|
Kai Tave posted:You should check out a game called Tragedy Looper, no joke. maybe i will, if our distributor nhas it in stock! Zman is iffy some days
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2016 18:50
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 18:07 |
|
|
Serf posted:Seems pretty easy to ask for this kind of thing when you aren't the one who was getting death threats. It's a matter of personal safety. Elfgames aren't worth risking your rear end over. It was a mistake for me to bring this up, I'll shut up about it.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2016 19:08
|
|
|
I'm all in favor of story games, but TIME Stories is just incredibly bad, both as a game and as a vessel for storytelling. You don't interact with the mechanics in any kind of interesting way, and you don't interact with the STORY in any kind of meaningful way, it's just flipping cards, trial and error, rolling some dice, whoops you reached an arbitrary failure state, time to go back and slog through the same poo poo again, except this time you know not to do the thing you just did. Or maybe you don't, maybe it was the dice that hosed you, in which case I guess all there is to do is hope you roll better this time. Or don't it doesn't really matter, because if you fail enough, the game will just give you infinite time units to complete it.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2016 19:19
|
|
|
moths posted:Looking forward to Zak dragging this thread out of the archives in five years as evidence of what a poor, persecuted baby he is. "When will the internet stop being mean to widdle old me?!" I guess I'm jumping into Magpiechat pretty late but hooooooly poo poo am I glad I didn't back Urban Shadows or Masks 'cos if I did I probably would've thrown up last night. (And idk, I kinda feel like if their audience is "the kinds of people who get targeted by vitriolic osr nerds and Elfgames Voldemort for LIKING WRONG GAME or [whatever other dumbass nerd crime]," posting this whole thing about Maybe Storygamers Are The Real Monsters Can't We Get Along With The Infamous Serial Harassers probably going to do some good for Misspent Youth, though  I know two people already who've gone 'fuuuuuuuuuck that guy also i kind of want to buy MY on principle'
Ningyou fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Jul 27, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2016 19:34
|
|
|
Speaking of story game board games, I can't wait to try Fall of Magic with some people.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2016 19:52
|
|
|
Terrible Opinions posted:I think the fundamental problem is dealing with Zak is that the only real way to remove him from the hobby would be an organized harassment campaign. Get a bunch of people together who can torpedo any attempt by him to be involved in community events, get a job anywhere in the industry, and convince digital/retail outlets to not carry his product. Given that he's seemingly immune to shame and doesn't really care about being told to kill himself, you're going to need an actual organized group of blackballers. It would also make you no better than Zak, and would play into both his "ha HA you're playing MY game now!" and his persecution/conspiracy complex. This is the absolute last thing anyone should try and do. And yes, I know, he does the same thing, but I like to think that we (the collective we) are better than him. Post about his asshattery, and be vocal about it to anyone that listens and remind/inform people that he's human waste. Be vigilant. Don't interact with him. Don't play by his rules. This is the best we can do without stooping to his level. We can only hope that over time we either: gather enough people shout him and his followers out of the hobby, he fucks up and the law can finally step in, he gets bored and leaves, or he just straight-up dies in some freak accident involving a gallon of lubricant and Appendix N.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2016 19:57
|
|
|
I've seen this repeated but never discussed at any length: how is Zack S.'s behavior - much of it documented - not criminal? http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/cyber-bullying.html quote:...However, prosecutors have used existing laws on the books to prosecute individuals suspected of cyberbullying. Criminal harassment statutes can often provide a basis for bringing charges in severe cases, and more serious criminal charges have been brought in cases where the offense has resulted in suicide or other tragic consequences. Like, obviously a lawyer would have to determine whether there was enough to bring a case, and victims would have to take the very real and significant risk of exposing themselves to his posse in order to be named as plaintiffs in a suit. But it seems to be taken as a given that whatever Zak S. has done, it's definitely not criminal, and therefore nothing can be really done about him.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2016 20:16
|
|
|
Oh, it's almost definitely illegal. It'd just require the people he and his posse have harassed and doxxed and terrified to go through a lot of legal trouble, pay a lot of money probably, and expose themselves to more harassment, and get basically nothing in the end even if it succeeds. Hell, they'd probably just get more harassment from his pissed-off followers. Also blackballing Zak out of the industry would not be a harassment campaign, nor would it be a bad thing, in any sense. If the industry were at all decent he'd already be unwelcome in it.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2016 20:25
|
|
|
 if you think the police, who routinely ignore rape threats and credible threats of violence, care about the RPG industry or Zak S.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2016 20:34
|
|
|
In practice it's drat near impossible to prosecute people coordinating online based harassment, even when it proceeds to doxxing and threats. Has anyone ever been charged in relation to the threats against Quinn and Sarkeesian? And that involved a bomb threat.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2016 20:42
|
|
|
Roland Jones posted:Oh, it's almost definitely illegal. It'd just require the people he and his posse have harassed and doxxed and terrified to go through a lot of legal trouble, pay a lot of money probably, and expose themselves to more harassment, and get basically nothing in the end even if it succeeds. Hell, they'd probably just get more harassment from his pissed-off followers. He's also adept at editing and erasing his tracks, and attacking through proxy via his followers. Making anything stick would probably require a lot of hard evidence. quote:Also blackballing Zak out of the industry would not be a harassment campaign, nor would it be a bad thing, in any sense. If the industry were at all decent he'd already be unwelcome in it. I just think such a tactic would just make things worse, and would just feed into Zak's narcissism that much more. It's liable to make him and his followers go berserk and hurt even more people in the process, and I'm not sure that the long-term goal would be worth the damage it does to surrounding people.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2016 20:44
|
|
|
.
