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ProfessorCirno posted:It's a bit of a perfect storm right now; 5e's accredation and Mearls secretly telling Zak S about all the things people have been emailing him have shown just how loving horrifyingly rotten the core of this hobby is, and the vindication that Zak S and Pundit have gotten over 5e has lead them (and their hanger-ons like GMS) to be more aggressive in their terribleness then ever. This is a pretty poo poo time for the hobby, at least if you aren't a "traditionalist" het white dude Night10194 posted:Same here, this poo poo is awful. Why does this hobby attract so much of this kind of poo poo? What is it about Tabletop Gaming and RPGs in particular that causes this kind of thing? MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Jul 16, 2014 |
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Jul 16, 2014 03:06
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Tollymain posted:They're as bad as the rest of this godforsaken hobby when it comes to ignoring and dismissing marginalized people being harassed by the worst elements. If that's OK with you, go ahead and give them your money I guess. I like knowing when designers are shitheads because it helps me decide whether to support them. Sometimes though, these discussions about which designers we should and shouldn't support turns to gossipy bullshit and moral grandstanding, like your post up there. "I am too pure for this wretched earth and though you are irredeemably corrupt I will not hold it against you, due to my purity and poo poo" *great tears roll down cheeks in sorrow at man's imperfection*. If you've seriously got a problem with Sage LaTorra, take it to him and call him on it. You'll get better results out of doing that than you would preaching to the choir here. If you want to talk more RPG gossip, there is a really great, terribly neglected thread just for that. neongrey posted:If he's actually coming around that's great but not just an hour or so ago I saw him doing some sad hand-wringing on twitter about how hard it is to truth-is-in-the-middle-guys. Changing your mind takes time. If you don't agree with what he's saying, have a talk to him about it.
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Jul 16, 2014 03:09
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Alright, I'm home. Lemon Curdistan, was there anything specific you were curious about regarding Warbirds?
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Jul 16, 2014 03:09
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I like how people think I see myself as anything resembling a decent person 
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Jul 16, 2014 03:10
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neonchameleon posted:What is it about tabletop gaming? Not what you think. Few other hobbies allow you such a tour through peoples' fantasies. If you're involved in model railways you don't have to hear about anything other than what they think about model railways. If you're interested in birdwatching what they think about politics doesn't matter. RPGs are right up there with fiction in encouraging Author Tracts and people to display what they really believe. Are you telling me that model railroaders don't craft elaborate stories about all the kinky sex that's happening in the sleeper car?
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Jul 16, 2014 03:10
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If this car's a rockin'...
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Jul 16, 2014 03:11
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MadScientistWorking posted:If you think this behavior is relegated to this industry you are in for a rude awakening. I know it isn't, but it seems to be goddamn everywhere here.
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Jul 16, 2014 03:13
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So Mearls didn't actually give Zak S access to the stuff he received, he just assured him "Yeah, nothing we're taking seriously, don't worry" 
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Jul 16, 2014 03:15
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ProfessorCirno posted:Mearls secretly telling Zak S about all the things people have been emailing him Yo, for the record, this isn't true. Mearls has explicitly stated, to me and several others, that he won't disclose any names or details. He did tell Zak that he hadn't received any evidence that Zak had said anything racist/sexist/etc, which is still a little hosed up, but that's about it. Also, keep in mind that Mearls would have had a lot of emails straight-up tell him that whether Zak said anything outright bigoted wasn't the problem, the problem is that Zak harasses a lot of people and the people he hits are almost exclusively women, minorities and pro-LGBT people. Tollymain posted:So Mearls didn't actually give Zak S access to the stuff he received, he just assured him "Yeah, nothing we're taking seriously, don't worry" Stop helping 
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Jul 16, 2014 03:20
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Wait, Zak S has problems with LGBT people when he films his girlfriend loving other women? Oh, this sounds delightful!
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Jul 16, 2014 03:22
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Quarex posted:Wait, Zak S has problems with LGBT people when he films his girlfriend loving other women? Oh, this sounds delightful! Zak S has a problem with people who disagree with him. Being able to use their sexuality to attack them when he's stalking them or sending out his followers to harass them is just a bonus. Also yeah I got the deets on the Mearls thing wrong. Which uh, isn't to say the actual result isn't a good thing, just not...as...lovely? ( gently caress if I entirely care about the nuance there though )
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Jul 16, 2014 03:26
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Tolly, if you're going to call LaTorra out, that means you actually have to call him out. About specific things. Just telling us "I know something you don't know, so trust me, this guy is a bad person" does not inspire trust. Quarex posted:Wait, Zak S has problems with LGBT people when he films his girlfriend loving other women?
