Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => General Discussion => Topic started by: John Schmidt on <06-29-11/1409:27>
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Bull and I sat down for an interview at Origins...before the camera was turned on we discussed a plethora (under used word) of Shadowrun topics. One of which was touched upon in another thread, refraining from thread jacking I decided to start a new topic here. ;)
There was a time when Shadowrun had reached an apex in popularity (at least as far as sales were concerned). Bull drew an interesting correlation, it was at a point in time when you had a slew of really excellent and well known SR websites. Blackjack's page, Raygun's page, Hoosier Hacker House, Big Knoobi Klub, Deep Resonance, Grifter's Shadow, and many...many more were in existence and providing fan based content. It was more than just content though, it was visibility and a perceived vitality that served to inject the gaming equivalent of adrenaline into GM's and players alike. Much in the same manner that attending GenCon can instill an enthusiasm by being surrounded by 30,000 like minded souls!
I believe that for Shadowrun to once more scale that summit of popularity that it needs to have that same level of support from the fans.
So...what say you?
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I was around back in those days and I definately think the high quality and easy availablility of fan site material was definately a factor in the game's popularity. Whenever I was trying to convince a new player to get into the game, Blackjack's was one of the first things I showed them.
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His site was great and he had some great advice for GM's and players. Blackjack is one of those people who's departure has really been felt within the community (IMHO). While there were certainly other sites that had more content the quality of his content was extremely impressive to me.
Desdinova81, I am glad that you are still with us! :)
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Chicken and Egg.
Were there more great fan sites because there were more fans?
You could also argue that most of the good fan content has been co opted into the game itself. The best material has been brought into the current version of the game, as well as the best fans as direct contributors rather then independent ones.
You'd have to evaluate the overall available material in terms of quantity and quality over the population of fans to really say that it has declined in relative or absolute terms.
My personal perception is that the relative quality is higher, and has been brought in house, rather than residing in exterior fan sites.
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"Well, you told me I have a plethora. And I just would like to know if you know what a plethora is. I would not like to think that a person would tell someone he has a plethora, and then find out that that person has no idea what it means to have a plethora."
-- El Guapo
Well said, DireRadiant.
I would also suggest that perhaps the apex in Shadowrun popularity coincided with a boom in the table-top RPG industry. Maybe that's just anecdotal, but it seems that back in the '90s and early '00s, there was simply more happening in the pen & paper scene. Sort of the Second Age of RPGs. White Wolf was huge, TSR was still semi-coherent, CP2020 was expanding, WHFRP, GURPs...I could rattle off a plethora of gaming systems that were all experiencing sort of a groundswell of support around the same era.
That audience has aged, and has less disposable free time...the next generation seems to be more interested in either computer-based content (MMOGs, JRPGs, whatever) or "WoWified" 4e D&D...*shudder*...
Not that I have scientific studies to back me up on this - just observation of the gaming landscape around me.
-Jn-
City of Brass Expatriate
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Aunty Ancient just took his Page down . .
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Aunty Ancient just took his Page down . .
NOOOOOOOOOO
ARGH his PACKS, infected info, artifacts list and earthdawn stuff were so useful!
ARGH
*Edit* whew way back machine salvages some of it
*edit2*Okay okay panic averted, just saw UA's back up he posted on dumpshock
but now there's copyightness to worry about....
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It was also the day of the fan-made webpage too. Less so of that sort of thing now.
Then again, back when I was GMing (http://fromtheshadowsrpg.blogspot.com/)...
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It was also the day of the fan-made webpage too. Less so of that sort of thing now.
Then again, back when I was GMing (http://fromtheshadowsrpg.blogspot.com/)...
I already have you bookmarked for a rainy days read
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If I ever get gaming again (And find some artists, perhaps), maybe I'll pick this up again...
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I've played SR since day one, and I can honestly say, the existence of fan web pages means nothing to me. Dumpshock was nice as a place to ask about rules or talk about fluff, and the MUXes were great for playing SR online before Skype and other tools.
Otherwise, I never really saw how having alot of sites with generally questionable material makes a game thrive or not.
Now, the great sites definitely helped me, but would they really bring in new players and generate sales? It seems doubtful.
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You could also argue that most of the good fan content has been co opted into the game itself. The best material has been brought into the current version of the game, as well as the best fans as direct contributors rather then independent ones.
This. This is important because the same time that web fandom seems to have declined, fandom's impact on the game itself skyrocketed.
There are a lot of factors. The reason for the decline can be attributed to a number of factors (FASA closing being far and away the biggest according to everyone I've talked to about the sudden drop off in support around 2000-2001). Some of the most popular sites also had server and other technical issues around the same time for various reasons, and that drove people away. FanPro making a home at DS helped it, but Shadowland never recovered from its high of having over 10,000 users after the Great Crash. It didn't help that around the time that happened Dave Hyatt—who had become a freelancer writing RA:S and Brainscan—no longer had any interest in running what was until the end the most technically sophisticated SR website ever because he had to go do stupid shit like invent Firefox, Safari, and Dashboard for OS X. If Grifter was who I recall him to be (AKA Corwin), then he's a piece of shit who was run off, and good riddance.
Technically, no one has homepages that they can make into fan sites—which is what the web was when it began. SR has had one of the largest and most organized online fandoms since before there was a World Wide Web. But now it's blogs and social media. Internet usage is going down except for Facebook. Shadowrun has over 12,000 fans on there. CGL and Jason have twitter feeds. But let's not pretend that the pieces of shit spreading the bullshit rumors of CGL's/SR's doom for the last two years hasn't hurt the game itself. It has. Fans can be bastards, too.
But the main point is important. All of the freelancers that followed the creators were fans. Peter Taylor showed that a committed effort by fans can really affect things. He went from a dude on DS to Line Developer in six-seven years and had an indelible impact on the line beyond the original EuroSB/Shadows of Europe project.
The product has changed as well. I always held that there were plenty of people who came before Bobbie Derie and plenty who would come after. Now, I'm not so sure. Who needs an archivist when you can search every products made in the last decade simultaneously?