Lightning Lord fucked around with this message at 07:48 on Aug 25, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2016 20:49
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:In practice it's drat near impossible to prosecute people coordinating online based harassment, even when it proceeds to doxxing and threats. Has anyone ever been charged in relation to the threats against Quinn and Sarkeesian? And that involved a bomb threat. Heck, I'm pretty sure it's hard to get charges to stick when people get SWATed, even. 
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2016 21:26
|
|
|
ravenkult posted:Magpie can suck it. Can confirm that Rob is one of the nicest people ever. Mark too; they're both friends of mine. They're also both great designers and admirable people. I hope the rift doesn't grow too much from this.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2016 21:34
|
|
|
Caedar posted:Can confirm that Rob is one of the nicest people ever. Mark too; they're both friends of mine.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2016 21:46
|
|
|
Evil Mastermind posted:Then you might want to tell Mark that he's hurt a lot of people, and that he might want to do something about that. He's well aware. That's about all I know.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2016 21:59
|
|
|
Lightning Lord posted:At this point, it's a blood feud on Zak's end. He thinks he didn't do anything, and he's also the type of dude who can't be wrong. This is a guy who straight up blocked Erik Tenkar of all people for the crime of disagreeing with him. It's kind of ironic that Truman titled his post two minutes hate because basically all of Zak's posts on his blog end up being that. He creepily screencaps things people say on here and twitter and signs his posts with them, with a reminder to vote for his products at the Ennies. It's a moral imperative, remember. He made a post about how Lovecraft's horror was about fear of life, not death, which is a good point but of course tied it back to those harassing goons. He thinks he's entitled to "discussion", despite not being interested unless he can control it, making him a sealioner. He thinks chasing Mikan off the internet and making things uncomfortable for others is perfectly fine because well, they made fun of him (and his friends and lovers, which frankly, was extremely unfair) and said mean things about old D&D. He's convinced that last part is actually bigotry, btw. He got stung so he responded with both barrels. He basically responded to someone saying he sucks by beating the poo poo out of them. Then he makes it about himself. Classic DARVO.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2016 22:03
|
|
|
While enforcement is still inconsistent as gently caress, it does sometimes happen for poo poo people post online. I know some guy in Ohio got arrested for posting military personnel addresses and pro-ISIS junk. Less specifically terrorist, there were supposed screenshots of arrest records for people driving someone in the steven universe fandom to a suicide attempt (I say supposed since aside from seeing said screenshots, I never saw any news reporting on it). Plus you recently had that gently caress Milo Yiannopolous get permabanned from twitter for organizing a hate campaign on Leslie Jones. The optimist in me likes to think these are signs of the slow lurching of the law and social media providers towards taking harassment more seriously. I certainly wouldn't begrudge anyone who thought that was a pie in the sky idealist notion though.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2016 22:22
|
|
|
Guilty Spork posted:There was also that time that he did a post using a pretty extensive collection of David Hill's opinions about Star Wars from social media (some of it quite possibly from private posts) to excoriate him out of the blue, because even having the "wrong" opinion about something wholly unrelated to anything Zak does is still a crime apparently, and RPG Voldemort somehow can't figure that it'd be not only possible but actually easier to make the exact same point without needlessly turning it into a vile attack on an innocent person (since it would remove the need for doing all that creepy stalking and putting screenshots into the blog post). Said post quickly showed up on r/KotakuInAction too. David Hill still gets harassing emails, despite not only leaving the RPG industry but also blocking Zak on every single social media outlet imaginable and telling Zak in no uncertain terms to leave him and his family alone. Zak just dregs up years-old poo poo on people whenever he's bored, or when he's got another book to shill.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2016 23:39
