So here I am, starting a blog. This blog has been a long time coming. Writing, drawing and tabletop role-playing games have always been a passion of mine, and this is a way to improve my game.
A Blog?
“Stay awhile, and listen.” (Diablo II, 2000)
This blog is for gamers, readers, writers and would-be authors like myself. My chosen genre is fantasy, with a preference for the classics: Tolkien, Leiber, Howard, and Moorcock. This blog is supposed to be fun, creative and light-hearted. We’ll see how that turns out.
The blog will be about writing and fantasy roleplaying games.
I will usually assume you know what I am talking about, but I will try to include definitions to get newcomers up to speed.
Writing
I write fantasy stories, and the plan is to self-publish somewhere in the not-so-distant future. These stories are likely to be a series of short stories set in the same world.
World Building
World building is building your imaginary world, for a book or perhaps a game. How do you zero in on the themes you want in your world? What makes your world different from Middle-Earth, Eberron or the Forgotten Realms? How is Diablo different from Harry Potter? Chicago from Waterdeep?
A possible logline – a one-sentence summary – for my world could be:
“A dark medieval world with hordes of orcs, evil cults, and feuding noble houses locked in centuries-old struggles.”
So that is my world. Hence the name of the blog, in case you wondered.
Fantasy Roleplaying Games
There are countless articles and blog posts about planning roleplaying games out there. I figure we can’t have enough of those, so I want to add a few.
First I will lay out some basics, setting up a Dungeons and Dragons game and such, before I dig deeper into topics like religion, noble houses, mercenaries, wars, monsters and all that good stuff.
Maps
Digital maps look nice, especially with minis or on your virtual tabletop of choice, but white paper, grayscale and black ink remains my favorite for print.
Related Posts
The Reading List
You can never have enough books. Right? Book recommendations and references is a natural part of a writing, gaming and world building blog. I will try to cite sources and reference additional reading to support the topic at hand.
The books I bring up may not necessarily be full recommendations, so your mileage may vary, but I will try to stay relevant. Make up your mind before spending time or money on whatever reference I include.
These references are likely to be affiliate links, but hopefully to a store as close to the creator as possible, if I have shopped there myself. If you are more comfortable shopping at the big name vendors, you should do that.