Being that Infinite Black is making YouTube a major part of what we are doing, we are keeping careful track of the growth of the Journey to the Tree of Sorrows channel. Our first major milestone was to get to 500 subscribers, and we hit that mark on February 20, 2018. There are lot of people who are hugely supportive of the creation of Journey to the Tree of Sorrows, most especially through the Inner Circle on Patreon, and so we wanted to publicly report on the channel’s progress. The first video on the channel was posted on November 8, 2017, but we did not really start promoting the channel until December 5, 2017. We have goals for the channel regarding total channel video views, total number of subscribers on the channel, and also goals for the total number of views for each video. Let’s take a look at the numbers: Here is how we got to 500 total subscribers: Subscriber count tracks well with total views. We crossed the 10,000 total view mark on the site on February 24th, only four days after we hit 500 subscribers. That means, on average, the Journey to the Tree of Sorrows channel gets 1 subscriber for every 20 video views. I think that is very good. I am particularly proud of the number of minutes the channel as been watched. As of February 24, 2018, the channel has been watched for over 1,000 hours. This statistic is undoubtably helped by the fact that the mainstay videos on the channel like, "The Chamber of the Yellow King” are longer stories, and so (hopefully) people are staying to listen to it all. As far as the video content goes, the mainstay videos on the channel are professional audio narrations of the Journey to the Tree of Sorrows. I write the stories, they are paired with David’s art, and they are narrated by Ian Gordon and Jennifer Gill of HorrorBabble. There are other videos as well, in particular “behind the scenes” looks at the development of the whole Journey to the Tree of Sorrows world, including the art and sculpture. Let’s focus on the three audio productions. The “Excerpt from the Libro Daemonia” was the first audio production released. It started off very quickly but its views have stalled. The stall coincides with the increase in viewership of the Abdul Alhazred video which was released later and attention was given to its promotion instead. The “Chamber of the Yellow King” is the only entire short story available on the channel at the moment. I have tried to maintain consistent promotional attention to it because it is videos like this that will be the main anchor of the channel. The “Prologue to the Life of Abdul Alhazred” got off to a slow start because it was released around the time we were starting to coordinate the fulfillment of the Elder Dice Kickstarter campaign. But, our attention returned to it as the rewards started shipping and we have been sending more people its way to check it out. We promote our videos on Facebook and Twitter through multiple accounts and pages associated with Infinite Black. They are also promoted through YouTube in-stream “TrueView” advertising. Our growth has also been helped by the shout out that Ian Gordon at HorrorBabble has given our channel. The biggest lesson from this exercise is one that should not surprise anyone. If you want people to watch your YouTube channel, you have to actively promote it. You can see where there are plateaus in the data and those plateaus line up with each other well. If no one is watching the videos then no one is subscribing. If no one is subscribing, then it means no one is watching. It also means that you have to remember that it is not YouTube’s job to get your videos views or your channel subscribers. Sure, YouTube does promote videos on its homepage, but that isn’t anything you can count on. There are way too many videos on YouTube for it to promote yours. YouTubers can also be the victim of YouTube algorithm changes that may shift how it recommends videos as well. As algorithms change, I have heard of channels whose viewership has taken a massive hit. The consensus among more experienced YouTube creators seems to be that you need to have other means of getting the word out to your followers that you have uploaded new videos so you can let them know about them. As someone who uses Kickstarter to raise the funds to create projects, this is pretty standard. The platform cannot be counted on to promote your material. You have to do that yourself. Are we moving slow or fast? I don’t know. We are probably moving slower than we could, but we are moving faster than any other YouTube channel I have tried to build. These numbers give us a benchmark though, and so we are going to try to get the next 500 subscribers and 10,000 views in less time than it took to get these. We will see if we make it! If you want to see what Journey to the Tree of Sorrows is all about, please come over to the YouTube channel, subscribe, and watch the videos. We would love to have you. Meanwhile, I will report back when we hit the 1,000 subscriber mark! Heath Robinson Elder Dice will be available for retail sale very soon, but supplies will be very limited. Sign up here to be notified as soon as they go on sale.
Twitter: @EHeathRobinson
Now that we are making roleplaying games a core part of Infinite Black, we wanted to talk about our goals and what direction we see the RPG taking. Our primary goal is to produce a game that gets people playing story-focused roleplaying games as quickly as possible. We think story is a major component of roleplaying games and with Journey to the Tree of Sorrows, they should be dark and horrific.