|
|
|
Well, that didn't take long. How mad do you think he was that he couldn't be the villain? I kinda want to live in the universe where Rob called Pundit a shitbird instead of Zak S, just to see the alternate version of this post. http://therpgpundit.blogspot.com/2016/07/why-cant-we-all-just-get-along-sure-as.html
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2016 23:47
|
|
|
thelazyblank posted:Well, that didn't take long. How mad do you think he was that he couldn't be the villain? I kinda want to live in the universe where Rob called Pundit a shitbird instead of Zak S, just to see the alternate version of this post. I think he's just angry that no one is paying attention to him anymore.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2016 23:50
|
|
|
Slimnoid posted:David Hill still gets harassing emails, despite not only leaving the RPG industry but also blocking Zak on every single social media outlet imaginable and telling Zak in no uncertain terms to leave him and his family alone. I filed two (2) police reports because random strangers from the internet contacted me to inform me where I live (always accompanied by a number of offensive slurs) and what I deserved. I deleted my tumblr and twitter (and even my Facebook for a while) because I could not deal with the internet invading my family's life. Zak Smith has perfect plausible deniability: he deleted the post we argued on and (so far as I know) none of them were *actually* Zak. The worst part is that none of this compares with what happened to Mikan. I feel so bad for her.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2016 23:57
|
|
|
Slimnoid posted:I think he's just angry that no one is paying attention to him anymore. I think we goofed that up. 
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2016 00:11
|
|
|
Does people paying attention to Pundit even matter anymore? Unlike Zak, he does seem to be a more benign man who shouts nonsense at clouds type, fighting a war in his own mind. Am I missing something?
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2016 00:13
|
|
|
am I right to be worried that people who are only aware of this argument now because of Mark's post, will see Pundit's rant and not realize he's talking out of his rear end?
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2016 00:16
|
|
|
Pretty sure half his audience was RPGsite and half was grogs.txt thread readers and only one of those remains. (To the extent that even RPGsite takes him seriously, anyway.)
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2016 00:17
|
|
|
Kurieg posted:am I right to be worried that people who are only aware of this argument now because of Mark's post, will see Pundit's rant and not realize he's talking out of his rear end? Well this entire thing was kicked off by some friend of Mark Diaz Truman's telling Zak to go gently caress himself and refusing to apologize for it even when Truman threatened to back out of a joint collab and instead of this inspiring Truman to go "hmm man my friend is really pissed at this Zak character, maybe there's something more to this than meets the eye" it inspired him to write a self-satisfied finger-wagging op ed on the company webpage taking people tired of Zak's poo poo to task for being too aggro. So I don't think the Pundit weighing in is going to skew peoples' opinions any more than their opinions are naturally inclined to skew regardless of circumstance or context already.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2016 00:27
|
|
|
Kurieg posted:am I right to be worried that people who are only aware of this argument now because of Mark's post, will see Pundit's rant and not realize he's talking out of his rear end?
