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I encourage the people I know to buy things and not pirate them, but I don’t hold pirating against them. People who insist that pirating is some sort of moral right are annoying as poo poo though. If you can, you should pay for things
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Sep 28, 2020 00:02
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Hostile V posted:I also agree with the notion of "pirate from the big people, pay it forward to the indie folks how you can or pay up-front for their stuff if piracy got you something you liked" but definitely complicating poo poo in this matter is Zweihander Guy's role as being in charge of a department of Andrews McMeel publishing. Like this is cop behavior, period, because he's made himself a "do not gently caress with me" party with pirates to begin with, but the big question is how much of this is corporate pushback and how much of this is just him. Either way this has evolved beyond "indie guy defending property". what RPGs do they publish
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Sep 28, 2020 00:46
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I'm also pretty sure that this isn't the first time Zweihander guy has gone after The Trove in its various previous incarnations, so I'm getting the impression that this is another one of their attempts at self-aggrandizement.
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Sep 28, 2020 00:54
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alg posted:what RPGs do they publish "Daniel D. Fox is the executive creative director of games at Andrews McMeel Universal. He was awarded two gold ENnies at Gen Con 2018 for Best Game and Product of the Year with his dark fantasy hit ZWEIHÄNDER Grim & Perilous RPG. After a 16 year career in digital advertising, Daniel now spends his days designing tabletop role-playing games and creating strategies to reach new RPG audiences. He enjoys good whiskey, ZWEIHANDER RPG and Dungeons & Dragons (in no particular order). Daniel can be found on social media using the hashtags #ZweihanderRPG and #Roll20Spotlight. You can find his RPGs at Zweihander.Game and GrimAndPerilous.com" There's no way he's not trying to make publishing through big name publishers a whole drat thing in 2020 when you consider how book sales are going with 16 years in advertising. Maybe he feels more empowered that he's got a secure place and a secure publisher, but this is absolutely a power trip, ulterior capitalist motives aside.
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Sep 28, 2020 01:11
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moths posted:I've legit bought PDFs through different outlets that I've later just downloaded through Trove because gently caress if I can remember getting it on Humble Bundle, Bundle of Holding, Backerkit, Drivethru, or it was sent directly to my email from the publisher. Or some weirder, more esoteric source. And if I can track it down, I need to remember login credentials on my tablet, and maybe verify my login with my phone I mean, I also send my players PDF copies of the rulebook for games we play (including Zweihander -- hi Andrew!) so we can play the game, but I'm not sure why the Trove needs to exist for that to happen. though tbh the only reason I have any opinion on whether it should be taken down is (a) they made a Twitter account to advertise new arrivals (b) they're asking for donations and (c) that loving copy.
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Sep 28, 2020 01:29
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gradenko_2000 posted:I'm also pretty sure that this isn't the first time Zweihander guy has gone after The Trove in its various previous incarnations, so I'm getting the impression that this is another one of their attempts at self-aggrandizement. Now he'll get articles "Dan, the Zweihander guy who publishes Zweihander is fighting the Trove which pirates Zweihander books and other books"
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Sep 28, 2020 01:43
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Lemniscate Blue posted:Wait, Zweihander guy is also Kaidan spamming guy? That's hilarious. Mors Rattus posted:No, two different guys. That's why I phrased it as a question. poo poo, what DID the Kaidan guy do after Kaidan then? 
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Sep 28, 2020 01:56
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thetoughestbean posted:I encourage the people I know to buy things and not pirate them, but I don’t hold pirating against them. Basically this although also the Zweihander guy is such a loving twerp so I naturally react negatively. In addition to his constant self-promotion and just general tweriptude, it's loving Zweihänder with an umlaut you loving hack. Get the name of your own god drat game right jesus christ.
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Sep 28, 2020 02:00
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gradenko_2000 posted:I'm also pretty sure that this isn't the first time Zweihander guy has gone after The Trove in its various previous incarnations, so I'm getting the impression that this is another one of their attempts at self-aggrandizement. The thing that really sours me on this is that if you go back and look at his tweets which kicked the whole thing off, he basically went out of his way to tag other people in without asking them first. Massif made a statement because he said "hey @LancerRPG, the Trove is pirating your stuff!" and he did the same with Mophidus/Arkane over the Dishonored RPG, etc. It would be one thing if he was personally aggrieved about the Trove pirating stuff he worked on and so he was trying to get it taken down, I don't think it'll ever work but I absolutely understand the impulse of "I worked on this, it's how I pay my bills, please do not pirate it," but he's now taken his grudge with the Trove into the realm of snitch-tagging bigger and, let's be real here, more popular games and creators to try and do his dirty work for him which is frankly pretty pathetic.
