5 Reasons Why Building a Blackmoor Community is Hard

[Rafael]

A small addendum:

https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com ... s-for.html

With this new set of laws bound to threaten the entire modern concept of "fair use", I as a European would probably refrain from creating anything video- or podcast-related for the entirety of 2019. Great times to curate one's own stuff, but really bad times for wanting to get into the "professional fan" business.

[Greg]

Internet companies such as YouTube have made billions by building a content platform that users have loaded with stolen content and copyright violations. They managed to achieve this by relying on a U.S. law that places the burden of defending copyright and requesting the removal of illegal content solely on individual copyright owners, who can't possibly police the endless stream of content being uploaded every minute.

This law is what has allowed many Internet companies to operate with impunity for many years. But now that the EU is proposing a law that shifts the burden to where it belongs, on the companies hosting the content, serving it up, and profiting from it, YouTube wants to cry foul and scare content creators into being its unpaid political lobbyists.

I am unsympathetic and unimpressed. These companies have been glorified crime syndicates for over 20 years, and while we have all benefitted from their impunity, it is unfair to copyright owners and costs them a fortune.

YouTube's scare tactics are a clever attempt to claim that all "small" Internet companies will be unable to operate, and it will no longer be able to support individual content creators. But these are outright lies. Small businesses are exempt from the proposed law, YouTube already has filtering technology it will be able to use to help ensure compliance, and YouTube's businesss model is so dependent on content creators to generate revenue that the company will have to absorb the burden and costs.

It won't be easy, but it has the resources and means to do this, and while it will pass some of the costs on to users, the company has operated all along with the full understanding that laws in certain jurisdictions could change and dramatically affect its operations and business model. In business, this is what we call risks and threats. Your job is to manage, mitigate and prepare for them. But when you build your platform with such reliance on a single law and a sweeping disregard for copyright, you've assumed an extremely high-risk position. Tough luck.

[finarvyn]

A great essay. I thought I'd add in my thoughts on a few things.

1. BLACMOOR IS A SMALL NICHE

Agreed. It's amazing to me how many recent gamers have no idea about the history of the hobby and have never heard of Blackmoor. I suppose it comes down to the number of products out there, and for Blackmoor there are hardly any in the early days. The FFC is the only one from the 1970's, the four DA modules from the 1980's, and so on. Zeitgeist games created a bit of an upturn for a while, and this has basically vanished again. Now, if WotC would release a 5E Blackmoor sourcebook then the setting would grab some attention.

2. PEOPLE LIKE TO READ, NOT POST

For me, I often go to boards to read but only post if I think I have something worthwhile to say. I try to avoid "me to" posts, and if I don't feel like much of an expert I may be very silent. From a Blackmoor perspective, I read the heck out of the FFC book back in the 1970's but I don't always remember the details well from so long ago, plus I own much of the d20 stuff but honestly haven't really read or used it much. Not at all an expert on Blackmoor anymore, especially when some of the folks here start to throw their wisdom around or when folks talk about the newer stuff.

3. PEOPLE WANT TO SET UP THEIR OWN COMMUNITIES INSTEAD OF JOINING

This is a tough one, and this is coming from a guy who set up his own community. In the case of ODD74, I tried to convince folks on DF to have an OD&D section and got lukewarm response so I started my own place to discuss OD&D. Having Dave Arneson join and post was a bonus, and of course I had to set up a Blackmoor section for him. In general, however, most communities flop around a while and then die off and it would be better to join up with an established community unless a poster just wants to talk to himself.

4. BLACKMOOR FANDOM IS FRAGMENTED

I'm guilty of this. I hate to think of myself as a Blackmoor "snob" or any such, but my real interest is in anything directly associated with Dave and his early campaign so I focus on the FFC and any old stories that Bob Meyer or Gronan or Svenny can spin about the campaign. I like my rules loose and fast, not as restrictive as d20 and so I tend not to spend much time thinking about the later materials. That does cause a fragment for me, even though I wish it didn't. Newer products just don't feel the same (to me) as the FFC. Bottom line is that most of us have a favorite version of Blackmoor, and since BM has appeared in Greyhawk, in the Wilderlands, in other campaigns, this generates unfortunate fragmentation in interest. (Which is why we have so many niche sub-forums here.)

