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Comment by SpeedilyDamage | Hacker News Reader

> Why do we not crowdfund some excellent game designers to make a truly open set of RPGs?

Why are you waiting for someone else to do this? Do it yourself!

Something that bothers me more than most things is when people demand others act to solve a growing problem. Sure, you're not the most qualified person to do it, but actual execution trumps qualifications every time.

Get out there! Get in touch with some excellent game designers, ask them what it would take to get their help. Come up with a plan based on their feedback and execute it!

Or at least if you're not going to do it, recognize that your reasons for not doing it are probably exceedingly similar to everyone else's reasons for not doing it, and stop asking the question.

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> and stop asking the question.

I agreed up until this part. Even if you aren't going to do it, stoking the fire with otherwise idle conversation might get more motivated individuals interested.

There are game designers possibly reading this thread.

I've approached two of my favorites, back possibly too long ago before Kickstarter was more of a known quantity, and they both said "hard pass" at the time.

Also, have you ever been approached by an "idea guy"? It's obnoxious as hell. "Hi, I'm creating a video game. All I need is a game designer, 2 programmers, 2 artists, and a sound guy. Pay is on commission." It's like, What? What do you bring to the table?

I bring very little to this table, other than the assertion that I would spend money on this product, if it existed.

But it's entirely possible a game designer will see this, and decide to run their own Kickstarter, based off of the comment I made and the comments I got back.

Or, someone more knowledgeable than me could have explained to me why my idea was unworkable. Or someone could have shared ten links to existing products or ongoing Kickstarters.

I'm not afraid to speak up in a public place about my hopes. Why should I be?

I mean, maybe you meant to be encouraging, but please accept my feedback that your comment seems to me to be an attempt to discourage discussion.

Yeah, I want to discourage people from asking the naive question: "Why don't people solve <problem> for me?!"

Do it yourself, or at least examine why you won't, and then recognize that the people involved are also humans, and many of those reasons you and others here have listed apply to these "special" people too.

Discussion is nearly worthless; so many people can generate so much of it for so little cost, it must be worth basically nothing. There's far too much of it, and far too little action.

This site is literally the social media arm of a startup accelerator, go start something up!

Is it better if I explicitly ask,

"Can anyone shoot holes through this idea of mine? Has anyone else already done this? Is anyone else interested in helping me do this?"

Or would that still warrant discouragement from you? Because, honestly, that's the tone I intended. And if you can't read that tone, maybe that's on you?

Yeah as long as you’re not asking for other people to solve your problems, all good from me!

Just to close the loop, in case you didn't know, the next biggest players in the Table-Top Role Playing Game World got together and did exactly what I was hoping for:

> In addition to Paizo, Kobold Press, Chaosium, Legendary Games, and a growing list of publishers have already agreed to participate in the Open RPG Creative License, and in the coming days we hope and expect to add substantially to this group.

This would be roughly akin to Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Rackspace announcing they would work together to fight some awful cloud computing initiative from Amazon. But thanks for angrily telling one dude on HN that he should be the one to lead the charge. Really great advice, thanks.

https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6si7v?Paizo-Announc...

> Something that bothers me more than most things is when people demand others act to solve a growing problem. Sure, you're not the most qualified person to do it, but actual execution trumps qualifications every time.

I would agree with this, however most people can't organise and maintain the most mundane aspects of their lives, let alone gather a large group of people together to combat some big goal like this.

What makes you think that GP isn't already doing so, and trying to rally others to do the same?

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