Therefore, we are making decisions about what to include or exclude based on what has the greatest potential to drive a story. For example, a major part of some roleplaying games is detailed tables of weapons that describe each weapon’s range, damage, clip capacity, recoil rating, and even more. We are not against that, but if the focus of the game is to tell a dramatic and engaging story, detailed equipment tables is one of the first thing that can be done without.
Similarly, we are starting with a classless system. This will not only the players greater flexibly in the creation of the characters, but also means we do not have to write and balance a large number of character classes with their associated data tables. Journey to the Tree of Sorrows takes places in many different places and many different times (and even in other planes of existence like the Dreamlands), and we want the RPG to be able to accommodate them all. If we have to create class and equipment tables, we would have to do that for all times and places, and we don’t want to do this. We think a much better way to go is for the core rules to provide the general information needed to play in any time and place, but then add more detail in dedicated sourcebooks.
Another important consideration is our own constraints regarding what we are capable of physically producing. As amazing as it would be, we cannot start out by creating a huge 400-page tome. Therefore, or first step is to create a “light” version of the game which can be published as a PDF and later a small softcover book. We want this to fit seamlessly with much more robust core rulebook produced later. It also allows us to experiment with rules and get feedback from the community as the game and the rules are developing.
Finally, we want the Journey to the Tree of Sorrows RPG to be fun and rewarding even for gamers that don’t have a lot of time. We want gamers to play long and extended campaigns in the Journey to the Tree of Sorrows world, but we also want players who only have two or three hours to be able to play fun and exciting games in that time, even if everyone cannot get back together next week. This goes hand-in-hand with the broad setting of Journey to the Tree of Sorrows. There is a lot of the world we want to explore and we know other players will as well. By making single-session RPGs a core part of the game, players will get to play more characters, see more of the world, and have more experiences in the Journey to the Tree of Sorrows world.
That is a basic rundown of our thoughts behind the RPG development so far. What do you think? What do you want to see from the Journey to the Tree of Sorrows RPG and RPGs from Infinite Black roleplaying games more broadly?
Heath
Twitter: @EHeathRobinson
The Journey to the Tree of Sorrows Inner Circle
We plan to make YouTube a major part of Infinite Black. We have lots of material, especially stories, that we want to get out to everyone so they can enjoy them, but also a lot of material that provides a glimpse behind the scenes at creating our worlds. YouTube is a great format for distributing this kind of content.
Therefore, we recently opened the Journey to the Tree of Sorrows YouTube channel. We decided to create a new channel specifically for Journey to the Tree of Sorrows so that it can be tightly focused on its stories and development. We will be promoting this channel heavily over the coming weeks and months, and I would like to be able to track its progress.
The purpose of this blog post is to establish a baseline to understand how well we are doing growing the Journey to the Tree of Sorrows YouTube channel. This will be the first in a series that tracks our progress toward our goals.
I already have experience with running several different YouTube channels with different degrees of success. They are:
Over the summer of 2017 I kept careful track of the numbers regarding my efforts to grow the GeoMindz YouTube channel. I even created vlogs about what I was doing and posted them to my personal YouTube channel. Those are the only hard numbers I have regarding what it takes to grow a YouTube channel to 1,000 subscribers, so that is what we will be comparing Journey to the Tree of Sorrows to. I report on all the numbers in my final vlog here:
I used Facebook as the primary driver of traffic to the GeoMindz YouTube channel. That made it very easy to divide the total amount of money I spent on Facebook advertising by the number of subscribers I had attracted during the time to arrive at a “cost per subscriber”. That cost ended up being $0.22 per subscriber. We will also use Facebook as a major driver of traffic to the Journey to the Tree of Sorrows channel as well. Will the cost per subscriber be more or less than GeoMindz? I have no idea, but we are going to find out.
We have a number of subscriber goals for the Journey to the Tree of Sorrows YouTube channel. They are:
We will keep track of how quickly we can obtain these goals.
However, very importantly, just because someone subscribes to the channel does not mean that they watch the posted videos. By far, GeoMindz has the most subscribers. As I write this, there are 1,704 people subscribed to the GeoMindz channel. But, the RAINN Studios & Infinite Black channel has the most views. GeoMindz has 71,536 total views with 1,719 subscribers, RAINN Studios & Infinite Black has 83,973 total views with only 1,045 subscribers.
