Nickoten posted:

The crazy thing is he already admitted that the account was named after Shannon Appelcline. I believe it was on the Kickstarter sometime before the Mandy stuff came out? Fact check me on the source because I can’t remember exactly where it was he addressed all that. I suppose his nuanced explanation must be that he intentionally named an account after that specific person but that doesn’t mean he used it to pretend to be them.

quote:

So, this is from forever ago and everybody should probably have found it googling but here you go:

A fellow gamer in Los Angeles (who does not want to be harassed and so does not want their name mentioned) had a reddit account long before I did.

They posted totally mundane game opinions there. They did not use their account to talk up my work as has been claimed, nor did they ever claim to be Shannon Appelcline (RPGnet owner) or post in a way that could remotely be mistaken for Shannon. These things are recorded, you don’t have to trust me.

Why did they pick that screen name? Well, since Shannon Appelcline was responsible for so much of the harassment I and the rest of my game group experienced over the years, when they were picking a name I was like “SAppelcline” and they were like “Ha! Yeah!” the way you might name your dog Nixon. Lots of people have screen names like “illary Clinton” etc. It was a joke at my harassers expense, but not an attempt at impersonation.

Once in a while I’d be like “Are you on Reddit? Can you ask about….” something. Until I got eventually my own account.

The night my video game came out, this person was at my house. We were watching a movie on one computer and watching Reddit explode with harassment of me and Sarah Horrocks (my trans co author) on the other.

My friend and I were commenting and fact-checking the smear campaign Hill and the other Something Awful commenters were launching (within like hours of my game coming out) and passing the laptop back and forth.

There you go.

Kai Tave posted:

It blows my mind that this goober has an actual fan following. Everything he says and does is the dumbest poo poo ever but people trip over themselves to tell him how cool he is.

Darwinism posted:

What a zany set of coinkydinks, well that reassures me that there could never have been ill intent - god bless that brave anonymous friend for wanting Zak to set the record straight that Zak is 1000% innocent

xiw posted:

they also have exactly the same typing quirks (linking words--like--so etc), clearly this is the equivalent of menstrual synchrony for internet shitposting

xiw posted:

they also have exactly the same typing quirks (linking words--like--so etc), clearly this is the equivalent of menstrual synchrony for internet shitposting

Kai Tave posted:

It blows my mind that this goober has an actual fan following. Everything he says and does is the dumbest poo poo ever but people trip over themselves to tell him how cool he is.

DalaranJ posted:

To be fair, you're prominently using tables, so you are web design's greatest monster.

inklesspen posted:

I'm using tables, yes. For tabular data! That's what they're for!

Haystack posted:

pshaw, if you were a real internet you world use divs with flexbox injected via angular gziped to wasm by rust deployed to a private cloud by 77 nmp packages containing .whls to shepard your latin1 make files.

quote:

Toys, board games and dice are on the list of proposed Chinese imports that President Trump has proposed for additional tariffs of up to 25%. The list was released today by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Trump proposed the tariffs after trade negotiations with China fell through on Friday.

Board games and dice are included under the subheading: 9504.90.60. “Chess, checkers, backgammon, darts and o/table and parlor games played on boards of a special design and parts thereof; poker chips and dice.”

Toys are under 9503.00.00. “Toys, including riding toys o/than bicycles, puzzles, reduced scale models.”

FMguru posted:

I'll always be proud of the way that these dying, mirthful forums figured out Zak's game almost immediately and sent him and his bullshit mind games packing.

xiw posted:

they also have exactly the same typing quirks (linking words--like--so etc), clearly this is the equivalent of menstrual synchrony for internet shitposting

FMguru posted:

I'll always be proud of the way that these dying, mirthful forums figured out Zak's game almost immediately and sent him and his bullshit mind games packing.

Ettin posted:

So it wasn't him pretending to be Shannon Appelcline, it was a friend who named the account after Shannon Appelcline on Zak's suggestion and made posts on Zak's behalf on Zak's computer. This is better because

Kai Tave posted:

It blows my mind that this goober has an actual fan following. Everything he says and does is the dumbest poo poo ever but people trip over themselves to tell him how cool he is.

MadScientistWorking posted:

The thing that really freaks me out the most about us is that most abusers are more competent than Zak at it.

inklesspen posted:

Oh, I was on his enemies list a long time ago, because I publicly stated on g+ that I believed Mikan. According to this blog post (archive.is link), I'm a "psychotic" (false) who thinks people should "buy his game" (also false). Check out the clever use of the screenshot from Amadeus, because of course I am the mediocre talent Salieri, who is plotting to murder God's pet genius Mozart.

