When Warren first had the idea of an Appendix N blog bandwagon, I thought I'd skip it. His Majesty the Worm has an Appendix N section (Dungeon Meshi! House of Orr! Pornography!). But something funny happened that made me realize: "This isn't about the Worm. This is about Me."
A little story
After college, I was working my first job and playing a lot of RPGs. 4E had come out, and ever the conformist, I swore my fealty to the Pathfinder banner during the schism. I wrote a few third-party Pathfinder books for Purple Duck for pocket change. I loved doing it! I was making money (however small) on RPGs.
Yesterday, I was doing a little writing exercise and had a dim memory of one of the books I wrote called The Heroes of the Fenian Triarchy. I dug the PDF out and looked at it. I didn't recognize it as my own writing. Legalistic game jargon. Long lists of the types of services you can expect in fantasy villages. But hey, that's the deal with Pathfinder.
What happened? What gave me my current RPG tastes? What gave me my current RPG ethos? What gave me my current RPG aesthetic?
Blogs.
Blogs that touched me
After college, I was working my first job and playing a lot of RPGs. One of the people I played Pathfinder with was always integrating older editions of D&D into his games. I told him I preferred Pathfinder. "Old D&D has no rules for, like, disarming." He told me that disarming was always part of the game--but it didn't need that much page space and players didn't need a feat to do it. If the players did something the core rules didn't cover, the core rules gave the GM the template for how to handle anything else the players wanted to do. He added me to his circle on Google Plus. And boy howdy, I started reading things.
Here is my list of inspirational blogs that changed the way that I thought about games circa ~2013. Here is a list of blogs I wish I could be like.
Goblinpunch
What blog list would be complete without one of the most prolific, inventive, and radical blogs? When Arnold has the demon on his back, he posts like a madman. And what a variety of ideas! He both articulates RPG theory (Comprehensive Guide to Secret Doors), cool rules (Brute Rider & Rideable Brute), and wild flavor (The State Religion in Centerra). A perfect mix of great ideas.
Last Gast Grimoire
The aesthetics of Last Gasp Grimoire have never been surpassed, even though it is one of the Blog Ruins now. Has anyone ever had a better list of starting equipment? Has anyone written a weirder city generator?
And don't forget, this was the origin of the Mausritter cut&paste encumbrance system.
Goatman's Goblet
Dolmenwood was a big inspiration for me. It wasn't exactly Tolkienesque classic fantasy, but it wasn't the fantasy hodgepodge elfkissers of modern D&D either. Both Gavin Norman and Greg Gorgonmilk had blogs back in the day. But Greg was chased off of the internet and Gavin went ultra-professional. In the interest to linking to a blog (even a ruin), Brian's Goatman's Goblet was part of a trilogy of blogs designing in a certain Weird Old England aesthetic that made me want to leave the Pathfinder fantasy schlock behind. No tieflings, only gnomes!
Necropraxis
Necropraxis stands out in my mind as one of the most influential blogs for me, but when I went to go select some favorite blog posts, I had a hard time thinking of one single "mindfuck" post. And maybe that's because Brendan was just so prolific. Like Arnold, the man could post. He addressed so many of the classic "OSR problems": thief skills, simple stunts (no need for feats to disarm!), carousing, dungeon keying, the ethos of play, etc. Flipping through his blog, this is what it was like back then. There were ideas, and people were postin'.
Wonder & Wickedness is one of the core published OSR texts, enormously influential on me (no spell levels! every spell should be equally useful! magic should be weird!). Necropraxis is a bit of a blog ruin, but Brendan is still kicking around.
Coins and Scrolls
Another non-surprise; Skerples is one of the most popular OSR bloggers. (Although released after the OSR had finally died once and for all, Skerples also released one of the core published OSR texts, The Monster Overhaul.) He brought a grounded sense of history and non-fiction to the table that introduced me to some sincerely interesting ideas. His series on the Iron Gates setting remains my OSR white whale--I'd kill to have this campaign setting complete. The Monster Menu-All proves that the OSR scene was making Dungeon Meshi games back before it was cool. And, of course, I can't tell you how many times I've run Tomb of the Serpent King.
Ten Foot Polemic
For whatever reason, there was something in Ten Foot Polemic that scratched an itch in my brain. There was a playfulness combined with the DIY D&D ethos that I really enjoyed. James's house rules became my house rules for a time. I loved his take on elves having a heartspell. Plus, he had this wonderful line in the post about his setting's religion:
The Termaxians are a weird bunch. They believe that the Apocalypse happened five hundred years ago when the Eris the Ninth God fell from heaven and became Queen Satan. Soon after, the prophet Terms Termax fused with the spirit of Jesus to form the entity called Maximum Godhead Hyper-Jesus and descended into Hell to defeat Queen Satan forevermore.
Last but not lease, P Stu is one of the weirdest, biggest brains in the blogosphere. He creates art. Art is the essence of surprise. And man, I tell you, False Machine has some surprises in it--things I never would have thought of in a million years. Genuinely interesting, new ideas. I can't imagine how I could use all of them at the gaming table, but all of them are new and interesting: from the deRRo (hell, everything in Veins, another ur-text), to goose-gold for children, the world of 100 wonders, what happens when you sleep in dungeons, and so on.
Anyway!
As evidenced by the fact that I'm joining in a blog bandwagon that has just so many participants, blogs are still going strong. The hivemind is still chattering away. We are all still trading weird ideas with each other. Who knows what will come out of this alzabo word soup?
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