When I reviewed Open Game Table: The Anthology of Roleplaying Game Blogs, Volume 1 back in October 2009, I felt it was a monumental and worthwhile compilation of game material from around the blogosphere. Jonathan Jacobs somehow managed to do everything from shepherding the articles to having the book printed and available. The result was a book that managed to provide players and gamemasters, both new and old, more inspiration than you could shake a stick at.
With Open Game Table: The Anthology of Roleplaying Game Blogs, Volume 2 (OGTv2), Jacobs manages to get much more help with nearly every part of the process — from nominating material to editing, art, and so on. He even manages to get sponsors to help foot the bill to pay for part of the publishing effort so it hasn't all been out of his wallet.
To avoid any misconceptions, I have helped with a couple of parts of the process of OGTv2. I have worked as a peer reviewer and contributed some funds to help get the book printed. But even with my help and the help of many other folks, I suspect Jonathan put in the lion's share of the work on this book.
That said, this book is simply astounding. From the description of the daily gaming convention on the web in the foreword from RPG industry veteran Justin Achili to Trent Colwell's hilarious article, "The Tale of Jacques: A Study in Ignominious RPG Death," in which poor Jack's character drowns in spectacular fashion teaching everyone to make sure the rope is tied off before you jump into a torrential river of death, I think there's something for everyone stuffed into this 158 page volume.
Just to provide some context, I'll provide a bit of information about a few articles...
Jeremy Jones' article "The More Fantastical It Can Be: Map Talk with Jonathan Roberts" provides a bit of background on how Roberts' cartography skills developed to make him one of the more sought-after map artists in the industry. He started out developing maps for virtual tabletop (VTT) programs like Maptool and eventually shifted to using Gimp, a free image editor that provides a ton of functionality for free (unlike Photoshop). By using a graphics tablet, he captures the freeform approach of hand-drawn maps and expands on them digitally. The work I've seen of his in Kobold Quarterly is just stunning, managing to not only provide a functional resource but one with a character of its own. Great interviews like this provide insights budding cartographers can use to enhance their own game maps.
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