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Most things haven't had other participants doxxed or sent death threats already, before the allegations about Matt came to light. Beast has. No one seems to be reevaluating Promethean's "unhappy creature made of junk that slowly learns to be a human" or demon's "robot masquerading human emotions" in the light of this. It's just sticking it to the target that's already endangered its writers' lives a few times. And yeah, I wrote on Beast. I mention Promethean first as Matt has, at various points, expressed to me that that's the game that feels personal to him. And yeah, the memory of that conversation now has overtones it didn't a week ago. Dave Brookshaw fucked around with this message at 17:52 on Oct 25, 2017 |
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Oct 25, 2017 17:46
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Dave Brookshaw posted:Most things haven't had other participants doxxed or sent death threats already, before the allegations about Matt came to light. Beast has. Uh, neither of those games had major parts of their books being very very unpleasant segments that many felt were at best clumsy and insulting to abuse victims and at worst actively minimizing them to make a darker and more edgy story? It's also kinda really hosed to say that going 'looking back that makes this project he worked on that was very troubling in some parts feel even grosser' is the same moral level as 'doxxing and death threats'. That's a really lovely way to try to cudgel people into not saying 'this weird abusive rear end in a top hat was a major contributor to a game that's kinda just about being a weird abusive rear end in a top hat and actually being noble for it and holy poo poo is that disturbing'. sexpig by night fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Oct 25, 2017 |
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Oct 25, 2017 17:52
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man how fuckin dumb do you have to be to have worked on beast lol
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Oct 25, 2017 18:01
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Serf posted:man how fuckin dumb do you have to be to have worked on beast lol This dumb! The game produced was, uh.. not really the game outlined. Many inexperienced people got way carried away, the more experienced writers (like me!) were busy on other things and only had short sections. The game stopped being about the cycle of abuse in a negative way and started glorifying its characters as section after section was written by people assuming that someone else would cover the whole Non-Aspirational part of non-aspirational characters. And then it got hastily reskinned as a band-aid during the kickstarter. Mistakes Were Made.
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Oct 25, 2017 18:06
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Seriously dude? Don't do this. Dave Brookshaw posted:Most things haven't had other participants doxxed or sent death threats already, before the allegations about Matt came to light. Beast has. I caught wind of the kickstarter and have kept abreast of news of the game throughout it's development because while I'm not an unhappy robot made of junk, or a robot masquerading human emotions, I am a victim of child molestation and systematic bullying. I'm focusing on Beast because it's a topic in which I was, and am, heavily invested. It's never been my goal to attack you or the other writers and if you've felt so on my account I apologize.
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Oct 25, 2017 18:10
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Serf posted:man how fuckin dumb do you have to be to have worked on beast lol I imagine the same way a game that ended up being about how good and cool being the abusers were managed to make over $100k: Lots of subterfuge and/or straight-up lying, which is why a lot of people who kickstarted it were really mad at the first draft. You can sign up reading a brief blurb and then get asked to write some weird section and not see how that part connects to the whole. People could have returned what they were paid and asked what they put in to be taken out, but I doubt people who write on RPGs make that much money. Beast was an awful game, now with an even more awful context. That doesn't mean it was pitched to be that.
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Oct 25, 2017 18:14
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Kurieg posted:Seriously dude? Don't do this. *checks what site i'm posting on* oh, it looks like i'm still posting on sa and not rpgnet. phew! Dave Brookshaw posted:Mistakes Were Made. indeed they were
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Oct 25, 2017 18:15
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Serf posted:man how fuckin dumb do you have to be to have worked on beast lol Well, many of them are freelancers; gotta get paid. In a small defense defense of a chunk of the people who worked on it, they dealt with things that were inoffensive and kind of neat mechanically. If I recall correctly, Dave worked on the lair system. A shame it was basically dumpstered by being attached to Beast. Unfortunately with the hodgepodge way Onyx Path handles book development, there's no real editorial control to speak of, so any individual freelancer either has the choice of not having a book to work on and thus keep themselves employed or doing the best they can to make the awful mess they're working with at least slightly less awful in the section they're handling.
