The Old and Dear

Given my preoccupation with bemoaning blog content that flits away into the ether, here's a blogging “movement” worth supporting: Old Stuff Day. Basically it's a chance for bloggers to show off the old blog posts that they feel have become neglected with time or are particularly fond to the blogger.

Here's my own run down starting backwards chronologically in the misty past of 2009:

The Discreet Charm of City Ruins

This was my first post to break the blog out of its role as merely a campaign hub for players. It was the first time I combined broader tones and personal story into a post and it just felt right at the time. Rereading it today makes me want to keep fleshing out that melancholy, besieged city lurking just off the southern map of the Hill Cantons.

Empire of the Petal Throne, the“Gamist” Early Years

This post kicked off the HC's long love-affair exploration of M.A.R. Barker's world. It also served as a manifesto of a casual sort, guiding my own approach to gaming in Tekumel. Best of all it put me into accidental contact with Jeff Berry, the old Petal Throne salt that I only half-jokingly refer to as the HC's resident Tekumel expert. The four-part interview with him (very much worth checking out in its own right  kicked off my interview series and really deepened my insights into that world.

Tony Bath's Hyboria

This post kicked off a multi-post exploration of the truly marvelous “worldgame” that miniature wargaming titan Tony Bath ran in the UK in the 1950s-70s. The series rooted around in the kind of big-stage roleplaying gaming that predated D&D and what people now refer narrowly as RPGs. It also opened up a number of domain-play themes that I started to explore later.

Follow the “Tony Bath” label if you want to read the whole thing.

Taking Domain Play Out to the Edges

The stirrings of the Domain Game and more importantly the attempt to not just recycle and extend “beancounter” domain-play but take it back to old-new areas in D&D that were dropped as the game developed.

How Jack Vance Almost Kicked GloranthaOff Its Runequest Pedestal

First time I really remembered to use a few tricks I learned from my old day job journalism work to write a good, compelling story.

Do RPGs Have to Be Cooperative?

More exploration of how some of the interesting holdovers from wargame play got dropped out too early in the development of RPGs in the 1980s. Should be read with this one, if you are interested in that theme.

Fantasy Fucking Vietnam

Far and away my most solid writing on the blog has been the personal entries. This one details my relationship through my combat vet father to the Vietnam War and how it colored D&D play back in the day. Read this one if you read anything today.