5. THE SHADOW OF CONTROVERSY

I dislike this part of the hobby. I know that the Dave-Gary thing has been around nearly as long as OD&D has been around, but it does seem like a certain percentage of folks are trying to build up one party at the expense of the other. I want to know what rules were created when, but I don't want to steal credit from one person in order to give it to another.

OD&D grew organically (in my opinion) based on ideas generated by many individuals, and Dave Arneson took the pieces and put them into a Blackmoor campaign. Then Gary Gygax came in and organized things, added to things, typed up things. Having played RPGs for more than four decades, I can be pretty certain that my version of the story is greatly simplified because I know in my own homebrew games over the years that nothing was created 100% by one person. I might create "the campaign" but my players offered ideas for NPCs, their characters affected the history of the game, sometimes they suggested rules for certain situations that came up. This means that "my campaign" was never really mine at all, but jointly created by my gaming group. I suspect that this sort of development happened to Arneson's group, with various people adding in ideas until their campaign became what it became.

Now I've done it. I've probably started more controversy and the historians will swoop in and rip my thoughts apart, too. 8)

[Greg]

No, Finarvyn, I don't think you've stirred up new controversy. As I've been learning much more about the origins of D&D, it's abundantly clear that many people played a role in its development, both literally and figuratively.

Dave and Gary played the biggest roles, and Dave was clearly the innovator and the person who created the initial game and concept that would become D&D. His players were also instrumental in helping establish fantasy role playing and how the game is played and judged to this day.

Gary seemed to drive much of the more formal process of codifying rules, publishing the game, and building a successful business around it. Others also played roles on that side.

Of course, things got much more complicated once different ideas, visions and especially money came into play, and the two co-creators parted ways. The rest is sometimes ugly and is subject to debate, but you can't deny the crucial role that both Dave and Gary played. I hope the forthcoming documentaries will also enlighten more people about the roles played by those first Blackmoor players and other lesser-known individuals who had a hand in the game's early history.

[Rafael]

Internet companies such as YouTube have made billions by building a content platform that users have loaded with stolen content and copyright violations. They managed to achieve this by relying on a U.S. law that places the burden of defending copyright and requesting the removal of illegal content solely on individual copyright owners, who can't possibly police the endless stream of content being uploaded every minute.

This law is what has allowed many Internet companies to operate with impunity for many years. But now that the EU is proposing a law that shifts the burden to where it belongs, on the companies hosting the content, serving it up, and profiting from it, YouTube wants to cry foul and scare content creators into being its unpaid political lobbyists.

I am unsympathetic and unimpressed. These companies have been glorified crime syndicates for over 20 years, and while we have all benefitted from their impunity, it is unfair to copyright owners and costs them a fortune.

YouTube's scare tactics are a clever attempt to claim that all "small" Internet companies will be unable to operate, and it will no longer be able to support individual content creators. But these are outright lies. Small businesses are exempt from the proposed law, YouTube already has filtering technology it will be able to use to help ensure compliance, and YouTube's businesss model is so dependent on content creators to generate revenue that the company will have to absorb the burden and costs.

It won't be easy, but it has the resources and means to do this, and while it will pass some of the costs on to users, the company has operated all along with the full understanding that laws in certain jurisdictions could change and dramatically affect its operations and business model. In business, this is what we call risks and threats. Your job is to manage, mitigate and prepare for them. But when you build your platform with such reliance on a single law and a sweeping disregard for copyright, you've assumed an extremely high-risk position. Tough luck.

I like your posts, Greg. Just to clarify, I am obviously not concerned about the welfare of Youtube/Google/Alphabet. - However, if taking down content for perceived copyright infringement is bound to become exponentially easier, the possibility of seeing sophisticated fan work will diminish. Talking in less abstract terms, for us here, this means that the chances that any of us are going stick our necks out and do a podcast, a video series, or anything of the kind, are likely dropping from "not very probable" to "about zero". That's not a statement on Google, on the (proposed?) new law, or any of the kind - that's just me saying, I don't want to burden what should be a recreational activity with any of the problems I have just described. Precisely because it's not *my* duty, let alone my job, to consider those things; it's Youtube's.