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Good. A proper purge of the rapists and harassers out of the industry is long overdue and there's a lot left to kick out.
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Feb 11, 2019 14:02
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Oh boy, now the RPGnet admins that came here last time to say the Matt they know would never do this and he's changed can come back to explain this, too. (Please don't)
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Feb 11, 2019 14:08
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True, the fact that he was still sexually abusing people while writing Beast, and that his editor/wife knew about it, makes his whole heroic rapist thing in the last book even more egregious.
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Feb 11, 2019 14:08
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Kurieg posted:Someone linked this to me knowing my history with the man Jesus, and his only defense for the past stuff was 'it happened many years ago'.
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Feb 11, 2019 14:30
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So this is a new one for McFarland? Gross as it is to say, its hard to keep up with the specifics of all the sex criminals these days.
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Feb 11, 2019 14:36
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This current acusation is new. But otherwise the short answer is "No". I can explain more when I'm not phone posting.
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Feb 11, 2019 14:40
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Lots of really shocked and outraged people on my twitter feed today!
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Feb 11, 2019 14:46
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Nuns with Guns posted:Oh boy, now the RPGnet admins that came here last time to say the Matt they know would never do this and he's changed can come back to explain this, too. (Please don't) Which admins did this? I don't recall anyone from that site defending Matt.
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Feb 11, 2019 14:55
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Falstaff posted:Which admins did this? I don't recall anyone from that site defending Matt. It didn’t happen.
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Feb 11, 2019 15:02
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What happened is some other freelancers that'd worked with him posted about how they were shocked and didn't understand how to square the person they knew with the information about his deeds, but that they believed the thing happened and were disgusted with Matt. Which, like, not unfair.
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Feb 11, 2019 15:15
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Kai Tave posted:Yeah, the extremely frustrating thing about Zak is that this isn't some deeply buried secret just now being unearthed and blindsiding everyone. He's been doing this poo poo for at the very least a decade now, tons of people have gone out of their way to say "Zak is a huge piece of poo poo, take a look at X, Y, and Z," and nothing has really come of it. He's harassed and abused a bunch of folks under the guise of some worldly woke sex-positive LGBT ally elfgame luminary and in the process of having the copious amounts of evidence and personal experiences shunted aside and ignored it's allowed him to harass and abuse even more people, all the while publishers like WotC and Paradox reach out to validate him. Mandy Morbid should not have had to go public with a recounting of the abuse she faced at his hands for anyone to go "oh wow I guess Zak really was a bad person all along."
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Feb 11, 2019 15:16
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Kurieg posted:True, the fact that he was still sexually abusing people while writing Beast, and that his editor/wife knew about it, makes his whole heroic rapist thing in the last book even more egregious. Sorry, I havent read Beast or followed this particular shithead but what the gently caress
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Feb 11, 2019 15:18
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Nuns with Guns posted:Oh boy, now the RPGnet admins that came here last time to say the Matt they know would never do this and he's changed can come back to explain this, too. (Please don't) Like who? When?
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Feb 11, 2019 15:19
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Unoriginal Name posted:Sorry, I havent read Beast or followed this particular shithead but what the gently caress Check out Kurieg's Fatal & Friends of Beast. It's on the F&F site. Tell you everything you need to know about the game, and then you get to know it was written by a sexual predator.
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Feb 11, 2019 15:24
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Desiden posted:So this is a new one for McFarland? Gross as it is to say, its hard to keep up with the specifics of all the sex criminals these days. Yeah, this is new. I'm sad, and angry, but I believe her.
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Feb 11, 2019 15:36
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Dawgstar posted:Check out Kurieg's Fatal & Friends of Beast. It's on the F&F site. Tell you everything you need to know about the game, and then you get to know it was written by a sexual predator. Which was distressingly obvious reading it. 
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Feb 11, 2019 15:37
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Dave Brookshaw posted:Yeah, this is new. I'm sad, and angry, but I believe her. Same.
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Feb 11, 2019 15:39
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Dave Brookshaw posted:Yeah, this is new. I'm sad, and angry, but I believe her. Is it true McFarland is still working for OPP?
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Feb 11, 2019 15:41
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Nuns with Guns posted:Oh boy, now the RPGnet admins that came here last time to say the Matt they know would never do this and he's changed can come back to explain this, too. (Please don't) When we "hire" a mod, we don't meet them in person. We don't have any ability to do any sort of background check or anything like that. We can only go by what they've posted on the forum or by what the people we know who have met him say. The sad fact is that Matt fooled us. And we absolutely believe his accuser. Matt is no longer welcome on the forum; there's no "he's changed" or anything like that.
