Anyways, I’ve been thinking of Tavern Keeper for the past couple of months despite the fact that I’ve honestly have very little time to put into it. After talking with Kristi, we’ve come up with a rough plan.
In short … open source.
We’ve seen all the stuff that you guys have requested, and it’s stuff we want to do as well. But with both of us working (beyond) full time jobs, and only being able to do things on an off and on basis for the past 3 months, to say it’s been difficult has been an understatement.
That said, Tavern Keeper is more or less something we’ve realize will never be profitable. Honestly, that’s not a bad thing. But, as matter of openness – Tavern Keeper currently costs us about $150 / Month in server costs.
It was started not as a business, but as a solution to our own problem (all the other RPG sites suck! ;) ), and something that we’re not planning to let go just because the workload is larger than the profit (because, well, the other RPG sites still suck!).
So at the end of the day we’re going to be borrowing a page from Wordpress, and release the source code, while still providing a publicly available version of the site. This will allow us to do something no other site of our kind has done before – which we think in the end will make us better, stronger, and ultimately make a more significant impact in the community.
To give you guys a bullet point list of our plan as we see it at the moment.
Exactly when we open source Tavern Keeper, I can’t really say. I do know that we’ve got a lot of technically inclined people, who have offered to help on multiple occasions. It is my hope that by open sourcing Tavern Keeper we can provide the world with the first class RPG platform that it deserves for free (or $12 a year…)
I want to give you guys … … well everything you want, and the reality is this is the only way that I can see to do it; without loosing my own sanity.
I know there’s many options out there for people looking to bring their games online. I know most of those projects suffer from the problem of a single developer, who ultimately vanishes, for months if not years. It has always been my goal to make sure Tavern Keeper isn’t one of them.
]]>In a word, work. If you didn’t know, Tavern Keeper is run by only 2 of us, a hubby/wife team. We moved from CA to NJ this December, and Bill had been full-time on TK as we settled in, and I (Kristi) took on a full time job to pay the bills in January.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough, and wasn’t working out very well, and Bill ended up also picking up a full-time job in March.
With both of us working full time, it has become a bit harder for us to crank out features like we were. Additionally, we went at Tavern Keeper full-speed-ahead since last June, which has honestly taken a toll on us, and we were frankly just a bit burnt out and needed a little break from coding all the time!
So where does that leave TK? Well, right where it is, actually. The truth is TK was started to solve our own problem – a great cross-device-friendly way to RP and collaborate with our gaming groups, and that hasn’t changed.
However, updates will be coming a bit slower, and support will be handled as soon as we’re able, and we ask folks to understand that it’s just 2 of us working on it part time for no profit, and to be patient. :)
… Is nearly complete, and almost ready to launch. Bill wrapped up the back-end, and I need to plug-in and test the front end, so you should see that soon.
Are also nearly finished, this is still being configured on the server-side by Bill (which is most of the work), and will be the next thing to go in.
I’m working on a tool that will allow anyone to create character sheet forms using a “toolkit” that would require a bit of HTML knowledge but not much else. We’ll be creating our own templating guide and style guide to assist people in creating their own character sheets to be submitted to TK for everyone’s use! This way we can support many systems without folks waiting for us to release them.
There will be a submission process, and a series of guidelines to follow to ensure the look and feel matches that of TK, and ensures forms are cross-device friendly.
Welp, that’s it for now. Thanks all for your patience with us as we settle in to our new life, and deal with being full-time code monkeys for the man while we also slowly build TK. :)
Best, Kristi & Bill
]]>ConTessa 2014: The ConTessa Online Convention by women for everyone, happened early this month. There was a lot of smaller updates / features that made it into Tavern Keeper because of ConTessa. Things like the Waitlist, Next Session Date, Campaign Reminders. While some of the features (like the events page) vanished until the next convention, they’re all still there and we’ll be improving some of the rough spots when we can. We’re happy with the changes that the convention brought to Tavern Keeper.
