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  • Locked thread
Zurui
Apr 20, 2005
Even now...



I made the mistake of reading further down the FAQ

quote:

I bought some of the various boosters as an inexpensive way to expand my Federation Commander game, but cannot find any of the Squadron Boxes that match the boosters. What do I do?

Answer: Each set of three Squadron Boxes matches the ships in a key product. For example, Squadron Boxes #4-#6 match the ships in Klingon Attack. Each set of three Booster Packs provides the ship cards that match the extra counters in the original product, for example, Booster Packs #7-#9 match the extra counters in Romulan Border. Each of the Border Boxes matches the ship cards in the corresponding set of three boosters, so Border Box #4 matches the ship cards in Boosters #10-#12 as well as the extra counters in Romulan Attack.

I literally cannot scan this :psyduck: poo poo. How does any of this match up?

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Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
I WILL CUT OFF BOTH OF MY ARMS BEFORE I VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT IS MORE POPULAR THAN BERNIE!!!!!

Lightning Lord posted:

The Kzinti being around would back this up, but I wonder if they have a deal with Larry Niven too?
Their ability to use Kzinti definitely devolves from Niven including the Kzinti in the episode of the animated series that he wrote. I don't think they have a separate agreement with him. I've heard that he was angry about it, but I'm not sure about that.

Loxbourne
Apr 6, 2011

Tomorrow, doom!
But now, tea.
Amarillo Design Bureau are speeeschul. 40 years of being a weird niche part of the Star Trek fandom will do that to a company. The answer to a lot of weird questions about why their products do X, Y, or Z Crazy Thing is "because Steve Cole went insane long ago".

I have some sympathy for them, because Paramount came at them with flaming lawsuits and they managed to hold on and carve out a niche to operate in, but that sympathy tends to vanish when you see how their writers and fanbase operate. They're very, very protective of their assets, and prone to lashing out at perceived threats.

PST
Jul 5, 2012

If only Milliband had eaten a vegan sausage roll instead of a bacon sandwich, we wouldn't be in this mess.

Humbug Scoolbus posted:

They're a good company too.

I think they're way overcomitted.

The Shadows of Atlantis campaign for Achtung Chtulhu was just awful, and a lot of the other AC stuff was all over the place in tone and feel.

Infinity is late and struggling as they keep getting material sent back by the license holders and told to do it again but better.

I'm yet to see a finished book from them that wowed me with art/design or system.

Comrade Gorbash
Jul 12, 2011

My paper soldiers form a wall, five paces thick and twice as tall.

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

ADB's original agreement was through Franz Joseph, who made the Technical Manual, and then this transferred to Paramount once they realized what they had. As stated before the manual was created during a time where Star Trek was dead and merchandising was nowhere near what it is today. ADB can't even use the original cast, only certain elements of TOS and TAS like races and governments. It's kind of like a more reasonable and civil version of the Battletech and Harmony Gold rights debacle but handled much better.

http://www.starfleetgames.com/federation/faqs.shtml
The SFB license is definitely weird, but its no where near the cluster-gently caress that is Harmony Gold/Robotech. It's not just the aggression Harmony Gold has in going after anyone who gets anywhere near it. SFB is at least attempting to monetize the line, as is Paramount, which is the heart of the conflict.

Harmony Gold hasn't done anything with the Robotech license, and in fact blocks access to the entire Macross line, with zero attempts to actually make money off it. They just squat on the license and occasionally sue the poo poo out of some poor sap who wanders too close. They rarely even make any money on that, is the craziest bit.

Actually, it's not the craziest bit. The craziest bit is that it's near certain that Harmony Gold doesn't even have the license it says it has. It take some creative reading of the original agreement to give HG the authority it claims to begin with. On top of that, there was a lawsuit in Japan over the international rights several years ago, the upshot of which was that the group that sold the rights to HG didn't have ownership of them or the right to do so. So HG's license is based on a shaky reading of a document that has no actual legal standing.

The trouble is that HG has good lawyers and deep enough pockets to outlast the people who trip over the landmine, and no larger company with a competent legal staff is going to touch the mess with a ten foot pole. Anyone who actually forces the issue to court would almost certainly win, it just has never been worth the trouble for anyone with the money to do it.

