New Hire Guide

RPGamer – Guide for New Hires

Welcome to RPGamer. Naturally, you’re likely ready to get started and dive into the wonderful world of RPGamer, and this guide details steps new hires need to take before they can get to work. Listed below are the tasks all new hires need to complete in order to get started. These do not include any department or job-specific information. Once these steps are done, you should speak with your department editor to get details and training on your specific job, and don’t be afraid to ask for help. Most staff members will be able to help with many different tasks you need to do.

Getting Started

  1. Sign the non-disclosure agreement. All staff of RPGamer must agree to the non-disclosure agreement (password is ‘signme’). You need to copy and paste the text of the non-disclosure agreement into an email to be sent to the Editor-in-Chief and Duty Editor, adding your name and address where indicated. (After this stage you will be given access to the staff channels and backend.)
  2. Join the RPGamer Discord server. Invites will be provided by whoever brings you into the fold. For most of you this will already have been done as part of the interview process! Huzzahs! As of this writing, these are the primary channels of importance for staff members (you will be given access once your NDA is confirmed as received):
    • #staff – This is the primary staff channel where matters concerning RPGamer as a whole are discussed and where most proofreading prior to posting is done. All staff members need access to this channel.  Please do not discuss any sensitive information found in this channel elsewhere.
    • #news – Some general notes and discussion about particular news stories if needed as well as updated on any stories added to the queue.
    • #general-proofing – Short articles, typically news posts, are proofed here.  Anyone, whether they be a news writer or another type of staff, can proof these.  Edits can be dropped into the channel itself.
    • #major-proofing – Longer articles, such as reviews, are proofed here. Edits should be send in a private message to the author.

    If you haven’t already please sign up for the Discord server here, after which someone will give you access to the staff channels.

  3. Get a good plain text editor. This is not as important on the 2018- version of the site, but don’t underestimate a good text editor 🙂
    We recommend one of these:

    • EditPad Lite. (Windows. Freeware.)
    • UltraEdit. (Windows. Shareware. 30-45 trial period.)
    • Textpad. (Windows. Shareware. Trial period not specified.)
    • VIM. (UNIX, Linux, Windows, Mac, Others. Freeware.)
    • BBEdit. (Mac. Shareware. 30-day trial period.)
  4. Create your RPGamer account and optional bio page. This will used to access and post on the back-end, once this is done please inform one of the senior staff members so that they can upgrade you to a staff account.  You can tag the “Chief” role for this in the staff channel if you’re not sure who to ping.
  5. Review staff information. Once you have staff access, review the Staff page and look over the policies and guidelines. Also review the quality standards and grammar guide, even if you are general competent with such things, as you are responsible for the quality of all content you post on the site. Reviewers should also check out the New Reviewer Guide. Finally, look over the Staff page in general and look over anything else that seems relevant to your job. Your department editor will be able to identify anything else you might need to review.
  6. After your first month with the website, you can request an email account. However, as we have found this to be an unnecessary expense please note we are limiting creating new accounts to those that are likely to need regular use of it. Send an email to cprivite@rpgamer.com (copying in severinmira@rpgamer.com) requesting an email address. In this email, supply your real name, job title, and the username and password you’d like for your RPGamer email account, as in the example below:

     

    To: cprivite@rpgamer.com
    CC: severinmira@rpgamer.com
    Subject: [RPGamer] E-mail Account Request

    Real Name: Alex Fuller
    Title: Editorialist
    Username: severinmira
    Password: [Choose your own. You don’t need mine.]

    [Also, include any email accounts you may be sending email to staff mailing lists with. See note below for details.]

     

    Your RPGamer email account will be [username]@rpgamer.com. You can access this through apps.rackspace.com, and you can set up forwarding to send your RPGamer email to another email account if you so desire.

    Important Note. Please make sure to change the settings on your RPGamer e-mail to display your real name on your account.