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Darwinism posted:In 2014, when he was heavily courting the more regressive parts of the hobby, Mearls got TheRPGPundit and Zak S involved to a basically unknown degree and credited as 'Consultants' so that their bases would be more inclined to buy 5E - at this point they had no idea that the streaming phenomenon would hit D&D hard and make all of that pandering to tiny audiences of lovely people really even more pointless. But anyway, even at this point both of these parties were very well known toxic assholes and Mearls was told as much. His response was to ask people with evidence of said toxic assholery to email him said evidence. When people did as such, Mearls shared these emails with Zak S who then assured Mearls that it was all not true, and this was good enough for Mearls. Zak also bragged about Mearls being some big discussion group Zak controlled on either G+ or Facebook. It was one of the ones he'd post stuff like "These guys are being mean to meee!!" to stir up some people to harass the target. moths posted:It's worth noting that Mearls hasn't tweeted anything since the non-pology, which suggests that he might be facing consequences over this. There's nothing to go on for that, so it's best to assume he's staying mute until the heat dies down unless WotC officially announces that he's out. The only upside to the weak Mearls tweet is that far more people know about what happened than ever before, and some of them will consider exploring games that didn't cover for and platform Zak.
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Feb 17, 2019 16:02
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moths posted:His (flagged for deletion) Wikipedia page has him at Yale, so probably. I wonder if anyone opted for the Executive E-mail Carpet Bomb approach to Hasbro’s leadership naming and shaming Mearls.
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Feb 17, 2019 16:03
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That Old Tree posted:https://twitter.com/IPRTweets/status/1097022709710479360?s=19 The McFarlands have transferred ownership of the Chill titles on DTRPG over to the IP owner, according to his Stepping Away post. This seems to me like obfuscation -- there are plenty of DTRPG titles from Growling Door which are not Chill.
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Feb 17, 2019 17:37
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King of Solomon posted:Hey guys, is there a summary of what's going on with Zak, with some detail about what Mearls did and why his statement was insufficient? I'm going to try to convince my group to stop playing D&D, and I'm not confident in my own ability to explain the situation. You already got some helpful answers so I'm just going to add that by through with this, you should be ready to find out which of your friends are perfectly fine with supporting abusive folks and their enablers as long as it's not happening to anyone they know. I'm not saying you shouldn't tell people what happened, I just telling you to get ready to deal with that.
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Feb 17, 2019 18:16
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Thanlis posted:The McFarlands have transferred ownership of the Chill titles on DTRPG over to the IP owner, according to his Stepping Away post. This seems to me like obfuscation -- there are plenty of DTRPG titles from Growling Door which are not Chill. They transferred the titles along with the rights back to the IP Owner so the IP owner can continue making games now that they're (hopefully) leaving forever. And McFarland and his wife won't make any money off of further sales.
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Feb 17, 2019 18:17
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Nuns with Guns posted:There's nothing to go on for that, so it's best to assume he's staying mute until the heat dies down unless WotC officially announces that he's out. The only upside to the weak Mearls tweet is that far more people know about what happened than ever before, and some of them will consider exploring games that didn't cover for and platform Zak. Mearls and Gencon are absolutely going to try to ride this one out in silence, with Gencon trying to support him the entire time on top of it.
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Feb 17, 2019 20:55
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Mearls' response is even more strikingly awful in contrast to Satine's statement. Just outright pathetic.
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Feb 17, 2019 20:56
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Darwinism posted:In 2014, when he was heavily courting the more regressive parts of the hobby, Mearls got TheRPGPundit and Zak S involved to a basically unknown degree and credited as 'Consultants' so that their bases would be more inclined to buy 5E - at this point they had no idea that the streaming phenomenon would hit D&D hard and make all of that pandering to tiny audiences of lovely people really even more pointless. I may be misunderstanding this, but hasn't streaming made 5th ed more popular than any previous version before? Or is it that streaming of computer games lowered the popularity of 5th ed? (If there's a post about how streaming has changed table top role playing and board games, I would be interested to read it).
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Feb 17, 2019 21:17
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Comstar posted:I may be misunderstanding this, but hasn't streaming made 5th ed more popular than any previous version before? Or is it that streaming of computer games lowered the popularity of 5th ed? Streaming has been huge in increasing 5E's popularity, though D&D has always had a steady increase in popularity.
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Feb 17, 2019 21:24
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There’s a few reasons. Streams and podcasts are a major part (especially how there’s a fandom behind them that’s finding rpgs scratch a lot of artistic itches) but Nerd stuff is more prominent than before, everyone is on social media so organising is easier, online tools are really strong, and the economy is poo poo so lots of people have lots of time and desire for fairly cheap entertainment and socialisation.