Eventually HG will piss off a company big enough that they'll get crushed - HG is hyper-litigious and the people running aren't terribly rational - but it's anyone's guess where that will lead. Probably with the rights being confirmed as returned to the original creators, as per the Japanese decision.

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

Kwyndig posted:

Roll under systems in general are kind of counter-intuitive for most gamers.

Personally if I was going to run MC I'd drop the nat 20 rule and just use the Repercussions rating for Complications instead.

I'm not familiar with other versions of 2d20 but I read through the preview rules for Conan when I backed it.

Roll-under makes sense when the target is your character's ability/skill, and you want that number to mean "higher = better." The game mechanic also includes copious opportunity (as in, it will usually be the case with most nontrivial rolls you make) to improve your chances at the cost of some resource, but that usually means adding dice rather than changing your target to roll against. Which I also like, because it means from round to round, scene to scene, etc. you are usually rolling against the same smallish set of target numbers, all of which are printed on your own character sheet.

This to me contrasts with the D&D style of rolling, where you roll 1d20 and then have piles of modifiers that may or may not apply to that roll, and which change from round to round, and your target number is often a secret that you can gradually deduce through the scene based on which of your results fail or succeed.

The natural 20 rule in Conan is pretty loosey-goosey... there are guidelines but essentially it means a complication can happen. More importantly, it adds an additional cost to your decision to improve your odds of success by buying more dice: each additional die you buy gets you another chance at rolling more successes (so if you need, say, two successes right now, you might buy from your starting two, up to four dice by spending two tokens) but also increases the odds that you'll roll a 20 and cause a complication for the group.

I have not playtested it but I found it interesting as a mechanic I'd like to try out.


Kurieg posted:

It makes it so that you can only get an even number of successes from your dice natively, unless you roll under your skill. I'm not sure what their probability curve looks like but I'm pretty sure there a huge cliff between the failure and success plateaus.

I think you've misunderstood how the mechanic works, because this makes no sense based on my reading.

If you like, you can preview the Conan quick start rules Free from DTRPG. It took me about half an hour to skim through. The system probably isn't for everyone and I'm not sure if it'd be right for Star Trek, but I don't see any glaring mechanical flaws along the lines of your statement, like bizarre probability curves or failure/success plateaus etc.

Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 01:38 on Jul 22, 2016

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

Kwyndig posted:

I was just going over my copy of Mutant Chronicles, and failure results don't do anything but make you ignore that die on the roll. Natural 20s can add Complications, but it's possible to both succeed at a task and get Complications.

I have no idea how Conan handles it, but I'd assume the same way.

That's the way it handles it.

PST posted:

I think they're way overcomitted.

The Shadows of Atlantis campaign for Achtung Chtulhu was just awful, and a lot of the other AC stuff was all over the place in tone and feel.

Infinity is late and struggling as they keep getting material sent back by the license holders and told to do it again but better.

I'm yet to see a finished book from them that wowed me with art/design or system.

Mutant Chronicles 3e is a lot of fun and my sister and my niece love the Thunderbirds boardgame. I don't have Shadows of Atlantis, but the Achtung Cthulhu stuff I do have looks fine.

Humbug Scoolbus fucked around with this message at 01:48 on Jul 22, 2016

Kwyndig
Sep 23, 2006

Heeeeeey


Leperflesh posted:

I'm not familiar with other versions of 2d20 but I read through the preview rules for Conan when I backed it.

Roll-under makes sense when the target is your character's ability/skill, and you want that number to mean "higher = better." The game mechanic also includes copious opportunity (as in, it will usually be the case with most nontrivial rolls you make) to improve your chances at the cost of some resource, but that usually means adding dice rather than changing your target to roll against. Which I also like, because it means from round to round, scene to scene, etc. you are usually rolling against the same smallish set of target numbers, all of which are printed on your own character sheet.

This to me contrasts with the D&D style of rolling, where you roll 1d20 and then have piles of modifiers that may or may not apply to that roll, and which change from round to round, and your target number is often a secret that you can gradually deduce through the scene based on which of your results fail or succeed.

