Planbeast News - March 2010

Welcome to the first issue of the Planbeast newsletter! This is the web version; if you'd like to get these newsletters in your mailbox as well, visit your account preference page and check the "Mailing List" checkbox.

OMG, Users!

February was quite a month for Planbeast! Chief hacker Jason McIntosh posted about it to GeezerGamers, a web forum for grown-up Xbox Live players. Next thing we know, Planbeast received the largest influx of new users it's ever seen. Which is to say, Pleanbeast received an influx of new users!

While Planbeast has quietly existed on the web for a whole year, we haven't done much to promote it before this winter. We're very excited at the reception it's got after just one forum post. Welcome aboard, everyone!

Repeating Ourselves

Did you know that you can set a Planbeast event to repeat? It's a new feature we added just last week! The option appears in the event editing screen, both for brand-new and existing events. You can set events to repeat daily, weekly, or monthly. (Or every N days, weeks, or months, if you desire.)

When an event repeats all the users and comments that were attached to it magically carry over. This allows you to join an event once, and then easily stick with it through the future. It also means that any conversation among that event's players will stick around, which should prove quite useful for regularly scheduled gaming meets!

Help us grow

Planbeast is the kind of web-based service that gets more useful as more people start using it. The best way that you can help make the site better is simply to tell your friends about it, and invite them to join events you create.

Some of you have been going an extra mile, posting around the web about Planbeast - and that's awesome! We're also looking for people that we ourselves can approach to get the word out. Do you have a favorite game podcast, blog, or website whose audience might be interested in Planbeast? Please let us know, so that we might send them a friendly introduction.

Looking Backward

Did you know that you can take a gander at all the past events you've participated in? Just visit your history page (while you're logged in!) to see a summary of all the one-time events you played in that have come and gone. It also shows you each event's most recent comment, if there is one, and you can revisit the event's page and continue the conversation there.

Note that this list is strictly for over-and-done events; repeating events with future dates don't show up here.

Looking Ahead

The next major feature we'd like to see is the ability to easily post notification of events to your Twitter stream or Facebook wall. Look for this magic to appear sometime in April; we'll note on on the blog and forums once it does.

In the meantime, you knew that Planbeast had a Twitter feed, right? All new public events, plus the occasionally tweet-sized news blurb, appear at http://twitter.com/Planbeast.

We'll be at PAX!

Both Jason and Zarf will be at the Penny Arcade Expo in Boston later this month. We won't be there under any official Planbeast or Volity banner, but feel free to come look for us within the Interactive Fiction event track. (See http://ifwiki.org/index.php/PAX_East_2010 for the schedule, which isn't part of the official PAX proceedings.)

TTFN

Whether or not you manage to stumble across us in person, we'd love to hear what you think about this newsletter or Planbeast in general. Please write us at info@planbeast.com.