Admin Chatter — Legacy Forums

Re: Admin Chatter

#1161

What val said.

Re-reading and digesting once more...

There is one part of this that seems strange to me, but let me first coalesce my thoughts.

Re: Admin Chatter

#1162

Well that's an interesting post to come into admin-dom on the heels of. I'll re-read it, and do a detailed breakdown of concerns. My off-the-cuff initial impression is, "Licensing for older subs is a grey area. A nasty grey area, filled with lawyers."

Re: Admin Chatter

#1163

I agree. For a strolens not for profit e-pub, the existing terms of service are fine. For a for-pay would require an amendment to the terms of service, or a specific agreement by the author.
I am not a lawyer however. :)

Apart from this particular detail, I'm good with it.

Re: Admin Chatter

#1164

Hard time sleeping. Follow-up from Johnn.

Cool beans!

Yes, feel free to share that email with the admins.

I used to work on the BioWare community forums team and believe community comes first. It is my philosophy with RPT, though I use email pretty much exclusively as the channel.

So, for example, I would not want to put ads everywhere just to promote products. We do need a way to push messages out to folks about product releases and sales, but you can let me know the options. Ads cannot ruin the community like I have seen them do elsewhere.

And I would like to see some kind of optin permission for using content in the books. It could be part of the site's legal. It could be a checkbox at the profile level. But best would be a checkbox on each entry ("Yes, you can use this in your books.").

That would let people get feedback and tweak entries (especially newbies or the slow and steady types) and give them a comfort zone. They could turn on a post anytime they're ready.

Also, some will never want their hobby and work profited from, and I have no problem being alongside those folks and co-existing happily.

Maybe all 3 - users can just give blanket permissions via profile setting so all posts are automatically in, by default, to save them clicking each time. And there's a sitewide policy that uses clean and plain language to explain how and where content gets used.

I just worry about folks thinking we're being sneaky or getting greedy, ruining the goodwill culture you and the admins have created. So whatever I can do to keep that going is important to me.

A small idea - maybe we host an Ask Me Anything thread as a way to introduce me to the community and give people a chance to ask the tough questions and get them out of the way honestly up front?

Re: Admin Chatter

#1165

Hmm, his follow-up actually addresses some of my concerns from his first email. I'm tentatively on board.

Re: Admin Chatter

#1166

I think this is great, but i can't help saying this; the way he phrases these things kinda rubs one the wrong way. Or to put it another way....

(21:12:01) Murometz: im mixed on this brave new upcoming world
(21:12:16) Chaosmark: Yeah. I'm still writing up my post.
(21:12:45) Chaosmark: Here's a snippet:

An off the cuff comment that came to mind when he said, "we'll give them a discount": "Dude, don't be greedy. If you select someone's content to be included in your commercial eBook, give them a free copy of the d**ned thing."
(21:13:11) Murometz: exactly!!!
(21:13:40) Chaosmark: I then proceed to do a quickie-analysis of why that's not a big deal.
(21:13:58) Chaosmark: *why that's not a huge cost-imposition
(21:13:59) Murometz: here's my snippet "A lot of the content will come from community members (sheep to do my will), and I feel they'll be happy to participate because quests are fun (they'll be happy?? Does he think everyone is an idiot except him?), they get their names in the credits and we'll give them a discount (thanks Santa!)
(21:14:27) Chaosmark: That's sorta kinda what it feels like, yeah.
(21:14:30) Murometz: so i get a *discount* by writing somthing that makes him money
(21:15:00) Chaosmark: And though I'm trying my d**ndest not to let it affect my thoughts on the matter, I know that Silveressa had issues of this same sort in her dealings with him.
(21:15:09) Murometz: interesting

Re: Admin Chatter

#1167

My thoughts, in roughly-chronological order:

Forum Hosting
This wouldn't be much more than what you already provide for Strolenites who want hosting. From a cost-analysis standpoint, you need to compare with your competition, effectively GoDaddy. Hosting prices there are normally in the $15/month range. At my day job, we tend to charge a baseline $30/month for Linux hosting, but we're normally bundling that with a CMS as well, so it's less painful for them.

So you're probably not going to want to charge him much more than $15-20 a month, because otherwise he'll feel mildly ripped off. Unfortunately, that's a bit subjective, and since you aren't a tech-guru that pricing might not cover any technical support you need to provide. When it's just the Citadel, and we're offering freebie content-hosting for users, that's one thing. Downtime is simply a fact of life, and we don't complain because we're getting it for free. A commercial entity that needs reliable uptime for paying users is something else entirely.