Hangout App: It arrived a bit closer to the start of ConTessa then we would have liked, but the App seemed to roll out smoothly. While it’s a bit limited in it’s current form in that it can only manage the invitation process for our campaign members. Launching a hangout from the TavernKeeper site will give the GM added flexibility of the moderated hangout tools. Beyond that we’re also looking at bringing more features from the site into the hangout as time goes on.
Gems: We’ve added in our on-site currency, and opened up the ability to purchase them through our shop. In addition to the ability to purchase them, we’re providing up to a 25% bonus to anyone who orders them before midnight tonight. As we’re not going to be implementing subscriptions gems will be used for one time purchases for both Players and GMs.
Enhanced Privacy Controls: While we mentioned a while ago that private campaigns were going to be a subscription only feature (back when we planned on using subscriptions). It is part of a much broader set of controls intended to allow you to finely control your campaigns privacy. The unlock includes:
Co-GM: Co-GM allows another (or as many people as you’d like) to be added as a GM to your campaign.
GM-Character Customization: This will allow you to customize the name and image the ‘Game master’ character. The control is on a post-by-post basis, so you can easily post as whatever you’d like without having to build out an NPC for them.
Inventory Management: Allows you to help keep track of both player and group loot, the details are still light as it’s in the design phase. However, the intention is to help the various loot-heavy games out there seem a little less daunting when it comes tracking who has what, where it is, and what it does.
Roleplay Tagging: The ability to tag characters in a roleplay is going to happen before the inventory management.
Here’s a preview of what that might look like, taken from our original wireframes back before we launched the site:
Privacy Overhaul: Along with Enhanced Privacy Controls, we’re going to be changing how the privacy options function for existing items that have them (Characters, and Wiki) and make sure things are consistent across the old and the new.
We’ve added a new link to the menu called shop… which will take you to the new Gem purchasing page.
This is a pretty large departure from what we’ve been talking about of late. Last month’s State of the Tavern there was a large amount of talk about Subscriptions, and Pre-Orders.
Over the course of the past couple months, we’ve seen a lot of different types of people use Tavern Keeper for all kinds of gaming uses. We love it, but one of the things we realized is that not everything we build is going to be useful for everyone. For core features (the things that are free), that’s not a big deal. However, in our minds… when it comes to paying for things; that’s a huge deal.
If and when we offer a subscription, we want to make sure that it has a significant value regardless of how you want to use Tavern Keeper.
While we’ll be detailing our first couple of gem-unlocked features, and how the whole process works during the coming State of the Tavern next Friday, at 9pm EST.
Between now and friday’s State of the Tavern, we’ll be giving away up to an additional 25% of your purchased gems, as a thank you for helping us test the new feature.
Obviously with the addition of Gems and money transactions, there’s going to be some changes to our Terms of Service. We’re still ironing them out, but wanted to give you a few key points;
Credit Cards / PCI Compliance - basically, long story short … our payment processor (Stripe), takes your payment information directly. It never touches our servers, we don’t store it anyway. All interactions between You and Stripe are secured with SSL, as are all your interactions with Tavern Keeper… as well as all interactions with Stripe and Tavern Keeper.
Refunds - They’re available, you can request them through Email, Private Message, or Bug Bucket. Or any other support mechanism that we use.
Chargeback / Charge Disputes - Obviously, we don’t like them and much prefer to deal with a refund. That said, they do happen… regular chargebacks will gem-lock your account (make it so you can’t get gems). Additionally, if a charge back drops your account to a negative gem balance your account will be subject to additional limitations.
Thanks, everyone! Let us if you’ve got any thoughts or idea.
~Bill and Kristi, The Minions
]]>That looks like this:
Google’s API allows us to launch what is called ‘moderated hangouts’, a feature that isn’t readily available when you launch them from normal means.
This means that you can launch a standard hangout, and still have access to all the control that a hangout on air gives you.
Like hangouts on air, all the moderation features are available in an app called ‘Control Room’…
Open the app, will give you the moderation interface…
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This app ties right into Tavern Keeper and allows you to start a hangout game right from any campaign you own!
Start a game by going to your campaign’s dashboard. You’ll see a new section to the left column that looks like this:
(If your campaign is private, you’ll only see the green button.)
