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Merry Monday folks!

*HUGS* and hopes from all of us at Rusty Towers for everything being as well as it can be in these difficult times. It’s been rather a busy week and weekend here at Rusty Towers. Between the launch of Season 5, Virtual Horror Con (VHC) and RQ Streams, plus all the other things going on in the background, there’s been a lot to enjoy of late. Thank you so much to everyone who tuned in and/or donated to VHC - the convention managed to raise nearly $8000 for the WHO COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund!

As we’ve said before, we’re not going to let the current situation stop us from making shows and improvements to the company to keep us going and growing. Your ongoing support for us here means so much because it allows us to do just that. So, I’d like to joyously announce the newest member of the crew at Rusty Towers - please join me in welcoming Suzanne King! Suzanne comes aboard as our new Head of HR and member of the Senior Leadership Team, bringing with her a wealth of administrative prowess to help organise the company.

Talking of the Season 5 launch, wow - that went amazingly! Thank you so much for the love and overwhelming response to the show returning - we even made it to #1 trending on tumblr in just over an hour of the public release on Thursday, and the spoiler channels on our Discord were buzzing. We hope that with your interest and enthusiasm, we can propel the show even higher to help send it off in style!

For those who may not have seen, Ian from Gehenna Gaming interviewed Alex & Jonny about The Magnus Archives for VHC, the recording of which is available here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/583994074 (please note there are spoilers about previous seasons and some hints as to Season 5).

So, onto the main topic of what I want to talk about today - the long-awaited changes to Patreon. For the longest while, we have been talking about changes that were coming or that we were hoping to make. In doing so, we attracted some perfectly valid criticism about the way things were going and the time it was taking to make changes. For that we can only apologise.

It has been a hard road to work out exactly how we could make things better here and provide the rewards we want to give you in a manner that was effective and sustainable for us to do so. Part of that has been spent trying to find the right people with the right talents and knowledge to plan & oversee this project. And that search hasn’t been without its surprises, pitfalls and false starts, plus some fairly large changes to the editing team, as crew moved on and we needed to train up the new folks. Also, the current situation has affected a plan that was almost ready to go, requiring a few further changes to ensure it lines up with our new working practices.

But now we believe that we have the necessary persons and procedures in place to start overhauling our offering here and bring you more for your support & loyalty. Naturally, this is a work-in-progress kind of situation as we see what is working in reality, so please bear with us in the event that we need to make tweaks as we’re going. Also, this is a phased approach we are taking - expect to see new things crop up as we go through the year.

So, what are we doing? Here are the key points for Phase 1:
- more content for all reward tiers, including Rusty Citizens;
- improved clarity about what rewards are available at each tier;
- declassifying older rewards to share with lower reward tiers;
- defined release schedules for reward content;
- confirmation that Freaks’ Rollcall will be available to all three tiers;

This may seem like an awful lot and very ambitious, and you’d be right to think so. However, part of overcoming problems that we faced getting to this point, was to make sure that the editing team has the capacity and skill to support this, that show producers are properly briefed and that we are making the most of the time our crew spend in (and out) of the studio.

This means, there will be at least one piece of reward content every week, starting this week. Of these, Rusty Nobles will get all reward content that we put out, and a minimum of two pieces a month will be Noble specific. Similarly, a minimum of two pieces a month will be specific to Rusty Knights (and Nobles). In addition, there will be at least one piece of reward content for Rusty Citizens each month. Our aim is to put reward content on a proper scheduled footing and not the ad hoc basis it has been to this point.

With that comes the decision to declassify some of our older reward content and share the goodness with new folks, as well as help smooth out the schedule. What we will guarantee is that all new content that is specific to a given supporter tier will remain exclusive to that tier (and higher) for a minimum period of one year. After that we may release it to lower supporter tiers or make it public.

We will always make it clear when rewards have been declassified, and we have a new tagging system on Patreon whereby all reward content now has a tag for the level it is at, as well as being specified in the title as to the lowest tier that has access to it. This coupled with new content channels in a Patreon-specific section of the Discord should also help clarify where folks can talk with their fellow Patrons about it. In tandem, and inspired by work done by some fans, we are going to be putting a content link page on our website to make it easier to find our reward content (because the Patreon search functions are still rudimentary at best). Expect that to go live soon at http://rustyquill.com/patreon-content-explorer/

As for what will be available to each supporter tier, here is what we are planning for - and the actual backer descriptions on Patreon will be updated today. As a reminder, we unfortunately had to remove the name shoutout for Knights & Nobles as of 13th March 2020. We have started work on making sure that everyone who was eligible up to that date gets their shoutout on all shows.

Rusty Citizen
- A weekly Patreon newsletter (i.e. this)
- Access to Patreon Exclusive Podcast, Freaks’ Rollcall
- Art, Artist & Writer showcases (details coming soon)
- Discord rewards (specific #citizens-content channel)
- Declassified Knights & Nobles Content (e.g. Rusty Bits) as it becomes available

Rusty Knight
- Everything at Citizen tier
- Name credit on the RQ website
- 24hrs early access to ad-free episodes
- Rewards including: Extra Q&As, bonus RQGaming adventures, Rusty Bits, Trexel’s Horrible Histories, David’s Fact Corner, Fluff competition winners
- Declassified Nobles Content as it becomes available
- Discord rewards (specific content channels for discussion)

Rusty Noble
- Everything at Knight tier
- Rewards including: Martin’s poetry, show bloopers, Deluxe TMA transcripts, RQGaming character sheets, show background material, What the Ghost? episodes
- Discord rewards (specific content channels for discussion) and access to Discord Live events (exclusive AMAs, chats/games with crew)

Whilst we are looking to increase the number of general community activities taking place during this time which may include access to crew outside of Patreon channels, I am specifically looking to improve and schedule regular Discord Live events which proved popular last year, and which will be exclusive to Rusty Nobles. More details available on this soon.

Obviously this is a lot of information, and there will no doubt be changes as we tinker with things, but we hope that you’ll find these changes to your liking and bear with us as we implement things. If you have any questions or issues you’d like to raise, please feel free to put them in the comments below or send me a message privately.

And, here's what you can expect from us this week (all shows release at 4pm UK time, unless otherwise stated):

Tue 7th April
RQG 5E Special - 4Thought, Part 4 (Patreon)

Wed 8th April
MAG162 - A Cosy Cabin (Patreon)
RQG 5E Special - 4Thought, Part 4 (Public)
RQ Streams - Anil plays... West of Loathing, Part 3 (5pm) 

Thu 9th April
STL043 - Detectives and Detonations (Patreon)
MAG162 - A Cosy Cabin (Public)

Fri 10th April
Nobles Bonus - Deluxe Transcript: MAG011
Knights/Nobles Bonus - RQG Sidequest: Exploration, Part 1
STL043 - Detectives and Detonations (Public)

Sat 11th April
RQ Streams - Anil plays... Gone Home (3pm GMT)

Sun 12th April
RQ Streams - Sandbox Sunday: Trivi-Anil Pursuit - Rusty Quill Quiz (2pm GMT)

Have a great week all!

Anil
Community Manager