The new website's been up for a little over a month, and even though we're still in the beta testing stage, a whole lot of what we want the site to do is now up and running.
The problem is, we haven't done a very good job of explaining what the new Erfworld.com is supposed to be, so nobody has been submitting stuff or participating very much.
See, we want there to be a lot more here to read than just the comic and the stories I write. Erfworld readers have a lot in common, and something that's interesting to you might be interesting to everyone else who visits the site.
TL;DR: We want you to submit things that other fans of Erfworld might like, and we'll pay you in Shmuckers to share it. (1 shmucker = 10 cents in store credit in the Erfworld store.)
So first, we have a Community blog/stream. Over the years, we've seen Erfworld readers post a lot of funny memes, comics, and illustrations to the forums. There have been Hamstard comics and demotivational posters, Erfworld fanfics and fanon character profiles and unit types submitted to the wiki, etc. We'd like to be posting the best of these to the Community stream, so everyone can enjoy them even if they don't like to visit the forums.
An example of an Erfworld meme, just not a very good one
Second, we have a Gaming stream. This is for links to good articles and podcasts about tabletop gaming, your game reviews, stories from your campaigns, maybe character sketches, video of your game group, con reviews of gaming conventions...anything interesting that's related to RPGs, board/card games, and whatever you play around the table with friends.
Third, we have a Fiction stream, for stories related to games. This can be a fictionalized account of your favorite campaign, an Erfworld-style treatment of the "pieces" in any game world you choose, or any other short story where the theme is related to a game. This is being coordinated with the fanzine Nth Degree, which I helped Mike Pederson start way back in 2001. Mike will be reviewing and editing your submissions. The ones that go up on the site will be paid in Shmuckers, and we hope down the line to have a printed collection of the stories, for which we'll pay in actual dollars. Artists, you can also submit illustrations for stories in the Fiction stream.
So please use the "Submit a Post!" buttons on each of our content streams and give us things to post that other visitors to the site would appreciate. If we agree, then we'll make your submission an official post, and award you Shmuckers for it.
Final note: all Tools have Shmuckers now in place of Tool points. If you've got Shmuckers and you liked someone's contribution, you can send them a Shmucker or two as a tip!
Thanks everyone, and we're looking forward to your posts.