Kickstarter Project Brainstorming

Recently a friend of mine announced a Kickstarter project and raised a lot of funds. It got me thinking...Star Army could do that, on a smaller scale. So I'm putting some feelers out here: If you wanted to get Star Army to do a project for the community, what would it be? And what would some good rewards for donators be?

Here's a few ideas I've been brainstorming:

- More Star Army patches likes Gartagen and Iroma ones
- Hire a web designer to build us a character/inventory management system of some sort?
- A large art project of some sort, such as the addition of a new faction that would be fully fleshed out in advance as an "expansion pack" to the SARPiverse
- A book version of SARP
- An art book
- Commission an actual SARP novel
- Purchase of rights to use a popular RPG stats system(?)
- Professional website redesign
- Commission a flash-based character art generator
- Illustrate an existing faction that could use more art (e.g. Neshaten etc)

Note: Projects cannot be ongoing things, they have to have a start and an end.

I'd start with small stuff first I think just to get a feel for things. I want to know your thoughts and ideas.

That would be, in my mind, just a more transparent way of asking for donations.

A lot of those ideas fall flat to me. Few truly actually seem like they would be effective in carrying out the "raison d'etre" of the site, which is our roleplay. More like lateral additions to SARP to make it something more than just our roleplay... but such ventures might not really feel more than satisfying in a temporary fashion since it's... not really the point of why we are here.

But, if you want to invest in a feel-good extravagance... how about ordering 3d Star Army ships? There's a online service called "ShapeWay" that prints 3d models submitted to it. Here are a few examples:

http://www.shapeways.com/model/639494/u ... material=6

http://www.shapeways.com/model/639491/u ... aterial=60

http://www.shapeways.com/model/725856/u ... Box-search

...beats patches, novels I can already read online, and artbooks to me. Web design works fornow - why fix what's not broken? Donations are already used for extra art, no need to focus more than that. SARP is a freeform roleplay,so,no use for an RPG system.

But, yeah, most of everyone likes ships. Being able to have your own Plumeria in your room ought to interest people far more than patches, right?

I disagree. Sure, a ship model would be nice, but only people that got one would be able to enjoy it sitting there. If we got art, for example, then that would be something everyone who visits the site could enjoy. Rewards could include signed prints and such. Or a character creator would be useful to newbies for years to come.

Hey, your kickstarter project. You asked to brainstorm, I just provided my input. I don't care for a lot of what's listed, since it has next to no value to me. But 3d ships sound like a nice vanity item.

Aendri mentioned an idea on our Facebook that was interesting:

I'd love to see some money put towards one of Luca's games for our setting. As it is, he makes good stuff.

Click to expand...

A Character Creator would be super-fantastic to me. This wouldn't be the first time I've said something like this and; while I'm not entirely sure who came up with the idea first, I know I'm not the only one who's voiced that opinion over the years.

That said, a Character Management system would be pretty neat! The problem with it is that I can't imagine what features would provide anything more than a minor convenience. But I do love the idea of SARPware of some sort.

Now, that said-- I would totally dig a little plastic ship to hoof around in my roof. There are dressers and desks out there that could use a little conversation piece. There is an issue with using Third-party production companies like that. Wes has Trademarked the Star Army name, and made official ownsership of the assets public knowledge by notifying the US Government of these things. You would say, "Well, he owns it-- he can do whatever he wants with it!", but for third party production companies it's not that simple. You have to arrange licensing at this point-- something these little online dupe-houses usually aren't willing to do cheaply.

A video game would be neat. Super neat, even. I'd be willing to work on that project myself. You guys need a voice actor? (That's all I can offer, I'm afraid. Otherwise I'm a useless, talentless asshole.) The endless discussions over genre and mechanics, though, would probably make the project die... :< Still, it's SOFTWARE, which as I mentioned before, makes me feel super-excited.

I really think the best thing to do is just save up donations and use them primarily for paying the site fees since no one would have a problem with that. No need to rush to spend. Tempting things will appear on their own.

