For those who celebrate the Sabbats, please consider lighting a white candle on Lammas for World Peace. Even if you do not celebrate Lammas or (aren’t even a witch!), you are welcome to join in.
Love and light,
Amethyst Rose
Tindalostalbot
Shared posts
01 Aug 18:51
witchyamethystrose: For those who celebrate the Sabbats, please...
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01 Aug 15:19
conciliate: Dictionary.com Word of the Day
conciliate: to overcome the distrust or hostility of; placate; win over.
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29 Jul 21:04
Direct and representative democracy.In direct democracy the...
Direct and representative democracy.
In direct democracy the people vote directly to create the laws, rules and regulations and such. In representative democracy, the people instead vote to elect a representative, who will then either act directly, or vote with other elected representatives to create the laws, rules and regulations and such. Most democracies are a form of representative democracy as I understand it, with the occasional instance of direct democracy thrown in, as in say, a referendum.
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29 Jul 14:05
virgule: Dictionary.com Word of the Day
virgule: a short oblique stroke (/) between two words indicating that whichever is appropriate may be chosen to complete the sense of the text in which they occur.
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28 Jul 21:19
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Mental Illness In The RPG Community
by Zak Sabbath
Any discussion of this topic period will immediately bring on accusations of "gaslighting!!!!!" if pointed at specific people, so let's stick with statements we can all agree with
Statement we can all agree with #1
Sometimes people in the online RPG community are mentally ill
Statement we can all agree with #2
Mental illness can cause people to experience emotional pain over things that aren't actually harmful to anyone who doesn't have their specific trigger or chain of associations. To something not ordinarily harmful.
Statement we can (probably) all agree with #3
It's not practical or desirable to talk to the entire internet as if it's mentally ill all the time and almost nobody does. You can tag specific common triggers, but ritually using indirectness, vagueness and soft probing creates a lot of other practical problems to getting anything done and creates new problems when dealing with any kind of urgent situation. It also can strike people as condescending.
Statement we can all agree with #4
If you write online, once in a while someone mentally ill will experience emotional pain because of what you write online.
Statement we can all agree with #5
Sometimes this won't be your fault, this will be the fault of the illness.
Statement we can all agree with #6
This emotional pain may cause them to fabricate or distort facts while expressing their pain. This can cross the line into libel or things like it that can cause real damage to the mentally ill person's victims.
Easy examples: "The authors of Dungeon World are trying to undermine gaming" "James Raggi hates all women".
Statement we can all agree with #7
People will (and should) rush in to reassure the mentally ill person who is caused emotional pain by the innocent thing you said. They are ill, after all, and need care.
Statement we can all agree with #8
This reassurance is hard to do without also reifying the distorted or fabricated facts they associate with their trigger and their pain.
Statement we can all agree with #9
If this is done in public but not done carefully, reassuring the mentally ill person risks victimizing another innocent person by reifying (plussing, agreeing with, condoning, sharing) the untrue things the mentally ill person said in the midst of their pain.
Statement we can all agree with #10
When a mentally ill person appears in the RPG community what should happen is their friends should take their pain seriously but not immediately accept all their fact claims. They should talk to their friend and try to connect them with help and try to do this in private as much as possible.
Statement we can all agree with #11
The online RPG community sucks at this.
Statement we can all agree with #12
The people who are attacked by the mentally ill have more of a personal motivation to do something about the situation than the people who are not.
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25 Jul 19:32
pantechnicon: Dictionary.com Word of the Day
pantechnicon: a furniture van; moving van.
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22 Jul 16:01
megillah: Dictionary.com Word of the Day
megillah: a lengthy and tediously complicated situation or matter.
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22 Jul 15:59
Make a cork pourer.With just a few deft cuts of a cork, you too...
Make a cork pourer.
With just a few deft cuts of a cork, you too can make a nifty pourer perfect for a straight pour while mixing your drink with air.
A speciality to use with sidra from the Asturian region of Spain.
HT: Adrian Majo Fernandez
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19 Jul 21:27
Sun Bug
by xkcd
Sun Bug
How many fireflies would it take to match the brightness of the Sun?
