Well, I am glad those few days are over! The site has been playing up for probably four days now just when I wanted to talk to you all about what has been happening in the background of the blog. Cameron Corniuk is telling me it is karma because I have had these plans for a while but been too nervous to pursue them a little but I have grown in confidence and so the time to start making risks is now.
First and foremost the major change is that RPG Knights is now a business in Australia. It is a sole trader business (i.e. me) and has signed on for the delivery of hobbies and games of the pen and paper variety as opposed to the electronic computer and console kind. I could have done this as an individual but I have plans to expand this from just me to being able to produce and support other creative gamer type people. Art sales, module sales and the likes, also my wife and I have discussed perhaps even breaking into a bricks and mortar board and role playing game store in the North West coast of Tasmania – become my own FLGS!
But this does not mean that the blog will take a back seat. In fact I see it as a key way of maintaining a presence in the community that I love. I can not tell you how much I appreciate being able to interact with such fine people on a daily basis. There will still be free adventures, there will still be all of our advice on a regular basis delivered to you. There are projects though that I have been building toward for a commercial purpose and so, in the longer term, you will see some of these arrive here on the site and at places like d20PFSRD and DriveThru.
The starting goal though is to get the web site to pay for itself (all of the plans above are longer term goals). So far this website has conservatively cost around $2000 for all the materials that I have given away, some that I have reviewed, the website hosting and domain name registration. I have been happy to wear this cost but it is the driving reason that I have now made the blog a business. It has to survive under its own steam. I have recieved no funding from any other individual or business to support this and rather than going to Patreon or other funding sites I have decided to simply add a donation button which I like to think of as a “Tip Us” button to our website. This is the first, and likely last time that I will ask that if you like the site, tip us a little every now and again. All tips are made through Paypal and can be accepted in the form of credit cards through them, you do not need your own account.
Donations are appreciated, not expected.
What will the money go on? Well, initially the money will cover the domain name registration which is due for registration within the month. Beyond that it will continue to ensure that RPG Knights remains ad free (I HATE ADS) and hopefully I can distribute a bit of the money to some of the writers on the blog (and one artist that has contributed) who have, up until now, been slaving away on posts in their own time with no remunerative compensation. I love all my writers to death for their support and contributions, but love does not keep their power on. The money will also go some way to developing any future extensions, such as the electronic publishing focus, art for products (including the website).
So there you have it. The future is an exciting place for me and I am going to spend a lot of the time in the next few months planning and making changes that allow the next stage to take form. That change is the ability to sell my own games and modules through the RPG Knights brand and also hopefully add it to my own store as well as those that you are used to dealing with. Tip Us if you can and you want to. The button is in the right sidebar and you have to go scrolling for it! Currently it says donate but I want to change that if I can so that is one of the tasks I will get to on Monday. Seriously though, what I want the most is interaction on all of our posts and get conversations happening for our hobby. Donations are appreciated but not expected. Keep rolling!