The Future of Lorecall

We hit pause recently on Lorecall development, but I want to be clear: this doesn't mean we're done thinking about Lorecall as an online tool for coordinating and managing games, nor does it mean we're done developing it. In fact this blog is part of a new strategy for Lorecall as a whole.

I want to gradually release Lorecall to our audience by providing continual value that meets the highest possible standards of quality. If Lorecall just sits as a landing page telling people the service is coming soon for months on end for the majority of visitors, this doesn't serve our end goal. We want to generate name recognition and create a presence that is credible and well respected among the community. As part of those efforts, Lorecall will begin to focus more on content, and not just the games and chronicles that players will eventually create via the service, but also blog articles, podcasts, and more!

By creating content that interests visitors, we hope to build a community around Lorecall even before the service becomes available to the public.

Our road map for a new and improved Lorecall (without dates) looks something like the following:

1. Launch the Lorecall marketing site and blog (if you're reading this, we've successfully accomplished this task!).
2. Integrate user authentication with the Lorecall application.
3. Release the community forums as an independent service.
4. Release an open beta of the Lorecall platform.

The blog is intended to entertain, provide insight and updates, as well as be a resource for players and story tellers alike. I'm not only working on Lorecall, there are a number of related efforts, including a campaign setting which I plan to begin releasing articles about later in the year. I also want to share the journey we've taken, our decisions on the technology we're using to build the service and why those decisions were made, for better or for worse. As we grow, I want to share those experiences with our visitors to encourage others to pursue their dreams and their passions, no matter how daunting the task might be.

Recently I also began considering some of the games I've run as well as played in over the past few years. I often took copious notes in the games that I played in, but recently began recording the sessions. I may go back and try my hand at editing them to produce a podcast series.

All of this is in service of providing new and varied content on Lorecall.

Once the blog is up and running, we're going to look at continuing development of Lorecall's back end (Symfony) and front end (React) solutions. This is going to be an ongoing effort but we'll focus on integrating Lorecall's user management, authentication, and authorization pieces with the blog. This will allow users to log in to the site and maintain their user profile—even if they can't do much more than that.

After we've got the authentication and authorization pieces integrated, we can begin work on releasing the community forums which were embedded into the Lorecall application during alpha-phases of development as a separate service that can be accessible outside of the application.

Our goal is to build a community around Lorecall and associated products first, because a service like Lorecall lives and dies by its content and user community. We want to serve you great content while also providing an amazing platform for you to tell your stories on.