The natural 20 rule in Conan is pretty loosey-goosey... there are guidelines but essentially it means a complication can happen. More importantly, it adds an additional cost to your decision to improve your odds of success by buying more dice: each additional die you buy gets you another chance at rolling more successes (so if you need, say, two successes right now, you might buy from your starting two, up to four dice by spending two tokens) but also increases the odds that you'll roll a 20 and cause a complication for the group.

I have not playtested it but I found it interesting as a mechanic I'd like to try out.



I, personally, have no issues with roll-under, I've played Alternity, GURPS, Tri-Stat 2, a couple others that were roll-under systems and I definitely prefer having static target numbers that you want to beat in a game since it speeds up play by a lot. But a lot of people I've encountered offline seem to have some sort of disconnect when presented with roll-under games and it takes them a lot longer to grok the mechanics.

2d20 is a pretty good dicepool system if for some reason you have to be rolling 20 siders, and the risk/reward systems they have in MC and Conan do put some real strategy into how you roll instead of just going for 'most pluses/dice I can get'.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

Comrade Gorbash posted:

Eventually HG will piss off a company big enough that they'll get crushed - HG is hyper-litigious and the people running aren't terribly rational - but it's anyone's guess where that will lead. Probably with the rights being confirmed as returned to the original creators, as per the Japanese decision.

Well, the thing is that Robotech is of vanishing importance thanks to the growth of anime fandom abroad. That's not to say it doesn't still have major name recognition amongst old nerds, it does, but there's less and less reason to care about it now that getting access to straight translations of Macross (or even Southern Cross or MOSPEADA) is trivial. Harmony Gold will cling to their old localization but as time passes it's more a weird artifact of fandom and translation history than anything particularly essential to watch. What it comes down to is the fact that less and less people will care about it over time and they'll probably hang onto it simply because the interest isn't there.

The same largely holds true of Star Fleet Battles, it's a weird artifact of licensing but Paramount has always moved onward with the franchise (with varying success), and doesn't have much reason to keep returning to the ring over a product that bears a largely incidental resemblance to Star Trek at this point.

Comrade Gorbash
Jul 12, 2011

My paper soldiers form a wall, five paces thick and twice as tall.

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Well, the thing is that Robotech is of vanishing importance thanks to the growth of anime fandom abroad. That's not to say it doesn't still have major name recognition amongst old nerds, it does, but there's less and less reason to care about it now that getting access to straight translations of Macross (or even Southern Cross or MOSPEADA) is trivial. Harmony Gold will cling to their old localization but as time passes it's more a weird artifact of fandom and translation history than anything particularly essential to watch. What it comes down to is the fact that less and less people will care about it over time and they'll probably hang onto it simply because the interest isn't there.
A few years ago I would have agreed entirely, but there's a spanner in the works here. In the past HG kept going up against game and toy companies, and there just wasn't enough money in either to make it worth a big player to take them on.

But the fact that HG is also blocking any sort of sales of the Macross and other series is the tricky bit now. Netflix just dropped a fair bit of money on Knights of Sidonia and the new Voltron. Crunchyroll is making pretty substantial profits. Amazon is pretty voracious is catching up with its streaming competitors.

Macross would be a nice addition to a back catalog - 139 episodes in the four series, another 19 in OVAs, 2 movies (though they are adaptations of two of the series), plus future access to popular series, and potentially a shot at a Voltron-like nostalgia series for Robotech. Not to mention 23 episodes of Southern Cross and 25 of MOSPEADA. Fighting it out with HG would be expensive, but not as expensive as paying for that much new content, not even after factoring in paying the creators for the license.

If HG was smart they'd just cut a deal with someone and get royalties or a nice one time payment out of it. But HG isn't terribly smart. And for a streaming service, the prize is starting to get big enough to justify taking on the legal headache.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib
What does Harmony Gold even DO these days? Like, is "owns the American Robotech license kinda sorta maybe" their entire business model?

Parkreiner
Oct 29, 2011

Kai Tave posted:

What does Harmony Gold even DO these days? Like, is "owns the American Robotech license kinda sorta maybe" their entire business model?

As I understand it, they are or have been involved in real estate too.

We also shouldn't overlook Manga Video somehow managing to release Macross II and Plus in the US and UK, under those names, in the mid-'90s. Never gotten a straight answer on how that came about.

Comrade Gorbash
Jul 12, 2011

My paper soldiers form a wall, five paces thick and twice as tall.

