Well, we’ve had a break in the rain here, and it’s been gorgeous.
On the gaming front I’ve finished my wire fencing, and also put together some 4Ground barbed wire barricades. The fencing has turned out okay, but when I need more I’ll be building them a bit differently. I’ll probably use skewers in MDF as balsa is just too flimsy. I’m happy enough with them, considering the time and energy involved but they’ll be touched up sometime.
I’ve also noticed that my shortening RPG blog list on this site is no aberration. Monsters and Manuals, a great RPG blog, has decided to stop blogging. Dungeon of Signs (who created some great adventures) did so about a year ago. Many of the blogs that I enjoyed in the OSR community (a community centered around the return to an older style of play or “Old School Renaissance” in RPGs) seem to be going dark. Now, I know that people say that 10 years is the lifespan of an average blog, but as blogging is relatively new, I’m not sure how much I trust that data set. I think it in the OSR world, it has more to do with acrimonious debate and incivility. The debate tends to be about things ranging from gender-roles in game worlds to what Saint Gygax wrote (seriously, to some people everything in the first editions is sacrosanct). There seems to be increasing polarity, and that is being coupled with RPG blogs being used less to share interesting ideas in the hobby and more to reinforce how others are having BADWRONGFUN and that they alone hold the answer to how to have fun as is proper.
Personally, I’ve avoided reading blogs that focus on debate, choosing to frequent blogs that share an interesting take on a particular narrative or rules situation, or neat adventure hooks and so on. Monsters and Manuals had the great idea of a world that rotates slowly and nights last hundreds of years. The edges of darkness would be full of strife with creatures from the darkness running rampant while nomadic cultures would rediscover old ruins when they once again returned to the light. Great stuff and really thought provoking. So, it’s sad to see blogs that come up with gems that you can chew on go dark. It’s also sad to see people lose faith in each other and merely use the Internet as a medium for attack and not discourse or support.
The online wargaming community certainly has its share of characters and opinions, but in my limited experience, it seems to be far more about sharing the joy of the hobby than to bash others. I think that’s why the list of wargaming blogs I’m following is steadily increasing (and if you have blog suggestion, please pass it on).
So, if you’re feeling offended when you read a blog post and want to write something nasty, think twice. Instead, keep on gaming and sharing stories, and pictures and your crazy project ideas. I know my lead pile needs more reasons to keep growing.
Now, back to the rain…