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Lol the other former employees are chiming in and backing her up. https://twitter.com/AmazonChique/status/1437839056461828097?s=19
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Sep 14, 2021 20:21
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midwifecrisis posted:apparently she blocked me at some point, so that's kind of a bummer. Same here, no idea what prompted that. I barely ever tweet and don't get involved in any discourse. Guess one of the block lists got a little too trigger happy?
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Sep 14, 2021 20:23
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KingKalamari posted:My experience with WoD as a whole is largely from an outsider's perspective (Urban fantasy isn't really my thing in general), but it seems to me a recurring thing underlying a lot of its more notable problems is the developers deciding they are grand auteurs making meaningful statements with their vampire tabletop game. Like, I don't want to denigrate either the urban fantasy genre or the medium of tabletop games as a whole, but there's a lot of topics that are not lent to being explored in these spaces and it feels like way too many of White Wolf's writers don't get that. Sometimes WW did get it right. There’s a concept for a campaign exploring racism and immigration issues in early Toronto in a Vampire the Requiem book that Actually Works, but it notably has none of that and is closer to a mob family drama.
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Sep 14, 2021 20:23
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I've got a load of old Vampire Dark Ages books that I got as a joblot from a goon who was selling them off. I'm almost afraid to go poking through them.
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Sep 14, 2021 20:29
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Arivia posted:Sometimes WW did get it right. There’s a concept for a campaign exploring racism and immigration issues in early Toronto in a Vampire the Requiem book that Actually Works, but it notably has none of that and is closer to a mob family drama. Also Some of this is basically. "Hey we need to do a mage anthology book." "Well the most qualified person to do that book is a sex obsessed wiccan furry." ".....gently caress."
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Sep 14, 2021 20:31
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Nuns with Guns posted:Oh my god https://twitter.com/dril/status/841892608788041732
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Sep 14, 2021 20:35
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Kurieg posted:Also Some of this is basically. "A-HA! I SEE SOMEONE IS TALKING ABOUT ME - PHIL "SATYROS" BRUCATO! HAVE I SHOWN YOU MY VARIOUS ROBES AND SCEPTERS? I PLAN TO US THIS ONE FOR THE UPCOMING OESTARA ORGY!|
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Sep 14, 2021 20:53
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Halloween Jack posted:When people working in this genre try to be "meaningful," you usually get either the horrible edgelord poo poo you're talking about, or stuff like True Blood--where vampires are a metaphor for oppressed minorities, and also a validation of conspiracy theories about those same minorities. Whoops! It was such a product of the zeitgeist of the time that its flaws become achingly apparent as soon as you move away from that zeitgeist, as indeed happened over its original run: the tonal shifts from 1st to 2nd to Revised were so sharp and abrupt they could snap the neck of your suspension of disbelief like a twig, but they were arguably necessary as successive designers tried to tackle the fact that Mage's foundational core is Very 1993 in a lot of its assumptions and it was - much to White Wolf's detriment - no longer 1993. You would think that Mage20 would be the perfect time to fix it, but two major mistakes were made: - They gave it to Phil Brucato, who is himself Very 1993. (He's one of those people who fit all three of the criteria I outlined above as prerequisites for taking 1st edition Mage seriously.) - When Brucato wasn't being Very 1993 with it, he and the other writers on the line were being Very 2013, trying to update the game by revisiting it from the perspective of the current zeitgeist. That second thing doesn't look like a mistake at first because updating the game to the current zeitgeist should in principle be an improvement, right? Unfortunately, a double-whammy comes in here: the zeitgeist is moving faster, and Mage books are coming out more slowly. Mage20 has been the current edition since 2013; in a comparable span of time, the original run of the game burned through 1st and 2nd edition and was comfortably into the Revised era in the span from 1993-2001. The original run had the luxury of putting out a new edition to correct course every so often; Mage20 hasn't. This means that Mage20 is a Frankenstein mashup of the Very 1993 bits which Phil either dropped in their or which you literally can't dig out of the setting without no longer having something you could reasonably call Mage: the Ascension, and the Very 2013 bits which, like the Very 1993 stuff, age like milk. Each successive book seems to be having to do more and more work to account for the fact that the baseline axioms of the game and the new packaging the game was delivered in with Mage20 at best make very little sense and at worst are abhorrent atrocities from a modern perspective. I gave up with the Technocracy book and only checked that one out because the original Mage stuff on the Technocracy at least was a fun skewering of a lot of the game's bullshit, but in the new Technocracy book they're reduced to saying "yes, yes, consensus reality doesn't quite make sense/the idea that the Sleepers have primarily bought into the Technocratic worldview and don't believe in magic is nonsense but... um... look, look over there!" car door slams engine guns airplane takes off
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Sep 14, 2021 21:06
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The most 1993 thing about Mage 1E were the character factions, each of them was a time capsule of what passed for a cool counterculture subculture in 1993. Spooky wicca chicks! Goths who could talk to the dead! Serial killers (the good kind)! Elite internet haXX0rz! Steampunk mad scientists! Aliester Crowley wannabes! And on and on.