Kai Tave posted:

What does Harmony Gold even DO these days? Like, is "owns the American Robotech license kinda sorta maybe" their entire business model?
Back in 2006 or so it looked like they might try to cash in on the licenses they held and actually release the old content, and maybe produce some new. But a couple things intervened - namely the production company they worked with went bankrupt, and then they got embroiled in legal troubles. The founder apparently was doing business with Berlusconi and was convicted on price gouging charges, though he was old enough that he served no prison time. The Italian government were after him for other fraud and embezzlement charges as well, and that didn't finally resolve until January of this year. They had a lot of assets frozen or seized along the way though.

So basically HG is in a really precarious state with an aged founder and no real future prospects, and with a rational company in such straits a cash in of their assets would make a lot of sense. But HG has never been run in a particularly rational way.

There is a chance they might finally just go bankrupt themselves, which would also probably resolve the issue.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib
Well that answers that I guess.

Issaries
Sep 15, 2008

"Negotiations were going well. They were very impressed by my hat." -Issaries the Concilliator"

I've only read the infinity beta version of 2D20, but the character creation system is really fun.

You basically roll everything: Faction, childhood event, school, social background & different phases of your career etc.
You have a bunch of "Fate" points that you can use to decide the result before rolling from table OR to re-roll a random event table result.
Each step of the creation gives you stats/skill points with your initial career result giving you the biggest number of points.
After the initial career, you can continue with same career (assuming you weren't fired in a random event) OR try to push for a more interesting career path.
Infinity had 2 career phases as a default, which made your characters age 20-30 (based on rolls). Using "fate" points you can do up to 5 career phases.

Issaries fucked around with this message at 10:04 on Jul 22, 2016

Mecheon
Nov 27, 2007

And that was when Ecco realised the world just fucking hates dolphins.
Of interesting note on the Harmony Gold stuff is they tried to sue Hasbro recently over a release of Jetfire

We don't know the full details of the lawsuit but given Hasbro put everything back up on the store and released another Jetfire with a blatantly Macross inspired faceplate the year after, it would seem they're starting to lose on that front at least

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy
TG Industry question: What does print-on-demand look like? How does it work? What kind of technology came about in the recent years that made this sort of thing possible?

fez_machine
Nov 27, 2004

gradenko_2000 posted:

TG Industry question: What does print-on-demand look like? How does it work? What kind of technology came about in the recent years that made this sort of thing possible?

I maybe wrong, but it's kind of like cloud computing. In the past you had to order specific print runs, because the printer would have to set up plates (not that they use them much anymore), or have to go through some other procedure before printing, now with digital/laser you can print from a file. It's also much more profitable to have a modern printer running continuously than to stop and start it, so a major part of commissioning print runs is about scheduling time on the printer. Also with print on demand you don't have to invest in stock storage if you're a small publisher.

One theory behind print-on-demand is that instead of scheduling bulk print runs on the printer, enough single orders are continuously processed that there isn't a gap in how much the printer prints. This requires the internet because you need to be able to have orders flowing in regularly as well as having the files on hand so that the printer can retrieve the information. The printer isn't geared towards printing your particular book so print on demand can feel very one size fits all.

The other model I guess is that you have a printer and it's ready at any time to print off a single copy of a book any time someone wants it, but that's inefficient and expensive if it's just sitting there and not printing. But I've seen that happen.

LongDarkNight
Oct 25, 2010

It's like watching the collapse of Western civilization in fast forward.
Oven Wrangler
One of the founders of Magpie games posted this on the company blog. Not sure how I feel about it.

http://www.magpiegames.com/2016/07/26/two-minutes-hate/

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

I've been going with "anger, depression, and utter disappointment with the company."

homullus
Mar 27, 2009

LongDarkNight posted:

One of the founders of Magpie games posted this on the company blog. Not sure how I feel about it.

http://www.magpiegames.com/2016/07/26/two-minutes-hate/

I feel it's a step in the right direction.

Kwyndig
Sep 23, 2006

Heeeeeey


I think Zak S should be burned at the stake for the good of humanity, but the post makes a few good points.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!
It has its heart in the right place, but at the same time I feel like good ol' geek social fallacies are rearing their ugly head there.

