While I don’t think Dave or I would ever classify CH as an “RPG only” site, we aren’t blind – we realize RPGs are our biggest topic and that especially in the last year and a half other kinds of content have dropped off for the most part. When CH started I was actually reading upwards of 10 different comics a week, but that was one of the first things to get cut when budgeting came into my life. 🙂
Don’t take this post to mean that we’re trying to shift away from writing about RPGs, or that we’ll start featuring other content more than them, but I do believe we will continue writing about whatever interests us. I was just curious how much demand there is for each type of content, specifically I can see right now that if we started featuring a weekly Poker post there would be a huge WTF factor (as it has 0 votes)!
Also, this poll serves as a great indicator for what types of things Dave and I should focus and report on at GenCon next week. (holy crap it’s next week!)
I voted anime just because I’d be interested in what sorts of anime posts you’d actually do, even if that option would never in a million years win this poll.
.-= Wyatt´s last blog ..Might of Eden: Wizards of Eden =-.