Therefore, we also have major targets for total views on the channel. We will be tracking how many total views the channel receives. Goals in this area are as follows:
Also, on the level of the individual video, my most watched video on YouTube by far is a video on the GeoMindz channel where I discuss “What is Geography?”. At the time of this writing, it has 8,620 total views.
Being that an educational channel on geography and GIScience should be a more niche audience than the Journey to the Tree of Sorrows channel which is, broadly speaking, an entertainment channel, we expect it might be easier to attract views to the individual videos. I think that one of the main story videos on the Journey to the Tree of Sorrows channel should relatively quickly surpass this video in total views. Therefore, I will also track which individual video is the first to make it to the following marks:
We will see if any of our videos make it to those levels and, if they do, how fast.
For the purposes of record keeping, we will set as our “mark” the date we publicly released the Journey to the Tree of Sorrows Youtube channel. That was November 8, 2017. On that day we had 0 views and 0 subscribers. As of November 23, 2017, we already had 597 views and 96 subscribers, so we are on our way!
Would you like to help us reach our goals? To help us reach the subscriber goals, please go over to the Journey to the Tree of Sorrows Youtube channel and click the “subscribe” button. If you would like to help us reach our viewership goals, all you have to do is watch the videos. For ease of watching, I have embedded the videos we have released below. Watch for the release of the audio production of the first Journey to the Tree of Sorrows story on December 5, 2017.
In the meantime, what strategies would you recommend for growing the Journey to the Tree of Sorrows YouTube channel?
]]>As part of last month's $500 Tabletop Gaming Giveaway, we asked everyone what worlds they are interested in exploring as well as what products they are most interested in. We thought everyone would like to know the results, so here they are.
First, we asked what worlds everyone would like to explore through games, stories, art, and films. Of the 2,970 people who entered the drawing, 1,510 responded to this question. The number of responses add up to more than that because you could select more than one option—in fact there were lots of people who selected all three!
Here is how it all broke down:
Please note that this is not a referendum on general popularity. Lots of people who entered the drawing are Lovecraft fans and backers of the Elder Dice Kickstarter campaign. Also, there were lots of people who have been part of previous RAINN Studios projects, including the Incantris board game Kickstarter. Therefore, it is not surprising that the Lovecraftian world and the high-magic mageocracy are the most popular.
The dark Lovecraftian world is Journey to the Tree of Sorrows. You may already have a pin that bears its symbol. Journey is also highly associated with “Project Chamber" that we talked about in the last newsletter. We will have more information on that very soon.
The high magic mageocracy is the world developed for Incantris. The Incantris board game is about how the Kingdom of Aldramere is engaged in a magical war that is fracturing the world. Players in Incantris control teams of wizards who are competing to become the kingdom’s champions.
Also, this world makes an appearance in the 12 Weeks of Gaming. The Crystal Caverns lie beneath the ruins of the capital of Aldramere, which were once the main magical workshop and study for the wizards of the realm. Now, magical energy is leaking from a trans-dimensional gate and the players must investigate. That adventure is Week 12 of the 12 Weeks of Gaming. Watch for it to hit your inbox.
The angelic empire on a primeval Earth describes the world I have been developing for years and I am looking forward to releasing material for it. There will be lots more to come in this area.
Now, let's talk about people's interests in products. We asked people what they were interested in and 1,581 people responded. Here are the results:
Which worlds would you like to explore through games, stories, and videos?
I’ll write a blog on the results of that question when the giveaway is over. But, those are the worlds David and I are interested in developing. We have spent a lot of time thinking about how we might adapt existing systems to those worlds. So, I thought it would be a good idea to break down some of the pros and cons of different systems. Here the are:
Dungeons & Dragons, 5th ed.: An obvious advantage of developing for 5th edition is that the mechanics are so well-known. Its disadvantages, as I see them, are that it is based on the roll of a d20. I prefer a system which uses a bell curve for its dice rolls (like a 3d6 system). When you are randomly generating a number between 1 and 20, it overwhelms many of the bonuses you might get to complete the task.