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Oct 25, 2017 18:18
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Dave Brookshaw posted:Most things haven't had other participants doxxed or sent death threats already, before the allegations about Matt came to light. Beast has.
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Oct 25, 2017 18:19
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Kurieg posted:Seriously dude? Don't do this. As one of the other Dummies in question, your review, while tough to read, never felt like an attack to me. And yeah, everything Dave said is accurate--I was one of those experienced writers with a lot of other poo poo on my plate at the time, and I regret that I didn't see where the game was heading before it was too late. It's not the game I thought I was working on, and I'm sorry that reading it caused you pain.
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Oct 25, 2017 18:20
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As someone who does identify a whole lot with the thematic background of Demon and Promethean (I'm on the autism spectrum, and the child of well-meaning parents with a horrifying ideology that they raised me in) you better believe this is making me re-examine the aspects of those games that I found relatable.
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Oct 25, 2017 18:21
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Obligatum VII posted:Well, many of them are freelancers; gotta get paid. In a small defense defense of a chunk of the people who worked on it, they dealt with things that were inoffensive and kind of neat mechanically. If I recall correctly, Dave worked on the lair system. A shame it was basically dumpstered by being attached to Beast. we all do what we gotta do to get by in this lovely world. i work in higher education and we put naive kids into a lifetime cycle of inescapable debt, so i feel extremely dumb going to work every day.
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Oct 25, 2017 18:23
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Serf posted:we all do what we gotta do to get by in this lovely world. i work in higher education and we put naive kids into a lifetime cycle of inescapable debt, so i feel extremely dumb going to work every day. Wrong, we're gonna get power and cancel that debt.
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Oct 25, 2017 18:26
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I can see why rpg.net doesn’t want to set the precedent of banning posters for irl crimes those posters have committed the moment those crimes come to light. I’d happily do so to anyone who frequented a circle-of-friends irc channel I moderate or some equivalent private space, but a public forum? It’s not the wrong thing to do, necessarily, but immediately puts a lot more on the shoulders of the mod team and adds a lot to the forum’s general remit. If someone got sent to prison, they wouldn’t be able to post anyway, right?
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Oct 25, 2017 18:27
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Ferrinus posted:If someone got sent to prison, they wouldn’t be able to post anyway, right? Some prisons let you use the internet. Some even let you play roleplaying games! Arguably we would all be better off if most prisons had people playing roleplaying games instead of what they're doing now.
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Oct 25, 2017 18:33
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sexpig by night posted:It's also kinda really hosed to say that going 'looking back that makes this project he worked on that was very troubling in some parts feel even grosser' is the same moral level as 'doxxing and death threats'. That's a really lovely way to try to cudgel people into not saying 'this weird abusive rear end in a top hat was a major contributor to a game that's kinda just about being a weird abusive rear end in a top hat and actually being noble for it and holy poo poo is that disturbing'. Dave Brookshaw posted:The game produced was, uh.. not really the game outlined. Many inexperienced people got way carried away, the more experienced writers (like me!) were busy on other things and only had short sections. The game stopped being about the cycle of abuse in a negative way and started glorifying its characters as section after section was written by people assuming that someone else would cover the whole Non-Aspirational part of non-aspirational characters. And then it got hastily reskinned as a band-aid during the kickstarter. If that is true, then isn't it fair to question how his past deeds as raised by the victim play into that? If that isn't true, and he really didn't have all that power over the text, why did he get the auteur treatment whenever people discussed Beast prior to this? Why are we only getting the denials of Beast being Matt's baby now that these accusations have come out? And if Matt wasn't responsible for how Beast turned out, who exactly carries the can? And if the answer is "nobody, it was a massive systemic failure on OP's part and no one person in the entire chain was in a position to stop it", why should I continue to be an OP customer? Why should I continue to back OP Kickstarters? Why should I not start insisting on waiting until a book is actually done and people have reviewed it so that I can be reassured that I'd get what I was expecting, rather than a trainwreck that drifted way off the intended track? Where was White Wolf in all this, given that they have approvals oversight on all this stuff? Ferrinus posted:I can see why rpg.net doesn’t want to set the precedent of banning posters for irl crimes those posters have committed the moment those crimes come to light. I’d happily do so to anyone who frequented a circle-of-friends irc channel I moderate or some equivalent private space, but a public forum? It’s not the wrong thing to do, necessarily, but immediately puts a lot more on the shoulders of the mod team and adds a lot to the forum’s general remit. Warthur fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Oct 25, 2017 |
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Oct 25, 2017 19:07
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SA > Trad Games > TG as an Industry - mandated government elfgame discussion space
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Oct 25, 2017 19:54
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GimpInBlack posted:As one of the other Dummies in question, your review, while tough to read, never felt like an attack to me. And yeah, everything Dave said is accurate--I was one of those experienced writers with a lot of other poo poo on my plate at the time, and I regret that I didn't see where the game was heading before it was too late. It's not the game I thought I was working on, and I'm sorry that reading it caused you pain. You've no need to apologize. The review helped me work through my feelings on the matter regarding the book.
