Letters from the Editor – Q2 Recap

Welcome one and all to another edition of Letters from the Editor where you get to hear a little something from the Editor-in-Chief of Roleplayers Chronicle, your online tabletop RPG newspaper.

First I’d like to discuss something quite obvious, the new Roleplayers Chronicle template. For the past year or so I have been looking for just the right template to use for Roleplayers Chronicle. Hours and hours of searching always produced nothing of interest until around the end of this past May when I stumbled upon the template you see now. To my excitement it’s EXACTLY what I was looking for. So here’s a bit about the new template:

• Submission Form: The submissions form has been replaced. Because the columns are smaller and I didn’t want the form on the homepage, it has been moved to its own page titled Submissions (look directly underneath the top banner). The new submission form is quite interactive and has a great WYSIWYG format. Plus you can choose the category for your post, although I often fiddle with that anyway.
• Navigation: Navigation has been made a little more user-friendly with the move from the top menu to a left-side menu. If you hover over each menu, you get the expanded sub-menus. The pull-down menu navigation is still available in the column on the right.
• Featured Articles: Our daily highlighted articles, now referred to as Featured Articles, can be found in the scrolling pictures at the top of the page. These are the articles of interest that include correspondent’s articles, reviews, and designer’s diaries.
• Categories: Each category has its own box within the page showing the 5 most recent postings. On the far left side is an additional box for the Role-playing Game category as it contains the most daily posts.
• Networking: We have a new set of buttons for social networking on the right-hand side which includes a link to our Twitter feed, Facebook page, Facebook group, eBay ID, main RSS feed, and Reference site.
• Reference: The Mystical Throne has been shutdown and all tabletop RPG products and battlemap listings have been moved to our Roleplayers Chronicle Reference database. You can follow the link in the Follow Us! widget or check-out the links found in many of our postings. Or you can navigate to reference.roleplayerschronicle.com.
• Diversions: We have a new category called Diversions to highlight non-RPG products based on RPG systems or settings such as fiction, board games, card games, and war games.
• Handheld Devices: The new template is more user-friendly for handheld devices. The large white space you see on a computer is removed for handheld devices for improved viewing.
• Advertisement: We have new advertisement placement including a 468×60 position up top and a 300×250 in the middle of the right column. The advertisement in the upper right-hand corner is a permanent home for the Gamerati ad network. Both advertisement slots sell for $0.50 per day paid in weekly installments.

And that’s it. I know it’s a lot but I sure love how the new website looks!

The Great Indie RPG Giveaway 2012!

Our new ANNUAL giveaway is underway. If you have not entered, head on over to http://roleplayerschronicle.com/?page_id=23188 and enter for your chance to win one of our huge prize packages. I have decided that this will be a yearly occurrence, although subsequent giveaways will probably only run for 2 weeks. I didn’t realize how big the response would be within the first week of the giveaway.

Roleplayers Chronicle Magazine

I have decided to combine our premium content offerings into magazine releases to provide valuable content in a single offering. Plus they are available in PDF and Print-on-Demand. Stay tuned for future issues of the Roleplayers Chronicle magazine, find out more here. Remember, by purchasing this magazine, you’re helping to support the website you get all your news from.

And now it’s time for a look at our traffic from Q2.

Visits: 20,277
Unique Visitors: 14,580
Pageviews: 34,134

Top 10 Most Popular Posts:

1. Under The Hood – Hero Quest and Where It All Began
2. Collected List of Cleric Spells for Pathfinder
3. A Word in Edgewise… with Wolfgang Baur of Open Design
4. Review: Margaret Weis Productions – Basic Game (Marvel Heroic Roleplaying)
5. Designer’s Diary: Über Goober Games – Über RPG: Steampunk
6. A Word in Edgewise with… Rucht Lilavivat about Gothic Earth Eternal
7. Fat Goblin Games Guide to Catfolk for Pathfinder
8. Review: Architect Games – Reclamation
9. Review: Open Design – Your Whispering Homunculus (Pathfinder)
10. A Word in Edgewise… with Fred Hicks of Evil Hat Productions

As you can see, our Interview series, A Word in Edgewise, is quite popular!

Top 10 Most Popular Reviews:

1. Margaret Weis Productions – Basic Game (Marvel Heroic Roleplaying)
2. Architect Games – Reclamation
3. Open Design – Your Whispering Homunculus (Pathfinder)
4. Reality Blurs – Agents of Oblivion (Savage Worlds)
5. Dias Ex Machina – Ultramodern4 (Dungeons & Dragons)
6. Adamant Entertainment – MARS Adventures (MARS Savage Worlds)
7. Open Design – Bestiary (Midgard)
8. Open Design – Elgar Fletch and the Dark Army (Party of One)
9. Rite Publishing – 101 Magus Feats (Pathfinder)
10. Open Design – Divine Majesty (Kobold Quarterly, Issue 21)

Top 10 Most Popular Non-review Articles:

1. Under The Hood – Hero Quest and Where It All Began
2. A Word in Edgewise… with Wolfgang Baur of Open Design
3. Designer’s Diary: Über Goober Games – Über RPG: Steampunk
4. A Word in Edgewise with… Rucht Lilavivat about Gothic Earth Eternal
5. A Word in Edgewise… with Fred Hicks of Evil Hat Productions
6. Under the Hood – Bounded Accuracy
7. Designer’s Diary: Pamean Games – Brass & Steel
8. Tales from the Gazebo – Character Creation Session Haters
9. Designer’s Diary: Arcanum Syndicate – Chaos 6010 A.D.
10. Under the Hood – Mechanics be Damned!

Top 10 Most Active Systems (Ongoing):

1. Pathfinder
2. Universal (system-less & battlemaps)
3. Savage Worlds
4. Dungeons & Dragons
5. Mutants & Masterminds
6. Traveller
7. Warhammer 40K (Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, Deathwatch, Black Crusade, & Only War)
8. GURPS
9. Shadowrun
10. d20 Modern

Top 10 Most Active Publishers (Ongoing):

1. Paizo Publishing
2. Avalon Games
3. Rite Publishing
4. Fantasy Flight Games
5. Green Ronin Publishing
6. Raging Swan Press
7. Super Genius Games
8. Steve Jackson Games
9. Wizards of the Coast
10. Rogue Games

Demographics:

1. United States
2. United Kingdom
3. Canada
4. Germany
5. Poland
6. France
7. Australia
8. Italy
9. Spain
10. Brazil

Thank you everyone for your continued support! Without you and the rest of the industry, none of this would be worthwhile. See you at Gen Con!

Aaron T. Huss
Editor-in-Chief
Roleplayers Chronicle