Official ICE Forums
Iron Crown Enterprises => ICE News and Discussion => Topic started by: Inez Hull on October 31, 2014, 05:20:14 AM
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Even though Rolemaster is my RPG of choice I find myself spending a lot of time cruising OSR/DIY D&D blogs due to there being such an active community generating a lot of gameable content. I'm wondering if anyone can recommend some blogs or websites with a Rolemaster focus. In aware of the ICE webring however many if the sites there are old and inactive
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Have you checked out the guild companion?
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Not recently but I was a subscriber to their old monthly newsletter which often had some great content. I wasn't aware it was all that active now, what with them publishing ICE material and all that!
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In fact I think I imagined that and simply that I regularly checked the site in the past
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You can check out the discussion on the latest issue http://www.ironcrown.com/ICEforums/index.php?topic=15434.0 (http://www.ironcrown.com/ICEforums/index.php?topic=15434.0)
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Have you checked out the Iron Crown blog? http://ironcrown.com/iron-crown-enterprises-blog/ (http://ironcrown.com/iron-crown-enterprises-blog/)
It doesn't have that much 'gameable' content on it, but I want to start moving it in that direction.
What sort of things would you (or anyone else) be looking for? It won't happen over night but it is definitely on my list of things to do.
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The OSR / DIY D&D scene has a number of blogs regularly posting fleshed out house rules, campaign generation tools, small adventures and maps. There's enough stuff to run whole campaigns off. Obviously there's much more people playing D&D, even "retro" versions, and I'm not expecting the same from Rolemaster players. Perhaps it's the fact that a whole bunch of people are blogging content arising from or developed for there active games. Hit a certain critical mass and it starts to inform itself. I'm looking to start a blog which will contain some Rolemaster content and I'm keen to see what others are doing and link to other sites once things get rolling. A whole lot of rules discussion happens on these boards, perhaps what I'm looking for is where do people actually put there money where there mouth is and post developed material rather than just ideas. That possibly sounds critical and it isn't intended to, I think I'm just mourning that Rolemaster doesn't have the same "scene" around it as DIY D&D. I think Rolemaster could attract a lot of interest in the old school crowd and I'd like to be taking a part in trying to make those links
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To some extent, I think the problem is feedback. We have a section in the forums for people to post about their own worlds and settings, but the number of responses is low. There's surprisingly little response to Guild Companion articles, which include Peter Mork writing about his own setting.
I'm not sure of the cause. It's got to be at least partly that we tend to make our own settings, and therefore don't need anyone else's. But I think more engagement would encourage more content. Certainly the RMU forums shows that there are enough people with opinions on the forum to maintain good discussions.
None of which is intended to discourage you from contributing your own work, whether on the forums, in the Guild Companion, or in a blog... I do suggest that if you use a blog, you also post about it on the forums, if only to drive traffic.
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Just my personal guessimate...
...but I suspect a large number of RM users are using their own home-brew world or a 'professionally' published world that they've been using for a long time. As a result they really don't pay much attention to other peoples creations and/or only pay any real attention to a the published world that they've been using.
Again, just my opinion, but existing RM users tend not to be the norm. We tend to be more self sufficient. For example, I'll use my own settings. I'll steal things from other settings or books, but I won't use them as wholesale. So I don't really comment much on other worlds. I like Robert Defendi's setting and I like the Shadow World setting, but I'm not going to use them, only steal bits and pieces from them.
But you have new gamers or younger generations that are probably more likely to buy in to a pre-generated setting... hence you'll see more discussion about them elsewhere.
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I also think that the population here specifically are all GMs with active games and players. They are disinclined to publish material that will effectively be spoilers for their own players.
If on the other hand a GM has finished a campaign and could share it they are more likely to be planning and developing the next.
I am running a game right now that is based upon old style D20 modules which I am converting over and this is the first time I have used someone elses material since I first discovered MERP and bought the settings modules.
I suspect that because RM characters are very much hand crafted, our end of level bosses so to speak are also hand crafted to be exactly the sort of villain we want them to be that lends itself to attracting the sort of GM that likes to build everything themselves.
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So does this mean we are more interested in the mechanics than the ideas alone? E.g. I might not use your race, but I might be interested in how you assigned costs etc so I can adapt it more easily. I'm less interested in your theory of magic, and more interested in the spell lists and items that I can fit to my magic theory. Etc.
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So does this mean we are more interested in the mechanics than the ideas alone? E.g. I might not use your race, but I might be interested in how you assigned costs etc so I can adapt it more easily. I'm less interested in your theory of magic, and more interested in the spell lists and items that I can fit to my magic theory. Etc.
