boschdevil said:
To me, the most important "theory" of the game to gamers and publishers should alway be profitability. If publishers don't make a profit, they don't usually last, and hence new products aren't made.
To me, seriousness is something one can take or leave. I know that if a game was take too seriously, I'll just walk away. The only thing that should be taken seriously is your life. Everything else is just details.
That's a fine theory to have. I buy very few gamebooks for gaming anyway, so it doesn't really matter to me what the game companies publish. If I want info for bards I'll turn to a book like The Spirit of Romance (mostly on troubadours), or something more historical like Albert Lord's The Singer of Tales (or one of Milman Parry's books), or something on Greek lyric poetry (you know, back when poems were songs), etc. Personally I think the fact that the bard class participates in heroic deeds but does not fulfill the role of epic poet is tragic.
What I mean by taking the game seriously isn't having some kind of stake in it. I could never play another session after today and frankly I wouldn't care. Like I've said, for my group and I, gaming is a way to tell stories together. None of us need each other to tell stories though. We do innumerable other things together as friends as well, so if gaming were to suddenly disappear it's not like we'd be left standing around scratching our heads.
Anyway, what is life but an enormous accumulation of details?
boschdevil said:
As for the music analogy, I would really tink Vile material would be more like a musician that blasts out explicitives every five seconds in their songs. (since the cussing language would be more akin to Vile material) From this, two observations can be made. First, the local radio stations (the media) in my area mask out the language int he songs. They don't leave the language in the songs. Next, usually these songs need the Vile material because there is nothing in the song. They need the cuss words to sell their inferior product. It is like getting a hamburger and realize it is all bun.
Finally, the Indie label isn't a good analogy for D&D as well. You don't need four people to be able to listen to an Indie song. Thus, in music, you have more of a chance of selling these songs to one to two people and they still enjoy it. In D&D, you need at least three people to really play the game. It is very difficult to play it by yourself.
Sorry, I can see how what I was saying there might be difficult to decipher. I'm not comparing vile/not-vile content to any kind of music. What I'm saying is this: profitability is not related to quality. Looking at Billboard, I'm tempted to say the inverse is true. So, if the argument is that vile material is crap, then that position can't automatically be extended to mean vile material will hurt sales. Whether Fred Durst is the equivalent of the BoVD wasn't the point; but it doesn't hurt the argument, since Fred Durst sells a lot of albums.
Also, you're right: the whole indie scene doesn't survive on anything like 4 people groups. It takes FAR more people at their shows (and indie bands tour relentlessly) to keep it afloat. The existence of punk today is thanks to local music scenes, not record sales. The center of independent music is cultural, not commercial. That's why you have outspoken punk bands like Rancid labeling
any successful punk(ish) groups as non-punk. The moment you become commercially successful you effectively (to a lot of these people anyway) cease to be a cultural center, so you're banished.
Labels like Drive Thru and Vagrant aren't about mainstream band promotion. Their bands play a lot of shows and win the people over with their music. Sometimes this works quickly, like with Dashboard Confessional (only about a year from Chris' first EP), and sometimes it takes almost a decade, like with Jimmy Eat World. Either way, it aint the record sales that keep these guys afloat, it's all the kids that come to the live shows.