Once you click on either the green or yellow “start” buttons, A Google Hangout will start and you’ll be prompted to accept the app. If you’ve connected your G+ account with Tavern Keeper, it will log you right in. Otherwise you’ll have to log in with your TK creds.
Once logged in, you’ll be directed right to a confirmation window like so:
Your players will receive an email telling them your game has started with a link to join the hangout right in the email!
Tavern Keeper also keeps tabs on games in session, so if one of your players visits the campaign while a game is in session, they’ll see a giant green JOIN NOW button on the campaign dashboard, like so:
Please let us know if you run into any issues with using this new feature, or if you have ideas on how to make this even more awesome.
Thanks again everyone for your amazing support and enthusiasm for Tavern Keeper! This is just the first of many kick-ass features we have in store for you this year.
Loves,
Your TK Minions
Just 11 more days to go and nearly 50%! Don’t miss out on the chance to get discounted subs and credits for your favorite systems!
Summary: – A recap of all the systems and sourcebooks we will be releasing with – Backer goodies offered in addition to the original perks – One last chance to get FREE custom portrait art, drawn live ON-AIR!
Here’s a recap of all the systems and sourcebooks we’ll be releasing with to start:
All of the mechanics of FATE Core, plus a listing of all skills, stunts, and edges in the most recent edition.
We’ll also be releasing a few sourcebooks along with the Dynamic Character Sheet:
Fate Worlds, Vol 1 & 2
All of the available skills, stunts, and edges will be available to you within the Dynamic Character Sheet when you unlock these sourcebooks for your account!
All of the mechanics of Savage Worlds baked right into a great looking, mobile-friendly character sheet design! Don’t forget you’ll also be able to track your power points, bennies, and fatigue using our GAME MODE feature!
In addition to the calculations of the Dynamic Sheet, you’ll also have access to all the Edges, Hindrances, Skills, and Powers available in the Core Rulebook (latest edition).
Here’s just a few sourcebooks we’ll be starting with right out of the gate:
Deadlands: Reloaded
When you unlock the Deadlands: Reloaded sourcebook for your Account, you’ll gain access to the unique features of this game, including all of the Powers, Skills, Stunts, Edges, Hindrances, etc from the Sourcebook!
Deadlands: Noir
All of the awesome goodness of Deadlands in the 1930’s.
Accursed
Melior Via’s own Accursed will be launching with our Dynamic Character Sheet engine! This amazing dark fantasy setting is one you won’t want to miss. Tavern Keeper’s Dynamic Character Sheet engine will be the ultimate compliment to this sourcebook based on Savage Worlds.
In addition to offering discounted subs and credits to buy all of the great stuff listed above, we’re offering Randomocity subscriptions and limited edition Tavern Keeper “Minion” T-shirts!
That’s in addition to all of the other backer perks you’ll get at that tier.
For an additional add-on pledge of $25 you can also get a limited edition Tavern Keeper “Minion” staff T-Shirt! Backers $100 and above will get this as part of their pledge!
]]>Most notable this week was the addition of Google+ integration and the long-awaited Categories for Site Discussions!
(This was actually added on 11/3)
You can now sign up with, or connect your Google + account. This will earn you the title “+1”!
Adding Google+ integration sets us up to offer some cool features around hangouts down the road. Stay tuned!
Manage Page – Join Requests are part of the accordion menu and are easier to see.
Campaign Character Details – The character nav now keeps you on the same page – If you have a stat sheet, it defaults to the stats tab. – The “GM/Player Notes” tab now shows up when it should! GM’s can now properly add notes to any character in their campaign. – Clicking on “message player” now auto-fills the user’s name in the TO: field like it should.
For some ungodly reason I don’t quite understand, I’m hopelessly addicted to Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, especially the UK version of the show.
Aside from Gordon just being a handsome devil, it’s the morbid fascination with the kind of people that start restaurants, and how Gordon applys the same formula over and again to every restaurant, with great success (provided the owners don’t f**k it up afterwards).