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Sep 28, 2020 04:22
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Kai Tave posted:The thing that really sours me on this is that if you go back and look at his tweets which kicked the whole thing off, he basically went out of his way to tag other people in without asking them first. Massif made a statement because he said "hey @LancerRPG, the Trove is pirating your stuff!" and he did the same with Mophidus/Arkane over the Dishonored RPG, etc. It would be one thing if he was personally aggrieved about the Trove pirating stuff he worked on and so he was trying to get it taken down, I don't think it'll ever work but I absolutely understand the impulse of "I worked on this, it's how I pay my bills, please do not pirate it," but he's now taken his grudge with the Trove into the realm of snitch-tagging bigger and, let's be real here, more popular games and creators to try and do his dirty work for him which is frankly pretty pathetic. I wonder if there's anyone in the industry that's as clued-in to this guy's sleaziness as we are and would have been willing to tell him to gently caress off they ever got tagged-in, piracy argument be damned
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Sep 28, 2020 04:56
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gradenko_2000 posted:I wonder if there's anyone in the industry that's as clued-in to this guy's sleaziness as we are and would have been willing to tell him to gently caress off they ever got tagged-in, piracy argument be damned That would require an industry that's substantially lower on moral cowardice than ours.
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Sep 28, 2020 06:28
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Lumbermouth posted:The Trove was the only place I could find old Call of Cthulhu modules that have no official PDF releases and I gotta say, I'm glad I grabbed all of those when I did because the people who run it are stupid as hell. Same for Shadowrun. CGL has no interest in producing PDFs of some of the old content, and my 20+ year old physical copies are starting to suffer glue rot.
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Sep 28, 2020 06:30
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admanb posted:I mean, I also send my players PDF copies of the rulebook for games we play (including Zweihander -- hi Andrew!) so we can play the game, but I'm not sure why the Trove needs to exist for that to happen. Gmail's 25mb limit mostly. I realize other options exist, but they require more coordination than my cat herd of a group has. "I'm running Ghostballer Dads Sunday, build a character with the PHB and the Zaddygeists! supplement" is a single text that (currently) replaces about an hour of headaches.
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Sep 28, 2020 11:57
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:Pay for Indie stuff, pirate D&D and GW it's this one Independent creators deserve to get paid for their work and while IP is technically rent seeking it's also the only way people get paid in our hellzone economy, outside of maybe patreon and stuff. Most indepdents, as stated previously, are not poor because of The Trove. In GW though? People who make books aren't making money off books sold and having that eaten into by pirate sites, the IP-owning corporation is. It's an apples and oranges comparison. I agree gently caress D&D though. EDIT: Also this conversation plays into the recent assault on the few rights to the digital commons we do still have right now which're using small independent creators as representative of the harm piracy causes, like spotify hasn't done more to massacre their income than anything else ever has. The trove isn't music, but it's worth keeping this wider context in mind. spectralent fucked around with this message at 12:40 on Sep 28, 2020 |
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Sep 28, 2020 12:37
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https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2v7an?how-not-to-value-your-volunteers Man this industry still has issues with dealing with abuse and harassment. Worst part about the situation is the harassment of people while defending Bill Webb. Yes I got involved with this and despite having no loving clue what went on with that person I believe every word. Namely because another victim said," I have no idea why your angry at me. You have to stop because your just going to get me killed." Edit: Also I don't blame Paizo for the initial harassment for reasons. I'm more angry that seemingly nothing has been done to fix this when the solution is to not have one point of failure in reporting harassment. MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 13:27 on Sep 28, 2020 |
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Sep 28, 2020 13:24
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MadScientistWorking posted:https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2v7an?how-not-to-value-your-volunteers Are you sure you linked the right thing? This is a thread from 2018.
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Sep 28, 2020 13:31
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I'm also kinda confused on context here.
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Sep 28, 2020 13:34
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I see you're new to MadScientistWorking posts.
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Sep 28, 2020 13:40
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Whenever I run a game I make sure I legally own the material and pay the creators. I'm benefiting from their labour so they deserve just compensation. That said, as a penniless teenager I pirated a lot of stuff and I think that helped me expose myself to a lot of different ideas and systems I wouldn't have earlier. As noted upthread, this wouldn't have been necessary if one company didn't dominate.
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Sep 28, 2020 13:55
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bewilderment posted:Whenever I run a game I make sure I legally own the material and pay the creators. I'm benefiting from their labour so they deserve just compensation. There's also a really good argument for archiving stuff that just isn't available through legitimate channels anymore. There was a brief spate of discourse earlier this year about that in regards to video games with people going "I trust the companies to archive their own stuff!" and then everyone lining up to point out how laughable that was. Know why you can't get a remaster of Homeworld Cataclysm? Because nobody has the source code anymore!
