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Maxwell Lord posted:He’s been tossed out of just about everywhere else. Yeah, Zak made Ettin post his legally required apology pretty much everywhere Zak has been kicked out of, no doubt Zak appealing to his own narcissism. "Now that one person's been proven wrong, they'll all have to listen to me and let me back in!"
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May 23, 2021 05:41
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Arivia posted:The Troika crew that he refers to as being trolls are very much being a harasser crew on Twitter. It's Zak being the broken clock that's right twice a day, his guesses about what the gently caress is up with them are all wrong, but he's right to call them out because they've very much been trying to establish themselves as the in-crew for the OSR and related circles and shutting down anything and anyone they don't like. Can you provide some further context/receipts for this? As someone who recently stumbled onto Troika it seemed like a great community, but I like to know who my RPG dollars are supporting and that doesn’t sound great 
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May 23, 2021 10:05
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Mode 7 posted:Can you provide some further context/receipts for this? As someone who recently stumbled onto Troika it seemed like a great community, but I like to know who my RPG dollars are supporting and that doesn’t sound great Only thing I've seen was some woman got into a conflict with them over some DMs, she called them out, they reviewed her products on itch and bombed them, seemingly. There's a lot of backstabby poo poo in that crew as well, there was some weird as gently caress drama regarding Skerples(OSR blogger, creator) choosing to remain aggressively anonymous(and why wouldn't he at this point, with Zak firing off lawsuits and people and Skerples being a Canadian, its easier to win defamation suits in Canada) and acting like this was some kind of pile of horrid red flags. Someone else blundered into it from the Troika crowd, made some dark intimations and mutterings about how bad of a dude he might be, and then everyone who had ever worked with Skerples popped up to say "actually he's not anonymous to me, I got my money on time and with a name attached???????????? wtf" That's the long and short of the drama, people just getting mad and stirring poo poo. But I don't follow Troika regardless. Zak probably hates them because they poo poo-talk him from time to time. Them reviewbombing someone apparently: https://twitter.com/ForestedDepth/status/1370829733030600704 The recent drama in march: https://twitter.com/j_d_duncan/status/1376276506951946242 https://twitter.com/Skerples1/status/1377011017847250946 https://twitter.com/Skerples1/status/1376677304596787207 https://twitter.com/TrebuchetOps/status/1376645839112798219 It's a lot of storm in a teacup slapfighting, but maybe Arivia has more insight. The OSR community is way too stressful to keep up with, lots of weird backbiting behind the scenes. Michael's always been nice to me. But it's kind of funny with him trying to sell people on the idea that someone going: "being anonymous all the time? fishy." "bro im right here, wtf" "no i meant someone else" TheDiceMustRoll fucked around with this message at 10:29 on May 23, 2021 |
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May 23, 2021 10:27
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I appreciate you providing some further information but this is just reinforcing that I loving hate Twitter and Twitter discourse because most of those threads are obnoxious vagueposting that doesn't actually loving name anyone. Like even at a base level, how are either Michael T Lombardi or Skerples related to Troika? I promise I'm not trying some sort of "just asking questions" schtick I just don't follow anything on Twitter so I feel extremely out of the loop.
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May 23, 2021 11:15
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Mode 7 posted:I appreciate you providing some further information but this is just reinforcing that I loving hate Twitter and Twitter discourse because most of those threads are obnoxious vagueposting that doesn't actually loving name anyone. Anecdata at best, but Lombardi is buddies with one of the Melsonian Art Council crew (infinite_mao on Twitter), and the latter was taking potshots at Skerples oh so coincidentally right about when the "if you're anonymous you must surely be up to no good" smearing started. And if I recall correctly shortly before the Xmas holidays Skerples reviewed a Melsonian Arts Council book and was less than glowing (about it and Troika in general), though still frankly fairly inoffensive about it if you ask me. So, yeah, it's just backbiting on the part of some Troika folks and their associates.
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May 23, 2021 11:26
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taichara posted:Anecdata at best, but Lombardi is buddies with one of the Melsonian Art Council crew (infinite_mao on Twitter), and the latter was taking potshots at Skerples oh so coincidentally right about when the "if you're anonymous you must surely be up to no good" smearing started. And if I recall correctly shortly before the Xmas holidays Skerples reviewed a Melsonian Arts Council book and was less than glowing (about it and Troika in general), though still frankly fairly inoffensive about it if you ask me. Yeah Skerples as far as I know has only gone in hard on one person, and that was Zak. I really liked his response to finding out Zak had an actual dossier of everyone who ever slandered him
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May 23, 2021 14:33
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:Yeah Skerples as far as I know has only gone in hard on one person, and that was Zak. I really liked his response to finding out Zak had an actual dossier of everyone who ever slandered him
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May 23, 2021 14:54
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Mode 7 posted:As someone who recently stumbled onto Troika it seemed like a great community, but I like to know who my RPG dollars are supporting and that doesn’t sound great For what it's worth, I think Jared/infinite_mao is the only one of the Troika!-adjacent fight-pickers who's actually worked on any official Troika! stuff. The game's creator, Daniel Sell, is no longer on Twitter, but the only discourse-y stuff I remember seeing from him was getting a little snippy when someone called out some Troika! content for being imperialist/ableist... and then within 24 hours, he publicly announced a concrete plan for addressing the criticism, which he actually followed through on. The rest of them are mostly just involved with making third-party content, as far as I can tell, and aren't really problematic or harmful so much as annoying.
