Recently, I wrote a guest post on Sarah Darkmagic’s blog regarding some inspiration I had for DnD from an unlikely source.  This got me to thinking about themes in general, and finally I was able to find a direction for the blog section of our site.  We search for clever ideas or interesting theories not because we want to stand out, but because we want to be inspired.  Looking back, as I’ve developed my ideas and style for this blog, that seems to be the main chunk of what I’ve posted about: the things that inspire me.

Having a solid direction is great, and definitely leaves me a lot more confident about our blogging future.  You can look for more posts on mining media for DnD ideas, for sure, and as always our link roundups will be full of inspiring things from other people as well.

Starting Again:

Recently WotC produced a new red box starter set for 4th edition.  It’s something we’re actually quite keen on, if only because a part of our goal is to bring new players into the game.  Thus, we relished the  positive reviews given by Sarah Darkmagic and ChattyDM.

Building Up:

We have a deep seated love for DIY D&D, and so it was with great glee that we read about Icosahedrophilia’s home-made 3d terrain.  Neat, simple, and effective!

Clever Twists:

Ok, so it’s rare that public drunkenness and cleverness go together at all, but that doesn’t mean it never happens.  We enjoyed reading about the Drunken D&D game at Gen Con, and were really enchanted by the clever twists they put on play.

Jeff’s Gameblog had a post about a D&D LARP that sounded amazing--too bad it was a dream only! But in the days of increasingly smart phones and media, it sounds totally plausible.

Chatty DM had an entertaining post about letting kids have free imagination to roleplay, and understanding that when they get it wrong, they’re actually getting it extra right.

Filling the gaps:

We were excited to discover yet another resource for filling in the gaps between the bits of D&D we come up with on our own, and RPG Blog II was kind enough to direct us to Wikimedia Commons for some lovely landscape imagery.

Stargazers World pointed us towards Dragon Avenue, another online resource for free D&D materials.

We also cannot help but toot our own horn-Sarah Darkmagic allowed us to write a post on her blog on extracting ideas from terrible plots.  This has given us new direction here on this blog–you can expect to see more inspiration drawn from media around here, too.

Zak from D&D with Porn Stars had an interesting dissection of how he builds up NPCs, one that sounds useful and, blessedly, a crapload less  work than trying to write up an entirely new human being.

Loose Ends

And since we seem so keen on spreading D&D blogger love, we’ll put a hit on Sarah Darkmagic again for her attempt to put up hits for Robert J Schwalb.  You know, website hits, of course.

And, because it is still our intent, once our portfolio is sufficient, to use this site to raise charitable funds, we cannot help but be delighted by other gaming related charities, such as the Extra Life Charity Drive as reported by Game Politics.

Of course, there’s more!  There’s always more!  Tell us in the comments, what inspired you this week?

All right, so apparently I found some more interesting links that didn’t show up in my bucket last time, so I’m throwing down yet again.  First, of course, the updates on our personal projects: we’re looking into creating gaming merit badges, mostly just for fun.  Hopefully we can get some ideas and some designs up sometime next week.

I think we’re going to work this in random order.  My first item is actually my most recent item, a post by Newbie DM on his GenCon experience.  This got me thinking about what strange algorithm I use to pick out what posts catch my eye in any given week.  I definitely do this for pleasure, and often call Level 30 Yinzer my vanity project.  It’s never meant to pay the bills or be a second job–it’s a place where we can build our DnD portfolio, allow others to build a portfolio with us, and hopefully someday when we have worthy product, use that to raise money for charitable funds.  Nowhere in that description do I intend to slave over this idea, to commit myself to it beyond the point where it stops being fun and interesting.  I applaud Enrique for realizing that himself, honestly, as sometimes it’s hard to admit when we’ve gotten caught up into something that maybe we never really wanted to do.  Still, what makes me choose the links that I do?  Inspiration.  I do this because it inspires me, and I like to share what inspired me the most.

Eye Candy

We have a lot of eye candy this week, as it seems to have been mostly left off of the last post.  WebUrbanist had a post on crazy cakes, and down there right at the bottom you can view some amazing DnD and dragon-related cakes.   Cruzine.com also had a really extensive post on modern imaginings of dragons, and the visuals are simply overwhelming.

In terms of setting, we have two posts from Design You Trust, one is concept art by Daniel Kho, and the other is concept art by Vinod More.  Creative Kingworks showed a little flashy hand with a sweet cave map, and the Long Now blog had a piece of city art that made me sit back in my chair, for it perfectly exemplified how I imagined my own capital city in my homebrew campaign.

Lastly, we did put up one comic before we took down the majority of the links to it, and it’s one that’s always made us smile.

Game Quirks

D20Source amused the carp out of us with their Dungeon Crawler’s Creed, and RPG Blog 2 tickled us with a post on naming conventions in DnD, one that struck near to my own heart as I am terrible at naming anything, ever.