Access to information has changed, too. Unless you want to go all-out and create new stuff (Novel for SR at times, I know), in which case it is irrelevant, you don't need the NAGEE writeups of Pueblo and Vegas; Blackjack's pieces on Philly; or the Shadows of Winnipeg, MSP, or Cleveland. This is actually related to the last tumblr post I made: Micro + Macro Setting Info, and Expansion, Generally (http://crimsondude.tumblr.com/post/6928875760/micro-macro-setting-info-and-expansion-generally). In 22 years, especially in the last decade, Shadowrun has finally covered most of the world. It's less of a mystery, and less of a blank slate to do whatever you want with. Ten years ago, there was still mystery: The only location books were for North America (including Aztlan), Hawaii, London, and Germany. FanPro gave us Australia, Shadows of Europe, and Shadows of Asia. The SR4 locations books gave us chapters or briefs on South America, Africa, Europe, most parts of Asia. We have two decades worth of storyline and major characters. No one feels a compelling interest to make their own NPC lists because ... FASA, FanPro, and CGL all got around to doing it themselves.
No one puts character sheets up anymore because since 1994 there were places where you could pit your PCs vs. those of someone living 10,000 miles away. The official forums even have a PBP area. So the info's out there, but only if you're looking for it. It's not the entirety of some dude's page that comes up when you hit Random on the Shadowrun Web Ring.
And, yes, people come and go. Different fans have different compelling reasons to provide information. My first writing collaborator stopped writing about SR specfor when he went to become a Navy SEAL. The second one was into designing weapons, and there is so much stuff in SR now what's the point? When FASA basically appropriated Peter Milhollands' Firearms Creation Guide (that Raygun modified and ran with. But the original FCG was Spud's) we had a vigorous discussion, especially in light of him studying IP law in law school at the time. What ultimately happened was instead he became a freelancer, and then he disappeared off the face of the Earth. A lot of PBEM/PBP players are writing what is in fact collaborative fiction. Well, guess what. The guy who won all of tisoz's fiction contests is a freelancer now. We don't play/write together anymore for fun much—it's our job now. He plays other games for fun. I am (finally) learning Battletech and Hero.
But mainly, it's the fact that the Shadowrun community has grown closer through message boards like this and DS. I can say, "Go back and look at BKK or Blackjack. They're not as good as you remember." And they aren't. What they had were site authors who constantly updated their pages. Let's not pretend that most SR sites weren't just basic HTML that someone put up once when they got a free public_html folder as part of their college account and then never touched it again. Those guys are exceptional because they were so uncommon. They had pages, and folders, and images. They updated the pages, and they provided a fairly decent amount of content compared to 95% of SR pages on the WWW. But even the "good" ones died when they weren't maintained. That some of them were hosted beginning around ten years ago by the de facto official message board/site didn't do anyone any favors—the authors, DS, or FanPro for giving them some imprimatur of official sanction. Same as the timeline explorer never getting fixed or updated (Again, a decade ago). Same with the wiki now.
The games evolves. The fanbase evolves. Fact is that the "Good" sites got good word of mouth because that's really how you found them. You pop into r.g.f.c or ShadowRN and ask "Hey, what's a good site?" Now you hit Google. You visit the FB fan page. You visit the official website and the official forums. If you want to put a free site together, you're pretty much limited to a blog format: tumblr, wordpress, blogspot, or livejournal for the fossils. Geocities is GONE. Qwest and Comcast don't give you a free homepage when you sign up now (to my knowledge). If you want to host a website, you have to host a website. Even Mac.com charges you a fee. I can't even get around to buying a domain name for my close friends to host a full-blown site. But what is a full-blown SR site going to be or look like anymore? Every creative content producer I know has insisted that they need to maintain a broad spectrum presence. You need a regular website (which is often a mirror of your tumblr), a tumblr, a twitter stream, a FB fan page, and so on. There is so much media that there isn't time for much content. No one cares if you dump a half-meg of setting info on the message board anymore. You do that in a ShadowRN e-mail in 1994 and you're in deep shit.
I think the idea of a Good Old Days is just that: an idea. Nostalgia is a motherfucker. I can't stand it. Nothing is going to bring back Shadowland. Even if it did, it wouldn't be the same because I am not the person I was five, ten, fifteen years ago (I hope). A new gamer now doesn't necessarily want the experience I want. I wanted to game without having to deal with, ugh, other gamers IRL. Now I do. But if someone has a cool idea and content, they're probably going to publish it here and/or DS. That way you get instant feedback and someone else eats all the costs and BS of hosting the data.
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I've got to completely agree with Crimson here.
I remember first coming across Blackjacks when I was twelve and printing out the stats for the Mr. Coverfire and begging my GM to my combat medic have one. Now though, I feel like all of that information could just as well be posted on these boards if people wanted to.
The internet has changed, the industry has changed, and in general people are greedier with their ideas and time than they used to be. I've got a buddy that writes all his adventures out and formats them just like Shadowrun missions, but he won't post them for anyone to use because he's worried they'll get stolen without giving him credit. On the other hand, he publishes all his D&D/Pathfinder stuff because with the open game license he can make money off of it. This is the same kind of material that used to be published for free on every single RPG fan site you came across.
Look at how the popularity of D&D soared with 3rd edition and now with 4th edition. Many people will say that's its because of the simplicity of the system, but I thoroughly believe that it was the OGL that did it. One system for every game people wanted to play (too bad it couldn't have been a better one).
I personally think that Shadowrun could gain some popularity by adopting a similar model. Allowing 3rd parties to use the system for their own settings and possibly allowing 3rd parties to publish SR adventures. That said, I would definitely impose a system of checks for any 3rd party material printed for the SR universe (or any others if CGL decided to use the same system for other RPGs of their creation) for quality purposes and force a non-canon statement on the first page of all 3rd party books, but that's just my nature.