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Feb 17, 2019 21:31
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5E is truly the Battle Royale videogame of TRPGs *said with as much contempt i can humanly muster*
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Feb 17, 2019 21:36
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King of Solomon posted:Hey guys, is there a summary of what's going on with Zak, with some detail about what Mearls did and why his statement was insufficient? I'm going to try to convince my group to stop playing D&D, and I'm not confident in my own ability to explain the situation. Also here's a stack of links regarding Mr. Smith. The first link is a good start.
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Feb 17, 2019 21:38
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Streaming and celebrity play actually helped back with 4e, but 4e and Mearls got intense backlash for not being 'old school' enough. He never really got the mechanics of 4e, and this shows when you realize he's behind its worst books. Near the end of 4e, Mearls cozied up to the most vocal critics. He wanted to be respected by the OSR people, but he was still a punchline. By the time he started pitching Next, he'd full-on adopted their 4e complainants and misconceptions. "Warlords shouting hands back on," etc. Part of his strategy with Next was to recycle what worked to boost 4e's publicity: The celebrity angle. But this time, Mearls' celebs were people his new "friends" revered. Monte Cook was promoted, but he also touted OSR chucklefucks like Zak and Tarnowsky. There were a handful of hilariously disappointing "official" actual plays when Next came out. The timing happened to lined up with a Zeitgeist of popular actual plays, who went with D&D because oops that's still the face of RPGs. And 5e because that's what's available.
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Feb 17, 2019 21:54
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Monster of the Weeks huge sale spike definitely shows that little games getting attention can really help out.
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Feb 17, 2019 22:26
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Comstar posted:I may be misunderstanding this, but hasn't streaming made 5th ed more popular than any previous version before? Or is it that streaming of computer games lowered the popularity of 5th ed? I can see how that wording was ambiguous, but I'm pretty sure by "streaming hit D&D hard" they mean it raised its sales to the point where other marketing efforts were irrelevant in comparison. Think home run, not car crash. (The car crash is what's happening now, but it's probably not gonna affect D&D sales that much either.) Thuryl fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Feb 17, 2019 |
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Feb 17, 2019 22:27
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To be perfectly frank nothing is really going to happen to D&D as a whole, the fanbase is much too big now and 5th Edition has the backing of a lot of good folk such as the CR crowd. But they aren't going to just drop the system over this either. It doesn't seem reasonable to expect someone to view their friends in a bad light if they still play/enjoy 5th Edition, given the scope of it has grown far beyond the comparatively tiny crowd it used to be.
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Feb 17, 2019 22:28
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Thuryl posted:I can see how that wording was ambiguous, but I'm pretty sure by "streaming hit D&D hard" they mean it raised its sales. Yeah, this is it. The exposure 5E has gotten from streaming has been an incredible windfall for D&D, and it's kind of sad to think of all those kids getting a 5E PHB or DMG as a well-meaning gift because drat there's not a single 'fun' 5E stream I can think of that runs RAW but none of them seem to want to draw attention to that
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Feb 17, 2019 22:32
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More players is more players, and that is a good thing. Some will leave when D&D doesn't do it for them, but others will seek out better games or make them. AP's are a net good for the hobby, regardless of your game of choice.
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Feb 17, 2019 22:52
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remusclaw posted:More players is more players, and that is a good thing. Some will leave when D&D doesn't do it for them, but others will seek out better games or make them. AP's are a net good for the hobby, regardless of your game of choice. Net, sure, it's nice that there's more players, but it's also sucky that a lot of potential players will be turned off because the books they have do not accurately reflect the things happening in streams and that's more what I meant
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Feb 17, 2019 23:02
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Darwinism posted:Net, sure, it's nice that there's more players, but it's also sucky that a lot of potential players will be turned off because the books they have do not accurately reflect the things happening in streams and that's more what I meant How would you change a RPG and/or D&D to make it better for streaming/watching?
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Feb 17, 2019 23:11
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What game systems would you recommend looking at if I like 5e as a whole but don’t want to support someone who defends an abuser? Systems that use d20, 2d6, decent combat system, room for role playing, etc. Asking this sincerely in case someone thinks I’m trying to be a dick.
