Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts

Friday, August 16, 2013

Not Going to Gen Con, but here are some winners

WOW.

That was a lot of people.

So I expanded my winners.
I pulled out my dice and did this old school.

Congrats to:

F. Douglas Wall.
John Harp
David Cutts

and since demand was so high I did some more.

faoladh
Thaumiel Nerub
Anthony Hunter
Tim Shorts

Seven is a good number!

Honestly that was fun.  I am working on more material for a variety of things (vague much?) so I am going to give more stuff away in the future.  Certainly in October, but maybe sooner.

Thanks everyone for participating!

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

New banner

Thought I needed a little change here.
Course I am only about 9 months late on getting a John William Waterhouse Magic Circle themed one up.
But I figure it is still less self-indulgent than my last one.


Sunday, August 4, 2013

Monday, July 1, 2013

July? That can't be right?

Today is July 1st.

Wait-What??  That can't possibly be right.

Work is kicking my ass at the moment (I just picked up a new school to re-design their entire curriculum) so I have not had the time for fun things since most nights have me working till about 11:00pm.

So the time I do have to work on things, around 6:00am after my morning run, I am usually too brain dead to come up with anything. In fact I have pretty much been staring at this screen (of and on) for the last 4 hours.

So....
Let's see.

Google Reader is dead, or soon will be.
I could get some reviews up while re-charging my creative batteries. I have been itching to review Monsterhearts and Otherverse America.

I have been thinking about picking up one of those Chromebooks to just use for game writing.  Though I love my MS Word and have been a user of it since Edition 1.1.  Google Docs, while nice, is just not the same.  Anyone use one of these?

Monday, June 24, 2013

Monday Monday

So nothing really to post or chat about today.

The day job is kicking my butt this week.  Our next Summer term starts next week so I am busy getting ready all this week.

In game news I am re-reading "The Silmarillion" for the first time since high school.  I am loving it and enjoying it on a completely different level than I did 30 years ago.  It's just fantastic really.  I had just finished reading "The Children of Húrin" and loved it.

I should have some game reviews up sometime.

Something interesting.
Tenkar has a post about advertising and marketing the OSR.   Go over there read his post, watch the video.
http://www.tenkarstavern.com/2013/06/marketing-your-rpg-panel-on-air-with.html

Me. I am happy with beer money (I make enough at my day job to pay bills and get the things I want).  Or rather, I use the money I make to buy more games or material for new game books.  It's a crazy little eco-system that I am happy with.

Maybe something will motivate me later today.

Friday, June 14, 2013

Winners, Losers and the Tomb

Winners
Wow!  What a day yesterday.  All I wanted to do was celebrate my birthday and give out some free stuff. ;)

Well I have emailed the two winners, I am just waiting for them to confirm their emails.  (ok both have gotten back to me!)

So congrats to John Harp and Michael Bolam!  You can thank the d20 and d6 I rolled!

Honestly that was a lot of fun and I need an excuse to do that again soon.

Losers
The big loser of the week is (or will be) Tracey Alley for publishing Mystara books.
http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2013/06/ugh-do-we-have-to-do-this-one-again-ip.html
http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2013/06/ugh-do-we-have-to-do-this-one-again-ip_13.html
https://www.facebook.com/groups/mystara.reborn/
I did not set out to ruin her week but seriously folks, IP is IP is IP.

I have seen a lot of comments of "well WotC isn't doing anything with it".  Sorry, but there is no such thing as "Abondon-ware" in fact the Mystara property is alive and kicking with the release of the "Dungeons & Dragons Chronicles of Mystara Game" out next week.
Or even "She is not making a lot of money on it". The amount made (lots, little or none) doesn't matter.  I bought those books (but got a refund) because I thought they were official Mystara books. There are lots of people that would love to make more Mystara products, people that I would love to support.  But they don't make them because they know they are not allowed too.

Of course the other loser in this is me.  I thought I had found a new series to read and instead I have to drag all this out into the light.

The Tomb
The best news though is for my birthday and Father's day I am going to play some D&D with my kids!  YEAHH!

Since it is also D&D day I think a classic is in order.   So Liam and Connor will be headed to The Tomb of Horrors!


I have copies for every version of D&D (well 1st to 4th) so I am not sure which system to run it yet.  1st ed is the obvious choice, but the boys are playing 3e now and their 1st ed characters are only 1st level.

I am expecting it to be a lot of fun!

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Happy Birthday to Me! Here's a Gift for You!

Today is my birthday!

The great thing about being this age is I am pretty much at the point where if there is something I want I go out and get it.  So all I asked for this year was some time to play some D&D with my kids.

But someone needs a gift.

