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 but don’t loving post if you haven’t reviewed the extant evidence. you’re doing “I didn’t get the email that there was a test today so I didn’t show up I should be allowed a retake” level poo poo.
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Feb 13, 2019 19:57
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Going 'yes but was it abuse abuse, in my opinion as an unrelated party, no' is something you should really know better than to try in this thread of all places. E: or anywhere else, holy poo poo
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Feb 13, 2019 19:58
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You're all absolutely right and I'm sorry for derailing the thread with such bullshit.
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Feb 13, 2019 20:04
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From a former wotc customer services personquote:His soliciting of emails in the first place, whether he intended to take them seriously, was an attempt to avoid accountability for the decision. He was trying to "handle it himself" rather than it being handled through proper channels so it didn't make him and his team look bad. https://twitter.com/XPMatthewLee/status/1095758445427470338
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Feb 13, 2019 20:05
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So what I am getting from that is that WotC Customer Services is the point of call for complaints, and if people think the action taken by Wizards/Mearls isn't enough they're the people who need contacting, yes?
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Feb 13, 2019 20:10
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I'm not sure anything is going to be done about Mearls by contacting them, at this point. His tweet was pretty firmly cemented in a lot of legalese bullshit given to him by the PR team. From what I'm reading of M. Lee's posts. Either it was an act of pure, unbridled incompetence and being unwilling to let the proper channels handle the issue, or an act of pure malice so that it wasn't handled properly.
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Feb 13, 2019 20:19
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Yeah, one thing I was going to point out is that it's possible that Mearls isn't allowed to apologize for fear of legal endangerment or the like. That doesn't do anything to exonerate him or ensure that he'd actually apologize otherwise, of course. It's more another nail in the coffin we're burying the corpse of his conscience in.
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Feb 13, 2019 20:23
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Why not both? This reeked of "gotta protect mah boys" wagon circling (malice) but going about it in a very stupid way. My hope is that Zak's ego is so bruised by Mearls calling him a playtester that he brings the receipts in whatever bullshit "statement" he posts. That's about the most good that could happen at this point
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Feb 13, 2019 20:23
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah, one thing I was going to point out is that it's possible that Mearls isn't allowed to apologize for fear of legal endangerment or the like. Arthil posted:I'm not sure anything is going to be done about Mearls by contacting them, at this point. His tweet was pretty firmly cemented in a lot of legalese bullshit given to him by the PR team. From what I'm reading of M. Lee's posts. Either it was an act of pure, unbridled incompetence and being unwilling to let the proper channels handle the issue, or an act of pure malice so that it wasn't handled properly. That assumes anyone senior at WotC/HR/Customer services etc. knows the truth at this point. The linked comment by Mearls said 'playtester', so it could just be that he got out ahead of it, told people 'hey a guy who playtested for us has turned out to be an abuser and we had no idea whatsoever' and that's what they came up with. If they don't know about his involvement before then they'd certainly benefit from knowing now. And likewise just because this is their first statement doesn't mean things won't go further if there's more pushback and criticism of an executive abusing his position.
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Feb 13, 2019 20:34
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Arthil posted:I'm not sure anything is going to be done about Mearls by contacting them, at this point. His tweet was pretty firmly cemented in a lot of legalese bullshit given to him by the PR team. From what I'm reading of M. Lee's posts. Either it was an act of pure, unbridled incompetence and being unwilling to let the proper channels handle the issue, or an act of pure malice so that it wasn't handled properly. Appealing to bureaucratic and corporate sensibility in this day and age is a fool’s game. The system has failed. Public outcry and social pressure is the only recourse here.
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Feb 13, 2019 20:41
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PST posted:From a former wotc customer services person That's a lot of light shed on how intensely bad Mearls handled everything, regardless of the motivation. I'm surprised, given how he tried to "manage" the situation and sweep it under every rug possible, that someone with some balls in the Wotc/Hasbro hierarchy hasn't fired him or at least kicked off the process of promoting him up and out. He sucks at game design and at being a decent human.