If there isn't any integration with the main Citadel from a code standpoint, we should really consider just having him get a hosting account with a regular hosting provider. It'd be cleaner, easier, and overall safer. You should definitely check with him and see what he's looking for in terms of hosting before agreeing. Also, does your hosting provider have terms dictating "no reselling" and whatnot? Kinda important.

(Hell, depending on what needs integration, it still might be wiser to just build a simple API that we can hook into from his external hosting.)

Partnership
Community Combination
1) Does the current site membership want this? It's still in the formative stages, yes, but we definitely need to hash out the explicit specifics of how things will change, and what will remain the same. And then we need to put it to a vote. Probably at least a month-long vote, considering the huge implications. Some of the other things he mentioned would take time to set up anyway, and would be independent of the Citadel's decision, so there's no reason we couldn't have that vote up for 2 months even.

2) How will the influx of RPTips users affect the site and our community? He mentioned having 10,000 subscribers. If even 1% of those actually came on-board and start adding content, it will exceed the currently active membership we have by a healthy margin. How will this affect our current submission standards?

I'm not trying to be elitist, but I know that their content-values will be significantly different from ours ("Voting 1/5: This isn't usable, it doesn't have stats", "This submission is too long, and has too much description. I can't use this in my campaign. 2/5", etc.). These aren't inherently bad, but do we want these changes? Regardless of how well the RPTips membership tries to conform to our existing values and standards, there will still be a significant shift in what is considered "useful" and "good content" by the overall membership.

Commercial eBooks
My first thought on this is, as already mentioned previously, the legal grey area. Some of our greatest stuff is in the old archives of the site, but while we definitely have carte-blanch to reprint and display the content, selling it is something else entirely. Copyright doesn't simply disappear because it was submitted to be displayed and commented on. There are a few options we have, but in the end we have to fall on the side of caution: without permission, we can't sell it. Period.

To start, we can pull a list of submissions that have already marked down a commercial-friendly Creative Commons license. That should be a healthy chunk, even if it's nowhere near all of our submissions. Having a page with a listing of "Subs available for use" would be handy for this sort of venture, anyway. I can whip up a quick query and page display for this, if desired.

Then we can hit up individual authors if and when their works come up for consideration. "Hey, we'd really like to include this submission in an upcoming eBook, but you don't have a license set that allows us to do so. Do we have your permission for this?" (This brings up an interesting edge-case: Are Scroll Entries covered under the license of the original submission? We don't have any way to know what their intended status is.)

Addendum: His follow-up email addresses some of these points. I think we're fairly good with the licensing options on the subs already, but adding more options wouldn't hurt. Having an option specifically to allow the eBooks to use this content, but nobody else is allowed to, might soothe some concerns people have.

My next thought is his expectations of content-generation. I'm not in a position to determine just how much content he gets from his users (and how much he'll be getting once he specifies that it might be in a commercial work), but a PDF a week sounds more than mildly ambitious. Especially when you take into account editing, art commissioning, layout, and the simple sifting required to find the usable content. How much of this is expected to be coming from Citadel submissions, versus a separate submission process?

An off the cuff comment that came to mind when he said, "we'll give them a discount": "Dude, don't be greedy. If you select someone's content to be included in your commercial eBook, give them a free copy of the damned thing." Seriously. It'll engender a lot more goodwill than, "Oh, I get a discount on this eBook that I contributed to. Yippee." Even assuming 1-page dungeons, that's only 15 contributors. At the rates he's planning to charge, $2.50 for each contributor is negligible ($40 in content-usage fees is ridiculously low, and if the number of contributors is less, then the fees go down even further).

Quests/Events
This could be good, or it could be fail. We'll need to get slightly more specific in what is desired (esp. with the very vague "events"), and whether all of them will be eBook fodder or not. I really hope not, since he's stated that he doesn't want to ruin our current community.

Store
This is indistinct. He seems to have 2 separate ideas here, one for commissioned creative work, and the other for selling existing works. More detail is needed on what he's really aiming for.

Misc. Thoughts
This seems like it could be a great boost to the site, if handled properly. We do need to define what our goals are for this, however. "We want an influx of new members who will add content to the main site and provide solid feedback for other submissions", etc. etc. It's nice that he wants to potentially merge our communities, but we have to consider this from our standpoint, not get sucked in by his vision for a commercial enterprise that ultimately feeds into his pocketbook.

Some of the issues he mentioned about his existing format probably won't be solved by adding a forum, to be honest. It sounds like he's reached the limits of what he can do by himself. He needs to get some assistants to help, especially if he's going to be managing a business. Simple fact of life.

Lastly, who exactly is going to handle some of the requisite IT work? Depending on how things work out, there will be a number of things that need to be set up, including a forum software install, recurring billing for subscriptions, a webstore (with appropriate theming for consistency), and any interconnections with the Citadel itself.

