Favorite Past Features

I've spent some time of late looking at a variety of my previous posts. I do a lot of self-critiquing and re-reading; I find myself constantly changing old posts that nobody will probably ever read again, but they've got an apostrophe in the wrong spot, or poor word usage in another spot, and I can't let that just hang there.

I also re-read for content, and I've found a few spots that I really enjoyed re-reading, and I enjoyed writing in the first place. As I'm trying to find more topics to write about, and formats within which to write, these old posts are a good first stop. Here are a couple I really enjoyed from the past, and maybe I'll resurrect them in some form.

Is He A Keeper?

Back in the early days of the fantasy baseball keeper league, we had a lot of questions about which players were legitimate keepers, which guys were borderline, and which guys were too unreliable, too unproven, or just too unexceptional. It was a fun little mental experiment for myself to judge a player's potential upside, downside, and general value in relation to other players. It was also a way that I sort of gave my (often unsolicited) advice to my fellow owners about their players, and hashed out some of my own players as well.

The odds of this one coming back are pretty slim, as I think most of my league has caught up to (or surpassed) me as far as baseball knowledge. As a result, I'd be out of order trying to declare what other teams should do. It was a fun exercise, though, and it's a good reminder that little discussion points were a good way to churn out several medium-sized posts.

Twi-Night Doubleheader

For most of one season, I did a little weekly recap on the fantasy comings and goings of the week. Best player of the week, biggest disappointment, etc. I was so tuned in to fantasy baseball at the time, and I had a ton of downtime sitting at a computer at my job, so it was natural for me to kill time by writing about what I was paying attention to.

The Game of Thrones posts I've been doing this season are a reasonable comparison to Twi-Night Doubleheader (though much less readable for cousin Michael), in that they're weekly recaps with quick-hitter topics. I don't foresee getting back into the weekly fantasy baseball recap post game, unless it were with a partner to bounce things off of, work together, and generate fast content. If anybody's got an itch, drop me a message and we'll see what might work.

Magic Decks for Review

It's hard to say this was really a feature on the blog, since I only really got one post up for it. But the idea was that I have all these decks I've thrown together over the years that could use some tightening, some review, and some revision. And, like most intellectual exercises, crowd-sourcing can create inputs from a lot of different angles, which is important considering the sheer volume of Magic cards that exist.

That single post and its follow-up (both regarding my Landfall deck) were actually pretty useful as far as trying to put together possible ideas for how to refine the deck. So in looking back, that's something I could definitely see myself getting back to posting. I still have the decks, and I think I put most or all of them on TappedOut, so they should still be visible to make comments and offer advice. Definitely something I could see revisiting.

Mega Man Magic Set

The Mega Man Magic Set wasn't exactly a "feature," as it had a specific endpoint. Once the set was fully released, that was that, the series was concluded. That said, it generated dozens of posts, numerous comments, and a good deal of discussion, not to mention the enjoyment I had in creating the cards and writing the posts. Overall, I would rate it as one of my most successful blogging adventures.

Additionally, while I can't generate many(/any?) more posts using that particular content, there are plenty of similar types of posts I can make. Most of them will be pretty hard geeky, but that's how it goes sometimes. I like sports and I like games, and sometimes the games take the lead. Lord knows I don't feel like talking about football anytime soon.

So here are some similar ideas that I've come up with, and I'm thinking I'll try my hand at in the near future:

• Create a D&D monster from other material
• Create a Magic card from other material
• Create another Magic set, this time using a different gaming "world"
• Create, create, create...

In thinking about these ideas, I think that the most fun exercises for me are when I'm trying to be creative using other people's bases. Kind of like a fan-fiction writer, except somehow even nerdier.

Anyways, that's it for this post. Just wanted to reminisce a little about some of our brighter moments, and give you guys a little insight into what goes into developing a post or feature. Until next time!