Then they danced down the streets like dingledodies

I've been lucky enough to receive a blogging award from Frontline Gamer, along with four other blogs. All of them are very deserving of it: it's worth taking a look if you haven't yet.

Like FG, I do have some reservations about the rules, so rather than name the five more blogs I recommend as winners, I'll just say go have a browse through the blogrolls in the left-hand sidebar. Those blogs are my recommendations and they deserve the attention.

But I am also going to suggest a few blogs that probably don't get much attention at all.

When we check a blogroll most of us probably start at the top and work down to the last posts we saw, but beyond are blogs that have been abandoned or gone on hiatus. These can represent years of excellence. And very nearly no one reads now. It's almost painful.

So here are just a few of those, representing various subjects. They're listed in order of period to the last post, longest to shortest. I recommend spending some time with each one, reading a few posts and taking in the wonders, especially if you never knew them.

Slight Foxing
ix
Riskail
Blighty Waaagh Boys
Rustfoot
Cook and Destroy
 Port Maw

 Studio Cyberlab
Double 0 Sven
The Secret Sun

I am serious - hopefully there's something for everyone in that batch, and there could be days of pleasure and learning just clicks away, benefits of the work those bloggers have put in. And these are just a sample of what's waiting deep in blogrolls all over the place.

The passage in the title is from Jack Kerouac's On the Road, and there's more of it here.

_

Full of beans, out of spam

It's been quiet here the last two or three days, but I haven't been far away. I've done some relevant reading and worked on a few projects, including the ongoing resolution system and an unusual conversion that might be good for INQ28 or InquisiMunda. Most of that will turn up here sooner or later.

I've also made a change to comment settings. The number of spam comments has been going up and the time taken to trawl through them all was getting seriously out of hand.

Frontline Gamer is managing it by turning word verification on and anonymous comments off, but I'm not willing to do the first yet based on this intriguing claim, for the lack of clarity about who gains from the work commenters do. There's more on the theme here.

Instead, given that most of the spam was posted with the anonymous option, which was rarely if ever used otherwise, I've only turned that off. I'm not so happy about doing it, but it seems the lesser of the evils for now. So far, so good - there's been zero spam since.

If you do want to comment and this change means you can't, just email me the text with permission to post it. If you can see any other solutions to the problem, don't hold back.

_

Getting here

Some of the stranger search terms people and/or bots have used to visit the Expanse...

Rogue Space at the Expanse

This is an index of content written or adapted for the Rogue Space system and posted here at the Expanse. I'll add new entries as more material goes up, and the footer will now link to this post.

We've only just begun

Yep, the Expanse is now a year old, give or take. Thanks to Whisk for the reminder and the fine singing, and to everyone for the ongoing encouragement, for all the reading and commenting, especially the tough guys who've kept coming back since the early days.

There's no plan for any competition or giveaway right now, but it has got me looking at a regular more tangible gift over the long term I'm hoping will cover the interests of most. More on that as I get it, and soon if my recharged batteries are a guide to progress.

I'll be honest and say the fact of it being exactly one year hasn't got me too excited, and I've been far too distracted by one thing or another recently to really take it all in. That said, I have been looking back at the various series and projects and getting fired up all over again. Measured in posts and even useable material it's been a wild enough ride.

I've been thinking about putting links to the major strands in a single reference post, but that will have to wait for a while. For now, I've done some quick tieing up of a few loose ends behind the scenes and written up a long list of things I want to get round to at last.

Of the changes, two are more practical. For those who remember, and maybe more for those who don't, I finally got round to labelling the Deep thought Fridays, a series we can expect more of soon. I've also added a row to the graphic menu at the top of the right-hand sidebar for what's been getting the love recently, or will in the near future.

One of the older ideas I'm reworking quite heavily is the triffle, which for me is up there with propluristemic content and strange new worlds as key to the Expanse. It has real potential as a tool and I want to simplify the format, expand the scope and do it justice.

In the meantime I'll be doing some reading and posting a strange new worlds roundup.

_

Keep plugging or pull the plug?

The Stylish Blogger nominations have died down now I notice. But how? Surely they multiply until the internet collapses? Have they left our part of the blogosphere? Did they get deleted by Blogger last week?

Wherever, after the dust has settled I have five more to turn the mind to. I'm very grateful to John Lambshead, jabberjabber, Ricalope, James S and Brian for thinking the Expanse is worthy of them, and especially for the generous words that were written.