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Oct 25, 2017 19:56
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I will note, if you expect White Wolf to have better treatment of this stuff than Onyx Path, uh uuuuuuuh uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh I have some very bad news for you about White Wolf As Owned By Paradox, i guess
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Oct 25, 2017 19:58
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Can't wait for them to release victim NPC stats for country music fans on the one-year anniversary of Vegas.
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Oct 25, 2017 20:23
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moths posted:Can't wait for them to release victim NPC stats for country music fans on the one-year anniversary of Vegas. My favorite part of Beast doing cheap 'what if the MONSTERS did a major tragedy' things was the...I wanna say it was a giant snake...that was said to have sunk the titanic instead of an iceberg. Because gently caress it, why not.
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Oct 25, 2017 20:33
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sexpig by night posted:My favorite part of Beast doing cheap 'what if the MONSTERS did a major tragedy' things was the...I wanna say it was a giant snake...that was said to have sunk the titanic instead of an iceberg. Because gently caress it, why not. The world's sexiest snake with bad photoshop scales. yes.
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Oct 25, 2017 20:40
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What pissed me off most about Beast was the idea that the Heroes were the "real monsters" with all sorts of "if you kill me you're just as bad as I am" and false equivalency bullshit.
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Oct 25, 2017 20:45
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Evil Mastermind posted:What pissed me off most about Beast was the idea that the Heroes were the "real monsters" with all sorts of "if you kill me you're just as bad as I am" and false equivalency bullshit. Somebody with clearer memories than me might know more details, but didn't Matt at one point insinuate that people who were critical of Beast were essentially taking some kind of Gamergate/MRA stance?
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Oct 25, 2017 20:58
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Wasn’t one of the core book Hero antagonists a teenage girl who ended up in a coma after fighting off her Beast attacker? This just gets worse and worse in light of everything now...
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Oct 25, 2017 21:02
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Kai Tave posted:Somebody with clearer memories than me might know more details, but didn't Matt at one point insinuate that people who were critical of Beast were essentially taking some kind of Gamergate/MRA stance? quote:Heroes are assholes. That’s not necessarily all there is to say on the matter, but don’t look for them to be portrayed sympathetically. You have lots of other games for that. quote:OK, I'm not going to post in red text, because I'm very much a normal poster in this thread, but as a request - could we tone down the "OMG HEROES ARE FIREMEN WHY DO YOU HATE FIREMEN" stuff a little? Because that's really obviously not what we're going for, and frankly the question of why Heroes are called Heroes has been more than adequately answered.
