Reply To: [unofficial weekender] Heeeeere's Johnny!

[limburger 21714xp 1]

Early weekend for me because of stuff that happened earlier this year.
I’ll try and see if I can get some proper hobby time in though. I’ve spend plenty of time just thinking about doing stuff and it’s about time I started building and painting things, isn’t it ?
Not sure how much of that is going to happen because me is good at procastinating …

(1) Having just seen how fast your hobby/passion can drop to a total zero[*]: Is your hobby insured?

Short answer : nope
Even *if* the things I have could be ensured there’s no replacing them. First edition original copy of Rogue Trader ?
Nope, and while I could get the reprint that GW did … it’s just not the same.
I wouldn’t know how to start again though. Probably just start collecting stuff again with the possible added advantage of only having one thing …
Haven’t even thought of how I’d do that.
And to be honest … even if I had you only know if any backup plans are functional once you need them.

Time to think and plan while we still can, isn’t it ?
It is kind of related to ‘cleaning out your hobby space’ and ‘dumping whatever you’re never going to finish/use’ …

(2) At what point does an “unofficial anything” (like uHH or this thread) get “official”?
The moment the actual owners of the IP hire you to do the same thing you’ve been doing as a fan.
Or you get a license to do such things and the company lists you as an official licensee (sp?) with all the associated trouble that comes with such things (ie : staff meetings, documentation, rules lawyering, etc).
I’m not talking about simply having permission to slap a logo on your website/thing and calling it done.
I’m talking about a two-way street of effort in communication from both sides to keep you in the loop of things that are happening.
That’s when you know you are “official” … anything less is merely a fan product that is allowed to exist until the powers that be decide your fate.

(3) And this one is a real spicy one and really just “food for thought”: if BoW/OTT where to transit to a new homepage/forum/project system (for what ever reason) and had to start from scratch, would you join in again or would that be a point in time where you’d reconsider being part of it?

as long as the soul of the original is still there … why not ?
Anything of mine that is on the site that I’d want to retrieve is more like research (collections of links and ramblings) that I should have been saving on my own system anyway. With digital systems you need to operate under the same assumption as backing kickstarters : can I do without that stuff ?
And if not … what am I doing to ensure I can retrieve it ?
It’s kind of how I approach my digital collections ….
The stuff on DriveThru, Bundle of Holding and GoG is probably the only things I can retrieve and backup off-line.
Everything else is in the hands of fate, because technically you don’t get to ‘own’ them anyway ….