Originally published at Deadly Fredly. You can comment here or there.

I’ve got to beg out from this week of posting as well. Last week was extra heavy with Dresden Files work leading up to the Alliance press release (among other things), and this week is chock full of similar activities (as well as some light anxiety about possible imminent travel).  But there are a few things I want to note quickly.

Evil Hat’s PDFs are 25% Off At DriveThru

The GM’s Day sale starts today and runs for 4 days past it.  Stuff which is on sale is 25% off, and that includes all of Evil Hat’s stuff. Well worth checking out the sale — tons of publishers have weighed in.  The site’s running a little bit slow, though; I’m wondering if they’re getting hit with huge traffic.  Just remember, this “GM’s Day” event is 5 days long, so you’ve got some breathing room.

Origins Game Submissions from Evil Hat Volunteer GMs

We got a ton of volunteer sessions onto the books for Origins 2010.  Most of them are Dresden Files RPG events.  You should head on over to the Dresden Files RPG website and give it a look.

Oh Yeah, That Alliance Thing

Evil Hat got in bed with a distributor last week and that included getting specific about the Dresden Files RPG’s pricing and cover art (don’t forget you can already find out what makes up the mammoth page count already).  Normally this is something I’d be posting about at length, but, well, see the above. I definitely have great plans and intentions to get into the details of it (as I always do), I’m just pressed for time this week/month.  It’s coming, though!

Originally published at Deadly Fredly. You can comment here or there.

So, it’s Friday, and I don’t have a food post for you. Once I do, it’ll be about The Banana Bread I Grew Up On. Promise.

Today, I’ve taken some painkillers, so I have very little to say that doesn’t dissolve into a suffusion of yellow.

I’ve got some interesting things to say about how a distributor totally backed me up earlier this week — without me being a client (at least not yet).  That, maybe Monday.

But it’s Friday, so I’ll just leave you with this:

Steve Kenson.

Fate-inspired supers.

On preorder.

Holy crap!

ICONS.

Kenson talking about ICONS.

The preorder.

The forum thread.

Originally published at Deadly Fredly. You can comment here or there.

Yesterday was Fat Tuesday, so naturally we dove into a pancake dinner. Good times.  We aren’t much for plain pancakes around here — I’m all about the chocolate chip, my wife’s into the banana and/or chocolate chip variety.

Naturally we are right-thinking people and build this around Alton Brown’s Buttermilk Pancake recipe, found over yonder at the Food TV site.  I grew up on the Bisquick variety, so the conversion to this one is extra-welcome, and definitely worth the very minor extra steps (composing your own mix, acquiring buttermilk, separating the eggs).

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Originally published at Deadly Fredly. You can comment here or there.

I’m going to try to talk food three times this week.  It’s going to be light on words, unless there’s a recipe for me to offer in-post, but hey, you’ve got some eating to do.

First up is my new favorite dinner. It is not healthy, but it is good: Chicken Lazone.

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Originally published at Deadly Fredly. You can comment here or there.

What it all comes down to is what Russell Crowe as John Nash was on about in A Beautiful Mind.  Watch this clip — it’ll only take a few minutes — then come back:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0ywiYboCLk

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Originally published at Deadly Fredly. You can comment here or there.

This is nominally the next part in my rambling about the elements of community building.  This time I’d like to talk about the value of the personal connection.

The good news here is that I’m not suggesting that you, the community “organizer”, are obligated to make a personal and direct connection with each and every member of your community.  In fact, if your community is active and thriving, you can’t.  (Not strictly true — in some circumstances, you could, but it would be a full-time activity and that’s all you’d be doing. So for our discussion’s purposes, we’ll call that close enough to “can’t” for the assertion to stand.)

The trick, inasmuch as there’s a trick, is to engage in behaviors that makes it seem like you’re making that personal connection anyway.

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Originally published at Deadly Fredly. You can comment here or there.

I’ve seen a few people ask me how I build communities. Most of what I do relative to communities that I’ve been in a nominal leadership role with just seems to proceed from natural instinct.  I’ve tried to deconstruct this in the more distant past, but it’s a topic worth revisiting, even if I’m not completely convinced that I’m actually doing that much in the way of direct building.  A big part of this has been good timing combined with grabbing onto something big and powerful and hanging on (ala Jim Butcher’s career in its earlier stages, or the preexisting Fudge community when we started running our yaps about Fate).

But that doesn’t mean I can’t dig into it at least a little.  Today, I’m going to talk about managing your critical mass and using it to power your community.

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Originally published at Deadly Fredly. You can comment here or there.

No more posts this week — Dresden Files RPG grows large in my schedule, along with some other things — but you may content yourself with running over to Blue Collar Space to watch me harrass Brad about our friendly philosophical divide.

http://www.vsca.ca/halfjack/?p=388

Originally published at Deadly Fredly. You can comment here or there.

… so maybe I will, too.

Yes, Amazon screwed up the public relations — you really should read John Scalzi’s excellent analysis of why, but as usual, skip the freakin’ comments.

I don’t really think that’s arguable. Everything outside of that is where things turn into a sort of wiggly, wobbly munge.

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