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May 23, 2021 15:10
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Warthur posted:Link the response?
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May 23, 2021 15:13
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Jared/infinite_mao is the Melsonian Arts Council guy who is most outspoken and frankly, he has terrible ideas about game design and gets very moralistic about them. He likes to hate on The Forge and accuse people who say 'system matters' of being outright coercive, and he and a clique around them like to accuse indie games of having the outlook or approach of a corporation and therefore not really being indie. It has the very definite feeling of, like, niche protection - going after possible competition in the indie space as somehow corrupt, or indie outlooks that care about game design qua game systems as somehow coercive.
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May 23, 2021 20:18
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Jared is someone I used to follow back when I started using twitter and eventually had to block because in addition to what everyone else has said, they also seem to love posting "hot take" clickbait just to stir poo poo up.
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May 23, 2021 20:29
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I do not have any more particular insight into the Jared/Axes and Orcs clique, I've just seen them go after friends of mine and try to stay out of their way. Same as pretty much everyone else here.
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May 23, 2021 20:48
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Joe Slowboat posted:He likes to hate on The Forge and accuse people who say 'system matters' of being outright coercive, and he and a clique around them like to accuse indie games of having the outlook or approach of a corporation and therefore not really being indie. Wait, was he the guy that melted down at the Death in Space guy for "ripping off" Mothership based on a two-page preview in a tweet, then admitted he didn't know anything about the game and just assumed they were the same genre because the art had spaceships?
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May 23, 2021 21:36
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:Them reviewbombing someone apparently: This might not be a good example because that 'I'm the toxic one' comment is referring to Lane posting people's actual info in Discords and harassing someone who gave their work a bad review, so the review-bombing might be in response to that. EDIT: Not trying to say that the people involved aren't poo poo, just that Lane is poo poo too. There is no-one good in that tweet. Tsilkani fucked around with this message at 21:40 on May 23, 2021 |
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May 23, 2021 21:37
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Mormon Star Wars posted:Wait, was he the guy that melted down at the Death in Space guy for "ripping off" Mothership based on a two-page preview in a tweet, then admitted he didn't know anything about the game and just assumed they were the same genre because the art had spaceships? YEP
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May 23, 2021 21:41
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Tsilkani posted:There is no-one good in that tweet. This could be the thread title
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May 23, 2021 21:41
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One of the Troika folks is a goon, SoundNinja, who did a lot to encourage me to publish my games, and does a lot to help push others with his yearly contest. I wouldn't presume them to be lock-step from everything I've seen.
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May 23, 2021 21:45
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Alien Rope Burn posted:One of the Troika folks is a goon, SoundNinja, who did a lot to encourage me to publish my games, and does a lot to help push others with his yearly contest. Yeah, I think that's a good point to clarify: not everyone who worked on/plays/creates content for Troika is someone lovely, far from it. It's just this group of lovely people on Twitter who kind of coalesced around Troika and publishing stuff for it that are the problem, but they're a subset, not the whole.
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May 23, 2021 21:46
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I don't know much about Troika as a whole because their whole brand seems to be willful obscurantism, but I can confirm that Jared, Lombardi and some others (others who seem to spend half their twitter presence with twitter on private and the other half fighting battles for these two) are without exaggeration some of the scummiest people I've ever encountered on the internet, to the point where I can name actual criminals I respect more. Having bad game design principles and being very vocal about it is no big deal. Trying to shame and deride people into following lock-step with these principles is bad, but also, sadly, so common it's not worth caring about. Taking these principles so far as to organize and encourage your clique to review bomb people you don't' like and purposefully run people off twitter for imagined slights manifested by petty differences is where it starts going from stupid and obnoxious to Actually Really loving Bad. But I think the worst thing about them is that, unlike most other arrogant RPG ideologues, if you actually take the time to ask them what the gently caress they are actually talking about and why they are this angry about it, they will either sarcastically deflect you or just straight up refuse to answer/block you. beeoi fucked around with this message at 22:54 on May 23, 2021 |
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May 23, 2021 22:51
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Tsilkani posted:This might not be a good example because that 'I'm the toxic one' comment is referring to Lane posting people's actual info in Discords and harassing someone who gave their work a bad review, so the review-bombing might be in response to that.  So yeah, theres a reason I stopped paying attention to the community, wrote my own system, took stonehell and all the gillespie books and hosed right off.