Neither and both, surely? Depending on who you are, what you just read and what you are looking for?
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While "it varies" is probably a true answer, I am wondering what will attract the most interest, and inspire the most discussion? Given that the current material does not inspire as much discussion as some would like.
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I was thinking about this this morning. If I were to write a rolemaster blog what would I write about and the answer is I don't know. I have two half finished guild companion articles what I intended to have finished two months ago so that doesn't bode well and they both relate to material that has spun off from the campaign I am running. I didn't give myself a hard deadline for writing them until I sounded out my players to see if they used these forums, which they don't, and I wanted to run the sessions with them before I published anything they would not know.
I am about to embark on my first ever foray into pbp rolemaster but the GM who does use these forums doesn't want us to share anything about our adventures as each player is a solo character at present. That would be a potentially interesting topic and ongoing making it prime blog material but is also a non starter out of respect for the GM.
I have never played in two games with the same rules for example our GM has made stunned maneurver far more powerful but you can only parry with the 'skill' element of your OB not your level bonus, stat or item elements and all minuses are applied as a percentage to your skill bonus not the total skill. That is a bit of mixed bag of house rules but fighters now wade through fights mostly ingoring stun from criticals and the minuses from torn muscles and tendons etc.
Balancing a fight for that game is a totally different thing to my game where I generally try to stick fairly closesly to the RM2 rules. My house rules tend to be about streamlining play and speeding up combat. Another GM we have all played with is a stickler for absolute accuracy and if there was a combat with 4 PCs 10 npc armed escorts and 50 orcs he would roll every single attack against every single orc and npc and you could make the tea and drink it between attacks.
I would be reticent to publish adventures or even wholely developed NPCs for another persons game.
So I really do not know what I would blog about if I was put on the spot.
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Another issue is whether just because I found it interesting woud anyone else find it so? I fear the answer is probably not.
If I was really put on the spot to produce regular content for something like a blog or the guild companion then I would probably start by taking a town and breaking it down into minute detail so one month you introduce the town guards, who they are, their stats and their relationships to each other and other town residents. The next month you look at the market place and the traders there. Who deals in stolen goods, who is paying off the guard to look the other way, who has contacts with the thieves or the magical community. The third month you look at the magic users in the town, who has a dark side, who likes to help the guard with investigations and who is amenable to helping adventurers. The idea falls down though when you hit the churches as religion varies so much from game to game and world to world. A town in Gondor will be worshipping in a totally different way to one in Emer.
I think I could develop a town 'live' like that bit by bit over the months, producing NPC descriptions and stats for well over a year and the town could be used by most people or an NPC lifted out to be used as needed. One could drill down to floor plans of guild buildings or even notable residents homes or detail every single member of the thieves guild in a sort of specialised Heroes & Rogues. I could easily spend a year just building a thieves guild, their appartments and the members.
The question is, would it interest anybody but myself and why spend so much creative effort to create something I then cannot use as all my players will know that the +50 sword of beasty slaying is behind the umbrella stand.
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What I look for is materials I can drop into my own setting using RMSS (subject to the usual individual modification). So I don't give a hoot about mechanics or game rules. I know what system I want to use and I have my own setting.
The first thing I want? Good maps. Buildings and towns/cities mainly or smaller area/region maps that can be dropped into my own world without disruption. I own large vinyl maps of Ptolus, Neverwinter, one (of a name I can't remember) that is a round city in a desert setting and a heavy paper version postermap of Ankh-morpork. I have the Eidolon box set from Shadow World. Plus I have loads of JPG format maps. I have a large Helms Deep map file I need to get printed someday.
The second thing? Localized plot ideas (that are not world impacting or can be ignored if they are) and maybe some NPC's related specifically to those plot ideas. I don't need details on the local shopkeeper unless he's relevant to the plot.
The second thing? Graphic representations (artwork) is nice, but not required.
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I quite like having shopkeepers detailed out. If I am put on the spot all of a sudden the world gets too many 'Bobs' and 'Burts'. If the players are going to visiting a town often or even based there then they can strike up relationships with some shopkeepers they visit often as well as the landlords of taverns. If they develop an afinity with a particular normal person then you can always put that person in the firing line to add a little twist to an otherwise run of the mill fight or have them play some other significant role even if it is just vouching for the PCs good character to the guard. If everyone is as equally well detailed then the players cannot identify the important characters just because they have personnalities. "You walk into the bar, there are 15 or 20 people of no consequence and an evil looking guy with a leather waistcoat, riding chaps and a scimitar on his weapon belt."
