State of the Role Play Media Network

First, what you want to hear: the Role Play Media Network will survive the July 20th Ning-pocalypse intact. The only changes we intend to make are the ones Ning might require for migration to their paid hosting scheme. Aside from that, carry on as usual.

I'd like to apologize for keeping everyone in suspense about this, but we didn't know ourselves until this morning. RPMN is an asset of UncleBear Media LLC. Because we're just starting up and we have our fingers in so many pies, from RPG publishing to producing an indie film to possibly toy manufacturing (is that not public information yet? Oops.), our focus is understandably on stuff that makes money. The Ning bombshell blew a hole in our production schedule; we have plans for RPMN, but not just yet. We discussed ways to monetize it, but we're not happy with those. I, personally, am not happy with those. I want it to be its own thing, not an UncleBear house organ. We could sell more advertising, there are various paid services we could add, we could beg for donations, but in the end we're just going to underwrite it for now and figure out ways to make it financially self-sustaining later.

If you do want to help, what the Role Play Media Network really needs is fresh meat for the Brute Squad. We need more moderators to approve members and bring the banhammer down on spammers. The automated anti-spam tools work great, mind you, but clever people manager to get around it from time to time and need to be dealt with. There's a thread on the RPMN forum where we're recruiting. If you want to chip in a few bucks for costs, there's also a donation tab, but we're not actively begging for cash.

As for the future... stay tuned.