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Lord_Hambrose posted:Critical Role seems big enough that WotC would notice if they did something. I mean, what percentage of 5E books are about them? Exactly the same percentage as are about Acquisitions Incorporated, Eberron, or Rick and Morty.
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May 24, 2020 18:44
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Dawgstar posted:Do gamers actually direct much outrage at Phoenix these days? I know she was in some twitter slapfight a few months back. Given the nature of twitter, I figured there's always a contingent of people that will go and scream at anyone for associating with her (or the McElroys or whatever) in any context for the rest of time.
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May 24, 2020 20:27
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Satine was, and maybe still is?, a huge Zak stan. So it's not like it's just a twitter slapfight, she has a history of working with some very unpleasant people. Like when she did an Actual Play for Frog God games. Frog Games has as one of its owners Bill Webb, a sexual harasser and all around nasty piece of work.
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May 24, 2020 21:52
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Thanlis posted:Exactly the same percentage as are about Acquisitions Incorporated, Eberron, or Rick and Morty. So we all agree it is significant then.
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May 24, 2020 22:28
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Meinberg posted:Satine was, and maybe still is?, a huge Zak stan. So it's not like it's just a twitter slapfight, she has a history of working with some very unpleasant people. Like when she did an Actual Play for Frog God games. Frog Games has as one of its owners Bill Webb, a sexual harasser and all around nasty piece of work. She also did the art for a planetary romance LOTFP game written by James Desborough.
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May 24, 2020 22:59
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Meinberg posted:Satine was, and maybe still is?, a huge Zak stan. So it's not like it's just a twitter slapfight, she has a history of working with some very unpleasant people. Like when she did an Actual Play for Frog God games. Frog Games has as one of its owners Bill Webb, a sexual harasser and all around nasty piece of work. The stuff with Zak was a longer period ago, I meant something else that happened more recently. Satine distanced herself from Zak after the stuff with Mandy Morbid came out and her Geek and Sundry videos with him were taken down. She was perfectly happy to work with him when there was plausible deniability that he wasn't a shithead though, yeah. Maybe it was the Frog God thing? I couldn't remember the specifics, just that she was doing some "woe is me" tweets right after and it was within the past like 12 months.
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May 24, 2020 23:00
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I'm still trying to parse the whiplash of this thread going directly from "we shouldn't be mean to this guy who worked on 5e products and didn't quit over Meals, because he's about promoting inclusivity elsewhere and you gotta survive under capitalism" to "we should totally be mean to this guy vaguebooking about being sad because he is willing to play 5e on his stream but hasn't demanded Mearls be fired. He's personally responsible for why Mearls is still around at a company he is not employed by"
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May 25, 2020 00:10
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Desiden posted:I'm still trying to parse the whiplash of this thread going directly from "we shouldn't be mean to this guy who worked on 5e products and didn't quit over Meals, because he's about promoting inclusivity elsewhere and you gotta survive under capitalism" to "we should totally be mean to this guy vaguebooking about being sad because he is willing to play 5e on his stream but hasn't demanded Mearls be fired. He's personally responsible for why Mearls is still around at a company he is not employed by" One of them has money.
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May 25, 2020 00:10
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Desiden posted:I'm still trying to parse the whiplash of this thread going directly from "we shouldn't be mean to this guy who worked on 5e products and didn't quit over Meals, because he's about promoting inclusivity elsewhere and you gotta survive under capitalism" to "we should totally be mean to this guy vaguebooking about being sad because he is willing to play 5e on his stream but hasn't demanded Mearls be fired. He's personally responsible for why Mearls is still around at a company he is not employed by" it's almost like there's vastly different power balances at play, and that context makes a difference
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May 25, 2020 00:39
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Desiden posted:I'm still trying to parse the whiplash of this thread going directly from "we shouldn't be mean to this guy who worked on 5e products and didn't quit over Meals, because he's about promoting inclusivity elsewhere and you gotta survive under capitalism" to "we should totally be mean to this guy vaguebooking about being sad because he is willing to play 5e on his stream but hasn't demanded Mearls be fired. He's personally responsible for why Mearls is still around at a company he is not employed by" One has a devoted audience of hundreds of thousands of slavish fans hanging on his every word and is famous even outside niche TRPG twitter circles for their D&D related stuff and the other is not. I also don't hold the average junior associate assistant undermanager as accountable for Wal-Mart's lovely practices as I would someone like a major shareholder.