It feels like all my players will visit every bookseller they get wind of as well as fletchers, blacksmiths, they use stables, visit taverns and try and use serving girls. They normally try and talk to gate guards either when entering a town or if they get near any castle or defended property. I generally do not have 'magic shops' but they will always try and find herbalists and apothacaries and they also use messanger boys or runners.
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Peter R I think the key is just to write what you find interesting and useful and a readership will develop (or not!) based on that.
For me I find that there is already plenty of non Rolemaster resources out there for generating non specific campaign content such as npc motivations, tavern names, wandering encounters, city generators etc. Whilst things being statted out for Rolemaster helps, as observed above any two Rolemaster games may vary considerably in power level.
Personally I'm more interested in house rules that have been tested in game and people then putting their observations out there. Kinda like the guild companion actually, I guess i just wish there was more of it!
If/when I get my blog up I aim to post a mix of D&D and RM stuff. On the RM side I'll look to discuss my thoughts in detail on some of the sacred cows of RM and how they could be addressed differently.
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That is all true enough, I manage a financial services blog and it took us two years to build up a readership of just 1,000 readers a month and that is on a blog hosted on a 2million visitors a year established site on the same topic.
Most blogs fail because the blogger runs out of ideas and in the early days they get very little feedback so it can feel like you are talking just to yourself.
I think RM suffers because the userbase is not massive but that userbase is fragmented between half a dozen rule sets that are not entirely compatible. Putting in the stats for RM is one a do it once and forget effort. I certainly do not own all the rules in all the flavours and I do not even have all the rulebooks in my preferred flavour of RM2. As a group we sort of stopped buying things after the core rules and the companions. There seem to be a lot of other books that I have never seen. At our last session we ended up discussing the Spell Users Companion but none of us owned it. There was a optional rule that appartently lives in that book that a player wanted to use. If it is available in pdf I may consider buying it.
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We were debating this internally in spurts, and I have a basic question - why a blog? Why not the forums? just start a topic when you do have a creative idea and get the juices flowing there. Look, we don't have a large user base, so I would be worried we are sending people to multiple sites when it can all be hosted here in a "one-stop-shop". we have the ability to post any fan generated material and social media it so people know it exists as long as we are notified. Hence I am very reluctant to go to a blog much beyond the one Colin runs for news-like notifications and the occasional musing. But...
What do you all think? ???
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Hand in hand with that, if people wish to have blogs off-site to maintain clear independence from ICE that is great also - feel free to highlight them to us and we'll help promote them for you here in the forums and in our social media efforts.
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I personally would agree with you.
Blogs are different beasts to forums though. With a blog it is all about getting an insight to the mind or world of the blogger. At the same time through the comments system the blog gives the reader access to the writer. The audience comment on the content, give feedback and interact with the writer and the content. The blog is also a continuum whereas a forum is discrete topics.
Finally the person who started this topic was looking for other blogs or sites to use in addition to these forums.
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The forums are a great way of workshopping ideas. However I don't think they are so great for presenting longer or finished off work. A blog is a good format for reading a single piece of work and digesting if on its merits, whereas when reading ideas on a messageboard I think folks start formulating their own ideas and response before they have even go shed reading!
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Are the things you're thinking of possibly appropriate for publication on the Guild Companion?
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If I can find the time to put into them at least one probably is
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Or turn that around, would the guild companion be better presented as a blog?
That idea has a certain amount of merit at first glance. I haven't thought this through overly but...
- using services such as networkedblogs every update to the guild companion could be automatically shared to ICEs facebook and other soial media platforms
- the discussions on these forums about each issue would become the comments under each article or column. This would show new arrivales at the companion from search engines that the companion was a live and vibrant publication
- the guild companion is a standalone data silo whereas bloggers are part of a large and active community and guest blogging is desirble and commonplace. The guild companion could actively welcome contributions from other industry figures and the blog is the natural 21st century media for such publications
- services such as pubsubhubub are easily integrated into blogs and instantly tell the search engines when a new article is published. This improves google rankings (they call it the freshness bonus) which could then in turn bring new gamers into rolemaster.
Moving from site to blog is relatively easy as only new content would be required to be in the blog format so there is no cnversion required. You would be moving some activity from here to the blog but the guild companion discussions do not even seem to be mainstream even on here. They rarely if ever reach two or three pages of discussion.
Forums are good, blogs can be good, standalone static sites are not so good these days.
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Yeah you could be onto something. The whole monthly newsletter thing tends to keep traffic away except for when there's an expected update
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Making the Guild Companion a blog is certainly a good idea. Give the host of templates currently availbale for blogging platforms (e.g. Wordpress) you can make it look really fancy without too much effort.
