Merry Christmas and Happy BOXing Day

We are celebrating Boxing day a day early here at the Other Side.

I am opening up Box.com functionality for all my free downloads.





So please expect some more content here as I am working on gathering up material and getting it out to you all.

So Happy Boxing Day!!

Year 2012 in reveiw

It is just about that time to get reflective on the year we have past and look forward to the new year.

Kickstarter
2012 might well go down as the Year of the Kickstarter.  Sure we had Kickstarters in 2011, but this was the year that everyone seemed to be getting on board.
We saw the introduction of the RPG Kickstarter Group on Facebook and I'd wager we will get something similar on Google Plus Community soon.    One of the more useful sites though has been Tenkar's Tavern and his round up of late Kickstarters.

Movies
I mentioned the Hobbit already, but 2012 was a great year for movies.  All sorts of Superhero action, with the Dark Knight Rises as my favorite super hero movie of the year.  I also enjoyed Brave quite a bit.

Games
Not much came out this year that I had to have. My Witch book came out and I was quite pleased with that.
In terms of running games, well it has been a busy year.
I am still running the D&D 3.x with my two sons, the Dragonslayers.  We had hoped to finish up this year but various things got in the way.  I started a new 4e game with my sons and some of their friends.  That one is more intermittent, but still enjoyable.   At Gen Con we also started a new 1st Ed game, designed as a "Next Generation" of our 3.x game.  I introduced my oldest son to Ghosts of Albion and he enjoyed it.  I want to introduce Doctor Who to them both since I think my youngest would like it as well.

The Edition Wars seemed to end, more or less.  WotC is working on 5e and printing 1st Ed material.  The OSR and Pathfinder is still chugging along.

Blog Traffic
So far this year I am sitting at 540 or so posts compared to 511 for last year.
My total traffic is down 109,747 visits (as of this writing  this year compared to 121,509 visits last year.  This is a general trend I think most bloggers are seeing.  While this is all down there is not a huge change in the patterns of traffic, just less of it.  One thing I have yet to figure out is why Google Analytics gives me different numbers than the Google Blogger stats.  For example if I just look at Blogger stats I got  over 300,000 hits this last year.
Regardless of the amount, the trends are about the same.

Here are my Top Ten Referers for 2012:

1. rpgbloggers.com
2. dreamsofmythicfantasy.blogspot.com
3. rpgba.org
4. tenkarstavern.com
5. facebook.com
6. networkedblogs.com
7. hillcantons.blogspot.com
8. dreamsinthelichhouse.blogspot.com
9. matt-landofnod.blogspot.com
10. theoreticalgm.blogspot.com

Google+
A lot of what is going on with Blogger and Bloggers is Google Plus. A lot of bloggers have been spending more time on talking and posting Google Plus.

Reviews
By the end of last year I had written a little over 200 reviews for DriveThruRPG.  This year I reached my goal of 500 and hit 531.  Not sure what my goal should be for 2013.

2013
Not sure what the new year will bring to the Other Side yet.  I want to continue White Dwarf Wednesday and Zatannurday.  More games and reviews to be sure.  I have a few WiPs I can alos talk about more next year.

What's It Worth to You?

Or to me for that matter.

Stumbled on on a website that calculates the worth of other websites.
http://www.worthofweb.com/website-value/

Where does the Other Side rank?


http://www.worthofweb.com/website-value/http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/

The whole thing is worth $1,971 (at the time of this post).

That's a little depressing.  I would have hoped for more.
Well that's just money, I am sure the Other Side is worth far more XP!

So go there and see what you are worth on the web.

Halloween Hangover

Well.  That was the most postings I have ever done in one month.
 Please don't expect that for November!

I doubled my normal abut of visits and page hits and I added about 20 new followers. I also discovered a bunch of new sites and blogs, so that is always welcome to me.

The Witch is selling rather well and I am pleased with the sales.  I never expected it to sell thousands of units; it's a niche product inside a niche market for another niche set of rules.  There are only so many ways to cut up this pie.

I have a few WIPs on my harddrive.  A couple for another publisher, my son's dragon book and a couple of others that people have told me will never sell because they are too "out there".  I will share more about those in the next few weeks.  Gotta see how they shake out.  Maybe I will release them for free.

I still have a desire to write a modern-supernatural game even though I well know the market is flooded with them.