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Feb 17, 2019 23:19
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Comstar posted:How would you change a RPG and/or D&D to make it better for streaming/watching? I think they mean that the two big D&D streams/podcasts (Critical Role and Adventure Zone) have made heavy use of house rules and home brew content. Adventure Zone isn’t even pretending to use 5e as a base system any more, having switched to Monster of the Week. And I actually like that a lot from what little I’ve listened to of season 2. This means that someone new to Dungeons and Dragons is possibly going to be let down when they read through the Player’s Handbook and some of this cool stuff they saw on their favorite show Critical Role is nowhere to be found in the book.
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Feb 17, 2019 23:22
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moths posted:But this time, Mearls' celebs were people his new "friends" revered. Monte Cook was promoted, but he also touted OSR chucklefucks like Zak and Tarnowsky.  best part about the whole "we need to court the most toxic elements of the hobby" thing was when Wizards (read: Mearls) chose Tarnowski over Monte after the vocal cords email kerfuffle, leading to Cook's resignation from the project.Seriously, what kind of person do you have to be to read that unbelievably unprofessional email and come to the conclusion that "Yes, this is what our new edition of the flagship RPG needs; these are the people whose tastes we must cater to. Courting them is important to the future of our brand, more so than my continued professional relationship with an actual peer respected by the hobby at large." And I'm using the term peer loosely here, given that though Monte has his problems, he's still an infinitely better game designer than Mike Mearls.
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Feb 17, 2019 23:36
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A box of assorted cheeses is a better game designer than Mike Mearls
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Feb 17, 2019 23:48
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Mr. Humalong posted:What game systems would you recommend looking at if I like 5e as a whole but don’t want to support someone who defends an abuser? Systems that use d20, 2d6, decent combat system, room for role playing, etc. Shadow of the Demon Lord is a pretty fun D&D-like if you can get past some of the tryhard gross grimdark poo poo.
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Feb 17, 2019 23:48
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Mr. Humalong posted:What game systems would you recommend looking at if I like 5e as a whole but don’t want to support someone who defends an abuser? Systems that use d20, 2d6, decent combat system, room for role playing, etc. 13th Age covers a lot of that. In all I would actually say it is better in every way than 5th edition, even if it has some issues on it's own. It is pretty much D&D but all the classes have more interesting things to do, even the martials, which are a little more constrained than they need to be. There are absolutely games out there I like more, but it is probably the best D&D that is actually like D&D but isn't called D&D. Everything I hear is that Shadow Of The Demon Lord is really good as well, probably even better than 13th Age, but it does use a system a lot further from D&D and the art is a little ugh. remusclaw fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Feb 18, 2019 |
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Feb 17, 2019 23:51
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Auralsaurus Flex posted:The I'd never read that before. It's a shame he didn't do what one actually should when they find they're 'scaring the poo poo' out of the RPGSite and go as far you can to terrify them as much as possible.
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Feb 17, 2019 23:53
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Auralsaurus Flex posted:The Yeah. Mearls is garbage and it's kind of hilarious explaining to my friend that all the things that are bad about 5e are things he tried to do in 4e (Which in turn made 4e worse) Like when I told him that He loved wizards and casters way too much, he didn't really believe me, till I pointed out that Essentials had somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 wizard subclasses to fighter's 2-ish (profoundly bad) ones.
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Feb 17, 2019 23:54
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Auralsaurus Flex posted:The I had entirely forgotten that, goddamn Next was a wild ride of terrible bullshit Kurieg posted:Yeah. Mearls is garbage and it's kind of hilarious explaining to my friend that all the things that are bad about 5e are things he tried to do in 4e (Which in turn made 4e worse) Essentials was kind of amazing. Like the core concept was really solid, and then Mearls happened to it, so for every really good option like Thief you had at least two options like Bladesinger or Hexblade Darwinism fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Feb 18, 2019 |
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Feb 18, 2019 00:01
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Mr. Humalong posted:What game systems would you recommend looking at if I like 5e as a whole but don’t want to support someone who defends an abuser? Systems that use d20, 2d6, decent combat system, room for role playing, etc. I have always loved Dungeon World for playing stuff with that classic d&d flavor I want with easy rules that don't require much prep. Worth a look.
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Feb 18, 2019 00:05
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Mr. Humalong posted:I think they mean that the two big D&D streams/podcasts (Critical Role and Adventure Zone) have made heavy use of house rules and home brew content. Adventure Zone isn’t even pretending to use 5e as a base system any more, having switched to Monster of the Week. And I actually like that a lot from what little I’ve listened to of season 2. I mean. Overall what happens in CR is in the book. The only difference is when one of the players tries to use Matt's homebrew class stuff (worked okay for Percy, not so good for Molly). With that dropped, the characters are all fairly as-is in the book, aside of course from where they're playing Xanathar's stuff. Now what you're talking about is basically what Matt is doing. Most of his strength is he's just very organized (and holy crap he plans EVERYTHING after looking at his notes for one session). Edit: Another hat in the ring for Shadow of the Demon Lord. The horror/gross stuff is easily stripped out and mostly flavor. Base mechanics are great.