Luke Doty
Not that many! I mean, it's definitely one of those gigantic numbers with lots of zeroes, but in the grand scheme of things, there aren't as many zeroes as you might expect.
Our first question: Where does firefly light even come from?
Fireflies may look like they're full of glow-in-the-dark goo, but the light they give off actually comes from a thin layer on their surface.[1]You can see some diagrams of the organs here and here. Lots of insects have glowing surface patches, and some of those patches have been studied carefully to calculate their brightness. A 1928 paper on beetles called "headlight bugs"[2]Such a great name. found that their glowing patches, which were a little over a square millimeter in area, emitted about 0.0006 lumens of light. Fireflies have luminous organs (bright patches) that are about the same size as those of headlight bugs,[3]See this paper on some common American fireflies. and their organs tend to have a similar peak brightness per area, so this figure is a good guess for the brightness of a firefly's lantern.
Firefly lights aren't "always-on." They blink on and off, with patterns that vary from species to species and situation to situation. These flashes carry information, some of which you can decode using this delightful chart.[4]You can also use LEDs to mess with firefly patterns, which feels strangely invasive.
To get the brightest light, let's assume we're using a species with a mostly-on duty cycle—like a headlight bug. How does its 0.0006-lumen light output compare to the Sun?
The Sun's brightness is \( 3.8\times10^{28} \) lumens, so by simple division, it would take \( 3\times10^{31} \) of those fireflies to emit the same amount of light. That's a surprisingly small number; adult fireflies weigh about 20 milligrams, which means \( 3\times10^{31} \) fireflies would only weigh about a third as much as Jupiter and 1/3000th as much as the Sun.
In other words, per pound, fireflies are brighter than the Sun. Even though bioluminescence is millions of times less efficient than the Sun's fusion-powered glow, the Sun can't afford to be as bright because it has to last billions of times longer.[5]If you like Fermi problems—and silly equations—there's an interesting route you can take to this answer without doing any research on fireflies or the Sun at all. Instead, you can just plug this equation into Wolfram|Alpha: (5 billion years / (4 hours/day * 3 months)) / (1% * (speed of light)^2 / (3200 calories/pound)).
Let's walk through it: The first half—the numerator—is a guess for the ratio between how long the Sun has to keep glowing compared to how long a firefly does. I took a wild guess that fireflies have to light up for a few hours each night for one summer, while the Sun has to last another five billion years. The second half—the denominator—is a guess as to the ratio between the stored energy in a pound of firefly vs a pound of star. Nuclear fusion converts about 1% of the input matter to energy, so from E=mc2, the stored energy is c2 kg/kg, whereas animal matter (say, butter) is about 3,200 food calories per pound. The result should tell us the ratio between a firefly's brightness per pound and the Sun's. And the answer we get says that the fireflies are a few thousand times brighter—which is roughly what we got from working through it the other way!
It's true that we got lucky with some of our guesses, but since we made errors in both directions, they tended to cancel out. This kind of thing works more often than it seems like it should!
But wait! A mass of fireflies that big would run into problems. Besides the obvious problems with gathering that many animals in one place, the fireflies would block each others' light. The inner fireflies would be hidden behind the outer ones, and the total brightness would be limited.[6]But the light from the core fireflies wouldn't just vanish. After bouncing around a few times, it would be absorbed by neighboring fireflies, which would get warmer. This is sort of like how radiation makes its way out of the Sun's core—but in the case of the fireflies, they'd die from the heat before the process got very far.
Since the only light that matters is the light at the surface, we could imagine arranging the fireflies in a hollow sphere, with their lanterns pointing outward. Or, to make thing simpler, we could imagine a single giant firefly. How big would it need to be?
Since we know our firefly will need to give off about \( 3\times10^{31} \) times as much light as a normal firefly, it will need a glowing patch \( 3\times10^{31} \) times larger. Since surface area is proportional to length squared, our firefly will have a body length \( \sqrt{3\times10^{31}}=5\times10^{15} \) times longer than a normal firefly, which would make it about the size of the Solar System.
