A Role Playing Games Blog
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Bye, bye, Odiogo!
0Some of you may have noticed that I removed the Odiogo plugin from my blog. It added those buttons that allowed you to listen to an audio version of the post read by a computer-generated voice. But alas this plugin caused some issues, so I disabled it. The main problem was that it interfered with Windows Life Writer which I intended to use to write and edit posts in the future. If you are interested to learn more about Writer, check out my post at Stargazer’s Tech Blog.
Happy birthday, Stargazer’s World!
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Awesome D&D themed birthday cake
One year ago, I wrote my first article “Beyond Azeroth” and if you told me back then that my blog would have hundreds of pageviews every day and over 140 subscribers, I would have thought you must be delirious. My RPG blog is much more successful than I ever imagined. But this wasn’t possible without the help of my fellow RPG Bloggers from the RPG Bloggers Network and my readers! Thanks, my friends!
Most of my other blog projects died after a while because I couldn’t overcome writer’s block or I felt nobody was interested in the stuff I was writing anyway. But not so with this blog. Being part of the RPG Bloggers Network helped me not only to get some pretty good traffic early on, but also helped me improve my blogging and find new friends.
I really hope the coming year will be as successful as the last one, and again, I wish to thank my readers and my fellow RPG bloggers for all your support during the last 356 days! Thanks a lot, guys!
Now, in tradition of my other anniversary posts I want to share some statistics with you:
- Total number of posts: 320 (including this one, please note I removed a couple of guest posts)
- Total number of approved comments: 1149
- Number of (unique) visits: 56.879
- Active WordPress plugins: 27
- Technorati authority: 29 (*sigh* it was still 30 a few days ago)
- Google Page Rank: 3
- Cups of coffee consumed by me during the writing of that post: 0 (hmm, I need more coffee!)
- Word count of this post: 326
Wow! The first year is the hardest for a blog, they say, so let’s hope it gets easier down the road. 
By the way, I didn’t get that cool dragon cake as present, I just found it at the “Pen & Paper Portal“. So, gentle readers, what are your thoughts on the first birthday of “Stargazer’s Blog”? Please post your comments in the comment section below.
Vacation time
1August 3, 2009
I just wanted to let you all know that I am having two weeks off from work and that usually leads to me being lazy beyond belief, sleeping until midday and sitting on the couch playing some video game. 
It is likely that I won’t update my blog on a daily basis, because of that. While I am wasting my free time playing “Final Fantasy XII” (pretty cool game, highly recommended!) why don’t you check some of my older posts?
- Roleplaying music – Five essential soundtracks
- The Horror of Leatherbury House
- Some free games I found at RPGNow
- Gaming on the cheap
- First Look: Traveller Core Rulebook
- First Look: Swords & Wizardry Quickstart
Stargazer, signing off (at least for today). I will be back tomorrow for sure, since it’s my blog’s 1st birthday! Yay!
300!
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THIS IS STARGAZER'S WORLD!
When I started this blog last year I never anticipated I would reach the 300 post milestone in just 11 months. But with the help of my guest bloggers Jenny, Ravyn, Shinobicow and Viriatha there are now 301 posts here at Stargazer’s World. In order to celebrate the occassion, I want to have a look back on a few of my favorite posts of the last three months.
- Cloudship Atlantis
As you all know I am the complete opposite of ChattyDM when it comes to roleplaying games. He’s a “monogamist”, sticking to the latest version of D&D, while I am more of a “polygamist”. I am not happy with playing the same game over and over again, I need to check out new games on a regular basis. In the last months I have focussed mostly on cheap or free games to satisfy my interests. One of these games is Rob Lang’s Cloudship Atlantis, a RPG he wrote in 24 hours. And for a game designed and edited in just one day, it’s just awesome. He even added some great artwork and a introductory adventure.
