Blog Discussions Round up

Lot of interesting things going on in the various old-school blogs over the last week or so.
Here are the ones that caught my attention.

Harvard over at his Blackmoor Blog is talking about formative images.
http://blackmoormystara.blogspot.com/2010/09/formative-images.html
He talks about Aleena and Bargle from the Mentzer Basic set.  Harvard describes me perfectly, a Moldvay Basic player that went on to AD&D skipping over the whole BECMI series.  So I never knew who Aleena and Bargle were.  Funny thing though I have been planning on updating Bargle, Aleena and a fave from Moldvay, Morgan Ironwolf to the new D&D4 Essentials.

The wicked cool Cyclopeatron has ranked all the "old-school" blogs by followers.
http://cyclopeatron.blogspot.com/2010/09/165-old-school-rpg-blogs-ranked-by.html
To follow up on that the equally cool From the Sorcerer's Skull had put together a level advancement table based on followers complete with level titles.  http://sorcerersskull.blogspot.com/2010/09/old-school-rpg-blogger-advancement.html.  Given that I am a 6th level Maven Blogger.

Not so much a blog, there is an interesting article on Dragonlance and the Forgotten Realms over at Grasping for the Wind, and how story and adventures play on each other in the creation of these two D&D worlds.
http://www.graspingforthewind.com/2010/09/19/the-worlds-that-outgrew-their-stories-two-roads-to-intellectual-property-success/
There is a lot of good points on both sides and especially a lot of good point for would world-creators out there.
James over at Grognadia follows up with a brief post and bunch of comments.
http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2010/09/power-of-ip.html
And Jason over at The Wasted Lands weighs in on the subject of Story-vs.-Railroad.
http://wastedlandsfantasy.blogspot.com/2010/09/story-vs-railroad-some-ponderings.html
This is something I keenly felt when writing and running the games for The Dragon and the Phoenix.  We were constrained by the IP in many respects but ended having the most fun when we broke out of it.  Plus I wanted to avoid railroading to get to a desired outcome.  Players will always do what they want.

Speaking of old school characters, Rob over at Bat in the Attic has been on the trail of Emirikol the Chaotic.
http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2010/09/imagining-d-for-myself.html
and as reported at Akratic Wizardry, http://akraticwizardry.blogspot.com/2010/09/on-trail-of-emirikol-chaotic.html (and a better version of the street here, https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKQTQHzeWs0a9N6e_oJRmu3lhWXjMZlb3oeyHpOAcAhRpIeUr_Pz6g7sAQaesEhwNfuVK0u9v1RX7FXClA-4QdkCBuZQ0qL_XKRASEZvGKDA8jLEigG4gFm3NSOqv9ZSfPCBntkVbpbLU/s1600/Street+of+the+Knights.jpg)  It was also reported at the Acaeum, http://www.acaeum.com/forum/about10562.html
Seeing the "Real World" scenes is very cool.

Know of anything else cool going on?