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Oct 25, 2017 21:02
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Simian_Prime posted:Wasn’t one of the core book Hero antagonists a teenage girl who ended up in a coma after fighting off her Beast attacker? Side book Hero was a teenage (or maybe college age?) girl who was being groomed by a Beast, sometimes woke up covered in his slime or something, and felt ashamed and disgusted by what he did to her, too. She was, of course, portrayed as a villain. Even as the book also presented plot hooks about stalking her into her therapist's office and stuff. There was also a Hero who was an actual Gamergater or something in the core book too, if I recall correctly. Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Oct 25, 2017 |
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Oct 25, 2017 21:14
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quote:OK, I'm not going to post in red text, because I'm very much a normal poster in this thread,
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Oct 25, 2017 21:18
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Roland Jones posted:Side book Hero was a teenage (or maybe college age?) girl who was being groomed by a Beast, sometimes woke up covered in his slime or something, and felt ashamed and disgusted by what he did to her, too. Then the first two characters in the book are someone who was basically being groomed by a future predator, and a guy who was trapped in an abusive relationship by his gay beast boyfriend before he killed him in self defense when he snapped and got mad. quote:There was also a Hero who was an actual Gamergater or something in the core book too, if I recall correctly. He was an MRA incel who killed a beast because she wouldn't sleep with him.
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Oct 25, 2017 21:28
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Zereth posted:People aren't re-evaluating Beast as a metaphor for, or frequently non-metaphorical, abuse. That was the first evaluation of the actual game, rather than the elevator pitch. From the WoD thread, my contemporaneous impressions of beast: moths posted:Thanks for elaborating on that, by the way. 
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Oct 25, 2017 21:30
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Just from the widely disparate themes and reactions of many others, I feel like this project started as commentary on the cycle of abuse, but also started as a "society says you're a monster so own it" idea. Then the two infused like toothpaste and orange juice because while each idea has some problems on its own, together they become insanely skeezy and regressive.
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Oct 25, 2017 21:39
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I'm not gonna touch the topic of RPG.net moderation, but the idea that people are only now re-evaluating Beast is bizarre. At least here on SA, loving nobody bought into Beast at any point. It's ALWAYS been seen as super gross from day one. People aren't looking at Beast going "oh now that I know this information, this looks bad." People are going "I loving KNEW IT."
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Oct 25, 2017 21:46
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ProfessorCirno posted:I'm not gonna touch the topic of RPG.net moderation, but the idea that people are only now re-evaluating Beast is bizarre. At least here on SA, loving nobody bought into Beast at any point. It's ALWAYS been seen as super gross from day one. People aren't looking at Beast going "oh now that I know this information, this looks bad." People are going "I loving KNEW IT." I don't think it was ever very popular anywhere. Looking at OPP's own forums, it has fewer topics than Mummy, Geist, and Promethean, but less than everything else. Although, it has more individual posts than Demon or Hunter. I have no idea what that actually means. I'd be interested to see comparative sales figures but I doubt I ever will.
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Oct 25, 2017 21:50
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The Bee posted:Just from the widely disparate themes and reactions of many others, I feel like this project started as commentary on the cycle of abuse, but also started as a "society says you're a monster so own it" idea. Then the two infused like toothpaste and orange juice because while each idea has some problems on its own, together they become insanely skeezy and regressive. There's definitely an element of "I'm inverting poo poo that happens in other games" to it. Unfortunately he didn't think about the implications of what he's saying, rather like a dolt who reflexively says "Well what about White History Month then????"
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Oct 25, 2017 21:55
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ProfessorCirno posted:I'm not gonna touch the topic of RPG.net moderation, but the idea that people are only now re-evaluating Beast is bizarre. At least here on SA, loving nobody bought into Beast at any point. It's ALWAYS been seen as super gross from day one. People aren't looking at Beast going "oh now that I know this information, this looks bad." People are going "I loving KNEW IT." This is 100% true. I don't feel like digging back through the WoD thread but I'm pretty sure that a good percentage of its content since the Beast Kickstarter was launched is "holy fuckin poo poo this game is disgusting garbage." What's come to light isn't prompting a reevaluating from "well okay" to "Jesus Christ how horrifying," this is moving peoples' opinions from "Beast is a bad game that has a bad message" to "Beast is a bad game with a bad message, and knowing that its project lead is a child rapist maybe explains where all that badness came from."