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May 25, 2020 00:49
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Meinberg posted:it's almost like there's vastly different power balances at play, and that context makes a difference True. One of the two unexpectedly had his goofy stream show get mega popular a few years ago, and had the audacity to...not really say anything about a guy who worked at a company he is not employed by. The other went and got employed directly by that guy, but did not get mega popular unexpectedly. Like, you can dress it up however you like, but at the end of the day you're not shrieking at the people who hired Mearls, or who have kept him hired, or the guy who actually went to go work for him. You're yelling at a dude at best tangentially related because no one actually involved is listening to you. It's very Pundit-esque.
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May 25, 2020 01:07
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There's a perception that Mercer has substantial influence, which could considerably be directed at cleaning up the industry. He's under no moral obligation to do anything but vague-tweet and cash paychecks, though. He may or may not possess any real sway, but weighing in with "Ugh it's so hard to be me right now..." is such a pathetic non-stance on the issue that it's offensive to anyone with any opinions on the matter.
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May 25, 2020 01:21
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moths posted:There's a perception that Mercer has substantial influence, which could considerably be directed at cleaning up the industry.
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May 25, 2020 01:28
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moths posted:He may or may not possess any real sway, but weighing in with "Ugh it's so hard to be me right now..." is such a pathetic non-stance on the issue that it's offensive to anyone with any opinions on the matter. If that's what that tweet was referencing anyway. 
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May 25, 2020 01:29
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Hey I have no actual skin in the game*, but do we have any actual evidence that his post was actually related to Mearls, WotC, D&D, etc. and not just that like his cat died or he had a really bad day or something? If he's elaborated sure, but just from that one incredibly vague tweet he could be slightly sad for literally thousands of reasons and trying to read into it is kind of madness. *Or well I do in that I think Mearls is a poo poo-bag, but I just know Mercer as "that guy who runs a podcast I never got into".
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May 25, 2020 01:31
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Desiden posted:True. One of the two unexpectedly had his goofy stream show get mega popular a few years ago, and had the audacity to...not really say anything about a guy who worked at a company he is not employed by. The other went and got employed directly by that guy, but did not get mega popular unexpectedly. One of the people involved is a nonbinary black person who can't pay rent, while the other is a super successful white dude who runs multi-million dollar kickstarters. gently caress off.
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May 25, 2020 02:05
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Nessus posted:Are y'all even sure he was talking about Mearls poo poo and not, like, the pandemic? Nobody knows for sure, maybe his goldfish died. But that's the risk you take vage-tweeting. People take the parts they know and fill in the blanks with a mix of extrapolation and zeitgeist.
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May 25, 2020 02:27
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EDIT: Nah, sorry, I'm being all bent out of shape and sensitive for bullshit not to do with what people are talking about here. Apologies for being so snarky and confrontational. Dealing with all the crazy wannabe rambos who keep descending on Lansing, both offline and on, has left me in attack mode. Imma bow out and get into a better space. Not fair to the conversation here. Sorry again.
Desiden fucked around with this message at 03:07 on May 25, 2020 |
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May 25, 2020 02:29
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I'm also squinting very hard and it's hard to see that as a double standard. One person just found out their boss is Mike Mearls. The other could probably leverage enough pressure to get Mearls censured. Money aside, the power discrepancy here is astronomical.
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May 25, 2020 02:32
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Lord_Hambrose posted:So we all agree it is significant then. It's a cute way of saying that each of those things has exactly one product devoted to it. 5E hasn't exactly had an abundance of releases but I'm not sure one product means they have significant clout. Mearls is garbage but I'm not sure if Critical Roll or any of the other people behind any of the other licensed products has any ability to get him fired BattleMaster fucked around with this message at 03:16 on May 25, 2020 |
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May 25, 2020 03:13
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Critical Role is more responsible for 5e's successes than Mearls is, but WotC may or may not be aware of this.
