Hey everyone, Nathanael here. It’s been a while since I last posted, in truth because I’ve been so busy with other projects that I just haven’t had the time. Wanna know what’s been going on, and what’s in the near future? Read on!

The biggest project that has occupied my time is a new site called Awropla (or Awesomeroleplayers.com), which is based on the premise of Campaign Networking. People can sign up for free, without any ads, and upload and host their campaign information. Characters can be journaled, campaigns chronicled, quotes submitted, and all are tagged, enhanced, and cross-referenced with one another to promote an idea of a community based on shared gaming information. Gamers can start their own online forums for their gaming groups, and use them to plan events and discuss their downtimes.

Needless to say, this has absorbed a large chunk of my time and focus, and I’m hoping it will go officially live in the near future. As it currently stands, I’ve just disabled the feature that required all new accounts receive admin approval before being able to post. Now, anyone can sign up, fill out the reg form, log in and start posting. If you’re reading this, head on over to Awropla, check it out, and let me know if you have any suggestions.

After Awropla are three major game design projects, one being Verses, one a LARP, and the third a fan-made (that fan being Me) game based on a fantastic-awesome-stupendous-fabulous animated TV show which I won’t name at this moment. I think our Saturday test campaign of the Verses RPG is coming to a conclusion soon, at which point we’ll be reviewing the system one last time to see if it is indeed worth sharing with external playtesters. It’s been a lot of fun so far, and I’m hoping it can stand up to the final scrutiny. The LARP, on the other hand, hasn’t really been touched much lately, but I’m hoping to give it a second test session after the holidays have passed and folks are all back and ready to game some more.

Yet another gaming project of mine has been the recent establishment of a dynamic gaming group I call the Portland RPG Noob Crew. The extended details can be found at that link, but the basic gist of the project involves finding locals who want to game but for various reasons never really have, and helping them find out if they enjoy the hobby. We’ve had one session so far and it was a whole lot of fun. The next session has just today been scheduled to take place on Saturday, December 8th.

So, what else is going on?

• Last night finally saw the long-awaited end to the Little Fears game we started several months ago. Our last session was 5 months back, and I know we’re all glad to finally have some closure. Perhaps I’ll make a post about it on Awropla - if I do, I’ll link it here too.
• We’ve got a LARP session planned for GameStorm 10, which is coming up in March 2008. More details on that as it gets closer.
• I have decided that after this holiday season, I will no longer run extended gaming campaigns, at least for a good long time. I just don’t think I’m cut out for them anymore.
• I’m debating closing the forums for now. Now that I’ve moved my personal gaming stuff to the new Awropla site, the forums see no use, and are just taking up dead space.
• I’ve started playing LotR:O again. Oh yeah. Like I have so much time on my hands as it is.

That’s it for now. I hope to update a bit more regularly, now. =)

- Nathanael Phillip Cole

As some of you know, June 23rd is the first-annual Free RPG Day, a national (international?) event inspired by the success of the fairly recent Free Comic Book Day. While RMG has no brand new products to contribute to this effort, I’ll still be spending most of this day running demos at Guardian Games, helping to promote the new free stuff (and getting free games and store credit in the process, woot). I’m looking forward to running a con-style demo again, and hopefully they’ll actually get the free stuff in advance so that those who wish to help run demos (like me) can see what they’ll be running and have a few days to prep. Cold-run Demo RPGs are theoretically possible, but I dunno. Maybe. We’ll see. If you’re interested in the events, check out the website, and if you’re interested in the game I’ll be running, then drop a comment and help make this an awesome event.

If you are actually interested in who we are (personally) and what we do around here, check out the new RMG Crew page I’ve set up. Are you part of The Family,” and want to be immortalized with us? Leave a comment and we’ll work something out.

- Nathanael Phillip Cole

I just finished adding in some Calendar features to the blog, with some plug-ins designed to integrate Google Calendar with the flow of the pages here. There’s now an agenda-style list on the right side of upcoming events, as well as an in-line display of our Google Calendar on our Events Schedule page.

- Nathanael Phillip Cole

I just finished uploading an entire new (read: the very first) gallery of user avatars on the forums. The avatars are all derived from the art of our previous Streetwise games, and looking through them all again brings back a lot of awesome memories.

If you have an account on the forums, you can access these new avatars by editing your profile. If you don’t have an account, go on over and set one up, and get the ball rolling.

- Nathanael

For some reason, this site doesn’t look that well with IE. When it comes to CSS, I’m a talentless hack skilled only at reverse-engineering scraps of code, so if any of you can point out the errors, I would be greatly appreciative.

If you’re reading this and you have not already done so, then I suggest you run over to Nearbygamers.com and set up a profile. This fairly awesome website uses a google map to track gamers’ home bases across the world, and you just might be surprised how many more gamers are around you. I’ve got a profile, and you should too! And if you’re a fan, be sure to put Streetwise in as one of your tags. Spread the word, keep the faith, and let’s take over the LARP world one gamer at a time!

After a couple of years of hiatus, Streetwise is making a return. Welcome to the Newslog!