Since mass is proportional to length cubed, our firefly would weigh \( \left( 3\times10^{31}\right)^{\tfrac{3}{2}}=1.6\times10^{47} \) times as much as a normal firefly, which works out to about half as much as the entire Milky Way galaxy.
Such a firefly would immediately collapse under its own weight and become a black hole. In fact, given the distribution of galaxies in our universe, there's an upper limit to how large black holes can grow, and this firefly would be bigger than that limit. That means our firefly would become the largest black hole in the universe. It would give off a lot of light as it devoured our galaxy, and then, eventually, it would give off none at all.
Black holes last a long time, but they eventually evaporate through Hawking radiation. When the black hole era of our universe comes to an end, black holes will evaporate one by one, with the smallest evaporating faster. Since our firefly's black hole would be the largest one in the universe, it would be the last to evaporate—a final outpost of irregularity in a universe fading toward heat death.
We should probably add that to the identification chart, just in case.
18 Jul 16:17
arrears: Dictionary.com Word of the Day
arrears: the state of being behind or late, especially in the fulfillment of a duty, promise, obligation, or the like.
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18 Jul 16:16
mysleepykisser-with-feelings-hid: Hamsterley Forest, The Green...
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17 Jul 18:04
ambrosial: Dictionary.com Word of the Day
ambrosial: exceptionally pleasing to taste or smell; especially delicious or fragrant.
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13 Jul 15:47
campestral: Dictionary.com Word of the Day
campestral: of or relating to fields or open country.
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11 Jul 19:03
tweedle: Dictionary.com Word of the Day
tweedle: to lure by or as by music.
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11 Jul 19:03
nixie: Dictionary.com Word of the Day
nixie: a letter or parcel that is undeliverable because of a faulty or illegible address.
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10 Jul 19:41
Morrigan Aensland by ClovermeiAs found...
Morrigan Aensland by Clovermei
As found at:
http://www.deviantart.com/art/Morrigan-Aensland-530307307
One of my most favourite Morrigan smiles in that there’s a little bit of… call it… teasing in her expression and look in her eyes…
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10 Jul 19:40
sockdolager: Dictionary.com Word of the Day
sockdolager: something unusually large, heavy, etc.
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09 Jul 06:13
velleity: Dictionary.com Word of the Day
velleity: a mere wish, unaccompanied by an effort to obtain it.
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09 Jul 06:13
Let your data speak for itself.Often, the form of the data is...
Let your data speak for itself.
Often, the form of the data is obvious enough for what it is that you might consider simplifying by removing the label.
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07 Jul 18:49
Stay Unprofessional
by Zak Sabbath
We're So Professional
As Noisms recently pointed out, me and Patrick just made a very large and expensive thing that looks very professional (and is nominated for as many or more awards as any single professional product in the RPG industry). Many people have also attested to the publishers' (a guy and an intern) handling of shipping, orders, etc as very professional.
Though it took us four years to make because we're not professionals.
...Sort Of
A lot of time when folks talk about "professional" they are using it as as a synonym for quality (production quality or content quality or customer service quality). I'd like to think that on this score we've been beyond professional at least as it's defined in this business, I haven't heard anyone disagree.
However "professional" can also refer to the creators' priorities and style of behavior, and in this we are woefully unprofessional. Just like the rest of DIY D&D. This is why we make such good stuff.
What The Difference Is
Professional behavior is characterized by prioritizing money in the long term, or at least prioritizing growing the business. These are not always the same thing: many RPG people could make more money in other fields with their skillset but would like to remain in the RPG business. In this case their priority is not so much money as doing things that keep them happily able to afford to stay full-time in the RPG business.
Either way professionalism often includes:
-Given a choice between what a target audience wants and what you want, choosing what the target audience wants.
-Not putting in more effort than the target audience will appreciate and pay for.
-Making things you may not, yourself, use.
-Making things you may not enjoy making.
-Making things you may not like.
-Never upsetting a potential customer in the target audience
-Never upsetting a potential business partner where no money is at stake.
-Making vague public statements or not making them, unless talking up your product or something about it specifically.
-Never letting the community do anything that you could do for them and monetize.
-Monetizing any creative impulse and packaging it for sale.
-Designing things primarily so they look expensive.