Here’s the main things I’ve taken away from the show and applied to my own startup company:
In a restaurant, it’s all about the food, first and foremost. Ugly decor? 2-hour wait? If the food is totally amazing, you forgive the rest. I’m sure you can think of at least one place like that – the divey little local spot that has the most amazing food. Back in New Jersey our spot was a place called Devone’s. Oh god, Devone’s.
In a startup, what you serve to your customers is the most important thing. Period. It’s not sexy design, it’s not SEO, it’s not a brillant marketing plan. It’s creating and serving something people actually want and enjoy. It’s that simple.
Great marketing doesn’t grow a business nearly as well as a product that people love so much they just can’t stop talking about it to everyone they know.
Right on the heels of #1, and a big part of having delicious food, is being relentlessly focused on always serving the highest quality food you can.
That doesn’t always mean the most expensive food, it means if you’re going to serve burgers and fries, you serve fresh fries and fresh burgers, and not frozen 3 month old crap, in a sparkling clean kitchen.
In a startup, it means always delivering the highest quality product and service you can at any given time. It does not mean wait to ship till it’s perfect – Your MVP can still be high quality, if incomplete. It means write clean, maintainable, tested code for what little you have. Just like a dirty kitchen, dirty code begins to show through the product, little by little, until it becomes an unmaintainable mess.
It means always be presenting yourself and your company in a way you’re proud of. It means that if you had to shut your doors and move on tomorrow, you can look back and be proud of your work, always.
It’s financial suicide to open a Fine Dining restaurant when the neighborhood wants a BrewPub. You’re not serving a product your customers actually want, you’re building what you want to stroke your own ego.
Do your homework, and test the market by getting prototypes in the hands of potential customers as soon as humanly possible. And then listen to your users. Watch the trends. Stay focused but not so much that you don’t waver from your original plan when the evidence so clearly shows you need to change. People will vote with their “feet”.
If you really, really want to be a Fine Dining restaurant… then maybe you need to find another location for your business? Likewise, perhaps you’re serving your product to the wrong demographic. It’s up to you to decide what the right choice is.
An idea may have been born from your own desire, even better if it stemmed from a problem you sought to solve for yourself. But once it evolves into a business, you become just one person of many it serves.
The people that buy what you are selling are the most important part of your business. It’s that simple. Treat them with respect and kindness, listen to their feedback, and cherish those blessed few that love what you’re doing so much they take the time to give you honest feedback and criticism when you need it most.
You don’t always have to do absolutely everything your users ask you to – if you serve Filet Mingion for free, few are going to tell you it’s an unwise business move, they want the free food! – but it’s up to you to see the bigger picture, recognize the value of what you’re doing, and drive the business.
But if you hate your customers and always think they’re idiots, you’re doomed.
Relentless doesn’t mean continually doing the same wrong things because that’s always what you’ve done. Relentless is being willing to keep working at it even though things suck. Relentless is pushing through the tough times because you believe that strongly in what you’re doing. Relentlessness is the only thing that pulls you through the “slump”.
It doesn’t matter how much you love what you’re doing, your are going to have days, weeks, months, where things suck. What separates the wannabes from the successes is their sheer, nearly unreasonable amount of relentlessness to see it through to the bright days of success.
Your business is a reflection of it’s owners and staff. It’s the soul of the place, and brings people to the business or drives them away. No matter what your personality is, be genuine. The days of the faceless corporation are long, long, past.
Your customers want to know who you are, share your ups and downs, and give their money to people who earn their trust. Be that person, and insist that everyone who works for you follows that ethos.
One bad employee can ruin a business. Every single role is important, from the cooks to the dishwasher to the bartender to the host. One bad employee brings morale down, ruins effective systems, and will kill your business.
Too many companies I have seen “adopt” rather than “hire”. If they’re not working out, they’re not working. Get rid of them! Like a goldfish trying to fly, some people just aren’t meant to do certain things. Don’t force it, let them go. You’ll both be happier in the end.
Right in between being genuine and getting rid of dead weight is owning up to your mistakes when you blow it. You will f**k things up from time to time. It happens. How you handle it makes all the difference. If you’re genuine this is far easier than if you tried to cover up your disaster under a pile of lies and double-talk.
