Rended Press

So a lot of the DIY/OSR RPG folk & funsters are moving to MeWe . I created an account to check it out, but decided it is not for me and deleted my profile a few days later. While the "privacy is everything" mantra of the site is admirable, the ability to discover new people, new shared interests, and new content is limited in such an environment. There has also been a lot of chatter about MeWe actively courting white supremacist groups and the alt-right, but conservative groups & radio personalities are also actively complaining that MeWe is courting antifa and liberal groups. So which is it? It's both. MeWe's CEO, Mark Weinstein, and Jason Hardy, MeWe's Vice President of Product Development, are more than happy to talk with OSR gamers , conservative radio hosts,  &  Fox News  to extol the benefits of their platform. And for good reason--they need users. MeWe needs to convince anyone and everyone to use their platform in an effort to gain users

Back in 2015 I created the following hex map, which I promptly named Dead Island : Two years later, I asked students in my Digital Narratives class to come up with encounters for each hex. It took 15 students 45 minutes to fill in all the hexes. Here is the result: This spreadsheet has NOT been tightly edited for grammar, etc. It's pretty gonzo, too. edit: direct link to spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EJXmraSwCRMMdCbq5yKC__BEi6r9GITC5QAuYXsmvL0/edit?usp=sharing

A project I had a hand in was released yesterday. Evyln Moreau has released the Mudwarren Zine , a final compilation of a community project started on two of Karl Stjernberg 's Google+ threads. Out of the goodness of her heart, Evlyn pulled it all together and released it yesterday as a free PDF and as an at-cost print version at Lulu.com . Download links at her blog!

The creature pictured below is not an owl. It is not a bear. It is not an owlbear or bearowl. What is it? Use the following format to tell me what the hell this is. Actual name of the creature: What people call it: Description: (5-8 sentences!) Things that folks know about it for sure (3 short sentences each!) 1. 2. 3. Things that are rumored about it (3 short sentences each!) 1. 2. 3.

For your mid-week viewing pleasure, a treasure from 1982 starring some meatball & his bosom buddy. Bonus: The work-in-progress Mazes & Monsters retro-clone posts at Blog of Holding .

I'm redesigning the Zine List  to be easier to sort, maintain, and edit. The first step is to capture essential data about each zine, which I plan to personally do by hand, checking & updating each current link as I go. To aid in this process, I'm using a Google Form to capture data to a Google Sheet. Take a look at a screencap of the form below & drop me a comment on what other general data points you think I should consider capturing. I have already decided I am not going to ask for cover prices & shipping costs, as those can easily be found by following the download/purchasing links. I can't figure out how to let you click to make this bigger. Did they change something with Blogger?

So Google is pulling the plug on Google+ . It was a good ride while it lasted. I'm not sure I will make the jump to another social media platform. I loathe Facebook, and even though I have an account, Twitter is a swamp of snark & shame trolls. All the other platforms RPG folks are considering migrating to have their own problems, too (Diaspora, Discord, Mastodon, MeWe, etc.). I've been pulling away from most social media except for one or two groups on Google+ anyway, so leaping to a new platform isn't that attractive at the moment. I plan to stick to Google+ until it's clear that the usual suspects I hang with online are abandoning the platform. After that, maybe I will just go back to posting here. This blog has been on the back burner since 2015, as the lack of posts can attest. Until then, here are my other links. Twitter: @matthewschmeer Gaming blog:  Rended Press Writing blog:  Poetry Midwest+ Writing blog:  Me & Alfred Roanoke