rpg blog carnival logo

What if you held a Blog Carnival and no-one came? Until quite late in the most recent carnival, that’s what I thought I might be faced with.

In the wash-up, only one person besides me proved willing to take the challenge.

To be fair, that’s not a total surprise; I knew it was a difficult one when I posed it. It was, after all, filling a slot in the carnival that no-one else was putting their hand up to post – Campaign Mastery’s “real” hosting will come later in the year. But still, that’s a little disappointing.

Perhaps some people didn’t see how what they did when they knew half (or less) as much as they do now could be relevant. But that was the whole point of the challenge – to turn their legacy content into something fresh and relevant.

It is equally likely that some people were worried that showing how good they weren’t, way back when, would be embarrassing. But you have to remember that other GMs are out there right now with less experience than you had at the time. I never forget that some of these look at my work now and judge themselves against that standard, no matter how often they get told not to. But potential embarrassment is still a valid reason to have participated.

And there may well have been people who didn’t want to mess with the integrity of their memories..That’s a good reason, too.

For that matter, how many of us have records going back that far? Nineteen years or more, in my case, more or less in others. Even if you do, these take time and effort to dig out. You could think of this as article prep time – and it’s an observable fact that blog carnival subjects that don’t require such prep attract more responses. So the topic had that going against it, as well.

I’m sure that some people started, despite these motivations not to, only to discover (as I did) that it’s a lot harder than you think to revise past material. The past tends to sprout tendrils of memory, and it’s hard to know where to stop. And those tendrils and past impressions are in constant conflict throughout the updating process. In a way, it’s easier to update something that’s still active within your campaign, because the continuity of past history both restricts the solutions set to something more manageable and gives you multiple starting points.

When you put all of this together, it’s not surprising that there weren’t very many entries, and there’s no blame to be attached for that.

Hopefully numbers will return to normal for the next carnival. And if that’s the case, then all of the above becomes relevant material to the consideration of future carnival topics by GMs putting their hand up. But there will nevertheless be difficult topics from time to time.

About The RPG Blog Alliance

After all, the membership of the RPG Blog Alliance is much larger than the list of those willing to host blog carnivals. That’s a good thing; it means that if a particular subject doesn’t produce any excitement in the GM, there’s scope for someone else to pick up the slack. Nevertheless, a number of blogs that were regular contributors to the carnival seem to have gone quiet lately, as happens from time to time.

That’s why the current ambitions to revitalize the RPG Blog Alliance by Scot over at Of Dice And Dragons are so important. We need to encourage new people to start blogging, we need to encourage new members to become part of the RPGBA, and we need to encourage others to take part in the Blog Carnival.

The RPG B A’s Identity: a sidebar

The problem now faced by the RPG Blog Alliance is an acute version of the one that’s it has struggled with from day one: when you ask “What’s it for?” no-one can give you a clear and succinct answer. It was a loose coalition of websites gathered together because it seemed like a good idea at the time – I think – that has struggled to find a clear identity and succinct mission, ever since.

As a consequence, no-one’s ever been quite sure of how best to support it. So, I’m starting something with this post – you may have noticed the graphic at the top. If you have something to say on the subject, some idea to contribute, use that graphic – and post a link to the article at the RPGBA site. Make it a nexus of discussion about the RPG Blog Alliance itself – no matter how self-referential that might make it.

So, here’s my vision of the answer: The RPGBA should be a resource available to RPG Bloggers and those who read them. Or listen to them; I think Podcasts have a definite place somewhere in the RPGBA.

Readers/Listeners first: There should be some sort of curated list of the most recent blog posts by participating members. The greatest problem any blog writer faces is letting those who might be interested know that there’s something of potential interest to them out there; the RPGBA should be one of the channels by which this expanse is bridged.

For Bloggers: There should be a list of bloggers who are confident enough in their skills and free time that they can be called on for an emergency fill-in guest post at, say, 24 hours notice. There should be a member’s forum where questions about blogging platforms and plug-ins and infrastructure can be raised and discussed. There should be discussions of taxonomy optimization and other aspects of blogging that are irrelevant of genre or approach to gaming or blog subject matter. There should be sites that are good for free clip art to accompany blog posts. I’d like to see a regular exchange for guest posting, too. The Blog Carnival is part of this side of things as well – a stimulant and conversation starter.

Which takes me back to where I was before I interrupted myself…

There should never be difficulty in filling a slot – rather, people should be lining up to host.

Because with such an active membership, participation rates will also rise.

Carnival Roundup

Which brings me back to the Carnival just concluded. There were two submissions:

  • From Campaign Mastery, He Once Was Elves took the Elves, and especially the Elven Prince, from my first AD&D campaign, from way back in 1981, and took a good look at the inadequacies that I wouldn’t tolerate these days – and then reinvented the Prince and his racial profile into an NPC for a modern campaign, named Fenton Cole. The process eliminated those inadequacies and produced a memorable NPC that I wouldn’t hesitate to introduce to any of my contemporary campaigns.
  • From Brent Jans, The Renaissance Gamer, comes Argent of Zeif, a reworking of his favorite PC from around the same time, and who he is looking forward to reintroducing as a character in one of his current campaigns.

By now, the Carnival has moved to Codex Anathema, where the subject is The Art Of Customization. It’s a tantalizing subject by Gonz. There’s customizing of rules, customizing of adventures, customizing of plots, customizing of NPCs… and there is the potential for articles about the processes, and the results, and even the motivations. That’s a lot of scope for participation…


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