1KM1KT Free RPG Community

Hi folks,

We're members of a successful gaming community - the free games community.

I want to create a successful gaming community - the open games community.

I've got a and I've got a . But that's not a community.

Open gaming has peripheral communities. There's us, focused on free games; there's retro-gaming, focused on retro-clones; there's the Grand OGL Wiki, focused on open d20 stuff. Then there are all the communities focused around particular open games, from d20 System to The Shadow of Yesterday to FATE.

I want to start up my own community without diminishing those existing communities. And I want to make it popular enough that it has its own momentum.

But I don't know how to do this, and I was hoping you folks would have some insight.

Can you help me?

I know this may be a stupid question, but what's the difference between a free and an open game?

There lies the problem I think.

@Groffa, an open game is one that has a CC license to allow other people to extend it. A free game is just one you get to download and play for free.

I think the best way of getting a community going is generating content like mad. You need to generate a huge amount of content and while doing so, you'll drag others along with you. You might find some other people who are keen too (we're lucky here to have discovered our wonderful Mod Monkeys) but it will be up to you to keep generating content. This was the case with my Icar forum. Icar gets downloaded more than 200 times a month but no-one posted on the old forum. Mostly because I didn't. Communities ebb and flow but you need some power houses to keep the lights on and post even when it seems dead. I merged the Icar forum over to 1km1kt because I knew it would get more views and, more importantly, I would post there more often. I have and it worked. Best thing I ever did.

Apart from generating content yourself, you have to go out and post on other people's blogs and tweet like mad. I scour the web/tweets/email newsletters/google groups/yahoo groups/reddit/google reader for any mention of something free and when I hear it, I descend upon it. Furthermore, if someone is writing a blog post generally about a game to choose, I'll step in and recommend a free one instead. The comment will have a link to the blog or to here.

The other thing to note is market size. I know what the market size for Icar is. About 200 people per month. That's not very big. Most of those download not to play but for a pretty picture. There are 500 subscribers to the blog but only fifth of those come through to the main page to read. That's not very large seeing as I review free things for free. By creating a community of Open - Free - RGS. You have set up a niche of a niche of a niche. Furthermore, the Open Gaming niche is not well understood by most roleplayers.

I would merge with other communities and help build those, rather than create your own. I was going to have a Free RPG Blog forum (there were calls for it) but it would do the same as this one. If you want to have a sub forum here for Open Gaming, I can sort that for you but you would have to keep generating content for it like I do with the Icar one. Sure, you'll get the odd person joining in but it needs to come from you.

1KM1KT is a good example of a community that went off the boil and came back. You can tell that by going back through this forum and you'll notice it's quite quiet up until 2008. OUR GLORIOUS BENEFACTOR is a self-employed family man so has very little time to spend writing posts and getting involved with the conversations but here's there in the background all the time and every time a game gets 'uploaded' to the system, it's OUR GLORIOUS BENEFACTOR who puts it up there.

Don't lose heart just try and merge and become part of something bigger. Create a network, as people to review free stuff. Write guest blog posts for other people's blogs. Just don't stop.

Lastly, communities are like economies. If you keep saying it's dead, people will believe you.