-Only committing to controversial ideas in public to the degree that they might help sales or have a neutral effect.
The last one is interesting and is the reason for the sort of corporate moderateness that soundly (and rightly) condemns being openly racist at work while at the same time (curiously) condemns wearing a Fuck The Pigs t-shirt to work. What's important to corporate moderation isn't accuracy or sincerity, it's being inside the Overton Window. This isn't easy during controversies--professionals in fields beset by controversy are constantly being forced to choose between being accused of not taking a stand against something horrible or having taken the wrong stand on something horrible.
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Unprofessional Behavior is characterized by prioritizing eccentric personal goals even in business relations. For example, my goal with putting out RPG stuff is to make stuff I can use in my games and to inspire other people to make things I can use in my games. An unprofessional is an amateur--that is, from the root word, a lover. They not only do it because they love it (just like a professional sometimes does) but they prioritize loving it. When the love stops, the product does.
Unprofessional behavior often includes:
-Given a choice between what a target audience wants and what you want, choosing what you want.
-Putting in however much effort is required to make the thing that satisfies you.
As Noisms recently pointed out, me and Patrick just made a very large and expensive thing that looks very professional (and is nominated for as many or more awards as any single professional product in the RPG industry). Many people have also attested to the publishers' (a guy and an intern) handling of shipping, orders, etc as very professional.
Though it took us four years to make because we're not professionals.
...Sort Of
A lot of time when folks talk about "professional" they are using it as as a synonym for quality (production quality or content quality or customer service quality). I'd like to think that on this score we've been beyond professional at least as it's defined in this business, I haven't heard anyone disagree.
However "professional" can also refer to the creators' priorities and style of behavior, and in this we are woefully unprofessional. Just like the rest of DIY D&D. This is why we make such good stuff.
What The Difference Is
Professional behavior is characterized by prioritizing money in the long term, or at least prioritizing growing the business. These are not always the same thing: many RPG people could make more money in other fields with their skillset but would like to remain in the RPG business. In this case their priority is not so much money as doing things that keep them happily able to afford to stay full-time in the RPG business.
Either way professionalism often includes:
-Given a choice between what a target audience wants and what you want, choosing what the target audience wants.
-Not putting in more effort than the target audience will appreciate and pay for.
-Making things you may not, yourself, use.
-Making things you may not enjoy making.
-Making things you may not like.
-Never upsetting a potential customer in the target audience
-Never upsetting a potential business partner where no money is at stake.
-Making vague public statements or not making them, unless talking up your product or something about it specifically.
-Never letting the community do anything that you could do for them and monetize.
-Monetizing any creative impulse and packaging it for sale.
-Designing things primarily so they look expensive.
-Only committing to controversial ideas in public to the degree that they might help sales or have a neutral effect.
The last one is interesting and is the reason for the sort of corporate moderateness that soundly (and rightly) condemns being openly racist at work while at the same time (curiously) condemns wearing a Fuck The Pigs t-shirt to work. What's important to corporate moderation isn't accuracy or sincerity, it's being inside the Overton Window. This isn't easy during controversies--professionals in fields beset by controversy are constantly being forced to choose between being accused of not taking a stand against something horrible or having taken the wrong stand on something horrible.
-
Unprofessional Behavior is characterized by prioritizing eccentric personal goals even in business relations. For example, my goal with putting out RPG stuff is to make stuff I can use in my games and to inspire other people to make things I can use in my games. An unprofessional is an amateur--that is, from the root word, a lover. They not only do it because they love it (just like a professional sometimes does) but they prioritize loving it. When the love stops, the product does.
Unprofessional behavior often includes:
-Given a choice between what a target audience wants and what you want, choosing what you want.
-Putting in however much effort is required to make the thing that satisfies you.
-Making things you yourself use.
-Making things you enjoy making.
-Making things you like.
-Making things you enjoy making.
-Making things you like.
-Calling out potential customers in the target audience for being dicks.
-Calling out potential business partners for being dicks whether or not money is at stake.
-Making clear public statements you don't mind being held accountable for.
-Committing to controversial ideas in public because you happen to believe them.