Nuns with Guns
Jul 23, 2010

It's fine.
Don't worry about it.

LongDarkNight posted:

One of the founders of Magpie games posted this on the company blog. Not sure how I feel about it.

http://www.magpiegames.com/2016/07/26/two-minutes-hate/

well I guess if you have the luxury of taking the moral high ground then why not? It'll keep you out of the range of all the stalkers and dickheads that would happily throw poo poo at you if you stay at ground level with all the people that can't escape.


oh wait I guess he used some kind of psychic power to establish that Zak isn't a thin-skinned bully with a ego large enough to have its own gravitational field, so any accusations against him are false

potatocubed
Jul 26, 2012

*rathian noises*
My immediate reaction was "Looks like Magpie's got an OSR game coming out."

If I'm wrong, I'll be happy to be wrong, but I want to be on the record for this.

Also, the post itself is complete bullshit. I get that a lot of people don't want to speak out against Mark Diaz Truman -- he's got a big platform and a shitload of money, and at least one of the people I've seen upset by this is conflicted because that Fate magazine of his publishes her -- but this is balls.

Examples:

quote:

Rob has always struck me as gentle and honest. His game—Misspent Youth—is about standing up for your beliefs in the face of oppression

So when Rob stood up for himself (and others) in the face of oppression, Mark and Co kicked him to the curb. Right, right, got it.

quote:

It saddens and pains me to write this post, but there’s a point at which silence—my silence, our silence—begins to look like we’re condoning terrible behavior that harms people.

'So please, shut the gently caress up about how bad Zak's behaviour is.'

quote:

We betrayed our values when we refused to support Contessa—on the grounds that it wasn’t woke enough to our feminism

The links in the original statement are to two women talking about how Contessa's values are somewhat dubious, but that doesn't stop Mark considering his own opinions on feminism to be superior.

quote:

The truth is that we know as little about the real Zak or Stacy or James as my TA, Kate, knew about the real me: nothing.

No, we know what their online behaviour is like. Maybe Zak is a top bloke IRL -- I don't know, I've never met him -- but his online behaviour is that of an unrepentant poo poo and people aren't wrong to judge him on that. Maybe that's only "shadows of their real selves" but the behaviour is real and the consequences are real and 'it's just the internet' is an argument that belongs in the bin.

Oh, also?

quote:

I hope it’s clear that I’m not defending Zak.

I mean, it might not be clear because he jammed several paragraphs between my previous two quotes, but defending Zak is exactly what this is doing.

quote:

It’s clear to me that he doesn’t respect our norms of communication, but he seems intent on engaging us in a protracted discourse.

Zak doesn't want a "discourse" with anyone. He wants to tell people that he's right and have everyone nod and praise him for being so smart, and God help you if you don't toe the line.

quote:

Apologize. Reach out to someone on the other side of this conflict and offer a direct, sincere apology.

This is the cherry on top of the turd sundae, and it is also a turd. "Hey people who Zak has shat on, you should reach out and apologise for getting your cooties on his poo poo." gently caress. Off. This is an argument that we should grovel to the worst man in tabletop gaming and invite him into our spaces, with not even so much of a hint that he might need to change his behaviour to earn that apology.

There's one good point in the whole loving thing and it's this:

quote:

None of the OSR folks are responsible for our community’s perpetual whiteness and maleness. None of them caused us to struggle to hire women and minorities. We did all that ourselves.

...

Take time in your next project or event to work with someone new—preferably a woman or a person of color. We’re not going to build Rome in a day, but there are real connections that need to be made within and between our communities to build the inclusive, diverse spaces that we want to have.

That is worth chewing on.

Roland Jones
Aug 18, 2011

by Nyc_Tattoo
What a loving bastard. If this weren't the first I'd heard of Magpie I'd be canceling any plans I had to buy anything they made.

Kwyndig
Sep 23, 2006

Heeeeeey


Yeah, in further retrospect, this is a poo poo move. I'm canceling my Patreon support.

homullus
Mar 27, 2009

Kwyndig posted:

Yeah, in further retrospect, this is a poo poo move. I'm canceling my Patreon support.

Canceling your support of somebody you don't wish to support is a good move and different from vomiting bile onto your keyboard. Zak S is an rear end in a top hat. Being an rear end in a top hat to him doesn't make you not an rear end in a top hat just because he's one.