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Feb 13, 2019 20:43
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I think the fact that Vivka who has been directly related to several WotC events like the Stream of Many Eyes coming out with her own story of abuse might help push something to happen for the company to more publicly denounce him. Maybe. But as you say, corporate sensibility doesn't seem to exist.
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Feb 13, 2019 20:44
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in a real country like the philippines the communists shoot sexual predators
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Feb 13, 2019 20:50
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The D&D office, if anything, seems to systematically weed out competency. At this point I'm expecting a 6th edition under the watchful eye of Sean K Reynolds.
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Feb 13, 2019 20:50
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Alien Rope Burn posted:The D&D office, if anything, seems to systematically weed out competency. At this point I'm expecting a 6th edition under the watchful eye of Sean K Reynolds. Remember feat points? Let’s do feat points again.
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Feb 13, 2019 20:53
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hot take: this has been true since gary gygax took charge.
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Feb 13, 2019 20:53
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Alien Rope Burn posted:The D&D office, if anything, seems to systematically weed out competency. At this point I'm expecting a 6th edition under the watchful eye of Sean K Reynolds. Time for the triumphant return of Feat Points! Natural Spell will finally be recognized as a worse feat than Diligent, which gives +2 to Appraise and Decipher Script.
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Feb 13, 2019 20:55
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Impermanent posted:in a real country like the philippines the communists shoot sexual predators
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Feb 13, 2019 20:55
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Arthil posted:I'm not sure anything is going to be done about Mearls by contacting them, at this point. His tweet was pretty firmly cemented in a lot of legalese bullshit given to him by the PR team. From what I'm reading of M. Lee's posts. Either it was an act of pure, unbridled incompetence and being unwilling to let the proper channels handle the issue, or an act of pure malice so that it wasn't handled properly. Naw. PR legalese would've been a lot of "we regret" and poo poo like that. It would've been weasely in a corporate way, where nobody is responsible for this bad thing, and they're sorry they let you down, and etc etc, and his tweet isn't. That's 100% Mearls doing his own posting.
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Feb 13, 2019 20:55
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Impermanent posted:in a real country like the philippines the communists shoot sexual predators Let's not. Arivia posted:Remember feat points? Let’s do feat points again. It was a Speculative Experiment, gosh.
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Feb 13, 2019 21:03
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Arthil posted:I think the fact that Vivka who has been directly related to several WotC events like the Stream of Many Eyes coming out with her own story of abuse might help push something to happen for the company to more publicly denounce him. Maybe. But as you say, corporate sensibility doesn't seem to exist. The corporate sensibility in this case almost certainly will come down to whether they perceive this shitfest and Mearls' attachment to it is impacting the value of their brand. And most of that will depend on how much the story of Mearls and Zak gets referenced in larger media than just the tabletop scene. Getting the story picked up in more general geek circles will definitely help with that, but in the end the tipping point will be "is WOTC and Hasbro worried that their brand manager's stupid fuckup is something potential licencors are going to find in google searches". If they think that's going to happen, Mearls will be gone pretty quickly. We've a ways to go yet to get to that though.
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Feb 13, 2019 21:29
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Loomer posted:https://tabletopsmissingstairs.blogspot.com/2019/02/zak-s-and-other-horrible-tabletop-people.html I feel sick, but I hope it's just the bad virus I have, and not the sinking feeling that I need to burn all my 5th ed D&D books to wipe my memory of Mike Mearls response. I've been down the rabbit hole reading about both RPGPundit and Zac S (holy poo poo it's been going on since the edition got released?!?!!?!?).
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Feb 13, 2019 21:40
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Comstar posted:I feel sick, but I hope it's just the bad virus I have, and not the sinking feeling that I need to burn all my 5th ed D&D books to wipe my memory of Mike Mearls response. I've been down the rabbit hole reading about both RPGPundit and Zac S (holy poo poo it's been going on since the edition got released?!?!!?!?). Before that. They've both been shitheads that hurt people well before that.