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May 25, 2020 03:17
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BattleMaster posted:It's a cute way of saying that each of those things has exactly one product devoted to it. 5E hasn't exactly had an abundance of releases but I'm not sure one product means they have significant clout. Mercer couldn't just call up Mearls's boss and get him fired, but if the crew actually leveraged their influence through the show, they could probably get a big enough outcry to make it happen. E: Of course, as Dexo said earlier in the thread, this would burn some bridges. King of Solomon fucked around with this message at 03:22 on May 25, 2020 |
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May 25, 2020 03:19
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BattleMaster posted:It's a cute way of saying that each of those things has exactly one product devoted to it. 5E hasn't exactly had an abundance of releases but I'm not sure one product means they have significant clout. I can't get Mearls fired either but I'm still gonna fuckin' tweet about it. No one's mad at him for not immediately getting Mearls fired, they're mad at him for just looking the other way and tweeting requests for online hugs instead of even halfway voicing any sort of real concern. And yeah, the timing of that tweet and the line about circling the wagons made it pretty obvious he knew eyes were about to be on him so went on a preemptive tour of "I'm just being my best me and you can't expect any more than that" type poo poo. theironjef fucked around with this message at 03:27 on May 25, 2020 |
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May 25, 2020 03:23
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You guys realise that the kickstarter money didn't like, go directly into Matt Mercer's money hole right? It was for an animated series, you have to pay animators to do that, and it costs a shitload of money. As far as I can tell the dude has gotten just rich enough to... afford the basic kind of healthcare coverage that most people get for free in developed nations. Also some of you guys have a very interesting view of the world if you think that an incredibly minor internet celebrity has either the power or responsiblity to get the Hasbro corporation to stop engaging in child labour long enough to care and act on the fact that one of their managers in one of their least profitable brands handled harrasment allegations like an utter shithead several years ago.
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May 25, 2020 03:36
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If Matt Mercer unhitched the muzzle on his fanbase and pointed them at WotC or Mike Mearls (let's be real here they'll go for Mearls and probably the rest of the D&D team even if he only tells them to go for WotC or Hasbro directly.) There absolutely would be a lot of noise and press and attention brought to the issue. I really don't know if that'd be enough to compel either company to drop Mearls when they weren't willing to back in February 2019 when the stories of Zak's abuse came out and Mearls was the more visibly inconvenient to have around. Like people here know he sucks because he was friends or at least a friendly associate of Zak's for years. People here have strong reason to believe Mearls passed on their emails and other private communication uncensored to Zak because after Mearls put out a call for details on why Zak was objectionable, and then the people who sent Mearls things started getting threatening emails back, even on burner email accounts Zak wouldn't be able to trace to them otherwise. I completely believe that happened. It's totally in character for Zak to do that and I trust people here wouldn't need to make poo poo like that up to tarnish either of those idiots. We also know that he posted on Google+ about how he believed Zak was being smeared by SA trolls and was apparently still friends with him, so it's clear he didn't take any of the concerns seriously. Based on the tweets Matt made back in February 2019, I'd guess he heard something about it, along with other stories about Zak: https://twitter.com/matthewmercer/status/1095543841568960512 https://twitter.com/matthewmercer/status/1095543846954364928 But the evidence of the relationship between Zak and Mearls is also going to look pretty circumstantial, or easy to dismiss as a sociopath manipulating someone who trusts him to a legal team or HR department or mainstream journalist. Maybe WotC would still cut ties with Mearls to make the noise stop, but they're not going to like the way their hand was forced by an angry internet mob, either. I'm not saying Matt shouldn't try, but I also don't think it would be as easy as making some politely worded tweets about why Mearls sucks and it's a way heavier burden to put on a guy burn his successful little fantasy franchise and public image on. Weaponizing a respectably-sized online fanbase is also going to be a complete mess to deal with on all fronts. Of course the other solution is to start The Revolution so we don't have to worry about poo poo like brands, and intellectual property, and corporations holding our livelihoods hostage in lieu of letting shitheads coast by... Nuns with Guns fucked around with this message at 03:56 on May 25, 2020 |
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May 25, 2020 03:54
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Nobody is demanding that he single-handedly casts Mearls from heaven, but it would be a nice change to see some good attempted by someone in a position to. He's generated a million dollars worth of kickstarter support for a cartoon - His tweets carry more weight than mine. It would be rad if he'd acknowledge the poisoned tree he's profiting from, rather than just whine about how hard it is to have ethics. My wild speculation is that someone in the group developed a conscious about Mearls and the collective silence is causing internal friction.
