This probably should have been long ago (well, if you consider 4 months “long”), but I have decided to commit to text a sort of mission statement for this blog. In the end, I think the delay will turn out to have been a good thing. When I started this off, I was not really sure what I wanted to do with this thing, but over the last couple of weeks things have really cleared up for me.
Let’s get down to business: the purpose of this blog is to provide regular, thoughtful essays for discussion by the community. These essays will be focused upon doing two things: 1) They will discuss new ideas, ideas I have not seen seriously considered elsewhere in the discussion of roleplaying (I like to think my plot twist post from last week is of this sort); 2) They will discuss ideas that were new “a while back” and that have not been recently discussed.
The first is pretty easy to facilitate, I just find a topic that intrigues me that I have yet to see anyone cover in-depth, and then cover that. The second is also easy even if doing it occassionally feels odd.
Simply put, when I run into an intriguing idea, I add it to the queue of stuff to write on. Since I only post one item per week, this generates a significant back-log of entries. At the moment I have this Thursday’s post completed, and I have outlines for posts through May, and topics to cover through June. So my thoughts on Push/Pull are coming up in mid-May, and my thoughts on freeform play sometime in early-June.
I like to think that this will provide a slower-paced discussion of these ideas. At the moment theory discussion is rapid with ideas flying fast and furious for a couple of weeks around the ‘net, and then fading. I would like to provide people with a place to discuss things again after a month or two in order to think about them.
All that is the public purpose of this little blog, but I have a slightly more selfish one as well, and it is one that I sometimes question: I want to use my readers as sounding boards. I could just email my little articles to smart people from whom I want input and leave it at that, but then I would miss out on some great feedback. I mean, I never would have thought to ask for Mendel Schmiedekamp feedback on my plot twist entry, but he had some great stuff to say about it.
To restate all that: the purpose of this blog is to provide the public with some fairly well thought out entries on various things (I spend weeks or months thinking about most stuff before I post it) and a place to discuss ideas after a month or two in which to consider their implications a bit more. I hope this turns out to be something that people can use, and I hope that it is clear that this is not really my little private playground. I like to think I am providing a useful service, but I suppose time will tell us whether or not this is the case.
Thomas
Tags: Administrata