Once upon a time Gary Gygax extended an invitation on behalf of a brand new role playing game site, for anyone in the industry to submit articles for consideration. He published something here himself; I accepted that invitation, and posted my <i>Morality and Consequences: Overlooked Gaming Essentials</i>, if I'm remembering the title aright.
In the years since then, there have been articles here from Ron Edwards, John Wick, Seth Ben-Ezra, and I'll stop there because I'm sure there are several people who I should not slight by omitting. The point is, there have been good articles by recognized industry people.
There have also been good articles from people like us who are not so well known, or even unknown, building up the rather large article library here.
I was talking with Valdron's president recently, concerned that the mainstay of Gaming Outpost is Valdron, Multiverser, and I suppose me. It makes me nervous to think that this wonderful site might cease to exist (and perhaps all those articles and forum archives lost) if something happened to me and Multiverser somehow lost its support. I wanted to brainstorm a bit with him about what we could do to stimulate a larger audience for Gaming Outpost.
I wanted to do that here, too, with all of you who are supporters of Gaming Outpost, to get your ideas and your thoughts about mine.
My thoughts were focused on articles. I can imagine that an increase in articles published here would have a positive impact on traffic here. I've published a few myself, and suggested to others that they do so as well. I would like to do more in that regard. There are two problems with this.
The first is that I probably have very little time to invest in writing more RPG articles. I've passed up opportunities to write for several other sites because of time constraints (not to mention that I have written so many articles it's difficult for me to be certain that I'm not rehashing stuff I've already written). One partial solution to this would be for me to gather up at least some of the articles I've written elsewhere--a few in The Way, the Truth, and the Dice, a couple at RPGnet, several at Places to Go, People to Be, at least one at RoleplayingTips.com, and some scattered about here and there, and republish them here. This might not be that helpful, as I suspect most people who would go out of their way to read one of my articles have already found most of those. More to the point, there is the second problem, and that is that such a strategy, even if I am writing more new articles, still relies on me, my identity, and the people who would come here to read articles I wrote. There is not much I can do to overcome that difficulty.
So I am suggesting that perhaps some of our GO regulars would be able to contribute to this task. It's relatively easy to set up a Gaming Outpost article writer account, and if you can jump through the hoops for a Google Ads account (I have not yet succeeded, but that's because my site is tied up with the reconstruction of the Multiverser.org site) Gaming Outpost has a revenue sharing program that might make you a bit of change.
Yeah, but what would you write about?
I suggest that the possibilities are pretty vast. People have written reviews of games and books, and there's no reason why reviews of movies could not be added to the mix, and even of music useful for gaming (some referees use tracks to set a mood during play; that's a bit beyond me even though I was a radio DJ for five years). We've got an article on time travel theory challenging the ideas used in Multiverser, and given that a lot of science fiction notions find their ways into games, discussions of faster-than-light travel, teleporters, replicators, cloning, mind/machine interface, and so many other concepts could make good fodder for articles, whether applying reality to fiction or fiction to fiction. Similarly, discussions of magic, religion(s), fantasy tropes, fantasy and sci-fi races, cybernetics, mechas, steampunk, mystery, horror, anything from any genre, can find a place here. You can also cover conventions, from a dozen angles ranging from reporting on those you've attended to looking behind the scenes at those you've organized.
So I want you to think about doing what Eric more than once did, putting yourself to the task of writing a few articles. It's a good way to cut your teeth and improve your craft as a writer, a thinker, a creator, and a good way to help Gaming Outpost.
I also want you to think about whether you know people who could post articles here, people who are not Gaming Outpost regulars but who are gaming enthusiasts, referees or players or even writers, who can share something that would catch the eye of others and build up the Gaming Outpost articles collection with some fresh stuff.
If nothing else, it will get that article attacking my time travel theory off the top position on the front page and replace it with something else.
Thanks for reading, and in advance for your thoughts and your contributions.
--M. J. Young
I can't get past the idea that a lot of the discussions about my experience in a certain military-themed world could be turned into a guide for rookie gamers like me. Kind of a "This is what not to do in that world" or something. It would be a shame for all of that to go to waste and not be helpful to at least one other rookie gamer.
Well, I guess it might be a start. So, are you going to write it?
--M. J. Young
Advice for rookies? Sound thinking. Let me know if you need any help with that. I have a few friends who have been refs for a good 8 years or so, and I'm not so inexperienced myself. You have my email...and good luck!
Articles on advice for rookies sound like an excellent idea. I have recently (separately) been talking about putting together something to help Multiverser referee recruits for the forum games, and maybe I can use those as articles somehow. But more to the point, I would love to have you write something on the subject and post it as an article. The point is to diversify the number of authors posting stuff and get some fresh quality material here--not to give me more things I don't have time to complete.
So yes, I'd love to see your article on advice for rookies.
--M. J. Young
Hopefully I won't thank Eric so frequently for his latest article that he tires of hearing it, but I wanted to call attention to it and encourage more to post articles, reviews, and blogs here.
--M. J. Young
How exactly do you go about doing that? Can anybody do it? What are the rules? Answer me some of this and I'll get started on one. It's in my head, I just gotta get motivated to put it down.
(Doing Therapy)
I'd say to start from the Gaming Outpost home page, near the top left of which you should see a link for your account. I think that will take you to a login page, but if it's rigged the way I think it is, your user name (or is it e-mail address? it will say) and password for the discussions is the same for the articles.
If not, I'm sure there's a way to create an account from there.
I'm not sure quite where that takes you, because it takes me to a somewhat cluttered page filled with everything I need to create articles and to moderate the articles and comments of others. I'm not sure what's there if you're not a moderator, but look for a link for "Add new post" (it should say post, not page), and that's where you go to create the article. Right side of the screen, down a bit (below the first "fold", as the old school web design people would say, although with the variation in screen resolutions your mileage may vary) there are check boxes for article, review, and blog, so pick one, and then give it a title and write your article.
I write my articles in WordPad and then copy-past them into the screen, but I do my blogs live. Oh, if memory serves, there's an option somewhere for whether you want a WYSIWIG editor or HTML, but since I've got mine set to HTML I don't know where it is.
--M. J. Young
I was intending to write an article about different ways that scenario could open, based on what you know about, and what you hope to learn from your player. This of course could be translated into other worlds as well. The opening of the MP, although perhaps not in the strictest sense "forced" is undeniably force-FULL. Of course you get players who get cocky with him. I wrote up pros and cons of different ways to open that scenario. Just got to get it posted.
(Doing Therapy)