That is also the reason why I wouldn't prefer posting material on this forum. There too many limitations in presentation and stuff tends to get lost in a forum. (just look at how many times similar questions are posted on forums)
But you can always go for the AND option...the good news about digital is that it's easy to copy 8) so post it on a blog, post it here, post in the GC, on facebook...wherever
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On a side note, does anyone know what the traffic potential is of a RM or HARP related blog? Assuming it has really good material of course.
Does the GC keep track of (and publicly share) its traffic to the magazine?
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On a real geeky technical point there is an issue with duplicating digital content in multiple locations that require one version to be specifically identified as the canonical version from which all others are duplicates and the duplicates should declare the url of the canonical version inthe page meta data.
This is easy enough to do but does add a straw to the camels back for the technician who is acting as curator for ICE.
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Well, that's what technicians are for ;)
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Very true, I just wanted to make the point that just reproducing content here, there and everywhere is possible but not necessarly a ood idea unless your infrastructure is set up for it.
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Just some thoughts to keep in mind from my personal opinions...
The Guild Companion, Guild Companion Publications and Aurigas Aldebaron LLC are all separate legal entities.
AA allows GCP to use the IronCrown web pages because GCP has a license to produce AA owned IP products.
TGC is separate, and intentionally so. TGC does at times share materials that are not ICE related.
A few comments about blogs... Some bloggers do a great job. They put in the time and energy to continue to add content, and make a solid effort to provide quality material every time. That is truly rare though as most individuals start with grand aspirations, and then fizzle out after a few posts.
Blogging on ICE website... Bad idea. It immediately draws into question the objectivity of the blogger, and adds extra work for ICE personnel to have to monitor and manage. We already get enough undesired spam hitting the forums. Trying to monitor blogs and the comments to them would be a real pain.
Blogging at TGC... Sounds like a good idea, though there is something to be said for the quality editing work that the folks at TGC do - and the monthly aspect gives you a little more volume rather than going to the site for each individual article. I guess as long as they use the push out notification process, they could move away from monthly and simply go to as ready - but that's a TGC discussion and I'll leave it to them to figure out what works best.
Blogging on the internet... Best solution. If there are people that want to blog, do it. Tell us about your blog and provided you don't spend your time trashing ICE, we'll probably help you out in promoting it - including links from Facebook, forums, or potentially even our newsletter.
As for the comment about formatting and losing stuff on the forums... The search function works pretty well, and with attachments you can do just about any kind of formatting you want, but I do understand it's not the same as working on many other programs.
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A few comments about blogs... Some bloggers do a great job. They put in the time and energy to continue to add content, and make a solid effort to provide quality material every time. That is truly rare though as most individuals start with grand aspirations, and then fizzle out after a few posts.
Blogging on ICE website... Bad idea. It immediately draws into question the objectivity of the blogger, and adds extra work for ICE personnel to have to monitor and manage. We already get enough undesired spam hitting the forums. Trying to monitor blogs and the comments to them would be a real pain.
Blogging at TGC... Sounds like a good idea, though there is something to be said for the quality editing work that the folks at TGC do - and the monthly aspect gives you a little more volume rather than going to the site for each individual article. I guess as long as they use the push out notification process, they could move away from monthly and simply go to as ready - but that's a TGC discussion and I'll leave it to them to figure out what works best.
Blogging on the internet... Best solution. If there are people that want to blog, do it. Tell us about your blog and provided you don't spend your time trashing ICE, we'll probably help you out in promoting it - including links from Facebook, forums, or potentially even our newsletter.
As for the comment about formatting and losing stuff on the forums... The search function works pretty well, and with attachments you can do just about any kind of formatting you want, but I do understand it's not the same as working on many other programs.
Your first quoted point above is my experience and is a point I made earlier. The point about moving away from the monthly format to the go as ready I disagree with. The best (for which read most successful) blogs actually have a formal publication cycle so that readers know when and how frequently to return. They are more like columnists in a newspaper. If you regularly buy a paper you will know that certain columnist will be in there on particular days of the week. That does not mean that every article has to be published on the same day and you can have a rolling monthly output with particular articles put out on particular days of the month. As a rule I would suggest steering clear of go as ready.
The ICE blog, the only thing I would suggest goes on there would be the directors briefing and details of new product launches, requests for play testers and so on. It could be treated as a branded news and discussion channel. The benefits you guys would have to weigh up.
I certainly agree wth the last two points.
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A few comments about blogs... Some bloggers do a great job. They put in the time and energy to continue to add content, and make a solid effort to provide quality material every time. That is truly rare though as most individuals start with grand aspirations, and then fizzle out after a few posts.
That is so very true...been there and its what keeps me from blogging for the time being...the ambition is there though...I just have to find a modus operandi so I know I'll be able to generate content on a regular basis. Otherwise, why bother?
