I finally motivated myself to finish putting together the index pages for the (as I am now freshly reminded) prodigious archives here at the Alexandrian. We recently crossed the threshold of 1,500 unique posts, so systematically going through all of them and figuring out how to organize them was a time-consuming project. (Far more time-consuming than I’d been anticipating, honestly.)
The index pages can be accessed through the side bar on the right. Several of these had been spun up previously, but have now been expanded/finalized:
Gamemastery 101: Has all of the GM-focused essays I’ve written about RPGs in general. This includes adventure design stuff like the Three Clue Rule, Node-Based Scenario Design, and game structures; The Arts of the GM essays; open game tables; and Random GM Tips.
RPG Scenarios: This has all the scenarios (for a bunch of a different games) that I’ve posted here at the Alexandrian.
RPG Cheat Sheets: Links to all of the RPG system cheat sheets I’ve written up. There’s about a dozen of these at the moment.
Ptolus – Shadow of the Spire: Includes links to all the campaign journal entries and the Running the Campaign essays related to my D&D 3.5 campaign.
Reviews: Here you’ll find the What I’m Reading series of novel reviews, every review I’ve written on the Alexandrian, and the archive of my old RPGNet reviews. (This latter archival project is one I need to get back to, as there’s still several dozen reviews I haven’t had a chance to reformat and post yet.)
Shakespeare Sunday: Shakespeare Sundays was a series of essays I wrote when I was the Artistic Director of the American Shakespeare Repertory, but I’ve also slipped in some additional Shakespeare-related posts over the years. (I need to finish archiving the ASR performance scripts at some point.)
In addition to these, I’ve now added a number of new index pages:
RPG Miscellaneous: The top section of this index has an archive of old articles, Tales from the Table, design notes from my personal projects, and a miscellaneous collection of essays and other material. The rest of the index organizes the material I’ve written up for specific games like Eclipse Phase, Numenera, Technoir, Ten Candles, and so forth. (Although I’ve generally avoided listing material on multiple indexes, this is the one exception: Reviews, scenarios, and system cheat sheets for specific games are included here with everything else I’ve written for those specific games.)
Check These Out: Collecting every post I’ve made where I’ve recommended checking something out elsewhere on the ‘net. (Many of these include additional discussion and insight.)
Essays: Long-form essays and similar thoughts on any topics that aren’t quite large enough to justify having their own index page.
Thoughts of the Day: All of my little interstitial “thoughts of the day” posts broken down by topic (Roleplaying, Politics, Pop Culture, Technology, Miscellaneous).
Dungeons & Dragons: The biggest index page of them all. This includes classics like D&D: Calibrating Your Expectations, Reactions to OD&D, and my review of 4th Edition. It includes Advanced D20 Rules (including Untested mechanics), cool stuff (feats, magic items, spells, monsters), reviews, scenarios, and miscellaneous essays.
If you’re an old hand in these parts, you might take a moment to poke around and find some old favorites. If you’re new in town, then this project has probably unearthed some lost gems that were lurking under your feet without you ever being aware of them.
Have fun storming the castle!
Nice work, Justin.
Did you also revamp the tags for articles while building the indexes and shifting the content around?
Allan.
Hmmm. I don’t see an easy way to view your articles chronologically now; is there a broader, titles-only-with-dates view available at all?—the only view I found was scrolling post-by-post via the Month drop-down menu, which is rather onerous.
Allan.
Re: Gamemastery 101; Have you considered collecting these essays into a published dead-tree book that budding GMs could pick up at their local game store? Because I’d totally buy a copy.
I would put “So You Want to Write a Railroad” in the Gamemastery 101 section, under the Railroading Manifesto, since it serves as a (IMO essential) companion piece to that series.
Long time reader here, rare commenter. I enjoy reading your site and your work’s frequent inclusion of game-agnostic material, techniques, and food for thought. I also am partial to your great D&D related articles. Thank you for taking the time to index your works and congratulations on passing that milestone!
Fantastic resource for endless browsing!
Wow, looking over the index at http://thealexandrian.net/gamemastery-101 – it really sinks in how my modern GMing approach & game organisation is largely based around the stuff I’ve read here! :\ You describe old ideas like open tables and megadungeons better than anyone else.
Thank you for the hard work it must have been. Having all your Game mastery 101 in one place is a boon.