Casting Shadows

Eighth Annual RPGaDay – August 2021

As June steams to an end and July sits simmering off to the side, Autocratik (David F. Chapman) and I find ourselves pleased to punctually produce for the purpose of preparation, the Periodic Table of RPGaDay for 2021. With the event being set for August every year (including this year) some might wonder why this post is coming out in June. The answer is elementary, my dear Reader: we want to give people who require more time to produce their responses the time they need to do so comfortably.

What is it and what do we do?

Returning for its eighth year, #RPGaDay is an effort to spend the month of August sharing positive thoughts about roleplaying games and our experiences with them. It’s a chance to roll down memory lane. It’s an opportunity to share cool games and gaming communities. It’s a way to share the fun that occurs in the games you play with the people that you play them with. Better yet, thanks to the hashtag #RPGADay2021, it allows allows you to easily find and enjoy the positive posts put in place by other posters around the planet.

As usual, to participate, share one response per day in whatever form or forms of social media you prefer. The infographic below is keyed to each day of August and each day contains 1 or 4 words to inspire you. You can share blog posts, images, poems, videos, short comments, murals, dance, or whatever else allows you to communicate your messages of love about roleplaying games. They can be as short as one Tweet or image, or as long as a feature film. The choice is yours. When you post your response, tag it with #RPGaDay2021.

What has changed for this August?

Because this is the eighth year we want to celebrate that and get back to basics. As a result, Dave has found the perfect marriage of the two ideas: a periodic table of RPGaDay. Our calendar month infographic for August 2021 is adorned with d8s and as you go through the month, you are invited to use some dice to take some of the pressure off or just to add a bit of fun. Because we know it can be hard to find a response to every prompt for every day of a month with 31 days, we have filled the weekdays with 4 options each. You can freely choose from the lists of words, or roll a die to select one at random. We suggest rolling a d8 with wild abandon: 1-2 being the first word, 3-4 being the second, 5-6 being the third, and 7-8 being the last. Of course, there are always d4s if you are person of more reserve, and d12s if you are feeling both fantastic and rambunctious.

The top prompt for each weekday starts with the letter for the day of the week, and that might be a fun challenge to pursue as you make your way through August, but the other prompt options are there to widen the diversity of topic and responses rather than march to a strict and alliterative regimen. The weekends have a single prompt and give us some things to talk about in common and all together. We are all gamers, and from that common ground comes the vitality of variation.

Collaboration, Connection, and Communication

If you are interested in finding and interacting with others who regularly participate in #RPGaDay each year, we do have a facebook page. Feel free to interact with us and each other there or on our respective blogs:
RPGaDay on Facebook
David Chapman on Autocratik
Runeslinger on Casting Shadows

Translations

If you are interested in contributing translations of the prompts and the infographic, please let me know. David and I will share your work on both this blog and Autocratik.