NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Eosin the Red" data-source="post: 1454824" data-attributes="member: 168">Website for Sale to good home!!Web design and the Death of an Icon!Not really an Icon but I sure liked it. After diving in and spending some dough, it suddenly sprang to mind that I ran an extensive fan site for the Wheel of Time RPG and I ran a fan site for my Fantasy Hero game that included proprietary images from Hero Games.Ut oh, that ain’t gonna fly real well at all. I started looking at methods to shelter my 3 year old website that was still doing well on Enworlds topsites. The grim reality set in that my baby was going to have to be laid to rest. Another sort of emotional conflict surfaced around this issue. I was giving up being a “big fish in a little pond” to become a “small fish in one of the great lakes.” That did not seem like much but I started asking myself why I was doing what I was doing? I came up with the following reasons.People – especially semi-pro people - like to grumble about how they could do it better. Critics grumble about how novices think they can do it better and gamers just keep on gaming. Can I do it better? Everyone who is in RPG publishing or reviewing, at their core, believes that they can do it better. That is what we are doing isn’t it? WotC thought that they could run TSR better, Hasbro thought that they could run WotC better, Monte Cook thought that he could do better, we all think that we have something to offer and that it is “better” than what is out there. The big BUT for me is that I could do the same with my website. That can’t be the only reason.Respect? Who are we kidding. Actually, I will discuss this in a minute.Money? I am the provider for a family of 5. My wife has been a stay at home mother for the last 4 years. Money is always an issue. Maybe I just dream big but I think that there is money to be made at this if you try hard enough, just like there is money in basketball if you try hard enough. Possibly big money, but that would hinge on getting licensing fees and novels deals. Ascending to ever higher heights of Dming? In a way, this is also a reason. Writing game worlds, modules, and supplements is similar to being the DM. As I have aged, gaming has been reduced from a Saturday and Sunday affair to a Saturday night thing and finally to where I am today which is gaming every other Saturday night. Lots of pent up creativity and frustrated story telling in this ole body of mine. I think about writing novels and directing movies also.I think all of these reasons play into the decision to become a publisher, even respect. I know that they did in my case. Like every arm chair quarterback I think I can play the game well. Everyone desires to be acknowledged, and that may be as indirectly as my wife telling her friends that her husband runs a small publishing company to getting special treatment at the FLGS. There is something special about being a writer or an artist who makes money at their profession. It is like when I was a Fire Fighter. That is the coolest job in the world and EVERYONE knows it. I was younger and much more foolishly prideful in my youth but I loved it when people asked what I did for a living. I like being a RN - I am damn good at my profession but I am not proud to say I am a nurse. I think I would be proud to say that I am a writer or publisher, not in the same way as being a fire fighter but with that same sence of owning or being your professional title. Money. It can be done, it probably isn’t easy but it is probably much more likely than my turning into a pro ball player. Tonight I spent several hours outlining my plan to a friend. My wife can breathe easy, our bank account will soon be back on the solvent side, and I will be able to make the mortgage. We discussed these very issues, and my friend told me with his wallet that he believed in my dream, and that he believed in me, even if I was doing some things in an unorthodox fashion. He saw my vision.  It is still weird losing my fansites so please pardon my sentimentality.Tomorrow night I will talk about web design and where I think many small (and some large) companies go wrong. It is a good thing that I am no longer foolishly prideful <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

Verification