I'll be writing soon enough but have my own assignments due in over the next few weeks, not to mention my planning and prep for work.

This might be tough for me, because I don’t really consider myself a contemporary gamer.  I’m an old school kind of guy and I know little about today’s scene, except for playing here and on Roll20.

In reply to Jan Tarran (msg # 720):

There is no big hurry: you have about three weeks before the deadline.

In reply to Rudjam (msg # 721):

Well... I understand very well your point, but I guess that, if you play in 2021, you can't deny you're contemporary ;)
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:46, Tue 07 Sept 2021.

I'm setting up The Well of Souls adventure for Garl and Stormrider Sureheart. Anybody else willing to join?

Happy belated Labor Day, y'all (or, ya'll of you in the States). Glad I didn't miss too much over the long weekend!

I'll be away from the 17th of September to the 4th of October with unlikely access to internet.

I hope you are taking some holidays :)

You deserve the break!

Indeed I do! :)

I forgot to notice that we recently passed the 12,000 posts milestone... and this campaign is now established in the top 50 Fantasy games (by number of posts) of RPoL...

Well done!

I'm just a bit worried that this likely absence will be across the 1st of October (Dave Arneson's Day)... I hope this won't hinder our little essay competition.

Then I think you should push the due date of the essay forward until you are back in action fully.

Well... the Dave Arneson's Day is the 1st of October... I can't change that as the submission deadline!
But I can delay the discussion and the voting to when I'll be back.

Looks like the essay competition thread is closed.  Is this deliberate?

I also am unable to access the thread because it's closed.

I really hope the contest is still on, because I just watched the 'Secrets of Blackmoor' documentary and definitely have some things to say about it.

In reply to Garl Ligoosh (msg # 737):

That sounds interesting. Is it available online?

It’s at Vimeo.  It used to be at Amazon but it was removed.

The thread was actually open, just fixed to the top, as a notice. As it looks like you had some issue accessing it, I removed that as well, just in case, so you should have free access to it now.
Just to make up for that, I'll leave the entries open until the 3rd of October.

Thank you because I was getting really anxious as I had nowhere to go with my response. I will try to get that up then this weekend.

Good.  Thanks.

Today is my last day of holiday - tomorrow I should (hopefully) be back to "normal" and deal with your posts as usual and with the essays competition.
I really needed a break and (hopefully) I'll be back refreshed.

The recurrence of the 1st October is an opportunity to look back at the past of this living campaign and do some statistics. The most obvious count is the posts count:

First year: 2,500 posts
Second year: 3,000 posts
Third year: 3,800 posts
Fourth year: 2,800 posts

Total posts: 12,100 !!!

Between the 1st October 2020 and the 1st October 2021 there were 2,800 posts, that are slightly below average, but still a great number, especially during a difficult year for many people (of course including myself).
Hopefully the future will motivate more people to have fun and role-play :)
Another factor to consider is that perhaps "simple" websites like RPoL are becoming a bit less fashionable for RPG support and it appears that there are less gamers available.

What do you think?