I also have a number of reviews I am really behind on.  Have to get those done too.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

A lot going on here today!!

First, don't forget that you have less that 13 hours to sign up for "Spread the Witch"!
http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2012/10/wicked-after-dark-blog-hop-spread-witch.html

I have some movies left to review and put up for the October Challenge (and I am draggin' today).

Also White Dwarf Wednesday.

Foremost though Happy Halloween!  The Best of all holidays!

Slasher Flick: Jenny Two-Bags

I am a fan of Shon Richard's Erotiterrorist site.

If eroticism or even mostly R and X rated stories bug you, then don't go.  But among many other things Shon has a great imagination and can write a good tale.

His Halloween feature this month have been tales from the Succubus, Sukubeth.  Today's tale was about this serial killer that comes back from the dead.  It is a great mash-up of Carrie, Friday the 13th and any nameless college-age porno.  Of course in my twisted mind I think it would make a a great Slasher Flick bad guy.

I reviewed Slasher Flick a couple of weeks back (here) and even posted some characters.  What I never posted was a Killer to go along with the story.

So, presented here, is the horrific, but ultimately sad, tale of of a Girl known as Jenny Two Bags.
You can read her story here, http://erotiterrorist.blogspot.com/2012/10/fiction-jenny-two-bags.html
I will not attempt to retell it.


Appearance: Jenny appears as young women, roughly college age.  Her body would be the envy of most supermodels and she usually does not spend much time covering up.  Her face though is completely hidden by a sexy red devil mask.  If you were to remove her mask (which is a suicidal idea) you would see her face.  While Jenny was not attractive in life, death has done nothing to improve her.  In fact she bares the marks of every kill and every time she has been killed on her horrific face.

Components: Fearful Visage, Feeds on Fear, Hard to Kill, Linked Location (the cemetery where her body was dumped and the nearby colleges), Punish the Promiscuous (this is her Raison d'être), Superhuman Strength

Plot Hooks:
• Jenny Two Bags only shows up on Halloween.  If there is a high school or college party with alcohol (which means EVERY party) then expect Jenny to show up.
• Don't call her that! If a character calls Jenny by her name "Jenny Two-Bags" then she will go into a mindless killing frenzy.
• Last Boy.  If one of the last characters is a somewhat average male (the Nerd Archetype works best here) and he tries to be nice to Jenny she will forget why she is there.  This is treated as an attack.

Jenny can be killed by normal weapons and has been killed many times.  But she is always back by next Halloween!

Read about Jenny Two-Bags here: http://erotiterrorist.blogspot.com/2012/10/fiction-jenny-two-bags.html
Get Slasher Flick here: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/82728/Slasher-Flick%3A-The-Director%27s-Cut?affiliate_id=10748

Fear Not the Monsters...

“Fear not the monsters, but that which the monsters fear.”

Monstrous Monday is coming soon.

MONSTROUS MONDAY!

This year I wanted to do something extra for Halloween (which in my mind is the entire month of October).  So I am going to be hosting the MONSTROUS MONDAY Blogfest!

The rules are really simple.

1. Sign up below
2. Grab a button and link back to my site
3. Post your Monster on Monday October 29th 2012!

That's it!

What kind of Monster?  Well that is up to you really.  I am going to be posting Monster stats.  You can do that, or post a monster you like/love/hate, or tell us about the monster in your new book coming out.  Anything would be great really.

I will be posting some more soon.

Here are some banners for your use with some code to link back here.

Code:

<a href="http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/"><img alt="MONSTROUS MONDAY!" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAY1PhNSBQ3RI5jgrciNyNqoS7fLZay3QLI5C73SjQpRXu4VybZTk9ftDUATfsZHyfYI7IP1LC0QcEbNDZrT2OhkEUxjPmuWC7R5O4Zfk9M0CICN5g7_ImhltCmcLVwPbRWExrfS290Es/s1600/MONSTROUS_MONDAY1.png" /></a>

Code:

<a href="http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/"><img alt="MONSTROUS MONDAY!" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj0cncKUv7DNEZfBdyDZegS9sXHpDVOglPL5L664rcMlzqPZcYyhpkUYiqjsNhoIpk43DIJMIzOv_as2Exwc7JqFE7fJXPm3Tl7q9ncdr9c1Rgw6AQSvBli4RwDBehi-eJEgC6qSNJzkM/s1600/MONSTROUS_MONDAY2.png" /></a>

Code:

<a href="http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/"><img alt="MONSTROUS MONDAY!" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4x9_A5q-bmXO4aLnhNT2FT_xuLjxK85rE4iCPTCXEWrtd9cALHohSeR-LEB8oivYF00kygA7jtPvL_2yi5qAP4_P4jjaoe9vR9az8zL27zJxZocWx-vp7aiSU13i9WyoiiGvU3mugwyk/s1600/MONSTROUS_MONDAY3.png" /></a>

OR Right-click on the picture you want and re-size as needed.