Re: Admin Chatter

#1168

It sounds like he's reached the limits of what he can do by himself. He needs to get some assistants to help, especially if he's going to be managing a business. Simple fact of life.

That is it in a nutshell, yes.

Re: Admin Chatter

#1169

Well noted observations.

Free copies for authors: First, this was probably not a planned conversation so until we really get into the details I wouldn't take all his wording at face value. He probably has general ideas on how to do things but may have not thought it all through. And, also, keep in mind that his mailing list he gets 100s of responses and idea snippets so when you talk about giving everyone a free copy...it may sometimes break into 50-200 people range easy. When you are talking taking heavy content, I absolutely agree. When you are talking Citadel content, you are talking an entire new level which will have to be discussed. Spot on I think. Definitely an issue that we have to get more specific on.

Forum Hosting. I have a fully managed VPS and I can resell and do whatever I want with it. The hit it is currently taking is minuscule. Due to jumping on deals and bonuses as the host offered them (the fools) I have 300GB disk space, 1.2TB bandwidth, 4GB memory on a Intel Xeon E3-1230 @ 3.20GHz. So we are doing OK to start. As you mentioned though about reliability, I would want so offsite automatic backups (We learned that that hard way.) but I am comfortable with this server overall.

Current site membership We have the distinct luxury of not being that large so it shouldn't take long of pointed conversation to get thoughts together on this. While this is absolutely a big decision, the way we are going can leave the bulk of what we do somewhat unchanged, technically and commercially speaking about content anyway. Once the admins make a decision on moving ahead in the conversation or not, then we will do a Strolenati available conversation with Johnn and talk it out. But, realistically, there aren't that many people we *really* have to discuss this with. Admins and the Strolenati are the shakers and movers and decision makers. I don't think we need a poll, we need a discussion like we are having.

Site dynamics The influx of people will certainly change the site's dynamic. This, I have no real answer or knowledge of how it will turn out. We get small surges of arrivals when he puts our site on his list, if we partner and become "the" community for it, yes, we will grow and most likely very quickly. We can be elitist about this. The quality of what Strolen's has compared to pretty much any other site out there is what makes us so valuable to him. He runs a high quality mailing list with great tips and he is VERY community minded and has always been in it for the gamers. We run a very high quality content site that is VERY community minded that has always been in it for the gamers. We have to either embrace becoming larger and more popular or be happy with what we have now, which *is* absolutely awesome.

Commercial ebooks Commercialism of subs. Yes, obviously each person can retain their rights and release them as they wish. I am not so keen on the Creative Commons in this case because then other entities besides us could grab them. That is Jonn's expertise so it is basically just another set of options we put together. We would, again, describe exactly what the author is doing and what they are agreeing to with each option. That part, honestly, is the easy part.

An ebook a week. Definitely an insane amount to me, but he has himself and another partner involved with that. If it is who I think it is, he is a graphic artist, and built the ebook I commissioned, and is another awesome support of RPG and a really fair guy. If his only job is creating ebooks, with all Johnn's past content this could be pretty doable. The Citadel, in this case, might not be trolled for content every week but be coming from multiple sources. This goes back to our question on what do the author's get.

Quests I think these would have the same rules as above as far as author approving the usage. I am thinking he transitions to us as the major content holder of his new system so he might be using his sponsors to offer a bunch of prizes on top of it too. But, yes, another one that has to be talked out as well to figure out his vision and see if it matches what we want too.

Store Yeah, easy enough to put together when it comes down to it. It is just software.

Citadel future with this change
This is where I started to get nervous. Two options that were maybe not explicitly mentioned. (well, maybe 3 kind-of options but will put them sort of in the extreme)

1) Citadel absorbs RPT and his ideas into our borg collective and we bend him to our will...for the most part. It honestly seems like a pretty good fit. Brings me back to the 5-room dungeon quest we did with him in collaboration and such. We would make a few adaptations and such to make it easier to control all we need to control but, overall, it is the Citadel on steroids.
2) Citadel gets absorbed by RPT. We get sucked into his collective and the Citadel morphs and adapts its current system to more precisely fit the large community and building of salable content.
3) Another site is built in his vision that is loosely connected to the Citadel and his RPT site but an entity of its own.

Right now, I am obviously leaning towards pushing for #1. I think the site has most everything in place that he is wanting to do with plenty of opportunity for us to maintain the status quo. The forum, it has never been *the* place to go on the site so what that turns into for his purposes doesn't worry me too much. That will be organic that bends to need vs. bending to will I think. Forums are always finnicky that way. There will be some initial forum changes and then we see how the community morphs them. Just have to figure a few things out. Guilds for one.

