I’ve been thinking of a solution to the problem of new people not being able to get LE playbooks due to lack of stuff to trade, while still maintaining the feel of trading playbooks. As is my solution to most problems, I’ve created a countdown clock. For each trade I make with somebody for the new trifold I made, I mark a segment. At 12:00 I release the playbook to the public.
This is a new trifold, so I can guarantee you don’t have it yet, based on Jamie Fristrom’s Orphan. The main thing I’m looking to trade it for is the Solace, after that I suppose any playbooks/skins/minisupplements that I don’t already have, although I don’t think there’s many of those. Finally, I’d love to see writeups for new playbooks, skins, and minisupplements, or anything else like that. I’m always looking for something new to lay out, especially since BFA seems to be down?
Edit: I accepted Patrick’s offer of seven playbooks for this playbook in the letter of the terms, not in the spirit, and here’s the Orphan:
Paging Patrick Henry Downs .
Don’t spread this new, but often I pretend to not have a playbook only in order to permit people to trade theirs with mine. 😉
:-/
If you want to keep trading, that’s your prerogative. If I were making playbooks or resources for other gamers I just know I wouldn’t want to hold any of my work back. Call me crazy, but I like sharing with other people.
I should write something up to trade away for the Solace, and this thing. And technically the Marmot, too. Hmmm. Quick, somebody give me an idea for a playbook-expansion!
Patrick Henry Downs If six people are willing to trade with me, everyone gets it and you can add it to your page. Otherwise, it’s just me making things and never getting anything in return. If that’s the case, I’ll just wait and let other people make stuff.
http://nerdwerds.blogspot.ca/search/label/Adventure%20World – here are seven playbooks for an AW hack I’m working on. According to your criteria, now you have enough new playbooks to release the Solace, right? Or maybe the fact that I share my work publicly isn’t exclusive or elitist enough? Or maybe the fact that these are first draft notes and I seek input from others means they’re not really playbooks, like the ones that have been revised by their authors after people traded for them and thus now have multiple versions of playbooks (the Agent, the Tribal, etc.)?
No worries, Ben. I have the Marmot.
No, those fit the requirements I put in my post, although I’d have preferred completed write-ups, since I was planning on laying them out for you. No worries, though, I don’t plan on doing that anymore, since apparently when I do I get my balls busted as a capitalist pig dog. I’m not sure if I’m just reading tone horribly, so I’ll take the rest of this comment to PM.
No, I just think the concept of one-to-one trading is silly. There’s nothing capitalist about it since you’re not charging money, but it still feels like exclusionary behavior. I mean, why wouldn’t you want to share something you made with the rest of the community, unless you are being elitist? If you have a good argument for why it’s NOT silly then I’m all ears.
Apart from pointing out how silly it is, now I can also send people here to read what Vincent Baker said : https://plus.google.com/u/0/112286177825103454410/posts/5cGBmxQGMwD
Ah, yes, a post from Vincent about exactly what I was trying to do here: trade, share. How relevant.
For the record, I do totally get behind “using semi-exclusive stuff as an incentive to get people to make stuff of their own.” I mean, the first time I made the Witch-King, I was all about “Don’t just give it away, tell people to make something, even if it’s just a custom move, and trade THAT for it.” I like the idea of encouraging creativity, showing people it’s not that hard to make ONE move, and then once they’ve made one, maybe they’ll make a few more….
More like, a post from Vincent about him not understanding why people latched onto the word “trade” when he also told people to “share”
Matt Strickling I can see your message but for some reason I can’t access Messenger. Yes, you’ve totally misinterpreted what I was saying. I think people should share playbooks that they make without waiting for a trade. If somebody hasn’t given you the Solace don’t feel bad, nobody has shared it with me either. And that’s exactly my point about why trading is silly and stupid. There’s stuff out there that other gamers made that not everybody in the community can even see or draw ideas from. Imagine if every RPG were run like this. What would TSR in the 80s have been like if they had told people “We have sourcebooks with new spells, new classes and new combat options, but we won’t release any of them until some of you write your own material and share it with us.”
And as a creator, I would be pissed if something I made for my fellow gamers wasn’t being shared with other gamers because of some playground rules that were arbitrarily applied to the community that nobody ever questioned.
My entire point was that I wasn’t following an arbitrary, unquestioned rule, I was coming up with a (hopefully) fun way to get people creating their own content. It isn’t actually a huge barrier, just write some stuff down. It doesn’t have to be the greatest, or extensively playtested, or laid out beautifully. I figured providing some small incentive to do that might be nice, but I still wanted to give it away pretty freely. As a creator, I feel emotionally like what you’re saying is my creation has no value and that I am in the wrong for asking for some (even intangible) recompense. I know that’s not really the case, but keep that in mind and work on your pitch. Also, by your logic you should be sharing the official LE playbooks on your list, right?
Alternatively, Vincent Baker , care to share the Solace with us, in the spirit of Epimas?
The official LE playbooks come with the game. I think if you have bought the game then there’s no reason why you should need them… because logically you already have access to them.
I think your intentions are good, but in practice it doesn’t work like that.
I was spurred to create my page because the people who were actively trading in forums only wanted trifolds, something I dont personally have the resources to make. And then one guy tried to charge me $15 for all of his playbooks. After a week of searching online, and getting nowhere with contacting people for trades, I got fed up with looking for playbooks and made my playbook post.
Now, take all of this with a little perspective: I’m an anomaly because I love Apocalypse World and I’m active in the online community. Imagine how it must feel for a gamer who is not gungho and crazy excited about Apocalypse World to be confronted with the concept that there are additional play resources out there that they can’t get access to. Are they really going to spend a week searching in their off hours? Are they going to spend time making a playbook when they probably don’t even know where to begin? Are they going to pay some guy $15 for a bunch of playbooks that you might have contributed to?