To celebrate this and recently reaching 1,000,000 hits I want to thank you my loyal readers.

Here's the deal.  I am gong to give away a $5 DriveThruRPG gift car and a $5 Amazon gift card.

What do you need to do to get it?
Almost nothing!
Just post below!

Make sure I have a way of contacting you (email is best) and I'll pick two people at random.
That's it.

Post. Get lucky. Win.
I'll email you and you tell me which of the two prizes you want.

Thanks so much for making the Other Side as much as it has been and here's to the next 1,000,000 hits!

Monday, June 10, 2013

1,000,000 Other Side Views Can't Be Wrong

I want to do a bit of celebrating here at the Other Side.

I just went past 1,000,000 hits here and had a pretty successful fundraiser.
Plus it's my birthday in a couple days.

Let's do something special.



I am going to give away some things.

Not sure what, not sure how, but something. and soon!

Keep an eye out.

(if you don't get the image, try here)

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Bloghop and Giveaways

Hey everyone!

May is winding down but there are still plenty of things to do here at the Other Side.
First things first.

I mentioned on the first day of the Hop Against Homophobia and Transphobia that I would donate all the money this site made to charity.
http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2013/05/blogfest-hop-against-homophobia-and.html

And the total is...$15.37 in affiliate sales and $5.90 in sales of the Witch for a total of $21.27.
Not bad for this site, I was hoping for some more.  I will likely round it up to an even 25 or 50.

There is also the business of giving away a copy of the Witch!
http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2013/05/bloghop-giveaway.html

Waiting to hear back from the winners (yes winners!) now.

I must be crazy because in June I am going to do some more giveaways.
Yes to celebrate 1,000,000 hits here I am going to give away copies of my books, gift cards and who knows what else.  No contest. No promotion. Just me giving stuff to you as a thank you for supporting me over the years.

That's coming in June.  So stayed tuned.

EDITED TO ADD:  The winners have been notified.  Rachel Ghoul and RQRobb both received a copy of the Witch!

Saturday, May 25, 2013

1,000,000 Page Views!

I hit 1,000,000 pages views earlier today!


Not too shabby really!

Planning some stuff to celebrate! Keep an eye open.

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Blogfests

Doing the A to Z was not enough for me so I am signing up for a few more blogfests.

I like these things.  They help me stretch my creative muscles and give me something special to work for.
Plus it exposes my blog and work to others that might not seek me out.

May Monster Madness
http://littlegothichorrors.blogspot.com/2013/04/second-annual-may-monster-madness-blog.html
http://www.anniewalls.com/2013/04/may-monster-madness-sign-up-linky-list.html
http://wickedwaysproductions.blogspot.com.au/


I love monsters as you might be able to tell.  So I am going to try to post something each day of this.  My hope would be to post something to promote Eldritch Witchery some more.

The Best and Worst Remakes Blogfest
http://alexjcavanaugh.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-to-z-challenge-memento-meant-to-live.html


From the King of Blogfests, Alex Cavanaugh.  I am not sure what I going to do here yet, but I am certain it will be horror related.

Hop Against Homophobia and Transphobia
http://hopagainsthomophobia.blogspot.com/2013/03/hop-against-homophobia-and-transphobia_15.html


I have never been shy about the fact that I support equal rights for everyone. In particular I have been a strong supporter of gay rights and freedom to marry rights.  So I am very pleased to be part of this one.  Since this hop is focused on authors I am going to talk about some characters.  Honestly no idea who yet.

Towel Day Blogfest
http://lgkeltner.blogspot.com/2013/04/announcing-towel-day-blogfest.html


This one is easy.  I am going to talk about what is the best RPG to play a "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" game.

May ends with:

The Obscure Fantasy RPGs Appreciation Day
http://mesmerizedbysirens.blogspot.com/2013/05/announcing-obscure-fantasy-rpgs.html
(no image yet, but here is one from the site)



This will be a bunch of blogs talking about their favorite pre 90s fantasy RPGs.  I think I know which one I want to do.


Heroes & Villains Blogfest 
http://danibertrand.blogspot.com/2013/04/u-unfair-ultraviolet-blogfest-unveiled.html


This one is very new to me.  I am sure I can come up with something in the next month!

There you have it!  Watch for these over the next month.

Monday, April 22, 2013

Stop CISPA


CISPA is bad for the internet, bad for people.
Learn more at https://www.eff.org/cybersecurity-bill-faq

Regular post continues later today.

Monday, April 1, 2013

A to Z Blogging for April and Introduction

Hello and welcome to The Other Side!  My little home on the internet.  I will have a proper post up later today.  I wanted to post an introduction to me, my blog and the various people that are likely to be here.


