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Aurigas Aldebaron’s Address (Comments)
Cory Magel:
--- Quote from: Aurigas Aldebaron’s Address ---Also, I wanted to highlight an email response I provided to a well-meaning fan who was asking if it was permissible for his GM to send to all his players pdf copies of the Rolemaster rulebooks he wanted to use in his campaign. Below is my response. I felt it was important to bring it to the attention of all fans and customers because our relationship with you is a two way street – We need to provide you with a product AND service that allows you to maximize your “fun time†with regards to your RPG hobby. In exchange for this, we need your feedback and guidance into what you want and need AND we need you to support the work by paying for it. Paying for the product and/or service is a fundamental cornerstone of our relationship with you. If you cheat, you will get a short term gain, but in the medium and long run, you will only be cheating yourself and your fellow fans.
(snip)
Look, I know you all think you are saving money, but its stuff like this that will eventually put us out of business. The industry is in difficult straits and I have seen a calculation that something like 40% of sales lost over the last 10 years are due to this type of behavior – essentially piracy. The rest of course is due to the rise of electronic gaming.
Here is the end game: If I can’t at least cover my costs and make a small profit, It will become some sort of free-ware. When that happens, there will be no more further professional creation – sure, you will get home-brewed adventure modules posted for free, but the development of the rules will stop, and high quality support product will be gone. However, if you pay for your entertainment (hours if not days of fun for the cost, in some cases, of a single movie ticket) then I will take a large portion of those profits and invest it back into the business to provide players with more game aids, support products, adventure modules, and the occasional new setting, etc.
At the end of the day, it is up to you, the fans/customers, to decide what they want. Ultimately, your behavior will determine if you get “free but static†(and I believe a far poorer overall experience) or “inexpensive and dynamic†(far greater value for some money). As in all things in our non-magical world, you get what you pay for.
--- End quote ---
I wanted to say something in support of this... and I'm probably going to ramble a bit...
In a day and age where it's easier than ever to send an email halfway around the world with some wonderful song, or book, or whatever to a friend because it's so great you either had to share it with them or they were begging you for it it's easy to not realize you are actually stealing work. There is, in my opinion, a huge section of the population that would never have considered going to a copy store and running off three copies of a book they just read and giving it to their friends. Forget about the actual cost to make the copies - they knew it was wrong on a level they were not comfortable with, largely due to the fact that they had to take the time and effort required to make the copies. It made them actually think about it. A large portion of that group doesn't connect that action with sending off a copy of a book in PDF (or whatever) format. It's so easy and seems so different that it just doesn't cross their mind that it is just as bad, worse in my opinion due to the domino effect, as running off physical copies ten or fifteen years ago.
Now, we could get into a discussion about Napster and 'big companies' and how the music industry moguls 'had it coming' and the like, but that's not what were talking about here. You play Rolemaster (or HARP, or whatever ICE product) because you think it's better than, or at least as good as, the other system out there. The publishers of Rolemaster have always been fairly small operations. When hard times really hit the RPG industry Steve Jackson Games was considered one of the larger game companies after Wizards of the Coast. When it was announced they had eliminated almost half their staff due to required cut-backs to remain viable how many employees do you think they downsized to? Would it shock you to know it was around 25? They were considered in the top three companies as far as size then. Rolemaster was actually ranked up about 6th in popularity/success in those days. Definitely in the top 10. So, while they may have been one of the lead RPG publishers, they were by no means a corporate giant.
So, what it really comes down to is respecting the people who put the time end effort into the product and dealing honestly with them. When I would get a copy of a music CD and found I loved it, I would actually go buy it. The first Trans-Siberian Orchestra was an album I heard only parts of on the radio, then borrowed a copy from a co-worker. I loved the stuff. So I didn't burn a copy, I went out and bought it. Why? Cause they deserved it. Yes, it would be nice if you could make a contribution directly to the artists and bypass the whole music company thing... but that's just not how it works.
Now, those who 'know me' (as much as internet friendship goes) know I had issues with the old ICE(s). We won't get into it for the same reason I never truly tried to play legal hardball with them: Respect for the fact that there were other people who depended on a living from the functioning of the company and other authors that were hoping for a royalty check. I am optimistic that the newest incarnation of ICE will respect the authors in return as much as they will their customers. But for that to have a chance of happening the customers need to respect ICE and those who work, both directly and indirectly, for them.
