by Arrakis » Wed Jan 21, 2009 10:15 am
There's a major issue with our game and games like it:
We are a sport with certain rules and we try to promote ourselves as such. You don't need to buy any official anything to play. So, in effect, we're like baseball or basketball or, more generally, kickball (no official equipment used in most places).
BUT. We're also like the American Football League. Or the National Football League. Or the NBA. Or whatever bowling league. So, we have policies that aren't necessarily sport rules, we have specific variations on the rules that are specific to our particular variant... So, if you want to play Dagorhir, say, you have to follow Dag's rules. It's like saying you're an NCAA Football team. That means something specific.
BUT! If you want to just play football... you can. You can't just play football and then call yourselves Minor League of Whatever if Minor League of Whatever has rules regarding how to become a member of it, but you can still play THE GAME.
So. People like to do this thing were we hit each other at full-strength with well-padded sticks. Mostly, they ally themselves with one of two or three major Leagues and a few smaller local Leagues. The problem is: We Don't Have a Nationally Recognized Name for the Sport. Other than Foamfighting (which is relatively accepted) and Boffing/Boffer Fighting/Boffer Sports (all of which have connections to and connotations of lighter-hitting games that aren't at all like Bel/Dag[/AmtDitching]), you pretty much have to call your sport by its League, right now, and that sometimes makes it harder for small groups to play. When Dagorhir says, "You have to do these things or you can't use our name", they're saying, to go back partway to analogy, that unless you're an official member of the Foamfighting League of Dagorhir, you can't use their official stuff or sell official merchandise.
And that's fine! They can protect their League trademark just as aggressively as they like.
When groups join a Leauge, though, it's generally not their first time playing the sport of which the League is. Dag, as a League-that-is-also-a-Sport-with-the-same-name-as-the-League, is squashing the sport in an effort to protect the League. I could almost see someone making an argument that Dagorhir is now non-trademarkable, like Kleenex or Google (as a tissue or a verb meaning "to search"), due to its heavy use to indicate the sport of Dagorhir instead of the organization. Probably not, though, as there's plenty of caselaw on boardgames and roleplaying games that would probably apply...
Anyway. The point is: Currently, the nature of the game we play is inseparable from the names of the organizations that are over each subset of the game. That makes life difficult for anyone wishing to officially participate in the games, especially the more legally-rigorous/vigilant ones, like Dagorhir. Bel is easier to get along with, as the organization makes fewer demands on groups wishing to join their League, but then you run into difficulties of advertisement; Most people don't know that that Dag-uh-here thing they saw last night on the Discovery Channel is almost the same * sport as the Belegarth Realm practicing in their very town and, the way Dagorhir's organizational policy currently works, there's really no way to tell them that in an advertisement or in any real way where they'd be able to find the information.
Semi-Related: There was a guy in Louisville on the Dag boards recently, asking if there was an active Chapter closer than Indianapolis; he was told that he was pretty much SoL and should totally just start a new Chapter. Now, I'm all for new Chapters and Realms (yay growth!), but there's a big, major, experienced Bel Realm literally in this kids back yard and I couldn't tell him. And that just sucks for him. If only there were some legal distinction between Dagorhir the Sport and Dagorhir the League of Sportsmen.
It's a thorny problem. I have no solutions at this time.