But what to do now? After the first from The Angry Lurker I passed the award on to 15 blogs, and very gladly, but if I do that five more times, that's 75 more blogs nominated.

Can Blogger hold up? Can we?

I do want to nominate more, and would willingly nominate even more than I can. It's fair more of the great blogs out there get the attention they deserve. That said, I realise patience, time and probably also value have been stretched. Should a break of some kind be made? Maybe there's a more intelligent approach I just can't see?

I've been looking, but no revelations. Any thoughts?
_

We're back, almost

Things are up and running again, superficially at least, but there's posted material still missing. I'm assuming Blogger has this somewhere and will be restoring it soon.

If you're not sure what's going on, neither are most of us; Blogger has been read-only for the best part of the last day, with surprisingly little information forthcoming.

An argument for looking into Wordpress, or even a personal domain and hosting? Free service or not, there are options, and the paid options needn't be expensive.

In the meantime, the posting schedule here is out. If this has published and all looks stable, I'll start catching up.

Update: I have my missing posts back. There was one problem I could see, the addition of some odd characters to the labels. I deleted these, but when I published the changes the posts became the latest, as if published for the first time, and comments were lost.

Update: I've just found another post lurking unpublished in the editor which I'm fairly confident I had actually published; now it's up for sure. Worth having a rummage.

_

All ways runs on

Once again the list of fictional portals is completely up to date!

Despite the time it's taken, it was excellent fun, a mind-expanding adventure. Every time I went back to add more, it inspired me, and I'd recommend anyone with an interest in fiction has a browse.

It's not complete of course. If you have any suggestions or can fill the blanks in the clarification needed section, please do, and if you can say how imaginary a portal is in its fictional universe, that would help too. The plan is to mark those entries with an asterisk.

An index by universe would also be a very useful thing. One day.

Thanks again to all the contributors to the project so far, especially those who just kept coming back with more, and yet more... Here's the full list, with Dave the latest addition.

ArmChairGeneral

Barking Alien

ckutalik

C'nor (Outermost_Toe)
Dave G _ Nplusplus

Desert Scribe

Greg Christopher

Jedediah

Jeff Hawkins

watchman

_

Deep thought Friday

We haven't had any deep thinking on a Friday for a while, not here anyway, or not intentionally, but yesterday's post qualifies so I'm linking back.

There are three questions, but the first and most important relates to our ability to be truly original. It's a biggie, and something that affects us all more directly than many of the past topics.

Come and join in the conversation, and check out the blog mentioned too. It's inspiring.
_

Where the style's at

So The Angry Lurker passed me the Stylish Blogger Award yesterday. I'm very grateful for the kind words. And I don't mind believing I'm stylish so I'll play along.

The award's contagious. Soon we'll all have it, and I need to pass it on now to another 10-15 other bloggers. The trouble is, if I could pass it on to 100-150, it still wouldn't be enough, and even 300 would be too few.

Here's a solution. In the same way I can get one up on nature's contagions by washing my hands, I'll get one up on this too by washing my hands of choosing favourites. I'll give it to the 15 bloggers I follow with the least followers themselves, to build up resistance early you might say.

They're all bloggers I think have real style, otherwise I wouldn't follow. More importantly they're all bloggers who show their style in another way, by posting at a high level despite a readership presumably still quite low. That's something special, and difficult, and deserves recognition. There's also a poetry in it: Angry was follower three for me.

I've been through the list and found the 15 bloggers with the least followers, where I have the number. To be sure they're still active I've left out blogs where the gap since or before the last post is a month or more. The blogs being deleted by Greg I've skipped. There might be errors, and if anyone has the patience to find them, I'll happily correct.

Anyway, no more detail. The 15 new and very deserving Stylish Bloggers are:

• Appendix N - inspirations for roleplaying

• chronicles of the underdog - reflections of a fiction-loving SA student

• defcon's defunct delirium - gamer, reader and writer

• Dice Like Dave - mixed wargaming, with lots of battle reports

• Hereticwerks - a gaming resource from NetherWerks

• Future War Stories - military science fiction

• Marks Art - art and photography

• Newschool RPG - critiques of old school roleplaying

• Of Cabbages and Kings Food Blog - food and photography

• Passion For Poetry - poems by form

• Recalcitrant Daze - vehicle modelling for Warhammer 40,000

• Servitor Ludi - old school roleplaying game design

• shenblog - Shen get own blog, no monkey, e.g. NetherWerks

• The Roebuck Poets - a three-strong poetry-writing collective

• Worlds Unimagined - thoughts on speculative fiction

No blog in the list has more than 11 known followers and one blog has just the one. It's amazing how many blogs there are just crying out for readers - a lot of blogs just missed at 12, 13 or 14 followers. I say check the blogrolls, find a few you like and start reading.