If you love Rolemaster pay for the number of copies that will get handed out. We all know that for every hard copy book sold back in the day something like three or more people were actually using it around the gaming table. Now imagine multiple groups of people that only a single legal electronic copy was sold to. Personally I think it's a mistake to publish unprotected PDF's for the very reason I mention above about the mental disconnect people have regarding the distribution of electronic files... but ICE has chosen to take the trusting road for the sake of the customers convenience of not having to deal with the hassles that protecting those files can bring. So have the respect to pay for at least what you would have if you were still buying physical copies.
Ok. Soap box put away.
:D
Raf Blutaxt:
The problem with pdf's is that there is no way to borrow them. Gaming has always been a hobby where books are passed around from GM to players and even to other GM's and that was never an issue as long as it was only one hardcopy that had to go back to the owner at some point. With pdf's you don't have that issue anymore, every copy is like every other and in no way different from the original. This becomes an issue since many groups, at least when they start a new game, have only one person, usually the GM who has bought into the gaming system and is trying to get the others to do the same. If he has nothing to show them, because he can't lend them his books, this becomes in fact something that could hinder the adoption of the game by this particular group.
From a legal point of view the issue is clear-cut, it is illegal to send pdf's around, it is stealing and that's it. But from a practical point of view it becomes a bit more complex. Still, if a group has adopted the system and is playing it for a long time, it is a matter of respect to buy these pdf's multiple times, but in the beginning it's a bit much to ask of a whole group to buy a large number of books, I think.
smug:
I'm pretty peeved with the pdf-only-can't-borrow-can't-resell model at present, thanks to RM Express Additions. The problem's not soluble without lots of DRM, though, so I guess we're stuck with this.
I am not an expert on the legal situation, but as I understand it, it varies from country to country in any case. But the point of the address message is really "we need you to buy stuff, please don't steal it" rather than a legal discussion that would in any case probably not be true across all markets, particularly on cases like printing multiple copies from a single pdf, and sharing those about (something that has long been done, back to the photocopy days, for spell lists and attack and critical tables).
ICE don't really have the luxury of the cheaper or free pdf models pursued by other companies; Paizo, for example, sell all their fancy RPG pdfs for $10 and still seem to sell a lot of hard copy (and the rules themselves are all OGL), but as ICE can't produce print runs their pricing differentials are effectively going to be constrained by the grim realities of PoD. Eclipse Phase is actually free on pdf, I think, but that'd mean people would just print their own and have it bound at Kinkos and no PoD monies for ICE.
I'm reassured that RM will be set free if it can't make any money, not because I want AA not to make any money but because I would hate for RM to disappear completely (something I believe Mr Seal has never wished to contemplate either). That's a really cool commitment.
I would note that, as a RMC fan, maybe I am more likely to get "static" in any case*. I'm happy to pay, of course -- I can afford it and I think that RMC/RMX is great -- but really I'd like to be able to buy all of it. However, as the bizarro WotC decision to pull all .pdfs showed, they have much less longevity for legal purchase then hard copy, which I can at least normally buy even if I pay more than cover price, when production and official sale ceases.
If stuff appears which I like, I'll happily pay for it. I do feel somewhat worried that the stuff -- that interests me, I mean -- might not appear, but I'm just an individual with my own preferences which certainly may not reflect the market. There's a trickier situation with stuff I like, written already, which won't appear, though, but it's hardly the first game in which that has happened (for pdfs, at least, all TSR/WotC stuff ever is in that boat).
*Although I'm not claiming this with certainty, or anything like that; if someone pitches an RMC idea which looks like it'll do OK, I'm sure it'll get full consideration. I've never, however, detected much enthusiasm for RMC/2 from some of the higher-ups, either the game or the tactic of reformatting RM2 into a new saleable form (pretty sure there was a GC editorial in which the wisdom of putting effort into that was questioned), so if efforts are focussed onto games in which I don't have much interest -- RMSS/FRP or HARP -- then I'm not going to be complaining that it was unexpected (any more than RMSS/FRP fans felt about the static nature of the book output for those games).
pastaav:
I think selling DRM-free PDF files is the right way to go. If the DRM madness barely works for the major labels and has alienated lots of possible customers so that they stop buying anything, then how could it possibly work for a small gaming company?
I would never ever buy anything with DRM in it. The likelihood I would like to use it one some kind of reader that is not invented yet is substantial and with DRM in the product it is doomed to happen sooner or later that I can use by legally purchased copy.
Truth is that fans buy material to support their company, but there is a catch. People only stay as active supporters if there is belief the company can deliver on their promises. So far I think the GCP is doing great...yet it of course the matter of getting the product work as PODs.
Witchking20k:
Whats DRM?
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