Okay, the topic line might be a little misleading, but while I was driving into work today I saw a Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone billboard.

Suddenly the thought stuck me ... I type the word "Sorcerer's" about a hundred times a day ... what is the likelyhood that newbie Harry Potter fans will find themselves onto this site? :confused: :wizard: (need a smily for that one Tal ;) )

Imediately my Salesman Mind thought .... we could put a link to the Harry Potter books on the front page so that Tal can rake in the dough :money:

Then I thought .... I don't want a million Harry Potter threads on here. What are Harry Potter's stats; Why can Harry Potter beat up Irenicus; How come my Sorcerer can't have a white owl familiar .... you get my point.

So, what should we do? Batten down the hatches and put a big, "NO THIS ISN'T A HARRY POTTER FAN SITE!" label? Or we could say, "You like Harry Potter .... You'll Love Minsc & Boo!" with an animated hamster riding the owl into the Books section ....


A similar situation happend to a small software firm called Survivor. They registerd www.survivor.com (http://www.survivor.com) (see note below before clicking that link!) five years ago ... long before the hit "reality TV show" was on CBS. Unfortunately millions of people hit that site looking for the skinny on the lying, cheating, stealing, beloved heros of American Pop-Culture seaking their 15 minutes of fame. The software business ground to a halt until the made the following decision (cut directly from their site) ...
http://www.survivorsoftware.com/ is the URL for the Survivor Software web site for now. Because of the huge volume of people looking for information about the Survivor TV show, we moved the software web site while the show is running. We will move it back after the show goes away. We have no idea when that might be, so in the meantime, we suggest that you bookmark the new URL. It will always work, even after the show's gone (if it ever does go away...).
We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused our customers.


- Mike Farmer, President of Survivor Software

****
BEWARE: if you go to survivor.com you'll find out that Mike Farmer is profiting off this, and you'll get a couple million pop-up adds (consider yourself warned)

Well it could happen but Harry Potter has so much of it's own terminology that it probably won't.

It's more likely the kids know the correct words to look up and Sorcerer is too general for them. :p

Saw the film last night and it wasn't bad. Good clean fun for the kids and Robbie Coltrain's character was laugh from start to finish. 'Now I shouldn't have told you that'.

It was or is a funny thought Math. But it won't cause problems. Survivor got in trouble cause they had the SAME name. If Tal had chosen to have the nickname "Harry Potter" then we might have been in "trouble". But.. I'll eat my old hat if Tal takes that name. :) :p :D

Well the problem that this site is not about fantasy. It is a D&D site, about D&D and D&D based games. So that can be an argument for Tal to say NO. I say this is an option start concentrating on more parts of Fantasy.

Sorcerer's Place then becomes interesting for more people, also for Harry Potter-fans and Tolkien fans. Why not a forum for fantasy book sor a main Fantasy forum? Why D&D only when you can get more visitors for you have more variety on your site? Tal, you should really think about this.

I posted this 99% joking, 1% curious, but a word to all of you who think this is only an AD&D site ....

If you vote for Sorcerer's in the NWN Top 10, you'll see a new SP Banner with the lable, "Your Finest CRPG Resource" ... hmmmm .... could changes be afoot?

There wasn't enough room to put anything more on the banner so "finest CRPG resource" did just fine.

As for fears of Harry Potter fans toplling the site, forget it. The stream of people coming to SP is highly focused, based on the links from other similar sites to ours and on search engines. Which all list a description of the site as well, not just the name.

Plus, the original title of the book is Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. It's only Sorcerer's in USA.

As for what Headbanger is trying to say... Haven't you noticed that there are many topics about non-AD&D books in Whatnots? That's because Whatnots is "For posts that do not fit anywhere else, comments, remarks and generally debating the meaning of life stuff™. Non-(A)D&D fantasy books are discussed here as well."

Straight from the forum description text. Of course a separate forum just for books wouldn't be a bad idea either, but I don't think book topics are so numerous here that we'd desperately need a separate forum for it.

[This message has been edited by Taluntain (edited November 09, 2001).]

But why not an additional forum for main fantasy? The amounts of posts in a board isn't interesting..... Important is that you know where to find topics you are interested in. Now when someone visits this place for the first time, he sees all game boards...and whatnots. Well, maybe whatnots then. But there he/she finds so many topics that are not about where he wanted to talk about... maybe somewhere is a book-topic but most he cannot find for it's no top 20 topic anymore. When he sees a book-forum, he can go there and find topics he is interested in wich he wouldn't have found on whatnots. Then he will like the place and stay, and that way you can get much more users.

There is PLENTY of stuff for us "regular" user Headbanger.. :)

I say we change the name of SOrcerer's Place to: "The Quidditch Court" or "The Muggle Barn" or something catchy like that. Capitalizism at its finest!

Please, no Harry Potter! The book are occult and lead to spiritism! :p

Wonder what those fanatic priests would do if they knew about AD&D CRPG playing :).

Nah, you won't be seeing any Harry Potter fans around here, Their parents will type in the AOL keyword for them and AOL will nicely scoot them to Harry Potter Land.. Unless...
Unless...
Unless we destroy AOL first MUAHAHAHAHAAAA

Headbanger, define "main fantasy". I'm not quite sure what do you mean by that.

I'll help you out with AOL linael.(i absolutly hate using it!:flaming::flaming::flaming::flaming: )

I do agree that there is not much chance of to many harry potter fans showing up. Plus I think they would get the picture if they looked around the site alittle. they aren't all stupid you know :hahaerr:.

[This message has been edited by jack-of-all-trades (edited November 11, 2001).]