New Rewards, Improving Rewards, CONTENT.

Patrons, followers, and enemies of the realm,

A little update post about what is going to be changing with Patreon rewards, behind the scenes stuff, and content changes!

Patreon Changes Happening Right NOW

Real names/Last names:

I know a lot of people have signed up for Patreon using their real names/last names, but a few people have asked me to adjust or change their name being shouted out for various reasons, but mainly because they don't want their full identity in every video, and that's absolutely acceptable, I would do the same thing.

Going forward, to help protect peoples identities, and give a little bit of extra privacy, if people have/do sign up using their full human name, I'll read out your first name followed by a letter for distinction, just in case a couple of people with the same name sign up. For example, if you signed up as John Snowy I'd shout you out as John S. That way if you suddenly realise "Oops, I didn't think it would be my actual name!" there's no real privacy concerns or other problems there.

If there are two people with the same first name and last initial, then everything is ruined and you should be ashamed.
Genuinely though, I'll message whoever signs up last and ask them if there's a name they'd prefer me shout out, an alias/nickname/display name etc, or if they're fine going with their full name. 

Hopefully this way everyone is happy, safe, and more importantly, anonymous.

How Things Are Now 

Firstly, I want the Patreon rewards to be more consistent across the board, both with CK2 and Rimworld. Right now, I'm basing what I do on feedback that I've gotten before, changes I've tried to actively implement are as follows: 

- Non-patrons felt alienated by the focus on Patreon houses in CK2 content, so I moved them over to the second channel and dedicated additional videos to doing Patron house overview. 

- Patron houses/characters ruined the theme, or were immersion-breaking, in series that were a bit more historically focused (India, Julius Nepos Rome, Celtic etc), so I started asking for more themed names, though I'll admit I'm still very flexible on this one, especially in the fantasy series. 

- Rimworld characters were pretty uneventful, generally, we were just sticking a name on a character we had already, and that was that. Whether they lived, died, or did anything special was more down to coincidence. 

I don't want there to be a big divide between the regular viewer and Patron - I don't want it to feel like an exclusive club, however, I do feel like even the small rewards I offer are the least I can do for people supporting the channel. 

How Things Will Be Going Forward 

I'm planning on some additional little rewards for both CK2 and Rimworld, and I'll work with you all here, or over discord, if we do finally find a good third game to throw into the mix. 

CK2 Changes:

- Access to CK2 mods I create ahead of the series release - consider this a beta-tester role, and I'll set this up as a separate channel on Discord for those of you who don't mind/don't want to be spoiled. I will emphasise this is not paying for mods, or access to, or customised mods. I imagine offering any sort of paid, exclusive mod for CK2 is against Paradox's policy, and if it's not then it absolutely should be.

 My reasoning is that I trust the patron's feedback and opinions on the content ahead of time, before its general public release, because you are supporters of the channel and want it to be the best it can be. Giving everyone beta access is effectively the same as a full release, and giving it to a cherry-picked handful might have a lot of confirmation bias.

In the past viewers have had some incredible ideas I haven't thought about, or suggested some extremely good changes to previous mods. Hopefully, it'll step things up to new heights to have another set of eyes looking over these things!

To coincide with the fairness and non-exclusivity I talked about earlier, this will be available to every tier on Patreon. I'll use Discord for managing links and I'll also post links here as well for those of not in the chat room.

Rimworld Changes:

- Rimworld rewards have always been difficult, especially given we have the theming issue of CK2 but ramped up to eleven Rimworld - with the Robot series it's difficult to put any names in at all because of exactly this. We're a hive of Assimilators; seems a bit dissonant to have one called Bert, or xXitachi69Xx. My plan for Rimworld going forward is to ask Patrons what characters they want in the game, but not just in name.

I want full-on backstories, traits, stats etc (not too overpowered please!) and have the patrons show up in the game naturally, whether in trade caravans or as a fine human-leather hat. We might see you chased to the colony in an event, or in a crashed drop-pod.
Either way, it should be a lot more impactful to have recurring characters, rather than just slapping a name on someone else.

This is achievable with some fancy mods that have sort-of recently hit the workshop, and I think overall its a much nicer, and more impactful reward, for those of you Patronising who don't watch CK2.

 All of the changes mentioned above will be put into place starting January 1st!

Overall Changes:

- I'd love to go back to the monthly round-ups again on Patron. They've been put on hold as of late because of the massive amount of work three videos a day takes. During the month or so where I went back to two videos, it was pretty fun to explore other avenues like streaming, round up posts, mods like the Education/Focus/Traits mods, however when it comes to three videos a day, I have to spend all of my work time on just YouTube.

If I can find the time for these they will return, if not for the few of you interested, but for my own benefit. It was pretty nice comparing each month and seeing where things went wrong, or where they improved.

- More live-streams: I know I say this all the time, but it's so difficult to get time for these at all. Right now, we have a single office/computer room in our house, and in a short while my girlfriend will be writing her dissertation for university, so having me less than two foot away screaming about Mechanoids or Vikings is not very conducive to a good learning environment.

Next year though we're looking at moving out of the city centre to a cheaper area in exchange for an extra room, even if it's only small, for live-streaming/recording purposes.  I don't discuss it very often, but the room I record in is the same room I spend most of  my free time in, whether that's playing games, playing instruments, talking to friends over discord.

It can be pretty stifling to sit in the same room for upwards of 12 hours a day, which  is something I'd have happily have done when I was 16, playing Oblivion for hours on end. But when its the same room I work in, and do my accounting in, at the same PC getting notifications about YouTube and the R1D2 discord on, there's no work-life balance, so an extra room would be pretty damn nice to have a dedicated work-room.

Anyway, after much rambling, I'll leave this one here for today. Thank you to everyone for your continued support of the channel, the next round of VIPs will be dished out soon - I'm gonna aim to do these every couple of months!

Have a happy Christmas/holidays, but if you're like me and don't give a shit about Christmas, wrap up warm and avoid getting frostbite, don't leave the house after 10pm and, please, please, don't answer the door when she knocks.
Do not let her in.

Tales of your ho ho hos are told from Ireland to Cathay,

Mr Streamer
Roll1D2Games
Sam