but probably slowly.
It is great that the ICE site is back up and running, and it looks like they preserved most of the data, everything important at least.
It is also great that RMu seems to be still making progress.
I think it was about this time two years ago that I last got excited about RMu being nearly complete. I wrote a series of posts about starting adventures, and cliches.
The point behind those posts was that to make RMu a success we need to get people playing it. New players are going to be starting at the bottom, whatever level that turns out to be.
What we are going to do with the 50in50 part 2 may be fine for experienced GMs with campaigns to drop things into, but I think that is a bit tough for a new GM with new players trying to learn a new game.
I was chatting to a podcaster last night on Discord and they were talking about live streaming their next game, using a VTT.
I can see the value of that. The live stream goes out via twitch, which attracts a live audience, who can interact with the GM via the chat stream. Post-game the video goes out to YouTube for posterity, so people can catch up or learn how to play.
You could even take the audio, clean it up and podcast it for people who just want to get their RPG fix while not being fixed to a screen.
I am building up my experience with VTTs, Fantasy Grounds, and although I can see the point of it, I really struggle with them. I am not seeing the software as enabling, I am seeing the software as interfering.
This isn’t a problem, no one says that we have to use FG or roll20 for that matter. It just means that this is not for me. When I have been doing it we were using voice of Discord and the character management over FG. It was quite detestable. One of those things where if this was the only option I would rather not do it.
As I say, it is not for me.
I always have a commercial head on my shoulders. I think it comes from the fact that I work in both advertising and finance. For someone with the appetite for this I think it could be an interesting side hustle.
Right now, you would struggle to get 100 subscribers to a Rolemaster channel but post RMu’s release, I would seriously hope to increase the interest in Rolemaster ten- or twentyfold.
I did a quick survey of existing Rolemaster streamers and actual play channels and that would mean as long at they could get over the 1000 subscriber threshold required to earn anything, they would earn $20-$40 per session. That was assuming a 10 or 20 times increase in interest in Rolemaster.
That isn’t a huge sum of money, but I looked at other streamers for other games. Some regular Zweihander youtubers are earning a ballpark $50 to $150 per streamed session. Even HARP, which is not expecting any kind of new edition anytime soon is bringing in thousands of subscribers and multiple thousands of views of each video.
I am basing this on a typical $3/1000 views.
This isn’t going to be an instant pay cheque, some of those HARP videos have been around for 8-9 years and have had time to keep ticking away picking up the viewers.
The things is, if you and your group are happy to put your games online, you are being paid to play. That is good for you but it is also good for the entire community. The more stuff there is out there to bring people to Rolemaster the stronger the community will become.
You don’t need to be Critical Roll to make a difference.
I am hoping to put the RMU games that I am running at virtual Gen Con online. I’ve never done the live streaming thing, so that might be a bit much for me to handle. But I have to get up to speed on technology anyway (university classes are going to be online again in the fall here), so the least I can do is try to figure all this out.
I have been using Roll20 for D&D lately (with Discord for voice chat), and I have a much better view of it. It isn’t as good as sitting around a table, but there are some real advantages that the real-life game doesn’t have. For one, I can play with members of my old group from the 80s, who are 3 Canadian provinces (which equals 3,000 km) away. The VTT also has the advantage of showing real lighting and lines of sight. We had a ‘this is so cool!’ realization when the characters went into their first dungeon, and the characters with nightvision could see ahead in black and white, while the guy with the torch could see only 40′, but in color. It was a very neat ‘What do your elf eyes see?’ moment. I also like the fact that I can run the players through an entire dungeon crawl without having to draw each section of the map individually (and having bought one of the D&D modules, without having to draw any map at all!). Now that we’re getting used to it, we can actually get through more encounters in the same amount of time, which is cool too (less setup time in terms of people driving to the game, saying hi to the kids, finding a bowl for their chips/crisps, etc.)
I still look forward to my local group getting together again. But I do very much like some of the extras that the VTT provides.