Building Community
For ten solid years we have attempted to grow a community around Horseshoes & Hand Grenades. We tried forums, we tried to get people to email us, we tried forums again, we tried discussion softare, and on and on and on. Never did we get enough traction to really continue the conversation outside of doing the show on Thursday.
Here we are at roughly ten and a half years, and we FINALLY did it! Thanks to Discord and it’s permiation into the gamer market, we were able to build a community. We branded this amazing group of internet weirdos The Legion of Dorks. We even have the snazzy logo at the top of this post, courtesy of Steve Musgrave from RPGHomeBrewery.
One of our viewers, JVarhol, told us we should get one. We were skeptical at first, mostly jaded by all the years of rejection. Why would anyone want to sit on just another Slack clone? Boy, we couldn’t have been more wrong. People were already all over Discord for different games and communities. All they had to do was add our little server and BOOM, they were in.
This has really been a fantastic experience for all of us. Being able to keep in touch with the community and chit-chat about things off camera has been great, especially for me. We always seem to attract great people who generally love to hang around and share in their lives with us. Not only that, they are a constant resource for new ideas.
We have rooms for tech stuff, movie stuff, gaming, and just channels for chatting with each other. I’m really amazed at what we’ve been able to do with the app, and I’m flattered by everyone who comes in to hang out. It really feels like the LoD has grown beyond just Ash, Jacob, and I, and has become something else entirely. Hopefully a force for good that we can utilize to do amazing things heading into the future. I’m feeling good about it.