This blog is the "reincarnation" of my old The Other Side website from the dawn of the Web.  I like to write about role-playing games, particularly old-school ones, D&D and horror games.  I post a lot of character write-ups, I love witches and magic.

I am participating in this blogging challenge for the same reasons I am blogging to begin with; to help improve my ability as a writer. Challenges like these help stretch those creative muscles and hopefully get me to write about stuff I might not normally do.

This year I am writing about Demons.  I am going to talk about them from the point of view of a game author and a fan of horror.  I am planning to "stat-up" as many as I can.  By that I mean work out the Role-playing Game stats for the creatures so you can use them in your own games.  I am also going to try and focus on creatures that have not been seen before in any of the games I play.

So with that in mind welcome to the A to Z challenge!

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Blogging Contract

Blogging is not writing. Not really.  Sure there are a lot of similarities but there are plenty of subtle differences.

When writing an RPG book I have an audience in mind. That is a nebulous audience that I may or may not interact with.  I don't know who bought every copy of The Witch or Ghosts of Albion or Buffy.

I do have the chance to get to know each and every reader here via the comments section.  I post, you comment, I reply.  There is a social contact at work here.. You are not expected to reply, but I write my posts hoping that people will.

Implicit in that is one of control.  I try to keep my posts interesting to my known audience.  This is one of the reasons I have different blogs.   I control what I post.  You control what you reply with, but ...I also control your reply. See I can delete any reply I don't like.  But I don't.  There are few good reasons for that.

I don't because it is dishonest. Having people disagree with me is a great way for me to learn something new.  I have lost track of all the things I have looked into because some one said "no. you are wrong."

I don't because it violates the social contract we have.  You put yourself out there, those were your thoughts.  I may not agree with it, but that doesn't give me the right to shut it down.

I also don't, and lets be honest here, controversy and conflict means more hits, more audience and hopefully more people reading my stuff.  Not fake controversy, people can see that a mile away, but real and honest.

A natural extension of that is I will also not delete old posts.  I don't see the point. You may want to go back a read something I posted in 2010. Great!  I will leave it there.  Even if it something I don't agree with, like or otherwise grok anymore.

I have been seeing too many cases of people taking down posts, editing posts to put themselves in better light. Sorry folks, between Archive.org and Google cache people can find anything that was posted given time, so don't try to change history.

I'll remove a post of your own if you ask me to. I'll delete multiple posts if looks like you were fixing a typo or something. I'll delete spam.

That's my contract with you.
Your contract with me is not post anything to make be doubt this choice! ;)

Friday, March 22, 2013

Friday Updates

hmm this might a regular feature.

Ok so next is a busy, busy week for me.
I am going to post a bunch of "The Best Blogs You Are Not Reading" posts.  I may not though be able to adequately respond to responses or even properly promote the posts.

I am also unsure whether I'll have a White Dwarf Wednesday ready to go at all either.  Yeah, it's going to be that kind of week.

In other news the new D&D Next playtest packet is out. People seem to like it. I have not read it yet myself.

So let me get this all straight WotC is A.) distributing their playtest material for free for anyone to play with and they are updating based on the feedback they are getting. B.) selling PDFs again and C.) have the reprints in physical stores for people to buy.  Oh and every so often Dragon features material for older editions.  It sounds like they are listening to their customers.

Eldritch Witchery Update / Elf Lair Games Update
Ok so. Yeah. I am way late on Eldritch Witchery. It was due out at the same time as the Witch, but needed some additional editing.  In talks with Jason Vey (head Elf at Elf Lair Games) we decided to merge in a couple of other products with EW that fit.  My celtic themed Old School game based on Spellcraft & Swordplay is for the most part dead in the water.  I know. I am saddened by it too, but Jason did not want to be in a position of competing with Troll Lords who publishes his Amazing Adventures game.  I can't say that I blame him.  Besides, the Codex Celtarum looks fantastic.  Ã‰ire will see the light of day, someday, but not as a Spellcraft & Swordplay book.  The materials though that went into it have been folded into EW rather nicely.  The other book I was working on was a book on demons and devils for Old School games.  But since that project started we have had a number of good monster books come out.  So that is also being folded in and the Warlock class in EW is getting a nice boost because of it.  I am editing down some things too to make sure this is not going to be a 300 page book.  Some of that will appear here on the blog.

A to Z Blogfest
I am doing demons. Should be fun. I have 100s or so to talk about, so the trick narrowing it down to just 26.
What pushed Demons up over Vampires?  Easy. I found a "Q" demon before a "Q" vampire.

Friday, March 15, 2013

Friday Updates

Well it seems to be a race now between Feedly and NetVibes.  The Feedly intetface is nicer and faster, NetVibes adds a lot of nice social networking features.

