Early Timeline of OSR Blogging

A cursory browsing of blogs reveals the first appearances of old-school gameblogging before 2009:

Feb 2004 - Jeff's Gameblog
Feb 2005 - Mythmere's Musings
Mar 2007 - Delta's D&D Hotspot
May 2007 - Adventures in Gaming
Jan 2008 - The Schizonomicon (became Grognardia)
Feb 2008 - Sham's Grog n' Blog
Mar 2008 - How to Start a Revolution in 21 Days or Less (blog dates back to 2006)
Mar 2008 - Strange Magic

<- DEATH OF GYGAX ->

Apr 2008 - Alex Schroeder's Wiki
May 2008 - LotFP: RPG
May 2008 - The Tao of D&D
June 2008 - Chgowiz's Old Guy RPG Blog
July 2008 - Sword +1
Aug 2008 - The Society of Torch, Pole, and Rope
Sep 2008 - Back in '81
Oct 2008 - Bat in the Attic
Oct 2008 - Uhluht'c Awakens
Dec 2008 - A Rust Monster Ate My Sword
Dec 2008 - Troll and Flame
Dec 2008 - The Other Side

Let me know if you can think of any other pre-2009 old school gameblogs.

I don't know why I am compelled to undertake these tedious blogometric exercises. I think it reflects some sort of personality disorder I have.

Rients, Maliszewski, and Early OSR Blogging

As is probably the case for a lot of you out there, Jeff's Gameblog and Grognardia are the first blogs I ever read that focused on old school D&D. I still love both of these blogs - they just keep going and going and going and are filled with a lot of great content. They are also supposedly two of the oldest gameblogs on the block and I don't think anyone would argue the fact that they've played an important role in shaping our collective view of the Old School Renaissance.

To better understand the origin of OSR blogging a while back I did some archive snooping to see how Jeff Rients and James Maliszewski (of Jeff's Gameblog and Grognardia, respectively) originally got into writing about old school gaming.

It turns out that Grognardia grew out of a LiveJournal blog called "The Schizonomicon: Musings of a Sleep Deprived Dad". Maliszewski started writing this blog in 2002 and it was initially filled with posts about very personal non-gaming issues. Starting around 2006 a significant amount of gaming content started popping up but it was almost all about modern RPGs and/or Maliszewski's creative projects (e.g. Thousand Suns).

It was January 10, 2008 when, as far as my skimming reveals, Maliszewski made his first post dedicated to Original D&D. It was two sentences long and titled "Things I Learned From OD&D". This post was rapidly followed by a succession of OD&D-related posts including the classic "Kill the Cleric":

"Lest anyone think my respect for gaming tradition prevents my being an iconoclast when warranted, I offer you this: D&D would be better off without the cleric.... If, as I contend, D&D is primarily a game of pulp fantasy and if you want, as I do, to see it return to its roots in a powerful way, there's really no choice. The cleric must go."

By March 2008 Maliszewski had started Grognardia to focus on OD&D-related material and The Schizonomican was shuttered by October. In sum, it appears that the seeds of Grognardia were planted in early 2008 and really only grew into a dedicated blog in mid-2008.

Now let's look at the origin of Jeff's Gameblog. Rients started blogging on February 25, 2004 on tripod.com. From day one his blog was called Jeff's Gameblog and was completely devoted to gaming. On his first day of blogging Rients is talking about 80s RPGs including D&D Expert Set, Call of Cthulhu, and Heroes Unlimited. As far as I can tell this is the first glimmer of retro-RPG consciousness in the blogosphere (please correct me if I'm wrong).

If there's anything I can discern about the evolution of Jeff's Gameblog over the last 7+ years it's that the early exclusive focus on games gradually expanded to include more general retro pop/geek-culture material, especially 1980s stuff.

So what does this all mean? Probably not much, but I do think Jeff Rients deserves a ton of credit for being one of the true founders of OSR blogging. Probably the first, in fact... by a long shot...

Grognardlings Are Our Future

A new old school gaming blog called Grognardling just came to my attention. I definitely recommend it as a very cool blog that deserves more attention. In addition to simply having great material, one of the striking things about the blog is the explanation of its title on the side bar:

What is a "grognardling?"