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May 23, 2021 23:19
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Mormon Star Wars posted:Wait, was he the guy that melted down at the Death in Space guy for "ripping off" Mothership based on a two-page preview in a tweet, then admitted he didn't know anything about the game and just assumed they were the same genre because the art had spaceships? I... think that was a buddy of his, not Jared himself? But I think Jared weighed in supporting said guy.
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May 23, 2021 23:23
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Warthur posted:Link the response? https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NxvQodb0TbfoEraMLy0DFtgRRwUt8lgl/view Skerples provided the entire conversion. So yes, Zak has a dossier, and each and every thing you say about him is almost certainly screenshotted and backed up, based on this assertion. lol
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May 24, 2021 01:12
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I don't want to devote my life to fighting on the Internet, but you see, MY GIRLFRIEND, who is very sick, says it's very important, so when you think about it, disagreeing with me is attacking a disabled woman, I'm suing you
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May 24, 2021 03:38
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Well, now that he doesn't have the sick girlfriend anymore (because she left him over being an abusive rapist), he has been more free to sue people (for calling him an abusive rapist). Such as his former sick girlfriend.
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May 24, 2021 07:40
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LatwPIAT posted:Well, now that he doesn't have the sick girlfriend anymore (because she left him over being an abusive rapist), he has been more free to sue people (for calling him an abusive rapist).
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May 24, 2021 11:02
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:So yes, Zak has a dossier, and each and every thing you say about him is almost certainly screenshotted and backed up, based on this assertion. lol Sounds like the worlds worst Monster Manual.
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May 24, 2021 11:02
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I'm just imagining sarcasticly inquiring after someone's Enemies List and they respond by immediately confirming it's existance. LOL, but also 
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May 24, 2021 13:47
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I wonder if he's got every white-noise grogs.txter on there, tagged with who they might be an alt of. hi zak its me ur roomie shannon
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May 24, 2021 14:13
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He most definitely did.
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May 24, 2021 14:14
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LatwPIAT posted:Well, now that he doesn't have the sick girlfriend anymore (because she left him over being an abusive rapist), he has been more free to sue people (for calling him an abusive rapist).
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May 24, 2021 15:03
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90s Cringe Rock posted:I wonder if he's got every white-noise grogs.txter on there, tagged with who they might be an alt of. He tracks threads here still and will screenshot and "rebut" poo poo on them on his own blog, so yeah he's been doing this for years.
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May 24, 2021 18:03
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Nuns with Guns posted:He tracks threads here still and will screenshot and "rebut" poo poo on them on his own blog, so yeah he's been doing this for years. Obsessively screencapping posts on a message board you got kicked off of five years ago in order to "rebut" them is the exact opposite of living well, and is thus the worst revenge.
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May 24, 2021 18:16
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FMguru posted:They say "living well is the best revenge" Nah its the best revenge. Cultivating bootlickers who get banned for discussing BLM is a sign you are on the right track.
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May 24, 2021 19:24
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that's amazing considering how many people on this thread have publically stated, or privately admitted to me, that they personally know zak and take great glee in posting about him here. It's shocking how many people who constantly talk about him online have had many face-to-face interactions with him personally and professionally. I'd imagine that at this point almost anyone he's interacted with IRL is likely a poster in this subforum.
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May 24, 2021 19:29
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:Nah its the best revenge. Cultivating bootlickers who get banned for discussing BLM is a sign you are on the right track. God, I always love accounts like that too. "You see, there I was being the most polite and rational person who is also very smart, and they BANNED me - ME! - for being so smart and rational, can you believe it?" You just know he linked some goddamn National Review article or some poo poo
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May 24, 2021 19:51
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Darwinism posted:God, I always love accounts like that too. If you like that, have this! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxYBsh4rjrY Please do note the image of him as Socrates taking Hemlock. You may be thinking this is some 2015 - 2017 video, but this man decided to get into the "historical figure with meme poo poo edited onto it rantsona" thing in 2020! TheDiceMustRoll fucked around with this message at 20:31 on May 24, 2021 |
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May 24, 2021 20:28
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:If you like that, have this! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxYBsh4rjrY "My name is Malcolm Rose and I write about cryptocurrencies and run a gaming YouTube channel." It's like they make these fuckers in a factory
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May 24, 2021 21:05
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Darwinism posted:"My name is Malcolm Rose and I write about cryptocurrencies and run a gaming YouTube channel." They stole one of the machines used to make 90% of Twitch streamers and Twitter checkmarks and somehow found a more evil purpose for it.
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May 24, 2021 21:13
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Impermanent posted:that's amazing considering how many people on this thread have publically stated, or privately admitted to me, that they personally know zak and take great glee in posting about him here. It's shocking how many people who constantly talk about him online have had many face-to-face interactions with him personally and professionally. I'd imagine that at this point almost anyone he's interacted with IRL is likely a poster in this subforum.
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May 24, 2021 21:22
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Also, for about 5, maybe 10 minutes when Zak showed up, he was very popular with the burgeoning OSR crowd. He had a hip actual play blog, he pushed hard for OSR success... it's just once people interacted with him for a while that the red flags started popping up.
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May 24, 2021 21:28
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