One of the reasons I started blogging here in the first place was to connect with like-minded folks about my favorite hobby. When I picked up D&D again and got into 4th Edition, it wasn't long before I started looking around on the interwebs to see what other people were saying about it. I managed to avoid the Edition Wars, for the most part (although I am guilty of the occasional comment). Anyways, I discovered that there were a whole shitload of people out there writing about every possible incarnation of Dungeons and Dragons, and I started voraciously consuming as much as I could, both in an attempt to improve my own game at home, and because, well, it's just fun. It makes me think. And that's a good thing.
One of the first things I did when I started A Pack of Gnolls was to go try to sign up for the RPG Bloggers Network. Well, part of the requirements for joining the club is to have been posting regularly for at least three months. So I did my time and got my posting regular and wrote a whole lot (this being my 79th post), and once it had been three months I sent in the email to the RPG Bloggers Network about joining. That was about a month ago... and I have since heard nothing, except for the automated response. I was a little bummed and frustrated by this, but it wasn't really a big deal. My little blog is doing just fine on its own, but it sure would be nice to have a place where all the great D&D bloggers that are out there could hang out and chat and there could be an exchange of ideas...
And then a couple days ago, at one of my favorite sites, At-Will, started up a webchat. I was suddenly welcomed into a very open, inclusive, intelligent and opinionated (in a good way) community.
So you can probably imagine my joy when I saw a post about the new RPG Blog Alliance, a blog feed aggregator and community site. Complete with forum and profiles. With a little time, and done right, it could probably be the Facebook for the RPG blogosphere. You can also probably imagine how thrilled I was when I applied for membership and was accepted within the hour. I'm still waiting to hear back from the RPG Bloggers Network, but I really don't care about that anymore.
So, if you haven't heard about the RPG Blog Alliance, go check it out, and if you have an RPG Blog, join.
Great stuff right? I write for Stargazers and I was totally surprised. Mr. Wolf and friends sure know how to keep a secret.
ReplyDeleteThe site works great and It's a great forum as well. Lots of very pretty happy people. Well, I don't know about the happy part, but the pretty part is definitely true :P
I signed up for the RPG Blogger Network right before it changed hands. It was... Oh... 6 months before I was approved. Maybe longer.
ReplyDeleteThis new community looks pretty cool though.
And I agree, community is key!
Thanks for the kind words about the RPG Blog Alliance. I had a few design goals when I first started. The primary being that members should be able to do updates to their profiles without the Administrator doing it. That alone is the key to why we can look at, review, and approve sites fairly quickly. Baring an incident, I think most sites should be approve in less than a few days or at the very least get an email from one of the administrators during that time.
ReplyDeleteWe do want to add new features as we go, but I'm taking things one step at a time. With over 100 new members in less than a week, we are making sure things work well. The original system was tested with about 500 random sites and things seemed to work out ok. Still you never know. We have had to fix a few issues that didn't come up in testing with the library we use for feed gathering (including and update to that library).
Overall, we hope people enjoy the community.