You can sign up here now.

Regular Posting

Resumes tomorrow.

Sorry.  Been one of those weeks.

Posting this week

My regular posting is going to be off this week due to Gen Con.

I have some reviews of some books I have been using for years , so I have those queued up and ready to go.

There might the random/odd post from Gen Con itself.

But otherwise I am going to be enjoying the Best 4 Days in Gaming!

Blog Roll clean-up

First of the month, time for clean up.

I want to add some new sites, but Google puts a limit on how many I can follow, so some have to go.
Normally it is very easy.  But as I deleted older blogs and replaced them with newer ones I have added more than fall out naturally.

So have to make some hard cuts.  I am not lobbying for one site or another, I am just bemoaning that Google limits how many I can follow.

London Map updates

So a while back I learned about Banners On The Cheap and their desire to "get into" the RPG map biz.

There was no single tabletop map I wanted, but I have always wanted a large map of Victorian-era London for my game room.  I finally settled on a map.

Click for a really, really big version

It is London of 1890, rather than my preferred of 1838, but that is cool.  This is the "classic" Victorian London and good enough for me. It will work great for nearly all the Victorian games I own.

The process could not have been easier and frankly the prices were a lot cheaper than I expected.  I'll get this one by the end of the month and I will let you all know how it works out.

If you want to try them out for yourself then here is the link.

Custom Bandit Signs

I have pretty high hopes for this.  If it works out well, and takes dry-erase or water markers well, then I have a bunch of others I'd love to do.

LinkWithin, part 2

Well I am going to stick with LinkWithin this time around.

Not only is it working better now it is also pushing up the hits on some of my older posts and that is a cool thing.

It looks like I could expand it to 4 or 5 links per page instead of just 3.   Will have to see how that works out.

ETA: Tried it, was a snap.  Is 5 too much?

Tales of Woe

It is a sad day here at The Other Side.

My hard drive died a couple weeks ago.  Normally this is a cause for panic, but I didn't because having been doing this for a while I thought I had everything backed up.  Well.  I didn't.

I didn't lose any of my PDFs save for maybe the most recent ones I bought since May, but I can always go back to DriveThruRPG and re-download those.  My current OSR/Old-School books were in the hands of editors, so they were saved.

I did though loose all my documents for my Ghosts of Albion adventures Blight, Obsession, Wilderness and Synchronicity.  I have printout of Blight and Obsession, so that isn't too bad.  And I lost all my personal emails from 2011-2012.

Figuring it was the circuit board (given the errors I was getting) I worked with a company that specialized in this brand of hard drive (Seagate Barracuda) called PCB Solution.

I worked with Kevin to find a new board for this drive and in truth my hopes were high, even if he felt (and he did tell all this upfront) that my drive might be further gone that I thought it was.  Undaunted I picked up their repair kit and got it in a couple of days.  It easy easy to do as long as you have no fear of cranking open your computer or drives.  I got it in installed and slapped it into a new external drive enclosure and ... nothing.

I worked on a few other tricks I have picked over the years.  Back in the day I ran the official usenet alt.sys.pc-clone.gatewat2000 FAQ, so I consider myself a bit smarter than the average bear in this respect.  But if there is one thing I have learned, there is always someone smarter.  And it will take someone smarter than me to fix this one.

Here is what I have learned (and should known already):

1. It doesn't matter how much you back up.  Back up more.
2. Stop buying Seagate drives.  Every single one has died on me and took much valued data with it.

So that is what I know.

I do want to publicly thank Kevin at PCB Solution.  He really went above and beyond the call of duty to help me.

LinkWithin

Well I have been trying out LinkWithin on my blog for the 3rd time (or maybe the 4th) and this time it seems to work much better.

