Back when I started this blog almost nine years ago (hard to believe!) I had never really combined the internet and RPGs. I hadn't ever gone to an RPG forum (and now post about once a year on HERO Games forums). I hadn't ever done much, if anything, on Facebook RPG groups. Heck, I had no idea what Dragonsfoot was until a month before I started this blog! I had made a Google+ account and found out that there were a ton of RPGers there, started this blog, and perused some of the internet's RPG resources.
There were plenty of blogs and many of the good ones are still around, and have been joined by new good ones. G+ had a ton of good discussions. But I was disconnected from a ton of gaming at the time. I was clueless that the Forge was ever a thing and didn't know how weird people could be, although I learned fast - it is long deleted, but when I did a review of the free 5e PDF and concluded that the free PDF didn't include all the rules I received death threats in my comments. Not tongue in cheek, either.
But 95% of my online RPG experience has been terrific, with 4% meh and 1% totally messed up. Nice ratio.
But there is one odd thing to me. When I started writing here a lot of what I was writing about was seen as radical, weird, and impossible. Back in 21013 when I wrote about how I essentially require all players to have and use multiple characters each the G+ crowd concluded I was loopy. Same results from the same year when I discussed strict encumbrance as needed. And my discussion of the centrality of disease rules, parasite rules, strict time records, henchmen, hirelings, sages, and so on. Likewise, when I rejected RPGs being about storytelling and discussed 'emerging narratives' versus pre-planned there has always been a ton of push-back. My instance that alignment, encounter checks, and on and on and on all had a lot of dissent and few supporters.
This varies a bit. Why? Over time as I keep mentioning these things and explaining why they are important with examples more and more people have come to agree with me. And many of them spread these ideas on their own, convincing others.
Slowly, but seemingly constantly, the ideas and concepts I learned in the '70's and early '80's are spreading again. Convinging people to try the old ways again. It took 7 years but I finally convinced someone to play AD&D 1e ("it is unplayable!" they repeated told be for more than half a decade) and now they call AD&D 1e "how to really learn to play D&D".
I see the future as less Restoration and more just Original.