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Feb 18, 2019 00:11
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Comstar posted:How would you change a RPG and/or D&D to make it better for streaming/watching? Honestly, a lot of the choices intentionally taken in 5E are pretty antagonistic towards fun streaming videos - stuff like caster dominance, CR being garbage, rules that are often terribly written because of 'natural language,' etc all get in the way of a 'fun' show. If you wanted to design something specifically that looked good being played, though, a good place to start is looking at what rules get ignored and what rules get kept. There's any number of systems with much better flow than 5E and a lot more permissiveness for different character types, but they don't have the awareness of D&D and not nearly as many people are primed to watch, say, a Dungeon World play even if its probably a much better game to watch being played given equally entertaining players. And they wouldn't have to fundamentally change the game for it.
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Feb 18, 2019 00:15
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Arthil posted:I mean. Overall what happens in CR is in the book. The only difference is when one of the players tries to use Matt's homebrew class stuff (worked okay for Percy, not so good for Molly). With that dropped, the characters are all fairly as-is in the book, aside of course from where they're playing Xanathar's stuff. Now what you're talking about is basically what Matt is doing. Most of his strength is he's just very organized (and holy crap he plans EVERYTHING after looking at his notes for one session). Marisha's character does use a homebrew subclass from the Tal'Dorei supplement but other than that there are a couple minor things like low level spells having a different action economy and potion quaffing.
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Feb 18, 2019 00:18
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Echoing both Dungeon World and Shadow. It really comes down to which you consider more work: wrapping your mind around not using a d20 and thinking in terms of "moves", or stripping out all the weird grimdark and poopstuff.
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Feb 18, 2019 00:20
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Darwinism posted:I had entirely forgotten that, goddamn Next was a wild ride of terrible bullshit "Hey Mearls, the melee classes are kind of profoundly uninteresting, can you maybe do something to fix that?" "Sure, here's a Melee Wizard, but it's encounters are dalies and it doesn't get actual dalies." "That's kind of the exact opposite of what I asked." "But it's a wizard?"
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Feb 18, 2019 00:26
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Thanks for the help everyone, I really appreciate it.Lynx Winters posted:You already got some helpful answers so I'm just going to add that by through with this, you should be ready to find out which of your friends are perfectly fine with supporting abusive folks and their enablers as long as it's not happening to anyone they know. I'm not saying you shouldn't tell people what happened, I just telling you to get ready to deal with that. Yeah, I know. I'm already kinda disappointed in our DM, who bought into D&D so hard that he's kinda unwilling to run anything else. Hopefully the rest of my friends will be more willing to join me in dropping the product like the toxic waste it is.
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Feb 18, 2019 00:39
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King of Solomon posted:Yeah, I know. I'm already kinda disappointed in our DM, who bought into D&D so hard that he's kinda unwilling to run anything else. Hopefully the rest of my friends will be more willing to join me in dropping the product like the toxic waste it is. Don't stress too much about that to be honest, some people are just unable to kind of see or interact with the stuff outside of their cone of vision especially when it comes to showing a big old black mark against things they really enjoy.
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Feb 18, 2019 00:51
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Also, uh, if you've already bought D&D 5e you aren't exactly contributing materially to zak or mearls in any way shape or form by continuing to use it, unless you encourage other people to buy it. A boycott is designed to exert economic pressure by deliberately targeting the purchase of a given product. And you should by all means discourage the continued purchasing of D&D stuff. But as far as anything that's been bought already, that damage is done.
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Feb 18, 2019 01:08
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Impermanent posted:Also, uh, if you've already bought D&D 5e you aren't exactly contributing materially to zak or mearls in any way shape or form by continuing to use it, unless you encourage other people to buy it. A boycott is designed to exert economic pressure by deliberately targeting the purchase of a given product. And you should by all means discourage the continued purchasing of D&D stuff. But as far as anything that's been bought already, that damage is done. I’m kind of assuming they will continue releasing material for 5e. Not to mention the subscription some people might pay for Beyond.
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Feb 18, 2019 01:11
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yeah, which is why I said that "you should by all means discourage the purchasing of D&D stuff."
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Feb 18, 2019 01:13
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