The Community, The Guild Hall, and Patreon

What’s up, folks?  Little “state of the blog” post today, wanted to touch base with you on a few things that are on the move around here.

The Guild Hall

For a long time, the blog has had a forum called The Guild Hall.  For quite a while we had a nice, thriving little community going.  Unfortunately, for the most part, the old bulletin boards of yore are a dying breed, and our plucky little Guild Hall was no exception.  We did our best, but barely anyone stops by anymore, and to be honest, a dead community isn’t really one worth putting time into.

So, in that respect, we’re moving!  The Guild Hall is no more, instead, we have RPG FitGroup, the official Facebook group of Be a Game Character!

Some pros and cons of this move:

Pros:

• Almost everyone uses Facebook, so there’s no need to create an independent account just for our community.
• Notifications and popups in your news feed helps keep you engaged.  I’m part of a couple fitness groups on FB already and I love seeing random posts and updates pop up.
• Improved picture, link, and video posting.  It’s way, way easier to share pictures, links, videos, and other stuff on Facebook than it is on a PHPBB board.
• Larger reach!  It’s super easy to invite your friends to join the group (and I encourage you to do so!)

Cons:

• Not EVERYONE uses Facebook.  I understand some people have an aversion to FB, for that, I’m sorry, but hey, you can always create an account just to participate in the group!  I mean, in a way that’s what you did for the forum anyway, right?
• Workout logs.  This sucks.  Workout logs only really work and stay organized in the “single dedicated thread” format of a PHP board.  I’m trying to think up workarounds for this (maybe a workout log Wednesday?) but for now we don’t have a great social option for maintaining personal workout logs in the Facebook group.  Maybe that will change soon?  Not sure.

In all honesty, it’s not a perfect solution, but the old forum is basically dead, despite the fact that every damn post on this blog links to it.  I think it’s time we try something new (and hey, if it doesn’t work, we can always go back!)  Of course, as always, this is a community, so I’m always open to other suggestions.  In the meantime, please, JOIN US!

(Note: The old forums aren’t going anywhere!  You can still go and post and chat and everything!  At least for now.  We’ll see how things go!)

Community

On that note, part of the reason I went with the name RPG FitGroup is because I want to try to get as many people involved as possible.  Maybe not everyone considers themselves a gamer, but I still want them to feel welcome!  So please, invite anyone you know who might be even a little bit interested in “Real Life Adventure-fying” their fitness experience!  The whole point of having a community is to support each other and spread the love around, so invite your friends!

Patreon

People are always asking how they can support the blog, and I always tell them when they do to go buy a shirt, or a copy of RPG Fitness!  However, some people want to regularly pledge their support for the blog, which is frankly really, really awesome.  So, if that describes you, I’d like to invite you to become a patron of mine over on my official Patreon.  You’ll be helping support the blog, and in exchange you’ll get access to cool stuff!  For now, anyone who pledges at least $1 a month will get access to the upcoming blog post early!  So, when Monday’s blog post goes up, you get Thursday’s over on the patron feed (and so on and so forth.)

However, if you pledge at least $5 a month, you’ll get to see blog posts an update ahead, and you will also get my UNDYING LOVE AND AFFECTION.  I mean, you’ll get that no matter what you pledge, but if you hit at least $5 you’ll get more of it!

Group goal is $50 a month!  If we hit that, I’ll do an extra bonus character workout every month, drawn from a pool suggested by Patrons!  Could be a new character, could be a new workout for a character I’ve already covered, IT’S UP TO YOU!

If the Patreon takes off, I’ll come up with some more bonuses and goodies, but for now let’s just see how that all goes, eh?

Click here if you’d like to become a Patron!

That’s it for today’s post!  Sorry, I know it’s just a bit of housekeeping, but we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming on Monday!  (and, if you become a Patron, you can see that post on the Patron feed right now!)

Thanks for reading, and as always remember to live boldly, change the world, and continue to be awesome!

Dan “DaRatmastah” Wallace