REAL TALK - CHANNEL UPDATE

 

Hey all,

So, it's time that I face facts. When I started this blog, it was with the idea to share my thoughts, colelcted wisdom, whatever you want to call it, about superhero RPGs. There is a lot to be said for running the genre and I think I said a lot of good stuff. The problem is that I may have said it too fast and with too much excitement.

When I kicked off the blog it was with the intent of posting two featured post a week. This seemed fine as I had a backlog of material I had posted on my Discord going back a couple of years but the problem arose as I reached the end of that material and I found it harder and harder to come up with new things to write about. Even adding the From The Folder Friday series seem to help as it just added more work and doing character conversions and updates proved a bit more work than I had thought. While I did manage to write more, the ideas came less regularly and didn't seem to understand deadlines. the blog fell behind and pressure grew which started to work against my ADHD to make it something to avoid. 

Further complicating it all was a lack of feedback, comments, and interaction over the posts. People were visiting the blog, if the stats could be believed but nobody was engaging with the material - not here or at other places where I posted the releases. this served to further negatively effect my ADHD. I'm not full enough fo myself to write/talk for the sake of hearing myself speak and I genuinely enjoy sharing ideas and methods with people but that stops being enjoyable when people aren't responding, so, again, I slow down. 

So, what's the answer?

For me the way forward seems to be to write when I have an idea and try to keep the Friday write-ups going. This may mean a post only every now and again but it will mean that content keeps coming out without the pressure that kills my motivation. Maybe if I can drum up some traffic, feedback, interaction that gives me new ideas or provides momentum things will pick back up. At the end of the day, there is only so much that can be said about running superhero RPGs. 

Thanks all,

-Eli

CONTINUED DELAYS

 

Apologies for yet another Friday with no post. Statting up characters tends to tak a lot of time and things are just getting away from me me on that front. I am working on some characters from my gaming past, so stay tuned and they will come out.

Just blame it on Spider Man. 

FROM THE FOLDER FRIDAY - A NEW UNCOMING FEATURE

 

As I have previously mentioned, I have played superhero TTRPGs a lot. Most of that time was in the past, when I had more time and more regular available players interested in such. Most of that time was split between the Marvel Superheroes RPG by TSR and Champions. I dabbled in DC Heroes, Heroes Unlimited, Guardians and Icons. I even homebrewed a very basic system with a friend back in the early 80's, before Iknew about any of these games and had only seen Villains & Vigilantes. I haven't played much in recent years but my love of the genre and these games remains.

Most of my current interest lies mostly with the classic Marvel Superheroes RPG from TSR. The continued fan works for this game are outstanding and I cannot rave enough about the hard work being put in by fans of the comics and that game system. The Unofficial Canon Project is a massive storehouse of modern materials for this classic game. When I have ideas for superhero TTRPGs, I generally default to this game system for stats as I can practically build in it by memory after so many years binging this. Which brings me to the new feature.

Pictured above is a stack of folders which contains tons of art and character write-ups from my glory days of the MSHRPG. While this is certainly not everything I ever created - much of that was lost through various moves and the happenstance of bachelor life - they constitute a massive collection of useable material. The art in them ranges from some of my oldest, crudest work, to later works where i had gained skill and confidence though none of it is anywhere near commercial grade. In fact, much of it reflects how I learned to draw comics characters as back in the day , tracing body forms and outlines and applying our own customes and detail work over them was how we learned the basics. 

Starting tomorrow (Friday), my goal will be to dive into these folders, scan the images, warts and all, with minimal editing (I have not the skills or tech) and post them here each Friday. I hope to present each with game stats, some background information and commentary on my thoughts (as I can recall them) from when I made them. 

I hope you will enjoy seeing my work and that it might inspire you to tinker with your own. 

-Eli

POSTING SCHEDULE

Howdy folks,

I seem to have forgotten to make any sort of attempt to let you all know just how frequently I'll be posting to the blog. So, let me remedy that.

The plan is to do two posts a week - one on Monday and one on Wednesday. Possts will hit the blog at 6AM CST. 

I have decided on this schedule as it seems like it best fits the schedule of most gamers, especially GMs for whom a lot of my material will be aimed at. Weekends are often game days and so releasing my posts at the top and middle of the week gives interested parties something to look forward to going into the week and something to read to get them through to games on the weekends. Those GMs and players who want to make use of the material I post here will have the week, in their down time, to think it over and perhaps apply it to their next weekends games. In my experience, weekdays are for prepping. 

So, there you have it. I hope to be able to keep up this schedule and have already set up many many weeks of posts to get started.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to reading your thoughts in the comments. Also, if thee is anything you would like to see me write about, by all means suggest it in the comments. I'll see what I can do.

-Eli