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Jul 16, 2014 03:26
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MadScientistWorking posted:Correction. That didn't happen. All he did was apparently tell Zak that the claims weren't credible. It's not that we think it's only here, it's more that the RPG community is so small and incestuous that we've wound up seeing like 80% of the community is kinda shitheads in some way and that's not awesome for a lot of us. Like, I doubt anyone here is going to burn our fuckin dice or whatever, it just sucks to see 'oh cool so this small community I'm in is mostly full of total turds, awesome'. Quarex posted:Wait, Zak S has problems with LGBT people when he films his girlfriend loving other women? Oh, this sounds delightful! He's exactly the kind of person who thinks lesbian porn is fuckin hot but woah why do us gay guys have to be such faggots about things.
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Jul 16, 2014 03:31
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Tatum Girlparts posted:Like, I doubt anyone here is going to burn our fuckin dice or whatever, it just sucks to see 'oh cool so this small community I'm in is mostly full of total turds, awesome'. I'm pretty sure dice melt instead of burning!!!
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Jul 16, 2014 03:34
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Like there's a reason all those guys who got their start in ttgs and moved on to video games, be they indie developers or mainstream, have not looked back. And it ain't just because of the money.
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Jul 16, 2014 03:35
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Bucnasti posted:Are you telling me that model railroaders don't craft elaborate stories about all the kinky sex that's happening in the sleeper car? I have no idea - under Rule 34 I'd assume some of them do. But it isn't even close to what the hobby is about. And for people complaining about game designers, let's look at SF and Fantasy Fandom. Terry Goodkind is on his howmanyith book? Xanth reached book 38 last year - twenty three books after one of them was called quite literally "The color of her panties" - and anyone who wants to google Piers Anthony and Firefly is welcome to horrify themselves. Last month Tor.com put up a post celebrating the known paedophile and child abuser Marion Zimmer Bradley (on a tangent, she with her ex-husband the convicted paedophile Walter Breen were founders of the SCA - which recently had its "Minister for Children" convicted of child rape). Larry Niven, author of some good SF back in the day and some more recent terrible SF inspired by the 1992 LA riots is still getting guest of honour invitations despite advocating race based insurance fraud. Getting worse, I'm British. When I think of kids TV I don't think of Mr. Rogers. I think of Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris (actually Saville is a bit before my time). I could go on (I haven't mentioned religion or politics). But if ZakS and the Pundit are the worst with big soapboxes this hobby has to offer we're actually doing pretty well - especially for a hobby where people put their own beliefs about the world on actual display. All of which isn't to say we shouldn't do better. If I thought we shouldn't do better I wouldn't be here. But claims that the RPG community is oh so terrible to me indicate only one thing. That the person making them is incredibly sheltered. Rather than that it's less than perfect and we should keep cleaning what we can.
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Jul 16, 2014 03:36
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I think there are two things that make bad behavior pronounced: one, it's a cottage industry so there's a lot of direct communication with designers. Two, the nature of the medium makes it more likely that authors' personal views will be evident in their work. Like, maybe at least one of the guys who coded Final Fantasy was a homophobe, but that didn't present itself in an 8-bit video game.
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Jul 16, 2014 03:41
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ProfessorCirno posted:There is something morbidly humorous about Sage trying to give Zak S and Pundit the benefit of the doubt and them vomiting that right back into his face. Once again, speaking solely from my conversation with him, I think this is partially due to this being his first exposure to social issues being a part of gaming. He's uncertain how to proceed after feeling attacked from both sides for what he felt at the time was a reasonable response. I'm not saying that excuses anything he's done, just that we have to understand there is a learning curve and that someone not being with us doesn't mean they can't be educated. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, especially since he hasn't gone through and deleted his previous statements or tried to take some revisionist, "oh I didn't mean THAT" position. For my part, I've told him that he needs come out with inclusive, decisive statements. Zak was wrong or he wasn't; claiming there is a "middle ground" is just endorsing his behavior.
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Jul 16, 2014 03:50
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Holy poo poo, I completely missed the Marion Zimmer Bradley stuff. Wow.
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Jul 16, 2014 03:52
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Mormon Star Wars posted:I'm pretty sure dice melt instead of burning!!!
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Jul 16, 2014 04:03
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It's also worth pointing out that fantasy fiction (being the largest portion of the hobby) is inherently a regressive medium, starting with Tolkien. The whole idea of the genre is "hearkening back to days of yore when life was better" and not acknowledging that unless the hobbits had penicillin and vaccinations most of them died horribly at an early age, and how we only get to hear about the privileged people in Middle Earth while the peasants' voices are largely unheard. The best part is that some people have twisted this to mean that fantasy RPGs should be some sort of medieval peasant death simulator in a hilarious unintentional parody.
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Jul 16, 2014 04:11
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Tatum Girlparts posted:It's not that we think it's only here, it's more that the RPG community is so small and incestuous that we've wound up seeing like 80% of the community is kinda shitheads in some way and that's not awesome for a lot of us. Like, I doubt anyone here is going to burn our fuckin dice or whatever, it just sucks to see 'oh cool so this small community I'm in is mostly full of total turds, awesome'.