MadScientistWorking
Jun 23, 2010

"I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

homullus posted:

Canceling your support of somebody you don't wish to support is a good move and different from vomiting bile onto your keyboard. Zak S is an rear end in a top hat. Being an rear end in a top hat to him doesn't make you not an rear end in a top hat just because he's one.
The problem with your argument is that this lovely purity politics is always centered at people who are the most touchy and the most liable to make a mistake.

gnome7
Oct 21, 2010

Who's this Little
Spaghetti?? ??
Yeah I got halfway through that article before I could not continue any longer. I co-wrote a book with one of Zak's victims and she has literally vanished off the internet and out of the industry, NEVER to return, entirely because of Zak S and his bile. This apologism is not welcome or wanted.

gutterdaughter
Oct 21, 2010

keep yr head up, problem girl
Here's a part I agree with, paraphrased: Getting into fights with Zak and his friends is pointless and stupid. It does none of the real work of making our industry better. It just appeals to clannish behavior and makes you feel better.

Here's another part I agree with, paraphased: Story Gamers versus OSR Gamers are not one-to-one with liberals vs conservatives, or SJWs versus GamerGators, or whatever us versus them dichotomy you wanna layer over it. The type of elfgame you like is not a barometer a person's politics or relative wokeness, just because some of the Big Shots in each camp are loud and specific jackasses. Quit treating a glorified console war as a banner of morality, fer chrissakes.

Here's a reasonable assertion, even if I'm not sure Truman actually made it: Even if Bohl's anger is justified, his public conduct is not. Bohl's conduct is also indicative of a larger conduct problem in the community. As a company, Magpie Games refuses to be associated with this conduct. This is their right.

Here's some complete bullshit: We should give Zak the benefit of the doubt, and make apologetic overtures with him and his people.

Here's a better conclusion: Stop engaging with Zak and his type. Or at least stop engaging on his terms and with his methods. It just makes you look bad, it makes us look bad, and you're basically giving Zak the shitshow he wants to see. Put your energy into making actual poo poo better, and into fostering relationships with OSR folks who aren't assholes.

gutterdaughter fucked around with this message at 01:06 on Jul 27, 2016

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

Help a hero out!
Telling someone to not get angry and/or post said anger, even in a *gasp* aggressive tone is insanely cowardly and I agree with forums poster Roland Jones - If i had known who this person was prior I almost certainly wouldn't continue to support their work.

Gutter Owl posted:

Here's another part I agree with, paraphased: Story Gamers versus OSR Gamers are not one-to-one with liberals vs conservatives, or SJWs versus GamerGators, or whatever us versus them dichotomy you wanna layer over it. The type of elfgame you like is not a barometer a person's politics or relative wokeness, just because some of the Big Shots in each camp are loud and specific jackasses. Quit treating a glorified console war as a banner of morality, fer chrissakes.

Until that post I didn't even know that liking crunchier games was trad game codespeak for being a neo-con and liking rules-lite games was a sign of moral purity. Basically all the crazy neet marxists and leftists I know play crunch-heavy games (primarily D&D 4e).

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

Alien Rope Burn posted:

It has its heart in the right place, but at the same time I feel like good ol' geek social fallacies are rearing their ugly head there.
They completely are.

Okay. Look. I have a lot of loving problems with that post. I'm going to loving rant and I don't give a poo poo if anyone reads this or not but I have to get this off my loving chest.

I realize I am coming into this hot. This is not going to be coherent or (probably) right. I don't loving care.

I know that Z coming here way back in the grognards.txt days was directly because of me. It was like five+ years ago and I still feel guilty for what happened even though I know the fallout of all that poo poo (like what happened to Mikan) wasn't actually my fault. I don't like talking about him or the whole g.txt incident that happened. And I know the people who were around back then don't care and the people who weren't around back then don't know what I'm talking about.

But the problem is that I still feel guilty about it. Because I put people into a crosshairs.

I do not like talking about Z. At all. I have deliberately not gotten involved when the topic of him comes up, even though that's a race occurrence around here nowadays. And I'm well aware that Z probably doesn't remember who I am, either inside or outside the context of SA. And I've interacted with him in both contexts.

