I haven’t posted in over a month. Nanowrimo is one reason, but not the only one. I mentioned several post topics back in September and had a pretty good run that month then less posts in October and November. Looking back at the topics I intended to post about but haven’t yet, some still interest me and others don’t. So I’ve been thinking about what Pyres of Vam means to me and what I intend to do here.  

Spoiler: I’m gonna keep posting but change how I do it a bit. Read on for why and how.

Continue reading…

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Yes, this is a post about not posting. I’ll keep it brief.

For regular readers, I apologise for the extended radio silence. Lots has been going on in my offline life. But all is well, I’m back and I have several posts on the backburner that I’m pretty excited about. If all goes well you will hopefully see a steady stream of posts for a while.

Here’s a preview of what’s coming up:

• I’ve reached the end of two campaigns in the last few months, so I’m going to suggest ways to wrap everything up and end your long campaigns memorably.
• I will post some musings about creating a character on the fly, during play.
• Worldbuilders build lots of worlds, more often than not; I’ll try to share some of mine and some ideas for organising your thoughts when worldbuilding.
• I’ll present a tool to help you generate quick and simple motivations for your NPCs, on the fly.
• Vam will reveal the truth about some classic monsters you thought you knew so well.
• I’ll translate the tropes and concepts of some new blockbuster movies into setting and adventure material for your fantasy roleplaying game (featuring X-Men: First Class and The Rise of the Planet of the Apes).
• And much more…

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I Am Your Champion has been an awesome, exciting experience. I recommend it to everyone. Everyone has something to offer. Here’s how the week went for me.

For many years I have supported Act for Peace at Christmas through their Christmas Bowl appeal. I knew I could always donate more, but this was the first time I had felt like I could do something more with my skills and gather donations for this worthy cause.  And it has inspired me to donate more to the charity. I’ve contacted them to see how else I can help, but I’ve got the feeling they won’t have a lot of opportunities. If that’s the case, I’ll set up a regular monthly donation. I had been meaning to do this, but IAYC gave me the motivation I needed.

I have a sense of satisfaction writing this post. I’ve done something good for people in need and helped out other Champion’s charities that I may not have even known about before, let alone donated to. I’ve made new connections in the roleplaying community and I now get to create a fantasy newspaper knowing that it has helped people in need.

I Am Your Champion update! If you don’t know what IAYC is, check out this link and/or my original post about this awesome challenge for charity. In that link you’ll learn about the charity I am Championing – Act for Peace – and how you can help me.

I’m supporting Act for Peace by making a free PDF-format fantasy newspaper full of adventure locations, artefacts, NPCs and the like. Donate $5 to my charity and you’ll get your name in one of the articles. Donate more money and you’ll get cooler articles that are more focused around your namesake (or your namesake’s artefact or adventure location!). See my original post for the full reward/goal structure.

I’ve gotten really excited about this since people started throwing in and throwing down and offering combined challenges. So, I’m upping the ante! I’ve added some more sections to the newspaper: obituaries and an advice column.

Read on for info on extra rewards and how you can help out some awesome charities.

A Terrible Idea has come out with another great idea. I Am Your Champion is a game/challenge played in five rounds that will challenge your existing ideas regarding charitable fundraising. Basically, you choose a charity and support it, but it’s more like you use your creativity to provide rewards or thank you gifts to those who contribute to your charity. Jump over to the website to catch up on the requirements for each round. It’s not too late to join in! I’m participating, and this post is me announcing myself, my cause, my goal and my reward.

This is too good to not post. You should be backing Joshua A.C. Newman’s Human Contact, a hard science fiction roleplaying game about what happens when a rationalist, free, democratic society explores its universe and finds others that have different values than it has. It deals with those interactions on both a personal and societal level. It will be awesome, but there is now another incredibly cool reason to back the project.

Any current backers and anyone else who backs the project before time runs out in 18 days will receive a free exclusive Apocalypse World character playbook written by Vincent Baker. The character is called the Quarantine. Here’s a run-down:

The Quarantine has been locked away, suspended in ignorance of the outside world, throughout the Apocalypse. But his ignorance is nothing compared to what he knows: he remembers what came before and knows what caused it.

Not that it will help him.

If that doesn’t sound good, then you probably haven’t read Apocalypse World. If it does sound good, get over to Kickstarter and back Human Contact. It’s shaping up to be a great game and now you get a cool supplement for another great game, too. You can’t lose.

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Check it out! Over at Troll in the Corner they’re doing a crazy D&D contest. You could win the Red Box, Rules Compendium, Heroes of the Fallen Lands and some Dungeon Tiles! All you have to do is shoot them an email. However, if you want more entries into the competition you can tweet about it, blog about it, and post on the Gamer’s Haven forums to net yourself some additional entries into the contest. Best thing is: it’s not limited to America! If the US can ship to you, you can enter.

Wow, can you believe it? This is our 50th post! I know we don’t have a lot of readers yet, but I’m working on that and I am eager to welcome visitors – please, add a comment, shoot us an email or tweet us. I’m always willing to talk roleplaying, worldbuilding and GMing. Now, seeing as this is our 50th post, I have something pretty special planned that I’ve been workigfnsogsl…

…

Ahem… now that he is subdued, I interrupt your irregularly scheduled drivel for a vastly more important announcement.

Too long as Mockingbard held the reigns of Pyres of Vam. It is I, Vam, who created this website and it is about time it start serving me. To that end, I usurp this post – it is, in fact, our 50th, but that is hardly momentous. What is momentous about this post is that it marks the founding of the Vamguard.

What is the Vamguard, you ask? It is the most illustrious of armies and will one day be recorded in the history books as the army that conquered the world. However, to make this a reality, I require minions to bolster the Vamguard. In light of this, I have created a recruitment page and an official Vamguard shield for use by minions.

Click here to read about and join the Vamguard, in 2-3 simple steps. Together we shall rule the world. Well… not really, but I will use you as I see fit to further my agenda then discard you when you become useless, if you survive that long. Just know that you will be helping shape the superior future of this world.

I leave you now to go to the recruitment page, join the Vamguard and bask in the vicarious glory of being loosely associated with me, Vam, your future Supreme Overlord.

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Alright, so I don’t have an iPhone or anything like that and my Internet connection can be as unstable as a wild mage. Nevertheless, I’m going to try using Twitter to complement this website. Stuff like what’s currently happening at the Project Donut twitter and the sort of thing Gnome Stew and Critical Hits do on theirs. That’s the plan, anyway. We’ll see how it goes. I’m also planning to give Echo Bazaar a go. It looks pretty cool.

You’ll also notice that there’s a brand new Twitter icon up at the top of our site. You can click that to check out my tweets and tweet back at me. I’m also trialling having the twitter feed right here on the site, too. I’ll try to keep Vam away from it, but I think that move is destined to fail. I’ll at least make sure his tweets are tagged with #fromvam so you can indulge in or avoid his madness at your leisure.

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