What I didn't know is he thought the fact I index and archive the F&F thread means I agree with, endorse, and have contributed to every writeup there. Which, holy poo poo.

Falstaff posted:

I'm actually not sure if he's ever accused you folks of having it out for him, but I figured it was a good bet.

Kai Tave posted:

It blows my mind that this goober has an actual fan following. Everything he says and does is the dumbest poo poo ever but people trip over themselves to tell him how cool he is.

Gerund posted:

Lets not ignore that he also was the Grand Interpreter Of The Old Values in that, oh so convienently, every single unbearable cruft of ancient D&D was also perfect for his Porn Star Game because they (as told to him) liked all of it exactly as Gygax intended.

The guy defended the old damage notation because Girls Are Bad At Math; he was always conciously pitching to the fanbase he gained.

TheDiceMustRoll posted:

Gary "OD&D + houserules forever but please understand that true and proper roleplaying is whatever book Im shilling this week" Gygax?

Swedracula posted:

Launched in 1991, Vampire was a one-of-a-kind game. It created its own pop cultural myth, cultlike groups of fans, inspired a really intense take on roleplaying and new forms of play (Minds Eye Theatre) and it reached audiences that wouldn’t touch D&D with a pole. It had women and clubbers and smart people in black playing it.

Halloween Jack posted:

I honestly haven't kept up with Vampire 5e at all and don't know the details of his mismanagement of it.

Joe Slowboat posted:

Swedracula needed Requiem to be widely disdained and a break from the past, in order for him to be the savior of the Golden Age sweeping back in to restore it.

DigitalRaven posted:

Good loving riddance, Swedracula

quote:

For now, allow me to just say that my brand work and subject matter choices always intended to bring WoD uncomfortably close to reality, letting us explore the worst parts of our world by mixing real horrors with metaphorical ones. I wanted to use WoD as a vehicle for awareness building and human rights advocacy. I wanted to show real evils by placing them next to fictitious ones. I wanted to weave myth and history so tightly that it becomes difficult to know where one ends and the other begins, make players untangle them for themselves, learning in the process. I wanted to transcend the genre with fresh darkness drawn from the filthiest wells of the commercialized internet menacing zeitgeist.

I wanted to become known for making the darkest poo poo using the best tricks for playing on serious subjects from the progressive Nordic larp scene and as opposed to censoring, ignoring, simplifying or romanticizing our real world material. I wanted us to be known as the company that treated our players as competent adult individuals, fully capable of enjoying a satirical vision of our own world, where everything is tainted and nothing is what it seems.

Kurieg posted:

The divisiveness about the nWoD wasn't about rules changes. It was about them "abandoning" the old stories. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who thinks that the oWoD resolution system was better than nWoD's. The rabid fanboys just wanted a shiny new coat of mechanics over the trenchcoats and katana's

quote:

The WoD was ended because they got tired of having the Damocles Sword of the impending final nights hanging over the head of the lines forever, they wanted to start over with a clean slate (and without a defined world ending scenario lying at the end of the road)

Halloween Jack posted:

I thought it was because there was simply too much accumulated lore for them to market their products to anyone who wasn't already a longtime fan. I assume this also made it difficult to bring new writers onboard.

Gerund posted:

Lets not ignore that he also was the Grand Interpreter Of The Old Values in that, oh so convienently, every single unbearable cruft of ancient D&D was also perfect for his Porn Star Game because they (as told to him) liked all of it exactly as Gygax intended.

The guy defended the old damage notation because Girls Are Bad At Math; he was always conciously pitching to the fanbase he gained.

DigitalRaven posted:

He caused an international incident with a V5 book.

quote:

However, this intention to integrate White Wolf has no doubt been accelerated by recent controversy over the V5 Camarilla handbook for Vampire: The Masquerade. According to our sister site Rock Paper Shotgun, a chapter about a vampire-run Chechnya referred to the persecution of LGBTQ+ people as "a clever media manipulation."

"While homosexuals are indeed held in detention facilities for days, and humiliated, starved, tortured, and eventually fed upon and killed, this is not the point. The point is to distract from the truth of what Chechnya has become."

RockPaperShotgun posted:

The Camarilla handbook, which has now been delayed by approximately three weeks so that these sections can be edited out, explained that Chechnya is run by vampires, and described the atrocities as “a clever media manipulation.” It reads: “While homosexuals are indeed held in detention facilities for days, and humiliated, starved, tortured, and eventually fed upon and killed, this is not the point. The point is to distract from the truth of what Chechnya has become.”

PinheadSlim posted: