Melody [00:00]
 Welcome back to the Game Master Certification Organization's interview excerpt podcast series.  Hi, I'm your host, Melody Rainelle.  I have with me Jay and Jon from Kanka.io, the minds behind Kanka.  Kanka is a world-building and role-playing game campaign management tool.  Haven't heard about Kanka yet?  Well, they're going to be telling us all about it.  So let's get started.  One of the notable features about Kanka is just how open it is, even at the free level.  Would you like to talk about that? 

Jon [00:35]
 Uh-oh. That's an ongoing debate right now.  

Jay [00:38]
 Yeah, more specifically, the question about the free tier being much better than all of our competitors.  That's historically because Kanka started as a hobby project on paper, on book, on Google Drive, on Wikipedia, on a hosted server, and I was looking for- for alternatives and nothing really stood out to me, and I didn't want to spend money on any of these tools.  There wasn't as many options back then in 2018.  There were a few, but none of them really sparked any, like none of them inspired me to use them.  So I built Kanka from the start thinking, “Oh, this is just a hobby project that I'll  build in a week and I'll use for myself and my players and that's about it.”  And then as it grew and it grew, I was just, “Okay, I'll just add features, add features,” and money or monetization was never a focus and it was a- like, “What makes sense, what the world builders need and what feels like a artificial paywall.”  So for Kanka, we always try to focus on worldbuilding, all the aspects, they’re free and there's no paywall and then customization, visuals, high up- image uploads, like these secondary things which aren't as important when you're worldbuilding and that it makes sense as a business to be able to pay ourselves to work on this full time, it makes sense to put those behind a subscription and always worldbuilding, the core worldbuilding, be able to create as many entities, invite all your friends so they can also see your world if you're playing a RPG.  It just never, yeah, never made sense to put these artificial paywalls in place.  

Jon [02:08]
 Yeah. And I think it really sort of boils down, well, as Jay's been saying, but, you know, it boils down to the philosophy, we don't want money to be what allows you to enjoy or not to enjoy role playing games or just world building in general.  It's always been Jay's belief.  And I have to admit that I wasn't initially as sold on this as he was, but over time it’s really kind of grown on me whereby you create a certain relation with your users who appreciate what you do and appreciate that we're not here to sort of gouge them, we're really here to build something together.  And I think it sort of ties down to the community aspect of Kanka where we do feel, I do feel that we're all sort of building this together and moving forwards together.  And I think you can single out the fact that we have a very large free offering, but ultimately I think if you look at the bigger picture within Kanka, everything we do is based on a lot of community input.  So, you know, we have regular community votes, we are always, Jay and I, available to the community,  we regularly engage, we regularly talk to our users.  I get emails or private messages on a daily basis and I'm sure Jay does too.  And I think the whole mentality of Kanka is very much not just about being free, but just about that community and that moving towards together and towards a common goal, which is making the best possible version of Kanka. I don't think that there's a final point to that.  I don't think there's a point where we say, ”Okay, we're done. It's now perfect and we can stop.” I think, you know, it all ties down to the core values at Kanka and the core philosophy at Kanka.  It's not simply a question of, well, we have the best free offering on the market.  Yes, we do, but, you know, there's the why, and I guess the why is the community. 

Melody [03:57]
 Okay, great.  So what are some of your personal favorite features about Kanka? 

Jon [04:02]
 Are we talking paid or free features here or either? 

Melody [04:06]
 That is an open question, so answer it however you like best. 

Jon [04:10]
 Oh, Jay, you go first, favorite feature.  

Jay [04:15]
 So I know I sound like a broken record to those who tune into monthly live streams, but for me, the best part is clearly the community.  We have, like Jon said, monthly feature votes for subscribers who get to kind of give the direction for the month, which big feature they want to see added.  And also any user, subscriber or free user can upvote feature requests through the Discord.  And sometimes some users will come into Discord and say, “Hey, this feature improvement will make sense.”  And I'm like, “Yeah, that does make sense.”  And just 15 minutes later, build it in and then it's live.  For me, that's the best part, or the best, yeah, best part about Kanka is just constantly evolving based on user feedback, which makes sense.  So there's a particular- one particular feature, which I love, but more the whole process behind it. 

Jon [05:05]
 I, uh, I'm going to be lame and agree with Jay, but if I did have to pick one feature, which I particularly like, I think it would probably be timelines.  I'm not sure why, because I don't know that it's necessarily like the biggest one or the most used one, but it's something that I just pushed for hard a while ago and I bugged Jay a lot. And we eventually put it to a community vote and it won the community vote.  And yeah, I guess just for that, it has a special place in my heart, not so much from a sort of a user perspective, because I don't, I mean, I do use them, but not extensively, but it is something that within the context of sort of my joining Kanka and Kanka growing is something that is quite dear to me, but yeah, otherwise I think, uh, yeah, we really do sound like broken records.  The answer to everything, whenever you ask us a question is going to be some sort of variation on the community.  And I know it's not the most satisfactory answer, but I think it's just, it is, you know, part of the Kanka DNA.  We are sort of custodians of a project that is moving forwards, that is open source and where anyone's input is valued and is seen as a step forwards in the right direction.  It doesn't mean like we will always act on what some requests are because some requests aren't necessarily compatible with the overarching plan that we have for Kanka, if there is such an overarching plan, but, or some requests might be a bit too niche, that there is some sort of hierarchy in how oft- like what features we- what new features we put in place.  And there is of course some curating of the community vote items, but by and large community vote items will have been features that have been requested for a while that Jay can't put together in 15 minutes.  And that requires some sort of time, some serious time from Jay to implement, but that a bunch of users have asked us about or have requested.  And I think touching on that, while it's not a feature, I do think the other thing that I really enjoy about Kanka is everyone kind of uses it in their own way.  Like it's also why it's hard to answer the question as to favorite feature, because I think everyone has their own way of using Kanka.  Everyone uses what we've put in place differently.  And you know, like we recently redid the user interface and that's always a bit difficult, right? Because you have a majority of users that will use things, you know, a certain way.  And then you have a sizable minority.  It's not like two use cases, one, the majority, one, the minority.  It's more like one use case for the vast majority of people, well, like maybe two thirds of people.  And then a third of people who just do everything completely different, even from each other. So, it becomes difficult to do something that pleases everyone.  And I know that we saw with the latest UX changes, that not everyone was happy.  And of course, you can't make changes that will please everyone, that would be impossible and impractical.  But I think it does show that there's no one way to use Kanka.  And it's not technically a feature, but that sort of adaptability and that freedom is something that I also value quite highly. 

Jay [08:01]
 Extending on that very quickly is also we have a marketplace for our subscribers, our paying users who can create themes, which will change the way the app looks or works, some parts of the app works.  And so our community can create these different themes or different workflows to some extent.  And then other paying users can use those in their campaigns.  And that just for me is amazing seeing like people create a theme which changes the way something looks and it ends up 150 people end up using because we're trying to build a flexible product, which does a good enough job for majority of users.  And then those who really want to push it to their needs or to their specific system, if it's D&D fifth edition or Pathfinder or sci-fi, writing, whatever, there's still that possibility for someone to create a theme and then to share it with the community.  

Jon [08:51]
 Yeah, that's a very good point.  The marketplace is, I mean, I want to say it's kind of unique in the way that it works.  But, admittedly, I don't keep up to date with our competition, so I couldn't tell you exactly  whether they have similar or not similar features.  But as Jay says, the marketplace definitely allows an exchange of ideas that I think is beneficial to Kanka.  We've actually, speaking of- just earlier today, we published our first sort of Kanka-approved pack where we're trying to sort of put in place what we can call some basic packs where any subscriber could just sort of implement them in their campaign.  And it would allow world builders who want to build, I don't know, a new city, a new continent, a new kingdom from scratch, but don't necessarily have the time to just kind of plug and play as it were.  And with our basic packs, that's kind of the idea.  It's something we've been working on, or I've been working on, for a couple of weeks now, and I will continue to work on.  And it's not necessarily like a lot of original work.  It's mostly rehashed from Jay's campaign, and it will also be rehashed from my campaign.  But the idea is just that, you know, a newcomer who doesn't necessarily know how Kanka works or what the possibilities are can import sort of ready-made segments of a world so that he can either use and expand on them or at least gain a better understanding of how other users would use Kanka.  Because I know that, like, we do have other campaigns and you can kind of go through everyone's campaign; see how they work.  But I always find that to be sometimes intimidating.  We're putting more of an effort to put those public campaigns front and center, because I do think that the amount of creativity that exists within our community is astounding, frankly.  The amount of public campaigns, and some of them are quite well-developed, is impressive. 

Melody [10:34]
 Sounds like there's a lot of fantastic features on the website.  Out of curiosity, how many features do you think Kanka has? 

Jon [10:44]
 I don't know that there’s a way... Like we can take a very sort of literal answer to that and, you know, just count how many different types of entities and whatnot.  But I think, because of the fact that Kanka is so freeform and unique, and because so many people use it in different ways, I would hesitate to put like a set number on our features.  I think there are some more important than others, but unless you want a very literal answer to that question, I don't know that there is one. 

Jay [11:09]
 No, even a literal answer like, is a delete button on a relation between two entities a feature?  It could be, because you're allowed to delete relations.  We'll have users who haven't used Kanka for two months and come back and be confused because there's suddenly all these new features that they thought, oh, this would be cool to have, and they don't use Kanka for a bit, come back, and then there's suddenly these new features.  So all I can say is every time you log into Kanka, chances are there'll be new features. 

Jon [11:36]
 Out of curiosity, did you count the number of features to compare for answers, or…? 

Melody [11:41]
 No, I didn't.  We were trying to find a way to show people just how powerful Kanka is. 

Jay [11:49]
 Okay, I can have a go at it.  

Jon [11:51]
 Yeah, go for it.  

Jay [11:53]
 So it's not possible to count the features because we start off with a base, 16 or so, no, I think it's 18 now, entities, so character, location, quests, journals, organizations, families, races, items, events, timelines, maps, tags, and more, I'm forgetting.  And those are the base entities.  And then you can put relations between all these entities.  So say this character is related to this location.  So say this character's birth location is the city of Geneva, or you can go and say, “Okay, this character was born on the 17th of Marchuary,” on this calendar you created, which has a month called Marchuary.  And that can all appear on the character view.  Or you can say, “Okay, this character's description… here is a general description.  But, ah, I also have all these physical attributes, like the eyes, eye color, the color of the hair, the height, weight, uh, well, I already said age, uh, the gender, pronouns.”  You can go and say, “Okay, this character's goals are this and this, or traits or fears, like this character is scared of flying gorillas.”  You can go and say, “Okay, this character is part of a plot, is part of a conspiracy, which I don't want my players to see.”  So you'll add a note, a hidden note on this character, which only you as the Game Master will see.  You can go and have fun with maps and upload your maps and start putting markers on your map, which point to different entities in your world.  So you say, “Okay, on this map, this town, it's this location, which I've already created.”  So when you click on the marker, boom, you can see the location's description and picture and stuff.  You can go and create timelines, as Jon mentioned earlier.  So say your kingdom, early or formative years, “it was this noble person who rallied the people around them and gathered support and rose up against the people in charge before.”  And then that's one era in a timeline.  The next era is like the golden age, like they centralized power, they reformed education, medicine, et cetera.  And then there'll probably be a declining era where everything went wrong.  What happened?  Whose fault is it according to historians?  And these are all features you can- you can build in Kanka.  And it's extremely… we've created it very flexible where every entity can kind of reference other entities and you have permissions that can control if, for example, we have some campaigns with 200 users in them.  And so they can control, “Okay, users in the role Campaign One, they can see these characters and locations and players in Campaign Two, they can see this other set of characters and locations and so you can have all your whole world in one campaign, but your players, based on different roles will see different things.  These are all aspects or features you can play with in your Kanka world.  I think that covered like 10% of features. But…

Jon [14:45]
 Yeah, I mean, if we sort of boil it down, I think we can also ask a slightly different question, you know, in the mindset that Kanka in a certain way is a Wikipedia for your world.  How many features does Wikipedia have, you know?  And I think it's very hard to describe the scale of something that can ultimately expand to a very substantial size with, you know, sort of an unlimited amount of interactions between a limited or 18 or so entities.  But you combine the 18 entities with the unlimited interactions and with the fact that it will expand as you expand your universe.  I guess like if we're trying to describe the scale of Kanka, it's really whatever you want it to be, as long as you're within a realm of world building and not even necessarily only for Dungeon Masters.  But I know that we have authors who use Kanka as well.  You know, that's also a slightly different use case, but with the same or similar parameters.  And so the scale is large.  The limits are your imagination, essentially.  And yeah, there's no easy way to say that there's X amount of features.  It's about like enabling any one person to create and document a world. 

Jay [15:56]
 What Kanka can't do is world build for you, but it can set constraints so you can focus on what maybe makes more sense.  So instead of giving you immense flexibility of a Wikipedia where you can just everything is an article.  OK, then what is an article?  Is it a name?  It's text.  Kanka puts some constraints and says, for world building, these are the 18 kind of global entities we think encapsulate all the use cases and kind of give you a direction when you're world building and organizing the information to then find it later.  Because that's my problem with Wikipedia.  My own Wikipedia I had in the past is I had no structure to the way I formatted the information.  So one kingdom would have this kind of information, another kingdom would have totally different information and it wouldn't be consistent.  And Kanka will bring that consistency to your world building.  So you have the same layout and the way the information is presented will be the same.  So you'll spend less time thinking about, OK, for my locations, I need to remember to do this, this, this, because you can set it up into Kanka, like your locations.  OK, you need to remember you have an attribute for population.  What kind of major rivers flow through?  What kind of the main economy is based off?  You can kind of set these templates up in Kanka, which will allow you to focus on keeping consistency while not stripping creativity. That’s about it.

Melody [17:16]
 Fantastic.  Would you please talk to us about some of the things you've seen people do with this tool?

Jon [17:22]

Worldbuild?

Jay [17:25]
 I have an idea how to answer this if you want, Jon.  

Jon [17:28]
 Go for it, because I'm drawing a blank here.  

Jay [17:32]
 So we've seen some very big campaigns.  We see people using Kanka in ways that we didn't anticipate.  Like there's some West March games where there's over 200 members and I've never tested the interface with 200 members.  I have no idea how that would even, how that even works.  So we've definitely seen big campaigns with many members or lots of entities.  Some campaigns have over 6,000 entities and they still managed to set up their worlds, their campaigns in a way which works for them.  And from what I can see is people just- since we built Kanka to be flexible and to be kind of, like I said just before, it doesn't world build for you, but it kind of gives you a template or structure that you can then use to then build your world.  People have been very creative, and people also use fields on entities that we didn't anticipate them to use, or they do use them differently as the way they were originally designed.  Like I'll see the characters, you can put a title and people will put all sorts of things in that field.  Because when I added the title, I imagined it, okay, only important people have a title, like, “This person is the Queen of Kingdom XYZ” or “This person is the magistrate and the title would be ‘High Magistrate of whatever’.  And people will use that field to put any information in there.  So, it's definitely interesting how, yeah, it's just interesting to see how people will use features we've built in a way which we didn't anticipate or we couldn't imagine or features get them because of the way people use something or want to use something.  They'll make a feature request or change request, and then we'll adapt that change because it makes more sense the way they want to use this feature than the way it was built. 

Melody [19:12]
 Interesting.  Have you read through some of the public campaigns on Kanka? 

Jon [19:17]
 Reading through campaigns with hundreds of entities, I've skimmed through a couple of them, but I think most of the time when I'm on public campaigns, it's because someone has a public campaign and is asking me to help them and I'm just trying to figure out what they're doing or what they're not doing.  I've not personally really- like, sure, you know, sometimes you want a bit of inspiration, and you can have a sneak peek at what others are doing or what their thoughts are.  And I think we have regular events and just kind of seeing people's entries on these events because in order to submit an entry, you have to have your campaign set to public.  And so then, yeah, sometimes you go see the entry and then you wander around a bit on their campaign.  But I don't know that I, like, have spent extended periods of time looking at them.  Not enough that I would be able to recall much other than maybe a handful of entities I found were really well thought out. 

Jay [20:07]
 I haven't spent much time either looking at public campaigns and that's because that's a limit- probably from my point of view, a limitation of Kanka.  We have public campaigns, but, like, exploring a campaign isn't really friendly if you're not part of it or not the dungeon master, the game master.  That's something I hope to improve in the near future.  It's just a better way to explore the contents of a campaign or a world because the moment when you click on characters, it's just a whole list, a whole messy list of all the characters or locations.  And having a better sense of exploring a world is something I hope we can focus on at some point in the future to make it more enjoyable.  And also, like John said, to get this inspiration, like seeing all these public campaigns, going and having a look, how are they built?  How are they organizing the information?  How are they allowing the users to explore the world?  

Melody [20:59]
 Okay. What are some of your goals for Kanka moving forward? 

Jon [21:03]
 World domination? 

Jay [21:05]
 Total annihilation.  

Jon [21:07]
 I mean...  Go for it, Jay.  

Jay [21:08]
 Yeah, I was gonna say you go for it.  Yeah, you go for it.  I've talked a lot. 

