EnWorld- The Professional Society

[Hand of Evil]

While this sounds interesting in the .com kind of way it also rings of Pyramid scheme.

 

[Belen]

Yes, but "marketing" is not the same as "ad campaigns". If ad campaigns don't do the job, then you put your money elsewhere - like into a campaign to make sure that every high-school-sponsored gaming group has books and dice. Or into supporting smaller local gaming gatherings. Or into grants for FLGS that cannot otherwise afford extra floorspace in which to hold games...

The flaw in this concept is simple - the effective professional organizatiosn are very large, and charge notable fees. Folks enter these organizations becuase they give material support to their professions - in other words, it is an investment. They expect that their membership will actually help them earn more money, in the long run. And, I suspect the membership fee is something they can write off their taxes as a business expense.

These things have many people, and charge large fees. So they have a great deal of money. $1 million sounds like a lot of money on a personal level. But in terms of national campaigns, it is tiny little potatoes. And you're motivating people here not based upon profit, but upon altruism. That's going to be a darned hard sell.

In order to be effective, you need multiple millions of dollars, and folks aren't going to give you money until they think you can be effective. You are now in chicken-and-egg-land. You can't start getting money until you already have money.

Not exactly. Membership fees can be only a small part of the budget. For our society, the moneymaker is the yearly convention. Members get a discount for the meeting, while non-members pay full price. An EnWorld con would be fun.

 

[Belen]

This is an interesting discussion. Not so much the specifics, but it really starts to get at the heart of what EN World's purpose is, and what it could be. (And I don't have the answers by a long shot -- I feel that one of EN World's primary missions is education -- educating the members of our hobby about the parts of the hobby they might not be aware of, but what else?)

Which I think would be the primary duty of any society revolving around RPGs.

 

[Belen]

While this sounds interesting in the .com kind of way it also rings of Pyramid scheme.

The leadership of the society would not be making money. We'd do it out of love for the game. Yes, we'd pay employees, but that is different.

 

[PugioilAudacio]

Great idea. I would love to help create such a society.

You brought up the point that the leaders of ENWorld would be the leaders of the society. While I would love that, you have to consider that becoming th leader would invovle a very large time commitment. They might not want to take on that added load. While it would still need cooperation from them, it would not need to be headed by them.

That said, I would (again) love it for Morris and crew to work and head this organization.

 

[Belen]

Great idea. I would love to help create such a society.

You brought up the point that the leaders of ENWorld would be the leaders of the society. While I would love that, you have to consider that becoming th leader would invovle a very large time commitment. They might not want to take on that added load. While it would still need cooperation from them, it would not need to be headed by them.

That said, I would (again) love it for Morris and crew to work and head this organization.

I agree completely.

 

[Hand of Evil]

I would support it but my loyality is with Morrus, Eric, and the mods.

 

[Belen]

I would support it but my loyality is with Morrus, Eric, and the mods.

Mine too.

 

[maddman75]

I see a couple of flaws in your premises here. First, just because there are 5000 members on ENWorld, that doesn't mean they'll all sign up for your society. In fact if you got 1/10, or 500 people to sign up I'd be amazed and consider it an utter success. You also vastly overestimate the influence ENWorld has as a share of the market. If the next WotC book was reviled by ENWorld and no one bought a single copy (and all non ENWorlders bought normally) I doubt anyone at WotC would notice. Where the online community has its biggest influence is with 3rd party publishers.

Also, $200 is absolutely unreasonable. These are gamers you're talking about here, not business professionals! Sure some of them are business professionals. But others are college and high school students. Should they be left out? What about people who can't just drop $200 on a society, no matter how much they would like to support it.

Now don't take this to mean that I'm against your idea - I rather like it. But if you have unrealistic goals and expectation you may doom the project before it gets off its feet. My $.02?

- Broaden the game scope. Don't make this about D&D, which is after all only one game. This should be about role playing and welcome members no matter what game they prefer.

- Focus on the players! One thing that has always bothered me is that there doesn't seem to be any organization for just RPG players. GAMA's for the industry people, and the RPGA is for the Convention goers. I've never been to a convention, there aren't any around here, so the RPGA does nothing for me.

First, there should be an easy to use way to find gamers in your area to play. There could also be aid in setting up PbP games, IRC games, or DMed games over NWConnections. There's some of this going on on ENWorld, with the Gamers seeking Gamers forum and the Game Day threads. But this would centralize it and make it all easier to find.

- Educate the members. Collect essays and articles on how to be a good player as well as a DM - its always bothered me that there are a million and one articles on how to be a good DM and virtually nothing on how to be a good player. Also have lots of advice for how to introduce new members to the hobby. The money needed for a national ad campaign is never going to be raised. RPGs will spread as they always have, by word of mouth, one person to another. Make sure that we create good ambassadors.

 

[Gerzel]

I do not have all the answers. However, ads are not the only form of marketing: Sponsored events at gaming stores, schools, after school programs?

You're right in that I cannot tell you the benefits right now. It's an abstract concept so far. We'd need support from Morrus, Eric, Henry and crew in order to get serious about this.

I know the right people to contact in order to get something like this off the ground, but without the leaders of EnWorld, nothing much can happen.

What do you think the EN world game days are? This site is already doing most of what you want your new place to do; distributing new matirial, providing a forum, hosting events, and ect. Also, EN World is far from the only site that does this. SJ Games has been working in the industry for a couple of decades now, at least since the '80s and their online magazines, JTAS and Pyramid are both well worth the subscription cost, providing non-mechanic specific gaming matirial.

What I would propose for a further way to help out is a sponsorship system for the Gamedays and EN world events. I know of at least TWO gaming groups, each with a couple of newbies, that have started up because of the NC Gamedays in Raleigh.

In order to help the hobby grow IMHO the best method is exactly the Gameday type of events. People will walk into these events knowing little to nothing about gaming, just that it is something to do on a saturday, and be able to play for free. That introduces people to the games and gets them some actual game time rather than having it just explained and it sounding cool.

What you do after that is during the Gamedays distribute simple "freebie" games to newcomers, or everyone attending. Something on the order of cheepass games, or an easy to run rpg using just six siders, or even paper rock scissors or no dice at all. That way some people will take those home and show them to their freinds...who might just come next gameday.

The other major thing to help out with is University and High School clubs and similar organizations that focus on gaming, helping them get established, perhaps with discounts or freebies(perhaps on pdf) for members of registered organizations, perhaps with arranging for someone to come and do a demo, or just helping them get into contact with the other game companies most of whom would love to have a demo or two run for them.

Finally I figure the max subscription yearly for most people might be more in the 35-25 dollar range and that be for a fan driven initiative that is not expressly for profit. What your talking about sounds more like you want to start up a new company with the EN world name attatched.