OneBookShelf Community Content Programs and the Polish RPG Fandom

Abstract

The paper analyses the almost complete absence of Polish RPG designers from OneBookShelf’s community content programs for various tabletop RPG systems, proposing an explanation for this absence based on the development of the RPG fandom in Poland. A part of the argument is concerned with a relatively weak position of Dungeons & Dragons in Poland compared to the English market and with the Polish RPG players’ lack of interest in the market of digital materials for tabletop RPGs. The main hypothesis, however, connects the Polish absence from community content programs with how the long absence of professional systems and the permanently small market of commercial RPGs in Poland might have increased the intensity of prosumption of RPGs among Polish fans but simultaneously limited their chance to gain skills and knowledge necessary to publish and market the results of this prosumption on a professional or semi-professional level. Statements of Jan Sielicki – the only Polish RPG designer who published numerous and successful supplements under community content programs – are quoted to reinforce this hypothesis and show how Sielicki gained the necessary skills outside of the Polish RPG fandom.