Anthology of Roleplaying Game Blogs Sneak Peek

Six weeks ago I announced a new project: The 2008 Anthology of Roleplaying Game Blogs. It was, at the time, a half-baked idea that popped into my head early one Sunday morning after one too many cups of coffee. Of course, I immediately blogged it - and within 48 hours I was honestly thinking "What the hell have I gotten myself into?" I did not, nor do I now, know anything about publishing. Nonetheless, I made a commitment to make this Anthology a reality and blindly put my best foot forward.

My overall goal for the Anthology was simple: To bridge the divide between the RPG blogging community and the rest of the gaming community, both online and off, by creating a printed book that showcased the best talent the RPG blogosphere has to offer. It was a blank slate. A wide open agenda. And certainly one of those "blue sky" ideas.

For the Anthology to be a success, it had OPEN and Community Driven. The later was addressed by having a nomination form for blog readers to submit their favorite blog posts for inclusion into the Anthology. So far, the Anthology has received 91 nominations!!! As for the the former issue - I knew that the process of putting the Anthology together must be a completely transparent process to the rest of the community. To address this I created a working group under Open Game Table, hosted by Google and open to anyone with an opinion to share. This working group has done well in providing me with the guidance I knew I would need (thank you!). For example, Dave Chalker suggested doing some market research so that we might better understand what people would want - so I created a survey to address that issue. To date, we've received responses from 54 people. I've also used it as a lunching pad to find willing volunteers - and created a sign up form for anyone else interested in helping out. So far, thirteen people have offered to lend their time to help move this project forward.

To date, the outpouring of support from the RPG blogging community has been amazing! Call what you will - but I'm simply floored by everyone's enthusiasm!!! The Anthology of Roleplaying Game Blogs has been mentioned on at least a dozen other blogs, and been a featured topic on the Roleplaying Game Blogger Network twice! Hopefully, today I'll be able to tap into your enthusiasm a bit to help this project make the final jump to the next level of development.

You may have some questions - because I've been a bit tight lipped about what has and has not been submitted. You may also be wondering what the results of the survey has been. I'll release the results of the survey next week; the same day as the deadline for nominations (December 1st).

Here is a 'leak' of the RPG blogs (but not the specific 90 posts) that have been nominated thus far.

• A Butterfly Dreaming
• ars ludi
• At-Will
• Beneath The Screen
• Cogito, ergo ludo
• Critical-Hits.com
• d21 Gaming
• Deeper in the game
• Dr. Checkmate's Lair
• Dungeonmastering.com
• Encounter-a-Day
• Exchange of Realities
• Flames Rising
• Game design is about structure
• Gaming Brouhaha
• Gnome Stew
• Grognardia
• Jeff's Gameblog
• Jonathan Drain's d20 Source
• Lamentations of the Flame Princess
• Life and Times of a Philippine Gamer
• Living Dice
• Mad Brew Labs
• Musings of the Chatty DM
• Paper & Plastic
• RPG BLOG II
• RPG Die Hard
• RPGCentric
• Scottenkainenland
• Sham's Grog 'n Blog
• Stargazer's World
  
• Tales of the Rambling Bumblers
• The Art of the Near TPK
• The Core Mechanic
• The Fine Art of the TPK
• The Geek Gazette
• The Seven-Sided Die
• The Silver Key
• The Society of Torch, Pole and Rope
• The Verbing Noun
• Turbulent Thoughts
• Turtles All The Way Down
• Uncle Bear
• XEVENINTI

44 roleplaying game blogs in all - quite a nice selection to be honest. Each nomination that was received was accompanied by a free-form list of tags assigned by the person submitting the nomination. Going over and consolidating this list is a bit of a chore - but here are the top 12 tags associated with the nominations the Anthology has received thus far (and the number of times that tag, or something very similar, has turned up):

• GM Advice 44
• 4E D&D 25
• Campaign Planning 22
• Game Theory 16
• D&D 15
• OD&D 14
• Player Advice 10
• Commentary 9
• History 9
• Homebrew 7
• New Items 6
• Combat Abstraction 5

Of course, D&D dominates the list - but to be fair there are a dozen or so nominations that are for other game systems and many more that are "system independent".

As you can see, the Anthology is coming along strong. It is shaping up to be a very diverse collection of blog posts from the best talent in RPG blogging - the names we know and a few pearls that may have been overlooked as well.

Now comes the part where I ask to tap into your enthusiasm for this project. My goal at the outset was for 100 nominations to be received by December 1st. We are only 10 nominations away! Thus, we can't lose steam now and assume we'll get there. Instead, I'm hoping for a big push as the deadline approaches. But, I can't do it alone. I need your help!

Doing any one, or more than one, of the favors below will be a major boost to the project. Please consider each of them in turn.

• If you are an RPG blog author or reader :
  
1. Nominate one your own posts from your blog for inclusion into the Anthology
2. Link back to this post so that your readers might become aware of this project and share their own opinions and possibly nominate one of your posts as their favorite.
3. Volunteer as an Anthology Reviewer or as an Anthology Artist who is willing to donate their time and effort towards making this project are reality.

Free-copies of the printed Anthology will also be given away to a few lucky winners who submit a nomination, send in a completed survey, or who volunteer to serve as reviewers.

Thank you for taking the time to read this! And thank you for any help you are willing to lend.

May the luck of the dice be with you!