...and with attachments you can do just about any kind of formatting you want...
You can? I've been using this forum system for my pbp games for years now (over at realroleplaying), but I wouldn't know how to recreate the same formatting I can do on my wordpress site...but that could just be my lack of technical skills.
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The reference to formatting was that you could do the formatting in Word, Excel, Paint, whatever and we allow a large number of different file formats to be attached, therefore you can show almost any formatting you want.... not the same as having it in the article that way - but you can do it.
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Who is up for a bit of an experiment?
I have mentioned to Thom @ ICE, Peter Mork and Markc a while ago about writing an article for the guild companion. That article turned into three articles none of which I have finished writing to my satisfaction.
I have all the technical prerequisites to set up a wordpress blog quickly and easily.
I could take the three articles I have yet to complete plus other articles I had in mind and start a RM based blog. Any stats would be RM2/RMC based and the world setting would be mostly Forgotten Realms as that is where my creative output is being directed.
I would make the analytics available (in this thread?) to those that are interested in blogging.
I would then like to try and write a column for the guild companion about the blog and any challenges to throws up if that would interest TGC readers?
I think I could keep it up for a year just based on ideas I have right now and I would expect more to come up as I am writing it. It would be interesting to see how many traffic sources the blog would pick up that are not existing AA/ICE/TGC sites.
I would also be happy to then post guest contributions from others so that people like Jaeru would have to option to publish a blog post on an ad hoc basis without the burden of committing to regular blog or testing the waters before starting their own blog.
I think a section on here for fan based blogs would not hurt and (I could be frightenly wrong here) to do a once a month visit to each blog to make sure it was still acceptable to link to. As you say you would not want to link out to people who are damaging the reputation of ICE and Rolemaster.
I cannot foresee there being thousands of them so visiting each one once a month would not be too onerous. If it were me I would use an aggregator so I wouldn't even have to visit them if they haven't posted anything new.
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Peter R it certainly couldn't hurt to try. I'd love to see a RM blogging community, even if small and anything that might help contribute to it is a good thing. Now I just have to get my own butt into gear
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It got to be worth a crack hasn't it.
I have to finish sorting out my characters DPs for Warls game tonight or I will end up holding up the whole game. This weekend I will register a domain, install wordpress and configure Google Analytics.
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Sounds like a plan!
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I have had a bit of waiting around to do today so I have registered the domain, set up wordpress and installed most my core plugins.
I am just putting a bit of initial content up.
Please may I use an ICE logo from your pinterest page just to give the blog a bit of ICE-iness, I will work on a decent theme later?
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What is the domain name? Or isn't it active yet?
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Give me a minute. I would like to use an ICE logo but do not want to publish anything without permission.
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Here you go!
http://www.rolemasterblog.com/ (http://www.rolemasterblog.com/)
the graphic design element may need a little work!
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Hahaha...nice...I like the handdrawn crown :D
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I would submit a request to Thom @ ICE or Colin (contact info is on the main web page for ICE) for the permission to use the ICE Logo.
MDC
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I mostly work from home but I do four mornings a week at a local charity just to get me out of the house. I am there right now and there is a limit to how much I can do sat at my desk.
There is a really nice crown on the ICE pinterest page that I would like to use reduced down to thumbnail size as an icon and in the header.
http://www.pinterest.com/ironcrown/iron-crown-enterprises/ (http://www.pinterest.com/ironcrown/iron-crown-enterprises/)
It is the crown on the right.
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I would submit a request to Thom @ ICE or Colin (contact info is on the main web page for ICE) for the permission to use the ICE Logo.
MDC
I have submitted a request. It took a minute as I had to configure the new domain on the mail server before I could send any emails.
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That crown is the current active logo (though we've got a slightly different version for product markings just for clean look). For details regarding their use - see the website page on trademarks
http://ironcrown.com/trademarks/
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Ok, so as long as you linkback and post the copyright notice...you're good to go...the logo's are also there
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Cool,
I have grabbed an image and the copyright notice is right there on the homepage. I chose the short copyright notice and the long one was a bit wordy.
There is a link back to here on the home page too.
I have also posted my first piece of rolemaster related content. I am going to have to give it a rest now and do some proper work.
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We were debating this internally in spurts, and I have a basic question - why a blog? Why not the forums? just start a topic when you do have a creative idea and get the juices flowing there. Look, we don't have a large user base, so I would be worried we are sending people to multiple sites when it can all be hosted here in a "one-stop-shop". we have the ability to post any fan generated material and social media it so people know it exists as long as we are notified. Hence I am very reluctant to go to a blog much beyond the one Colin runs for news-like notifications and the occasional musing. But...