Jon [21:15]
 I think, you know, if I was to boil it down to one sentence, well, maybe not one sentence, because I'm not known for being succinct.  But just to have a good time with the people who enjoy using Kanka.  Ultimately, that's the ultimate objective.  I think we do have, you know, if we now talk more seriously, as opposed to just, this is something that we love doing.  And this is something that we want to keep doing as long as we can.  We do hope to keep building on Kanka since we kind of turned it into a business about a year and a half ago.  And we have seen growth that has been quite substantial. You know, like, you can always hope for more or faster or whatever.  But we're getting to the point where we've had an intern working with us for a couple months, and we're looking to either keep him on or get another intern going.  And I think that will hopefully lead to, by the end of the year, us hiring someone to help with further development of Kanka.  So I don't know that like we, I mean, because of the way that Kanka works, in the sense that we have these community votes that help us choose the direction when it comes to features, I don't know that I can say that we hope that Kanka will have X features or Y features within this timeframe.  I think that would be very adventurous on my behalf.  But I think, you know, the hope for us is to keep developing Kanka.  It's obviously something that is very close to both Jay's heart and my heart.  It's something that we've worked very hard on over the past year and a half.  And, you know, and Jay before that, but it's something that we just want to keep growing.  It's our little baby.  We want to see it grow.  We want to see it mature.  And I think we just kind of want to see how far we can go.  What's the best we can do with Kanka and just kind of keep developing it to the point where either people stop using it or it just, it doesn't make sense anymore.  I don't know that we have like that end point in mind, really.  It's something that, for me, I think for Jay as well, work-wise is very rewarding.  It's something where, you know, sometimes- Jay's the same, but we pull crazy weeks with way too many hours of work in it.  But it never really feels like it's work.  It always feels like, I mean, fun is perhaps not the right word, but it's something I'm happy to do.  It's the first time I've really experienced that ever within my professional life.  So, I think without giving any specific, like, uh, milestones… I think, well, actually, you know what, I will give a specific milestone.  I think for us, the big next milestone is hiring someone that helps us develop this even faster and even further.  And where would we like Kanka to be in a few years?  Well, I guess, you know, if the stars aligned and we ended up with another couple of employees and just kind of build this up and see how far we can go.  Yeah.  I don't know if you have different thoughts on this, Jay, but... 

Jay [23:51]
 No, that all sounds good. 

Jon [23:53]
 Like, yeah, you know, because it's a pet project, because we're not like a big corporation or anything.  Well, a pet project that became a business and whatnot.  Like it's just- the sky's the limit.  Ultimately, you tell me that in five years, we'll end up with a hundred employees.  I- I mean, I would be very skeptical, but I guess if that's what Kanka becomes and that's what Kanka becomes, I don't know that we have necessarily that ambition to be like a full-on corporation or anything.  I don't know that there's necessarily the demand for that within the segment.  I don't know that we really want Kanka to be anything other than what it is today.  And of course, a better version than what it is today, but a goofy community centered around worldbuilding.  And I think that suits me, that suits Jay, that suits our personalities and our visions for Kanka. So, as long as we get to keep doing that, I don't know that there's a wrong answer about what we have in mind for Kanka.  We have in mind to keep going, to keep enjoying ourselves and to keep delivering for what we both consider to be the best community in the world. 

Melody [24:53]
 Okay, here's an odd question, but what question do you wish I had asked? 

Jay [24:59]
 For Kanka, one comes up often in the live stream is what could we have done if we'd be starting Kanka now, with what we have today, what would we do differently?  And for me, that's like focusing, knowing that it doesn't have to be just a hobby project and spending more time from the start on it, bringing John much earlier doing marketing because the first two and a half years there was zero marketing.  Like I posted two messages on Reddit and that was it.  So just getting the word out there that Kanka exists, getting more people interested in it.  

Jon [25:31]
 Yeah, I don't know.  I guess we did talk a- Yeah, perhaps I would join Jay in that.  We, I mean, of course, all your questions are very open-ended, so it's kind of left to us to interpret and then to kind of answer that.  Perhaps I joined Jay in saying that it would be interesting to explore a bit more that question that, you know, if we would start again tomorrow, what would we do differently?  It's something that's come up a few times during our live streams.  And I know that as Jay has just said, he would have liked to bring me on sooner.  And I guess, like, if I was to ask myself that same question, what would I- there's quite a few things. So I guess we could/should have done differently, but let me think about it for a second. 

Melody [26:08]
 Thank you so much, Jay and John, for being with us and telling us all about Kanka.  We really appreciate it.  To our listeners, please check the podcast description for details on how you can connect with John and Jay and to visit Kanka.io.  In our next episode, we will be chatting with them about world building.  Follow us to receive notifications when new podcasts are released.  For more podcasts and information, check out our website, https://www.gamemastercertification.org/.  If you liked what you've heard in this episode, please share it.  Thank you for listening.