It's time to address the elephant in the room. You guessed it. I'm talking about the lack of gaming content here, at The Tavern's blogside.
Where did it go?
In truth, there was never much of such in the first place. Sure, I've posted new creatures, discussed setting ideas, designed new magic items, shared some classes - but little of it got read all that much here at The Tavern. Given a choice between a new creature for Swords & Wizardry and a post highlighting the new Midderlands release, the latter wins hands down over the former every time. By multiples of traffic. Often 3x to 4x the number of hits on the post. Why is that?
Maybe my content isn't all that good. I'm proud of it but maybe it doesn't resonate with The Tavern's readers. Or maybe my readers "as a whole" come here more for the news than gaming material. I'm at a loss, in truth, because the posts creating new gaming content are time sinks and rarely get a fraction of the traffic that other posts receive.
What about the gaming questions? The questions such as "do you use henchmen in your campaigns?" or "how much magic is in your ideal setting?" Why have they moved to the Tavern Chat Podcast?
Quite simply, because it works better for me and the way my mind works. Believe it or not, I often lose my train of thought while writing. I lose it when speaking too, but I can talk faster then I type and derailing seems to happen less for me when I'm talking. Part of those concentration and focus issues I mentioned the other week.
Why is the Tenkar's Tavern Community on Facebook full of product releases, Kickstarter announcements, blog post links, Youtube videos and the like? I want more game discussion!
Again, the Facebook Community has always been dominated by announcements and gaming links. It is a hub of sorts for much of the OSR and a repository of OSR announcements. If you want more gaming discussion in The Tavern's Facebook Community, the opportunity to do so is literally in your hands. Just do it and the conversation will follow.
The Tavern's Discord Server has lively discussions going on 24/7, and Pexx (one of the moderators) puts up a discussion topic each morning. I'm considering stealing his daily topic each day to inspire a blog post. This may help alleviate some of the concerns that all of the actual gaming talk has moved to the podcast side of things.
There is a concern that the podcast is leaving behind members of The Tavern's community that are deaf. I'm looking for a partial solution, one that would maybe allow me to convert one or more episodes of the podcast each week to text. I'm open to suggestions. I'm on the Mac / OSX side of things.
I've been "doing this" since the Spring of 2009. First, the blog, then the Facebook Community, then the Discord server and now I've added the daily podcast. Its become a damn near fulltime job (but trust me when I say the pay isn't there ;) I wouldn't do it if I didn't enjoy it. All of it. Change is part of the process, but I'll try and alleviate the growing pains as best I can. All I ask for is patience as we get there.
As an aside, The Tavern is always open to guest posters. If you have an idea, send me a short pitch at tenkarsDOTtavern at that Gmail thing.
Thanks for taking the time to read all of this. It's a bear ;)
I think the strength of the blog has always been the short blurbs that keep people in the gaming loop.
ReplyDeleteI rather think your readers' eyes would glaze over if I tried to post one of my adventure module deep dive analyses here.
ReplyDeleteI have no doubt it's a ton of work, but thanks for doing it.
ReplyDeleteAs far as stealing my daily questions go... I'm all for it =) Whatever helps the Tavern out is my main concern.
ReplyDeleteAs far as stealing my daily questions are concerned...I say go for it. Whatever helps the Tavern out at the end of the day I am for.
ReplyDeleteGrowing pains are a sign of actual growth, so don't feel too bad. I bitch and complain as much as the next person, but I wouldn't want to lose any Tenkarness along the way!
ReplyDeleteI'm great with the content you're currently offering. If you're worried about the deaf fans.
ReplyDeleteDon't, it tend to be the growing pains with new technologies. It took almost a life time to add closed captions to TV shows. (Interesting Fact: The French Chef TV with Julia Child was the first show to be closed captioned in 1972) Creating accessibility with podcasts/TV shows is actually very time consuming to be done properly.
I would think the best option, if you want to, is to take the Podcast recording and post it on the Youtube to obtain some support to add subtitles service.
For now, I'm happy with sales, major news, and more importantly the PSA for those sneaky Kickstarters Creators on the blogs. I know I'll miss out on the smaller details but that's something most of us are used to.