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Feb 13, 2019 21:45
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Mors Rattus posted:Before that. They've both been shitheads that hurt people well before that. Yeah, them being announced as consultants was one of the big signs to people here about how trash 5e would turn out to be.
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Feb 13, 2019 21:46
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Yeah, Mearl's most egregious event comes during 5E's 'playtest' days when it was still Next. It was covered up just by the merit of it being incredibly uninteresting to anyone outside the hobby. What he did with Zak is beyond atrocious, but it happened to a very small subset of a very small hobby, and it happened to groups that the hobby as a whole has been just fine with being lovely to. I earnestly hope there will be some accounting for it.
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Feb 13, 2019 21:49
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Comstar posted:I feel sick, but I hope it's just the bad virus I have, and not the sinking feeling that I need to burn all my 5th ed D&D books to wipe my memory of Mike Mearls response. I've been down the rabbit hole reading about both RPGPundit and Zac S (holy poo poo it's been going on since the edition got released?!?!!?!?). Your first mistake was having 5th Ed books to begin with, even in spite of current events.
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Feb 13, 2019 21:49
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Xelkelvos posted:Your first mistake was having 5th Ed books to begin with, even in spite of current events. Yeah because this is the perfect time to grind out your Edition Wars points on people who weren't aware of Zak's toxicity.
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Feb 13, 2019 22:12
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Darwinism posted:Yeah, Mearl's most egregious event comes during 5E's 'playtest' days when it was still Next. It was covered up just by the merit of it being incredibly uninteresting to anyone outside the hobby. What he did with Zak is beyond atrocious, but it happened to a very small subset of a very small hobby, and it happened to groups that the hobby as a whole has been just fine with being lovely to. What surprised me most was Mearl's complete lack of apology he tweeted yesterday, with a small easily disprovable defence that Zak was just a "playtester". This stench is going to follow him around forever -the only way to make some of it go away is to publicly admit he protected Zak and he was wrong. If he does any public Q&A's again he's going to be asked about it every single time. Considering how many people did get manipulated, it wouldn't be that much extra shame to admit he got manipulated as well. I can onlypresume that Zak has something else that he can hold over Mearl's and Hasbro HR head, to expose when needed. Hasbo's going to get nervous about this, once a reporter starts sniffing around, because the amount of evidence that's been left lying around will make it easy to follow the trail right back to them. It's not often that someone does a cover-up and then goes ahead.... and just tweet's it out (which is what Mearl's did when he said he investigated it). Comstar fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Feb 13, 2019 |
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Feb 13, 2019 22:17
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Comstar posted:What surprised me most was Mearl's complete lack of apology he tweeted yesterday, with a small easily disprovable defence that Zak was just a "playtester". This stench is going to follow him around forever -the only way to make some of it go away is to publicly admit he protected Zak and he was wrong. If he does any public Q&A's again he's going to be asked about it every single time. Yeah, the statement he released is bizzare in the current day, which makes me think that if WotC PR was involved in any way they were heavily lied to about what all took place. Zak's got a 'consultant' credit alongside industry bigwigs and within minutes of Mearl's dumb nonapology people were providing screengrabs because of course they were this is 20-loving-19 Mearls. So he's probably desperately hoping that it just blows over again the same way - people pointing out how utterly terrible he is but no one with the power to do anything about it knowing or caring.
