Okay, it’s been two years. We’ve missed so much of what’s happened to each other! Time to update the site here and catch up a bit.
I’m back to acting more or less full time, squeezing GM for hire gigs, writing, editing, and layout design into spaces between contracts. And hey, my kids are getting older! The eldest just entered Kindergarten. Her favorite thing is to play D&D (more on that in another post).
What I really want to talk about is what you’ll be seeing here on the Darkplane site, and it starts with the fracturing of social media.
Twitter/X is a dumpster fire as we all know, and while I’m migrating to Bluesky and Mastadon and whatever other heir presumptive, I’ve found that my sense of connection to the wider TTRPG community is lower than it’s been in 5 years. I don’t really know where to go. I worry the solidarity I once felt is slipping away for good as everyone goes separate ways and Discord absorbs the daily attention I used to give to centralized platforms like Twitter.
After a year of hearing from Mike Shea of Sly Flourish that blogs and newsletters are coming back, I’ve decided to take his advice and pour the effort I once put into social media into this repository of my thoughts. I’m blogging! And really it’s the first time for me. Posting to the Darkplane site was more of a random project showcase in the past—but my intent is to turn it into a curated collection of tips, explorations, resource guides, and even a handful of reviews.
Likely I’ll start by polishing up some of my advice threads and building up a stack of solid GMing advice. I’ve got posts on traps and exploration and physical play aids and running horror games and TTRPG categorization—and ever since I watched Collabs Without Permission’s three-hour review of Root the RPG I’ve been grappling with this question of what a TTRPG designer’s job is and why D&D advice rarely seems to apply to indie RPGs and why I bounce off Powered By the Apocalypse and…yeah. I got thoughts.
I’m nervous about it. Honestly, I doubt many people want to read what I have to say. But M.T. Black keeps telling me I need a blog, and who am I to tell that genius he’s wrong? I get pretty far with hyperfixation, but I’ve never been an endurance runner when it comes to maintaining an online presence. So here’s to new horizons, and let’s hope I don’t fall into the sky (unless that’s what I’m going for).
Thanks for joining!
— Graham