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Oct 25, 2017 21:58
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Kai Tave posted:This is 100% true. I don't feel like digging back through the WoD thread but I'm pretty sure that a good percentage of its content since the Beast Kickstarter was launched is "holy fuckin poo poo this game is disgusting garbage." The first several months of the thread (like 40+ pages) are primarily people discussing Beast's faults, yes. And there are several other flareups through it.
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Oct 25, 2017 22:06
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ProfessorCirno posted:I'm not gonna touch the topic of RPG.net moderation, but the idea that people are only now re-evaluating Beast is bizarre. At least here on SA, loving nobody bought into Beast at any point. It's ALWAYS been seen as super gross from day one. People aren't looking at Beast going "oh now that I know this information, this looks bad." People are going "I loving KNEW IT." The impression I get from the responses of RPG.net mods and OP employees on this thread is that they probably didnt take much of a look at the game itself (or at least the problematic parts). Having worked with Matt for years, they probably figured “This is the guy who makes top-notch games like Promethean and Demon” and gave him the benefit of the doubt without a close reading of the material. To be fair to them, if I had read the material without knowledge of the author, my first though would be “this is either some Black Dog style parody or a creepy fan-game by some random CHUD” I’m sure at least a few who were in charge only heard “there’s some people up in arms about Matt’s new game” and just figured that “clearly they’re unreasonable.”
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Oct 25, 2017 22:10
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Warthur posted:RPG.net isn't a public space though. It's a privately owned and operated business, not some sort of gamer co-operative or a mandated government elfgame discussion space. True, but I don't really find this kind of argument convincing. From one side, if we didn't live in hell world, then maybe we would have a gamer co-op and we would want some idea of what it should look like. From the other side, it's not like our government is necessarily any more responsive to our wishes than whatever private fiefdoms people who can afford hosting can carve out for themselves. I've always read a forum like rpg.net as different in character from my circle of friends' IRC channel, in that it's an attempt by a bunch of people to create a public space, rather than to create a space responsive to specific private and ultimately arbitrary interests (and like, isn't a common complaint about rpg.net that a bunch of the mods are also developers and there's clear favoritism and so on?). So I don't think "well technically we can do whatever we want, the domain is registered in our names" would scan well. That said, the fact that rpg.net is supposed to be a public space, and maximally inclusive, and so on, suggests that banning anyone known to be guilty of sexual assault or similar behavior would just straight-up be good policy: it'd make it safer and more comfortable for other forum members. It's the kind of thing that's tricky to implement, though, and once you've started you really want to work hard to do it consistently and thoroughly and like, how much are those guys paid? How resistant are they to the wrong kind of social pressure? Halloween Jack posted:When your moderation is Extremely Normal. "Extremely Normal" is the best pejorative to come out of 2017.
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Oct 25, 2017 22:14
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Oh poo poo quote isn't edit!!
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Oct 25, 2017 22:16
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I think that at a certain point if you want to successfully moderate and curate an online space that you eventually have to, in some cases, say "actually we CAN ban you because we think you're a bad fit, not because you violated the rules in subsection Q paragraph 12." Bucket of dogshit guy got banned even though site policy is that off-board stuff doesn't get you probated, but who wants that guy on their forum? That was a good call even though it was "arbitrary." And of course you inevitably have to explain this same concept in detail to the free speech brigade whenever that becomes an issue as well. I agree that a forum like RPGnet is different from something like a private IRC chat channel, and what works for one might not work 100% for another, but if your forum has a stated goal of being as welcoming and inclusive as possible then sometimes that might mean you have to make a decision that isn't covered by the general rules in order to help that goal along, and if it's not the mods' place to decide because they're simply volunteers then it's the site owners' place to decide. Apparently that decision has been made, but I don't think that their hands were tied about it. If that prompts a discussion about how to handle similar situations going forward, well, I can think of worse outcomes.
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Oct 25, 2017 22:35
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