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Feb 13, 2019 22:23
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Lumbermouth posted:Yeah because this is the perfect time to grind out your Edition Wars points on people who weren't aware of Zak's toxicity. the old Next thread would bring this up every other page, followed swiftly by people saying it wasn't germane to the product people were perfectly willing to tell others that they shouldn't pick up 5e on the basis of Zak's inclusion as a credit on the game if one was willing to look
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Feb 13, 2019 22:31
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Darwinism posted:Yeah, the statement he released is bizzare in the current day, which makes me think that if WotC PR was involved in any way they were heavily lied to about what all took place. Zak's got a 'consultant' credit alongside industry bigwigs and within minutes of Mearl's dumb nonapology people were providing screengrabs because of course they were this is 20-loving-19 Mearls. So he's probably desperately hoping that it just blows over again the same way - people pointing out how utterly terrible he is but no one with the power to do anything about it knowing or caring. This is what I think, especially with the ex-Wotc cust-serv guy saying how this was a rogue operation by Mearls in the first place. And why i think emailing wotc and tweeting at them and spreading this wider could get attention. Also we know he's a liar to his customers/the industry, why wouldn't he also have lied to his colleagues to cover up something he was covering up in the first place?
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Feb 13, 2019 22:34
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gradenko_2000 posted:the old Next thread would bring this up every other page, followed swiftly by people saying it wasn't germane to the product Oh believe me, I remember that. But I think telling someone who seemingly just found out about the extent of this stuff that they shouldn't have bought those books in the first place is counterproductive.
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Feb 13, 2019 22:38
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gradenko_2000 posted:the old Next thread would bring this up every other page, followed swiftly by people saying it wasn't germane to the product Several iterations of the 5E thread specifically banned discussion of this because I guess it’s hard to enjoy your toys when people remind you that it aided and abetted serial harassment. Now is the loving time.
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Feb 13, 2019 22:39
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Mr. Maltose posted:Several iterations of the 5E thread specifically banned discussion of this because I guess it’s hard to enjoy your toys when people remind you that it aided and abetted serial harassment. Now is the loving time. tbh it's the OSR thread that needs to be gassed at this point
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Feb 13, 2019 22:50
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gradenko_2000 posted:tbh it's the OSR thread that needs to be gassed at this point Both really. Lock them for like a month and then reopen them with stated details on how much of a shitlord these people are. There’s no reason for our threads to cover for rapists and their enablers, even if the 5e players whine like crazy about it.
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Feb 13, 2019 23:01
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gradenko_2000 posted:tbh it's the OSR thread that needs to be gassed at this point We have an OSR thread?
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Feb 13, 2019 23:20
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I'm involved in an intensely unpleasant argument about Mike Mearls in which every attempt I make to ascribe any behaviour to Mearls-in-the-past is met with accusations of rumormongering and requests for proof. For my benefit, and possibly the benefit of anyone else who is unlucky enough be involved in a similar argument, does anyone know of any public record or evidence as to Mearls having handed people's in-confidence criticism of Zak to Zak with names unredacted that I can use in this argument? To my knowledge there's no "gotcha!" evidence on the matter e.g, a direct admission from Mearls or Zak, but is there at least anything circumstantial? A post from Mearls soliciting complaints about Zak or even just a testimonial from a victim or a third party from around the time? something that I can point to as proof that I'm not just making it up out of whole cloth
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Feb 14, 2019 00:03
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http://failforward.co.uk/post/93348768153/how-dungeons-and-dragons-is-endorsing-the-darkest/amp?__twitter_impression=true It's hard because so much was lost with G+ but there you go.
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Feb 14, 2019 00:10
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Kwyndig posted:We have an OSR thread? Do we ever VacuumJockey posted:I don't care about proof per se. If the guy's a rapist, his victims will hopefully seek legal redress. That's where proof will come in handy. BENGHAZI 2 fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Feb 14, 2019 |
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Feb 14, 2019 00:11
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Because an American court will totally be respectful and kind to a pair of porn actresses who engaged in a kink-based relationship with their abuser. That's totally not going to gently caress them over hardcore. Going to court over this would put Mandy and Vivka in danger, and who knows what else. They can't take this court unless they're absolutely prepared for that, and I can't imagine many prosecutors being willing to go through with it, given the nature of the case.
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Feb 14, 2019 00:15
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