RPGaDay: Banner

This will be my 163rd blog post under the Savage Spiel banner.

When I started this blog, just under a year ago, it was because I was posting a bunch of RPG related stuff on Facebook and thought a blog would be a better venue for it.  Much as I loathe the phrase 'personal brand' (I work for the kind of company that runs training courses for staff members on how to develop your personal brand) it felt like the thing to do.

Picking a name was tough.  I knew I'd also be creating a Twitter account to go with it, so I wanted a name I could also use there.  Pretty much every variant on the theme of 'savage gamer' was already taken.  I reached out to Facebook for help and got a bunch of suggestions, none of which I used, although one I particularly liked was 'savage words'.  If it wasn't for the fact that I don't even particularly like Savage Worlds, let alone talk about it, I would have gone with that.  And that was what gave me the idea of Savage Spiel.

I like that it's alliterative, and I like that it has a dual meaning.  In English, a spiel is a long outpouring of words, which seemed entirely appropriate for a blog.  And in German, it means game or play (hence the SPIEL board gaming event in Essen, Germany.)

It has had a strange side effect, however, in that since lockdown, I've been mistaken for a German roughly once a month.  (It seems to have stopped now, but August's not over yet.)  As it happens I do speak German.  Not fluently, but enough to get by if I go on holiday there again.  And I do talk about LARP, which is way bigger in Germany than it is in the UK, so I guess it's plausible if you've never heard my voice...

Anyway.  I've hung up my virtual banner.  What do I want people to associate with it?

1. Interesting things to say.
2. Entertaining game write-ups.
3. Quality convention games.
4. Fun RPG supplements/adventures.

I think I'm doing reasonably well on the first three.  The last one...well, I need to get on and finish some stuff.

The one other thing I'm considering is a new graphic.  My current icon is a chibified version of one of my LARP characters, so does technically depict me, just not in any outfit someone outside of that game would recognise.  I'm thinking of commissioning a new one with me actually looking like me.

And that concludes my thoroughly self-indulgent and barely RPG related thoughts on the word 'banner'.