What should we put here?

Fez Flip is about two month in on our tiny journey down the well trodden path of geek culture internet blogging. I think things are going pretty well. It is fun to have a place to write about random topics. The constant pressure to keep on writing hasn't been oppressive. Most of our pageviews probably come from me obsessively refreshing the page, but we just started cross posting and providing other ways to get into the blog. I know that consistently providing interesting post that challenge our readers is the best way to grow the audience. So tonight while staring at the blank page I have decided to make a distinctly boring navel gazing post. Who needs readers? Instead of writing something cool, I'm going to write about all the cool things I could have written.

Something thinky: These posts tend to just be whatever I'm thinking about at the moment. I almost wrote about my love hate relationship with narrative rpgs, and I probably still will. These kinds of posts seem the most self indulgent but they are also the best way to get across a particular take on a subject. I worry that what I have to say isn't that interesting, novel or well put together, but making a blog at all implies that I think I have something to say. As to the point of well put together, that is something I need to work on. Rather than writing the night before I need a post up, I really have to start doing a couple of drafts. Look for improvement on this front.

Reviews: Fezzypug and I were talking about this tonight. Reviews are good content and I think it is something that we want to do. We are working on a format, or at least talking about one. So far I think we are leaning toward shorter overview articles without any kind of numerical score. Another thing we agree on is only reviewing things that we like. If we are talking about something it probably means that we liked it. It would be nice to have some kind of gimmick, but well reasoned opinions are more important than being quirky. I think reviews of everything should be on the table, movies, video games, board games, music, rpgs, food, beer, tv, comics, novels. The other benefit of reviews is that they can be cross posted easily and try to pull some eyeballs our way.

Mining: The mining articles I really like. They allow us to talk about things that arent' necessarily great, in positive way. And it helps show our process when it comes to filing away those game ideas. They are also easy to write because they don't require original content. We are just butchering a movie or whatever and laying out the choice cuts of meat. I probably should have done one of those about the directors cut of Nightbreed.

Adrift: Adrift is our series of rpg games that will never be played. I think I want to expand this into game that are beyond my capability of even making. Why stop at rpgs I don't have time to run? Why not talk about ideas for computer games or board games?

PC posts: There is a ton of Gm-centric material out there. I think because most of the people writing content tend to be Gms rather than players, but also because it is much tougher to create good content for players. Players have considerably less control over your average rpg than a gm, but I think this is a subject worth covering.

Now on to some things that I think I might want to do that require a bit more work.

Monthly adventure: I'm thinking it might be fun to try to put out some kind of larger rpg content once a month. This could be a generic (or specific) scenario. Fezzypug mentioned putting together NPC profiles for games. Those could make good individual blog posts, or be bundled into a monthly pdf. Or both! I have a bunch of background material from my short lived Fort Pitt game that I would love to do something with.

Videos: One thing that we talked about tonight was video reviews for RPGs, it doesn’t seem like there are a whole lot of them out there. RPGS are a bit tougher for video reviews in the sense that they don't have as much to show. Board games have bits, movies have trailers, but an rpg book might just be a few pieces of art. So I was thinking that an rpg review really needs a quick bit of actual play to spice it up. Is it possible to effectively sum up an rpg in 5 minutes of game play? I wouldn't want it to go longer than that. The big drawback I see to this is it works against my other big plan.

Samurai game dev posts: I've been working on this samurai western game for a while now, and it seems mostly in a playable form. What I need to do now is playtest the hell out of it. There are a ton of moving parts to it and I know for sure it needs to be streamlined. What aspects of a game to keep and what to cut can only really be figured out by contact with the player characters. There are plenty of things to write about it for sure. As my friends can attest I will talk about this game to no end. This is really the project I should be dedicating my time to, but procrastination reigns supreme.

So if you are one of our 3 readers, what kinds of posts do you like? What do you want to see more of? What don't you like?