I finally got around to consolidating all of my Knights of the Dinner Table web notes into one big mega file, which now holds about 38 links. Thanks to this endeavor, I’d say I’ve got about two and a half WebScryer columns researched now, so all I need to do is bang out the actual text. With most of these columns, writing them is actually a lot easier than researching them because finding the sites can be so infuriatingly difficult.
That difficulty is mostly a function of the way Google operates — it’s focused on what’s popular, as a function of what gets linked to most. Failing that, it’s a function of what pages mention the term most. So when it comes to games, the sorts of sites I’m looking for tend to get lost in the static (e.g. I want to do a column on fan sites for Iron Heroes; I end up with 400 links pointing sites selling copies of the game; I want to do a column on RPG music, I got a thousand pages pointing to fan sites for Final Fantasy).
My solution to this has been to keep a running junk file into which I dump all the sites that I think are interesting, but which don’t easily fit into a given column topic (at least, not yet). Over time, I eventually accrue enough of them to either write a column on a given them, or enough interesting-but-unique sites to run a hodgepodge column.
As for those upcoming columns, they’ll be on resources for RPG/wargaming miniatures, rpg humor web sites, and rpg zines/webzines. I’m still looking for sites on those topics (particularly RPG humor, which is particularly difficult to search for) so if you know of any deserving sites, send me an e-mail at nuketown@gmail.com.