Shopping cart, IT, code etc. I am no expert and am a hobbyist (even with the CS degree) when it comes down to it due to my military career eating a majority of my time. But there are no real extreme technical hurdles at this point.

Again, the elephant: money. We will do what is right for the authors and those that put in time with any IT considerations. Of that, we are all of agreement. I don't know what kind of cash flow there will be or how it will work but I can promise that I will always be fair. I have put a lot of time, sweat and tears into the site, and so have you, so all we can do is see what the deal is and talk it out. Depending on what author content is used, free ebook makes perfect sense...but doesn't a monetary reward, perhaps in credit to the "store" make sense as a tangible return on using the content? I don't know anything about writing for magazines and such, but if we are using quality content in bulk I almost see our author's as freelance. I can't help but think, just for an example, if they did an ebook on space/robot stuff and used a bunch of Scras's submissions. That is high quality content. To take it, sell it and give him a free book seems like we would be taking a huge advantage of him. However, if there is a system in place that has a reward based on content provided then it would encourage excellent quality and provide good faith return to the authors. So the small snippets and quick one-off short articles that much of RPT is made of, sure, give them a discount or something for their small contribution. But when you get into quality articles and ideas like we have, there has to be a scale of discount, free, store credit or even monetary reward. And if it comes out of the "Citadel's" cut, so be it.

Big step. Huge change. But change is supposed to be scary to a point. I see way more ups than I do downs for this though, of that I have no doubt.

Re: Admin Chatter

#1170

Wondering if there is another choice too and Chaos probably was already thinking it.

We could almost leave the Citadel alone. Develop a new site that can use the Citadel backend but be branded differently. But the more I think of it, that is a lot of redundancy and not sure how to play it out. Could use the same database...but why? Just talking out loud.

Re: Admin Chatter

#1171

Pulling things from "the Citadel's cut" to me seemed like a definite option, I just didn't mention it because I was trying to consider the broad perspective, and that sort of thing is fiddly-bits. It would nicely handle some of the concerns about "where the Citadel's cut goes".

I'm sorta liking option #3, and yes, it was something I was already thinking (it came up when thinking about external hosting and integration). I think it would free both parties up to do what they consider best for organization and modifications, and there's no reason we can't integrate the two to any desired degree. We can still implement some partnership stuff on our end, and if he's looking for it, implement a stripped-down version of our submission-quest system for his users. Let's be honest: They don't need regions. They don't need scrolls. They really just need content submission, voting, categories (maybe not even that) and freetext. And the ability to set up events/quests. At that point, if John wants to include Citadel material, we would have the system in place on our end to make it a quick process. "Yes, we can use this. No, we can't use that."

I'm not heavily advocating for any one option at this point, I'm just pointing out that there are alternatives that are completely viable for both parties.

Re: Admin Chatter

#1172

From Johnn

===

Sure. As long as we don't need to start from scratch in terms of audience. For example, if you said, "Let's close RPT and start a brand new email list with the new branding" I'd worry that was taking too many steps backwards.

Also, if we can prevent overlap so that people don't just stick with the old site and ignore us at the new site, that would be great.

I'm cool with sticking with Strolen's. You keep Strolen's, I keep RPT. I funnel RPT people over to Strolen's ongoing, and those people must learn the Strolen's culture, to participate, be polite, be creative, give thanks, etc.

We can also throttle things to keep the influx of new people steady but limited so Strolen's doesn't get taken over by newbies and lose its core or culture.

For example, to start maybe we offer just one product: monthly subscription.

That subscription gets subscribers 4 ebooks a month, contests, and other stuff non-subscribers don't get. I suggest you, me, Robert (the third partner), and the admins brainstorm a wall of ideas on how to reward subscribers in ways that do not make non-subscribers feel screwed or left out. There's definitely ways to do this, we just pick the best ideas we like most.

Then I only invite new customers from RPT over to Strolen's. So, I don't make it public. I only personally invite people who buy my books. That'll weed out a lot of the troublemakers (they don't usually buy stuff).

We could kick up a brand new site if we decide that's best. One of the big benefits with working with you is the tech.

But another huge benefit is the Strolen's community and their proven record for creativity. So I would not want to have to start from scratch on that front, or have some kind of RPT-only community. It's doable, but it would be a huge timeline setback.

Oh, and I have to say my best RPT customers are awesome people. They contribute, are mature, and really supportive and generous. They'd make great new Strolen's citizens, and many of them will join if I invite them and they know I'll be there with them and having fun with everyone.

