When I Look Back at My First 100...

At the first day of April, I opened The Bleeding Scroll. It was yet another attempt to open a blog of my own. It was supposed to replace my Facebook as a public diary, and to a certain degree, it did. I almost completely stopped using it (a blessed change...), but almost nothing from the original idea survived when I look on this blog, today. 

It became, quite early to say the least, a blog about RPGs. Sure, it had (and still has) its heavy dose of movies, but it became more of a place to post about lessons from them than as a place to talk about them. I touched music only once, and my thoughts disappeared from the blog quite quickly also. It's still a collection of thoughts, but not of the type that I intended for. 

My posting frequency rose up, the focus on RPGs rose also, and before I knew it, it was an RPG blog. I tried to make it different, bringing in a focus on horror, waving in a focus on lessons from movies and from improvisation, but it was still an RPG theory blog first, and only then the rest.

I don't think it's a bad thing, actually. It's an organic transition, and as such it's a good one. It's a way to stay tuned on RPGs even when I'm not GMing at the moment, even when I'm taking a short break. The blog started to take a bigger place in my time, using a bigger share of my energy, and I think that it deserves it. From a leading writer for a big Israeli site, I came to be the writer of a nice little blog. There's a lot of freedom that comes with this transition.

Today, with this post, The Bleeding Scroll reaches a landmark: 100 posts. It took me a far shorter amount of time than I expected, in 88 days actually, but I think that overall, almost all of the posts are there for a reason. Sure, my first ones weren't that great, and I went through a lot of crap, but I improved overall, and I think that it shows.

So, in order to conclude this first part, first act of my blogging story, here is the roundup of my favourite posts, accompanied by a few statistics:

1. My first favourite is from April's bog carnival. I joined in late, but it was part of it. It's more of a personal achievement than a perfect post (although I believe that it's a great post). It was, after all, my first post after joining the RPG Blog Alliance, and was my most popular post for a long time.
2. Another one is my second Fiasco session recap uploaded. It was a great session to play within, and I think that it was the first time that I could really say: Wow! I've just played Fiasco and used it to the peak of my abilities." I think that it shows.
3. The post about game history is another favourite. When I look at this post, I can't stop thinking that this is the point where I really understood what freedom I have here. Until then, I was quite conventional, but from this point, I started to explore the possibilities of blogging. 
4. The post about how to open a game is another one. I think that it's one of the best examples for what I strived for when I said lessons from movies. It's a discussion about how the movie Frankenstein is opened, what does it achieve with this way of opening, and how can we use it in a game. 

My favourite of all time is of course the post about how the soundtrack affected my GMing. It's a personal post, and I think that it's one of the easiest ways to know what my GMing style is, and to where I'm striving with it.

A few statistics to close this off:

Number of Posts 100

Number of comments: 8+8 responses from me

Number of visitors: 3023

Google Page Rank: 2

So, what are your thoughts about the first 100 posts? What posts did you like? What you didn't? Is there anything that you want improved?