The donations are for our regular expenses. We don't really get enough to do special projects without a Kickstarter. Plus a Kickstarter has a chance, if we do it right, of getting donations from people outside the site. Kickstarter allows us to float projects we might not be able to do normally. If there's not enough raised for them, no money changes hands. And if the goal is met, we'll have the necessary funds to complete it. In this way it eliminates a lot of the risk.

Something like what Luca is working on is what I'd be interested (and could contribute a bit with my models) it would also be a great way of advertising SARP (and content for it could be treated as the roleplay develops, similiar in practice to how Defiance is going)

However, I do think that having Kickstarter span into other areas, such as improving upon our website (there is always room for improvement) and making it more streamlined than it already is would be a great idea.

There is a lot that a kickstarter project can potentially do for the site, it's figuring out what might work. I do feel a game can help us out, but streamlining our website to make it easier on new players and perhaps even easier to understand is a major plus.

I will confess - I haven't had many opportunities to work on my game development skills since University got started again and since I begun going to work - so I am a little rusty, and I think my skillset is a bit limited!

And if I'm commissioned to have a go at this, I can't do it entirely alone. I'd need help from people here to contribute things like spritesheets, art, ideas, sound, music and perhaps programming. (We won't worry about the story too much - we're not Mass Effect - let's focus on making making an awesome game first)

Luca, id love to help.,

Not everything needs a Kickstarter. I think it's getting a bit out of hand, really.

If you're looking for something that will get donations outside of people who already know about SA, I don't think it will work out. There's not much here to interest someone not involved.

I think something like that will only work if we are providing something that will also benefit people who do not RP here. If you had an interesting game concept that people would like playing, that happens to take place in the SA universe, perhaps.

Otherwise, the only way you could really get people to buy into something they don't participate in is to involve someone that is well known. For example, a SA novel written by a cult favorite author or a SA RPG system/module created by a famous geek.

If you're looking to get donations from us regular SA users, for something that will benefit us, just take donations. Not everything needs to have a Kickstarter.

I'm of the same mind.

I think notions of turning SARP into some videogame, a novel or a tabletop game is unrealistic. People will scoff at me, think I'm just being a downer or that I'm being contrary, and not realize that I actually had training and past experience in the context.

For one, I've professionally trained as a videogame designer, modded games like Neverwinter Nights, Bridge Commander and Skyrim, participated in the videogame industry for several years before I decided to reorient myself toward networking for better pay/job security.

The other point is how before SARP I was for years involved in another roleplay setting whom tried to develop both as inspiration for videogames, and tabletop gaming. That amounted to small cellphone games that didn't quite succeed and a series of tabletop books... but how much you have high esteem of something doesn't mean it will succeed.

If this ends up being a Kickstarter, you're free to dream, you're free to have your flights of fancy. It's your money. But for most of the successful stories on Kickstarter, the reality is that most fail. I've the very great impression that this community - despite its high opinion of itself - is really too casual about whatever 'thinking big' project it might hatch, attempt to get involved into such and end up being 'butthurt'. Since real money will be involved, it might also strain some relationships too.

If you want to invest effort in something, there's something much closer within SARP that's been neglected and never completed: the starmap cluster revamp. It's much closer to home, it still needs to be done, and it's been kind of just languishing there. Since we're a space setting, it'd surely benefit the majority of our plots and partly also our site's image and would hardly be superficial.

One could argue that if that starmap couldn't even get completed in years, what hope would you have of pulling off something bigger?

Well, maybe we could get a map system designed where planets are click-able and take people to the wiki page for them. The project would entail finding a space art/mapmaker artist and commissioning him/her and a web design/programmer to do the map implementation.

Mmm.... finishing off the cluster map is something I would love to see, considering that we are in need of a new map system. Something along the lines of google and is easy to update. Being able to put more fine details into the map.