But I'm ok with us using Strolen's, working with the terms you and the admins layout for me and Robert. And you keep the rights to Strolen's. Meantime, I operate RPT and keep the rights to it.

So I see RPT operating as a marketing and recruitment arm for Strolen's and the book subscription. And we can throttle or filter as you desire to protect Strolen's community and culture.

ME: So, with that train of thought said, would you want to use strolen.com as the forum and the site as a content gathering entity of the enterprise? Is that the branding that we want?

That works for me.

ME: 1) An ebook a week? Seriously? That is a big commitment.

Yup. No problem. And I can use your help in making some of my processes less manual for even faster production.

Here's how I see it. I carve my RPT weeks into "days" where one day is typically a couple hours of work at night.

Cover - use a well-designed attractive template, just change the text and export for each book.

Text - aim for 5000 words, which is about 15 pages. And as it's high quality text, we fall into the $5 price range no problem. If we can use community content, then let's say this will take me 1 day.

Editing - 5000 words would take me 1 day.

Layout, proofing, PDF - 1 day. I use Word with a pre-set style set. I also use a template for the utility pages: legal, credits, foreword, "Other work by this author" etc.

Sales page copy, DTRPG setup, RPT setup, upload - 1 day.

Done. That's 4 days. 3 days to spare. :)

And that's me doing all the work (except for content creation.) Robert is my editor, layout guy and he can hand crank like a mad man. :)

The key is to be organized, use/develop good tools and shortcuts, and to get a workflow going with Quests and community content.

So for example, if we know there is an 8 week latency between a book concept ("Legendary Items IV") and the content being ready, we adjust our calendars and workflow accordingly.

We use editorial calendars to manage production and keep the team well informed.

I will also create a marketing calendar, so I know what I'm promoting via RPT and when. The promotion takes a lot of work.

Each book should be given a full-fanfare launch treatment. Or, with weekly releases, I suspect we'll pick one book per month to do this with and let the other three go through the regular release buzz process.

Anyway, with a full launch, I like to tease, build buzz, create awareness and generate deep interest (through content marketing, i.e. my newsletter, news releases, contests, etc).

So I cannot do all this plus build books and handle the tech and community.

So I kinda had these roles in mind:

Mike - tech and chief admin coordinator
Robert - book production, content wrangler, editor
Johnn - marketing, Chief Editor, help with book production

All three - community building and support, admin support, member and customer support, events coordination and operation.

Legal and accounting I'd like to outsource. When we reach a certain level, like say our first $5000, we invest in formal legal docs and an accountant using revenues.

ME: 2) Quests. Would there still be prizes like offered in the past?

Yup. Prizes are never a problem with my/our industry contacts, as long as we are ok promoting prize partners.

ME: 3) The Citadel has a tradition of pretty high quality work. The feeling that for 1+ page piece of content, a discount on the ebook is somewhat weak. Their thought is if they are writing the content, they should at least get the book for free. I think there is a difference between sharing and compiling individual email tips vs. spending hours writing a detailed submission. So that part will need more discussion. They would want to share their content, but if we just take it and sell it and they get a pittance, they feel taken advantaged of. So, there probably needs to be a scale, almost like a freelancer, to how much is contributed to a return on their effort. Shop gift cards or even a monetary incentive/percentage for providing content that is used. This goes into the level of quality that the Citadel is used to. I wouldn't say elitist, but I wouldn't not say it either. If we were to offer some kind of compensation, that would go far to try and maintain the quality that we want to maintain on the site and keep the authors that provide it. Newbies are going to happen and we, of course, work with them. But we do have an expectation of a base level of quality in what is submitted to the Citadel.

Yup, no problem.

Whatever makes financial sense.

If we say roughly one submission per page, a 15 page ebook is 15 people.

And we're putting time and money into assembling entries and creating high quality ebooks (PDF, MOBI, ePUB).

So they're creating one entry and getting 14 more in return in a nice, convenient, portable format.

If they want to be paid, then I'm ok with that but we'll need to look at different financial scenarios to make sure we're meeting our goals. A good baseline is what we'd pay a freelancer (who'd actually make this whole process a lot easier and more efficient lol) which is 1 cent to 5 cents a word.

But I'm all for rewarding contributors. I'd prefer to use badges and social recognition (plus free copies of the book) if possible, rather than gift cards or monetary payments.

Say it's a year from now and we're hitting our stride of 1000 $5 sales a week, then sure, paying folks 5 cents a word for 5000 words each week is doable. But I'd prefer not to start they way and set that expectation up front.

Instead, I'd like to get the community behind us, happy supporters of what we're trying to do and our vision for this thing.