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Of course you agree. I'm always right. :)
The third-party thing is a bit more complicated since there's an IP holder and licensees. I think if Mafia Wars can make Zynga worth billions that a SR version designed by someone like Dave (or him, but not likely) would kick its ass. Problem is that the legalities are a mess. I have some business ideas I want to discuss with Jason and Randall, but might and probably would have to get Topps involved. No one wants that hassle for the miniscule amount of money involved.
Fan involvement has changed, but it is still strong. Most games will never have near the support SR does now and has had in the aggregate. Propriety over IP had also changed a lot. Information may want to be free, but I don't know anyone who wants THEIR INFORMATION to be free anymore. Even now I hold stuff too the vest from everyone so I can have credit when it is used in the next project. However, I have also refused to propose stuff for even more selfish reasons. I'm thirty-plus. I'm getting paid, damn it.
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Yes, it seems that everything these days has to be a pain legally.
I majored in computer science, so most of the legal issues I keep up with are in that field. There was almost an entire year where the precedent had been set that if you named an MMO character (we'll use World of Warcraft as the example) with a name that is against to ToU (for instance in WoW you are not allowed to have the name of a famous person as your character name, so we'll say Aldrin (as in Buzz Aldrin the astronaut)) you break your license and would be committing copyright infringement every time you log on the character.
Things like that make me wish I had an ounce of control over our laws, stupid me for always liking the independent candidates.
As for the IP issues, I would think the key (and I'm not a lawyer so I am most likely wrong since it makes logical sense) would be a separation of Setting (i.e. all the shadowrun material) from the system (i.e. the rules that make it work). For instance, instead of calling the system SR4A (for Shadowrun Fourth Edition Anniversary), you would have Shadowrun Fourth Edition using the Hit System (or whatever it was to be named).
Then you could also have Dark Dank Places and Great Big Worms: A Fantasy RPG using the Hit System (I personally feel that the SR4 system makes a great fantasy base). In fact, I've actually played in more non-SR games using the SR4 system than I have played SR games with it and I can say its worked wonderfully for everything from pulp indiana jones style adventures to hardcore action Terminator style games.
I wasn't condemning the greediness (I havn't posted my material anywhere since my Living Greyhawk adventure proposals were published with all credit to the regional coordinator I sent them to), and I do feel that we should get paid for work that makes the game better. I was merely stating that this is the general fan attitude today as opposed to the "Good Old Days" when people were happy just to get feedback on their ideas.
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I think there's more to it than the popularity of the game. The way the www is used has changed radically since the 90s.
The days of fan-pages and web1.0 businesses have come and gone, for the most part. Online sales have given way to community marketing (we the community are the product in most web based business models these days, we're not the client anymore). Bbs gave way to the personal webpage which gave way to the blog which became the aggregated blog or blogroll and has now been largely supplanted by microblogging (the smaller of pieces we break our information "texts" into the more opportunities our community hosts will have to sell our existence to their real customers, the advertisers).
I think current events might make for a good tool to bring new people into Shadowrun. I tend to pitch it as an Earth sci-fi in a capitalist dystopia, where the common man has been reduced to nothing, governments have been reduced to shells of what they are today, and the corporations (and of course the almighty nuyen) rule the roost. Given the situation in places like Wisconsin, there's a bit of a sympathetic feel to the idea of having your government hollowed out and the world in the hands of businesses more interested in squeezing a buck out of you than in making a buck with you... /end politics
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I just wish kids today remembered Regan-omics.
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I'd kill for Reaganomics right now.
"Say what you will about the tenets of national socialism. At least it was an ethos."
Anyway, my last point was more of me just saying that even though I have gotten my way so far papa is selling his shit O-U-T.
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Yeah, but if Reganomics came back, so would skinny leather ties, legwarmers, and 1980s music videos. Is it worth that much? Is it really?
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Actually...
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Yeah, but if Reganomics came back, so would skinny leather ties, legwarmers, and 1980s music videos. Is it worth that much? Is it really?
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Actually...
Point #1 (http://blog.gettyimages.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/zac-efron.jpg)
Point #2 (http://styletips101.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/legwarmers.jpg)
Point #3 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyMhvkC3A84)
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I think I'm in the minority of people here who actually lived in the eighties. I hate that I am now old enough that I have to suffer through stupid pop shit twice—the first time it happens, and twenty years later when some nostalgic idiot gets an idea.
Anyway, people have always been outgrowing the game. By all rights I should have five or ten years ago. There is something to be said for the appeal of tabletop RPGs. I don't play video games because I just do not see the appeal in satisfying the social and creative endeavors I have been able to pursue through Shadowrun. All my video game experience has basically been to kick someone's ass. I keep seeing people discussing comics and doing everything to replicate or otherwise mimic other media. Each is its own medium, and they work because of what they do that no other medium can. I don't think it's a coincidence that people keep asking about SR novels. Given my background my gaming experience has been collaborative storytelling. RPG sites are great in theory for sharing ideas and telling tales around an endless gaming table, which the web experience is very amenable to promoting right now. I can't recall exactly when my last one was, but only half of my tweets with the #Shadowrun hashtag are pimping my stuff. The other half is just random stuff I think of, and I don't really feel compelled to expand upon them. I like to think that anyone who is intrigued is fully capable of running with that ball themselves. If not, there's a million places to ask around for help.
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1. Official forums helped the decline of fan pages and fan productions.
2. The 80's were ok as long as you avoided all the goofy fads and the yuppies. (Geeky Metal Head was a fine alternative.)
3. Don't forget the 80's did produce at least one great rpg we all know and love.
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I agree with the sentiment that lots of the fan made material has been incorporated into the game.
I've been playing Shadowrun since the game hit the shelves of Fandom II (my friendly local gaming store) back in 1989, and my friends and I who play it have always been pleasantly surprised whenever a new edition comes out. Many of the house rules we came up with were done in a vacuum, since none of us were on the internet until the mid-90's, and we were a tight knit group who didn't game with any other folks but ourselves. And those house rules we came up with, well, SR2 incorporated many of them.
If I were to extrapolate, I would probably find that many people who played Shadowrun had the same, or similar, beefs about the system and that the editors and writers for Shadowrun either got enough feedback or figured it out themselves.
