Well That Was Interesting: Followups

It's been an interesting few days. The hit counter for the site has lit up in a major way, and so have people's tempers.

Ahhh, like the old days. I actually got private hate mail! No death threats though. +358449558316 (so I think it's 011 358 449558316 that you would have to dial from a phone in the US) if you want to call one of those in (emailed death threats are lame). It's been about a decade since my writing inspired one of those, so get cracking! (that's a cell phone number, so it'll be a tad expensive...)

It was the two posts I wrote Saturday that did it. "Role-Playing is not..." got linked over at Enworld and almost derailed what was a cool a thread there. My response when people seemed to gloss over what I was saying:

It's like pizza. You can customize it as you like, a nice deep dish, or stuffed crust, with the works or maybe just veggies or a selection of meats, but a plain cheese pizza is still a pizza.

Now then, the other one. I am an awful cheerleader. When being blatantly encouraging, I can't help but feel like Rob Schneider making a cameo in an Adam Sandler movie (You Can Do It!) or feel like I'm imitating some scene from Leave it to Beaver or something. It's just corny, and feels wrong to do it. Such things don't move me to action, that's for sure. And action is what I'm trying to kickstart. And like the message of I Hate Fun was not that I indeed hate fun, the message of Don't Care was not that I don't care. (the original title for that post was originally going to be Old School Renaissance = Fail, but I couldn't twist that to mean different things...)

So far, it seems that some understood it, more took a look at their own net projects and blogged about why they do what they do, and in one case there was anger. One advantage to my writing style is I never have to worry about whether someone's holding back when they respond to me. :D From my clarification underneath the angry guy's post:

The point is I fear we're building a faddish and transitory "renaissance" here and that would be a tragedy considering the creativity and talent of the people involved and the quality work they're doing.

Content is the hard part, yet people are doing that readily. A more enduring (dare I say legacy-enabling?) presentation is easy after that.

Blogging and pdfs and how the web and computers are used is all very *now*. We have no idea at all how things are going to look in 5, 10, 15 years.

Yet books have proven to have lasting quality and have survived numerous shifts in cultural trends and pop culture. Disregarding print is not a good idea.

My dislike of POD (well, Lulu anyway) is simply that it is expensive and slow and poorly suited for the task, not to mention subjects the vast majority of the printed output of the renaissance to the whims of a company that really has no stake in what we do. See their recent sudden and inexplicable change in shipping rates and policies for one example. And people are reporting quality issues with certain types of artwork now...

My girlfriend pointed out that I've been doing self-publishing for over a decade, and (keep in mind she doesn't read the blogs and was just hypothesizing) perhaps I forget that most people haven't ever done it, so they might not know how easy it is. Or at least how not-daunting it is. I thought that view might be a little condescending, but I'm throwing it out there anyway.

One guy suggests a publishing how-to guide. I have ideas and directions to go in and know some of the basics of what needs to be done, but my own RPG publishing efforts have been riddled with errors and missteps, and my only real attempt ever at making money (as opposed to breaking even or just losing some) with my writing was sort of hijacked when two weeks after I released it, a bigger publisher approached me about re-releasing it for retail. I have things to contribute (mistakes and non-profit-seeking publishing do teach lessons) but a publishing guide with my byline would not be credible. That's for someone else to do.

I've got a couple of projects on my plate that are a tad more serious than FFV, and I'll be putting my suggestions into practice and putting the previous lessons learned to use. But I apparently work at a glacial pace these days. More of us making mistakes and achieving successes and sharing the hows and whys of them will only make it easier for everyone, and now that the playing environment has been nurtured a bit, it's time to lay down the lasting monuments that will be what this Renaissance will be remembered for in a couple decades' time.

Now go look that up in your Funk and Wagnalls.