Over morning coffee I readded my selection of links to the right hand side of the blog. I cleaned up the dead links, which saw a sad bye-bye to the inspirational Fighting Fantastist and fuckyeahbritishrpgs blogs. Also, the retro-clone section got moved into “publishers” because that’s what the ones who are still going have mutated into over ten years.. The selection is also a bit more personal, so sites everyone knows about like company sites for Cubicle 7 got dropped. But the main reason I even touched and brought back the Links section (which needs constant checking and updating) is to add two very fine blogs to the blog.

Old Scouser Roleplaying. Old Scouse is an enthusiastic member of the Grogsquad, a lose but very friendly association of returnees to the hobby after a break during the 90s/00s, He’s an especially big fan of Old School Essentials, and his blog has actual plays arising from his campaigns and one-shot convention games of this and other games. The blog also features reviews of UK conventions, such as UK Games Expo, Owlbear and Wizard Staf, Grogmeet (read on for more about that) and of course his own “I’ve dropped me daughter off at Manchester Comic Con, so I may as well make a con of it” Burrito Con.

The Grognard Files. Run by fellow Mancunians Chris “Dirk the Dice” Hart and Steven “Blythy” Blythe this multimedia experience is not only a regular blog, its a convention – the annual Face to Face Grogmeet and its biannual virtual Grogmeets, a thriving discord channel, with book club, and occasional fanzine. It tends to cover a lot of OSR stuff, because the theme is very much gamers from the 80s returning to the hobby after a break, but they’ve branched out and covers stuff that grabs their attention. They recently did a couple of podcasts about Savage Worlds for example.