Crossposted to the main forum on the Mongoose board and the Paranoia Live forums.
It should come as absolutely zero surprise that I'm both against DRM and DTRPG - that Mongoose has chosen to join DTRPG in peddling crippled PDFs is sad.(ly disheartening.)
Then again, I'm not much of a Mongoose customer. You have one game line I adore, but mostly focus on stuff I'm not really interested in.
That line is Paranoia, and I think it's a bit significant to bring it up.
Paranoia's newest incarnation points out many of the problems with Digital Restrictions Managament. (more on this later.) It basically does nothing to deter the pirates, but it does make it more inconvienient for the user and seems to be a way to wring out more dollars for "licencing" the product rather than selling it.
It's silly because the pirated copy has become the *better* copy. It's possible to compete with "free but unethical" by offering an "ethical and reasonably priced" product, but for many people, myself included, supporting DRM is *less* ethical than piracy. (I do not mean to say that RPG piracy is ethical - simply that it is a lesser sin than locking consumer choice and "licencing" the product.)
I know that alot of publishers are out there thinking: "Who the hell cares what this guy thinks, how dare he claim to know more about our product than we do." In this case, sadly, that's just the case. DRM is not just unworkable, it's also unethical. I really can't support a company that uses DRM - this is why I've had to give up on several of my favorite (and money-draining) game lines, Exalted, Buffy/Angel, and Tri-Stat.
On the plus side, this has generally meant that I can afford a lot more Paranoia stuff, HERO suppliments, and Atlas Games stuff.
I hesitate to throw around the word "hypocritical" - but when Mongoose puts out Paranoia - a satirical look at many of the nasty things occuring in the technical parts of our society - including, specifically, DRM, it's had to suggest that Mongoose be taken seriously. That said, I did notice that there were no Paranoia products available on DTRPG.
I'm hoping that this was a concious choice. So long as Paranoia products are excluded from DTRPG, I'd feel much better about picking them up. Not entirely better - because Mongoose is still supporting DRM, but better.
What I'd like to hear is some sort of official assurance that the Paranoia line will not be DRMed if it is ever published in an electronic format.
Thank you.
-- Funksaw, Brian Boyko.
It should come as absolutely zero surprise that I'm both against DRM and DTRPG - that Mongoose has chosen to join DTRPG in peddling crippled PDFs is sad.(ly disheartening.)
Then again, I'm not much of a Mongoose customer. You have one game line I adore, but mostly focus on stuff I'm not really interested in.
That line is Paranoia, and I think it's a bit significant to bring it up.
Paranoia's newest incarnation points out many of the problems with Digital Restrictions Managament. (more on this later.) It basically does nothing to deter the pirates, but it does make it more inconvienient for the user and seems to be a way to wring out more dollars for "licencing" the product rather than selling it.
It's silly because the pirated copy has become the *better* copy. It's possible to compete with "free but unethical" by offering an "ethical and reasonably priced" product, but for many people, myself included, supporting DRM is *less* ethical than piracy. (I do not mean to say that RPG piracy is ethical - simply that it is a lesser sin than locking consumer choice and "licencing" the product.)
I know that alot of publishers are out there thinking: "Who the hell cares what this guy thinks, how dare he claim to know more about our product than we do." In this case, sadly, that's just the case. DRM is not just unworkable, it's also unethical. I really can't support a company that uses DRM - this is why I've had to give up on several of my favorite (and money-draining) game lines, Exalted, Buffy/Angel, and Tri-Stat.
On the plus side, this has generally meant that I can afford a lot more Paranoia stuff, HERO suppliments, and Atlas Games stuff.
I hesitate to throw around the word "hypocritical" - but when Mongoose puts out Paranoia - a satirical look at many of the nasty things occuring in the technical parts of our society - including, specifically, DRM, it's had to suggest that Mongoose be taken seriously. That said, I did notice that there were no Paranoia products available on DTRPG.
I'm hoping that this was a concious choice. So long as Paranoia products are excluded from DTRPG, I'd feel much better about picking them up. Not entirely better - because Mongoose is still supporting DRM, but better.
What I'd like to hear is some sort of official assurance that the Paranoia line will not be DRMed if it is ever published in an electronic format.
Thank you.
-- Funksaw, Brian Boyko.
