I'm just going to rattle off a few things. I've just watched this video from CinemaStix. I follow the channel; the creator has some valuable things to say. The creator occasionally has his head up his ass. This video makes me want to write in his comments, "Shut up. Go make your own film."
The video is irrelevant. The creator also, the comment too. What's relevant is that as I sit here in my world giving advice as a creator on my channel, outlining rules for a game that I've run, that I would run again... that I've proven to many online that I can run, I'm not prancing out someone else's work that I can't duplicate, I can't match, I can't even remotely, fully, understand.
You, Dear Reader, see that video and think, "Interesting, I hadn't thought of that before, I have new perspective on the movie..." Whatever.
You read a post here about something I've written that says if you want your game world to work effectively, you'll need to get off your ass, work, figure it out, create your own content that I haven't created for you and no, no one's really going to help you, especially your own players... and you think, "I can't do that."
Well, maybe you don't, but you have ready excuses for why you don't. No one has that kind of time, it's just a game, this isn't rocket science, I have other things to do with my life, I don't think my being a better DM is all that important. Whatever. What matters is that you have an excuse, not that it's a good one.
The difference is that Danny Boyd, the voice behind CinemaStix, isn't a creator in the way that Tony Gilroy, who directed the film spoken about, is a Creator. Boyd needs someone else to create things, so that he can comment on it. That's the strength of his "creativity." Tony Gilroy doesn't need that. He needs money. Because the difference between Gilroy creating and Gilroy not, is whether Gilroy has the money to create what he does.
I am not a filmmaker. I am a writer. I don't need money. I need a computer. But I don't need someone else to create something first, either. I continue to use source material that is 45 years old, but I pay no attention to it. I don't cut it into different shapes and then call that "creating content."
More to the point, I tell you, Dear Reader, that you don't need someone else to create content first, either. You don't need someone to make you a module, so you can be Danny Boyd. I don't tell you that you need to buy the latest books. I don't tell you that you need to follow people on youtube, or anywhere else. I tell you that you need to get off your ass and make your own fucking content. For your players. That you pretend you care about.
When I started "working on my D&D world" in 1980, I had players. I did not have subscribers. I did not have a channel. I did not have a computer. I had a desire to work on the game because I loved it. If, today, I'm not working on my Streetvendor's Guide... I'm not working on Finding D&D in the Dark... I'm not working on Fallow... I'm not working on any of the projects I've started and haven't published... it isn't because I've forgotten about these projects, or because I'm not going to do them. It's because, for me, my priority is, always, that I love D&D and I'm going to work on whatever the hell I love. If I want to spend four or five months doing maps, then that's what I'm going to do. If I want to work on my wiki, that's been closed to me since winter of last year, then I'm going to do that. Because that's what matters to me. I don't give a fuck, sorry, what others want, or what others think matters, or what others feel I ought to be working on. I don't care about success. If money is what mattered to me, if it ever mattered, then I'd be out working and making it. What matters to me is what I want to work on. In the way that I want to work on it.
What most youtube "creators" who talk about this kind of material, who laud this person or that, will never understand, is that youtube "creating" isn't. It just isn't. It's time-wasting naval gazing that adds nothing to the store of value for the human race.
As I'm also doing that, then I'm going to do it for me. Those of you who want me to go on working, who are simply glad that I am working, it won't matter to you what I'm working on. It won't matter than I'm a miserable, inflexible, uncaring, hostile asshole. It will only matter to you that I am still working, on whatever I want to.
Thank you for your time.