And they weren't afraid to change SR.
I think, despite recent troubles, that the game will continue to improve, and some of that improvement will be created by the fans. Through posting of their custom stuff, or through posting here, or through providing feedback to CGL.
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Or suggesting management styles to the folks that run CGL, like throat-punching people until novels are made. :P
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For me, the best thing about the old SR fan sites wasn't the material they provided, but the ideas the gave me for my own material. For a little while, I had my own unknown SR fan site with a bunch of stuff. Looking at what everyone else had done made me think of new things to try out, both in-game and for write-ups on my site. Yes, things have changed a lot since then, but I still look back at the stuff that folks like Blackjack were doing and think... man, that helped me make my games so much better because it made me think of new ideas. That's why I honor BJ by using his time-honored tradition for dealing with trouble players... drop a cow on their characters :P
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My grandfather once said, "what's so good about the old days?"
That pretty much summs up my feelings about SR. Now granted, I never got into the whole "scene" and my experience with gaming fandom in general has been limited to my friends and the occasional visit to UT-BASHCon in Toledo. But for me, I tend to look forward to the future of things like games, comics, movies, etc.
Shadowrun has been around for over 20 years...I can think of only two other games off the top of my head that can match or beat that. In my point of view, that's pretty damn good. At the risk of sounding cliche`, the past is merely a foundation for which the future is build on. Because if you aren't moving forward, you're likely already going in reverse.
OK, there are no more or few fansites....OK, how many people follow SR, Jason, et al on like twitter or facebook? How about the fact that every game at Origins was packed and that from what I heard half of the Runner's Toolkits sold out early on. Are things really worse, or were they honestly "better back when"? Or have they merely changed a bit and we have to adapt accordingly?
Honestly, what we have is what we have; why not try and keep it going instead of worrying about the way it was rather than what we can help it become?
OK, getting off my soapbox now.
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As the other half of the original conversation, one point I was making was this:
There was a very, very compelling and thriving web community for Shadowrun once upon a time. Now there is... The forums. Which are, on the best of days, a pit of raucous contention. On the worst of days, well, the less said the better.
I think there's still a lot that gets created for Shadowrun. There's some good fiction, some good source material, and some good ideas and theories... The problem is, The forums (and to a lesser extent, social media sites like Facebook and Twitter) have supplanted the websites and even the old email lists. And Forums have one glaring flaw...
Forum posts are not forever.
Now, I don;t mean we go through and delete old posts. THey'll hang around for quite some time. But forums have notoriously bad search functions, there's no way to really sort the data, and the signal to noise ratio is hideous.
The culture of the internet has changed a great deal. And not to the better, IMO. We're a culture of idle chatter, of fire and forget. The words we speak don't have any permanence.
The forums are a place to gather up a little bit of community, to get quick responses to questions, and that's fine. But in the long run, the forums don't really add anything to the community, to the culture, to the presence of Shadowrun. They're more noise, more walls of text. And a lot more crap that needs to be filtered to find those minor slivers of gold.
There's a lot of reasons for the culture change over the years. Part of it is laziness. Forums are easy.
Part of it is that those of us who used to put forth the effort have moved on, for one reason or another. Families, responsibilities, jobs, a lack of active game, there are a ton of reasons why. I dropped out of the game and the freelance scene for a while and let my own site die off after a Dumpshock database crash. I've considered putting it back up quite often, and I still want to, but most of my material is badly out of date (3rd ed, and even some 2nd ed) and much of it's stuff taht has since seen inclusion in the game (Vampires, Wendigos, Windlings, Centaurs, etc). I like my version of the vampiric races better than the SR4 ones (Vampiric Abilities gained in a similar fashion to Adept abilities), and tehres still stuff that isn't or can't be put into the game officially (Highlander style Immortals and Disney's Gargoyles)... But it comes down to a matter of time, and the effort of completely redoing and updating my site. And I never seem to find that time.
<shrug>
It's not a matter of "Old vs New". A couple years back, I was pushing heavily to try and revamp the entire DUmpshock site and to open up the site for new Member Sites, because the lack of stuff like Geocities or Angelfire or what have you makes fan sites much harder to put up these days. There are some really creative people out here on the forums, with some great ideas and some good, solid fan-created material. But without a way to showcase it, it's simply an idea that's likely lost to the ether.
And while I think some of the stuff that FASA, FanPro, and CGL put out over the last decade has been fantastic... I tell you this. The fan community is a much different, and much weaker thing than it used to be. There's a reason that the majority of freelancer writers came from the Fan Community pool. You could look at someones website and the material there and gauge what they could do, and to a large degree it was a resume.
<shrug>
My 2 Nuyen.
Bull
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On the flipside, art sites are a good way to put things up where you can find them later. ;D
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Yeah, eventually we who serve as a form of Institutional Memory will move on for good eventually.
Lack of Geocities, Angelfire, etc. notwithstanding there isn't a lack of opportunity to produce content in a singular location. Frankly, with the five-ten minutes of CSS coding I can't be bothered to do for my tumblr that site is remarkably versatile.
It's not the medium that's the problem, if there really is one. It's a lack of commitment to earn one's way. I got referred from Critias, sure, but I have a long and distinguished record and readily-provided PDFs (Not anymore, save TNF) in the general format of both content and proposals. I host the PDFs on Google Docs, and they were (the novel still is, but that's also hosted elsewhere) on my tumblr. I never really thought about it the way Bull describes it, but yeah ... Of course, I refrain from reading others peoples' stuff anymore, and really haven't in years. So my perspective may be skewed. I mean, I'd love to see the Atlanta file blond goth girl posted, but I won't because I don't want it affecting any possible work product.
@CanRay Yeah ... Art. Art's a whole other beast.
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then he's a piece of shit who was run off, and good riddance.
Please refrain from the personal attacks.
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Yeah, those of us who did it "Back in the day" now have other commitments we have to deal with (Such as families), and kids today just don't have the urge to do it because they didn't grow up with Dial-Up and got to enjoy the "Simplicity" of HTML Coding in MS-DOS EDIT. :P
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Damn kids and their programs that do everything but wipe their asses for them.
