Artwork for blog post image is Beyond by Pimsri.
Greetings PaperDemons. Today is an exciting day! I'm proud to announce that one of the largest Art RPG communities, Dracostryx, is moving from DeviantArt to PaperDemon!
DracoStryx is an Art RPG community where players draw or write stories of their Stryx characters doing everything from fishing, to bonding, to battles in order to level up their Stryx toward ascension. As their community has grown, they've been looking for a new place to help them better operate and scale their Art RPG. I was very humbled to learn that they chose PaperDemon.
Please join me in giving all of these lovely artists and writers a very warm welcome! Here's your official PaperDemon welcome basket, complete with cookies...
🍪 🌷 🍪 🌷 🍪
(Psst... don't forget to join our Discord server.)
🙈 Why is this happening?
At PaperDemon, we've been doing gamified art challenges for more than a year and I've been prototyping expansion of this gameplay to include more role-playing elements like items, spells, and battles.
When I met one of the lead admins of Dracostryx, Shyftlock, and she told me about Art RPGs, things really clicked for both of us. We both realized our groups had very similar goals and communities and had potential to complement eachother well.
🌡 Adjusting
This will be a big change for both communities. The sudden influx of new people will change the culture and dynamics. And Dracostryx members will be adapting to a new environment. Like with any big change, it will take time for all of us to adjust.
I'm confident the new members from Dracostryx will fit right in here. Both of our communities have a positive, healthy, low drama culture.
However, there's likely to be many other new members as word spreads across DeviantArt and ARPG communities. Please always report to us if there are any mishaps.
🎯 What to expect
PaperDemon is independently owned and while I do get to work on it full time, I don't have a staff of web developers like DeviantArt does which means our feature set and site reliability is limited.
But, we more than make up for that in heart and spirit ♥. We're pretty chill with a friendly mod staff. We listen and address feedback 🌟. And our focus is aligned with the ARPG community 🎲.
We're not a portfolio site and we don't intend to become one. Oh, and we don't have any of that endless scrolling bullshit anywhere on the site. Pagination buttons FTW.
🦅 What our future looks like
My goal has been for the past few years to help motivate neurodivergent artists and writers through gamification. I invision a future in which Art RPGs can operate together as part of a shared community with tools to help us run our games.
I don't want to give away too many details yet. But check out the May Developer update which outlines some of the things coming in the short term.
📚 A little about me and PaperDemon's history
If you want to learn more about me, my technical qualifications, and a little about PaperDemon's history check out this blog post.
😀 You have questions, we (maybe) have answers
We are expecting that people from both communities will have many questions and concerns. So DizzyDraws and Shyftlock from Dracostryx and I will be doing a joint livestream question and answer session. You can post your questions ahead of time and vote for the most important ones or you can join us live and ask your questions in the chat if you have a Twitch account.
June 6th, 2020
Time TBD*
👉 [POST YOUR QUESTIONS HERE] 👈
*We're still deciding on a time but will post another announcement soon with more details. If you're not able to make it, we will distribute a recording after on our youtube channel.
Below I've done a quick FAQ...
Will PaperDemon soon only be for Art RPG submissions/content?
No. PaperDemon is still an art and writing community website. Art RPGs are becoming our focus and we will definitely promote our Art RPG challenges and content but all of your art and writing is still welcomed and celebrated here, whether it's ARPG related or not, as long as it follows our site rules. Our mission to help motivate one another to become more awesome and support freedom of expression is still part of our DNA.
How does PaperDemon make money from this?
PaperDemon is and still plans to remain a free community site to anyone who signs up. DracoStryx LLC will pay a monthly fee to PaperDemon LLC to get their admin team access to special moderation tools that will help them run their game more efficiently. The players do not have to pay anything extra.
At some point in the future, PaperDemon will offer paid virtual items or content of some kind for our own Art RPG. PaperDemon and the ARPGs will always be free to play with the option to purchase premium items only if you choose.
Where can I learn more about the PaperDemon Art RPG?
Read through our Create a Character challenge to get started. You can also check out our How it Works page which describes the game at a high level, though many of the pieces have not yet been implemented.
PaperDemon just launched the very early beginnings of its Art RPG in May before we knew that Dracostryx would be joining us. We will continue to release more content for the game as it grows. Thanks for your patience!
Does PaperDemon have a groups feature?
We used to have one that kind of functioned similar to DeviantArt's where members could join a group and post their work to group folders. But due to lack of usage (which is understandable how small we've been), much of it has fallen into disrepair and it's currently slated to be removed. But a lot has changed and I'm open to rebuilding it and providing at least a simplified version of it at a later time if there's enough interest. It remains to be seen where this falls in the priority list given we've got a lot of Art RPG features to do as well.
I run an Art RPG. Can I run my own Art RPG on PaperDemon? Where can I learn more about if PaperDemon is a good fit for me to host my game?
Probably, but the partnership discussion for each individual ARPG will be different. We're just getting started on building out our feature set. Let's talk more! Email me at [email protected]
Have a question not listed?
Post your question here. If the question poll is closed, just go ahead and reply to this announcement.