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Jul 16, 2014 04:20
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What is Zak's soapbox these days? Twitter? I tried to find a blog but I couldn't find one after some minimal Googling. Only his Twitter account and his Tumblr. I remember watching an episode of his video series where he played DnD with some porn stars and being really bored. I guess the allure was that these "eccentric" porn stars were playing DnD but they all just had boring or very bad personalities for that type of thing. I'm surprised people are still talking about him.
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Jul 16, 2014 04:20
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The Dongion, which is like the onion but instead of comedy just signal boosts terrible poo poo as 'jokes'.
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Jul 16, 2014 04:25
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:What is Zak's soapbox these days? Playing D&D With Porn Stars
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Jul 16, 2014 04:27
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Gau posted:This is absolutely, positively untrue. Sage LaTorra is, over the last two days, having an extended Facebook conversation with me as he tries to determine the truth about Zak Smith. From what I've determined, he was skeptical about the accusations but has gone through an eye-opening experience as he has seen Zak's behavior and people have come forward with their stories. He is incredibly concerned. He has gone out of his way to network and find people and get their stories to understand the truth. That's the opposite of ignorant and dismissive. Sorry to involve you, but he did ask and his intent was honest.
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Jul 16, 2014 04:36
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MadScientistWorking posted:The community is just a subset of the geek culture which is equally just as horrible. I come across this stuff on a regular basis and I don't actively look for it. How do you avoid it? The interesting thing to me is that there are so many people in this thread alone who apparently have made Zak angry enough that he called them out by name on the page Mr. Maltose just mentioned. Normally one side pretends the other does not exist in these things.
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Jul 16, 2014 04:39
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MadScientistWorking posted:The community is just a subset of the geek culture which is equally just as horrible. I come across this stuff on a regular basis and I don't actively look for it. How do you avoid it? When Tatum Girlparts points out that the community is small and incestuous, he's also pointing out that it's the same horrible dudes everywhere, you pretty much can't get away from them. Look at Zak S, unless you are in the two communities he is banned from (here and RPGnet) he's everywhere. If you run a gay gamer blog and post something about the Savant and Sorcerer cover being terrible he will show up in your comments like a poltergeist, moaning "OOOoooOOOooo Paaaaaat Roooooobertson" with an armful of apples.
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Jul 16, 2014 04:40
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Any time I read anything from one of his games, it's just a string of adjectives and made up words that cause my eyes to glaze over. It's a classic example of bad writing and trying to make yourself sound smarter than you really are. His artwork also sucks, mostly for the same reason his blogging sucks. He just keeps regurgitating the same things over and over again without coming up with anything new or innovative. Also, being super "edgy" with sculptures is pretty boring and far from edgy. I've never heard of any of these people outside of SA and I doubt any of the people I have gamed with would have. Some of my friends are pretty big in following some of the people in the gaming industry too but the Pundit or Zak never came up. They're both honestly pretty forgettable and unoriginal so it doesn't surprise me. Mormon Star Wars posted:When Tatum Girlparts points out that the community is small and incestuous, he's also pointing out that it's the same horrible dudes everywhere, you pretty much can't get away from them. Look at Zak S, unless you are in the two communities he is banned from (here and RPGnet) he's everywhere. If you run a gay gamer blog and post something about the Savant and Sorcerer cover being terrible he will show up in your comments like a poltergeist, moaning "OOOoooOOOooo Paaaaaat Roooooobertson" with an armful of apples. It's an echo chamber and Google allows them to hone in on things with drone like precision.
