Where I'm Coming From
OK, so I'm a big-time fan of the online D&D community. Not just one piece of it, I mean the WHOLE thing. My online presence consists of...
I'm an administrator on dandwiki.com.
I'm friendly with the administrators at dnd-wiki.org.
I run a gaming blog which spends a lot of time on D&D, and have even interacted with other blog-based homebrewers, like James Musicus. (Creator of the Musicus system for calculating 5e racial trait balance)
I have a Dungeon Masters Guild account and have submitted and reviewed content.
I've had a brief chat with the creator of The Homebrewery after the software began to fail around 218 pages of writing.
I'm an active redditor and subscribe to the following subreddits:
/R/ADVENTURERSLEAGUE
/R/ASKGAMEMASTERS
/R/BEHINDTHETABLES
/R/CHARACTERDRAWING
/R/CHARACTERPROMPT
/R/DMACADEMY
/R/DMTOOLKIT
/R/DND
/R/DNDBEHINDTHESCREEN
/R/DNDNEXT
/R/DUNGEONPROMPT
/R/DUNGEONSANDDRAGONS
/R/FANTASY
/R/GAMING
/R/HEROFORGEMINIS
/R/IMAGINARYTAVERNS
/R/LFG
/R/LOREMASTERS
/R/RPG
/R/TABLETOPMASTERS
/R/UNEARTHEDARCANA
/R/WORLDBUILDING
/R/WORLDPROMPTS
I'm active on RPG Stack Exchange and frequently ask and answer questions relating to D&D and other games I understand.
I have an EN World forum account and spend some time on the D&D forum. I have also shared my homebrew content through their uploads service.
I have an RPG.com account and spend time on their D&D board.
I have a Gaming Den account, but I'll admit I only lurk. Those people scare me.
I hang out on 7chan/tg/ and 4chan/tg/
I even browse Giant ITP when I feel nostalgic!
I am an active member on D&D Beyond. (A service provided by WotC which is currently in open beta)
I've been around and am around, a'ight?
The Problems
OK, so the issue I see with all of this activity is that most of it acts like an island. Sure, there's some random overlap between user base of the communities, but the creative output of each community is often land-locked and otherwise inaccessible.
Some of these communities have no effective archival system, making it frustrating to try and go back to find old creations.
Some of these communities, for whatever reason, don't like each other much, and so do not communicate well.
Some of these communities, due to their relative isolation, are redundantly providing duplicate services or products.
We are fragmented, disorganized, divided... inefficient.
My Idea
I want to make a news aggregating website that will unify the online D&D gaming communities. I want to maximize the mobility of everything that is good from each community, to try and spread the awesome as far as possible.
My initial thought is a blog, where I find "reporters" from each of the major groups and give them limited access to post regular reports of cool stuff. Maybe go to producers like Matt or BaBGM and just give them direct access to promote their work.
However, such a blog would rapidly become unnavigable.
Then I thought maybe a wiki with a main page that shows the most recent reports, and separate pages that show a history of each reporting line, accompanied by pages which sort past reports by content.
But a wiki is rather difficult to control, it is anarchic and disorganized by nature, and runs the risk of becoming a community in its own right. I don't want to make a new community, I just want to facilitate the expansion of user base overlap between a large group of related communities.
So whatever I do, I'd have to write it from scratch and find a cheap server to host the thing. At its best, the D&D Hub should be a conduit connecting as many minds as possible. I don't want a computer just dumping links to most active topics. I want real minds sharing what they love most about their community with the world.
I'd also like a section which reports news from major services and products, like WotC, Fantasy Grounds, etc, and a section dedicated to accumulating links to awesome online resources.
Preferably, it should be something extremely minimal and simple.
Well, I'm going to post a link to this on all the communities I frequent and see what people have to say. If nothing else, I know I'll need help to do this. I cannot actually be everywhere at once.