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Feb 11, 2019 15:53
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Bedlamdan posted:Is it true McFarland is still working for OPP? What? No. I fired him off Deviant the day after the first allegations came out. Well, okay, actually I told OPP what had been alleged and let *them* make the call, as that's their job, while telling him that's what I was doing and would stick by their decision. They discussed it with him, he left all projects. A couple books have his writing in that have recently or are about to come out because stripping his credit would be unethical, but to my knowledge they've never hired him again. (Edit to add - Deviant isn't one of those books. He hadn't actually written anything when he was let go. I am thinking of things like the recent Promethean Night Horrors that he was Dev for that had to be given to someone else to finish. He may still have words in Hunter 2e. Technically, every book that reprints the 2e core rules has his work in it. That kind of thing.) Dave Brookshaw fucked around with this message at 16:03 on Feb 11, 2019 |
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Feb 11, 2019 15:54
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Kurieg posted:Someone linked this to me knowing my history with the man I sent a message to the IGDN list a year ago saying that if there was a conflict of interest, she obviously must recuse herself. She didn't. I think they both should be gone and will say so.
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Feb 11, 2019 15:55
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Falstaff posted:Which admins did this? I don't recall anyone from that site defending Matt. It wasn't a defense of Matt but it was uncomfortable wibbling about Matt as a person and the validity of the RPGnet permaban. I was thinking specifically of this post: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3541519&pagenumber=308&perpage=40#post477702237 I'll pull out the relevant bit: quote:But I am also pretty confident, again purely on a personal level, that Matt today would not do the poo poo that Matt of many years ago is accused of doing. That doesn't mean any victims should shut up; it doesn't mean we shouldn't hear their stories, it doesn't mean the things that happened to them magically ceased to have happened. It just complicates what those of us in 2017 feel is the morally correct response. If there are...gently caress, I pray to the Godless universe this doesn't come up...if there are other victims out there, I hope they come forward. That would change the calculus. A lot. Again, I'm sure the clever among you can figure things out without me drawing you a picture. I did misrember because I thought there were others but I'm probably mixing that up with offsite posts like Mors mentioned. Cessna posted:When we "hire" a mod, we don't meet them in person. We don't have any ability to do any sort of background check or anything like that. We can only go by what they've posted on the forum or by what the people we know who have met him say. I'm not asking you to run a background check on every person you appoint as a volunteer mod. I just think it would've been better to avoid publicly voicing personal feelings about Matt right after the allegations came to light and everyone's emotions were raw. Nuns with Guns fucked around with this message at 02:36 on Feb 12, 2019 |
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Feb 11, 2019 16:01
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Nuns with Guns posted:I'm not asking you to run a background check on every person you appoint as a volunteer mod. I just think it would've been better to avoid publicly voicing personal feelings about Matt right after the allegations came to light and everyone's emotions were raw. In retrospect you're right.
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Feb 11, 2019 16:07
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Mors Rattus posted:What happened is some other freelancers that'd worked with him posted about how they were shocked and didn't understand how to square the person they knew with the information about his deeds, but that they believed the thing happened and were disgusted with Matt. Which, like, not unfair. Having had a best friend turn out to be a sex addict and get arrested for soliciting a minor, stuff like this makes you really question your own ability to "read" people. You think you know a person, but sex pests seem to get really good at lying and hiding things and obfuscating truth. Looking back, I think I can point to warning signs but I'll never be 100% sure and honestly it's sickening to read (again and again) about people having to deal with this and be victimized by this. Can't wait to see how ZakS tries to weasel his way out of this. Even on reddit, I'm seeing a lot of comments along the lines of "oh wow I had no idea, I thought all those accusations were made up" :bangingheadonwall:
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Feb 11, 2019 16:10
