I think I jinxed myself with my post about DRM on September 30th. In my comments, I mentioned how absolutely reliable my Windows 2000 machine had been. It naturally committed suicide a few days later by burning out a graphics card. I replaced the graphics card and 9 days later the computer crashed again. After many tribulations, I finally concluded, in a highly technical fashion, that it must be “some damn thing on the motherboard”.

So then I had to research, purchase a new computer, wait for it to be delivered, and then go through the laborsome duties of stripping out the bloatware, loading up the essential utilities, and transferring over my files.

Phew.

On the other hand, the Windows 2000 installation is still humming along merrily, the drive having been transplanted to another machine which it is now running quite pleasantly. (Something which would be impossible under Windows 7, of course, thanks to its DRM. Seriously, I hate DRM.)

By and large, you probably have no reason to care about any of this, except insofar as the conclusion is this: Barring any new catastrophes new content should begin flowing onto the Alexandrian starting tomorrow.

Things have been quiet around here lately. Partly because September has been a hell of a month for me (although I think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel now), and partly because there was an abortive effort behind the scenes to update the site to a WordPress installation (which will probably happen at some point, but didn’t work out this time).

If you’re starved for Alexandrian verbiage, you might be interested to know that I’ve been posting Shakespeare-related essays at the American Shakespeare Repertory. And we should also start seeing some fresh material around here in the next couple of days.

Meanwhile, a public service announcement:

I’m looking for an experienced web designer who would be interested in designing a subscription-based website with a roleplaying focus. For the moment I’m going to be deliberately vague regarding the details of the project, but to give some indication of the scope:

Content would be accessible through (1) chronological blog-style archiving / daily postings; and (2) an alternative archival format accessed through a heirarchical graphical interface (click on a specific location on one image to open a sub-navigation page with another image that will take you to more specific content).

Preferably this would be the same content, just accessed through different navigations systems.

Automated content drip and subscription feeds probably go without saying, right?

A forum-system integrated into the site’s subscription log-in.

I also need to be able to deliver PDFs as bonus material to subscribers. I would prefer to do this directly through the website, but the twist is that — unlike the rest of the content — subscribers would only gain access to a PDF if it was released while they were an active subscriber.

It may also make sense to include a native store for selling and delivering e-books, but at this time I would consider that an optional feature.

I would like to launch this project some time this fall.

I have a small development budget for this project at this time, but the primary form of compensation would come through a revenue share from the subscription fees.

If you’re interested, please e-mail me with some links to your existing design work and we can start chatting details.

In the spirit of the recent facelifting I’ve been doing to some badly outdated portions of the site, I’ve re-designed the Bibliography page to be a little bit snazzier and a little bit more useful. Perhaps most notable, however, are the cover shots for all of the books I’ve written or contributed to:

City Supplement 1: Dweredell June 8th, 2007 Buy!

City Supplement 2: Aerie July 1st, 2007 Buy!

City Supplement 3: Anyoc October 20th, 2008 Buy!

There will probably be another revision of the Bibliography coming at some point down the road: The links to the Pyramid articles no longer work since Steve Jackson Games stopped hosting the old weekly version of the magazine; and at some point I really do need to get around to hosting my old RPGNet reviews on the Reviews page.

But I honestly have no idea when any of that will be resolved.

As I reviewed some of the older material while prepping this revision, I realized that some of it feels like a bit of a tease. For example, I wish that the adventures I wrote for Fantasy Flight’s Legends & Lairs were still available. But they are apparently almost impossible to track down. I’ve received several e-mails in the past asking me if I had any extra copies, and unfortunately, no, I don’t.

These were among my earliest published work, and although I still cringe occasionally when I read some of the prose in them, I’m still quite proud of them. The only one I really regret is The Wreyland Serpent, on which I blew my word count by producing something like 150% of the maximum content, which subsequently resulted in most of the really nice detail work I’d included being (rightfully) cut. Basically a complete meltdown by a neophyte freelancer. I frequently feel the urge to call Greg Benage (my editor on the project) and apologize all over again for the mess.