What do you all think? ???
Why a blog?
A blog is a continuum of ideas, it has a theme. It is more like reading a regular column in a favourite newspaper. A blog has a reognisable author but it also invites comment directly on the page where ideas can be either challenged or applauded. A post is a visually rich format where media can be placed directly within the content. A blog is a connected medium being able to communicate directly to social media and search engines to announce new content. Blogs are more timely and more often reflect the authors state at that time whereas forums are timeless and it is not uncommon on the forum for a new question being met with a suggestion to search the forum as the question has already been answered.
In the specific case of these forums. You have facebook pages for shadowworld which is one community and you have us here but there is very little crossover. My shadowworld GM follows the facebook pages but never comes here, I visit here daily but do not use facebook. Content is published in the guild companion but then is discussed here. Surely it would be better to have the discussion in the same place so both can be seen in the same context?
You aready have an official blog but you have turned off the option to comment. This post http://ironcrown.com/blog/2014/10/15/memories-of-minas-tirith/ (http://ironcrown.com/blog/2014/10/15/memories-of-minas-tirith/), if you had allowed people to comment probably would have recieved a flood of comments about how wonderful all of those products were, how people are still enjoying them and so forth. The same comments put on Amazon about a current product you would be pleased as punch about. You have Terry actively soliciting positive reviews for RPGNow in one place whilst ignoring a free opportunity to get the same goodwill in print and indexed by the major search engines.
The blog I set up has been live for little more than 24hrs. I have attached a screenshot of the Google Analytics and it has already had 2 organic visits. People who have searched the Google index, seen a site called rolemasterblog.com and wanted to know what was on it. Those two may or may not have been new potential customers, they may or may not go on to become active members of this forum. The point is that the there are thousands of rolemaster sites out there but they were looking for a blog.
Some media channels are all about broadcasting a message, that is what email marketing is all about, some channels are about discussion and that is where an active forum is excelent but some channels are about connecting with people and if you have complex ideas you want to get across such as the directors briefing or TGC articles then in the first quarter of the 21st century a blog is the best tool for the job. It is not the only tool for the job admittedly but then I could bang in nails with a rock but I choose not to.
I think having a section on these forums for fan blogs is a good idea and getting someone to scan them for negative content is a must. I am suggesting that a blog is a good idea and I am prepared to test my assertion by doing it and sharing the findings. It is good that you are discussing it. There is no strong reason for you to leap right in, setting it up for TGC would involve an expense with no proven increase in revenue. Any revenue you are missing out on you have been missing out on for the past 5-10 years so is effectively moot. Let the blog mature, let me publish more content and we will see if it has legs. I will happily give one of the guys from ICE shared access to the analytics account so you can see over time which articles are gathering the best responses, which are ranking the best and the visitor demographics.
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Peter R your quick whipping up of a blog inspired me to get cracking. I've set up a blogger site and am working on some initial material to post. Nothing Rolemaster related at first by I have some ideas I'm working on. Cheers for the motivation
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I am extremely lucking in that I happen to have many webservers sat there humming away there that I can use for that sort of thing.
For most of the week I am my own boss, working from home and managing my own time. There is no direct connection between the work I do and the money I earn by which I mean I can spend an hour here or there doing other stuff and i will not lose out as long as the work gets done before the any deadline. For the most part I also get to set the deadlines.
If I want to take an afternoon out to write an article because I am feeling inspired then I just can.
If anyone doesn't want to commit to writing a blog and having to constantly share new content from now and for ever then you can always write one off articles and send them to the Guild Companion.
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My blog is now 1 week old.
In the analytics you can see a big spike in the first 48hrs and that is all the referrals from this thread while I was talking about it. The referred traffic only looked at one or two pages each as that was all that was there.
The organic traffic that has been trickling in is far more interesting. Over this week I have posted six articles just to stuff the blog a bit and give visitors something unique and interesting (hopefully) to read. The organic traffic has an average of nearly 4 pages each. Obviously as the week went on there were more pages for them to actually read. I am hoping to settle down to one or two posts per week.
I have written one article for the guild companion that I have submitted and written half of a second article that I want to submit at the beginning of next week.
The blog now has its own Facebook page and Twitter account and yesterday I got around to linking the accounts so new posts on the blog are automatically pushed to the social media accounts.
I will update this again when the blog is a month old.
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OK, the blog is now one month old. I have attached a screenshot of the analytics. the biggest chunk is still the directer referrals from this forum and while most are from this thread early on now the url in my signature is giving me a steady stream of visitors from all over the RM2/RMC threads.