Mark says that it's not about Z or Rob, but they're the ones he called out. He says that Rob swearing at Z was endemic of the conflict between the storygame community and the OSR, but that completely ignores the context of what happened or Z's (known) history. It's a total false equivalence: Rob swearing at Z is not at all the same as how Z's treated people in the past. It's a "tolerate intolerance" bullshit argument.

Mark wants everyone to get along, which is fine, but he wants it to happen by everyone just being nice and if we all just listen and accept the other side everyone will get along. But that ignores the fact that the problem isn't the OSR; it's specific people who happen to be in the OSR.

He says it's "our" responsibility (us being "the storygame community" whatever the gently caress that means) to reach out to the OSR. But the OSR isn't the loving problem. People like Z and Pundowski are the problem. And yes, there are people who are just as problematic on the storygames side.

Read . Mark wants to extend the hand of friendship to the OSR.

But the solution to the reactions people like this generate isn't to just reach out the hand of friendship. That needs to come later. The problem isn't representation in the industry; that's a completely separate issue. The problem is the toxic people everyone just...accepts. Like it's the cost of being part of the overall gaming community.

Read the responses to the post on G+. There are people who flat-out say they were scared to reply to this because they know what'll happen when Z gets wind of this. There are people who point out what has happened to them in regards to Z. I've seen so many people, mostly women, in my G+ feed saying how scared they are about what Mark posted, and how it brings people into the attention of harassers by putting the focus of the problem in the wrong place.

The problem isn't that the people who like games like this aren't seeing eye-to-eye with the people who like game like that. That's Geek Social Fallacy #4 thinking.

The problem is the ever-present toxic element. That's not going to go away and saying "look, can't we just get along and play games?" just perpetuates it.

Mark says Rob should have apologized to Z for the post he screenshotted. Why? Rob is completely within his rights to tell someone with Z's history to gently caress off. But because Mark treats the two guys as being just as bad as the other, it completely ignores the core loving problem.

I need to go lay down.

Serf
May 5, 2011


If being vocally hateful towards Zak S is wrong, I don't wanna be right.

Really regretting dropping cash on Urban Shadows now.

Kwyndig
Sep 23, 2006

Heeeeeey


Evil Mastermind posted:

They completely are.

Okay. Look. I have a lot of loving problems with that post. I'm going to loving rant and I don't give a poo poo if anyone reads this or not but I have to get this off my loving chest.

I realize I am coming into this hot. This is not going to be coherent or (probably) right. I don't loving care.

I know that Z coming here way back in the grognards.txt days was directly because of me. It was like five+ years ago and I still feel guilty for what happened even though I know the fallout of all that poo poo (like what happened to Mikan) wasn't actually my fault. I don't like talking about him or the whole g.txt incident that happened. And I know the people who were around back then don't care and the people who weren't around back then don't know what I'm talking about.

But the problem is that I still feel guilty about it. Because I put people into a crosshairs.

I do not like talking about Z. At all. I have deliberately not gotten involved when the topic of him comes up, even though that's a race occurrence around here nowadays. And I'm well aware that Z probably doesn't remember who I am, either inside or outside the context of SA. And I've interacted with him in both contexts.

Mark says that it's not about Z or Rob, but they're the ones he called out. He says that Rob swearing at Z was endemic of the conflict between the storygame community and the OSR, but that completely ignores the context of what happened or Z's (known) history. It's a total false equivalence: Rob swearing at Z is not at all the same as how Z's treated people in the past. It's a "tolerate intolerance" bullshit argument.

Mark wants everyone to get along, which is fine, but he wants it to happen by everyone just being nice and if we all just listen and accept the other side everyone will get along. But that ignores the fact that the problem isn't the OSR; it's specific people who happen to be in the OSR.

He says it's "our" responsibility (us being "the storygame community" whatever the gently caress that means) to reach out to the OSR. But the OSR isn't the loving problem. People like Z and Pundowski are the problem. And yes, there are people who are just as problematic on the storygames side.

Read . Mark wants to extend the hand of friendship to the OSR.

But the solution to the reactions people like this generate isn't to just reach out the hand of friendship. That needs to come later. The problem isn't representation in the industry; that's a completely separate issue. The problem is the toxic people everyone just...accepts. Like it's the cost of being part of the overall gaming community.

