Quote from: Gareth's blog(including some absolutely delusional garbage from the “Indie” crowd about how the resistance to monetization was due to the fact that gamers are “artists.”).

Or, if he had actually considered the point from a different perspective, there are some of us who are creative individuals that like using our games as toolkits and don't necessarily need to buy-in to the industry every franchise cycle to keep playing.

In fact, most of my more "casual" RPG-playing friends don't want to spend money on new books every edition.  They just want to sit down and play a game.  To them it's no different than sitting down and playing Monopoly, and who the fuck buys every new edition of Monopoly that comes out?

Also, another point, that the co-called "indie" crowd is very much into bottling up tiny ideas and marketing them (not necessarily a bad thing if you want a really tight, focused game), which kind of runs counter to the more trad toolkit approach where you'd see the sort of conflict between creator and consumer.  

So I'm not sure Gareth is really right in his labeling the origin of that type of "gamers are creative/artists" thinking in the indie crowd -- seems more like a knee-jerk reaction to the word "artist" rather than contemplating Corley's point.

Quote from: jeff37923;389141Whose own point would seem to be made just by reading this thread.

GMS finding irony in some gamers' knee-jerk reaction. Gareth M. Skarka, no less.

Irony INDEED.

Quote from: Silverlion;389137Ouch, that sucks. I don't think I've ever done that--I certainly hope not. I usually marched up and talked to the game store owner/worker to talk to them, if they were interested in conversation. That is, no matter their physical sex. I miss the owners wife at the local store--he's usually there when I go in, and he's awesome. Yet his wife was too and she's not around as much. I imagine she's working another job to make real money. ;/

On the other hand, I'm sure the nice young lady who owned the local comic book store a decade or more ago had the same issues. Although I walked up and talked to her about comics, as I would any guy comic store owner. Again if interested.  


I guess I'm odd. Ah well.

People walking up and talking to me is fine.  Especially if it's about something that the store carries.  Heck there is a regular who has the 'look' of the bad gamer type, big beard, over weight, middle aged, comic t-shirt, etc that I talk to every time he comes in.  He's funny, tells great stories and is an all around nice guy.  It's the folks who don't walk up and talk, the ones who just kinda hang out and stare.  They just creep me out and make me glad I don't work there after it gets dark.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;388953WAAAAAAAAAH THOSE MEAN OLD GAMERS WON'T SHUT UP AND BE A PERFECT MARKETING DEMO AND FIT INTO THE MOLD SOME MARKETROID INVENTED WAAAAAH.

Thread won at post #2.

Quote from: RPGPundit;389043The fault for this lies with the Lawncrappers, those who say we should be tolerant to them

The Swine I'm familiar with, but who are the Lawncrappers?

When I'm trying to recruit players, I'll start as a player at the FLGS and see people who I want to try out.  Then I'll GM my own game at the FLGS and see who I think I want to actually invite to my home.  There's definitely a segment of the gaming population I don't want in my house.

That having been said, the marketing tripe the guy's whining about in his article is no big news.  It's target the lowest common denominator, you'll get more people.  Once you move on to discriminating customers who have defined tastes, the number becomes smaller the more refined the taste or sensibility.  Look at these boards as a perfect example.  We're a small segment of the tabletop population and usually you can't get more then ten of us to agree on any one thing.  Why do you think Hollywood turns out Michael Bay fiasco one after another, because people fill the seats.  People don't care that the movie sucks, they want to see robots and Megan Fox's sweaty abs.

Quote from: Benoist;389079Rebuttal.

Lord, Erik's rebuttal gave GMS and the idiot a trashcan-sized asshole.

Quote from: Spinachcat;389135RPG as hobby =/= RPG as industry.  However, I do believe that the failure of the industry will result in the disappearance of the hobby.

I don't think the hobby will die anytime soon. There are enough out in internet land to keep producing material if only for the love of it. And we gamers will keep introducing our friends to RPGs.