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May 25, 2020 03:58
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Honestly, from what I've been able to tell digging around, I think he's talking about folks who are mad that he's not forcing everyone to go back to work on the campaign because COVID. I think this might have just been extremely poor timing.
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May 25, 2020 04:04
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The story I heard continues to be that Zak somehow got someone at both Paradox and Wizards to sign a non-disparagement agreement, which would probably explain why people at both companies are so happy to never mention his name again.
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May 25, 2020 04:04
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yea I don't think anyone thinks Matt needs to challenge Mearls to pistols at dawn or whatever but considering he and the rest of the team DO genuinely seem to be on the good side of things and all it'd be nice if they maybe used the fact that, regardless of if Wizards is smart enough to know it themselves, they HAVE done more for 'the brand' than Mearls and his crew ever did to at least go 'it's absolute horse poo poo you keep this guy around'. He doesn't need to do some big "DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM? I'M MATT loving MERCER!!!!" thing, just kinda say it sucks and make it clear to his fans it's not alright.
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May 25, 2020 04:06
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Mors Rattus posted:Honestly, from what I've been able to tell digging around, I think he's talking about folks who are mad that he's not forcing everyone to go back to work on the campaign because COVID. I think this might have just been extremely poor timing. If this is the case, and at this point I probably should give a bit of benefit of the doubt and say that it is, I'm sorry for going so aggro on the subject. I still think Mercer should say something, but saying nothing is... expected I guess, and somehow way less bad than if those tweets were about Mearls. To be honest, I'm probably overly stressing myself over the whole situation, and I'm sorry for going on the offense to the degree that I did. I still think that Mearls and WotC have a lot to answer for though.
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May 25, 2020 04:11
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I imagine that it's also, for a distressing amount of new D&D players, their first experience finding out That Thing I Like has its roots in poo poo. Here, most of us have been aound the block enough times to have seen the sausage made and are capable of reconciling this, but I'm seeing chatter elsewhere about how we don't even know conclusively that Mearls did anything wrong and it's a really bad vibe.
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May 25, 2020 04:16
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Mors Rattus posted:Honestly, from what I've been able to tell digging around, I think he's talking about folks who are mad that he's not forcing everyone to go back to work on the campaign because COVID. I think this might have just been extremely poor timing. That makes way more sense than anything this thread has brought up.
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May 25, 2020 04:27
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admanb posted:That makes way more sense than anything this thread has brought up. He vagueposted and the timing is extremely suspect.
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May 25, 2020 04:28
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Mors Rattus posted:Honestly, from what I've been able to tell digging around, I think he's talking about folks who are mad that he's not forcing everyone to go back to work on the campaign because COVID. I think this might have just been extremely poor timing. This is why I don't like "vagueposting", regardless of whatever it is might actually have been going on
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May 25, 2020 05:08
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https://twitter.com/wundergeek/status/1264365019631886337
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May 25, 2020 05:09
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This, on the other hand, is unambiguously bad.
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May 25, 2020 05:14
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"Maybe you are the real harassers" is a take I didn't expect to see until next week E: Wait is that ASH LAW weighing in at "uninformed and spun up?" moths fucked around with this message at 05:19 on May 25, 2020 |
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May 25, 2020 05:17
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moths posted:E: Wait is that ASH LAW weighing in at "uninformed and spun up?" Was this the games publisher who was an angry defender of Zak for years before feeling Super Betrayed when he learned that no, Zak was in fact bad all along?
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May 25, 2020 05:21
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That's wundergeek, who ran the Go Make Me a Sandwich blog, not ASH LAW. They're the one who had the two-part breakdown about their history of interactions/harassment from Zak. e- and afaik ASH LAW doesn't have much of an online presence beyond a patreon for 13th age content, but I never got an impression she got along with Zak at all. Nuns with Guns fucked around with this message at 05:30 on May 25, 2020 |
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May 25, 2020 05:23
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Nuns with Guns posted:That's wundergeek, who ran the Go Make Me a Sandwich blog, not ASH LAW. They're the one who had the two-part breakdown about their history of interactions/harassment from Zak. Oh thank goodness
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