Saturday, January 22, 2011

Sometimes Blogging is Hard

I'm having one of those brain-fart days, where there are a million things I want to write about, but none of them want to sort themselves in my head. So rather than write out a whole huge thing for each of them, I'm just going to throw my ideas out into cyberspace and see if maybe clearing the air does me some good (the hope: I'll be able to focus on the content I want to get out on a weekly basis).

~ As of a study done in 2000* by Wizards of the Coast, roughly 19% of people who play role-playing games once a month are female. That number is abysmal, and I constantly hear men complain that they wish more women were involved in the hobby. Dismissing a woman's valid criticisms of the way women are portrayed in the hobby (by implying that, because she is a feminist, she is probably hideous) is not a great way to go about convincing ladies to game. I used to follow @DreadGazeebo. Now I do not. I do, however, have Go Make Me a Sandwich on my Flipboard now.

~ I want to write up the Bones of a Dead God setting as an actual game world at some point. I have no idea who would want to publish such a thing, and it would need a real name, but I think it's probably the most over-the-top game setting I've ever come up with, and it deserves some love.

~ Does anyone remember when I was writing up an encounter-by-encounter rehash of the old Undermountain campaign? Me neither...

~ Trying to come up with internally consistent obstacles to throw at a group of D&D players has actually been a lot less difficult than I had originally anticipated. The only problem I have at this point is that they level so fucking fast! Good gods, we're half-way through Paragon and have only just now started the major arc of the tier.

~ Magic items were a lot cooler in 3.5 than they are in 4th. What I think I'm going to try and do with the Peculiar Curios column of the blog is bring back some of that awesome; less reliance on the resource, more focus on the weird. I think there's more room in the world for a magical bard-scroll with a song on it that demons find insanely annoying, or arrows that burst into brilliant light and blind whoever they hit or face paint that turns your body into a briar of horrifying poison barbs. Or a fucking crab-tank. There's no wonder in Fourth Edition's magic items.

So that's what I've been thinking about for the past couple of days. Now I'll go see about making you a monster for Monday.

*This is the latest market information I have. If you have a newer report, I'd love to read it.

2 comments:

DreadGazebo said...

For what it's worth, I apologized publicly both on twitter and on a podcast wherein 45 minutes was spent discussing the topic and myself admitting my own douchbebaggery on multiple accounts.

I wrote a huge blog post only to discover some internal self realizations that were all too personal for the internet, it basically amounted to me asking myself more questions than making statements.

Anyway, lesson learned. Lots to think about. I understand where you're coming from, just wanted to touch base here. I enjoy your writings and hope you don't mind if I at least hang around as a reader.

SlurpeeMoney said...

Of course I don't mind. I don't think you're a horrible person, just that you and I have a fundamental difference in philosophy.

Feminism in gaming is a pretty hot-button topic for me. I appreciate that you're reaching out, I'm glad you've learned something from the exchange, and I hope you'll find it in you to champion the cause of gender equality at the gaming table (and, y'know, everywhere else).