. . . and thanks again for the links.

I’m glad that you like the reviews, rest assured that more are coming really soon. Also this one is the offspring of your Dragonball comment.

Talk to you later,
Fred.

PS: I’m lacking some statistics about average RPG blog hits, or some information about the niche at least. From the blogs that I’ve seen however I would say that while it’s not WoTC it’s certainly a very good number. So if you’re not Chad and you’re reading this, you better check SOB so you know what we’re talking about.

If I get some downvotes on submissions, my “karma” takes a hit — but it’s not like I can use karma to pay my rent, so I might as well gamble it spreading the word about something I like, such as your 4E reviews.

I had the most user activity (ever) last week, and I’m pretty sure it came from your side of the fence (when you placed a link in your article about magic items.)

I don’t really consider what I get a “huge” amount of traffic either — but it has been increasing gradually over the last couple years, with a couple of nice spikes. My biggest day was 10,000 visits according to WordPress stats, but yesterday was only 167. I tend to get between 150 and 250 a day on most days, I think, though I don’t really pay close attention.

Comparing a game to Dragonball is one of the quickest ways to make me choose to play a different game.

Ha! You should be thankful that I did not compare it with Gatchaman! (that comment goes waaay off the nerdy scale and besides Gatchaman doesn’t have anything to do with this.) In any case I used Dragonball since it’s apparently well known in the US (not that I’m from the US though) so I thought it would make an easy to get reference. That is just one example though, you can find another in the early Monkey King vs. Jade Warlord fight in The Forbidden Kingdom (look at what the Jade Warlord does and you’ll get the picture.)

Also, thanks for submitting the articles to reddit. I know this is not the first time you’ve done so (and I sent you an e-mail through your website to thank you last time) and it does provide some traffic (which is especially nice for a place like this, since I don’t have a huge number of visitors yet.) No need to worry about the rude comments, I can handle those very well myself… although is there a negative side for your submissions getting downvotes?

Fred

PS: Talk about not having a huge number of visitors. I had the most user activity (ever) last week, and I’m pretty sure it came from your side of the fence (when you placed a link in your article about magic items.)

I think you may find more controversy arising as a result of these writings at reddit. I submitted both this and your Chapter 1 review to the RPG subreddit, and fully expect some people will disagree with you there — possibly resulting in discussion, and certainly resulting in my submissions getting some downvotes.

Of course, you’ll get some traffic here from those submissions, too. Hopefully the visitors don’t post rude comments if they happen to think D&D 4E is the Second Coming of RPGs.

A few weeks ago I read this very interesting idea, but I lost the reference (if you happen to read this, let me know it was you!)… basically the guy said that in order to use your most powerful assets (powers in this case) you had to create a buildup and that said buildup would be mechanically relevant (or enforced, don’t remember which one… most likely enforced.)

The idea was to emulate certain anime action movies/series. If you’ve ever watched those (although this might not be exclusive to them), you’ll see that the combatants never start the fight using their biggest weapons… especially if they have some “nuke” spell or power that they could use to blow the opposition to pieces. Dragonball is a prime example of this behaviour although many others follow the same formula. There is basically a back and forth between the good and bad guys and only after the good guys are put on that “dire strait” (geek reference to the PHB) are they ‘allowed’ to bring out the big guns…

Just a thought…

The point about daily and encounterly powers possible simulating certain kinds of fiction is a good one.