I also need to tell you seven things about myself, but I'll do that in another post because this one's getting long and I don't want to steal anyone's thunder.

Here's one for the road though - I read a lot of blogs.

Update: And another one - I'm very fallible. There is a mistake. The details are here.

_

Pink, blue

With the 'hot elf chick' everywhere recently, even this week's EXPANDERS!, more on gender in gaming and other interests. It's the subject of some current or recent posts.

Greg Christopher at Errant has thoughts on magic as an equaliser in games.

Loquacious at World of Wonder looks at women as players, here first, then here.

Juliette Wade at TalkToYoUniverse has a major post on contemporary culture with the title "The Cultural Question of Girls and Princesses, Boys and Battles". This is one that's well worth reading right the way through and mulling over long.

The latest follower here has the name Mary. Not enough battles at the Expanse? If you're reading this, Mary, it's good to have you onboard too. There's no personal site link in your pop-up so please drop me a line or leave a comment here. This is often the case, and finding a new arrival can involve a lot of detective work or plain good luck. Anyone with the same trouble might like to read this post at The Angry Lurker.
.

To LinkWithin or not?

Thanks largely to a post by Dave at Wargaming Tradecraft, I'm trying out LinkWithin. This is the widget now bringing up a group of images and/or links under every post.

It's a good way of highlighting old and possibly related material, but it's very intrusive too, and dominates many of the shorter posts. I also think it distracts from the posts needing more imagination or concentration. It pushes the comments further down as well.

I'll give it time, but I'm very interested in your thoughts on it.
.

Triffles (7-12)

With a dozen Triffles now, six since the last summary, another quick reference list.

  (7) A secret passage

  (8) A trapdoor

  (9) A broken fall

(10) A high denomination

(11) A tense exchange

(12) A wrong turn

The idea of the series is to present some simple ideas for wargaming, roleplaying and writing. It's aimed at those of us who want familiar, comfortable concepts in a practical form, but also everyone wanting a reminder of what's tired enough to need improving on.

In wargaming nos. 7, 10, 11 and 12 are hopefully useful, no. 10 thanks largely to the commenters, with no. 11 probably the most challenging to the usual game form.

Terrainmakers have simple thoughts on sets of pieces in nos. 7 and 12, and nos. 7 and 8 are already familiar as elements of geomorphs.

The whole set this time seems to have something for roleplaying, especially in terms of narrative, with no. 12 moving more into theory.

Writers could find something in each too - nos. 7 and 8 focus on feeling and nos. 9, 10 and 12 on plot; no. 11 is more a mix of both. The last three in the set also cover music.

As an aside, no. 11 includes in the comments an attempt at introducing the overlapping concepts of wargame, skirmish game and roleplaying game. It might need looking at it.

There's a list for all the Triffles so far lower down the right-hand column.

The N++ Network

News for the wargaming bloggers. Dave at Wargaming Tradecraft has set up a network page for blog listings by focus. Here's the intro post. The Expanse is already there, but there's still plenty of room for more. I've added the banner to the left-hand column.

A few changes here too. You can now monitor all frequencies, i.e. subscribe to posts and comments, using the buttons in the right-hand column, under channels still open.

I've also added some status buttons for simple, instant feedback at the bottom of each post. Comment too of course if you have more to say - discussion is good and welcome.

The Big 100

Yep, Porky's Expanse! now has a wonderfully round number of intrepid explorers!

It feels warm and fuzzy. Thanks very much to everyone, whether you read, follow or comment - it's a cliche, but it really does inspire to see the interest and your thoughts.

As a more tangible thanks to the followers, I've listed the full 100, with links to their profiles if I have them. If you don't already know them, I recommend looking them up.

Equally, if you see a comment on a post here and you don't recognise the commenter, do click and explore. It's the sharing of ideas and energy that makes all of this work.

The order in the list is the order of following, from Big Jim right at the beginning to Justin S. Davis most recently. The guys without custom avatars, i.e. no recorded place in the main sequence, are listed separately below, but they're no less highly regarded!