The organic traffic now respresents nearly a third of all traffic. 57.65% of all those visits are repeat visitors.
All in all I am quite happy with the way that the blog is progressing. I have settled down to two regular posts each week. One is bang on the topic of my blog being using RM in the forgotten realms setting and the other is more generic RM/RPG and GMing.
I will give another update in another month.
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Cool. 8)
I see you also added some ads to the site. The one on the right is fine, but the one on top is not good for the look of the site IMHO. Also the green first letters of paragraphs are centred vertically in the middle of the paragraph. My guess is this has some compatability problems with Internet Explorer. I love the reading time estimate of the rest of the article. That's very witty and helpful.
Good stuff...
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That is interesting about the ads.
I added the ads because someone messaged me about could you make your living just writing about rolemaster and playing. I was curious how much income it would generate and about the volumes required. I do not have enough data yet to draw any conclusions and I would expect to have to build up a much more significant following before anything like that became viable. At present the blog is making about £0.02 a week based on what I estimate to be about 80 real human beings. It is a nice idea though.
I hope I have fixed the dropcaps issue in IE for you. Could you have a look and see if there is any improvement? You may have to refresh to see it of course.
The attachment shows the drop caps in firefox.
I have stripped out the top ad. Over time I intend to play around with the ad formats and positioning. As everything stands at the moment I would need something like 4million readers each month which is unlikey to say the least to make a monthly income of £2,000 per month or £24,000/pa or about $36,000/pa.
Nice idea though.
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There's an improvement in the dropcaps. The top of the dropcap is now aligned with the centre of the first sentence of the paragraph. Unfortunately I can't send you an attachment due to firewall restrictions.
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No worries, thanks for bringing it to my attention.
I have tried to fiddle it a bit more but too far and it looks really odd in Firefox and Chrome.
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Peter - really good stuff. I posted some comments directly into your blog as I quite enjoyed the pictures with the gaming ideas. Often when I take walks in the countryside or visit a new city and you see an old piece of architecture, I immediately start to think of gaming and how it could be used. we should get more people sending in photos with people being inspired by the pictures on how it might be "dropped into" an encounter!
PS - I made some comments on some issue I had with posting which I hope you find useful.
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I saw them thanks!
I am dealing with the captcha issue first.
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That is interesting about the ads.
I added the ads because someone messaged me about could you make your living just writing about rolemaster and playing. I was curious how much income it would generate and about the volumes required. I do not have enough data yet to draw any conclusions and I would expect to have to build up a much more significant following before anything like that became viable. At present the blog is making about £0.02 a week based on what I estimate to be about 80 real human beings. It is a nice idea though.
There are of course other related ways of earning - RPGNow's affiliate program and Amazon Associates. The earning potential of those can be much higher. Amazon Associates does, these days, require you to start selling pretty quickly for new accounts, or they cancel your account (why, I don't know - it's not like you're costing them anything) but you can apply again.
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That is very true but I am not really doing this for the money. If I can get the blog to the point where every post gets 1000-2000 reads then it may well be worth monetising the site properly.
At the moment, coincidentally, the forums on here that I follow most closely are very quiet. The time I would normally spend on here is going into creating the blog posts. I work from home and I am effectively self employed so if I spend 5 minutes editing the blog in the middle of the day it makes no difference. I spent the morning blogging about George Osborne and the Autumn Statement and the effects on the Euro exchange rates and I will finish the day blogging about Dark Elves. I will give you one guess which is going to be the most fun. I get paid for the first I don't need paying for the second.
I just stuck a little poll at the top of the page to see if others felt the same.
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Who picked the Euro option? ::)
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Peter R I'm curious how much traffic you blog is continuing to get? I've made half a dozen D&D related posts on my blog and will look at putting up some RM content next, but realise that most of my referrals are coming from Google+ (often due to spamming relevant Communities when I've updated). Unfortunately there aren't the same numbers in the G+ RM communities (as an aside there are two main RM communities, and no points for guessing they are split between RM2 and RMSS! I'm quite surprised ICE haven't set up an official RM G+ community)
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Hi Inez!
ICE have an official ICE page which has RM news etc on it and when relevant things come out they are posted in the RM groups. The decision was taken to not run groups of individual games because we felt that 1. people would perhaps prefer to discuss their games and RM related things without me constantly updating them with ICE news and 2.Keeping all ICE news on the ICE page removes the need for people to flit across groups to gather all the information and it stops us having to post the same content in different groups.
If you do start blogging about RM let me know and we'll get you sorted out as an official member of the OIC. I'd also be interested in hearing how your (or anyone else's) blogs perform. As I do the ICE blog I'm always looking for insight on what people want/what works.