D&D is also based on hit points, which brings up the whole “hit point debate”. While I don’t think hit points are the problem per se, I think they are a problem for dramatic story telling as they have manifested in D&D. Combat in dramatic stories is seldom about wearing away an opponent’s hit points a few at a time, back and forth.
Another core component of D&D is that it is built around classes. I think I generally prefer classless systems, but I recognize that character classes can have a lot of advantages. The D&D classes would have to be reworked for any of the worlds we developed. That is an important part of capturing the feel of the worlds. A great example of this appears to be Adventures in Middle-earth. I was skeptical of it at first, but, after reading it, they are close to winning me over. Part of the reason why is the care they took to design character classes that were appropriate to Middle-earth.
Pathfinder OGL: Pathfinder also has a large following, but it has many of the same disadvantages that I articulated for D&D above.
Fate - There is a lot about Fate that I love. I think it can be an excellent system for epic RPGs. I have found that it is easy to put together memorable games for players in ways that I had not been able to with D&D. Players seem to remember Fate games and the battles they fight in ways that they don't with other games. I like how easy it can be to get up and running with Fate and get players into the story. Fate games also do not seem to get as bogged down with roll after roll to accomplish a task. Making sure that even many failed rolls drive the plot forward in some way is an important part of the game system.
One of the problems I have with Fate is that I always want a little more crunch. “Crunchy Fate” is an ideal I have always been after. However, the rules are very adaptable and they have been used to develop other settings. Even though I am not familiar with it, I know the Dresden Files RPG is based on Fate.
Open Legend - I have recently been introduced to Open Legend and, although I have not been able to play it yet, I am interested in what I read. Although it is based on the roll of a d20, it creatively uses additional polyhedral dice to give bonuses based on your character’s abilities.
Dice rolls can also “explode” allowing you to roll more and more dice if you roll well. This reminds me of penetrating dice in Hackmaster. That may not address the core issue of understanding how good your character is at any particular task because the random roll can far exceed your bonus (especially when the dice explode), but those people who love rolling dice will enjoy being able to suddenly roll a lot of them.
Open Legend does not have character classes, but has all the parts from which to build them. It even has suggested character archetypes on the website. Open Legend also includes the Fate-like idea of “failing forward”. Even a failed roll is still expected to move the story forward in some way.
What major advantages and disadvantages of these systems did I not mention? What other systems should we be considering? Which system would you be most interested in having us develop worlds for?
Heath Robinson
Follow Me on Twitter: @EHeathRobinson
Instead, it is much more interesting to think about what are the fewest essential core elements a game must have to provide a rich and rewarding play experience. “Perfection is achieved,” so they say, “not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
David and I are potentially interested in expanding Infinite Black into roleplaying games. Therefore, we have been thinking a lot about possible approaches. One of the most important decisions from the standpoint of designers and publishers is whether or not to license an existing RPG engine or to try to develop our own. There are a lot of factors that go into making that decision. If we developed our own system, it would be a major undertaking. That is why we started pondering what the least is that a game must have in order to fulfill its purpose.
Considering this within the context of purpose is very important. I think there is no absolute right or wrong with roleplaying game design. There is only right or wrong and better or worse for a particular purpose. Games have different mechanics, at least in part, because there purposes are to provide different play experiences for the players. Whether or not these are the right mechanics is probably best discussed in relation to whether or not they are contributing to the game’s purpose.
Arguably, one of the major purposes of a roleplaying game (besides having fun) is for the players to tell a story. Creating a narrative is a common feature to many roleplaying games, but different games focus on this is in different ways. Some will focus on a large and world-wide epic. Others have no problem allowing the story to be constrained (at least for a while) to how a tactical battle unfolds in detail. Different systems cater to telling stories at different scales.
Another major purpose of many roleplaying games is to evoke a certain feel. This is often closely tied with allowing players to experience a world. Some roleplaying games try to invoke the feel of Middle-earth, Westeros, or the Firefly universe. Certainly, the skill of the game master is a critical part of this, but the mechanics of the game can be an important factor in invoking the correct feel.
What do you think? What are the essential elements of a roleplaying game? If you were designing a game for a particular purpose, what would you want to make certain it includes?
—
Heath Robinson
Follow me on Twitter: @EHeathRobinson
If you have not already done so, please check out our set of collectable Lovecraftian pins. The set includes the Brand of Cthulhu, the Elder Sign, and the Astral Elder Sign. You can pick up a set of all three right here.