I've only been role-playing for a few years, which isn't surprising when you're in your twenties, but is rare when you play the kind of games that were published in the 70's. I'm a grognardling- someone who is young, has never even seen a copy of the LBBs, a Red Box or a 1st Edition book, but is avidly in the process of learning the "Old Ways."

Staples, the proprietor of Grognardling, is representative of a new breed of twentysomething gamers that is specifically attracted to old school RPGs - games that they never actually grew up playing and therefore have no nostalgic bias for. I think this is great because I actually care about old school D&D, you see, and I love to see new gamers getting into it.

I've noticed a recurring sentiment on many old school forums and gaming blogs along the lines of "I don't care if old school roleplaying is dying out, I'll just keep playing what I've always played and ignore the rest of the world". I don't subscribe to this point of view at all. I think old-style RPGs are crazy and beautiful things that inspire creativity, imagination, and camaraderie in a very unique way. I firmly believe that this pastime of ours adds a tiny bit of fragile beauty to the world. I don't want to see it die. I want to see it live and grow. I want more people to play classic RPGs.

The fact that some new gamers are skipping over trendy new rules-heavy games to go for the quirky classic stuff is very heartening to me. If our hobby is going to survive another generation - and I hope it does -  we NEED enthusiastic and articulate younger voices like Staples, Evan of In Places Deep, and Oddysey of How to Start a Revolution in 21 Days or Less (any others I'm missing?). Please visit their blogs and support their endeavors!

Blog Readers Don't Want Creative Content

My last post about the OSR Blog Graveyard generated an interesting discussion about the nature of OSR blogosphere content. I mentioned in a comment that even though quite a few blogs have gone quiet, there are still over 200 that are regularly pumping out a Dragon Magazine’s worth of material every day or two. This comment generated these thoughtful responses:

-C: “Entirely too much of that dragon magazine's worth of material is equivalent to forum letters, rather than articles. I am fairly frustrated during my daily blog roll review at the amount of posts that are nothing more than opinion pieces on "what OSR means" and the absurd "OSR is dead" other rubbish.”

Dyson Logos: “I'm with -C from Hack & Slash. Even worse than the navel-gazing though is the edition warriors. Keep to the content generation and talking about how awesome our games are (with examples of play, not with navel-gazing) instead of how un-awesome something is.”

As a blog READER I like the best of both commentary (i.e. history, news, and opinion) and creative content. I think both can be done quite well. As well, both are equally susceptible to becoming trivial and uninteresting in the wrong hands.

In contrast, as a blog WRITER I find myself constantly pulled towards writing more commentary. Why? These are by far my most popular posts. I would be lying if I said I don’t get some sort of positive reinforcement when a post gets a ton of comments and hits. I’m only human.

I’ve put a modicum of effort into a number of creative content posts – like my Gamma World character sheet, fillable-PDF henchman cards, and fully-illustrated culinary guide to wizard entrails. I like writing these kinds of posts and I will continue to do so. The attention these posts get, however, is miniscule compared to something like my pretentious and gametastically useless I Am D&D post from a few days ago.

So what does this all mean? Well, one obvious explanation is that the creative content I produce stinks, which may well be true. I think, however, that most blog readers truly prefer commentary over creative content. Grognardia is the biggest old school gaming blog around – how much creative content does it have? Virtually none. On the other side of the coin, I could easily name several blogs that regularly produce excellent creative content yet attract relatively little attention.

Even though I think most readers would say they like creative content the best, I bet you dollars-to-donuts their mouse clicks would say otherwise…

Facebook and Twitter Killing Blogs

A week ago NY Times published a story "Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter". This article cites surveys and anecdotal interviews showing how younger people are giving up blogging in favor of Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook. I guess most of what these young internet migrants have to say to the world fits into 1-2 sentences. Or less:

"Kim Hou, a high school senior in San Francisco, said she quit blogging months ago, but acknowledged that she continued to post fashion photos on Tumblr. “It’s different from blogging because it’s easier to use,” she said. “With blogging you have to write, and this is just images. Some people write some phrases or some quotes, but that’s it.”"

No offense to any of you tweeters or fb'ers out there, but I personally cannot get into Twitter or Facebook much. As a matter of fact, I often find them depressing because they make a lot of the people I know seem a bit dull even when they're not. I mean, how much can one say in 140 characters? One little poop-pellet of mundane boringness, most likely. Unless you're a brilliant poet. I haven't friended any brilliant poets on Facebook yet. In the mean time, I don't care what my 3rd-grade friend had for lunch.