Hand coding really is just better.
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*Waves my cane* Bloody Skript Kiddies! They're even in-game now! :P
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Until I read this, I'd forgotten all about the hours upon hours I spent rummaging through Shadowland and Blackjack's website. I remember crying laughing at some of the humor found there, and glaring angrily at some of the ideas, and debating rules on ShadowRN.
But as someone said earlier, one of the really NICE things about sites like Blackjacks, is that you could go BACK there, and reread that great idea/funny story, etc. Try doing that on Facebook or any forums. Even finding something on Google gets you mostly advertisements on how to put something on a tshirt.
But it's also that the younger generation uses their time differently. My kids are gamers, sure--but they are primarily either PC or console. I have to constantly yank their attention back to the game from texting, and heaven forbid if they have a laptop open.
Heck, they even roll their dice with phones now. My OWN group has folks doing it. I still like building forts with all my six-siders but I admit that yowch from a critical glitch is pretty cool. I guess back in the day there was just less distracting me from Shadowrun, whereas today I find myself tugged on 50 directions, and accomplish nothing.
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I miss Brumby the Troll Philosopher myself...
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Plethora = overabundance
I agree with Bull that forums are a poor substitute (if at all) for a fan website. Be it the inability to search a forum or the vitriol that seems prevalent (more with some sites than in others).
As far as nostalgia...the conversation was more about analyzing the impact of fan sites on the visibility of SR rather than lamenting the good ole days. I contend that there is a correlation between visibility (i.e. grass roots marketing) and the growth of a product line. There is something terribly compelling about a fan site, it speaks to their interest/passion for a particular topic (by virtue of the effort it takes to create and maintain one)...and it is most often the exact opposite of the slick packaging and marketing message we are bombarded with every day.
I don't feel any need to defend the content that various sites had as it is completely subjective in nature and is like arguing the merits of the color blue.
@ Onion Man: “Online sales have given way to community marketing (we the community are the product in most web based business models these days, we're not the client anymore).”
Pretty sure that Amazon.com would say that is not the case.
@ Mystic: "Honestly, what we have is what we have; why not try and keep it going instead of worrying about the way it was rather than what we can help it become?"
First off, I am not worried it was a topic I felt like sharing from an interesting conversation. Second, said topic is precisely about "keep it going" and perhaps improving the situation.
As for the 80's, that I am able to remember the 70's allows me to put things in very fine perspective for me. ;)
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That's the thing-I don't see fan sites for anything. I see forums up the ass and fb pages. It seems like people have no great of walking in and dropping grenades.
I don't know. I have the only thing approximating a GM advice site I know of and it varies the imprimatur of me being a freelancer, but no one seems to care. I'm not going to shut up there or on twitter (though I haven't said much there recently), but no one else seems to want to do it and the freelancers are too busy (myself excluded for reasons of not having a life like everyone else, which is how I can spend so much time here and elsewhere. Plus posting is easier, A LOT EASIER, than putting thought into a real site or real writing).
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@ Mystic: "Honestly, what we have is what we have; why not try and keep it going instead of worrying about the way it was rather than what we can help it become?"
First off, I am not worried it was a topic I felt like sharing from an interesting conversation. Second, said topic is precisely about "keep it going" and perhaps improving the situation.
Fair enough. My take on things, I admit tends to be somewhat jaded as from what I see in my little part of the world, things are stagnant. And this isn't just gaming, its pretty much everything. Industry in my area sucks, the economy sucks (where dosen't it though?), and well, overall things just suck. A sense of longing for what passed for the "good old days" has become a regional pastime and it seems to have become a quagmire of meloncholy with no one really doing anything other than longing for what was.
And unfortunately it seems to have infected a lot of the people I used to and still game with. I get people who want to keep playing the same damn things over and over with no real change and in the end no real fun. It's become almost a second job and a requirement rather than a way to have fun. Origins for me was a much needed breath of fresh air in so many ways and for so many things because I know not everyone out there is like this. The game is still fun and evolving and for that I am grateful.
And, for what good I can do, I DO want to keep it going.
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I've been playing SR on and off for nearly 20 yrs. Have to say I never used the old fan websites folks are referring to. They were too "unofficial" for our group. The forums here however are awesome. Great place to scan a few interesting threads, post queries of your own, etc. So I'm an example of someone who likes this setup better. It ain't all bad!
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I would not say that forums are harming SR. It seems to me that forums serve one function while fan pages another. Nor would I claim that you have to have one or the other, both should function within their respective roles without hindering the other.
@ Crimsondude: "Plus posting is easier, A LOT EASIER, than putting thought into a real site or real writing"
It is easier but is the payoff the same? Do you get as much gratification from a post as you do from writing something for print?
As for the twitter stuff and the fact that I am not contributing...I have to pick and choose my battles these days. However, as soon as I get the interviews edited and posted to YouTube I will post links on the forums. ;D
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Depends on the post, or whatever.
I only have one thing in one book that's in print. I consider my contributions to the masses on boards and tumblr and twitter and among the freelancers to have a much more significant impact just by sheer volume of work. If I stuck to one name, even after getting banned from DS I would easily be in the top three all-time posters. That's a HELL of a lot of posts. It's easier somehow to just discuss things that way for me, especially recently. It's a lot easier to edit and comment on my and other peoples' work sitting in a hospital room than it has to write material for publication even though I haven't had to go visit that hospital in three months now. As much as I can't wait to get my copy of Street Legends, I am more looking forward to being able to sell the ideas and potential that come from what's in that book to the others. I'm an ideas, guy, it turns out. That sucks compared to someone like Critias who can and does just plow through his writing. I'm not trying to diminish his ideas or work, but I'm much more comfortable throwing out ideas and trying to work with them. Being a dictator in print and saying "This is how it is" doesn't always suit me.
I get a much more immediate sense of pleasure helping someone out on a board, especially since the closest I've gotten from SG is "I need to figure out how to have my PCs run into a Ranger" in, like, Germany or Seattle or space. I can't recall where he said offhand.