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Sep 28, 2020 14:08
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Kai Tave posted:There's also a really good argument for archiving stuff that just isn't available through legitimate channels anymore. There was a brief spate of discourse earlier this year about that in regards to video games with people going "I trust the companies to archive their own stuff!" and then everyone lining up to point out how laughable that was. Know why you can't get a remaster of Homeworld Cataclysm? Because nobody has the source code anymore! Yeah at certain points companies just do not give a poo poo, or at the very least see the extra cost in archival as unnecessary. You have to hope some of that team kept hard drives up in ceiling panels to be found a decade later or else you end up with a Silent Hill 3 HD scenario.
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Sep 28, 2020 14:17
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Back in the 3.5 days we pirated practically everything, because as young, working class people living in Venezuela, it was next to impossible to get the books physically and what options we had for them were few and unreasonably expensive. We still tried to get as much as we could, taking advantage of rich friends vacationing in USA or the very rare MTG store bringing a few copies of the PHB. But if we hadn't pirated then none of us would've played any tabletop rpg ever! Now that I'm somewhere else and earning a normal wage I kickstart a bunch of games I will never play. Balance!
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Sep 28, 2020 14:22
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Toshimo posted:Are you sure you linked the right thing? This is a thread from 2018.
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Sep 28, 2020 15:00
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Hugoon Chavez posted:Back in the 3.5 days we pirated practically everything, because as young, working class people living in Venezuela, it was next to impossible to get the books physically and what options we had for them were few and unreasonably expensive. I feel like this is the trajectory more people fall into rather than the assumed game pirate who sits at home on a pile of money but just pirates everything anyway because gently caress THE MAN that's why. I've pirated a shitload of games myself when I was broke as hell, now I'm not so broke and I enjoy backing and paying for cool games, it's more convenient and I get to help support people. I'm not gonna say a bunch of Hail Marys like I need to repent or anything though.
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Sep 28, 2020 15:13
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Kai Tave posted:I feel like this is the trajectory more people fall into rather than the assumed game pirate who sits at home on a pile of money but just pirates everything anyway because gently caress THE MAN that's why. I've pirated a shitload of games myself when I was broke as hell, now I'm not so broke and I enjoy backing and paying for cool games, it's more convenient and I get to help support people. I'm not gonna say a bunch of Hail Marys like I need to repent or anything though. Yeah, I'm personally grateful you helped me out with two specific things. One I did in fact purchase later (admittedly as part of a Bundle of Holding, but I did pay the highest tier for it) and the other sadly I couldn't because RIP D&D 4E's awesome online character creator.
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Sep 28, 2020 15:31
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The 4E character builder is a great example of something that's only preserved in a usable format due to what WotC's legal team would 100% classify as piracy, there's literally no actual official way to purchase or subscribe to it anymore.
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Sep 28, 2020 15:33
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Building a Windows XP retro PC just to run Character Builder
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Sep 28, 2020 15:44
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Kai Tave posted:There's also a really good argument for archiving stuff that just isn't available through legitimate channels anymore. There was a brief spate of discourse earlier this year about that in regards to video games with people going "I trust the companies to archive their own stuff!" and then everyone lining up to point out how laughable that was. Know why you can't get a remaster of Homeworld Cataclysm? Because nobody has the source code anymore! This would hold more water if the Trove was any good as an archive, but it isn’t. It has no interest in being one, it has no desire to give the context and information hate make it a really useful archival tool. An archive should definitely exist! This ain’t it. It’s just file sharing. Which, like, I am not particularly enthused about taking down myself, but I’m not gonna pretend the Trove is anything but a pirate thing, the folks running it do not care at all about doing the work required to be a useful archive. E: like, they’re not interested in even the basic archival description that’s possible using file sharing sites.
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Sep 28, 2020 15:58
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moths posted:Gmail's 25mb limit mostly. I realize other options exist, but they require more coordination than my cat herd of a group has. If you're already using Gmail you can upload the files into a Drive folder and then it's two clicks to share a link.
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Sep 28, 2020 17:14
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Yeah we just have a communal Google drive where my buddies and me keep random .pdfs to share. (Which are either massively rare out of print things or fully legally purchased.)
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Sep 28, 2020 17:19
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Xiahou Dun posted:Yeah we just have a communal Google drive where my buddies and me keep random .pdfs to share. (Which are either massively rare out of print things or fully legally purchased.) Same, my group has a PDF collection that is referred to as the Book Suppository.