How does something like that happen? Basically you let your eyes get bigger than your stomach. You start with a nifty (but probably too complicated) concept:

The legendary exploits of the Wreyland Serpent have long passed from mouth to mouth, the stories finding their way from one mountain village to the next before finally filtering from there into the lowlands beyond. The dragon described in these legends, however, possesses a double-edge: In many accounts, the Serpent is vindicative, petty, and tyrannical – a terror to those who encounter him. In others, the Serpent is kind, helpful, and forgiving – a boon to those who cross his path.

In truth, the apparent duality of the Wreyland Serpent is due to the confused conflation of two separate dragons – Sul’tara’ha’berthur (the Serpent of Terror) and Al’aereyan’serul’il’taran (the Serpent of Peace) – into a single dragon.

Sul’tara’ha’berthur is a black dragon, born among the foothills of the Tuggorth Mountains five hundred years ago. His parents ruled their domain with an iron fist, and as Sul’tara grew older he also grew jealous of their power. When he was little more than a young adult, he attempted to overthrow and murder them. As a reward for his failure, he was nearly hunted down himself by his parents minions before fleeing west to the Wreyland Mountains a century ago.

Al’aereyan’serul’il’taran, on the other hand, is a gold dragon from the lands of the Talundin Estuary. Nearly three centuries ago, Al’aereyan earned the enmity of a Dragon Witch through actions which have been forgotten by all but the oldest of creatures. As a punishment, the Witch placed a curse upon him – causing his golden scales to tarnish. (Although the result does not make Al’aereyan appear as a true black dragon, the result is close enough that the two dragons can easily be confused for each by those with little experience in the manner.) Shortly after receiving the curse, Al’aereyan left Talundin, and journeyed to the western mountains – where he has spent the past three hundred years atoning for whatever misdeeds he may have committed in his untempered youth.

And then you try to flesh it out with details on the local protectorate; a princess in distress; warring colonies of living silver and gold; details on a mining village; and two separate dungeon complexes…

Which is right around the time that you remember that you can’t actually do all of that in 15 pages, no matter how much you might pride yourself on squeezing a maximum amount of content into a minimum amount of space. But it’s too late now because everything you’ve written depends on all the other parts of the adventure’s structure, and there’s probably a way to cut it and rewrite it, but your deadline is looming and–

Kaboom.

Freelance writing: Sometimes it’s fun. Sometimes its a car crash. Not infrequently, it’s both.

Several months ago, Kynnin Scott sent me a very nice e-mail requesting that I change my RSS links for the website so that they point to the archived versions of the articles. I put that on a checklist of things to accomplish and promptly procrastinated it to death.

And then a few days ago Jalapeno Dude posted a comment pointing out that some RSS readers (including his) didn’t recognize the anchor-based links as being distinct links — instead it noted that Jalapeno Dude had already read “index.html” and marked each new feed item as already read.

Jalapeno Dude asked me to have the RSS feed link to the individual articles on separate pages. This, unfortunatley, isn’t technically feasible at the moment. Most of these daily entries simply do not exist as individual webpages.

But what I can do is finally get around to implementing Kynnin Scott’s request. So, as of yesterday, the RSS feed links now point to the permanent archive pages. I’m afraid those of you with readers similar to Jalapeno Dude’s will still have multiple entries show up as “already read”, but you will at least get pinged whenever a new archive page is initiated.

However, since the RSS feed will now be pushing readers into the archives (instead of the front page), the new archive pages will feature increased advertising. (Roughly equivalent to the front page.)

Which allows me to address another semi-frequent topic of e-mail: “How can I support the site?” or “Where’s your Paypal tip jar?”

I don’t have a Paypal tip jar (and probably won’t have one any time soon), but thank you for asking. If you want to send me a tip, it’s just as productive to buy one of my products linked to on the left. Dream Machine Productions features RPG supplements and audio books ranging in price from $2 to $20. And it’s even better than tipping, because you get a nifty RPG supplement out of the deal!

If you don’t want any of my books, but you still want to support the site, then you might consider clicking through my Amazon associate links. Many of the books I talk about get linked to through associate links. (For example, if you were to buy a Kindle through my associate link, you’d be taking care of my hosting fees for half a year or more.) But even if you aren’t interested in the specific books I’m linking to, if you click through the link before completing any order with Amazon, the site garners a small commission from the sale.

Okay, that’s enough site maintenance jabber. Tomorrow we’ll pick up with more content that you actually care about.