TL;DR version: I'd like to get together with a few like-minded people to publish RPG-related articles on a centralized site. Either Star Wars RPG-only, or a broader spectrum of games. I have domains! I have hosting! Who's in?
Thirty five years ago, a friend introduced me to role-playing games. At the impressionable age of nine, I got involved in an ongoing game of Dungeons & Dragons run by a kid in our suburban Phoenix neighborhood. Taken in by the storytelling, the strange, arcane dice, and the opportunity to transcend the mundane nature of that which I could experience with my senses in order to travel to vivid realms full of adventure, I dived in head first. For a child with Asperger's Syndrome, RPGs were a godsend. I devoured every one of them I could, reading the core books for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons at the local library, picking up copies of Dragon Magazine and burying myself in their articles, playing every game I could get my hands on. James Bond: 007. Indiana Jones. Villains & Vigilantes. TMNT. Palladium.
Four years prior to my induction into the world of RPGs, I experienced Star Wars. 1977. Opening night. At age four (almost but not quite five) I was floored. It might have been the hand fate used to flip the switch, turning me on to fantasy and science fiction. Starfighters. Lightsabers. The Death Star. The Force. If I was impressionable years later, when my friend showed me D&D, I was programmable when I first heard John Willams' score and watched the opening crawl of George Lucas' masterpiece before it was even called
A New Hope
. It was, at its core, the story of good versus evil, filled with weird creatures and blazing swords and magic. Between then and now, I have seen every Star Wars movie on opening day.
Jumping forward five years, I published my first short story. In fifth grade, I won a contest and my first piece of speculative fiction - like Star Wars, about good and evil, with flashing blades and a dark villain - saw publication in a local writers' journal. Since that time, I've published articles in a number of magazines and blogged off and on for the last thirteen years; writing is an integral part of my life, a piece of my identity.
For the last couple years, I've considered putting together a gaming website. The one thing that has kept me from doing this very thing is the knowledge that I could not push out enough content to make it more than a casual blog. I know this from experience: two years ago, I started
a news satire site
after several friends agreed to be regular contributors. After a month of publishing my own articles (which I admit aren't great - my sense of humor is colored by my experiences and high-functioning autism), none of the articles promised by friends materialized. Within a couple months, I realized I could not keep up with a daily article schedule and maintain the other irons I had in the fire. Family. Work. A half-written steampunk novel. I've dabbled in writing for the site a couple times since, but mostly it sits fallow.
Over the course of time, I've picked up a handful of domains. Well... dozens of them, in fact. There are a few, however, that would make decent gaming site URLs. For instance...
- dvntr.com - All the consonants for the word "adventure," shoved together. Like many of the domains I have, we could use this one for a general, multi-purpose game site.
- radiojedi.com (and jediradio.com) - A decent choice for a Star Wars site, but it feels like it should be used for a podcast or some other kind of audio delivery. These domains could be used by a general Star Wars info site, too.
- rpgmonk.com - Like dvntr.com, this one feels like a general role-playing game site.
- scryr.com - One who uses "divination to discover hidden knowledge or future events" is a scryer. But here on the internet? We have tumblr, flickr, foodtruckr, and other sites that have exorcised the "e" before the final "r".
Personally, I think a focus on Star Wars would be fun, but its audience would be limited. Currently, FFG's Star Wars games are the only RPGs going on at my table, however, so I would likely limit myself to writing for that game in any case, or a combination of Star Wars and general RPG advice and ideas. I'm more than willing (and have plenty of time to) act as general editor, as well.
So... anyone interested?
