GLoGtober '21: Back with a Vengeance

  I’ve learned a lot since last year, and with the help of a crowd of people smarter than I am on Phlox’s GLoG server, I’ve remade GLoGtober from the ground up to make it more accessible, produce better content, and just be more intrinsically fun.

• For starters, if you haven’t noticed, I’m releasing the list early so you have a month or so to draft these posts before you publish them- definitely learned from last year on that score.

• Instead of having 31 prompts, which is rather staggering, I have 7 day’s worth of d6 tables to roll on. Most people stalled out at around 3-4 posts last year, which was definitely understandable, so a week was a good midground that people could write easily and feel accomplished about. It also gives room for people to do extra entries on the tables as they feel inspired to.

• I’m adding in a really cheesy badge system. Ignore it if you want, but I’d certainly get dopamine out of it. Helps incentivize not only GLoGtober, but more community-building, which is always lovely to see.

DAY 1: COLLABORATION

Be sure to give all appropriate accreditation!

    1 Someone else’s setting

    2 Someone else’s class

    3 Someone else’s GLoGhack/a published game you don’t normally write about

    4 Someone else’s adventure

    5 Someone else’s generator/roll table

    6 Work with a buddy to create two linked posts

DAY 2: MONSTERS

    1 Goblin

    2 Dragon

    3 Slimes

    4 Orcs

    5 Drow

    6 Something strange and utterly unique

DAY 3: MAGIC

1 Crystal

2 Rune

3 Orb

4 Book

5 Portal

6 Wizards (damn them)

DAY 4: ADVENTURE

    1 Dungeon

    2 Mobile dungeon

    3 Hexcrawl

    4 Heist

    5 Long-term/domain level adventure

    6 Something else that isn’t any of these

DAY 5: CLASS

These are just classes I haven’t traditionally liked the execution of in the past. If you don’t like these prompts, I don’t blame you, feel free to go off the rails.

    1 Thief

2 Cleric

3 Bard

4 Monk

5 Tinker

6 Convert something cool from a wild source

DAY 6: SETTING

    1 Government

2 Crime (organized or otherwise)

3 Religion (approved or heretical)

4 War (past or present)

5 History (deep or recent)

6 Geography/Landmark(s)

DAY 7: ODDITIES

Go nuts with this one.

    1 Index card

    2 Zeppelin

    3 Bone

    4 What causes that strange black lightning?

    5 Poem/artwork/verse

    6 5e (curs’d be its unholy name)

BADGES

    If this doesn’t work, blame SquigBoss. When you complete a challenge and get the relevant badge, you are free to post the list of all the badges you have on the sidebar of your blog. For some of the more ambitious badges, I may draw up some little scout style emblems for you to put onto your sidebar instead. The badge-earning stars Oct 1st and the statute of limitations for earning ‘em is until GLoGtober ‘22 drops, so don’t feel like the 31st is your last chance to hop on the bandwagon.

    The E stands for Exemplar; when you go above and beyond, you can put the adjective “Exemplary” in front of your badge to show people just how cool and special you are. For example, if I made seven GLoGtober posts (which I plan to), I’d be an Exemplary Toe-Dipper. If there’s parenthesis next to the E, it’s an alternate badge name upon reaching Exemplar status.

• Toe-Dipper: Make a GLoGtober 2021 post. E: Make seven.

• Calendar Fiend: Create one post for every day. E (Numerical Fiend): Do the same number for each day/Do all the numbers for a single day.

• Starving Artist: Accompany one post with an illustration of your own design. Quality irrelevant. E: Accompany half your posts (rounded up) with such art.

• Mechanical Mad Scientist: Try a piece of design you’ve never tried before, like flip templates, delta templates, or monster AI. E (FrankenGretch): Create a novel mechanic or work of design and make 2+ works with it.

• RNGesus: Roll randomly for your set of prompts and stick with it. E: Roll a d8 and complete the relevant badge, discluding this entry and Toe-Dipper.

• Phase Spider: Comment on or reach out to somebody about one of the GLoGtober posts you've really enjoyed and want to know more about. E (Arachnid Scrapper): Use that content in a game, perhaps expanding it in a blog post of your own.

• Contrarian: Start some other community project or bandwagon. E: Have people actually participate in it and make it successful.

• Master of Ceremonies: Run a game using GLoGtober/community sourced content. E: Run someone else’s game.

• Gretchling Artificer: Create a complete new GLoGhack. E: The GLoGhack includes art, an equipment/loot table, a bestiary, a GM section, and an adventure.

• Zine Fiend: Release a zine or some similar self-contained, polished product. E: Make a publicly-available print run of one of your works.

• Completionist Nerd: Write a good, solid post for every prompt for every day. E (Showoff): Earn every badge (if you earn all the rest you get this one too, no paradox here).

Count the number of badges you have. If you are an Exemplar in a given badge, it counts as 2. Use the total to find your title below:

1-3: Snivelling Neophyte Looking to the Stars

4-7: They-Who-Sleep-Among-The-Maggots

8-11: Otyugh Dentist

12-15: Wizened Wizard off their Rocker

16+: GrEtChLiNg gRaNdMaStEr

Yet to come, as I’m still editing the lot of ‘em, but there will be little badge pngs available here soon. They should be ready by GLoGtober proper!

Can’t wait to see what this year’s GLoGtober bounty will be! Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.