-Getting the community around you to do things so you don't have to.
-Giving away free things even if they could've been packaged for sale.
-Designing things primarily so at least you can use them.
People Forget These Are Different Things
Professional people and customers often assume everyone in a business is professional or aspires to be. Customers will shout, at a nonprofessional or semiprofessional "You just lost a customer" as if they expect the nonprofessional or semiprofessional to care. Professionals, very worried about taking controversial stands, will assume that anyone taking a controversial stand is doing so in order to sell things--especially if it's one they disagree with. It's hard enough for anyone to see why anyone would disagree with you, much less (from inside the cage of a professional mindset) why someone would feel comfortable doing it in public.
Being able to behave unprofessionally is a privilege and a luxury. It means either your rent does not ultimately depend on the business you're dabbling in or that you're getting paid enough that you can afford not to care. It's not an option for everyone, not even for everyone who is good and honest.
Pandering
Here's a word you hear a lot: "pandering". It literally means pimping (there's a "sly panderer" on the AD&D city night-time encounter chart) but the analogy is: the customer gets pleasure and the businessperson gets (only) money.
A politician or business or creative person is generally accused of "pandering" when they adopt a position or provide something that the person criticizing them doesn't like, but it is only properly used when the provider doesn't like it either. Confusion is common because most people aren't smart:
Trump is "pandering" if he doesn't want to build a wall between us and Mexico but says it to get votes, if he actually wants to build the wall because he personally wants to keep out Mexicans he isn't pandering, he's just an asshole.
In games, creators are often accused of "pandering" when they do something controversial and this is nearly always wrong. I'm fairly sure Blue Rose is full of romantic fantasy tropes because the creatives involved actually like them and likewise Hyun Tae Kim's art is full of tits for the same reason.
(The accusation of pandering regarding sexuality in games is usually based on very strange assumptions: An artist does something gay and is accused of "pandering" to teh tumblrgays or an artist draws boobs, then is said to be "pandering" to 14-year old boys who like boobs, thus suggesting the speaker cannot imagine an adult who is gay or who likes boobs. Or just can't imagine an artist who is gay or likes boobs. Either way it suggests the critic's private life is very dull.)
One very loud indie RPG author is on the record as claiming "all games pander" suggesting that there are people who aren't even aware that you can make a game you enjoy.
The same person said "Common meme is 'Just make games you'd like, stop trying to change others!" No. If I wrote it, I know the story. I don't need to be told it. After spending 1500 hours with a game, you don't necessarily want to sit down and play it for fun."
In short: it's possible for even indie RPG authors to be so professional they aren't making anything they want to (or have to) live with. In a curious quirk of early 21st century post-hobby production, they have alienated themselves from their labor, with almost no help from the larger capitalist system.
Elsewhere I have seen indie gamers grouse that 5th edition is designed with only one person in mind: Mike Mearls (the head designer). As if this would be a bad thing.
Unprofessionalism and Diversity
It is often imagined that there's a necessary tension between hobbyist, individualist unprofessionalism and diversity. If you're prioritizing your own taste, you're supposedly not inviting in people of other genders, ages, sexual preferences, skin colors. This assumes--irrationally--that an individual's taste can't be shared by diverse other people. It also frequently assumes--again irrationally--that anyone making anything crowds the market, which isn't true (ie the "scarcity fears" that beset the storygames crowd). As the DIY D&D scene proves: on this scale a rising tide lifts all boats.
This Is All To Say
While professional priorities in the sense of suppressing your ideas and desires for the sake of a buck may occasionally benefit the individual doing it, when it comes to both the RPG product and the community it's attached to, there's no benefit at all to professionalism and quite a bit to recommend unprofessionalism.
Ed or Molly or Sam may sometimes benefit by having professional priorities, but Ed's Guide To Zombies, and Molly's Tales Of The Deep Crypt and Sam's Secrets of the Lost Labyrinth benefit from having hobbyist ones, as do Ed, Molly and Sam's friends if they are invested in keeping the community fun and they can trust them to speak out against abuse and identify people who will lie or steal.