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Peter R I'm curious how much traffic you blog is continuing to get? I've made half a dozen D&D related posts on my blog and will look at putting up some RM content next, but realise that most of my referrals are coming from Google+ (often due to spamming relevant Communities when I've updated). Unfortunately there aren't the same numbers in the G+ RM communities (as an aside there are two main RM communities, and no points for guessing they are split between RM2 and RMSS! I'm quite surprised ICE haven't set up an official RM G+ community)
In the past 30 days it got 351 visitors who spend an average 4m 12s on the site. That sounds pretty much like they are reading articles in full.
I am publishing two posts a week. One is pure RM and the other is just roleplaying related but not exclusively Rolemaster.
Blogging is a long term investment in time and effort. As an example there is a well respected blog directory that will not even accept your blog for listing until you can prove you have been blogging regularly on rpgs for at least three months. The Google indexing algorithm takes a while to sort out what to rank your blog for. You need to build a body of work to lets that software propperly classify your blog and then continue to publish to so that they recognise you as an authority on that topic and worthy of ranking well. Additionally I hope at least some of the readers who visit will want to come back again in the future so a monthly body count of 351 this year I would hope would be double that this time next year through reader retention and a greater body of work within the search engines' indexes.
I have decided that the opbjective behind my blog is to attract as many new roleplayers and GMs into Rolemaster and most specifically D&D players. This brings in more fresh players into our game and community. I am running RM in a traditional D&D game world and there are many things that exist in D&D and that setting that do not exist in RM. I am filling those blanks or if they have already been filled then I will point potential players to those resources.
These forums are the 'go to' place if you are already an GM and you want help or advice so there is no need for a blog to offer that. Also I want to publish my own take on things and that may not be in line with the majority of other GMs. Every game is unique. I play in Warl's game and his character creation is completely unrecognisable to the way I do it. I frequently disagree with Markc but both of us have almost identical ideas on the skills of the general population in the game world. My blog reflects my take on RM at this time.
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I have decided that the opbjective behind my blog is to attract as many new roleplayers and GMs into Rolemaster and most specifically D&D players. This brings in more fresh players into our game and community.
This is very much the idea I have as well, hence my starting with D&D related topics to try and get some modicum of a following before moving into RM stuff.
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I have decided that the opbjective behind my blog is to attract as many new roleplayers and GMs into Rolemaster and most specifically D&D players. This brings in more fresh players into our game and community.
This is very much the idea I have as well, hence my starting with D&D related topics to try and get some modicum of a following before moving into RM stuff.
Let me know the url of your blog and I will comment and share your posts.
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Cheers Peter. The url is http://deathanddismemberment.blogspot.com.au/ (http://deathanddismemberment.blogspot.com.au/) It may be worth waiting before there's RM content up before linking though.
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Cool, It always helps to have someone commenting on your posts, it shows readers that other people are reading your blog and encourages others to also comment.
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Hi Inez,
When you do start posting about Rolemaster let me know. We award Order of the Iron Crown points for bloggers that promote ICE games so we'll get you all signed up. You can then use these points for discounts on ICE games and exclusive merchandise.
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Hi Inez,
When you do start posting about Rolemaster let me know. We award Order of the Iron Crown points for bloggers that promote ICE games so we'll get you all signed up. You can then use these points for discounts on ICE games and exclusive merchandise.
Has the email for the OIC changed? Or should we PM stuff to you now instead?
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Both is fine.
The OIC E-mail remains the same or you can PM me direct. Whichever works for you.
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I just thought I would do a quick update on how the blog is going. Traffic is steady and over 20% of all visitors are from organic searches. I am steadily climbing the rankings for rolemaster related keyword searches.
I have applied now to join the RPG Blog network and I am waiting to hear from them. That could take up to 6 weeks and you cannot apply until you have been blogging regularly for 3 months. There are no other rolemaster blogs in the network or at least searching the network for rolemaster returns no results. If it is accepted and cannot see why it shouldn't be then that will be another road that leads to rolemaster.
I think that the most use to the community for the blog is to draw in d&d players into the game. There are millions of d&d players so at least some of them must be seducable! New blood is rarely a bad thing. I am going to start posting more cross over content that is relevant to the d&d community as well as us more enlightened roleplayers. ;)
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So it only took 18 months but I've actually made a couple of Rolemaster related posts - they are more aimed at folks in the old school D&D scene who may have enjoyed Rolemaster in the past.
http://deathanddismemberment.blogspot.com.au/2016/05/old-schoolifying-rolemaster.html?m=1 (http://deathanddismemberment.blogspot.com.au/2016/05/old-schoolifying-rolemaster.html?m=1)