On Friday, in a moment of recklessness, I hacked together a Patreon page and put it live.
What’s Patreon? It’s a platform that allows creators to ask their fans and followers for financial support.
In short, fans can become patrons of their favourite artists, musicians, writers, journalists, podcasters, or whomever. They pledge a small amount of money per month and Patreon handles all the details. This frees up the creator to create while receiving the direct support of their fans.
So, yeah, I’ve designated myself a creator and I am asking if you’ll support me in creating the Roleplay Rescue podcast. The first goal of the Patreon is to raise $10 per month with which I will be able to stop worrying about paying for this blog. Will you put $1 in the tip jar?
If yes, there’s a button on the blog, over to the right, that you can click anytime and get teleported over to the Patreon page. It looks like this:
Become a Patron!Am I really a creator?
I’ve thought about this a lot. I also posted onto MeWe about it last week – twice, actually, although my Protestant work-ethic forced me to actually delete the first post before many people saw it.
I grew up with the belief that you should only get paid for doing a “proper job”. After University, when I left home and worked for first Burger King and then Games Workshop, the mantra of my family was, “When are you going to get a proper job?” It was twelve years later, when I was made redundant from GW, that I finally started to work in a business that most other people seemed to approve of. Eventually, aged 40, I trained as a teacher.
The crazy thing is that, until very recently, I did not consider myself to be creative. I wanted to write, for sure, and I have been talking about writing since I can remember. My wife occasionally jokes about, “when you finally write your novel, and we are rich, can we… <add something she’d like to do>?” I love that she is merely joking, that she has always supported both my career choices and my hobby… but I didn’t really see myself as a creator.
When the Design Mechanism published my adventure modules, that was when I began to believe. When I saw myself as a creator. In the hiatus since then, despite submitting another contracted manuscript that remains unpublished, I began to doubt again. The podcast has changed all of that.
Is it fair to ask to get paid?
When I put the Patreon live on Friday, and after I nervously posted about it on the Roleplay Rescue MeWe and Facebook pages, I got my first four Patrons.
In my heart, I was asking myself whether – as the host of Roleplay Rescue podcast – I deserve to get paid. It’s the question I heard Amanda Palmer voice: “Is this fair?”
One of the first four Patrons, those generous folk who pledged before I’d even finished running the game on Friday night, wrote some very kind words in a message to me, which I’ll share anonymously:
You don’t give yourself enough credit, and I hope that more people chance upon your podcast.
Patron X
That person is right. I don’t give myself enough credit. And I don’t, at heart, feel very confident about asking for money. I was never a terribly good salesman. But here’s the thing: creators get paid. Or, at least, I’ve always believed they should be.
What’s Roleplay Rescue worth?
That’s the question. And I don’t know the answer. But I want to find out.
The podcast will always be free.
There are currently no “rewards” offered to Patrons. I don’t want to offer things I can’t, in all conscience, deliver on – I barely have time to do the podcast itself, let alone promise any extras. But I can promise to keep writing, recording, and editing episodes that call people back to the roleplaying games hobby. And I can promise to keep recording my GM’s Journal.
That said, I have started to fiddle around with the community features on Patreon. There’s a cool feature in the Patreon app, called Lens, that allows me to upload photos or short (15 seconds long) videos to share the creative moments. If you have the Patreon app, you can view these snippets.
I’ve also decided to rummage around in my Dropbox and share unused gaming materials that would otherwise go to waste. The first thing I posted (yesterday) was a map of the Ice-Rivan Realm rendered beautifully by Joseph Vandel back in 2014. It seems a shame not to share it. Patrons, you can get this stuff by way of a random thank you.
So, what do you think? Is my blog worth $1? Is the podcast worth a little more? If you like what I do, then please come and support me. I’ll use the money as a gauge of my creative value and as an encouragement to keep going.
Become a Patron!When the creative doubts strike, when my mind accuses me of being an imposter, I can look to the Patrons and remind myself: you are a creator and there are people who want you to keep creating.
Game on!
