Blue Moon Aurora

As one would guess from the lack of activity – I’ve been busy. Partly the kids being back in school and partly a very aggressive roleplaying blitz. I’ve restarted my famous West Pacific Supers play-by-post campaign and have seven players living it up as celebrity superheroes. I’m also starting in October a weekly chat-based Pathfinder campaign on Wednesday nights from 8 to 10 pm, if interested post so here. I already have two players and a few tentative players so should have enough to make it work. Autumn is always a time of new beginnings, mainly due to how the US school year is organized, but it has rejuvenated me to launch these campaigns, which should go well into 2010. 2010…wow, time is flying.  

The website will be getting a few more adventure outlines from a competition wrapping up on the forums Monday and there are some new maps, with more on the way in coming weeks. From book to roleplaying the website is sort of in a standby mode, but the wiki is booming, mainly due to Michelle, though we may close some sections off to wiki members. Still debating that issue.  

Yes, lots in politics and movies to ramble about, but haven't had much time to focus on a specific issue.  Maybe next week, we'll see.  

Also still haven't run Faery's Tale adventure with kids, sort of dreading it a little, but will force myself to do it this weekend if we have time. 

The process of writing a novel has slowed down my play-by-post campaigns and updates to the website the last two months, but I did finally replace the old campaign wiki with a more usable version from wikispaces.  This should be infinitely more usable for the members of the community to record information for their campaigns and characters.  Beyond this I've only did some fiddling here and there on the website, but nothing too significant. 

So what's the plan for the rest of the year?

In September we will have another Adventure Synopsis competition on the forums and we'll also be rebooting the Directed Discussions, but extending them to three week discussions.  I'm also going to start really pushing to expand the membership of the forums to build up a little more mass for more roleplaying opportunities.

In October there will be the second annual Blue Moon Awards and also Aurora Con. 

In November I will probably be trying to move some campaigns to conclusion before the December/January hiatus.  I intend to wrap up most duets and West Pacific Supers, but will keep Rifts going into 2010.  We'll also have another Adventure Synopsis competition, the last for the year. 

As usual things will die down around December/January, but I'm already thinking about my campaigns for 2010.  Here is the list I am currently kicking around and as some of them will require a few months to set up I am tossing them out for feedback now:

Apotheosis

I have learned a lot with my divine duets.  I actually think this is a very cool idea, but I need to tweak the rules and the setting.  However, I do intend on running a revised version of the campaign in 2010. The PCs will be more powerful and things will be a lot clearer about the setting and the rules.  I might keep this in duet format as that has worked very well. 

Mouse Guard

This will be a one-shot campaign to run for a few months. The PCs will play mice with sword defending the Mouse Territories.  It's a fun RPG and actually a good fit for play-by-post.  If there isn't enough interest at Blue MoonAurora I will probably run it off-site. 

Nesyr Crusades

My big campaign next year will be the Nesyr Crusades, which will use the Pathfinder RPG rules. It will be my first real fantasy campaign by play-by-post and reallymy first real fantasy campaign in years. I can guarantee the awesome and there will probably be chat sessions forthis campaign to keep things moving. This will be my cornerstone campaign for 2010, well, if I have playersfor it.

Rifts

I intend to keep my current Rifts campaign running into 2010.  Have lots of ideas and it's a fun group of PCs, well, as long as they survive the Demon of Canal Town.   

Super League

I am working on the idea of running a campaign where players run the team presidentsand manage superhero teams.  They willrecruit their superheroes make their picks at the Super Draft and navigate a host of challenges during the Season on their way to dominating, or not, their Conference.  I have most of the mechanics already worked out and this will be my West Pacific Supers campaign for 2010.  It should be a lot of fun and anice twist on the setting. 

To Boldly Go...

I intend to keep running this ICON Star Trek campaign on Crazy Monkey's Asylum for acomplete run of six adventures (nearly finished with the first one), which willprobably take most of 2010 to complete. 

Thoughts and feedback are welcome, but that is the plan for fall and my 2010campaigns. 

So what’s new for July? 

For one, when the Adventure Synopsis Competition ends on the forums, I will be starting the Adventure Repository, which will be a repository for adventure outlines that can be used by narrators as a basis for adventures to use in their campaigns.  It will be linked to the Behind the Screen page. Every other month there will be a new Adventure Synopsis Competition, and in a few years the Adventure Repository could be quite impressive, at least that’s the plan.  

The forums are running well with a good number of campaigns, but there hasn’t been any change in membership on the forums – in other words, no crossover from my other play-by-post campaigns or posting on other forums. I am setting a goal of two new members for July, but I have been struggling to figure a way to do that so we’ll see – I may have to run a mass appeal play-by-post campaign.  