ME: The usage of the work is the big conflict point right now. They understand that they will have to explicitly choose to allow the content to be used commercially. No worries on that. Their main thing is that it their content is currently given away for free. Now somebody will be selling their content. Why would they agree to let somebody else profit off their work when they can, alternatively, just leave it out there for free? For the good authors, we would have to provide some incentives to entice them into letting us use it.

Yup, understood.

I suggest we be open and transparent with the community. Talk with them about this in the forums and get their ideas and input.

My view is:

* We're adding value through the compilation process - turning individual posts into cohesive high quality compilations. It's just like a bunch of fantasy authors with their own short stories working with an editor to create a cool anthology product under a single title.

* Distribution - we'll be promoting them and sharing their work worldwide to new readers every day via DTRPG, Amazon, RPT and the greater exposure products generate. A weekly product should generate a snowball effect.

* Our greater purpose - getting gamers great content to make their lives easier means they'll game more often, keeping RPG hobby thriving. We'll be exposing the content to more people than the traffic reaching Strolen's right now. So we'll in effect be helping more people.

* They'll be helping us. My fans really do want me to succeed and make a business and living from RPG. And it sounds like your fans support you too!

I think this is where the larger vision comes into things. It should inspire people, including ourselves.

We should take this to the community. Just ask them where the sweet spot is for everyone.

======================

Nutshell: We remain whatever we want to be and the sites basically become a creative partnership. We continue to do our thing the way we want to do it while changing a few things to allow the use of content and the creation of some subscriptions for the ebooks. All within the confines of how we feel it should move forward. He has some fun ideas about tying adventures together and has some of those adventure templates from his mailing list that might make a showing. All awesome stuff that fits right in with us.

This also gives us a publishing engine for the authors that want to go that route. Strolen's Citadel branded ebooks would be sweet. :) Finally, after years of wanting to do it, we have somebody that can do it professionally for us. :)

Every question we ask it is met with openness, concern for the community and wanting to do it right.

My plan now is to put together a synopsis of the vision. (We have been chatting in G+ too) and put that past him, then post it to the Strolenati board. There we will invite the other trusted inner circle Strolenati for opinions and brain storm how we do it. At that point too, Johnn will be given access and he can speak for himself towards the vision and answer any other questions we might have. We can move forward as fast as we are comfortable.

Re: Admin Chatter

#1173

With my concerns having been recognized and (mostly) addressed, I'll put my tentative support to exploring where this might take us. So long as we keep a critical eye on whether this is going in directions we like, I don't see how it can hurt to explore the options. Some of the benefits do sound nice, mostly with respect to getting quality new members.

Re: Admin Chatter

#1174

I've been thinking about this today, and I am growing fonder of the idea.

I like the idea of our writing getting a broader exposure, because in the long run, we as writers run the chance of getting some serious attention. I do know there are some writers out there who started blogging and ended up getting the right attention and ending up getting employed to just write.

I like that idea.

After reading the new material presented I like where it is going. I don't think we need to rush into it, lets get the bridges and foundations set first.

Re: Admin Chatter

#1175

Sold! What they said.

Re: Admin Chatter

#1176

Ok. Going to do a thread in the Strolenati Guild laying out some of the key points and open it up for discussion with the rest of the Strolenati and invite Johnn in. That will happen in next few hours.

Re: Admin Chatter

#1177

Not sure how SE fell from the admin list. Kept wondering why there was no answer from him. FIXED!

Re: Admin Chatter

#1178

(Hi SE!!)

I have a question, but not for Johnn per se.

So hopefully i'm understanding the flow of things here correctly...

John will initiate "quests" and "events" on our new shiny shared forum. Let's just suppose one of the quests is "New Monsters".

So, everyone (us, the new rpt'ers) will start writing up monsters. I assume (this is the part where I may be wrong) that we will all posts subs on the main site, and Johnn will then choose entries. collate, edit, add graphics, and put out a "New Monster Ebook". Is that sort of correct?

If that is the case, I find it kinda weird that someone would pay $5 for an ebook, featuring content that is now already featured on our main page gratis, except with fixed grammar and some pics.

What am I missing?

Re: Admin Chatter

#1179

Ah ha! I had assumed my admin status had merely been removed due to my years of inactivity and I thought little else of it.

I'll read the relevant info through properly tomorrow when I am not cooking for the masses, and throw out any thoughts I have.

Re: Admin Chatter

#1180

I think it is a fantastic idea! It has hurdles to jump over and creases to iron out but at the end of the day I think anything that brings exposure to the citadel is a plus.

Most of the issues I had considered have already been addressed by the others - mainly legal/licensing woes and the whole 'discounted book' idea.

