You're up at 7 AM on a Saturday morning just to make posts like this? Man, you're dedicated to what you do!
Heh. I'm at Origins right now waiting for the booth to open.
--Erik
Pathfinder 1E Paizo Publishing Hires Sean K Reynolds
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Heh. I'm at Origins right now waiting for the booth to open.
--Erik
That's a little narrow-minded itself. Your lack of support for a music artist you normally like doesn't likely affect their bottom line, and they are still likely to be supporting whatever causes they believe it. I can understand not going to a concert where all the proceeds go to a charity or cause you find offensive, but not a general artist boycott because "OMG, if I buy this CD by Herman and the Hermanmisters, I might indirectly support their charity for Joey Politician! I'm just gonna download their CD's illegally to punish them for not thinking like me".
I guarantee you, a lot of the money on food, gas, clothing, housing, etc, indirectly supports some cause you dislike. I think it's a little strange to worry about the entertainers. If people really knew all the facts and made those little moral choices nobody would buy anything.
And you miss my point about Lovecraft and Wagner. Some people think an opinion totally invalidates the old work. For instance, I might not be inclined to see Michael Richards do stand-up, BUT I'm not going to say he's now not funny in Seinfeld, which is what some people do.
My point is that people should be able to ignore other's different opinions and enjoy their work as it stands. I know Sean has political rants, but nobody was forced to read them and just because he has different opinions, they shouldn't change how you feel about the work.
I would like to think people are more accepting of opinions that don't match theirs and look beyond that. Basically, I can't see wanting to boycott Paizo just because they hired Sean and Sean said X about Y on a message board.
Don't get me wrong, I will most probably choose 4E over Pathfinder. I am still glad to see that Paizo is moving in their own direction and working at creating a strong team doing that. Even if I think Paizo has been hit and miss with their Pathfinder offerings, they have still created better adventures than WotC over the last few years, and their map packs and flip mats are way more useful to me than WotC's dungeon tiles.
Basically I think it is good for D&D-style gaming if both 4E and Pathfinder succeed, perhaps especially for those of us who choose 4E. After all, translating Paizo adventures into 4E seems easier than translating 4E crunch into Pathfinder. And I think Paizo will probably make better material when they write for their own game, and don't have to either adjust things to accommodate rules they don't like or push things into an awkward angle just to try to be different from what WotC are doing.
SKR has always seemed to me like a person with strong opinions and a lot of energy to push things forward in order to forward his vision. That can be very useful to a company. Of course, I don't know him.
A final thought: The more strong companies that are in the RPG business that create good products, the more chance there will be for our games to get new players and survive in the long run. There are way more people out there that are potential roleplayers than there are active ones. In other words one company's success might very well be very good for the other companies as well...
Basically I think it is good for D&D-style gaming if both 4E and Pathfinder succeed, perhaps especially for those of us who choose 4E. After all, translating Paizo adventures into 4E seems easier than translating 4E crunch into Pathfinder. And I think Paizo will probably make better material when they write for their own game, and don't have to either adjust things to accommodate rules they don't like or push things into an awkward angle just to try to be different from what WotC are doing.
SKR has always seemed to me like a person with strong opinions and a lot of energy to push things forward in order to forward his vision. That can be very useful to a company. Of course, I don't know him.
A final thought: The more strong companies that are in the RPG business that create good products, the more chance there will be for our games to get new players and survive in the long run. There are way more people out there that are potential roleplayers than there are active ones. In other words one company's success might very well be very good for the other companies as well...
Entertainers count more because they influence public opinion more. How is this not clear to you?
You've got to be kidding. There are entire adventures under Paizo devoted to quirky, humorous themes....and how do you think they got selected, on the quality of their stat blocks?
The style changed over the years, perhaps, as the culture of the game changed, but that was always going to happen no matter who was running Dungeon, because of what people were submitting under the influence of the zeitgeist.