Read the responses to the post on G+. There are people who flat-out say they were scared to reply to this because they know what'll happen when Z gets wind of this. There are people who point out what has happened to them in regards to Z. I've seen so many people, mostly women, in my G+ feed saying how scared they are about what Mark posted, and how it brings people into the attention of harassers by putting the focus of the problem in the wrong place.

The problem isn't that the people who like games like this aren't seeing eye-to-eye with the people who like game like that. That's Geek Social Fallacy #4 thinking.

The problem is the ever-present toxic element. That's not going to go away and saying "look, can't we just get along and play games?" just perpetuates it.

Mark says Rob should have apologized to Z for the post he screenshotted. Why? Rob is completely within his rights to tell someone with Z's history to gently caress off. But because Mark treats the two guys as being just as bad as the other, it completely ignores the core loving problem.

I need to go lay down.

Thanks to the internet, there's only two ways of getting rid of the toxic elements in a hobby, and the first one which is foisting them off on another fandom is not only reprehensible, it isn't working because then you get cross contamination from other bad actors.

Which means we must employ option 2, get rid of them by any means necessary.

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

Okay I'm not going to lay down. I'm too wound up again.

This may be the best summation of the problem with Mark's article:

quote:

It's very easy to cluck at someone for being upset with Zak when you haven't been driven off the face of the map by him.

gutterdaughter
Oct 21, 2010

keep yr head up, problem girl

Gutter Owl posted:

Here's a reasonable assertion, even if I'm not sure Truman actually made it: Even if Bohl's anger is justified, his public conduct is not. Bohl's conduct is also indicative of a larger conduct problem in the community. As a company, Magpie Games refuses to be associated with this conduct. This is their right.


Countblanc posted:

Telling someone to not get angry and/or post said anger, even in a *gasp* aggressive tone is insanely cowardly



Evil Mastermind posted:

Mark says that it's not about Z or Rob, but they're the ones he called out. He says that Rob swearing at Z was endemic of the conflict between the storygame community and the OSR, but that completely ignores the context of what happened or Z's (known) history. It's a total false equivalence: Rob swearing at Z is not at all the same as how Z's treated people in the past. It's a "tolerate intolerance" bullshit argument.

...

Mark says Rob should have apologized to Z for the post he screenshotted. Why? Rob is completely within his rights to tell someone with Z's history to gently caress off. But because Mark treats the two guys as being just as bad as the other, it completely ignores the core loving problem.


Okay, yeah, these are some excellent points. And it's bullshit to say that Rob was "harassing" Zak. If Truman thinks that's what harassment looks like in this industry, he needs to pay a bit more attention.

(I'm just coming from a former position as an ad rep/PR person for the board game side of the industry. And in the past I've been terrified to voice any of my negative opinions on my former company's clients--or potential clients--here on Something Awful for fear of serious career repercussions. So it really doesn't surprise me in the least that Magpie Games, as a company, would demand more civil public conduct from a designer, on penalty of his job. But yeah, whether it's industry policy and whether it's right are two very, verrry different things.)

gutterdaughter fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Jul 27, 2016

Lightning Lord
Feb 21, 2013

$200 a day, plus expenses

.

Lightning Lord fucked around with this message at 07:51 on Aug 25, 2016

homullus
Mar 27, 2009

Serf posted:

If being vocally hateful towards Zak S is wrong, I don't wanna be right.

Really regretting dropping cash on Urban Shadows now.
Spewing poo poo and venting rage do not get rid of a Zak S. Those acts make more Zaks. Extremism begets extremism and Exhibit loving A is the US political climate. Be as wrong as you like, as long as you like being on Team Making poo poo Worse For Everyone You Think You're Helping. Voting with your dollars, shining a light on his bullshit, and speaking reasonably to those who make decisions about games are the only ways you're gonna see him out of the hobby. He isn't gonna quit because you call him names.

Edit: Gutter Owl said it better.

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Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

Gutter Owl posted:

Okay, yeah, these are some excellent points. And it's bullshit to say that Rob was "harassing" Zak. If Truman thinks that's what harassment looks like in this industry, he needs to pay a bit more attention.
It's really just straight-up tone policing. The idea that context or intent don't matter; all that matters is that Rob used swear words.

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