One big problem with the larger indie RPG community is how many of the most intelligent and productive people started right off as would-be designers with the explicit goal of building business or business-like activist organizations. Interpersonal honesty and creative integrity go out the window when they fuck with The Brand, or are, more often, simply beside the point. You get people making games they aren't playing for people they don't like for just enough money to keep the whole spiral going down the drain.
This Hasn't Happened in the DIY D&D Community--Yet
And it's that "yet" that makes me write this. The community has been radiantly unprofessional: generous, cooperative, personal, committed and (very) open to disagreement but with influence slowly accreting around people who stand by what they say and actually make things worth playing with.
There are certain projects that make it harder to be unprofessional: introductory games, games for kids, even certain parts of dungeon master's guides all require imagining an audience who isn't at all you and playing to it. Most kinds of outreach and organizing are going to involve a certain amount of battle-picking and going along to get along. This isn't a tragedy. However, as DIY RPG stuff gets bigger it's going to increase, and the same tensions that, for example, make indie scenesters and mainstream full-timers wary of calling out even the most blatant hate speech and willing to pump out games barely anyone actually wants to play will begin to infect the scene.
The dystopia we're currently avoiding is the one across the table--where people moan about the travails of deadlines and freelancing, talk about comic book movies and politics because their RPG ideas are property and their RPG opinions might get them in trouble and we slide back to the same shovelware and platitude-filled conversations that we had to make all these blogs in order to lift ourselves out of.
The dire trolly predictions made on the paleoschool game boards 5-6 years ago about what wurz gun tuh happen once James Raggi started in on printin up thim tharr Boxed Sets an' embossed leather guuds an' capituhlism tuk hold have not occurred--we still make cool free stuff a lot and nobody's been left blind and begging for random tables in the streets or been forced to kiss Kevin Crawford's perfumed boot-heels. The problem isn't selling stuff--it's what happens when and if we internalize an ethic that prioritizes selling stuff over all the reasons this is fun.
So don't do that--and enjoy the privilege of being unprofessional as long as you can hold onto it.
-Calling out potential business partners for being dicks whether or not money is at stake.
-Making clear public statements you don't mind being held accountable for.
-Committing to controversial ideas in public because you happen to believe them.
-Getting the community around you to do things so you don't have to.
-Giving away free things even if they could've been packaged for sale.
-Designing things primarily so at least you can use them.
People Forget These Are Different Things
Professional people and customers often assume everyone in a business is professional or aspires to be. Customers will shout, at a nonprofessional or semiprofessional "You just lost a customer" as if they expect the nonprofessional or semiprofessional to care. Professionals, very worried about taking controversial stands, will assume that anyone taking a controversial stand is doing so in order to sell things--especially if it's one they disagree with. It's hard enough for anyone to see why anyone would disagree with you, much less (from inside the cage of a professional mindset) why someone would feel comfortable doing it in public.
Being able to behave unprofessionally is a privilege and a luxury. It means either your rent does not ultimately depend on the business you're dabbling in or that you're getting paid enough that you can afford not to care. It's not an option for everyone, not even for everyone who is good and honest.
Pandering
Here's a word you hear a lot: "pandering". It literally means pimping (there's a "sly panderer" on the AD&D city night-time encounter chart) but the analogy is: the customer gets pleasure and the businessperson gets (only) money.
A politician or business or creative person is generally accused of "pandering" when they adopt a position or provide something that the person criticizing them doesn't like, but it is only properly used when the provider doesn't like it either. Confusion is common because most people aren't smart:
Trump is "pandering" if he doesn't want to build a wall between us and Mexico but says it to get votes, if he actually wants to build the wall because he personally wants to keep out Mexicans he isn't pandering, he's just an asshole.
In games, creators are often accused of "pandering" when they do something controversial and this is nearly always wrong. I'm fairly sure Blue Rose is full of romantic fantasy tropes because the creatives involved actually like them and likewise Hyun Tae Kim's art is full of tits for the same reason.
(The accusation of pandering regarding sexuality in games is usually based on very strange assumptions: An artist does something gay and is accused of "pandering" to teh tumblrgays or an artist draws boobs, then is said to be "pandering" to 14-year old boys who like boobs, thus suggesting the speaker cannot imagine an adult who is gay or who likes boobs. Or just can't imagine an artist who is gay or likes boobs. Either way it suggests the critic's private life is very dull.)
