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Post by jeffgeorge on May 17, 2018 4:35:34 GMT -9
Hey, folks! I've been working on a side project for the past couple of months: printandplaygamer.com, a blog covering the downloadable side of the tabletop gaming hobby! I've already got seven posts up, including a full sheet of giant toadstool miniatures in a rainbow of colors. My review/recommendation for the Black Pudding OSR 'zine is finished and scheduled to post tomorrow morning. Going forward, I plan to include downloadable minis and small game supplements, product recommendations (I'm not going to waste time and space writing negative reviews!), papercrafting tutorials, and maybe some of my personal views about the gaming scene. Not everything on the blog will be news to the members of this community, but a lot of it should still be of interest. I'd like to invite you all to drop by and poke around a bit. The site is still growing and taking shape, but there's enough there that I can receive visitors. I'd take it as a special favor if you leave a comment there, or post links to it in whatever online gaming communities you think might find it interesting. Thanks in advance for taking the time to visit printandplaygamer.com. I hope you find it worth your time! --Jeff
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Post by emergencyoverride on May 17, 2018 4:49:55 GMT -9
Right on! Cant wait to dive in!
Edit: Also, those toadstools are ace!! Thanks!
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Post by nolabert on May 17, 2018 15:49:43 GMT -9
jeffgeorge I’ve already checked it out. Good stuff there! It’s not Wordpress, right? I was hoping to subscribe. If you’ve not checked out my own blog (it’s a 5E campaign journal) and it seems like something you’d be interested in, you can find it here: thulaen.wordpress.com .
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Post by jeffgeorge on May 17, 2018 16:11:05 GMT -9
jeffgeorge I’ve already checked it out. Good stuff there! It’s not Wordpress, right? I was hoping to subscribe. If you’ve not checked out my own blog (it’s a 5E campaign journal) and it seems like something you’d be interested in, you can find it here: thulaen.wordpress.com . Thanks! Yes, it's WordPress, but I'm on the fence about whether its better to let people just leave comments without signing up--which is how it is now--and requiring them to subscribe or "join". The question is whether its better to review and approve membership applications, or to do it on a comment-by-comment basis. The underlying mission of the project is to learn more about WordPress, and that's just not an issue that's climbed to the top of the priority list yet. What I've done so far is get the site's appearance established (using a customized child theme based on Astra, a solid, flexible WordPress theme that works well with the Elementor page-builder), getting a starting round of content up, and setting up the SEO (Yoast) and getting it connected to Google's web developer tools. I still have lots of things to study up on, to continue to enhance the site and build my WordPress skills. I'll definitely check out your blog. I may have peeked at it before--the name sounds familiar--but it was probably in the middle of the night some time when I wasn't really saving things into memory well. Thanks for your interest and input, too!
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Post by nolabert on May 17, 2018 17:36:25 GMT -9
jeffgeorge I’m not an IT guy so some/much of what you’re talking about is lost on me. I’m a university professor by profession at a regional undergrad university (i.e., next to pond scum in the grand scheme of things). I went with the free WordPress build using the simplest layout just to get something done. Ostensibly, the blog is for my players as a memory aid to remember what has transpired in our campaign. But there are additional goals: encourage story writing, share my love of papercraft, connect with other 5E DMs and players as well as other RPG enthusiasts, and connect with other people who make terrain for their RPGs. There is a pretty vibrant terrain community out there mostly centered around cheap cardboard DIY projects (a la DM Scotty) and more involved/precise XPS foam builds (like Black Magic Craft). I think papercraft has a role to play in this group, both as a complement to their other projects and as an alternative worth exploring in its own right.