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2016 00:31
|
|
|
I like that Pundit isn't even subtle that even if you're relatively innocent in his eyes, you'd better loving apologize on behalf of other people, while he's under no reciprocal obligation whatsoever.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2016 00:56
|
|
|
thelazyblank posted:Does people paying attention to Pundit even matter anymore? Unlike Zak, he does seem to be a more benign man who shouts nonsense at clouds type, fighting a war in his own mind. Am I missing something? Pundit has said some pretty vile poo poo over the years, mostly to other RPG designers (he rather famously posted that someone should cut out Monte Cook's vocal cords when both of them were on the 5e design team), but over the years he's managed to get kicked out, banned, or shunned from virtually every RPG forum out there, relegating him to his own forum for him to rant his decade-old tinfoil-hat conspiracies about elfgames. A forum, mind you, that is slowly getting sick of his poo poo. Other high-profile shitbabies in the hobby don't really like him, to the point that even Zak blocked him on G+ recently (supposedly, anyway). Pundit being a consultant (  ) on 5e gave him the impression that he had some sort of legitimacy and that his opinions were vindicated, but that all blew up in his face when it came to light that he'd cribbed most of the spell list from Empire of the Petal Throne for his game Arrows of Indra after denying that he'd done so.At this point, Pundowski is irrelevant. He just doesn't know it.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2016 01:04
|
|
|
Ratoslov posted:Heck, I'm pretty sure it's hard to get charges to stick when people get SWATed, even. Incredibly. There's a great article on that very topic that got linked last time this was brought up: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/magazine/the-serial-swatter.html
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2016 01:44
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:Well this entire thing was kicked off by some friend of Mark Diaz Truman's telling Zak to go gently caress himself and refusing to apologize for it even when Truman threatened to back out of a joint collab and instead of this inspiring Truman to go "hmm man my friend is really pissed at this Zak character, maybe there's something more to this than meets the eye" it inspired him to write a self-satisfied finger-wagging op ed on the company webpage taking people tired of Zak's poo poo to task for being too aggro. Like, yeah, that part alone had me wondering how anyone who's ever encountered friendship before could agree with him. He tries to point out that his friend who's making this super rad game and all this kept refusing to recant as if this were some loving inquisition, and what he took from this was "clearly my friend is irrational and insane in anger - I will publicly reprimand him on the internet so that all can see." As far as I can tell he didn't even talk to Robert Bohl about this, he just went straight into throwing himself into Zak's defense and throwing Robert under the bus. Like, loving hell, how lovely a friend do you have to be to do that? How could anyone see that and remain his friend? This is some Grade A bus throwing.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2016 02:52
|
|
|
i would love love love to know if Mark actually found the post himself, or whether Zak etc pointed him at it directly or via proxy. The technique of picking a fight, getting angry responses, then deleting all his own posts is so effective.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2016 03:06
|
|
|
I am incredibly late to the discussion, and only know who Zak S is based off the posts on the last few pages...I've decided that I don't ever want to support him or his endeavours...but I see people mentioning Urban Shadows a lot in relation to him and I'm not seeing his name anywhere in the credits or acknowledgements or anything. Could someone tell me (preferably via PM; I have zero intention of starting a random thread tangent) what exactly his involvement was? From what I've heard about him, it seems worth it to purge the volume from my collection if he's some kind of major contributor. EDIT: And on that note; what would be a better way of getting rid of my copy of Vornheim? Destroying it, or returning to my FLGS (not for a refund; just giving it back to the store it came from) and telling them why I'm doing so? jivjov fucked around with this message at 03:30 on Jul 28, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2016 03:28
|
|
|
jivjov posted:I am incredibly late to the discussion, and only know who Zak S is based off the posts on the last few pages...I've decided that I don't ever want to support him or his endeavours...but I see people mentioning Urban Shadows a lot in relation to him and I'm not seeing his name anywhere in the credits or acknowledgements or anything. Could someone tell me (preferably via PM; I have zero intention of starting a random thread tangent) what exactly his involvement was? From what I've heard about him, it seems worth it to purge the volume from my collection if he's some kind of major contributor. Zak doesn't have anything to do with Urban Shadows afaik. Magpie Games publishes Urban Shadows, and the guy writing the sanctimonious essay works for Magpie.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2016 03:31
|
|
|
jivjov posted:I am incredibly late to the discussion, and only know who Zak S is based off the posts on the last few pages...I've decided that I don't ever want to support him or his endeavours...but I see people mentioning Urban Shadows a lot in relation to him and I'm not seeing his name anywhere in the credits or acknowledgements or anything. Could someone tell me (preferably via PM; I have zero intention of starting a random thread tangent) what exactly his involvement was? From what I've heard about him, it seems worth it to purge the volume from my collection if he's some kind of major contributor. Urban Shadows is published by Magpie games, whose owner is Mark Diaz Truman. Zak wasn't involved. The people who are feeling regret about US are responding to Truman's post - not anything to do with Zak.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2016 03:32
|
|
|
Oh good; that makes me feel slightly better about that one then. Thanks guys
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2016 03:38
|
|
|
I don't think anyone here is going to throw you out of the hivemind for owning a copy of Vornheim.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2016 03:53
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:I don't think anyone here is going to throw you out of the hivemind for owning a copy of Vornheim. Oh I know. I just personally don't want it in my possession any longer.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2016 03:55
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 18:07 |
|
|
Sell it in an ebay lot with a couple of 3rd party D20 books.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2016 05:12
|
|