Names have been switched if the name in the profile is clearly better known; if a profile is unavailable, but another link exists, I've included that one. There are five people I haven't been able to find any link for, so please leave one in the comments if that's you.

Thanks again to everyone!

Talk Tuesday

It's Talk Tuesday again!

This time too the point is to give a summary of where the discussions have been going on lately, even deep inside the blog, so the good ideas, recommendations and musings of the commenters don't go to waste.

Here's the list of posts this time round, loosely arranged from most to least active.

• From 3D to ?siD - magic and psychic powers
• The D1 - still going, still deep, still in need of help
• When lives co-world (2) - preaching to the converted; continues off-blog
• Let's talk about six - the D6 versus other dice
• Need input - Paul's Bods as a god; links on gathering data
• Hanging back - Warmachine and D&D queries in the comments

A wild card this week too, a post still without a response despite being no heavier than the latest. It's scary, possibly offensive and may be uncomfortable, so maybe that's it?

• They live among us (4) - The alien from Alien - a series on alien design

Be my guest!

Triffles (1-6)

There are six Triffles up now so it seems like a good time to summarise the run so far. The point of course is to offer up a few simple ideas for wargamers, roleplayers and writers, the three largest groups of readers as far as I can tell.

Here's the quick and dirty half-dozen.

(1) A makeshift bridge, with the intro

(2) A power failure

(3) A search

(4) A field kitchen

(5) A shed load

(6) A lookout

Where to start? For wargamers nos. 2, 3 and 6 ought to be especially useful, and for terrainmakers nos. 1, 4 and 5. The same three plus no. 6 could also be starting points for geomorphs. Roleplayers have a bit more choice as all seem to offer some basis for an encounter, with nos. 1, 2 and 6 having most potential for combat. Writers and narrative roleplayers might get most out of nos. 1, 2, 3 and 5.

There's also a list lower down the right-hand column which I'll keep up to date.

All ways for now

At last the list of portals is fully up to date, with the outstanding suggestions all now in place. I almost can't believe I got through it.

That was an interdimensional adventure and a half - to anyone needing their mind expanded I recommend a click or two.

There are still a handful of entries needing clarification: if anyone is up on their doors, be my guest and set me on the right path. Dare I open another kind of gate, the floodgate, and invite more?

At any rate, thanks again to everyone who has contributed so far, many with more than one suggestion, some with far more...

ArmChairGeneral

Barking Alien

ckutalik

C'nor (Outermost_Toe)

Desert Scribe

Greg Christopher

Jedediah

Jeff Hawkins

watchman

Apologies also to Jedediah for spelling her name wrong for the past couple of weeks...
_

Talk Tuesday

After the runaway success of Ecumenical Monday, thanks in large part to Dethron linking to the post from his blog, today becomes Talk Tuesday, for one week at least.

Ecumenical is still going and recently too there's been all kinds of discussion deeper inside the Expanse than the latest post; I want to give a summary of where, so the good ideas, recommendations and musings of the commenters don't go to waste and questions new and old get answered.

So here's a list of older posts with discussion ongoing or comments just added - in order of activity, most to least.

• Ecumenical Monday - religion informing fiction, and in it, with examples
• The scope of fiction - an attempt to map all the space that fiction covers
• Hanging back - help needed, plus C'nor has Warmachine and D&D queries
• Discussing terms (1) - Beer and pretzels - the hobby, expression and food
• From stardust to moondust and beyond - the first post on quogwinkles

It's all yours.

Repelling boarders

I've been pondering control of spaces. In wargaming and roleplaying we could well be encouraged to invade, occupy and steal, and how we rationalise this is a big subject. Big Lee at his Miniature Adventures has a real life example, which is what set me off.

The problem has reared its head at the Expanse too. One follower showed surprising contempt for everyone else by manipulating a mechanism for his or her own ends. I don't like the idea of diversity suffering for limited personal gain, as I suggested here a while back on the subject of tournaments. With no means of contact, I've blocked the person, but will happily review the decision. If any Blogger blogger has a need to do this, they can click the green 'Followers' icon on the dashboard, then the given avatar, then select the option under the name. I feel unhappy for having done it, but better than I did before.

All of this reminded me of two movies featuring similar situations, one of which you probably know and the other quite possibly not. It's a common problem, but in both help comes from an unlikely quarter, from aliens, possibly those quogwinkles again.