Blogs as an ideal method for publishing RPG related stuff

[reason]

I overflow with ideas for stories and gaming but I'll never have the time to go through the tradition publishing path - or even the modern non-traditional path. I don't want to write books and tie everything together and deal with all the hassles that come with publishing PDFs even. But it seems a shame that my ideas will rot unused. So enter blogging - this, for me, is an ideal way of sharing small ideas that anyone can pillage, of recording and worldbuilding in a way that allows me to build up edifices one piece at a time, in the time I have to spare for such things.

I enjoy worldbuilding in a way that allows others to pick up and run with it, illuminating a whole with fragments in such a way that everyone can make what they want of the overall picture while retaining what they like of the flavor.

So I kicked this off when I had a spare day or two to set up the software and whatnot: not much there yet, and the UI will no doubt change, but you get the idea. I'd like to see more people doing this - I think it would be a good thing, an excellent resource as time goes on and it spreads. Take a look:

http://www.principiainfecta.com

Reason

 

[jmucchiello]

Aren't blogs an organizational nightmare though? Everything is stored primarily by time of post. That doesn't make it easy to try to read the material you have posted. There's nowhere to really start. The more disjoint the material becomes the harder it will be to usefully access.

If your goal is simply to get stuff out there. Congrats. But if you also want it to be used.... You might rethink this plan.

 

[Vlos]

You may be thinking more of a WIKI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiWiki (WIKI defined)

This would allow you to post your thoughts and then allow other people to run with them defining/developing them to their fullest.

 

[reason]

You may be thinking more of a WIKI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiWiki (WIKI defined)

This would allow you to post your thoughts and then allow other people to run with them defining/developing them to their fullest.

Also an idea - but I rathered want to keep the untrammeled record as the principle view the world gets.

Reason

 

[mythusmage]

Aren't blogs an organizational nightmare though? Everything is stored primarily by time of post. That doesn't make it easy to try to read the material you have posted. There's nowhere to really start. The more disjoint the material becomes the harder it will be to usefully access.

If your goal is simply to get stuff out there. Congrats. But if you also want it to be used.... You might rethink this plan.

That's why you archive your posts. Besides, you can always take the posts and compile them for inclusion on a standard web site.

 

[reason]

That's why you archive your posts. Besides, you can always take the posts and compile them for inclusion on a standard web site.

Once your info is in there in a nice category hierarchy, you can keep tweaking the output to get what you like - the date sorted front page is just a default. The various archiving methods (e.g. by category) provide a very good system for adding incrementally and still winding up with output that looks nice and sorted. On Movable Type anyhow; other blogging systems may vary - the subcategory system is fairly essential.

I'm aiming for something that looks like book sections/subsections on the various output pages (eventually - nowhere near there yet; it's fairly random right now, but I guess there's something to be said for that too).

Anyhow, the point being that there has to be a whole load of people out there who would produce a lot of useful content if they approached it this way. For every person who has the technical know-how to build a setting/gaming/content website and add to it incrementally, there are 100 with equally good content and no idea how to publish it with the resources and time to hand. So blogs!

Reason

 

[Mystery Man]

I blog, but only for my campaign notes. It's proved handy as a reference for me and my players. I also have a couple private blogs, one is for a homebrew (yes, DnD again) which one of these days I may make public. And another as a personal diary of sorts which isn't ever going to be public.

I use Typepad as my blogger host and I really like them, you have to pay for the service but no ads and I have a place to store files and they continue to add services, templates and such.

 

[reason]

I blog, but only for my campaign notes. It's proved handy as a reference for me and my players.

What I wouldn't have given to be able to do that back in the day - writing the sessions up was always a real time sink, not to mention actually trying to find the relevant piece of information I was after for any given upcoming game.

Reason

 

[reason]

working well so far

Well this experiment is working well so far; it meshes very nicely with my available time and size of "idea buffer" and the software can be tweaked to spit out something that doesn't quite look as though it was written by Burroughs.

Latest updates:
- http://www.principiainfecta.com

Latest updates formed up by section and ordered by topic:
- The Enclave
- Spirits of Rock and Sky
- The City, the Shades
- Artilect Earth

So overall I'm pretty pleased - and I do think that more people should give this a try. I think we'd see a real outpouring of very creative material, as has happened in the wider blog world.

Reason

 

[ssampier]

Interesting idea, but...

Maybe it's just me, but I fail to see how a BLOG is any different from a personal homepage. You could publish your stories with a personal website just as easily as a blog.

I've read a few blogs, but I haven't really found a difference from blogging in 1990's--write a webpage and update it frequently.