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Unoriginal Name posted:Sorry, I havent read Beast or followed this particular shithead but what the gently caress I used to have a boilerplate explanation for this but I can't find it so I guess we're going without a script this time. During Beast's Development (So, you know, 2015) the previews that we were getting heavily coded Beasts as marginalized groups (LGBT people, ethnic minorities, etc) that were born the way they are and their "enemy faction", named 'Heroes' were traditionally enfranchised groups (Jocks, conservatives, etc). Which, you know, a bit heavy handed but whatever. Then it came out that Beasts literally need to abuse people to continue their existence. Not necessarily rape (and not explicitly rape until the latest book, but I'll get to that) but abuse of power and spiritual torture until the target of their abuse lost a point of Integrity. A Brief aside here, in Chronicles of Darkness games, Integrity was a replacement for the "humanity" stat from World of Darkness games. "Humanity" was explicitly a morality stat, 10 Humanity meant you were a saintly being incapable of harming another person, 1 Humanity meant that you stopped caring about murdering people 4 Humanity points ago. Integrity is not a morality stat, it's a measure of the strength of your self image. A mass murdering psychopath can have the same integrity stat as person who is a devoted member of their neighborhood watch so long as that mass murdering psychopath was very sure of what he was and quite comfortable with it. Matt apparently did not get this Memo, as one of the Criteria for becoming a Hero is having a low integrity stat, which is his explanation for why all Heroes are Evil Self Centered Assholes. Because literally no one would ever look at an entire splat of people who need to break people's arms on the regular to continue existing and say "hey maybe I should stop those people." Particularly since at this point in development Heroes explicitly rose out of people that Beasts victimized. Regardless, MANY people pointed out to Matt that coding Beasts as gay men who need to rape little boys to live but it's not their fault and actually their victims are the real villains who deserved it was problematic as gently caress and he sort of walked it back in the actual printed book. Beasts were now chosen, not made, Heroes just kind of exist but are all universally evil because they see themselves as the center of the story and thus are bad. But several of the beast sample characters are heavily queer coded, including a gay beast couple who entraps people into transgressing against one of their many many laws so that they can kill them, and a woman who goes to bars dressed sluttily to tempt men into groping her so she can break their arms in retribution. Also an arab cabbie who drops people off in the wrong part of town. And the storytellers section includes a sidebar that almost flat out states "Beasts are actually born not made, anyone telling you different is being forced to tell you a lie by bad people." Another Beast Book comes out, it actually has some flat out Heroic Heroes, and some truly repulsive Beasts so, like, okay? Maybe Matt learned his lesson? Anyways, fast forward to the end of 2017 during the height of the MeToo movement. Someone on RPG.net posts that Matt McFarland molested a teenager several years ago. When confronted about this knowledge Matt willingly steps down as a moderator at RPG.net and is subsequently banned from posting (I think). OPP Also cut ties with Matt almost immediately afterwards. Then in early 2018 the Beast Player's Guide comes out.  The game dances around it but if you read between the lines enough the "Curse" is an entire family wide Anathema placed on the Talassi that force them to "actually sex-rape" rather than "technically the latin definition of the word only means capture and confinement-rape"  It also spends time talking about how hard it is to resist the stigma of being a Rapist and the heroic willpower it takes to not rape someone and how it's really not their fault when they give into the narrative.  And then.. you know. this   When he wrote these things it wasn't public that he had raped someone 20 years ago, so people were a little off-put by an ex-rapist wanting a pat on the back for not raping anymore. Now re-read these passages with the knowledge that not only was he still raping women when he wrote these books but his wife(who was his editor) knew.
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Feb 11, 2019 16:20
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Dave Brookshaw posted:What? No. I fired him off Deviant the day after the first allegations came out. Well, okay, actually I told OPP what had been alleged and let *them* make the call, as that's their job, while telling him that's what I was doing and would stick by their decision. They discussed it with him, he left all projects. A couple books have his writing in that have recently or are about to come out because stripping his credit would be unethical, but to my knowledge they've never hired him again. Oh, okay. I think people got a little confused after they saw him posting on the OPP forums and were like “wait wasn’t this dude fired?” It makes a bit more sense if he just resigned, which I guess puts everyone in kind of a weird place. But yeah, I mean, as long as the dude isn’t working there then there’s not much else that can be done. Cessna posted:In retrospect you're right. Comparatively speaking, while things could have gone better, you did handle it a lot more promptly and with significantly less drama than a lot of other popular websites that had mods turn out to be sex offenders. Bedlamdan fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Feb 11, 2019 |
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Feb 11, 2019 16:21
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What is it with weirdo neckbeards and misogyny, bigotry, and sexual abuse? It can’t all be explained by 4chan.
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Feb 11, 2019 16:40
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Let’s also not forget one of his original example Hero’s was a teenage girl who killed a Beast that broke into her room to try and rape her, only to be sucked into a nightmare realm where she goes around trying to escape and killing other predatory beasts who try and torture, kill, and rape teenage girls. And remember - she’s bad for doing this. It was wrong of her to kill her attempted rapist, and it’s wrong of her to fight the ones trying to keep her trapped in hell. Yeah. That one got changed for hella obvious reasons.
