bySwarm update - January 17, 2010
A lot is happening with bySwarm, and there's no time like the present to get more involved. Perhaps you made a resolution to do more writing this year. Perhaps you want to spend more time on your RPG designs. Right now is another great opportunity to get your creative energy flowing for 2010! In this update, we have some important news about the project plan, so be sure to read the whole message.
New site design
After receiving a great deal of feedback and talking to our community, we launched a new design for the site. We took a great effort to make navigation use less page real estate and put more content that you want to read on the page. The biggest changes are on the home page and on the setting concept pages. On the home page, things that change frequently are given emphasis, and we give you a few teasers for content that you might have missed previously. For the setting concept pages, the concept reviews and discussion have all been brought onto one page. This change eliminates the need to visit multiple pages to see what is happening with a given concept. If you see other things that you would like to have improved on the site, please contact us to let us know your ideas or leave a comment in the forums.
Setting concept contest update
We have many good setting concepts and a few really great concepts so far. While it would be interesting to leave the submissions open forever, we need to reach an end point. With that said, we will be setting a deadline of February 20th, 2010, for setting concepts to be finalized and submitted. That gives you about a month to get those creative ideas swimming around in your brain committed to words on the submission form. We encourage you to use the forums, Google Wave (search "with:public byswarm"), or any other tools at your disposal to work on your ideas alone or with a group. Once the submissions close, we will have two weeks for reviews to be submitted. Based on the aggregate scores, we will then know what setting concept we'll be using for the bySwarm setting design project.
We have many good setting concepts and a few really great concepts so far. While it would be interesting to leave the submissions open forever, we need to reach an end point. With that said, we will be setting a deadline of February 20th, 2010, for setting concepts to be finalized and submitted. That gives you about a month to get those creative ideas swimming around in your brain committed to words on the submission form. We encourage you to use the forums, Google Wave (search "with:public byswarm"), or any other tools at your disposal to work on your ideas alone or with a group. Once the submissions close, we will have two weeks for reviews to be submitted. Based on the aggregate scores, we will then know what setting concept we'll be using for the bySwarm setting design project.
Events
As mentioned on the forums, Mike will be running an RPG setting concept design session at Winter War in Champaign, Illinois, on Friday, January 29. If you will be in the area, be sure to attend the convention and come to the session. Mike is also considering attending Fear the Con 3 in St. Charles, Missouri, on March 12 and 13. If you are in that area or would otherwise like to coordinate attending, please contact him via the contact form.
Thank you for your interest and participation in bySwarm so far. The new year has already had a great start with the launch of the improved design, and we are really excited about 2010. We hope you are, too, and we look forward to working together to build something great together.
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