When you’ve been going down the wrong path for a while, it might be really hard to see how far off you are, and feel helpless as to what the problems are, like every restaurant that goes on the show. They don’t see all the problems right in front of them.
When things look bleak, and you don’t know where to turn or what to do to turn your business around, first, take a long hard honest look at yourself and say “what am I not admitting to?” Next, get an outspoken angry Englishman to tell you what a big pile of bollocks you are.
]]>The Kickstarter is now nearly halfway over, and we’d like to kick it up a notch with some tangible rewards for our backers beyond credits and subscriptions.
Randomocity is a quarterly print and digital Zine dedicated to delivering fuel for your imagination in the way of fun and interesting roleplaying game adventures, NPCs, and ideas. The Zine is delivered as an exclusive, small-batch high-quality print version directly from the creator, via digital PDF. The exclusive, small-batch “dead tree” versions are full color and come printed on high quality paper that you won’t find anywhere else. Randomocity is the fanzine with an art edge.
Backers $25 and up will get a 1 year PDF subscription to Randomocity, and backers $100 and up will enjoy both the print and PDF for 1 year!
These t-shirts are something we planned to produce just for our staff for conventions. But, we’ve decided to share them with our backers, so everyone can be a Tavern Keeper Minion like us. :)
T-shirts are available as an add-on of $20 to any backer tier, or will be included for FREE for backers $75 and up.
Kristi Centinaro (also known as inkjetcanvas) will be drawing character portraits on-demand and live on Google Hangouts On Air on Tuesday, Nov 5 at 5:00 pm PDT! Participants will be able to link their Tavern Keeper characters in chat during the Hangout, and she’ll draw as many as she can in the 1-2 hour window, and answer any questions you might have.
This is a great chance to have your character immortalized in a custom piece of art!
The event will be posted on Tavern Keeper’s Google + community page.
Here’s a peek at some of the past portrait contest winners:
If you haven’t seen the latest update to Tavern Keeper, it’s a biggie! We’ve just added inline dice rolling to Play-By-Post Roleplays. You can now carry on an entire game on Tavern Keeper!
We’ve also added the ability to carry on an OOC conversation in a tab tucked away from your roleplay, out of sight unless you need it.
Thanks everyone for your continued support. We’ve got a long way to go, but we’re not going to stop fighting to get there!
]]>You can now roll more than once in a post! Separate rolls with a comma.
You can label your dice roll to clarify what you are rolling for!
The help text dialog has also been updated with new examples.
You can now carry on a sidebar conversation within a roleplay! There is a blue tab called “comments”, which displays the number of comments on the tab. Clicking the tab will slide open a view.
The tab and the slideout view will stick to the page, so no matter how far you scroll down you can access it easily.
Click on the “reply” button to reveal a text area to type your reply, and “close” to close it again when you’re done.
We now have support for Maturity ratings on Campaigns! This will help people find the kind of Roleplay environment they’re looking for. Future updates will leverage this further through filtering/search.
… I can’t believe it’s only been 2 months!
Here they are, in reverse-chronological order:
You asked for it, you got it! Tavern Keeper now supports dice rolling in roleplays!
You’ll find a “Roll Dice” field below the content area of your roleplay reply. Click the blue button for a guide on how to type your roll.
Dice rolls appear below your roleplay content. You can edit your RP content, but you cannot delete it, nor modify your rolls. No cheating! ;)
You will be able to also add this to a Google or Yahoo calendar, as well as receive an email reminder via Tavern Keeper a approx. 24 hours in advance of your next game.
You will see likes next to each campaign in the list.
Character likes are shown below their avatar.
This is a little something that lets you give props to your fellow gamers for a job well done. We’ll also use this to choose our featured campaigns & characters on our newly re-designed homepage!
In addition to being featured on the homepage, you also receive a title awarded to your account for the recognition!: The Featured!
There’s quite a bit more coming soon on the heels of our partnership with Contessa! Tavern Keeper will be hosting all of Contessa’s events and panels for their next convention in February! We’re so excited to be working with this incredibly talented group of women.