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The problem is Crimson, the board stuff is fleeting, as I mention. There may be volumes of text you've written on the boards, but honestly, other than knowing you (Or FastJack, or CanRay, or Critias, or a half dozen other names that pop out at me) post frequently? THere's nothing that has stood out and said to me "This is something that's important" or "this is helpful" or whatever. ANd that's nothing against any of the stuff you guys have contributed here. Everyone can likely say the same about me. OUtside of general tone (Friendly, interesting, funny, smart, irritating, etc) and whether or not I consider the person a tool or not, message board posts are temporary, transient. Fire and forget. I look stuff over, but rarely do I remember any of it because it's a Message board post.
That might just be my own nature, I admit. Blogs/Journals are only a step above them.
I like the written word. I love it. I read volumes of material. I have probably 50-75 books that I read and reread on a regular basis, and am always adding to that list. Plus I'm always looking for new stuff to read. I also love to write, as my chatty nature online tends to show. But... If I'm going to really pay attention to something, if I'm going to take something written and really utilize it, it has to be well organized, easy to find, well written, and most of all, "permanent" (or at least as permanent as the Internet gets).
As John says... FOrums serve a purpose. Websites serve another. It's a shame that the latter have fallen by the wayside. I may have to try again to do something about that, even if it's just in my own little corner of the Net.
Bull
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Might have to see what I have in my notes to dust off if you do, Bull.
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Well, I long ago gave up on permanence the first time I threw away a pile of notebooks and deleted folders worth of material. The Internet does forget, and there are no Resonance Realms IRL. I appreciate that a lot of the time.
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My notebooks got lost in the variety of moves I've made in the past six years. :'(
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I'd be willing to bet I have enough notebooks to fill a 10 gallon tote these days. Everything from 7th Sea adventures when I was 13 to complete Deadlands campaigns that will probably never see the light of day again.
I know I don't have the time, patience, or money these days to keep up with a website. On that note, what would the chances be for CGL to host a fansite for users to post unofficial material to? I know if I had somewhere to put it where it wouldn't disappear in a week, I'd love to share my 2073 Knight Errant Armaments weapons log pdf with people.
The only issue I foresee with going this route is that most people won't like it if there is the standard RPG company "blah blah blah, all submissions give us copyright, blah blah blah" tag. I understand the general need for such things for the cases of pitches as the company may already be working on something similar, but I would think that it would be detrimental in this case.
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I DO have a 50-gallon storage box filled with notebooks, printouts, and most of my hardcopy books. I haven't looked in that box in years. There is at least one more box sitting in my bedroom that's about 1.5 cubic feet with notebooks, pads, etc. Plus all the current stuff I have sitting on multiple HDDs.
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Man, you write a lot of shit down. The only thing in the world I've hand written for the last fifteen years are class notes for school. And even there, I've got...uhh...seven semesters worth of notes in three eight-and-a-half by eleven spiral bound notebooks, with room to spare.
No kiddin' you're an "idea" guy. Yeesh. That's an awful lot of ideas, man. ;D
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It helps not to have friends or a life or now family less than 800 miles away.
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I just can't imagine the arthritic claw-flipper-thing my arm would turn into if I tried to hand write that much, is all. It's not a knock on people that can and do, just my own knee-jerk reaction against having to physically manipulate a pen or pencil in order to create letters that turn into words that turn into coherent sentences. I detest the primitive act of scrawling out my barely decipherable handwriting, and it blows my mind that someone with so much to say would choose to say it in that way, instead of typing it. I've hated writing anything by hand for about two decades now.
Now I can't help but picture you hunched over rolls of vellum, scratching away with a little vial of ink and a quill, sealing up your next chapter proposal with a glob of wax and a signature ring, before sending it off to Jason by horseback courier.
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Well I know I personally always have a notebook an pen/pencil on me because I have to jot down every good idea i think of (and of course they always have to come up when I'm away from the computer, damn the fates).
On that note, the bulk of my notebooks hold stuff from before I had a computer to type things on. I usually type out my notes and make a backup and keep the handwritten copy just in case all my hard drives get fried (gotta hate those lightning strikes).
That said, I'm very happy that I don't have to use a quill these days. Had to do that in art class and it was even worse than my usually illegible chicken scratch. ;D
Now that I'm finally graduated, I finally have time to work on putting some of the ideas to use. Yay for free time.
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Have 4 giant plastic totes in my basement full of old games and notes. Dug around in them last winter. Things I found.
1. Writing tablet full of d&d npc's from the old basic days.
2. Cyberdungeon my cp2020 d&d mashup home brew notes.
3. Hand drawn maps aplenty.
4. 1st editon SR pc's and a plastic sheet covered graph paper page with a grease pencil map from my final 1st edition game.
5. 8,000lbs of white wolf books.
6. A small mountain of magic cards.
7. Enough notes and test chacters to choke a Dragon.
8. My first foray into game design s.o.d. Special Objectives Detachment. A modern day black ops game. (modern in the 80's that is.)
And lot's more.
I had alot more free time in the past that's for sure.
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I think part of it came from having to share a computer until I was in college, and then it was sharing with the lab. I actually don't write much by hand anymore, especially in the last four or five years. I don't really write much at all anymore. The bitch of it is that I am an incredibly slow typist. I knew Critias was a fast typist just by how fast he could crank out stuff on SL, and then later how fast he's written stuff for Missions and other drafts. But then I actually saw him typing in his office while I was pecking away at my laptop across the room and a part of me died.
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To increase typing speed I highly recommend learning a little bit of programming. I was terribly slow as well, but as soon as I picked up C++ my typing speed doubled, and once I became proficient in the language its about four times what it was. From what little I've looked into it, learning to type the non-spoken languages used for programming helps the brain learn the letter locations better than trying to learn on a normal language.
That said, the faster I learn to text, the slower my typing gets. Stupid tiny screens.
If you're interested I could probably find some of my old programming labs.
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To really increase typing speed...I say go with Dragon Naturally Speaking. It takes a bit to get used to talking for writing but it has jumped up my daily word count by more than 50%.