Wulf Ratbane
Adventurer
Sure. So?
Of course it does. Maybe not appreciably so, but a sale's a sale. And it affects my bottom line. If I have $20 bucks to spend, where do I want to spend it? This is really a no-brainer kind of thing.
I don't download music illegally. Ever. So kindly take those words back out of my mouth.
I'm not punishing anyone for not thinking like me. I am availing myself fully of the options capitalism affords me. It is no different than NOT buying from a manufacturer who employs child labor, or pollutes the environment-- or even in some cases, just uses foreign manufacturing, period. It's the same thing.
Well, then, perhaps the entertainers should just, "Shut up and sing."
On the other hand, if the artist has done the work to build a following and would like to take the opportunity to support a cause, that is the artist's right-- and it is the patron's right to decide to cease patronage.
If I am aware of it, I can make an informed, moral, and/or ethical decision as to whether to buy it or not. Entertainers who make a public display of their inclinations invite that decision.
And folks who don't make a public display out of it are likely to enjoy a larger audience, customer base, what have you.
Who said that?
As I recall the posts upthread, they validated the work, and then said, "But it's too bad I can't support SKR."
I don't recall a single post that said, "I thought SKR did good work until I read his rants, and then I realized that his work wasn't actually very good after all."
I'm not as publicly rant-y as SKR (thought I think I am at least as irascible online) but I don't think folks would have a hard time sussing out my political leanings. I know of at least one gamer who has told me he won't buy my stuff, ever. (Although I don't think it was specifically politically motivated-- I think I said something derogatory about France.)
I'm cool with it. I am not inclined to "Shut up and sing."
I suspect SKR is cool with it, too.
Being narrow-minded is not something to aspire to.
I never said it was you in that hypothetical quote, so stop reading into things.
While that's the person's rights, I do find the term "shut up and sing" somewhat offensive because I think it's leading to a world where nobody wants to express their opinions ever for fear of "market share loss". In the past, Democrats and Republicans were able to get along better, now it's become more devisive. Heck, that's what's probably leading to all the 3e vs. 4e stuff on this board, it's like even being surrounded by opinions contrary to your own is detrimental to your happiness.
And in Sean's case--I highly doubt he's a big financial backer of anything, so that's why I think in the original poster's case, it's more a case of not buying from your local store because you know one of the clerk's votes for the opposite political party, not any of the hypotheticals you are pointing out. When you carry things to that extreme, it gets a little silly.
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Funnily enough, though some of Gary's views don't match my own, and he's more conservative than me, I respect him more now for having the strength of his convictions. I felt the same way about SKR's political views, though he's more liberal than I am. Both are probably right, but from different frames of reference, or in less absolute terms.
I guess I like it when people don't sit on the fence. At least it shows some passion for the fate of the world and engagement with the people and other life on it. Perhaps the tragedy of the maintenance of a professional guise is that it tries to pretend that we aren't all flawed beings in a flawed world.
And yes, despite that nice bedside manner, the theatre staff are making jokes at your expense when you're under the general anaesthetic. That sort of sums up professional demeanor in a nutshell, for me.
I guess I like it when people don't sit on the fence. At least it shows some passion for the fate of the world and engagement with the people and other life on it. Perhaps the tragedy of the maintenance of a professional guise is that it tries to pretend that we aren't all flawed beings in a flawed world.
And yes, despite that nice bedside manner, the theatre staff are making jokes at your expense when you're under the general anaesthetic. That sort of sums up professional demeanor in a nutshell, for me.
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Wulf Ratbane
Adventurer
I prefer to call it "morally anchored."
I admit it-- I expected you would.
Well, John, once again I confess that I don't know what world you're living in, but the rest of us are living in a world where being vocal and active on a range of issues is more often than not how you build market share. Rush Limbaugh and Keith Olbermann operate on a larger scale, but in the world of little game designers it can be the heart of a successful Long Tail/True Fan strategy.
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