Welcome to the Gauntlet Blog!

By Jason Cordova

I have been pitching the idea of a blog for several months now, and the reactions I get range from curious to puzzled. No one has had a negative reaction to the idea, but folks often wonder “Why now?” The Gauntlet has a successful podcast network, a small publishing arm, a vibrant gaming calendar, and runs an annual convention. The thinking, I suppose, is that most folks would have started with a blog and then moved onto those other things. We seem to be doing it backwards!
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But now is the right time for The Gauntlet Blog.

Our community has been growing like crazy. Last month, we successfully organized over 140 game sessions on Gauntlet Hangouts; our Patreon subscriber count just passed the 500 mark; and each episode of every podcast we produce gets thousands of downloads. I don’t point these things out to boast, although I’m certainly proud of our accomplishments. Rather, as we have grown, so has the number of voices in our community.

Everywhere you turn in The Gauntlet, be it on the Slack group or our various social media channels, interesting conversations about tabletop roleplaying games are taking place. Gauntleteers are the very best thinkers when it comes to indie RPGs, informed in part by the fact that we play so many of them. We have a lot of things to say about these games, our play culture, game design, GMing advice, our community, and more. We need a home–a permanent home–for these conversations to live. The Gauntlet Blog is that home.

Our plan is for the blog to be on a daily release schedule. It may take us a few weeks to ramp up to that, but once we get going, you can look forward to the following types of content every single day:

Play reports
Game reviews
Game design diaries
Interviews
Community spotlights
Actual play round-ups
Podcast round-ups
RPG theory
GMing advice
And more!

You can also expect blog posts from some of the best thinkers in the ttrpg industry, including Lowell Francis, whose ENnie award-winning Age of Ravens blog will merge with The Gauntlet Blog; Kate Bullock, author of the excellent Bluestockings blog; Rach Shelkey, co-host of +1 Forward; podcaster Kyle Thompson; and many more. (As for myself, I will be using the blog space to write down all those gameplay techniques I have been talking about for years but have never made available in a written form.)

The Gauntleteer running the show will be Will Patterson, who has professional experience managing a blog. He will be assisted by various folks, including Michael X, who has professional experience with SEO. For now, they’re only going to take submissions from folks within The Gauntlet Slack group, or people we personally invite to write for the blog. If you’re a member of our Slack and have an idea for a post, be sure to contact Will.

This is a very exciting new project for The Gauntlet, and represents the best new opportunity we have to show folks what our community is all about. Please be sure to bookmark the page, add it to your RSS feed, and, importantly, get involved in the conversation. We want to hear what you have to say!

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