minor trivia

So my back end site stats tell me this is the 3,000th post published here at the blogspot version of the Gameblog.  (I did 300 posts on the first version of the blog, begun in February 2004 and hosted by Tripod.)  Other stats stuff I find vaguely interesting:

Current Followers: 612
Hits/Day: Between 1,000 and 2,000 typically
Published comments: 19,586
Total hits since I started keeping track: 1,954,265

Howdy, Massachusetts! Howdy, France!

I wasn't expecting to see either place show up so prominently in this graph of links to the ol' Gameblog.

I'm slightly disappointed in Wisconsin and Minnesota right now. I expected to see them on the first pie.

Where's my blog, fool?

Big thanks to everyone who checked up on me when they found this blog no longer existed.  I've been mostly offline the last week or so with a friend visiting from out of town.  At some point a robot at google detected some sort of suspicious activity involving both my blog and my gmail account, putting the kibosh on both.  Fortunately Mike Shorten sent me a text message alerting me to the problem.

Time to get serious about archiving this stuff offline...

attention all OSR bloggers: do this now please

Matthew over at Rended Press found a third party way to make blogposts into print friendly PDFs.  Go here for the details.  Took me like a minute and a half to get this up and running.  Don't miss the extra advice in the right hand column for blogger and wordpress specifics.

Matthew, here's that gold star I mentioned on your blog:

a legitimate journalistic outlet?

So it looks like I have been cleared for a press pass for the next GenCon Indy. Which is pretty funny, given the normal levity to gravity ratio around here. My plan is to visit for one day (probably Saturday) and try to come up with a little report for all the folks who wish they could go but can't. I'll bring this up again as we get closer to the con, but I just wanted to put this idea in everyone's head: if there's something you specifically want me to try to get info about let me know in a comment here or via email (jrients, gmail, etc, etc.).  Right now I don't have a plan beyond hitting up the OSR Group booth and seeing if Goodman Games has mock-ups of the DCCrpg.

I will try to suppress the urge to wear a fedora with a little card in the band labeled "PRESS" and refer to myself as Scoops Rients.

search for hidden treasure

So old school blogger Cyclopeatron has gotten into this groove where every month he posts lists of the most-followed and fastest-growing OSR bloggers.  His data is limited to blogger.com accounts, but it's still interesting info.  You can see his March numbers here and here.  I'll straight up admit that I like to check his numbers to see if I have a chance of catching up with Jamie Mal or Zak.  Grognardia really ought to get some sort of shiny award for being number one on the list without pictures of naked ladies, but DnD With Porn Stars clearly offers an amazing amount of high quality non-naked-lady content as well.

Anyhoo, I just wanted to point out something that we should all be doing with Cyclopeatron's posts.  Every blogger started out with zero regular readers, therefore being on the bottom of Cyclopeatron's lists doesn't necessarily have anything to do with quality.  So do yourself a favor and poke around the bottom quarter or so of the entries.  If you see something you like, let the writer know.  And if you have a blog of your own, share a link.  If the stuff there looks good but there haven't been any updates in a while, leave a comment (or send an email if an addy is handy on the blog) saying something like "Just found you blog and I like it.  Please post some more!"  The distributed metamind of the OSR will only improve by these efforts.  And you just may be the person who discovers the next great talent in the scene.

self-indulgent meta-update

Howdy, folks!

New posts have dropped off around here and I thought I'd let all y'all know why.  I just got accepted into grad school, which at least initially I am going to attend part time while working full time.  It has been almost 15 years since I participated in the ritual appreciation of Important Literature™ as observed in the Orthodox Church of Academia, so I'm trying to bone up on my main man John Milton before class starts in January.  I still plan on continuing with my game group, but I'm not sure if I'll have time enough to do that and yammer about gaming on the internet.  Going back to school may not turn out to be the life-altering disruption that it seems right on the cusp of the operation, but I wanted to make sure that anyone who cared was in the loop.

Wish me luck.

an announcement

After serious consideration I have decided that next Saturday will be the last public observance of Shatnerday here on the ol' Gameblog. The following week I will begin a new ridiculous weekly observance featuring a different pop-culture icon. Going forward, my plan is to change subjects on a yearly basis.

Please try not to cry. You know, for the children's sake.

egotistical self-referential post #2,437

All GMs should also read Jeff Rients "How to Awesome-Up Your Players", I loved Jeff's writing style and his premise that "Your players are rock stars and they're here to rock your house" is a dandy one.

--Daniel Donahoo's Wired review of the Open Game Table: The Anthology of RPG Blogs, volume 1.

Between the Hackmaster forum hate-on, the Chatty DM all but tattooing the article on his chest, and this review I continue to be utterly baffled by the amount of attention that particular post has drawn. Don't get me wrong: It's extremely gratifying that folks are reading the article and having such visceral reactions to it. But it seems like a lot of people take that piece way more seriously than I do.