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Sep 14, 2021 21:13
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Can someone repost the character entry that was a very thinly-veiled caricature of Brucato printed one of the later White Wolf books from some unfortunate writers who clearly experienced far too much of his wizardly aura?
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Sep 14, 2021 21:15
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Jfc Pathfinder tying psionics to occultism seems way less out of left field now And more horrifying
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Sep 14, 2021 21:20
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 I just remembered I had extracted that for my review of Satryos' fur gently caress adventure.
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Sep 14, 2021 21:21
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FMguru posted:The most 1993 thing about Mage 1E were the character factions, each of them was a time capsule of what passed for a cool counterculture subculture in 1993. Spooky wicca chicks! Goths who could talk to the dead! Serial killers (the good kind)! Elite internet haXX0rz! Steampunk mad scientists! Aliester Crowley wannabes! And on and on. This was the dichotomy of White Wolf: extremely cynical and critical of the whole history of Western civilization, particularly Christianity, but its alternative was doe-eyed fascination with ethnic stereotypes and appropriating other cultures into New Age eclecticism. drat, TheRPGPundit was Erik Mona the whole time! Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Sep 14, 2021 |
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Sep 14, 2021 21:21
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Toph Bei Fong posted:oWoD was very bad. This isn't even the worst stuff I could find Goddamn it's so weird looking at this 20 years later for so many reasons.
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Sep 14, 2021 21:23
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Kurieg posted:
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Sep 14, 2021 21:29
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Froghammer posted:Jfc Pathfinder tying psionics to occultism seems way less out of left field now they did note they got a lot of inspiration from erik mona's collection (it's in the introduction to one of the occult supplements or another), so this isn't really new just the thing about the theosophy poster in the office is
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Sep 14, 2021 21:34
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SkyeAuroline posted:Same here, no idea what prompted that. I barely ever tweet and don't get involved in any discourse. Guess one of the block lists got a little too trigger happy? IIRC she was the target of at least one organized harassment campaign over something a while back and makes liberal use of blocklists, many of which, in turn, will tag you simply for being recognizably connected to Something Awful
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Sep 14, 2021 21:40
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Oops wrong
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Sep 14, 2021 21:40
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hyphz posted:That wasn’t White Wolf. It was Unknown Armies. No. It was white wolf, I literally just posted it. It was in the Pentex book.
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Sep 14, 2021 21:41
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Warthur posted:- They gave it to Phil Brucato, who is himself Very 1993. (He's one of those people who fit all three of the criteria I outlined above as prerequisites for taking 1st edition Mage seriously.) Yeah, Brucato is a well-meaning and friendly guy, but he's just so... himself... and so tied into that early 90s zeitgeist. The Mage podcast opened with an interview with him, and it's extremely illuminating as to just how different a generation he's from, and how weird it is that he's been sort of isolated inside it, despite the world moving on: http://magethepodcast.com/what-is-mage-the-ascension/
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Sep 14, 2021 22:04
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Mage '93 made a lot more sense after I listened to an audiobook of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a really weird book that I strongly doubt any mage writers other than Stewart Wieck were interested in. The other half of Mage 1e is werewolf the apocalypse. Several factions in Mage 1e started out as WTA factions: the Dreamspeakers were the prehistoric spirituality faction keen on saving Gaia the Earth Spirit ensnared by the Wyrm. The Nephandi were wyrm affiliated, the Marauders were an ideological faction serving the Wyld rather than the offensive bag of mental illness stereotypes that they are now in Mage20, and the technocrats were linked to the Weaver. As additional books released, werewolf's spiritual entities were deemphasized and the factions and especially the Traditions in Revised were turned into gigantic umbrella orgs consisting of cultural mages whose portrayal was not always great. This isn't to say 1e was more culturally sensitive than the others - werewolf is known in particular for being filled with a lot of stupid stereotypes - , just that characterization shifted over time for better and for worse. Octavo fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Sep 14, 2021 |
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Sep 14, 2021 22:32
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KingKalamari posted:"A-HA! I SEE SOMEONE IS TALKING ABOUT ME - PHIL "SATYROS" BRUCATO! HAVE I SHOWN YOU MY VARIOUS ROBES AND SCEPTERS? I PLAN TO US THIS ONE FOR THE UPCOMING OESTARA ORGY!| I'm hearing this as said by Matthew Berry in his most Lazlo voice. Ditto the biography.
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Sep 14, 2021 22:48
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moths posted:Unrelated but industry related: I don't think I can speak to the representation issue, but I'd be surprised if the devs didn't very carefully vet it just because it seems like they've been actively courting the Chinese market with previous releases.
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Sep 14, 2021 22:59
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Octavo posted:Mage '93 made a lot more sense after I listened to an audiobook of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a really weird book that I strongly doubt any mage writers other than Stewart Wieck were interested in.
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Sep 15, 2021 00:46
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dwarf74 posted:Lol the other former employees are chiming in and backing her up. Speaking of Crystal backing her up: https://twitter.com/AmazonChique/status/1437865802393337862?s=19 Holy loving poo poo.
