Do You Blog?

[Umbran]

Piratecat gave a warning about being insulting. Herschel here apparently didn't get the message, and won't be continuing in the conversation.

If you really feel the need to belittle others, take it elsewhere, please.

 

[Frost]

What would be a good place to start one's first Blog?
Here on EN world?
Blogger?
livejournal?
anywhere else?

I checked out that RPGbloggers and it seems that they're not accepting any applications at the moment.
What are your experiences with the blog hosts you have used?

Check back from time to time with RPGBloggers.

I use Blogger because it is insanely easy to use. As someone else mentioned, you can use Live Writer with it, which I do some times if I want to caption a photo (via a "Polaroid" add-on).

I don't have experience with any of the others. I could be wrong, but I get the impression that unless folks are ENWorlders themselves, they might have difficulty locating your blog if you put it here.

 

[FreeXenon]

I do most of my blogging here (www.ArionsHome.com), but it is not at all gaming related.

I also have a Web Dev blog (www.FreeXenon.com)which I do not use as much.

 

[davethegame]

What would be a good place to start one's first Blog?
Here on EN world?
Blogger?
livejournal?
anywhere else?

I checked out that RPGbloggers and it seems that they're not accepting any applications at the moment.
What are your experiences with the blog hosts you have used?

RPG Bloggers isn't a host- it's just a way to connect existing bloggers. And they will open up applications again in the near future.

Blogger is a very good and easy start (and it's where I got mine), though I'm a huge Wordpress fanboy. I'd definitely recommend WP if you want to get into it seriously.

ENWorld's system has a lot of advantages too, though (as we discovered) it unfortunately doesn't play nice with RPGBloggers' system.

 

[Orius]

I don't blog. If I want to discuss hobbies and interests, I just hang around message boards. And I'm not sure anyone really cares about my various political/moral/social views, which would be likely drowned out in a sea of other blogs anyway. Doesn't help my views would likely offend some most people anyway. Sometimes I feel a desire to use a blog to persuade others and maybe change the world (easy for me to do with my dump stat Charisma score ), but I don't really believe I'd get a big audience unless I was blogging professionally.

What would be a good place to start one's first Blog?
Here on EN world?
Blogger?
livejournal?
anywhere else?

I suppose it depends on what you want to blog and what sort of audience you want to reach.

 

[NiTessine]

I've got a gaming blog, too. It's now a bit over two years old, and called Worlds in a Handful of Dice. I discuss gaming, occasionally my work on Ropecon, whatever I consider interesting at the moment. There's the occasional review, and posts about new games I've tried. There's also the series of posts about a university course on roleplaying games I took last year.

There's now been a lull in updates, with me wrapping up schoolwork for the spring, but the pace ought to pick up again once my summer games get underway.

 

[Abraxas]

I neither blog nor read blogs - I have no desire to spend that much time on the computer. I only post occasionally here - typically only when I have a rpg question that someone else may be able to help with or on something that humors me. This thread humored me tonight.

I don't use the computer to converse to make friends - I dislike social networking sites intensely and blogs strike me as being social networking tools - I require direct interaction with people to actually call them friends and I want no followers.

Of course there are always exceptions - I very briefly read Wulf's blog because I had a question regarding Trailblazer - but I haven't been back since.

I have no idea when any of the blogs here update because I go directly to the forums when I access the site.

 

[Maggan]

it's the search for validation.

I readily admit that it is a search for validation, like so many other things I do in life. It's difficult to forgo the notion that I really would like people to like what I do in life, be it blog, or hold a lecture, or design a web site, or write a comic script.

And if people wouldn't like what I'm doing and I wouldn't receive that validation, I most certainly wouldn't continue doing it. Much like posting on EN World is to me. I like when people comment on my posts, I like when I get XP, I like it if people say "that's a good point". It is on some level all about validation of me and the things I have to share.

And that's the point: sharing.

This hobby has been about sharing since the beginning. Sharing new rules, adventures, advice, interpretations, inspirations and so on.

Some of that has been in the form of magazines like Dungeon, Dragon, White Dwarf, Challenge and Arcane. Some through fanzines like Alarums&Excursions, some through hosting games at conventions, some through organising and participating in gaming groups at school, writing letters and so on so forth.

Blogs are just another way of sharing information that is useful to other gamers, the same kind of information that we have been sharing since the beginning of our hobby.

And I think that urge to share is a stronger motivation than pure validation, at least in my experience.

And the fact that there is so many cool things being created outside of the beaten track that the publishers follow, is one of the main reasons this hobby is so captivating to me. And the power of the internet to enable this sharing, through various means of self-publishing (or vanity press if you like) is in my eyes one of the best developments our hobby has adapted the last 10 years.

Cheers!

/M

 

[Dr. Harry]

My Astronomy Blog

I don't have a gaming blog, but I do have a blog on backyard astronomy that doesn't assume that the reader:

* Has a large telescope
* Gets to observe far away from city lights
* has been doing this for thirty years, like I have

 

[Dr. Harry]

I think you are making a big mistake equating all blogs with intense outpourings of personal emotions.


/M

Right. It's not so much personal emotion as personal enthusiam. Some people's personal enthusiam is taken up by themselves, but all the blogs that I've taken the time to look at have been about hobbies, vocations, causes, etc.

Harry