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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wayside" data-source="post: 839366" data-attributes="member: 8394">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?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.</blockquote>

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