Hi all!
We are now one month since opening up subscriptions for Romancing Jan and 5 days from officially starting the game. We have learned so much about this game in just this short amount of time, and I would like to share with you and some of the changes we are making based on our findings. Quick info on updates and changes below, or continue reading for detailed analysis.
TDLR Summary
East Asia and Westlands Tsalagi Nation content added to World!
Elizabeth Upshur hired as a full member of the team! She is an amazing contributor and will allow us to continue to grow and support our players with her creative writing and word design.
There are now 2+ Newsletters. Choose one or add additional Newsletter subscriptions to get them all. 25% shared content, 75% newsletter specific. 100 player mentions per paper. Choose yours HERE
Submit your own suggestions and content for the Newsletters HERE
We can Block players you don't want to interact with. Email gm@romancingjan.com with names of people who should be blocked for you. Review Code of Conduct here.
Want to extra support us? Donation links now available here
Newsletters We underestimated how much interest we would gain before publishing this first Society Gazette which resulted in a couple problems. Problem 1: We were processing so many new characters, that I pushed too close to my writing deadline for the Gazette and I did not give myself time to send it past our editor before publishing. Solution: We will start writing Newsletters earlier in the month, with a hard deadline of the 14th, to give time for editor pass and printing. This means that players signing up in the second part of the month might have to wait a full month before seeing their name in the paper, but they will still be able to correspond and interact. We hope the increase in quality will be worth that delay. We also have hired on Elizabeth Upshur as a staff writer to help balance time with me. She is currently focused on NPC letter writing so Athena can focus on Newsletters and other admin tasks. As subscriber numbers increase we hope we can bring in more writers to balance this load. Problem 2: Cost! We underestimated current printing costs as well as the number of pages it would take to include all of the eligible players. This means we overblew our budget of $5 per newsletter, in that we spend more than that on printing and mailing alone. Solutions: First, multiple newsletters capped at 100 player mentions per newsletter. This will allow us to keep each individual paper to 12 pages, controlling the costs and allowing us to hopefully keep subscription prices where they are. You can choose your preferred paper here. Second, we have found a vendor that will print and mail our newsletters on actual newsprint like a tabloid you might pick up in the store for less than our subscription cost. This saves us time as well as money on the mailing end of things, and should leave $1 per newsletter to pay our writers and admin costs. Third, on suggestion of one of our players we have set up a few ways that you can help offset our costs. You can subscribe to more than one newsletter. 25% of content will be the same, but the other 75% will be specific to the cohort of subscribers. You can donate supplies directly to us. We can always use paper to print out NPC letters, envelopes, stamps, and a collection of different seals and sealing wax for our NPCs. Any of that can be sent to our PO Box H Arlington, MA 02476. You can give a "tip" to our individual staff members if you feel like it. We now have kofi and follow links on our team page here. Or you can also just donate directly to Incantrix Productions to help us keep up with admin costs such as website subscriptions, editing software, etc here. We are technically a "for profit" theatre production company, so donations are not tax deductible, but this is a way to help us keep our overall costs low so more people can have access to our art. We also received feedback on readability of the Gazette and breadth of content. We feel the solutions above will solve a lot of that but we are still open to feedback as we work through these aspects. One request was for players to submit content to the newsletters! Yes, please do. We have created a form here. Submit article suggestions, letters to the editor, Advice columnist queries, Fashion plates, Artwork, poetry, short stories, etc. All of these things are found in period magazines of the time and we want these Newsletters to reflect YOU and the changes you are making to our re-envisioned world. So please send them in. They will be subject to review and approval, but we want to work with you on them. Safety and Code of Conduct Since beginning and as our community grows we have received a few requests to not interact with certain other players. This is 100% supported in our system. You do not have to interact or play with anyone you don't want to for any reason. If you have a person you need to have blocked, just send us an email to gm@romancingjan.com with the player's name and we will add them to your blocked list. This means that staff will not forward any correspondence to you from that person or vice versa. If possible, depending on your selection and the number of newsletters currently available, we can also move you into a newsletter cohort that does not involve that person. We do not need to know your reasons for not wanting to be in contact with that person. It is enough to just tell us to block them for you. Please note that this ability to block or be blocked, does not exclude a person from still needing to follow the our safety and conduct expectations in our community. If violations occur within our community we will take appropriate action to respond and remove violators as needed. World Expansion New world history has been added to the World page for East Asia including China, Japan, and Korea written by Alyssa Yeo. We also have our first content of the Westlands published! Learn about the Tsalagi Nation and some other general information about this re-imagined corner of the world written by Riana Elliot. We are so excited to see these areas of the world develop further and make their influence on British and world Society through you, our players! Thank you again for helping us get this far, and the game is really just beginning. Please continue to send feedback to us as things come up so we can continue to improve and grow. Humbly Yours, Athena Z Peters Lead Designer and Game Master Romancing Jan Team CEO, Incantrix Productions LLC