Another thing I don't like about Facebook is that I can't be anonymous there. Ironically, I feel like I can be much more anonymous on my blog. On Facebook I have to worry about a strange and uncomfortable mix of family, professional colleagues, and weird friends mingling around my posts. I really don't want my mom or co-workers reading about my frenzied alcohol-fueled nights of pretending I'm an elf. Here on Cyclopeatron only a few weird friends and Canadian strangers read my crap. I know this because I have Sitemeter. Is it healthy that I prefer babbling to strangers? Probably not... But I guess this is preferred by all you other geriatrics:

"While the younger generation is losing interest in blogging, people approaching middle age and older are sticking with it. Among 34-to-45-year-olds who use the Internet, the percentage who blog increased six points, to 16 percent, in 2010 from two years earlier, the Pew survey found. Blogging by 46-to-55-year-olds increased five percentage points, to 11 percent, while blogging among 65-to-73-year-olds rose two percentage points, to 8 percent. "

I won't name names, but several blogs that I've enjoyed in the past have gone silent, but I still see the (ex-)bloggers posting all over FB (pictures of ferrets in one case, perhaps? ;) ). Too bad...

Follower Number is Poor Predictor of Blog Popularity

I have sometimes wondered about whether older blogs with large, established reader bases gain new readers faster than newer blogs. This is an important question because it gets to the heart of the issue about whether current post quality is more important than the momentum provided by historical post quality. Ideally, a good blog will attract readers based simply on the quantity and quality of its latest posts.

To make a long story short, the good news is that initial follower number is a poor predictor of how many followers will be gained over a subsequent period of time. This implies that a blog's current popularity is not determined by how many readers it has amassed in the past; readers will be gained based primarily on how good a blog is, not how big a blog is.

I came to this conclusion by looking at a dataset of 216 old school roleplaying game blogs. I plotted follower numbers as of 30 Sep 2010 against gain-of-follower numbers over the period between 30 Sep 2010 and 31 Jan 2011. While a simple linear regression shows a weak trend for larger blogs to gain followers faster, the r-squared value for the trend is very low (0.3575). If we remove the juggernaut blogs GROGNARDIA and Playing D&D With Porn Stars the r-squared value drops down to 0.2087. An r-squared value of 1 is a strong association; the low values we see here suggest a very very weak association. This is good news! Keep on blogging!

 

Note that if you don't look at the (weak) trendline, the plot is basically a cloud...

The Fastest Growing Old School RPG Blogs

Here's a list of 212 old schoolish roleplaying blogs ranked by the number of followers they gained between 16 December and 31 January. I am ranking the blogs using this system - as opposed to raw follower number - in order to determine which blogs are "hottest" without being biased by how long a blog has been around. My main motivation for making this list is to highlight the blogs that are currently attracting the most reader attention regardless of the blogs' age. Out of respect, I DID NOT list blogs with zero or negative growth this time. At the end of the list are blogs that I am now tracking, but did not have data for when I was making this list.

My usual blogometric caveats apply: (1) This list only has blogger.com blogs because follower numbers are not publicly available for WordPress blogs. (2) Yes, I know some blogs are missing. If your blog is on my big blog list as of today, it should be in the next ranking. If your blog is not on my list and you want to be included, please send me the link.

Although older and more well-established blogs tended to fill in most of the top spots this time, attention is due to some of the smaller and newer blogs making the top rankings, including Black Hole Diaries, Gorgonmilk, Rather Gamey, The City of Iron, and The Dump Stat. Keep up the good work, everyone - there's definitely an audience out there!