The simplest fashion to do so would be to use software like photoshop to 'slice' the image into a mosaic of smaller images, and certain of those slices could actually be URL link images. That's the crudest way in which it can become possible.

It might be 'simplest', but I'm not sure it'll be efficient. It'd be time consuming, for one, and will require a lot of organization to keep those hundreds of little pictures straightened out. The sheer number of small mosaic images might end up being very easy to confuse, making updating also difficult, and the process error prone.

A more elegant method could be to have a single large picture and resort to code which will basically say "If you click between x1/y1 and x2/y2 coordinates, go to this URL". If your base image stays the same size, it'll be a simpler matter to update said image with new stuff, and additional coordinates URL can be provided with each of those updates.

That's one I know exist and doesn't go so far as involving something more advanced like flash. Kind of like this:
http://www.elated.com/articles/creating-image-maps/

I've made imagemaps before (the old Yui site had them, actually) but I would want something more advanced that would be more interactive with popup system names and the ability to scroll the map.

Y'know, looking at your papers and experience running this site, I kind of expected you already did. Sorry for the redundancy. I just figured there was a way to already cover most of the needs without needing to pay much for it.

Now, truth be told... I'm fairly happy that a map revamp looks like something that'd be worth doing. I figure some cool functionality could be added with the a better sense of scale and programming. Like, for example, being able to determine distances between two points and even computing the time it would take to cover said distance at X speed.

My concern lies in how to update said map. If a professional artist is commissioned, few things us users will be able to make will match that quality and it'll look incongruous. It's not just a matter of only making it, but also upkeep. Same thing for a web programmer: if it's too out of our reach, we can't expand on it without being dependent on another 'specialist'.

Is it really worth it? It seems, right now, that we have the ability to make one big map and tie its star clusters to imagemap links. Once on those cluster pictures, we could use image maps to view specific systems. That'd serve most of our purposes and expand on our starmap in ways which... it simply doesn't have even now.

Compared to present standards, it'd be pretty good. Even better: we could easily update it.

A Kickstarter usually involves two groups: creators and consumers. Creator puts up a Kickstarter, consumers buy into it. Reward? What the creator was making.

Artists are lucky in that they have varied creations and "artistic refuse (n)" they can use as rewards along with the product they're Kickstarting. Lexxy had that with Cloud Factory.

We do not. A Kickstarter for SARP means a third party: us. Creator, consumer, commissioner. Consumers could buy into our commissioned project, but why would they? They don't benefit from the end outcome. Even if we assume some do, just for the rewards we might offer, who outside of us will care for the rewards? I would find it dishonest of us to put up such a project on Kickstarter.

If you skip Kickstarter, and create our own little financing drive for a special project, it needs to be something that benefits everyone. Which sounds great, but what do we really need? A map might be nice, but the one we have is OK. Books? We have the wiki. Character creator or manager? We've got the wiki.

The wiki really is the big thing. Hiring someone to clean it would be awesome, because I'm lazy.

Honestly?

My idea for a project is to pay for one of two things:

• create a community ownership system for SARP,
• hire a professional GM to allow Wes to step back from running a plotship and be able to fully devote his time to thinking big when it comes to SARP. Big in the way he wants — games, music, media, etc. Do it in a way that he can sell his vision beyond just roleplay, and make it huge.

Thoughts?

Hiring a mod or GM of some sort is an interesting idea.

Making a very pretty map that links to lots of info would be nice. I think Flash/Java would be better than just images, but it would certainly make it harder to update. Perhaps we could contract the creator to do a yearly update?

I've always thought the Timeline is a bit simple, while some of the other background pages are too complex. Perhaps we could set up a really nice welcome/getting started page, with lots of art and examples of RP events, working through a timeline that leads up to where we are now? We could also include some advertising budget. Something like the Let's Play Archive ?

https://www.projectwonderful.com/advert ... 667&type=5

I know I stumbled onto some comics and other sites from there. Just as an example.