"An author's worst problem isn't piracy, it's obscurity."
--publisher Tim O'Reilly

As the writer gazed out across the blackness, he saw the twin glowing eyes of the creature staring back. The twin eyes were named Fame and Renumeration, and he choked back a scream as he realized the eyes were coming, but not coming for him.

I started in this industry as a horror RPG writer, and one of the strongest themes in Lovecraftian horror is the concept of insignificance. To realize ones total lack of significance within an alien and incomprehensible universe is enough to drive the strongest protagonist mad.

Put another way, you aren't 'killed' by Cthulhu because of who you are. You simply die because you don't matter, because you aren't even a part of Cthulhu's universe.

If insignificance leads to madness and death, what fate then awaits the writer who willingly toils in the obscurity of writing RPGs? Are we simply begging to be driven insane? Or is there a power in obscurity that sustains us?

There are three kinds of obscurity my columns are mired in. For starters, RPGing is a relatively obscure hobby, and my soapbox topics are obscure aspects of RPGdom-- business aspects, new modes of game design, even LARPing. Not a single dragon or elf chick in the mix.

This, I say, is the joyful obscurity. Instead of having to appeal to an ill-defined mass market taste, I instead get to write material that appeals to the sort of people that like this sort of thing (to crib madly from Abraham Lincoln.) The proper name for this type of obscurity is 'Editorial Freedom', and it is one of the finest blessings in the world.

The virtue of this, and most columns, and most blogs, and most creative works, is their very obscurity. Obscurity breeds freedom to create without risk to anything other than one's ego. Given a strong enough ego, one can write worlds and thrust said creation into the void in hopes that kindred souls will enjoy it.

And thus the second kind of obscurity-- just how many kindred souls do I get to reach? I would fairly classify my readership numbers as granting me the title 'Obscure', in a mainstream sense. I don't get the numbers that, say, 'Heroes' Season 1 got (nor do I get their budget. Rats).

But this comes in part from the joyful obscurity. By choosing a small topic in a small market, I've already cast my die. A typical new RPG from a small RPG publisher sells perhaps 400 copies, and a decade ago 2,000 copies was a solid book. With readership ranging from 700 to 3,500 readers per column, I'm happy with the raw numbers. Reaching the same number of people as a printed book, to me, indicates I'm in the pocket. I have readers. Many come back. As a writer, that is the essence of success.

So in chosen joyful obscurity and being fortunate enough to have a small measure of success, there remains only one form of obscurity to tackle, an abstract one. As a writer, it is economically unclear whether it is worth writing these columns at all. Thus it requires rather arcane reasoning to justify, in an economic sense, the worth of writing these columns.

The obscure hand-waving justifications and barely guessed at statistics as to 'reach' and 'branding' that goes into justifying this column are, frankly, not worth the time to write them. They're a hack. Any economic value of this column that honestly compares time spent here, versus time spent writing more lucrative projects, requires arguments either specious or so obscure as to be indistinguishable from fantasy.

While I do feel I have a small economic advantage in maintaining my column, I do not feel I have a strong argument justifying that. Instead, it's a belief. It is akin to the motive for writing this in the first place, a belief that this column has utility and is worthwhile beyond society's cold measures of fame and renumeration.

So, in summary, I write this column in a chosen obscure hobby called RPGing, for a small audience, for motives that are obscure and have little if any rational economic basis. And yet... I believe my reasons and my persistence are identical to the bulk of RPG publishers, indy designers, and RPG writers. We all do this for ill-defined reasons.

And we all rage against obscurity-- but obscurity isn't binary. You are not either famous or obscure, but somewhere between the two extremes. Maybe you reach 2 people, maybe 6 billion. Obscurity is like entropy, a measurement of the system that we then weigh against all the other parts of our life.

It is not required that we be famous for our RPG works, simply that there exist an audience, that we reach them, and that our works satisfy some of their needs.

If the curse of the writer is obscurity, what then is the curse of the willingly obscure writer? Complacency. A writer shouldn't worry about their numbers or pander to an audience. They should write the best they can, with all their skills, regardless of renumeration or audience size. If you commit to writing, write. Write well, write often, and hope you find an editor and publisher able to perfect your works and bring them to the audience that needs it.

The true horror is not whether Cthulhu arises to destroy the world as we know it, or not. It's whether we chose to act at all. And an author's worst horror isn't obscurity, it's not writing at all.