Blog Name	31-Jan	16-Dec	Change
Playing D&D With Porn Stars	619	561	58
GROGNARDIA	783	726	57
Rule of the Dice	103	57	46
Black Hole Diaries	36	0	36
Cyclopeatron	213	177	36
destination unknown	171	136	35
The Underdark Gazette	214	181	33
Gorgonmilk	32	0	32
From the Sorcerer's Skull	141	112	29
Swords Against the Outer Dark	201	172	29
B/X BLACKRAZOR	235	208	27
Beyond the Black Gate	288	261	27
Hill Cantons	119	94	25
Rather Gamey	28	3	25
The City of Iron	39	15	24
The Dump Stat	34	10	24
LotFP: RPG	343	320	23
The Lands of Ara	77	54	23
Gothridge Manor	155	133	22
Aeons & Augauries	111	90	21
Dungeons and Digressions	212	191	21
THE LAND OF NOD	126	105	21
Jeffs Gameblog	416	396	20
Risus Monkey	122	103	19
The Tao of D&D	170	152	18
Sorcery & Super Science!	65	48	17
The Society of Torch, Pole and Rope	219	202	17
Trollsmyth	188	171	17
Bat in the Attic	180	164	16
Greyhawk Grognard	180	164	16
I Waste The Buddha With My Crossbow	106	90	16
World of Wonder	91	75	16
Akratic Wizardry	152	137	15
Cthulhu's Library	30	15	15
Errant	52	37	15
Gaming All Over The Place	44	29	15
Tenkar's Tavern	98	83	15
The Yaqqothl Grimoire	14	0	14
Axe & Hammer	109	95	14
Fame & Fortune	34	20	14
The Other Side blog	122	108	14
aldeboran	83	70	13
Crawdads and Dragons	52	39	13
Hack & Slash	31	18	13
I SEE LEAD PEOPLE	190	177	13
Monsters and Manuals	196	183	13
The RPG Corner	142	129	13
Tombs of Horrors	39	26	13
Uhluht'c Awakens	94	81	13
Green Skeleton Gaming Guild	115	103	12
In Places Deep	89	77	12
Lord of the Green Dragons	256	244	12
Professor Pope	33	21	12
Telecanter's Receding Rules	124	112	12
Troll and Flame	88	76	12
"It's okay; Gary sent us."	109	98	11
Carto Cacography	61	50	11
Countdown to Game Time	36	25	11
Discourse and Dragons	84	73	11
Fabled Lands	80	69	11
Grimmhaus	74	63	11
HUGE RUINED PILE	147	136	11
Old Guard Gaming Accoutrements	133	122	11
Old School Heretic	60	49	11
PLANET ALGOL	111	100	11
The Nine and Thirty Kingdoms	90	79	11
The Warlock's Home Brew	113	102	11
Tower of Zenopus	24	13	11
What a horrible night to have a curse...	96	85	11
A Hamsterish Hoard of Dungeons and Dragons	86	76	10
A Paladin In Citadel	227	217	10
ADnD Grognard	25	15	10
Daddy Grognard	133	123	10
Forgotten Runes	53	43	10
Henchman Abuse	33	23	10
HeroPress	151	141	10
Jasoomian Dreams	55	45	10
Quickly, Quietly, Carefully	20	10	10
Sickly Purple Death Ray	87	77	10
SWORD & SHIELD	54	44	10
Tower of the Archmage	65	55	10
ChicagoWiz's RPG Blog	240	231	9
For A Fistful Of Coppers	45	36	9
Sword and Board	63	54	9
The Wasted Lands	74	65	9
Advanced dungeons & dragons	43	35	8
Beyond the Wall	32	24	8
Carjacked Seraphim	80	72	8
Delta's D&D Hotspot	95	87	8
EXONAUTS!	69	61	8
Middenmurk	35	27	8
Roles, Rules, and Rolls	67	59	8
Tales from the Flaming Faggot	57	49	8
Teleleli	25	17	8
TEMPLE OF DEMOGORGON	131	123	8
The Grumpy Old Troll	49	41	8
The Lair of the Evil DM	157	149	8
Vaults of Nagoh	74	66	8
Asshat Paladins	50	43	7
Bugbears for Breakfast	28	21	7
El RagnaBlog	34	27	7
FightingFantasist	65	58	7
Havards Blackmoor Blog	105	98	7
Have dice, will travel...	49	42	7
OEF	129	122	7
Reviews from R'lyeh	53	46	7
The 25 Mile Hex	30	23	7
The Book of Worlds	52	45	7
The Grand Tapestry	137	130	7