Re: Muro's question - its a valid point, although I think people will still pay for a compiled, sorted and organized list. I can look up 100% of the pathfinder core rules on the pathfinder SRD, but I still got the book :p

One thing that stood out for me is the freelancing part, and actually getting paid for the input: while it might not be as interesting a prospect to others, it is of great interest to me and even if it only amounts to several dollars per input, it's still motivation to both create quality work, and to allow it to be published.

Perhaps getting off on a tangent here, but it would be terrific if we could smash out our own 'strolen-approved' 15-page e-books and submit it to Johhn & co for approval. If he likes, all he needs to do is edit it, slap in it in a template and publish it on his site. And then whatever sales are made of that E-book, the author gets say 20-30% of the profit (not sales, profit).

Then effectively, Johhn has his own workforce and he only has to pay out of profits, meaning if there is no profit, he loses nothing. He could churn out the eBook content as fast as the freelancers write them, provided they are of high enough quality, and the books can have a standardised cover, bit the featured author will be named at the front.

"Oh man, I can't wait for the next 'Scrasamax e-book to come out!"

Re: Admin Chatter

#1181

Not to be a killjoy, but if I'm going to go to the work of making an ebook, DriveThruRPG makes a lot more sense than RPT. The "skim off the top" is almost certainly going to be less, unless I'm being way too uncharitable to Johnn (which I might be, but it's just an idle thought anyway).

That might be worth its own topic eventually: are we open to Citadel branding of materials, outside of this potential RPT partnership?

We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread.

Re: Admin Chatter

#1182

are we open to Citadel branding of materials, outside of this potential RPT partnership?

We have been for years. Discussed many times in the past. Threads exist on the topic. Nothing ever got off the ground. Laggards and layabouts we are :rumgone:

Re: Admin Chatter

#1183

How is exclusivity going to work?

Re: Admin Chatter

#1184

We specifically talked Freelance prices and he said .02-.05 cents a word. Initially, we have no capital and quite a few start up fees so if/when we get to that (which I am full supporter of) and are making enough money to cover initial expenses then that is the path I will continue to push for.

Johnn's intent is to use us (a store we put up on strolen.com) DTRPG and amazon to push the products.

The other thing that Johnn brings that we don't have at all is audience. He currently has a 10,000+ member mailing list that can be instantly pushed to. Through that and his other websites he already has a loyal cadre of followers that he can push sales and advertising through. He does all this out there so strolen.com can stay a bit more pure and without all the advertising that some get sucked into. I am sure we will have it, it only benefits us, but it can be subtle and appropriate. Plus he has a TON of contacts in the RPG world. Literally. So the exposure we get through him is huge compared to what we could do ourselves. So, short term we will doing things for the love of the RPG community and helping push the RPT and Citadel dream of becoming big movers. But once we are established and things are working we will have the option for a much bigger profit sharing for all those involved.

On top of that, if Scras or SE or somebody wants to develop their own ebook, he will have no issue accepting terms on it. That will have to be discussed but if you want to make an ebook with exclusive content, we will come up with an agreement to get it in the shops and have Johnn sell it out there for different than the typical quest terms.

Johnn has the vision on the open content to ebook conversion. Their may be added value to it that he has in mind. He is also looking at a subscription service vs a single purchase. So, say for $10 a month you will get 4 ebooks gained from content from the Citadel and RPT. On top of that subscription we may build that campaign manager thing into the citadel like obsidian portal or other software benefits. Not sure, that is where we all come in on the comfort level and the value we expect.

Sort of goes back to this too:

My view is:

* We're adding value through the compilation process - turning individual posts into cohesive high quality compilations. It's just like a bunch of fantasy authors with their own short stories working with an editor to create a cool anthology product under a single title.

* Distribution - we'll be promoting them and sharing their work worldwide to new readers every day via DTRPG, Amazon, RPT and the greater exposure products generate. A weekly product should generate a snowball effect.

* Our greater purpose - getting gamers great content to make their lives easier means they'll game more often, keeping RPG hobby thriving. We'll be exposing the content to more people than the traffic reaching Strolen's right now. So we'll in effect be helping more people.

* They'll be helping us. My fans really do want me to succeed and make a business and living from RPG. And it sounds like your fans support you too!

I think this is where the larger vision comes into things. It should inspire people, including ourselves.

Short term it will take a leap of faith by the authors to help grow this. But through consistant ebook generation, value of the content and distribution over time (and Johnn doesn't expect it to take a super long time) we will establish ourselves, our style and our offerings and will get to the point were we can do the freelance thing and maybe move on to bigger things. Initially though, there is no cash flow until we have product and there is no product without a leap of faith by the authors. And we can continue these pointed questions with Johnn. He has a better vision of the commercialization of things as he has already done it since 2009 with some other services he does.