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Jul 16, 2014 04:50
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Mormon Star Wars posted:When Tatum Girlparts points out that the community is small and incestuous, he's also pointing out that it's the same horrible dudes everywhere, you pretty much can't get away from them. Look at Zak S, unless you are in the two communities he is banned from (here and RPGnet) he's everywhere. If you run a gay gamer blog and post something about the Savant and Sorcerer cover being terrible he will show up in your comments like a poltergeist, moaning "OOOoooOOOooo Paaaaaat Roooooobertson" with an armful of apples. I had a guy who was permabanned extra hard from RPG.net show up in the Korean tabletop gaming Facebook page of all places. Gau posted:Once again, speaking solely from my conversation with him, I think this is partially due to this being his first exposure to social issues being a part of gaming. He's uncertain how to proceed after feeling attacked from both sides for what he felt at the time was a reasonable response. I'm not saying that excuses anything he's done, just that we have to understand there is a learning curve and that someone not being with us doesn't mean they can't be educated. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, especially since he hasn't gone through and deleted his previous statements or tried to take some revisionist, "oh I didn't mean THAT" position. Yeah I can buy this. As I said, I think he sorta stumbled into a very rough time. Nerves are already being run raw, intentionally in a few cases as Zak S has definately upped his harassment and Pundit has upped his shittiness post-5e. The toxic elements of this hobby have seen 5e as a big rallying point that they were "right," so people who actually give a poo poo about that or are their victims are going to have difficulties with people who claim the truth is in the middle. Gau posted:It's also worth pointing out that fantasy fiction (being the largest portion of the hobby) is inherently a regressive medium, starting with Tolkien. The whole idea of the genre is "hearkening back to days of yore when life was better" and not acknowledging that unless the hobbits had penicillin and vaccinations most of them died horribly at an early age, and how we only get to hear about the privileged people in Middle Earth while the peasants' voices are largely unheard. The best part is that some people have twisted this to mean that fantasy RPGs should be some sort of medieval peasant death simulator in a hilarious unintentional parody. It's worth mentioning that one of the most common styles of fantasy may as well boil down to"White man's burden" libertarian's wet dream. Those nasty foreigners are invading our peaceful sleepy kingdom, but you, the lone Randian hero, can defeat them and
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Jul 16, 2014 04:51
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I kinda disagree on the whole "fantasy has Randian subtext" thing, at least in regards to party-based tabletop gaming, as it teaches and requires cooperation rather than stingy Objectivist nonsense. And most people I've known usually roleplay as regular Joes and Janes: blacksmith's sons, farmer's daughters, etc. I mean, yeah, people sometimes like to play as a noble and experience the high life once in a while, but most of the time they just like to play as themselves with more muscles or access to sorcery.
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Jul 16, 2014 05:00
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Rulebook Heavily posted:Sorry to involve you, but he did ask and his intent was honest. It was refreshing to have someone ask questions and honestly be interested in the answers as opposed to barging in the door and telling me what they think my problem is. ProfessorCirno posted:It's worth mentioning that one of the most common styles of fantasy may as well boil down to "White man's burden" libertarian's wet dream. Those nasty foreigners are invading our peaceful sleepy kingdom, but you, the lone Randian hero, can defeat them and It reminds me of zombie fans who, when you press them enough, just want to be crusaders against whichever societal wrongs they believe the masses are perpetuating and shoot people without consequence. This is why zombie fiction appeals across ideological lines. What was the name of the industry douchebag who tried to make a fantasy Israel and turned the Palestinians into ogres who fire rockets or something? I am probably remembering this wrong; after a while all of the poo poo just blends together.
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Jul 16, 2014 05:03
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SunAndSpring posted:I kinda disagree on the whole "fantasy has Randian subtext" thing, at least in regards to party-based tabletop gaming, as it teaches and requires cooperation rather than stingy Objectivist nonsense. And most people I've known usually roleplay as regular Joes and Janes: blacksmith's sons, farmer's daughters, etc. I mean, yeah, people sometimes like to play as a noble and experience the high life once in a while, but most of the time they just like to play as themselves with more muscles or access to sorcery. More muscles, access to sorcery, complete independence from legal and social systems, and the ability to kill intelligent creatures without remorse because they're "evil." Some groups don't play this way, but it's literally written into D&D that you should do this.
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Jul 16, 2014 05:05
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Gau posted:
No that was pretty much it. I remember he was fired from WOTC after someone pointed out his blog posts about thinking it was totally cool to teach Gor to kids. Don't remember the name though.
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Jul 16, 2014 05:09
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This?
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Jul 16, 2014 05:13
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Gau posted:It was refreshing to have someone ask questions and honestly be interested in the answers as opposed to barging in the door and telling me what they think my problem is. Uri Kurlianchik. Runs a blog called "D&D Kids" that had adult subject matter because obviously a blog with that title isn't intended for kids, made his fantasy setting with an obvious Palestine pastiche whose people were okay to kill, got fired from WotC as a column writer because he talked about using the setting of Gor for children's games. e: It just struck me as I read my post that I really am not making any of this up. Rulebook Heavily fucked around with this message at 05:19 on Jul 16, 2014 |
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Jul 16, 2014 05:17
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RPGs: There's always more and it's always worse
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Jul 16, 2014 05:29
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Kai Tave posted:Hey Rulebookheavily, run a Darker Dungeons PbP, thanks. Stay tuned!
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Jul 16, 2014 06:22
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Man, if that actually works, then SOMEONE RUN DOUBLE CROSS. Thanks. And if THAT works, since I was reminded of this today, someone call China Mieville /TOR and get them to take the RPG rights to Bas-Lag back from GMS, because I'd like to see that published sometime before I'm 40.
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Jul 16, 2014 08:25
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Sorry, it's time to embrace my true role as the Balaam of this forum and curse you allDarksaber posted:Man, if that actually works, then SOMEONE RUN WRAETHTHU. Thanks. 
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Jul 16, 2014 08:47
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