Favorite Site of the Month – January / 2012

The Quirky DM has been a guilty pleasure of mine for awhile now (the site, not Quirky).  I simply dig the site’s tone and content.  So, of course it’s only fitting that they’re our favorite site of the month!

Here’s Quirky:

When Tourq told me that he wanted to choose Quirky DM as the site of the month, it was a dream come true. My original scheme was to wait for SOPA to come online and then wait until my blog was the only website available on the internet. Actually being chosen for legitimate reasons was a “Plan B” approach that I never expected to come to fruition. But here I am, which goes to show that Tourq is not only a great blogger who has given me an enormous amount of inspiration, but he’s also totally not above bribes of any kind.

The Quirky DM started up in the summer because my brain was in desperate need of a creative outlet. Our normal gaming group was playing board games for a temporary break. At work, I got stuck on a never ending project in a support role. I had nothing to keep my brain engaged. After watching The Shining and thinking, “Man, that Johnny has got his $&!# together. I need to get myself a typewriter,” I realized it was time to find another way to keep busy.

I had been reading D&D blogs for quite a while and I had my mind blown countless times as ideas came pouring in. Aspects and playing with fate. Three stage bosses. 5×5 adventure plot. The 3 clue mystery. And after a while, I even started coming up with my own ideas. So I wrote them down.

I wrote and I wrote and my gaming group begged me to let them in on what I was doing. (they never asked for anything) After emailing them my ideas, they were extremely supportive. (they never read a word) This was the kind of genius they assured me could not be contained. (I’m now on all of their email spam filters)

And so Quirky DM came to life. All those other bloggers seemed to have such a fun time writing their blogs, I wanted to see what it was like. Whether I had an audience or not was irrelevant. I just needed to flesh out my own ideas and solidify it in my own mind. It would be a great bonus if there was anyone who wanted to read it and give me any feedback. According to many of the emails I received so far, I have a supportive fanbase of Russian women who would love to be my wife and companies that want to sell me, er, enlargement devices.

So what am I writing about? It’s more or less your kitchen sink of D&D blogging. Some of it’s about speeding up combat, because no one has ever talked about that before. Other times, I’m talking about how to run the game better to increase tension, tell better stories or just avoid the situations that really bug me. Some of it is how to house rule the crap out of your game to make it play the way you want, an art that has largely been lost since D&D went to public play. None of it is new ground, but I try to deal with it in new ways. Quirky ways. Ways that at least I’ve never seen done before.

This is an extreme honor for me. I am not only a huge fan of Stuffer Shack, but the other Sites of the Month have been top notch choices; I’m thrilled to be included in their numbers and I have further inspiration in the coming year to push the Quirky DM even farther. Thank you to Tourq for choosing Quirky DM for the Site of the Month for January, and a happy 2012 to everyone out
there.

Thanks bud – keep up the good work!