Fuck the industry. Look what happened to EGG and TSR. Look at all of the designers of 2.5e and 3e that have struck out on their own. Necromancer produced some of the most memorable products, and Clark is a lawyer (I hope he made some money for his work.) My point is the industry is brutal to both those that produce and those that play.

What WOTC forcing a sourcebook per month during its heyday... seriously? If I took all of the material they put out during 3e and 3.5e I don't think I could play half of it my lifetime. I have been in two different groups that played a mish-mash of 1e, and BD&D. During the three or so years they used maybe half-dozen modules. These are the fucking people that bought-in the late 70's early 80's. Fuck, Goodman's first-so-called Golden Age. Those groups had maybe 6 hardbacks! These people spent more on Tolkien's books than D&D (everyone in those groups had the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, The Silmarillion, and the Hobbit.)

Yeah for the hobby, fuck the industry.

Quote from: Benoist;389119Dude, you're forgetting that I amended (at 1:49 PM, i.e. prior to your own post) said post mentioning that I couldn't remember the last time I did, but assumed I did.

You're right. Mea culpa. My apologies.

Seanchai

Quote from: CRKrueger;389161Lord, Erik's rebuttal gave GMS and the idiot a trashcan-sized asshole.

I rather think the bit in his rebuttal about "marginal RPG businessmen trying to explain their failures" might have stung a bit as well...

Lord Hobie

Quote from: Lord Hobie;389165I rather think the bit in his rebuttal about "marginal RPG businessmen trying to explain their failures" might have stung a bit as well...

Lord Hobie

I know.  

Quote from: Eric Mona kicking assI see as you piling on the tired old cliche of "the customer is the problem" that I see parroted again and again by marginal RPG businessmen trying to explain their failures.

Ouch.

Quote from: Melan;389116Know what? That right there is what's wrong with gaming. You, Gareth and friends, turned it from community-based shared creativity into the passive consumption of uninspired pablum you and supposed "game design pros" were paid $0.05 a word to write. You don't get the core idea of the hobby you made your living on, and now have the audacity to question others' rights to treat it as the social, bottom-up and user-driven medium it was meant to be from the start. Amazing

I have to agree. The hobby doesn't benefit from attitudes like those above expressed by people in the industry. I don't even think the industry benefits in the long term. As I've said before the tabletop RPG hobby can survive without the industry, but the tabletop RPG industry can't survive without the hobby. I think attitudes like those you quoted do far more harm to the industry in the long run than all the neckbeards -- real and imagined -- at game stores.

Quote from: kregmosier;389051This would be News, except that you can replace "tabletop role-playing gamers" online with:

* Model Train Enthusiasts
* Gun Nuts
* Sports Fans
* Fitness Buffs
* Historians
* New Mothers
* Librarians

etc. etc. ad nauseum...

Reads like someone needed to vent and had no content for a blog update.  Low hanging fruit and all...

Yep, every group has their mouth breathers.

Quote from: Melan;389116Good riddance! Leave! Out! Out! Out!

:worship:

Quote from: GarethNo, the problem is that a group of *consumers* somehow got it into their heads that they're "artists."

No, the real problem is that rpg writers are usually failed novelists who somehow got it into their heads that they're "artists."  

Quote from: Melan;389116Good riddance! Leave! Out! Out! Out!

:worship:

Quote from: jeff37923;389140Had to deal with a creep who acted like this last year. Had a woman join our Labyrinth Lord group and the DM started hitting on her, even though she was engaged to be married and showed no interest in becoming romantic with anyone but her fiance. It got to the point that she felt so uncomfortable by the unwanted attention from our DM, that she left the group. At which point, our DM went completely emo and quit the game and gaming because, "his muse had left and he just couldn't go on anymore."

So that's what happened to him.  I knew he had some kind of melt down, but I didn't know the details.  Still, this sort of thing happens outside of games all the time too.