So, 2023 is off to a rough start for me. The good news is that this means good or at least goodish things for Tavern Keeper (and its successor - Tavern).

Let’s start with where things are with Tavern. User Authentication is done; we’re using single sign-on in place of email & password authentication. Right now, that’s limited to Discord and Google, but that may get expanded. The core of Stories (a new word for Campaigns) are also there, but more on that later. We’ve added the concept of a ‘World’ or reusable setting; it’s mostly a wiki-like feature inherited by a story. So if you want to run several stories in the same world, you can without duplicating the entries. You can even make them public, allowing others to use them.

Tavern is designed not to be a place for long-term storage because storing things has a cost, and we’re aiming to drive that down, but more on that later. This goal of not keeping things forever means that Tavern will allow you to export most items so that you can store them. While the main hosted version of Tavern will now allow you to re-import these items, Tavern will be small enough to run locally or self-hosted, enabling you to import these items.

While roleplay is still core to Tavern, we’re expanding its scope with a few new features. Stand Alone characters and character search features will support roleplay in MMORPGs. The new story structure with chapters and plots will help GMs with structure and be useful for other creatives, such as writers. We also aim to have character-centric and story-centric websites as an option.

So now to the less fun portions, mainly money. The current monthly upkeep cost for TavernKeeper is at $200 - $300 a month. Thanks to our generous Patreon supporters, this is only partially on me. It often covers between 2/3 and 1/5 of the bill, depending on when the most recent ‘problem’ happened.

While I aim to keep Tavern usable for free, I’m trying my best to get Tavern to pay for itself by next year. To this end, Tavern is going to be getting a subscription; it’s going to mirror what’s already on Patreon. Without Patreon’s cut, the current supporters will go further.

The rough idea is a three-tiered subscription. The $1.50 plan targets enthusiast players, removing the limits on active characters and allowing them to advertise characters available in a ‘looking for story’ feature. The $5 plan targets Story Tellers (GM, Writer, Etc …), allows for a boost in ‘looking for characters’ feature, as well as opens up public stories. The $15 plan is superficial mainly, it will enable you to use a custom domain for any story or character websites, it allows your characters and stories to be featured on the homepage, and will get you a fancy title so the world knows you’re one of the incredible people keeping Tavern afloat.