On other news, this month should be when a column by yours truly will come out on RPGNet. It is a monthly column that will deal with duet campaigns; it is a good way to keep forcing me to write on the subject to secure my place as the undisputed expert on the subject, hey, everyone should have dreams. The column will be mentioned in this blog when it comes out and will be linked through the duet roleplaying page.  

As for other materials for the website, most everything is on hold as I am working with a writing project with Michelle, expect news on that in a few months if it comes to fruition. I am very exciting to finally have a project which Michelle is excited enough to be a full partner in the writing, mainly as she is a much better writer than me. I am back to a more regular blogging schedule and will keep up with that as the summer is now settling into a nice schedule.  

This is about it.

This month I want to talk about the forums and where I am going with them.  The transition from the old forums to the new forums was mostly successful though a lot of threads were  abandoned in the move and the membership dropped significantly.  The membership that remains has been the core of the Blue Moon Aurora forums from the beginning so I am not that bothered by the drop in membership, but the truth is that forums need a critical mass to flourish.  Thus my main priorities are two-fold: keep the members we have happy and to expand the forum's membership.  

Here is how I am planning on accomplishing this: 

First, organization is everything.  The new forums are far better organized than the old forums and the current structure is scaleable as the community grows as I have everything fairly clearly charted out organizationally.  There will be less juggling and shifting things around as the new forums began with a plan unlike the old forums, which I really started with no real plan.  

Second, better discussions are the goal.  The new Directed Discussions forum is aimed at generating detailed discussions about roleplaying topics.  We have had two topics so far and the approach has worked well, especially, considering the small size of the community at the moment. The plan for the forums is not to have a lot of conversations, but to have a small number of really good conversations and this is a significant change in the forum's philosophy.  

Third, roleplaying is the focus of the forums and that means more opportunities for roleplaying are needed.  This means more GMs besides me and this is something I am working on, but it requires a larger membership, but progress is being made with Crazy Monkey coming back to the community to run a Blue Rose campaign.

Fourth, more fun and better incentives.  I am planning competitions with genuine prizes to drum up activity and to reward members with fun stuff to do.  I have been putting this off, but think that July is a good time to begin this.  I am also trying to think up an incentive program for when members bring in new members to the community, any ideas would be appreciated.  

Fifth, solid moderation, but this has never been an issue.  These forums will be troll free and that is my goal, but it really hasn't been a problem - mainly as people who game together don't try to really aggravate one another that much. 

Sixth, expanding the visibility of the forums.  I am increasing my activity on some other forums and hopefully that may lead people who like my thoughts to follow my signature to the forums.  This brought in a few members on the old forums so it does work, but I just need to get out there and posting and engaging more in the RPG community.

Seventh. keep the sense of community going on these forums, which has always been strong in my opinion despite some ups and downs.  All of the above contributes to this. 

Anyway, this is the plan and any and all comments are welcome.  Feedback on this would be very helpful as I really want the forums to succeed, as I do take great pride in them, but think they need to be stronger so they can flourish as they should. 

After much thought, I am preparing to make some major changes in how I approach Blue Moon Aurora. 

First, I will be adding forums that will be officially linked to this site, these new forums will be ad-free and will replace my play-by-post forums and the feedback forums.  These forums will be hosted by another provider and will have a small monthly fee, but this will solve a lot of problems I have with the current setup. I've wanted to do this, but felt very uncomfortable officially linking this site with my play-by-post forums, which were free, but had ads.  Now that the ads have gotten out of control on my play-by-post forums, I am making this change.

Second, I am going to set up the development of my Apotheosis and Aurora Supers rules as community projects to be developed, by invitation, on the new forums.  I have most of the rules done, but I realized that that you just can't assemble a ruleset alone that is any good.  I want them available for my play-by-post campaigns and for other people to use for their campaigns and to get this done sooner I need some help.  However, I expect for the system to be properly credited when used.  Also if someone wishes to use the rules in a published product then please contact me and we can definitely work something out.

Third, I'm going to keep blogging and adding additional material to the website, but I am going to try to get the community more involved in the process.  Years in management taught me some lessons, which I have apparently forgotten - delegation and team work is always the way to go.  One of our early successes was the Reviews, but I need to get serious about getting people involved.  Competitions, prizes, and other incentives are critical.  You have to motivate people and that takes effort and my time is probably better spent on that front - it's something I have a lot of experience with, then spinning my wheels on material. 

The processes on all of this are in flux, but I am really trying to do this smart and I have some rather clever ideas, shamelessly stolen from other websites and forums which I hope will help jumpstart this community.