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Post by jeffgeorge on May 18, 2018 4:13:07 GMT -9
jeffgeorge I’m not an IT guy so some/much of what you’re talking about is lost on me. I’m a university professor by profession at a regional undergrad university (i.e., next to pond scum in the grand scheme of things). I went with the free WordPress build using the simplest layout just to get something done. Ostensibly, the blog is for my players as a memory aid to remember what has transpired in our campaign. But there are additional goals: encourage story writing, share my love of papercraft, connect with other 5E DMs and players as well as other RPG enthusiasts, and connect with other people who make terrain for their RPGs. There is a pretty vibrant terrain community out there mostly centered around cheap cardboard DIY projects (a la DM Scotty) and more involved/precise XPS foam builds (like Black Magic Craft). I think papercraft has a role to play in this group, both as a complement to their other projects and as an alternative worth exploring in its own right. I did start to read your blog last night, and it's a really great campaign record. You do an especially great job of showcasing papercraft game props in your photos, which seem to become a bigger part of the blog as it goes along. I couldn't agree more with your assessment about the papercraft game terrain situation in relation to the broader online terrain community. When I was getting interested in rejoining the hobby after a two-decade layoff, around two years ago, I started by looking for miniatures, and was appalled by how much even Reaper Bones were charging for a single figure. Remembering Steve Jackson Games' Cardboard Heroes from the 80's, I started googling for cardstock alternatives, which led me to okumarts' Darkfast Dungeons game and line at DTRPG, and then here to CWF. As I was printing and assembling David's minis, I ran YouTube vids in the background, which led me to Wyloch's Armory, then DM Scotty, Black Magic Craft, Drunkens and Dragons/Runehammer, Dungeons and Gluesticks, the Terrain Tutor, and many more. I think it's fairly obvious that my Dungeons of Olde tiles are inspired mainly by Wyloch's 1.25"-grid modular tiles, and I've made no secret about that influence here in the forums. Yet while there is lots of support for the gluestick-and-foam sort of terrain online, especially on YouTube, there's very little to support papercrafters making minis and terrain. That's the niche that printandplaygamer is attempting to fill, or at least to exist within. If I knew more about video production, I'd be doing a YouTube channel instead--and that might be in the future--but I know a bit about putting up websites, so that's what I'm doing for now. But doubling back to your blog...one of the best ways to evangelize for papercraft gaming is to show it in action. People like you, oldschooldm, and many others here at CWF are using cardstock to realize a wide variety of amazing campaigns, and sharing your tabletops with the world through blogs, Facebook, and other social media. I'm thinking now that I need to do post, or perhaps a series, showcasing the campaigns of people like yourselves, so that other gms and players will be better able to find your images, and become inspired by them. Thanks so much for this dialog, nolabert. You're really inspiring me to keep this project moving forward!
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Post by jeffgeorge on May 18, 2018 14:47:29 GMT -9
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Post by nolabert on Jun 1, 2018 5:45:29 GMT -9
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Post by jeffgeorge on Jun 1, 2018 6:00:32 GMT -9
That's a good idea, once I figure out how to do an interview. I'm still figuring out who *I* am on the blog right now--not sure yet I'm up to the challenge of asking someone else who *they* are. But yes, that will have to come eventually. And btw, you're doing a pretty amazing job of papercrafting an RPG campaign yourself, over there...maybe I should interview *you* too!
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Post by nolabert on Jun 1, 2018 6:07:55 GMT -9
jeffgeorge I’d be up for an interview but I think you should interview the master first.
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Post by jeffgeorge on Jun 1, 2018 8:21:35 GMT -9
jeffgeorge I’d be up for an interview but I think you should interview the master first. Duly noted. First, I'll have to figure out how to do one of these two things: - Find a way to conduct an interview that is not too burdensome for the interviewee, but can be presented in a text format within a blog.
- Conduct an interview as a YouTube conversation...which has a list of prerequisites as long as my arm. If I knew how to run a YouTube channel, I'd already be doing it!
But now that the blog is officially "live," and it's starting to get some traffic, the stuff that isn't on the site but should be is becoming really obvious. The list of things I need to implement PDQ starts with, but isn't limited to:
- Navigation bar menu. Now that I have a clearer idea of what permanent pages I will need, I know what goes on that menu. Of course, that also means I have to implement those pages...
- A contact form, so that people can send me their brilliant ideas for the blog, which will no doubt be much better than mine.
- Social media links, so that people can at least follow me on Twitter (which would be twitter.com/pnpgamer/, btw!), as well as any presence I intend to have on Google+ and Facebook, neither of which I've ever taken the time to learn much about.
Seems that now that the "launch" was just the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end!
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Post by jeffgeorge on Jun 5, 2018 5:47:17 GMT -9
Tuesday's post just went up (four hours late, but who's counting?). This time, I write about my super-cool experience playing Advanced Song of Blades and Heroes at my local game club last night. Check out the all-cardstock table, featuring minis by okumarts and Paper Forge, and terrain from Dave!
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Post by jeffgeorge on Jun 15, 2018 13:10:45 GMT -9
My Friday post this week is about how the GM tools and advice Dungeon World and its supplements are essential reading for game masters running sandbox campaigns in any rule system. It's worth mentioning that Dungeon World is one of the offers at Bundle of Holding through June 25, 2018, so you can pick it up cheap, along with a whole bunch of supplements!