Players can:
GM’s can:
Bugfixes to Character Visibility: There were a number of bugs with regards to character visibility permissions. This has gotten cleared up and you should now see:
Campaign Character List: The hidden eye tooltip on a character will tell you who can see it.
And apparently the beginning of adding screenshots to updates posts. ;)
The “Change Owner” button is inside the character edit page.
You’ll be prompted to choose the new owner. Choose wisely! :)
Characters: – ONE EDIT BUTTON! Edit everything in one place, finally! – Advanced Permissions – Public, Private, Me & GM, or Group Only – GM/Player notes – Add a note to your GM on your character sheet. Also, GM’s can add their own notes to characters in their campaigns that only they can see! – NPC flag – This shows up everywhere a character is seen, above their avatar. NPC’s have the same permissions as regular characters, the only difference being the “NPC” label.
Campaigns: – Earlier this week: “World” is now “Wiki”, a more easily understood term and more open-ended for content “– About” nav icon changed to a house – what was that other thing anyway? – Players list on dashboard, and the ability to add players is more easily accessible. – You can also add players by username as well as email address. Add/Create Character on the “characters” tab, where it makes more sense – Filtering of character list based on: npc, players, mine, not mine
Global: – Image uploads now go into a queue, no more hanging on a page for a few seconds while your image uploads! – Nicer typography formatting for open content areas (user-created content, mostly) – Text editor toolbar now stickies to the top of your window when you have a huge text area (like this one) :D we now have a Favicon! – Characters are now linked up on a users profile page Fixes to editing, saving, and deleting roleplays – We have a footer!Hooray! – We also have a TOS & Privacy policy. We’re committed to retaining our user’s rights to their own content, and enforcing the enfringment of our game creator’s content!
Campaign Manager Tab: GM’s can now remove characters and wield the player BANHAMMAR if necessary
For the time being, all campaigns and characters are public. The discussion boards on a campaign are still private. This will persist through the beta.
I was absolutely petrified of the idea of having to stand up and talk to people. I didn’t want dozens of people looking at me, noticing me, and most of all, disapproving of what I had to say.
I had it really bad in high school. I was the kid everyone made fun of. So I basically had this mental ruleset of: “people by default don’t like me” and “don’t call attention to myself” and “hide behind my art”.
Fast forward 10 years later –
I had a conversation with my mother the other week, where I basically pitched her our start up idea. Towards the end, she said to me “I’m so glad you have your Grampa’s sales voice. He can get up and talk to anyone”.
… wait, what? When did that happen?
It’s really, really hard to put yourself out there. It’s even harder to convince yourself, let alone the rest of the world, that your ideas aren’t complete trash and you shouldn’t even waste your time.
Honestly, I don’t think I’ve really come that much farther away from that scared person in high school/college, I just learned how to Roleplay my life. I figured if I just Roleplayed that super confident person that believed in everything I did, people might just buy it.
And holy shit, it worked.
Roleplay helped me hide my fears and play “normal person”, when all my adolescent life my peers convinced me I was freak-girl.
Tavern Keeper has, after give or take a year as a tinkering side project, finally went into Beta. We opened the doors to let strangers kick and prod our little idea, and hope we didn’t completely blow it or that it doesn’t totally suck. We shipped with the bare minimum of features in each section, probably 1/1000th of what is in my sketchbook or even in the wireframes, but we knew we just had to ship the damn thing and put it out there.
It’s only been two weeks since then, and today we’ll have our 100th user sign up. It’s a tiny little snowball, but it’s still a snowball, right?
I alternate every other day (ok, sometimes several times a day) with the feelings of “We’re on to something! We can do this!” and “What the hell are we thinking, no one is going to pay for this!?”. Every time a Google+ post doesn’t generate many new pageviews or when my discussion posts don’t see a reply, I dip back a little bit into panic mode.
But then I remind myself one thing:
“If we don’t build this, what else are we gonna use?”
And that keeps me mentally on track. Because that’s why we started this thing. Because the ‘other stuff’ wasn’t good enough, and we wanted to make something cooler and better.
We’re not the best Tabletop Roleplaying site … yet. But I’ll be acting as we are until we really are. :)
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