OSRToday Says Goodbye to Tomorrow - Site is Winding Down

Earlier today I spoke with +Jason Paul McCartan and he informed me he will be winding down the OSRToday website. It is very upsetting news for me. Jason is a dear friend and OSRToday is the homepage on my browser and the site I most often go to in search of OSR news.

The sad reality is that running an updated and informative website with creative content, news and all the things between is time consuming. When you need to decide how best to allocate that time to put food on the dinner table for your family, decisions like this, no matter how painful and disappointing, are inevitable. Few have the luxury of a government pension to allow for creativity (or whatever you call The Tavern's postings) at less than minimum wage in return for the effort.

Jason hinted that The Tavern may need to pick up the slack that the loss of OSRToday will have on the community. I know there are regular features at OSRToday that may need a new home and I'll be in close contact with Jason over the next few weeks to see what can be done.

Just like OSRToday, The Tavern is mostly a one man show. I have some amazing partners in crime that contribute when they can, but the reality is they need to put money on the table too. I'm not like some other site that can pay folks to fish the internet for press releases.

I was already working on plans for the future of The Tavern. The loss of OSRToday is huge but perhaps we can minimize the loss by integrating some of it's goals here.

OSRToday is winding down operations. 

Starting something is always exciting and filled with challenges, but the challenges don’t stop when something has been running for a while. Sometimes they lessen and sometimes they intensify, ebbing and flowing. Usually the challenges don’t come from the something itself but from other things that press upon it. 

OSRToday finds itself in that position right now due to a number of factors. It’s mostly been a one-badger operation from its launch (with the awesome support of contributors such as Glynn Seal), and it was always intended to grow and develop and be not only a community resource pointing to other content, but to provide original content too. The time and resources to develop it haven’t been truly available, and due to circumstances out of my control, those aren’t going to be available going forward. The amount of time, effort, energy, and other factors it takes to maintain and operate OSRToday outweighs its performance in a number of areas, and it make more sense to apply that to other areas of InfiniBadger Press’ product portfolio that have better returns and performance. 

You can read more at of today's announcement at the OSRToday site.

Contest - OSRToday Turns Two, Win Two Classic Books

+Jason Paul McCartan , AKA The Badger and well known as my partner in crime, is celebrating the 2nd anniversary of his RPG News website, OSRToday.

Pssst! And he's has a contest to give away free loot.

What kind of loot?

Tunnels & Trolls loot, signed and personalized by +Ken St. Andre himself.

How might you come into possession of such sweet loot?

Here's the details from OSRToday:

On June 18th, 2016, OSRToday turned two years old, and to celebrate it we’re going to run a contest to celebrate. The prizes for the contest are listed below:

1st Edition Tunnels & Trolls & Saving Fang From The Pits of Morgul 

In the picture above, you can see reproductions of the 1st Edition of Tunnels & Trolls [AL] and Saving Fang From the Pits of Morgul [AL], the first full solo adventure for the 1st Edition of T&T . Both of these have been signed by Ken St. Andre, who very kindly personalized each of the inside covers of each of these books at Origins 2016. What did Ken write inside them? That’s a secret that will only be revealed once the competition is over and one lucky winner has received these books. 

So, how do you, our diligent OSRToday readers, get a chance to win both these books?
Simply post in the comments here on this post (at OSRToday mind you) either your first experience with Tunnels & Trolls or your first roleplaying game experience either as a player a GM, even if it’s not with Tunnels & Trolls! 

Everyone that posts at least one story by the deadline for the competition will be entered into the Hat of Potential Winners, and one lucky winner will receive both copies of the books shipped to them no matter where they are in the world, courtesy of OSRToday. The deadline to comment on this post will be midnight on July 6th, 2016, which is two weeks from when this post has gone up.

What are you waiting for? Go to OSRToday, drop a comment and get put in the running.

The Badger Asks: An OSRToday OSR Storefront?

+Jason Paul McCartan , otherwise known as The Badger, posted earlier tonight about the possibility of opening an OSR Storefront over at OSRToday

Personally, I like the idea. I know The Badger has the skills, both technical and social media wise to make this work.

As OSRToday heads towards its second birthday in June, there are some tweaks and updates coming to the site and services, including a massive server upgrade. We recently launched our Patreon to help generate new and unique content for the site, and we’re looking at getting more content (including implementing a quality review and promotion system) on the site. One thing that we’re also considering is offering an OSR-centric digital storefront for old school publishers to sell from. Much of the research for a storefront has been done already, and many key features that would make a new player on the scene successful have been identified and researched.

Competition is certainly needed in the virtual RPG storefront market and options can only be good IMHO.

I any case, Jason has the full details over at OSRToday and is looking for some feedback. Give him some!