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Post by jeffgeorge on Jun 20, 2018 18:03:01 GMT -9
Hey guys...just wanted to share some data with someone who might care... The printandplaygamer.com blog started for real about a month ago, and I hooked up a Google Analytics plug-in on May 20th (Monster Insights, if anyone cares). That means that as of now, I've been able to count visitors for a few hours short of one month...and the numbers are pretty cool, at least to me! From May 20 to June 20, I've had 1,271 sessions--that is, people have visited the site 1,271 times, which comes out to about 42.3 sessions per day. 71% of those sessions are new visitors, and 29% are returning visitors, which means that I've had just over 900 different people visit the site in the last month! That's more than 30 new people each day (on average, of course) visiting the site for the first time, which is amazing to me. I know that checking this data daily has kept me inspired to keep the blog going. There have certainly been days when a post was due (I am supposed to post every Tuesday and Friday!), and I was tired, busy, or just not feeling it. But knowing that there were people out there actually reading what I posted motivated me to sit down in front of the keyboard and bang out something that I felt would be of value to "my" readers. Without Obviously, Cardboard Warriors has been one of the best referral sources so far. Thanks, everyone who's visited the site, and especially to those who have left commentsthere, and encouraging words here. This community's support has been a huge boost to myself and the blog, and now I hope that I will be able to keep going, keep growing, and keep spreading the word papercraft gaming to the wider tabletop world!
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Post by emergencyoverride on Jun 21, 2018 4:22:07 GMT -9
Huzzah! Those are some good numbers. Especially just starting out. I know I look forward to your posts! I've bought several new items that I wasn't aware even existed until you wrote about them, especially Wormskin (super fascinating) Keep up the great work.
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Post by jeffgeorge on Jun 21, 2018 15:41:22 GMT -9
Huzzah! Those are some good numbers. Especially just starting out. I know I look forward to your posts! I've bought several new items that I wasn't aware even existed until you wrote about them, especially Wormskin (super fascinating) Keep up the great work. That's just what I was hoping would happen! There's tons of really amazing print-and-play content out there--stuff like Wormskin--that folks may not know about. One of the things I want to accomplish with the blog is to help bring attention to products I've found useful, interesting, or entertaining, so people know how to find it. The other major objective is to evangelize for papercraft gaming paraphernalia like minis and terrain, and the other other objective is to share techniques I've figured out for DIY projects. I've been bringing papercraft terrain to my local gaming club--which is about 80% Warhammer 40K players--and they're consistently impressed with the detail and "table-effect" of the stuff I've shown them. Admittedly, there are some pretty amazing terrain crafters on YouTube, but most of the terrain I see on local tables just looks like insulation foam sprinkled with kitty litter and spray-painted (which is what it is!). Our community's papercraft designers put that stuff to shame, and the world deserves to find out about them!
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Post by lightning on Jul 9, 2018 23:38:21 GMT -9
Awesomesauce! I just found out today but hey, I am getting old and all these different forums and social media sites I am in are making my head spin lately. Good luck and let me know if you want to do one article with my stuff one day.
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Post by jeffgeorge on Jul 27, 2018 17:08:28 GMT -9
Awesomesauce! I just found out today but hey, I am getting old and all these different forums and social media sites I am in are making my head spin lately. Good luck and let me know if you want to do one article with my stuff one day. Thanks! Yeah, I definitely want to do a feature on your models...I just need to get a few more of them built! (I've got several of yours on my hard drive, but I'm soooo far behind assembling stuff). I'm in the middle of moving to a new home now, tho, so there's no crafting going on for several more weeks. I hope to really hit terrain and model building hard starting about labor day, so this fall should see lots of builds on the blog, including yours.
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Post by jeffgeorge on Jul 27, 2018 17:17:43 GMT -9
If you've checked the PnPG blog over the past few weeks, you'll notice it suddenly got very quiet around the first of July. What happened is my wife and I bought a new home on June 28, and we're up to our eyeballs in the move--including fix-it jobs in both the old house and the new. I'd hoped to make at least short posts once a week or so through the summer, but I've been working on the houses every waking moment since we got the keys. We hope/need to be moved by mid-August, though, so I should be back to a more regular blogging schedule no later than Labor Day. That being said, Christmas in July is going on right now, so I'm making time to recommend a few of my favorite DTRPG finds while prices are discounted. I've posted two of my "Christmas List" features so far, covering the Hero Kids FRPG and Okumarts 5e figures, which you may not have noticed hiding out over at DMsGuild. Give 'em a read, if you have the time, and leave a comment, if you're so inclined! Thanks!
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Post by okumarts on Jul 27, 2018 19:26:25 GMT -9
I really liked how those sets turned out and nobody is buying them! It's like they don't exist! Thanks for this!
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Post by jeffgeorge on Jul 27, 2018 19:38:50 GMT -9
I really liked how those sets turned out and nobody is buying them! It's like they don't exist! Thanks for this! Yeah, I love these sets too. I had a sense that people weren't finding them, because if people knew these sets existed, they'd be selling. One of the things I hope to do with the blog is bring attention to good print-and-play products that people may not know about. I doubt there are many people reading me who don't know about the Darkfast stuff, for example, but I don't think that there's much cross-over between DTRPG/RPGNow and DMsGuild. They seem to be very separate markets and communities.
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Post by jeffgeorge on Jul 28, 2018 7:04:21 GMT -9
Just added another installment to my Christmas in July recommendation list: three very different OSR rule sets you should own!
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