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Or learn to type faster when you have a 10+ page arrest report and have a DA breathing down your neck or REEEEEEEEEALY want (read: NEED) to go home!
I don't know what my speed is now, but one of my nicknames in the station was "machine gun" and it had nothing to do with firearms.
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To really increase typing speed...I say go with Dragon Naturally Speaking. It takes a bit to get used to talking for writing but it has jumped up my daily word count by more than 50%.
As long as it's able to understand you. With my Ontarian Accent, I was never able to get it to work quite so well with me, despite months of "Learning" my voice.
Or learn to type faster when you have a 10+ page arrest report and have a DA breathing down your neck or REEEEEEEEEALY want (read: NEED) to go home!
I don't know what my speed is now, but one of my nicknames in the station was "machine gun" and it had nothing to do with firearms.
The more I learn about the Justice System... *Shakes Head*
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I've got the same problem with voice typing. Stupid machines can't understand a southern accent. Fortunately my typing speed isn't that horrible anymore.
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Point #2 (http://styletips101.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/legwarmers.jpg)
Heh, i have been looking at the young ladies lately and i could have sworn i was back during my teen years based on their hairstyles and wardrobe choices.
And ugh, now that i think about it i think i owned a red leather tie once...
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I had a skinny black leather tie... ???
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I have both and used one recently. Oddly enough, I blended into the crowd.
Kudos to you who can still write by hand, I tried to do so and failed. Honestly, it was just on a post-it and my scribbling was illegible. I ran over to a laptop and opened notepad to jot it down in a jiff.
I can't wait till they invent trodes.
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Some of my work for writing is still done by hand. I have to get a new spiral-bound book for jotting down notes when I'm away from my computer, however.
Lost a good set of them when moving. :'(
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I hate how they seem to crawl away on their spirals when you're moving. Last move, every single one I had with blank pages in it managed to get lost. Fortunately every fall you can pick em up at back to school sales for .20 each. Makes me feel like I'm buying them by the tree. 8)
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I hate how they seem to crawl away on their spirals when you're moving. Last move, every single one I had with blank pages in it managed to get lost. Fortunately every fall you can pick em up at back to school sales for .20 each. Makes me feel like I'm buying them by the tree. 8)
That's why you get composition books. they can't sneak off if they don't have a spiral, now can they?
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I have a bunch of notebooks, and do a lot of my notes by hand. I usually then transpose stuff to the computer later on, but for quick notes, I find it easier and more comforatable to work longhand.
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I think it's more a changing of the internet, as opposed to a changing of Shadowrun.
What I mean is, there are very few fansites for anything anymore. But what you do have are things like Facebook Fanpages. I know they're not the same at all (for one, Facebook pages don't have House Rules and player debate), but what can really be done about it? Having and maintaining a webpage like that takes time and money. For most it would be another monthly drain on income. It's sad, but that's what's happening (as far as I see). Forums are fast becoming the new version of Fan Pages.
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@ SirDelta There is a lot to be said about the shifting dynamics of the internet. It does seem that you have to shell out money any more to get a website. That is alot to ask a fan to do, after all that is money that could be going to buy SR product. ;D
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I miss the days of free websites. :'(
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@ SirDelta There is a lot to be said about the shifting dynamics of the internet. It does seem that you have to shell out money any more to get a website. That is alot to ask a fan to do, after all that is money that could be going to buy SR product. ;D
Or diapers for the kids...Gotta get them first because there is no WAY Im gonna use my new version of ARSENAL for that...duty. Although my better half has threatened that once or twice.
:o
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My defense against such a threat would be that the absorbency of Arsenal is far inferior to that of Huggies. ;)
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Touche' good sir...
8)
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I'd like to put in my two cents as a relatively new (about a year) player. The short version is this: if, during the first couple of months, I had Google'd Shadowrun and found the state of the fandom websites in the state it is now, I may have given up on the system then and there. It's pathetic, frankly. You've got websites from the Geocities era whose entire content is lists of house rules they like and this is one of the top 10 Google results for some relevant Shadowrun search. You've got the Sixth World Wiki, full of topic titles in some other language (Swedish, I think?) and broken links.
This isn't a perception limited to Google, either, and the perception is itself hurting the popularity of the game. I'm on staff for an anime convention (Anime Punch), and for the tabletop gaming room I brought up the idea of running an anime-themed Shadowrun game. The first person to respond to the idea said "Isn't Shadowrun sort of not the cool game anymore?" and the discussion grounded from there. There was no Shadowrun at AP.
Lucky for me, I read the sourcebooks before I started googling. And the sourcebooks are, as most of us will agree I'm sure, in pretty excellent shape. But not everyone does that, as the anecdote illustrates.
If I were running the show at Catalyst, I would hire somebody to, if nothing else, maintain the Sixth World Wiki and make it not look like such a ghost town. It's hurting the game.
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The Sixth World Wiki is a fan site.
I would love for there to be a much more robust online presence, but ... But.
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There is this wonderful thing called advertising. If you build a good site, throw up some ads and boom, it pays for itself.
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The Sixth World Wiki is a fan site.
I realize that. But Shadowrun (and by extension Catalyst) would benefit greatly if it were better maintained.
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I am the last person who is going to defend dumpshock so ...
I agree. They need to get their shit running again.
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There's more than the forums?
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Well, there used to be.
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I tried really hard for about 6 months to move forward with getting the sub-sites running again and to try and recruit folks to maintain and clean up the Dumpshock SR WIki (Which is packed to the gills with unofficial information, probably from someone's home game, which is less than helpful), get some kind of chat up and running, etc. Other than Jackal volunteering to host the http://irc.dumpshock.com I wasn't able to get any interest or help from the other mods, the Dumpshock Data Haven project stalled out because I couldn;t get anyone to do layout (and most people agree after the slop 'n go layout I finally did myself that I should never be allowed near layout again), and then I got wrapped up in other things (And then the CGL "Situation" happened).
