Which of My Ongoing Series Would You Like To See Continue?

Over the 10 years or so that I've been running Improved Initiative I've started a lot of different series. While many of them have waxed and waned in popularity, I thought I'd take this Monday to ask my regular readers which one of these series you'd like to see get more attention going forward. And if you're a relatively recent addition to my audience on here, you might find a series you haven't even come across yet!

So if you have a strong opinion about what you want to see more of, leave it in the comments below! Or if you want me to start a new series discussing something I didn't mention here, or haven't covered yet, let me know. If enough people request the same thing then it's definitely something that will get my attention going forward.

The floor is yours!

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#1: Character Conversions List

Perhaps the biggest and longest-running list of all the ones on this blog, this series currently has 63 entries on it! They range as far afield as Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones, to Harley Quinn from DC Comics, to The Incredible Hulk, Guts from Berserk, all the way to the Death Korps of Krieg in the Warhammer 40K universe.

It's a pretty big project, admittedly.

This series was a major breadwinner for a time, but it's grown steadily less and less popular in terms of views. Which makes sense, given that it was conceived primarily for Pathfinder's first edition, and while I love that game it's definitely seen its player base diminished over the past few years. If you add in the lack of searchability that articles hosted on Vocal have, along with conversion fatigue (since it seems the thirst for this kind of content has largely passed), I've been only adding to it sporadically.

With that said, if folks want to see this project renewed, check out the Character Conversions master list, and share your favorite guides on social media! The more reads they get, the more likely it is that I'll boost this series up over 100 entries.

#2: 5 Tips

Speaking of long-running projects that have gotten pretty involved over the years, my 5 Tips series has quite a number of entries as well! Perhaps the runner-up in terms of numbers (depending on how you count the entries) there are over 40 articles in this series touching on everything from base classes, to player species, to broader pieces of advice like 5 Tips For Creating Fantasy Towns and Cities, 5 Tips For Roleplaying Characters With Mental Disorders, and even 5 Unusual Martial Arts For Your Monks.

There's still plenty of topics to cover with this one!

This series has met with a lot of successes, and a lot of duds, over the years. A recurring theme folks will notice, of course, is that stuff hosted on Vocal hasn't gotten the views I need it to in order to feel like it's worth continuing. That said there are still several books worth of classes I could cover, as well as everything outside the standard species players usually have access to. I could even expand the tips list to cover Starfinder classes and species, or switch this over to cover more World/Chronicles of Darkness concepts, which I already started with entries like 5 Tips For Running Better World of Darkness Games, as well as 5 Tips For Running Changeling: The Lost Games.

#3: Awful Characters You Meet in Your Gaming Career

This series got started off with a one-off joke in the form of The 5 Awful Paladins You Will Meet in Your Gaming Career. The sheer amount of stories people swapped over these 5 archetypes of painful player character took days to die down, and it still sees occasional spikes. It felt like I'd tapped into something people wanted more of, so I followed it up with other entries. While there was still interest, it seemed to have seriously diminishing returns over time. So far the list includes:

- 5 Eye-Rolling Rogues

- 5 Bothersome Bards

- 5 Infuriating Fighters

- 5 Cringey Clerics

While not as numerous as the first two entries on this list, this is the one that felt like it had the most potential in terms of audience interest. What I don't know is whether folks just stopped reading it because the novelty wore off (entirely possible), or the algorithm stopped it from finding its way to folks' faces. Regardless, though, if this is a series you'd like to see more of, share the entries, and maybe comment some of the classes (or even species) you'd like to see more of!

#4: Gaming Etymology

Etymology has a soft spot in my heart, and it's something that always fascinates me. This goes double when it comes to the creatures, classes, etc. that wind up in our games. From articles like What It Really Means To Be a Swashbuckler? to What is a Barbarian?, I had a lot of fun putting these together. When it comes to the projects I work on, though, fun takes a distant second to what will actually get the reads I need to keep the lights on around here.

There are a lot of other subjects to cover, still!

You know the drill by now, of course. If you liked this project, check out the Gaming Etymology master list, and help boost the signal so I can justify putting some more of these together in the near future!

#5: Alignment Deep Dives

While I eliminated the alignment system from my own setting, Sundara: Dawn of a New Age (more on that in the video below), I've always found the absolutism of alignment a fascinating, philosophical discussion. And while it's often very gray and very squishy, sometimes there are enough examples in a character's canon that you can genuinely sus out which of the 9 boxes they fit into... roughly speaking.

The project's original goal was to find at least one character of every alignment box to operate as an example of who best fit into that little square. However, I only got around to really covering The Punisher, Robocop, and Captain America before the project went into the fridge for a while. If you'd like me to pick it back up again, consider suggesting some characters along with sharing any of the existing articles!

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Moon Pope Monday. To stay on top of all my content and releases, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page!

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