Midnight Oil

I went to a Dungeons and Dragons meetup today in order to, well, meetup with other Dungeons and Dragons players. Of course, my ulterior motive was to show of Obsidian Portal a little in the hopes that I could garner a few more subscribers/beta testers.

I have never been a sales person before, so I was a little worried about trying to sell something. Luckily, my wife Sarah, has been through some of this before with her website, Southern Spaces, and had some good advice. Rather than approaching it as a sales opportunity, I should approach the meeting as an opportunity to network with other gamers and talk about our campaigns. Naturally, any discussion of my campaign would lead me to show off the Adventure Log. Then, I could use this as a jumping off point for describing the website.

Sarah’s advice was quite helpful and put me much more at ease. Rather than being a corporate shill trying to sleaze my way into this group, I would be a fellow gamer there to talk about my game. If the opportunity to talk about the site presented itself, then I would take it, but I would not otherwise try to force it.

Still, I think it is useful to set goals, so I told myself that I would try to get five people to sign up for the site, and at least one person to create a new campaign.

Unfortunately, only two other people showed up to the meetup. I blame it on the fact that it was on Easter Sunday. It was truly disheartening. Of the two that showed up, only one was really much of a hardcore player. His name is Logan, and he is currently playing in one campaign and getting ready to start another. I tried to sell him on the idea of hosting his new campaign on Obsidian Portal, but he seemed sort of on the fence. Perhaps if I keep at him, maybe I can convince him to give it a try. I don’t want to be too pushy, but being not pushy enough really isn’t getting me anywhere.

Although the meetup was fun, and I really enjoyed talking to Logan, the final tally of signups was a big, fat zero. That’s not good.

The next Atlanta area D&D meetup is one month away. Hopefully we can get the homepage working by then and perhaps make things a little more usable, with better page flow and perhaps some documentation. Then, assuming the meeting is much larger, I can give it another go at recruiting some local players.

Ok, imagine that you have just created the most awesome website in the world for the greatest game ever, Dungeons and Dragons. Now, also imagine that no one knows about it. That’s about where I am right now.

Obsidian Portal has reached a stage where we are ready to begin beta testing. There is just enough functionality to make the site useful, and all that’s lacking is content. So now, I’m splitting my time between implementing features, adding content, and trying to think of ways to promote the site.

On my wife’s advice, I started looking around for college gaming groups. Lots of D&D groups form around colleges, and often larger organizations also form in order to help students find local games.

I finally managed to contact Mike Roselli of North Carolina State University. He is the president of the Collegiate Association of Table Top Gamers (CATTG), a multi-university organization dedicated to promoting table top gaming (including D&D and RPGs). Mike has expressed a lot of interest in Obsidian Portal, but he has some reservations about the fact that we are a for-profit enterprise. Perhaps I should tell him that we have a long way to go before we see anything that could be considered “profit”

The CATTG presents a wonderful opportunity for OP. If we can get exposure to college gaming groups and develop a core following, it would be excellent. For a shoestring-budget site like ours, the only kind of marketing we can afford is the word-of-mouth viral marketing. Luckily, that’s exactly the kind we want. Hopefully, we are on our way.

I sent out my first beta test invitations today. I chose the Hawkeye Roleplayers Association of the University of Iowa as my first target. It is a small group, but they are trustworthy, hardcore RPG players. My hope is that I will get honest, thought-out feedback as opposed to random flames.

Knowing that I’m about to unleash my creation on the world is both exciting and terrifying. What if they hate it? What if it crashes? What if they say, “Eh, nothing special”? I’ve invested so much time and effort into this that the prospect of failure is a nightmare. It’s inevitable that some will hate it, but will some like it? Could one or two possibly see the potential that I see? Am I really on to something, or was this all a horrible mistake?

I’ll probably be checking my e-mail all night just to see if anyone wants to join up. I might not sleep for days…