In earlier versions of the Other Side layout I had written large parts of my own CSS. The new Blogger layout now gives me the advanced features I wanted without needing to muck around with coding.  That is nice since my own coding also has disabled some of the nicer comments features.  It also was not very compatible with LinkWithin.

Well now it seems to work better.  I am not seeing how the algorithm works; for example how a post on the Zatanna and Hex Girls will also direct you to Dracula, Shakespeare, and D&D Basic.  But I guess in my world that makes sense.

The one thing I am noticing that my hits for older pages are way up.  That is a good thing.  I have over 1200 posts here now, some of that older stuff has to be good too!

Do you like the LinkWithin widget?  Are you finding any hidden treasures, not just here, but any blog that uses it?

Dear Google Visitors...

I am sorry.  But despite your efforts over the last week you can not find "Supergirl Porn" here.

As a consolation, here is this image.

May you have better luck on other sites.

Edits

I just got back the edits for both Eldritch Witchery and The Witch within hours of each other.

I have not looked at either yet, but I am expecting there to be some pretty extensive changes and edits to be made.

This will certainly cut into my blogging time here.  Just wanted you to know.

A to Z: Reflections Post

So the A to Z Blog Challenge is over for another April.  Not sure what I'll do next year, but I am sure  I am going to plan ahead for it better.

How did your journey through the alphabet go? Did you meet new bloggers with similar interests? Are there any you would like to feature and share with others?
Yes.  I joined several new-to-me blogs and found a bunch of books I wanted to read from my travels.

What were the highlights for you? (lowlights too...we want to hear it all)
Highlights for this blog was to get the word out on so man great games out to people that didn't know about them.  Lowlights...trying to do this for two blogs at the same time!

Did you enjoy posting daily? What was your biggest hurdle? What was your easiest task?
I tend to post everyday anyway.  Biggest hurdle was coming up with something appropriate for the letter in question that also fit with my theme.  Easiest part was finding games to talk about.

Was time management an issue? (I know, silly question, when isn’t time management an issue - but, it is worth reflecting on)
It did cut into my schedule quite a bit to be honest.

And what about your content - did you have a theme or did you wing it? Was it easy to come up with ideas for each letter, or were some harder? 
I had a theme and I stuck with it. But I had thought about it a lot and tried to find games ahead of time.

How about commenting - did you stumble upon lots of sites still using word verification? Did this prevent you from leaving a comment? What worked for your blog? 
I tried to visit every blog in the challenge.  Yes, I ran into a number that had Word Verification still turned on and it was annoying.   Though much worse than that were the people the had to approve my post/comment and then never did.
I keep word verification turned off. I would rather have it easier for my readers than worry about spam.

What will you do different next year? (Yes, you are doing this next year, you know you are, even if your brain is telling you to run for the hills - it appreciates the exercise)
Try to get more posts in before April!   Craft the posts in such a way to encourage more feedback.

What pearls of wisdom do you want to share with the Co-Hosts of this event? (We would love to hear from you and know what you think would make this awesome event even better)
There were a number of "dead" sites on the list and some were some that didn't link to their blog, but some other page.  You might want to get more Co-Hosts next year to help clean out the non-participants (the ones that signed up then never posted) and dead links.

So I ended up with a bunch of new followers.  50 on the Other Side and almost 20 on Freedom of Nonbelief, and very little overlap between the two.

My growth in views was not as much relative to last year.  But that is to be expected really.
I will be participating again next year.

A to Z Challenge

Tomorrow begins the April A to Z blogging challenge.




This year I am doing it not just once, but twice.
I have signed up my other blog, The Freedom of Nonbelief, to the challenge as well.
I felt that my other blog could also gain from the exposure and it would help me collect my thoughts some on what I think that blog should be about.
So please join me over there as I go through the A to Z of atheism, skepticism and free thought.

Here at the Other Side, I am going to be doing the A to Z of RPGs. I am going to pick a game for each letter and talk about it. I am though having trouble with the letter I. I am thinking I should do In Nomine, but not sure yet.

I am open to suggestions!

If you are coming here from the Challenge, then please leave a link back to your own blog.

Blog Roll Fixed

The simple solution was to split up my blog rolls.
You will now see I have an RPG one and an Everything Else one that has all the writing, horror, comic and other stuff I read.

My RPG one though is now just as full as it was before, so even if it is an RPG site chances are I'll have to add you to the other blog roll.