I do need to talk to Redjack and get my password for my FTP site so I can at least start getting my site back up and running. I started that (and started to try learning CSS), but again time became an issue.
Bull
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Hey, Bull, who said you could get off Missions writing!
Don't make me get the whip! ;D
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I got into playing Shadowrun with second edition, and that was after first being exposed to the Sega Genesis game that came out in the early 90's. It has been a regular rotation in my RPG group's play schedule ever since.
Once I got into the internet scene, I became hooked on the idea of a fan site in general. I was overjoyed when I saw what some of the Shadowrun fan sites had to offer. I honestly believe that it is one of the things that has made the game one of my favorites. Seeing that decline, due to things like Twitter, Facebook, the lack of places like Geocities, et cetra is disheartening to say the least.
While I agree with what others have said about the decline of the fan site having a negative influence on fan participation, I have to ask: is there something more that could be done with the new things the internet has to offer us?
Hosting a fan site anymore costs money. In an economy such as is right now, that is not possible for many people. Social networking sites are free to make, but are not well suited for what the fan sites of old could provide.
What about the wiki style site? I have seen in the past, other game fans use a wiki style site to provide not only setting content, but also a place to provide house rules they feel the need to put out there for others to see. There are wiki sites that are free, so that absolves the cost argument. Anyone can edit a wiki site, that one could be a problem. However, it could also turn into a benefit, if done correctly, it could draw more people into contributing. Would that not increase fan participation?
The only argument that can not be turned away is the effort argument. It would take effort to start, to compile the information, to ensure the site was staying accurate. I know my life does not offer itself easily to endeavors of the like, even with my abundance of "free time." So I can only imagine what it would be like for people that have to worry about family \ school \ careers. However, if people spent just a portion of their time on maintenance of a wiki style site, that would typically be spent perusing through a message board, it could be done.
That is just one example of a modern internet staple that could be used to help breath some life into fan participation. What more could someone come up with if they just thought outside of the box?
Then again maybe this entire post is merely the idle ramblings of mine during a post dialysis washout. ;D
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Bull brings up a big issue with the 6WW--it had no Editors out mods our whatever you want to call adult supervision. It had entries for every creature in the paranormal animal books WITH pictures, but the Seattle article is lacking. I don't know how our where to look for new editors even if I were to right this second create a new wiki, which anyone could do through wiki dot or whatever.
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There is this wonderful thing called advertising. If you build a good site, throw up some ads and boom, it pays for itself.
It's not that simple.
It's no where near that simple.
You've never run a for profit website with ad revenue as the only income, have you?
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Ha! Leave it to Google.
http://www.google.com/sites/help/intl/en/overview.html
tl;dr: They host free sites, even wikis, because of course they would.
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Bull brings up a big issue with the 6WW--it had no Editors out mods our whatever you want to call adult supervision. It had entries for every creature in the paranormal animal books WITH pictures, but the Seattle article is lacking. I don't know how our where to look for new editors even if I were to right this second create a new wiki, which anyone could do through wiki dot or whatever.
Heh... I think I put most of the images up there. Man, that was a while ago.
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I spent three hours this morning writing articles on new characters and on organizations for CGL's internal wiki. And not "Meet the Press is on" this morning. Pre-dawn this morning. Because that's how I roll.
EDIT:
And now I'm back to it. The funny thing is that much of this is specifically written to be overview and not replacement (because we have the damn books), and since I tend to hold my cards close anyway most of this could go on the 6WW or some other wiki without much if any editing. For example, I'm writing articles on UCAS law enforcement that will probably exceed what appears in Conspiracy Theories, but would probably be of immense use (or interest. Maybe?) to someone somewhere about exactly the scope and scale of what the Marshals Service does, including the Matrix Marshals. BTW, I'm currently running at a dozen agencies and two sub-agencies. That is a Hell of a lot fewer than IRL.
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There is this wonderful thing called advertising. If you build a good site, throw up some ads and boom, it pays for itself.
It's not that simple.
It's no where near that simple.
You've never run a for profit website with ad revenue as the only income, have you?
Well...there is a difference between a for profit website and a fan site with ads. A fan site has the monthly cost of the server and the annual cost for the domain name. The assumption being that the fan isn't paying for the creation of content or adding it to the web page.
Still, I have to agree with you...there is going to be threshold of web page quality that advertisers are going to look for before they are willing to shell out money to put banners on. Not to mention the work that goes into the arcane lore of search engine placment.
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Ha! Leave it to Google.
tl;dr: They host free sites, even wikis, because of course they would.
Just another step towards world domination through ways that aren't evil.
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Ha! Leave it to Google.
tl;dr: They host free sites, even wikis, because of course they would.
Just another step towards world domination through ways that aren't evil.
That's what they WANT you to think!
Google is just as evil as everyone else. They just control the PR spin better.
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Well, with that many nerds, they probably read Shadowrun and went, "Hey, Aztechnology has the right idea." ;D
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Like Horizon.
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No, we're mostly aware of what Google is up to and their goals (Of a sort.).
We still don't know jack about Horizon. Hell, FastJack doesn't know jack about Horizon!
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Ha! Leave it to Google.
tl;dr: They host free sites, even wikis, because of course they would.
Just another step towards world domination through ways that aren't evil.
That's what they WANT you to think!
Google is just as evil as everyone else. They just control the PR spin better.
I just take what everyone says and reverse it. So far, it's been a stellar way to interpret people's/organization's true intentions. :P
(No, really, try it. Things start making a whole lot more sense!)
-Jn-
Ifriti Sophist
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No, we're mostly aware of what Google is up to and their goals (Of a sort.).
We still don't know jack about Horizon. Hell, FastJack doesn't know jack about Horizon!
So there was nothing in that Fistful of Credsticks adventure? It was supposed to shed some light on Horizon... Was gonna buy it just for the info.
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One of the few books I'm not interested in buying. Personal taste issue, that's all.
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So there was nothing in that Fistful of Credsticks adventure? It was supposed to shed some light on Horizon... Was gonna buy it just for the info.
It's Part 1 one a multi-part adventure. So it builds up to more stuff later.