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Feb 11, 2019 16:40
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Bedlamdan posted:Oh, okay. I think people got a little confused after they saw him posting on the OPP forums and were like “wait wasn’t this dude fired?” He could be banned from those forums, for being a rapist.
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Feb 11, 2019 16:42
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So, gonna put on my tinfoil hat for second... is this Beast stuff specifically written to groom victims, a la pedophiles? I'm starting to feel nauseated...
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Feb 11, 2019 16:43
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What the hell is wrong with tabletop rpgs
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Feb 11, 2019 16:46
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Andrast posted:What the hell is wrong with tabletop rpgs they contain human men
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Feb 11, 2019 16:47
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One thing not mentioned is that Beasts as a splat are ALSO able to be super-bestest buds with any other nWoD splat by virtue of existing. Vampires recognize them as "true monsters" and werewolves "true hunters" and so on and so forth, except I believe Demons who just flat out hate them while Beasts are all "hey I bet I can tear away your Cover and the only thing that can make you hide from the God-Machine Nelson laugh." Despite the fact that by their natures Beasts would make lives difficult on pretty much all of those other splats they get 'coo blimey i feel a speshul kinship with a Beast.' So not only are they heroic rapists and abusers and whatever else, they also get to be everybody else's best friend.
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Feb 11, 2019 16:56
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Enola Gay-For-Pay posted:He could be banned from those forums, for being a rapist. Yeah but if people actually banned for suspicions of sexual misconduct rather than explicit legal confirmation then I’m pretty what’s left of SA would end up as some sort of Old West style ghost town with a lone tumbleweed careening down the street.
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Feb 11, 2019 16:58
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I'm pretty sure most of the people here aren't rapists, actually
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Feb 11, 2019 17:13
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Dawgstar posted:One thing not mentioned is that Beasts as a splat are ALSO able to be super-bestest buds with any other nWoD splat by virtue of existing. Vampires recognize them as "true monsters" and werewolves "true hunters" and so on and so forth, except I believe Demons who just flat out hate them while Beasts are all "hey I bet I can tear away your Cover and the only thing that can make you hide from the God-Machine Nelson laugh." Despite the fact that by their natures Beasts would make lives difficult on pretty much all of those other splats they get 'coo blimey i feel a speshul kinship with a Beast.' The Changlelings were the worst because the books admit the True Fae like the cut of Beasts' jibs and Beasts even team up with True Fae on hunts, but somehow Changleling still really want to hang out with the abuse elementals.
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Feb 11, 2019 17:15
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Finster Dexter posted:So, gonna put on my tinfoil hat for second... is this Beast stuff specifically written to groom victims, a la pedophiles? I'm starting to feel nauseated... No, at least not intentionally. What is is intended to do is this. Dawgstar posted:One thing not mentioned is that Beasts as a splat are ALSO able to be super-bestest buds with any other nWoD splat by virtue of existing. Vampires recognize them as "true monsters" and werewolves "true hunters" and so on and so forth, except I believe Demons who just flat out hate them while Beasts are all "hey I bet I can tear away your Cover and the only thing that can make you hide from the God-Machine Nelson laugh." Despite the fact that by their natures Beasts would make lives difficult on pretty much all of those other splats they get 'coo blimey i feel a speshul kinship with a Beast.' Beast "society" as a whole is rather explicitly based on Geek Social Fallacies. Beasts are explicitly told they aren't allowed to critique other Beasts on their feeding habits or behavior because "We're all family." And Beasts are coded as Queer and Marginalized to make them more acceptable and 'woke'. Much like McFarland himself the idea is that you accept Beasts for being hyper-woke allies and just deal with the baggage that they're actually rapists and abusers. It's also a bizarre empowerment fantasy for people who were bullied in high school for being different because it tells them that "no, you were in fact correct and it is now your sacred duty to go out and kill jocks."
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Feb 11, 2019 17:16
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Elephant Parade posted:I'm pretty sure most of the people here aren't rapists, actually
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Feb 11, 2019 17:20
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FMguru posted:Bedlamdan just revealed a little too much about himself. I am clearly the tumbleweed
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Feb 11, 2019 17:22
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FMguru posted:Bedlamdan just revealed a little too much about himself. At least he use his cachet of goodwill with the RPG community to pen a 356 page book about it first.
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Feb 11, 2019 17:29
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