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Sep 15, 2021 00:48
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That Old Tree posted:Speaking of Crystal backing her up: This actually does a lot to explain the disconnect I'd noticed between the weird, edgelord tone of early Pathfinder and the more inclusive, nuanced tone it developed over the game's lifespan.
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Sep 15, 2021 00:52
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It's generally how all companies work. Employees, contractors etc etc all fight tooth and nail to do something that management either outright doesn't want or more likely doesn't care or think it's worth the time/money/effort. The workers win the war of attrition and do the good thing. Then management comes in to reap the rewards and publicly fellate themselves about how "progressive" they are and get great press. Regardless of the material working conditions are at their company.
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Sep 15, 2021 01:08
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There's been even more posts to that thread and from former employees. There's a whole thing about how Jason Bulmahn hit on her, she turned him down, and he told his department to stop sending her updates (in her own words "At least I was spared the unsolicited dick pics he's sent some other women in the industry"), there's stuff like this: https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1437944940558946311 And then there's this: https://twitter.com/AmazonChique/status/1437953182882217986 https://twitter.com/AmazonChique/status/1437955520514625539
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Sep 15, 2021 03:29
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All of these are of course horrible and I'm not like ranking them or something gross, but I really want to single this one for just being so loving petty. It has all of the bigotry of the others combined with the energy of a spiteful child.
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Sep 15, 2021 03:35
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I don't care who the gently caress I room with so long as there's two beds, if there's only one bed I better as gently caress be rooming alone because asking your employees to double bunk is just loving cheap even before you start handwringing about whether they may or may not be loving.
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Sep 15, 2021 05:07
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Mors Rattus posted:Technically speaking I believe it was a Hunter example PC who used to be a racist skinhead and now was a vampire hunting skinhead, possibly still racist. The braided novel When Will You Rage that actually came out before W:TA to set up the setting had full on Nazi Get. Like reading it you assume that the Get are going to be antagonists. Even down to a Jewish Kinfolk hunting down the Nazi Get who raped his mother in a concentration camp, leading to the birth of himself and the story's protagonist, a Garou who doesn't know he has a brother. Oh, and executed her in front of the young kinfolk as part of massacring the camp before it was taken by the Allies, and threw both into a mass grave. Short story is "A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing" by Vincent Courtney. Might have to hit DTRPG, as it hasn't been printed since ~1995.
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Sep 15, 2021 05:15
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As somebody who had to sleep on the floor of a hotel room at Gencon because of somebody who changed their mind about rooming with a trans woman, that last bit has me absolutely loving furious. EDIT: Like seriously conventions are probably the single most important thing we do as an industry, I've slept on dorm room couches and taken multi-day bus rides to make cons. This is making me want to loving scream. open_sketchbook fucked around with this message at 05:44 on Sep 15, 2021 |
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Sep 15, 2021 05:41
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open_sketchbook posted:As somebody who had to sleep on the floor of a hotel room at Gencon because of somebody who changed their mind about rooming with a trans woman, that last bit has me absolutely loving furious. I'm still mad about that! If we had known at our phone booth of an airbnb we would have tried to help!
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Sep 15, 2021 05:44
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theironjef posted:I'm still mad about that! If we had known at our phone booth of an airbnb we would have tried to help! Believe it or not, this was a different Gencon. The time you're talking about is an even wilder but way, way weirder set of events. After those two I've decided I'm never going back to the con unless I can afford both a hotel room and transport I don't have to split with anyone. That con is loving cursed for me.
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Sep 15, 2021 05:47
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One time we had to drive down to our company headquarters to be present while a Sales guy wined and dined our clients, but since the Sales Guy was there and was trying to make a good impression, rather than staying at the cheap-but-not-so-cheap-the-employees-quit hotels, we stayed at the fancy hotel where my room had a living room, bedroom, and ensuite kitchen that I never used once because we weren't staying long enough for it to even be a thing that crossed my mind.
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Sep 15, 2021 05:57
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A weird part of me wants to see if Jessica shares any details regarding Pathfinder Online. I'd have loved to be a fly on the wall for that years-long clusterfuck, even if I can accurately guess the major reasons why it failed (probably Ryan Dancey).
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Sep 15, 2021 06:19
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Libertad! posted:A weird part of me wants to see if Jessica shares any details regarding Pathfinder Online. I'd have loved to be a fly on the wall for that years-long clusterfuck, even if I can accurately guess the major reasons why it failed (probably Ryan Dancey). I used to think that PFO was Lisa Stevens having a lapse in judgment trusting a friend of hers to deliver a pipe dream project, but honestly it's seeming more and more like she's just as much of a dipshit as Dancey.
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Sep 15, 2021 06:31
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Yeah the reasons why it failed are pretty obvious but I'd love to hear the goss as to how it managed to get started at all and then limp along for so long.
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Sep 15, 2021 06:38
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moths posted:Unrelated but industry related: I appreciate that they've nailed the presence of dougong at least. A lot of things don't remember to add them when doing Chinese architecture.
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Sep 15, 2021 09:15
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Something of a drop in the bucket, but at least a few of paizo's customers have decided enough's enough.
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Sep 15, 2021 10:14
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