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Thursday, February 20, 2020

Blog Post of Note: The Khopesh Curve (plus a sidenote)

Delta's D&D Hotspot: The Khopesh Curve is a short and to the point post about the XP awards for killing monsters. What's the difference between flat XP for hit dice and the Greyhawk XP system? Read Delta's post to find out!

A sidenote on blogging, though: I've seen many posts since the collapse of G+ about how going back to blogging will help keep the conversations going. OK, but why does everyone have to make this harder? To those of you on the Blogger/Blogspot platform: there's a little widget that adds sharing buttons to your blog posts. Believe it or not, this lets people share your posts, which means people can be invited to join those conversations you crave. I'm sure other platforms like Wordpress have something similar. But I'm not seeing anyone use these.

It's like people prefer screaming into the void.

On a related note: people should be reading the Old School RPG Planet aggregator. Not just adding their blogs to the bloglist and ignoring everyone. Sure, there are some improvements I'd like to see, but it's a great resource even as-is.

3 comments:

  1. Could you provide a little more detail about this widget please? Maybe a link to some documentation?
    I'm guessing it is the block of 5 buttons at the bottom of the post? Is doesn't actually look useful for bringing people into a conversation. It looks like it exports your conversation to other media that maybe you don't follow. But perhaps I am misunderstanding this. How does it work for you? Do people use it on your posts?
    I keep finding things on Old School RPG Planet and then I'm never able to find them ever again if I forget to bookmark the page.

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    Replies
    1. I guess technically it's not a stand-alone widget, but is an option in the blog post gadget in the layout settings. It's called "share buttons". It lets you post links on various media, including Blogger.

      This means that if someone reads your post and wants other people to know about it, they can quickly blog about it, or share it elsewhere... and people can then follow the link and read the post themselves. They can comment on your post, or on the post/tweet that talks about your post, or they can blog/share either post themselves.

      Yes, it's probably more satisfying if people comment directly on your post, but "the conversation" is not necessarily your personal conversation, but the general conversation on that topic, wherever it may occur. If everyone had share buttons on their posts, you could share a post yourself and, if nothing else, use your blog/Twitter account/Facebook account as your own personal reminder of posts you've read, which would solve your Old School RPG Planet problem.

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    2. I should also add: there's another feature, useful for if you leave a comment on a blog post and want to go back to it. Below the new comment box there's usually a line that reads something like

      "Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

      This will actually subscribe you to an RSS feed for just that post. You will get an email when someone else posts a comment.

      On the comment box itself, there's a checkbox that's labeled "Notify me". Not sure what the differences are between this and the subscribe link, but I think the Notify me box only sends email if someone replies directly to your comment. Also, maybe the "Subscribe to" link works even if you don't comment. Not sure.

      There's also a "Links to this post" feature, but I'm not entirely sure how it works... I used to use it, but found it wasn't doing what I expected and stopped. It's still available on my blog, though. I think it's a way to track who's blogging about your post...

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