Paging the admins of this community! :)

[Ivid]

Hey,

I manage the Comeback Inn website, another D&D community dedicated to Dave Arneson's Blackmoor setting.

Right now, I'm corresponding with the admins of the other big D&D fansites
about working closer together on some stuff.

If you like, send me a PM with your preferred address, and I will include you in the email exchange.

Yours,

Rafe (Rafael San Miguel)

[Arjan]

could you be a bit more specific on "working closer together on some stuff"
I did a search on your site name and nothing but real restaurants popped up..

[AndrewTall]

I can't see any harm in getting to know any other D&D communities, and some items - D&D maps on iPAD, etc that have been mentioned here and there could only benefit from more support.

[Vicente]

This seems to be Rafael site :)

http://blackmoor.mystara.us/

[Ivid]

Basically. Our community is on the same server:

http://blackmoor.mystara.us/forums/

And this is the thread where you would need to register:

http://blackmoor.mystara.us/forums/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1482



Basically, it goes about doing a social media project together, specifically to open a twitter account
that all the bigger fan communities share.

The idea is that all the major setting sites for D&D share the same account, to provide a larger number of fans
with news and relevant information to their setting, their community, etc.

The goal is to reach out to people that are interested in OOP-D&D, but do not follow each setting closely,
and to access bigger and wider audiences with less effort.

In general, I think in the last few years, the different D&D communities have kind of drifted apart.
Something like a common social media platform could help to bring people back together a bit.

Like, I loved Birthright back in its day, but I simply have no time to check this board, or for that matter I don't remember. A social media platform that catches the latest news of all the old settings and related communities would surely be useful, and likely not only to me.

Yours,

Rafe

[Ivid]

Oh, and here's the twitter account I was talking about:

https://twitter.com/#!/GreatWheel

Looks like the people from Planescape, Spelljammer, and Dark Sun are with us on this already, so this will likely work well.

But the idea is really to get all of "The Knights of the Nine (settings)", as I refer to them :) into the project.

And you, Sirs, are important for it, if alone because I am a huge Birthright fan! :)

[Arjan]

Its always good to explore new possibilities in combining the strength of (non)official fansites.
I have tried this a couple of times in the past.
I am also the owner of dndworlds.net domain which is perfect to use for all sites combined.

our "problem" is that we never made use if the wotc boards forums and therefore always been separated from the rest "doing our own things"
so rpg newcomers dont get to know BR if someone in their close neighbourhood doesnt know it.

Another thing is that we never really paid attention to 4e, purely since the majority of BR players dont play use it.
but that means "staying behind"

I would love to take BR to a next level and see where it can bring us, but i simply dont have time to do a whole lot (well i am already doing a lot, but it would be too much)

i am kind of a perfectionist when it comes to "publishing" things on the website.
For example, i am working on a interactive map.. but i am not happy with the current maps.. i dont think they fit into the design.. so i wont release it until i redraw the map to fit my thoughts.. so it will take a while until i have redrawn it.

I think also the site need some "fixing" .. easier navigation, clear separated parts from the homepage, ie.. 3e, 4e, maps, atlas etc..

but having "only" a handful visitors each day doesnt really motivate me in doing so much work on it.. and before you know.. you leave it be.

it would be great to have 10 people working on the site to improve things

I am not really a twitter person myself, so i will not take part in that, but if someone else want to do that job, please do so.

[bigmac]

Its always good to explore new possibilities in combining the strength of (non)official fansites.
I have tried this a couple of times in the past.
I am also the owner of dndworlds.net domain which is perfect to use for all sites combined.

Cooperation between the fansites is something I've wanted to see happen for several years.

I honestly think that the easiest way to link people together would be a webring or something similar to make sure that if fans find just one setting site, they can find them all. Here are a couple of options:
Find one other webmaster that will work with you and build a mini-portal that you can both expand later (as you or others can recruit more fansites)
Make a multi-setting portal now and try to encourage other webmasters to join in later


our "problem" is that we never made use if the wotc boards forums and therefore always been separated from the rest "doing our own things"
so rpg newcomers dont get to know BR if someone in their close neighbourhood doesnt know it.

That is the disadvantage of the isolation. You make great content, but not everyone sees it.

Are you aware of the history of The Piazza forums? They got set up in response to the Wizards of the Coast forum staff merging the posts for every out of print TSR campaign setting into a single "Other Worlds" forum and then deleting the empty forums.

The Piazza started off replicating those deleted forums and then went on to add forums for campaign settings that WotC never supported. It also has rules-based forums now. It has the world's most active Mystara community, the world's most active Spelljammer community. And for the smaller settings, that do not yet have a website like Birthright.net, it makes a great place for fans to gather together and get things off the ground.

The Piazza's Birthright forum (which beats WotC's restored forum in the search engine results) already has links to here from the Other Birthright Websites sticky and from some of the threads. But if someone from here wants to educate people over there about Birthright, they could drop more links into conversations about the setting and help spread the word.


Another thing is that we never really paid attention to 4e, purely since the majority of BR players dont play use it.
but that means "staying behind"

True, but when WotC move from 3e to 4e a lot of fans stuck with 3e or migrated to Pathfinder RPG.

Building a new edition takes up a lot of time. I would personally prefer to see Birthright.net work on some content to build towards a Djapar netbook.


I would love to take BR to a next level and see where it can bring us, but i simply dont have time to do a whole lot (well i am already doing a lot, but it would be too much)

i am kind of a perfectionist when it comes to "publishing" things on the website.
For example, i am working on a interactive map.. but i am not happy with the current maps.. i dont think they fit into the design.. so i wont release it until i redraw the map to fit my thoughts.. so it will take a while until i have redrawn it.

I think also the site need some "fixing" .. easier navigation, clear separated parts from the homepage, ie.. 3e, 4e, maps, atlas etc..

but having "only" a handful visitors each day doesnt really motivate me in doing so much work on it.. and before you know.. you leave it be.

You certainly have a beautiful website. But if you hold things back it delays useful feedback.

Have you seen the work of Greyhawk fan cartographer Anna Meyer? She is building a 3D map of the Flanaess. She has switched from "making things perfect" to making them "good enough for fan feedback". That has helped her farm the error checking out to the fan community and has meant that she gets bugs spotted by a team of fans.


it would be great to have 10 people working on the site to improve things

I am not really a twitter person myself, so i will not take part in that, but if someone else want to do that job, please do so.

Personally, I don't like Twitter. I do like Facebook, but it is a time eater.* And the problem with the social media thing is that you spend a lot of time talking to people on the social media and risk making that more interesting than the forums you are trying to promote.

* = I went onto Facebook to look for Spelljammer fans. Then I started to check what other settings my new friends liked. I've actually found 13 people that like Birthright without making any effort.

[Arius Vistoon]

i agree : something must be do to be less isolated.

Arjan was doing a very great job with the website. As he said "its
too much of a jewel to get lost." So we need to do something. And currently, some way are explorated.