Admiral C

I went ahead and moved all my blog entries over to my Livejournal. To some it might appear that I'm being overly protective of my ideas, especially considering three of the last dozen or so posts have been about blog views, blog copyright, and how to delete entries. In reality most of these posts were spurred on by different stimuli. The first one was simply curiosity while the other was brought reading about White Wolf's policy concerning fan sites and how they laid claim to all intellectual property on those sites. After asking, Simon suggested if I was worried about people stealing my ideas I shouldn't post to a public forum.

I've always considered the word "blog" to mean certain things. One of those things is ownership of ideas. All of this wouldn't mean anything to me if I wasn't selling my work already and trying to make this coming year, "My personal year of authorship" where I either get something out of being a writer or not. Since many of my ideas flow into game, story, story, game I didn't want to create a conflict of interest.

Do I think anyone at DOJ would steal anybody's idea? No, I don't. Do I think there could be confusion about where an idea came from and some people get blamed? Since this hinges on human error I would say yes. Could there be people outside this who could get upset such as future editor or agent for myself or Cryptic Studios? Once again yes, Cryptic has no authority in DOJ but their requests would not be ignored if they were reasonable to the business side. Could DOJ or agents within it attempt to capitalize on ownership on the property on these boards? Not as they are now but gaming is touch niche business. DOJ is willing to make drastic changes in 6th Edition and move away from how the system has evolved into a brand new game. People willing to make such a significant changes would be willing to make others, such as selling the business if it becomes unprofitable or becomes a financial burden. And whose to say what organization would replace DOJ? I respect this as a possibility not an inevitability.

I will still post my ideas to the boards to help people because it's something I like to do and I have plenty of creativity and moreover plenty of advice to help people with their own ideas, something I like to do. I just want to keep the bigger ideas to myself unless someone I know can benefit from it. I've even welcomed open collaboration but nobody has taken me up on the offer.

I also started blogging here to hopefully make some friends here on the boards. None of my HERO groups ever bothered to join the forums so in person I know no one here. I tried I believe at Dragoncon 2007 to get together with some of you guys but nobody ever got back to me even when I offered to run a game. It seems to be really hard to make anything more than a passing acquaintance on the board. I've seen a couple of you guys on Livejournal but never knew any of you well enough to ask. Not to say that you guys aren't friendly, you are and your polite, mannered, well read, and responsive when asked. I can't complain that you guys don't act well in concert as fandom, you do. It's just that HERO isn't ever represented here at the local cons or the local clubs. Everybody that I know except for five guys, two I knew over a decade ago (who showed me) who played HERO were guys I had to teach how to play it. Over the years I taught HERO to at least 33 guys I can remember and probably a bunch I don't. Despite running a good game most of these people cycle through the local college and are gone after a year or two and I start recruiting again. It would be nice to actually go to a con and know a few gamers there or know someone in a longer term sense.