It was a dark and rainy day in late September...

September has historically been a bit of a down month for The Hopeless Gamer. In June you get Free RPG Day and July and August are all about Gencon, so the time I get to September, I'm a little burned out on writing about all the many, many cool things that summer brings for tabletop gaming. This means that September brings less posts and the themes of the month are all over the place. This September's been unique in that I've been following along and reviewing a lot of DC Comics' New 52 #1 issues this month and posting a big article every Wednesday. Still, gaming posts have been few and far between, but it's a period for me to recharge my batteries. Why do I need to recharge my batteries?

Shocktober 2011 is almost upon us! I feel like the one thing, more than any other, that I do right on THG is to celebrate horror and horror gaming for the whole month of October leading up to the big H at the end of the month. Horror gaming will always be my number 1 favorite theme. So to celebrate that, I try to do something special and put out more than normal material to honor the genre. My first Shocktober I challenged myself to post a one- or two-sentence horror story/horror game hook. It was a TON of fun and still one of the most satisfying experiences I've had with the blog. Last year's Shocktober fest saw a much bigger variety of posts, but they were still centered around themes for each week such as a Cthulhu week, gaming week, etc. It was a lot of fun, and a lot of work, but again, I felt like it was the best thing I did all year.

With Shocktober 2011, I again want to try something new. Every day of the week (excluding weekends) in October will be assigned a certain type of post. In other words, I'm taking a column style of approach to this Shocktober. It'll mean a greater variety each week while more predictability from week to week.

Mondays are going to be Horror Gaming Fodder days where I post material focused solely on tabletop gaming similar to the general Gaming Fodder tag found here on THG, but with a decidedly-horror bent to it. Tuesdays are for Horror Story Seeds where I go back to the concept of the original Shocktober with just little bite-sized bits of horror to get your game going or just to enjoy on a cold October afternoon. I want to take advantage of the large archive of horror-related material on the blog, so Wednesdays are going to be dedicated to horror Greatest Hits. I've been wanting to dip my toe back into writing some flash fiction stories, so Thursdays are for A Flash of Horror where I'll be trying to hunt down some interesting prompts for the month to write on. Finally, the best part of Halloween and the whole month of October is horror movies. Each Friday I'll post a review of a horror movie that I think would make an especially good Horrors to Play.

So that's the plan! I hope everyone else is looking forward to October and a month-long celebration of the creepy as I am!