We participated in Zak’s Secret Arneson Gift Exchange, and although we didn’t get a gift back, we enjoyed giving nonetheless.  There were some really stellar players on the field, though!

Gnome Stew had a couple posts on gaming tips that caught our eye, one on how to deal with a truly terrible GM, a happenstance we’ve been fortunate enough to avoid, and another on running combat with no minis or map, a happenstance we’d love to participate in.  To bring it all together, the Underdark Gazette posted about running a game using digital media and tools, all on the cheap.

Generally reviews of products are pretty dry and boring, but there were a couple this week that we liked to see:  Stargazer’s world reviewed the official 4E tomb of horrors, a mod we eagerly awaited, having run through a few home-made conversions already, and Critical Hits had a discussion with some of the creators about the Dark Sun setting, questions and answers you  might not get to see anywhere else before the setting itself hits store shelves.

In Good Faith

Lastly, we have a blip from Game Politics news–sure, it’s about a video game, but we really like to see when a game goes pay what you want and still manages to turn a profit.  Since this is essentially the model we’re basing our own business on (with the added bonus of all profits going to charity, in the end), it gladdens us to see it working elsewhere.

Tell us, what inspires you?  Where do you draw the most ideas from?

All right, time for a what-should-be-weekly update on what we’re writing and reading.  We’ve been working on redesigning the site slightly for easier navigation, with the unfortunate side-effect of shunting the blogging aside for a moment.  Still, the updates are coming along swimmingly, and we’re very happy to be working diligently on our portfolio.

Other projects we’re tooling around with:  we’d like to do five minute “how to” videos for playing Dnd.  Things like “how to write a character backstory,” or “elements of a turn in 4e”.  We will be setting up a youtube channel for these videos, and if we can bring together just the right elements, we’ll probably have a video up within a week.  Stay tuned for more updates on that!

We took down the links to our comic on all the main pages because, well, we still aren’t sure what to do with it.  We may have an actual, talented comic artist willing to put up his work there, but we’re also still interested in drawing our own stories.  The problem was that the comic was supposed to be a journal of our Eberron game, but the game on which the comic was to be based never materialized.  One of those gaming duds that sank before it had time to fly.  So instead we’re kicking around an idea we’d had for running DnD, but instead may apply to the comic itself.  We were thinking of basing a campaign on the format of Spanish telenovellas.  The spanish soaps run for a max of 3 months, unlike their american counterparts which never, ever end.  Three months from start to finish to tell all the sordid tales they wish to tell, and then that soap ends and a new one begins.  This seemed like a fun way to run a DnD game–as a series of short story arcs rather than an ongoing campaign, with each new story beginning at the level the last one left off at.  While we couldn’t get the players interested in that format, a series of short stories sounds like a great deal of fun for the comic, so we may work on writing short DnD stories there, instead.

We have a couple weeks here of DnD posts to catch up on, so let’s get to it!

Eye Candy

Need monster inspiration?  Check out these cool monsters from Design You Trust.  That site also gave us another beautiful post full of fantasy art.  Epic Win also gave us a real iron gate any of us would be proud to have on our own castle.

A thousand words is worth a picture

First, the transition:  we had our own guest post over at Sarah Darkmagic’s blog, a silly piece of fluff with a diner menu worth perusing.  Grognardia had their own strange ideas in a dream that may involve a bit of muppetry and a dash of swedish chef .

Then, actual ideas:  Zak from DnD with porn stars ruminated on what exactly to do with Wizard Brains (although I’m sure the swedish chef could figure it out).  Chris Sims from Critical Hits pontificated on how exactly to sprinkle minions throughout your game, comparing them to spice (and we all know the spice must flow!).

After, the ideas behind the ideas:  Gnome Stew had an excellent post on the utilization of GM notes.  We rely extensively on Google docs to organize our plot, treasure, monsters, and NPCs (which is, what, everything in a DnD game?).  Men With Pens also touched upon the chutzpah it takes to write at all, something that struck us near to our own hearts as that is the main portion of what we do all day.

What’s Old is New

Motor City Gameworks outlined a dream for many of us–I know I’ve spent far too much time in dingy, ill-kept game shops, and now much prefer the well-lit and clean one I frequent now, even though it’s a half hour farther away than a few others I could visit.

Kobold Quarterly had a fascinating glimpse into the past with their post titled “I was a Gen Con Spy for TSR.”  It’s a good read, check it out!

And that’s all folks! I know it’s not much for 2.5 weeks worth of reading (and we read literally hundreds of posts a week), but don’t let that fool you into thinking that people weren’t writing great stuff, but that instead we weren’t reading it hard enough.

Tell us–what were your favorite posts from your cadre of must-read bloggers this week?