Hey, all!
Thank you for your kind words, Yaz! :) That said, I hope the context is clear: I'm not complaining. Also, to keep things real, I *did* receive some feedback over the years, just not in any all too elaborate and detailed ways. Happy to report that the feedback was always friendly and constructive, just usually not at all detailed, which is of course what you like - and need - as someone who tries to better himself at the craft.
I think it's also quite inevitable that people don't play or close-read 90% of their RPG stuff, especially these days: The Blackmoor MMRPG documents, for example, that are out there are 70++ PDFs alone. If each of them is just 20 pages long, then we're already at a number that's probably higher than what an average person reads in a year. Or, to put this into perspective, a recent charity sale at DTRPG contained twenty single books, divided into probably fifty single files. That's a lifetime of roleplaying right there, already, if you like it to be.
Now, what people actually, usually do instead is that they enjoy having a big library, but will usually really only cherrypick what they even consider to read, let alone to run as a game. So, downloads and sales can be pretty deceptive, as the act of purchase alone is not yet a guarantee that people will even make it beyond the cover. - Not that there was anything wrong about that way of managing your library, by the way - it's just a different way than we grew up with: In the 1990s, every form of media was a treasure, from your friends' mixtapes, to the rare comic book you got at the skateshop, to the OOP D&D book that you found in a dusty corner of your local bookstore. Today, it's more like "you are looking into to get into [insert name] - cool, here's a USB stick with 50 GB of the most integral data". That, in itself, can be a thing of beauty as well, but it surely devaluates each content creator's individual contribution; unless you really write a lot, and a lot of stuff that connects with people, you don't get ahead in the business. 50 years ago, one good short story or article could make you a personality of note to the general public; today, we have well-selling, prolific authors that follow a steep publishing schedule that can make a living through their art... And that nobody outside their respective bubble knows because the market is so big.
I don't have an answer to this, other than I generally think that good work never goes entirely unnoticed. It's just not a linear ground-level-to-top-level journey, any more, and mouth-to-mouth, viral propaganda is way more important, these days.
This whole new way of managing content is also a reason why I still resist digital books, at least to some degree. You buy something for the e-reader, it's a piece of data. You buy a phyiscal book, it's an item that will belong to your household, and that this way will probably develop a certain life of its own - even if you never run or read it.
"Rafe, have you really read all of Hermann Hesse's stories? Oooooh, intelligence is so sexy!" - "Oh, yes, oh cute and easy-to-impress doctorate student. It's not AT ALL like the collection was for sale at the 0.99 store and I felt it would make me look smart if a book lay next to the dumbbell rack. Now, let me tell you all about why 'Steppenwolf' was really the best DC movie villain..."
Aaaaaaaaaah.
Ahem.
- R
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