I haven't read the other thread yet either. Trying to get some thoughts out before I am behind my work's firewall.

Re: Admin Chatter

#1185

Sounds really cool and I have no issues with what i'm hearing. It's a damned attractive prospect to me that doing something I love to do could potentially earn me a little scratch - and i'm sure i'm not the only one who will think so.

What i'm liking most about it so far is the approachability of it: If Johnn's willing to talk and negotiate and iron things out with us then how can it not be good for us?

Re: Admin Chatter

#1186

Scras got his very own Citadel playing card. :)

Got a few templates so figured I would throw something together for our member with the highest level.

Didn't want to post it on the main site with his real pick on it. I can change it to a My Little Pony picture (or other) of his choice but thought I would share it.

:)

The other motive for this was:

Award systems. This might be a fun alternative to smaller icons. For the bigger awards, could throw together a few playing cards. :)

Lots going on with the site in the background.

Re: Admin Chatter

#1187

Ha! Awesome.

Every kid grows up hoping that some day his face graces a playing card.

Congrats Scras! Now you're immortalized for posterity. :)

Re: Admin Chatter

#1188

Next his face should grace a 1920's Police Mugshot!

http://themetapicture.com/police-mugshots-in-the-1920s/

Re: Admin Chatter

#1189

Haha, it is good! Congratulations, Scras! In a few thousand years, archaeologists will dig up this relic and think you a god of some ancient civilization! That's totally what will happen!

Re: Admin Chatter

#1190

:jester:

Re: Admin Chatter

#1191

Hahaha! His 1920's mugshot!

He does look rather smug about his crimes, does he not?

Re: Admin Chatter

#1192

I'm now hoping I haven't jumped in over my head. >.<

http://strolen.com/guild/index.php/topic,6717.msg80609.html#msg80609

Re: Admin Chatter

#1193

Yes!

Re: Admin Chatter

#1194

May I suggest a new Guild?

The Constructors' Guild
or
The Engineers' Guild
or
The Worker Drone Guild

or something like that.

Idea is that it is a guild for building the dream; enhancing the citadel.

Right now we have all that in the admin section, but potentially we have some very skilled non-admins that would love to help too? :)

Re: Admin Chatter

#1195

You know I am all about full disclosure, however....

There is a diminishing return on getting too many people involved at the birth of an idea. We are still in labor, contractions are there but not ready to go to the birthing room.

The RPT merge was an interesting experiment and I think I would have been much better off only sharing that with admins till we had a solid plan to pitch. This is a similar situation.

I would love to get more people involved, but lets have something for them to get involved in before we open it up. That is the main reason I want to keep all the discussion in the admin area. A few, trusted people that are skilled and know the Citadel. We will get solid ideas without being overloaded with them. There are others that can contribute of course, but who else would you promote to admin of those not in?

I want those that are making progress to be able to do their thing and get something out the door and too many opinions could more disruptive than helpful.

If there are individuals that can directly contribute to a solution, then bring them up on an individual basis and we will figure out how to get them in. I don't want to make more admins at this point. We can create another level of Strolenati trust if we need to. But if they would only be ideas, moral support and awesome adding content, then lets wait till we have something usable and then they can be beta testers and help us from there.

Hard to say without being insulting and I don't mean to be. I respect every user and we owe them a lot. I just want to keep the beginning as small as possible until we actually start releasing stuff. There will be plenty of time to add more ideas to our core beginning!

Re: Admin Chatter

#1196

I feel useless :(

Let me know when I can help with anything, and I mean anything, that isn't technical in nature!

Re: Admin Chatter

#1197

Don't forget that we've got other things that we're all ignoring here in the hub-bub of getting the first eBook out, generators revamped, AG's PbP toolkit, and site v5.

We haven't done a quest in months, we haven't had any kind of special content challenges (Decathros, "I need a...", etc.), we still need ideas and content for our NEXT eBook, and we always need more friendly, helpful guides for newbies to the Citadel (especially when we're working to draw them in like flies to vinegar). I'm sure there are a bunch of others, but surely there's something in there that you can start poking at to feel useful, ne?

Re: Admin Chatter

#1198

I suppose i can go collate the finished tattoo quest and make a voting poll

sigh :P

Re: Admin Chatter

#1199

LOL.

I have a PM coming your way. You have special skillz too ya know.

Re: Admin Chatter

#1200

Oh, and those that aren't code monkeys. We want your brainstorming and ideas. We want you to get loopy and outside the box with ideas when you read the threads. You are the voice of insanity that drives the wheels of progress. We just don't need 20 of those voices.

So don't be shy in any of these threads!!