Warning - Mutagenic Substance	77	70	7
Age of Ravens	47	41	6
BigDungeon	22	16	6
How to Start a Revolution in 21 Days or Less	134	128	6
In a Dark Cell	28	22	6
In Like Flynn	54	48	6
No School Like The Old School	18	12	6
Over the Misty Mountains	19	13	6
Shouting Into The Void	45	39	6
The Blog That Time Forgot	85	79	6
The Doomed Wastelands	34	28	6
The Frothy Friar	56	50	6
The Gallery: Russ Nicholson	154	148	6
The Jovial Priest	13	7	6
The Savage AfterWorld	110	104	6
Threads of Adventure!	49	43	6
Weird Worlds of Geoffrey McKinney	69	63	6
Appendix N	42	37	5
Back Screen Pass - A DM's Secrets	49	44	5
Digital Orc: Fantasy, Horror, and Sci Fi in Ro...	12	7	5
ENCOUNTER	34	29	5
of Pedantry	12	7	5
Old School Psionics	15	10	5
Saturday Night Sandbox	35	30	5
Tankards & Broadswords	128	123	5
The Omnipotent Eye	56	51	5
The Realm of Zhu	20	15	5
5 Stone Games	34	30	4
A Wizard in a bottle	37	33	4
chirine's workbench	46	42	4
Dungeonskull Mountain	82	78	4
Joethelawyer's Wondrous Imaginings	105	101	4
Rustfoot	45	41	4
Swords of Abandon	39	35	4
Tempora Mutantur	22	18	4
THE WHEEL OF SAMSARA	49	45	4
Back in '81	113	110	3
Beacon	12	9	3
Castle Dragonscar	52	49	3
Drawings & Dragons	48	45	3
Iron Rationales	22	19	3
Kingdoms in Trevail	25	22	3
Lawful Indifferent	46	43	3
Maximum Rock & Role Playing	44	41	3
MORE&BIGGER LOOT!	23	20	3
My RPG characters	25	22	3
RPG Blog II	132	129	3
SANDBOX EMPIRE	71	68	3
Savage Swords of Athanor	69	66	3
SAVE OR DIE!	32	29	3
The Delve	47	44	3
The Keep on the Gaming Lands	119	116	3
The Metal Earth	61	58	3
Warriors of the Red Planet	76	73	3
Attack Plan R	16	14	2
Back to the Dungeon!	59	57	2
Blood of Prokopius	38	36	2
DUNGEON ADVENTURES	25	23	2
Dungeonmum	93	91	2
gnotions	22	20	2
Knightvision Games - This Changes Everything!	6	4	2
Let's Make Believe	22	20	2
No Signal!	15	13	2
Penguin Overlord	6	4	2
Places to Go, People to Be	37	35	2
Polar Bear Dreams and Stranger Things	23	21	2
Save Vs. Poison	84	82	2
Spell Card!	38	36	2
Terminal Space	54	52	2
The Library: Retro and Classic Fantasy Games	46	44	2
The Vorpal Spork	28	26	2
The Weirdlands of Xhuul	39	37	2
Unofficial Games	46	44	2
Valley of Blue Snails	36	34	2
"The Troll Ate My Homework"	48	47	1
Archive of the Rotted Moon	33	32	1
Coffee swillin' analog gamer	35	34	1
Creative Mountain Games	13	12	1
Dungeons & Dorks	13	12	1
Embrace the Dungeon!	13	12	1
Grevious-Injury	18	17	1
Inspired Mythos	1	0	1
KOK'ed Dice	23	22	1
Mandragora: The Mandrake March	46	45	1
MF WARS	11	10	1
Mike's Amazing RPG Fun Pad	24	23	1
Musings from Myern	11	10	1
O RPG da Vida Real	10	9	1
Oubliette Magazine	34	33	1
Semper Initiativus Unum	39	38	1
Some King's Kent	31	30	1
Superhero Necromancer	51	50	1
Tales from the Dusty Vault	11	10	1
The Badger King's Den	17	16	1
The Burning Wastes	7	6	1
The Contemptible Cube of Quazar	42	41	1
The Dragon's Eye	4	3	1
The Hydra's Grotto	16	15	1
The Incredible Fétide Grigou Rôliste Show	8	7	1
The Old Forest	13	12	1
The Paradigm Traveler	10	9	1
The Polyhedral Dicebag	26	25	1
Trollish Delver	34	33	1
Where'd my Vorpal Sword Go?	20	19	1

To Be Included Next Time:

The Grumpy Celt

Ostensible Cat

Redwald RPG

Geordie Goes Gaming !

Forever Free Games

ix

Sword+1

Riskail

Antediluvian Printworks