As many of you know I am participating in the A to Z challenge again this year.  I am also working as an Ambassador for the challenge.  This means I'll be going over sites and encouraging them to post, comment and the like.
You can read about that here, http://tossingitout.blogspot.com/2013/03/meet-arlees-to-z-ambassadors-part-1.html

I also joined D.L. Hammons'  Blogging Blitz. This is an ongoing blog-fest to drive new visitors to your site.
I plan to use it in conjunction with my own "The Best Blog You are Not Reading" feature (which I am way overdue on) to get the word out on some cool, but under read blogs.


Here is the code to sign up!


Friday, March 1, 2013

Busy Day and other stuff.

Gotta a lot of stuff to get done before the next half of the spring term starts.  blah.

Also I have a post over at my other blog, The Freedom of Nonbelief about the "Gay marriage" bill in Illinois. Pop over there and give it a read please.
http://freedomofnonbelief.blogspot.com/2013/03/sb-10-and-culture-of-blindness.html

Thanks

Monday, January 28, 2013

Please Allow Me to Re-Introduce Myself

I am a man of wealth and taste....oops. Wrong introduction.

Today (and I almost forgot about it) I am participating in the "Please Allow Me to Re-Introduce Myself" blogfest. It is hosted by Stephen Tremp, C.M. Brown, Mark Koopmans, and Elise Fallson.  Plus I should mention I saw this first on L. Diane Wolfe's Spunk on a Stick blog.


The purpose of today's blogfest is to re-introduce yourself to your readers.  I think that is a great idea since The Other Side has gone through quite a bit a growth over the years.

So, hello. My name is Tim Brannan, and I have been running the Other Side blog now since 2007, though I really didn't get going till 2008.  The name "The Other Side" came my old website, The Other Side that I have been running since the mid 90s.  Back around 2003 or so my site began to wane a bit so I took it down.   Creating this blog was supposed to be a band-aid or temporary solution till I got my site back up.

Things didn't really happen that way.

I started to blog, and not run a website, so I could have a design journal for some of gaming books.  In particular The Witch and Eldritch Witchery.

I started playing RPGs back in 1979 with a copy of the Holmes Blue book.  My small group played during recess with that and a copy of the Monster Manual.  That Monster Manual changed my life.  I got into gaming hard core with the Molvay Red book and then later moved to AD&D.  I have played scores of games, but mostly horror games and versions of D&D.

I have been writing games and game books on my own for years. I "released" by first netbook back in 1999. It was every bit the amateur effort you would expect, but it was mine and based on things I had been working for years.  That lead me to doing some freelance work on some d20 products, including some work at Eden Studios.  There I worked on a WitchCraft book and then moved on to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
This lead to my big break, writing the Ghosts of Albion corebook.

Working on Ghosts was awesome. I got work with Amber Benson and Christopher Golden on their world. Plus get a lot of acclaim for it.  It has been great.

In my "other life" I was a university professor. I taught research design, statistics and ed psych.  I later moved to online teaching and now online curriculum development.

I live in the Chicago burbs with my wife and two great kids.

That's me.

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Email blues

So I was talking to a few people this week and today  about email.
One thing that came up is that is hard to figure out what someone's email  is supposed to be unless you do some digging and very difficult without a Google+ account.

So to that end I created an "email me link".  I used an image to help stop at least some of the spammers.
You can click on it and email me now if you like.


Just another service provided to you, the readers of the Other Side!

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Beginnings Blogfest

I am participating in the Beginnings Blogfest hosted by L.G. Keltner over at Writing Off the Edge.

The theme of this blogfest is to talk about why you started blogging in the first place.

I actually have two reasons, but the first was to start out as a design blog/journal for my work on Eldritch Witchery and The Witch.  I was going to talk about what I was doing, the playtests and the writing process.
I did do all of that, though not to the level I thought I was going to do.  Instead reason number 2 took over.

I used to be very active in online message boards. I spent a lot of time on Planet AD&DEden's Boards and various boards for other systems. I was also involved a lot in RPG.net and the Kitten Board forever.  Boards are fun, but rules over what you can post vary.  D&D boards don't want to hear about my Unisystem stuff, and visa versa.  Some boards have very strict mods while others don't.

With blogging I got to post what I wanted, the way I wanted to post it.
If I wanted to spend a week on vampire movies or anime or stats for various witches in various game systems, I can.

Getting to know other bloggers was just a really nice and totally unexpected benefit.

I hope that doing this has improved my own writing and opened up a new avenue of social networking for me.

Note:  White Dwarf Wednesday will appear later today.