Just to reiterate: I think your intentions are good, but in practice it doesn’t work like that.
Matt Strickling Of course. I give all the LE playbooks to everyone who buys the game and to anyone who asks.
Just one comment, about how “if you bought the game, you have all the LE playbooks”. Uh, unless something’s changed significantly, no? Some of us bought the game a while ago. When I got it the only thing I got was a hardcopy of the Maestro D’: not even a pdf.
Ah, I see your first problem. I bought AW, I got The Faceless. That’s it, the only LE playbook I got from that, then and forever. The others I had to get through preorders, charity, trading, etc. So I’m not sure if you don’t have all of the LE playbooks, or got them some other way, or what, but let me know, I can send them all to you to put up. Also, are you telling me that there aren’t six people interested enough in AW, it Monsterhearts, DW, etc. to come up with some idea, but they will be interested enough to seek out a random guy and offer him money for a playbook (which, incidentally, I did offer for free, no strings attached. That clearly worked well.)?
If you still have your Forge login you should be able to access the download for the LE playbooks. The file is called “bonus playbooks”
I’m not sure what the question was. If you make something difficult to access, you’ll get less people looking for it.
Patrick Henry Downs It’s a bit more complicated than that, for purely technical reasons, which I’m not going to go into because it’d be too irritating to type it all out pn my phone. The upshot is that Ben and Matt probably don’t have access to that file.
I rely on people who want them to ask, because I don’t have a good way to handle it otherwise.
In that case Vincent Baker , should I make the bonus playbooks available on my page along with all of the other player-made playbooks?
(Touchstone, Quarantine, Maestro D’, Faceless, Marmot, Hoarder – I don’t know if there are more that weren’t included)
Not my call.
I decided not to make them publicly available, just available to people who bought the game (or received it as a gift, or whatever).
Vincent Baker that’d be awesome. I preordered the game, at the beginning, picked it up at that gencon, talked to you with Elizabeth for an hour or so while I was still mostly sober. I was the one yelling that Harper wasn’t allowed to sit on furniture until he finished Knife & Candle. (I said mostly sober.) Now that we’ve been reintroduced in the wild, I’d love to check out the Solace.
Matt Strickling Email me! I need your email addy to authorize you at the bookshelf.
Let me figure out which email has access to the rest of the AW stuff and I’ll send it as soon as I get home.
Just got them! Public thanks to Vincent for being awesome. Also, JFC the Solace is HOT. You all need to ask him for this one, guys. Maaaaaaan. Okay, who wants to play/run a game of AW on IRC?
I guess… I’ll change my page to reflect what you’ve said.
I would also love to get any playbooks that are not on my list, my email is nerdwerds AT gmail
Seriously, please email me. It’s the only way for me to sensibly deal with it.
Vincent, canI get the solace too please? 😀
Swear to god, friends. Email.
But I forgot your address…
Your email does take some work to find if people don’t know it.
What IS your email then?
Lumpley at the good old gmail.
All right, I just got home and added the link to The Orphan to the original post. Patrick Henry Downs, I just typed and deleted some bitchy snark, but I guess my point was that I intended from the start to make it available to everybody almost immediately, I just wanted to get more people creating content. As far as I can tell, you believe that any period of exclusivity is anathema, and we’ll just have to disagree. I definitely would like to talk with you more fully and find out whether you feel the same way about (reasonable) copyrights in general, or if it’s just this. Maybe next Forge Midwest?
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B1jk2CQW22IYSkVrSXlHMWwyQVE
I for one fully, fully endorse and support periods of exclusivity.
Good to know. I almost gave up on this, and creating things for the community in general, but I just decided fuck it, and came home to post this.
Periods of exclusivity is not the same thing as always exclusive. Just like trading is not the same thing as sharing. You know, I did tell you Matt right from the start that if you want to trade with other people for content that’s your prerogative. I just think it’s silly (and I don’t hold my tongue when it comes to my opinion).
You are exactly right that periods of exclusivity is not the same as always exclusive, which is why I said that after 6 people traded with me I’d share it freely and publicly. Is there something that is making us talk past each other? Is that not what you read? Not good enough? All/none of the above? I’m genuinely curious about this, I know sometimes I wall of text, and that can inhibit communication.
I also fully, fully endorse and support ongoing exclusivity. Nobody is ever automatically entitled to somebody else’s work.
Off-topic, Vincent Baker, is all of A-W.com borked, or is it just for me?
Looks like it’s down, yeah. It’s been kind of jittery for a couple of days. My webhost knows about it and begs my patience while they migrate.
Fair enough, although know that I blame them for this whole hullabaloo. The only reason I asked for content in trade was because I wanted to lay out some playbooks while I procrastinated and waited for some inspirado. Since the forums were down there wasn’t a lot for me to choose from, and I thought I’d ask people for any ideas, you know, to make more things.
For the third time: DO WHAT YOU WANT. It’s your work, it’s your prerogative.
I just don’t understand why you wouldn’t want to share your work. It seems silly to me. But if my opinion really tears you a new asshole maybe you should meditate on why it’s so upsetting for you.
Oh, I figured that out, three back to back to back shifts in two days had me touchy. That’s why I took a second and stepped back.
And really, your last comment just proved my point about how exclusivity is silly. “…I thought I’d ask people for any ideas, you know, to make more things.”
Imagine if nobody had anything to share with you until you had something, but you’re not inspired because you haven’t been effectively brainstorming with other peoples’ shared ideas? My best ideas come from collaboration and being informed where my ideas are weak. If you don’t have that, then you really are just isolating yourself.
And I’m done talking about this too. I’ve got other shit to do today and I think the depth of my opinion is summarized in my earlier comments.
So… Everyone… Wins?