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Sep 28, 2020 17:22
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admanb posted:If you're already using Gmail you can upload the files into a Drive folder and then it's two clicks to share a link. I am but I don't know about the others. Still, thanks - that sounds like a better alternative and I'll look into it.
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Sep 28, 2020 17:25
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I prefer Google drive for abstract taste reasons, but there's also Dropbox or whatever as well.
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Sep 28, 2020 17:43
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While I don't think we've clearly broken the rules, I feel like we've covered the bases and would like to move on from "here's how to fileshare for pirating purposes" please. Obviously we are mostly filesharing for legitimate file sharing purposes unrelated to piracy, yes? Clearly. Everyone nod and change the subject. Yup. Hi FBI person reading this thread, we are all fully aware of and compliant with laws and such. Neither SA nor its officers and administrators and hangers-on condone or promote the illegal things, no. This is not sarcasm I just always post like this, honest.
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Sep 28, 2020 18:56
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Doing crimes is incredibly cool though no not those crimes
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Sep 28, 2020 19:44
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Andrast posted:Doing crimes is incredibly cool though There are Crimes that are cool and you'd do them in a TG game and they're cool, and crimes that are uncool and you'd skip over them in TG games because they really aren't all that cool. Now we ask, which cool TG Games are good and cool at doing cool crimes?
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Sep 29, 2020 00:16
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admanb posted:(c) that loving copy. You mentioned it, and the Lancer guys mentioned it but what was the offending bad copy on the site?
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Sep 29, 2020 00:48
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Mors Rattus posted:This would hold more water if the Trove was any good as an archive, but it isn’t. It has no interest in being one, it has no desire to give the context and information hate make it a really useful archival tool. An archive should definitely exist! This ain’t it. It’s just file sharing. Which, like, I am not particularly enthused about taking down myself, but I’m not gonna pretend the Trove is anything but a pirate thing, the folks running it do not care at all about doing the work required to be a useful archive. Yeah to be clear this wasn't a defense of the Trove specifically so much as the potential usefulness of file sharing in general.
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Sep 29, 2020 03:53
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I feel like the biggest obstacle to a proper archive of RPG and wargaming material is the audience for it. Yes, there’s the occasional person who is interested in the historical development and context surrounding games and the requirements for archival work and the attendant study made possible by it, but the surface-level nerd understanding of the archive is “a space with all the books in it” and so we get the muddled mess here. It’s a real shame, too, because the industry could really benefit from this kind of research from both a historical perspective (there’s a huge quantity of ephemera associated with the field) and from a modern designer’s perspective. Something that took the time to catalogue these kinds of details would be incredibly interesting, and is still (vaguely) possible given that a lot of influential figures from the genesis of the modern gaming world are still alive. As someone doing their own research into an adjacent topic (the history of modern miniature sculpting), an archive would be incredibly useful, but it’s never just the books - stuff like advertising copy, company records for production, materials sourcing, initial concept notes/art, and records of the names (or pseudonyms) of sculptors who worked with companies during a set period are vital. These are the kinds of things that get neglected with a surface-level archive and that can lead to incomplete information and a further scarcity of verifiable information, especially as the consumable products are lost or damaged. I’ve found a lot of weird stuff over these searches - the origin of the now-ubiquitous greenstuff is the obvious one, but also stuff like interviews with a sculptor who did his sculpting by building up liquid wax and did some really impressive Frazetta minis - and actually cataloguing it is difficult and brings in a lot of stuff that doesn’t seem interesting or useful at all unless you’re considering a really broad narrative of “this was an industry publication that was seen by X and later mentioned by Y in an interview”, which gets absolutely exhausting after a while. I think there’s a great need for an archive of RPG related material, but it has to be an actual archive, rather than a bunch of disorganized books. To further tie to the issue of how capitalism loving sucks, an archive of products is kinda useless unless you just want to see products and not the thought processes and context that went into their creation.
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Sep 29, 2020 06:59
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Specifically towards The Trove, playing it off as an "archive" strikes me as trying to apply an intellectual sheen on really being a dumping-ground for PDFs to get stuff for free. We do need an archive, and it does need to be approached as a discipline, a teaching tool, and a way to preserve "institutional knowledge". I think this sort of goes hand-in-hand with the issue of how each new generation of gamers ends up having to rehash topics like "fudging dice", or "rule zero", or "why system matters" - D&D is too badly-designed to ever inculcate lessons learned previously, and anyone just getting into the hobby now isn't going to have years of experience reading through grognards.txt or The Forge (for better or worse, you get the point) to understand that maybe you shouldn't punish players in-game for out-of-game transgressions, so it has to be re-explained and re-tackled, except in this iteration we do it through twitter threads and hour-long youtube videos instead of blogspot.com
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Sep 29, 2020 07:09
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