One very loud indie RPG author is on the record as claiming "all games pander" suggesting that there are people who aren't even aware that you can make a game you enjoy.
The same person said "Common meme is 'Just make games you'd like, stop trying to change others!" No. If I wrote it, I know the story. I don't need to be told it. After spending 1500 hours with a game, you don't necessarily want to sit down and play it for fun."
In short: it's possible for even indie RPG authors to be so professional they aren't making anything they want to (or have to) live with. In a curious quirk of early 21st century post-hobby production, they have alienated themselves from their labor, with almost no help from the larger capitalist system.
Elsewhere I have seen indie gamers grouse that 5th edition is designed with only one person in mind: Mike Mearls (the head designer). As if this would be a bad thing.
Unprofessionalism and Diversity
It is often imagined that there's a necessary tension between hobbyist, individualist unprofessionalism and diversity. If you're prioritizing your own taste, you're supposedly not inviting in people of other genders, ages, sexual preferences, skin colors. This assumes--irrationally--that an individual's taste can't be shared by diverse other people. It also frequently assumes--again irrationally--that anyone making anything crowds the market, which isn't true (ie the "scarcity fears" that beset the storygames crowd). As the DIY D&D scene proves: on this scale a rising tide lifts all boats.
This Is All To Say
While professional priorities in the sense of suppressing your ideas and desires for the sake of a buck may occasionally benefit the individual doing it, when it comes to both the RPG product and the community it's attached to, there's no benefit at all to professionalism and quite a bit to recommend unprofessionalism.
Ed or Molly or Sam may sometimes benefit by having professional priorities, but Ed's Guide To Zombies, and Molly's Tales Of The Deep Crypt and Sam's Secrets of the Lost Labyrinth benefit from having hobbyist ones, as do Ed, Molly and Sam's friends if they are invested in keeping the community fun and they can trust them to speak out against abuse and identify people who will lie or steal.
One big problem with the larger indie RPG community is how many of the most intelligent and productive people started right off as would-be designers with the explicit goal of building business or business-like activist organizations. Interpersonal honesty and creative integrity go out the window when they fuck with The Brand, or are, more often, simply beside the point. You get people making games they aren't playing for people they don't like for just enough money to keep the whole spiral going down the drain.
This Hasn't Happened in the DIY D&D Community--Yet
And it's that "yet" that makes me write this. The community has been radiantly unprofessional: generous, cooperative, personal, committed and (very) open to disagreement but with influence slowly accreting around people who stand by what they say and actually make things worth playing with.
There are certain projects that make it harder to be unprofessional: introductory games, games for kids, even certain parts of dungeon master's guides all require imagining an audience who isn't at all you and playing to it. Most kinds of outreach and organizing are going to involve a certain amount of battle-picking and going along to get along. This isn't a tragedy. However, as DIY RPG stuff gets bigger it's going to increase, and the same tensions that, for example, make indie scenesters and mainstream full-timers wary of calling out even the most blatant hate speech and willing to pump out games barely anyone actually wants to play will begin to infect the scene.
The dystopia we're currently avoiding is the one across the table--where people moan about the travails of deadlines and freelancing, talk about comic book movies and politics because their RPG ideas are property and their RPG opinions might get them in trouble and we slide back to the same shovelware and platitude-filled conversations that we had to make all these blogs in order to lift ourselves out of.
The dire trolly predictions made on the paleoschool game boards 5-6 years ago about what wurz gun tuh happen once James Raggi started in on printin up thim tharr Boxed Sets an' embossed leather guuds an' capituhlism tuk hold have not occurred--we still make cool free stuff a lot and nobody's been left blind and begging for random tables in the streets or been forced to kiss Kevin Crawford's perfumed boot-heels. The problem isn't selling stuff--it's what happens when and if we internalize an ethic that prioritizes selling stuff over all the reasons this is fun.
So don't do that--and enjoy the privilege of being unprofessional as long as you can hold onto it.
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