It was a pleasure to review the game of a fellow RPG blogger. - Ad Astra Primer
One of my goals for 2009 was to write my own SF campaign setting. And on May 7th I finally was able to release the “Ad Astra Primer”, a 13-page PDF document with details on my Ad Astra campaign setting. The booklet is in a system-less format but I’ve written a few follow-up articles that help GMs to run Ad Astra using the PDQ rules by Chad Underkoffler. - The Horror of Leatherbury House
In April ChattyDM and Chgowiz announced the “One-Page Dungeon Contest“. Initially I was not interested in participating but several people encouraged me to give it a try. But since I am not really experienced in running classic dungeon adventures, I decided to create a “haunted house” scenario. In the end my dungeon was one of the runner-ups and won the “Best Non-Fantasy Dungeon” category. Yay! - Review: Questers of the Middle Realms
For me Questers is a mixed bag. I really love how Silver Branch Games used the PDQ system to create a fantasy RPG but I was pretty underwhelmed by the campaign setting included in the book. But all in all I don’t regret buying Questers and I am also pretty happy with how the review turned out. - My idea for a Magipunk setting
I regularly have a lot of ideas for campaign settings that probably never see the light of day. And in some instances I decide to write down said idea to share it with the world. One of these ideas was the one of the “magipunk” world inspired by the awesome Neverwinter Nights module HeX Coda. - Gaming on the cheap
Recently I wrote a post about cheap and/or free games that spawned a whole lot of follow-up posts on other blogs. It seems quite a few people love free games. You definitely should check out the comments on that post, too. - Interview with Chad Underkoffler
Last but not least I want to mention my interview with Chad Underkoffler. Back in the day when I ran several computer games fansites I did quite a few interviews (you can check them out here). When “Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies” was out, I thought I might ask Chad if he was willing to answer a few questions about his latest project and PDQ in general. The interview also contains one of the greatest lines ever displayed on a computer screen: “You can punch Spider-Man in the girlfriend!”
If you want to find out, what this quote is about, check out the interview.
And following the tradition I started in my “A look back on 100 posts!” post, I will now give you some stats:
- Total number of posts: 301 (including this one)
- Total number of approved comments: 1042
- Number of (unique) visits: 49.174
- Active WordPress plugins: 26
- Technorati authority: 30
- Google Page Rank: 3
- Cups of coffee consumed by me during the writing of that post: 2
- Word count of this post: 699
By the way, this blog will have its first birthday next month. Wow! Time flies!
One-Page Dungeon Contest winners announced
5July 1, 2009
Today Chgowiz and ChattyDM announced the winners of the “One Page Dungeon Contest”. 6 judges including the aforementioned RPG bloggers as well as Dave: the Game, Sham, Amityville Mike and Alex Schroeder had to read and judge a total of 112 entries.
I don’t want to repeat all the winners, runner-ups and honorable mentions here, so if you want to have a detailed look on what entry won what prize, check out one of the links above.
But I just have to mention that my own “The Horror of Leatherbury House” is one of the Runner-Ups and won the “Best Non-Fantasy Dungeon” category. Yay! 
It’s actually ironic that I didn’t want to participate in the first place. I think it was good that I could finally be convinced to give it a try.
Thanks to all the judges and congratulations to all winners, runner-ups and honorary mentions! You all did a great job! I can’t wait to have a look at all entries when they are released.
Stargazer’s Irregulars forums
0You probably remember when QuestingDM and I created an “Unofficial RPG Bloggers Network” behind the back of the powers-that-be. I still had that forum software running on my server, so I decided to put it to a new use. I rebranded it to “Stargazer’s Irregulars” and installed a pretty new theme.
It currently features only a few boards but I intend to add a few in the coming days. One thing I would like to add is a PDQ board since I haven’t found any PDQ-related communities but the S7S Yahoo group. If you have interested in such a discussion board, just let me know.
Status update
4Some of you may have noticed that I posted some Ad Astra stuff this morning and another post will go live soon.
So I am not completely gone. I just can’t turn my back from my blog completely… But I probably won’t return to a daily schedule anytime soon.
So, what am I doing right now? Aside from going to work and all that stuff, I waste a lot of time surfing the net and looking for inspiration for my projects. I really should be working on my SF campaign setting Ad Astra, but since I now entered the phase where I have to create the “crunchy” parts, things get more complicated. It’s pretty easy for me to churn out pages of fluff, but modifying d6 Space’s Metaphysics or d6 Adventure’s Psionics to suit my needs is harder than I thought. I also need stats for gear, weapons and a lot of space ships before I can even think about running the game. I hope my players can wait for a few more weeks.
I am also still reading “Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies“. The setting is awesome. What surprised me the most is that the nations of the 7 Skies are actually unique and not just fantasy versions of European nation in the 17th century. I also can’t wait to try out the PDQ# system that S7S uses.
I also bought a copy of “Questers of the Middle Realms” on RPGNow, a humorous fantasy RPG using the PDQ rules. The setting, the “Middle Realms” is a bit generic, but QotMR shows that PDQ can be used even in a high-fantasy campaign.
That brings me to my PDQ Horror project. Inspired by Chgowiz’ posts about the solo games with his wife, I decided to start a solo game with my girlfriend. I wanted to try something new and after some consideration we chose contemporary horror for the setting and PDQ (or perhaps PDQ#) for the rules. Alas I am still struggling with the basics of the setting, since I don’t want to repeat all classic horror clichés. But it’s pretty hard to be truly original.
Stargazer signing off!
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