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Dawgstar posted:"He's just so smart and clever, you know, writing a Nazi book to shock the straights. Just pushing buttons!" And then keeping it under wraps and actively covering it up when local fans founds out. 
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Mar 18, 2022 03:07
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Leraika posted:For all that guy is careful not to make judgements, he sure is quick to defend the nazi book being written.
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Mar 18, 2022 03:32
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Writing an entire neo-nazi novel and publishing it under a pseudonym, you know, as a goof
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Mar 18, 2022 03:43
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Exactly like how alt-right comedian Sam Hyde donated $5,000 to the Daily Stormer for the lulz.
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Mar 18, 2022 04:02
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Hostile V posted:Zak has learned the fool's lesson of Never Stop Posting Through It, Posting More Will Fix It. wait, the tekumel estate guy in that post was zak?
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Mar 18, 2022 04:09
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Leraika posted:wait, the tekumel estate guy in that post was zak?
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Mar 18, 2022 04:22
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quote:Yeah, a discord server I'm on stumbled across this a while ago via the academic paper on Barker that alludes to this book and his innermost circle of friends and family's knowledge of it without naming it. I have to admit, I would not have immediately pegged the Tekumel guy as this sort of race-science loving dipshit but I also never really knew much about him, and I guess neither did a lot of people (except for the ones who did know and were covering for him, it turns out).
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Mar 18, 2022 04:43
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Kai Tave posted:I have to admit, I would not have immediately pegged the Tekumel guy as this sort of race-science loving dipshit but I also never really knew much about him, and I guess neither did a lot of people (except for the ones who did know and were covering for him, it turns out). lol i'm just boggled by things going in a circle - I posted the original note from Absurd Alhazred to that discord server, then gendernihilist read it, then her response gets reposted here.
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Mar 18, 2022 05:29
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Listen, everyone has their crazy academic theories that we all just sort of ignore. Albert Einstein loved to contrive scenarios that sound like the setup for a joke, and Tolkien didn't believe French was a real language. Sometimes you gotta hide people's imperfections.
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Mar 18, 2022 05:50
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I would love to read Tolkien's opinions on French, that sounds hilarious.
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Mar 18, 2022 07:50
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Tolkien was so incredibly old-school that he still had a bit of a chip on his shoulder about the Normans invading England and getting their Romantic tongues all over the Germanic Anglo-Saxon language.
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Mar 18, 2022 13:52
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dwarf74 posted:Uh yeah, he's been insufferable the whole loving time, and got removed from basically any community that could remove him. That was what he was best known for before he mostly became known for (alleged) abuse and then (alleged) pants-making GBS threads and then (ongoing) lawsuit warfare. Let's not pile on the patent trolls here. They ain't ZakBad.
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Mar 18, 2022 14:21
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Arivia posted:lol i'm just boggled by things going in a circle - I posted the original note from Absurd Alhazred to that discord server, then gendernihilist read it, then her response gets reposted here. Hey, now, the actual original original note was from Sax Solo in the Old School D&D and Retroclone thread, I just engaged with it, asked for updates once, and spread the word in other threads.
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Mar 18, 2022 14:26
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I don't have any concrete evidence for this, but I have a feeling that a lot of Zak's "friends" were there because they were nerds who wanted to
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Mar 18, 2022 14:58
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Dawgstar posted:"He's just so smart and clever, you know, writing a Nazi book to shock the straights. Just pushing buttons!" I can not put into words how much this pisses me off. I used to love Tekumel, but finding out about this "lol nazi" bullshit - and the fact that it was covered up - means I'm just done with it.
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Mar 18, 2022 15:05
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Someone on RPGnet ferreted out this little tidbit about Barker:RPGnet poster NiTessine posted:Not surprising. In 2017, I was forwarded a PDF copy of The Journal of Historical Review 4(1) from 1991, which Wikipedia characterizes as "a non-peer reviewed, pseudoacademic periodical focused on advancing Holocaust denial." Having skimmed the contents, I find no lie there. In the Editorial Advisory Committee, there is credited one Phillip Barker, PhD, of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Phillip, of course, was M.A.R. Barker's given name. My source told me they'd called up the Institute for Historical Review to check, and received confirmation that this was the same person. I have not confirmed this independently, but I do retain the PDF. The IHR was the nerve-center of the 1980s-1990s efforts at holocaust denialism, trying to make it 'respectable' with a pseudo-academic gloss and lots of 'teach the controversy/just asking questions'. They're real, real bad actors (and were pegged as such at the time), and it looks like Barker was on their friggin' editorial board. Not looking too good for the whole 'it was all an elaborate ironic joke you guys!' defense.
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Mar 18, 2022 15:18
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call barker the american tolkien but at least when nazis wanted to publish tolkien's work he told them to gently caress offFMguru posted:Someone on RPGnet ferreted out this little tidbit about Barker: sorry chirine, you may not have known that bit but your desperate hope it was a bad prank gone wrong is as dead as barker's idol
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Mar 18, 2022 15:41
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1989-2002 you have to hand it to him, that's serious commitment to the bit
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Mar 18, 2022 15:58
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Toph Bei Fong posted:I don't have any concrete evidence for this, but I have a feeling that a lot of Zak's "friends" were there because they were nerds who wanted to Even now, he's essentially taken the stance that two women accused him, but he has more than two female friends who deny it, so he wins. Cessna posted:I can not put into words how much this pisses me off. I used to love Tekumel, but finding out about this "lol nazi" bullshit - and the fact that it was covered up - means I'm just done with it.
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Mar 18, 2022 16:01
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Oh hey, the weekly new stock email from The Shop on the Borderlands arrived. They're a British shop that stocks new and old RPGs, with a solid amount of collectible secondhand stuff. I wonder what they have this week? Another TSR RPG from 1975 - Empire of the Petal Throne. In fact we've acquired quite a large Empire of the Petal Throne / Tekumel collection this week. The rarest item is this publication copy of Milanyal (The Gods), one of only thirty produced and sold at a convention in 1999. It's signed by Tekumel creator Professor M.A.R. Barker. For those who don't know, Barker was an American linguist who created his own fantasy world to put his constructed languages into - very much like Tolkien. The key differences between the two are that Barker's expertise was in south Asian languages rather than northern European, and that Barker was a gamer. He was hanging around the Minnesota wargames crowd when David Wesely and Dave Arneson were creating what would become fantasy roleplaying games. So it was an obvious step to make a Tekumel roleplaying game, which is what Empire of the Petal Throne was. Amazing timing. 
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Mar 18, 2022 16:15
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I don't mean they're nazis, it's just funny.
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Mar 18, 2022 16:16
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*MAR Barker seated across from me vomits up decades of holocaust denial at my feet* "That's a real Nazi habit you've got there."
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Mar 18, 2022 16:23
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I always feel for LGSs and small retailers when stuff like this happens and creators are outed as horrendous people, it seems like it's almost always a lose-lose situation for them, because they're faced with either keeping that stuff on the shelves and hoping they don't get raked over the coals for it, or pulling games/comics/whatever and just eating that loss. Though the LGSs around here are generally really conscious of that sort of thing, the one I frequent pulled all the LotFP stuff they used to carry when it became apparent Zak S and James Raggi are both piles of poo poo, but I'm guessing there are probably just as many that either leave the stuff on shelves and insist they're "apolitical," or lean into the controversy for sales.
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Mar 18, 2022 16:24
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Halloween Jack posted:Tekumel isn't easy to get into, and this certainly kills any interest I have in getting better-acquainted with it. If you had asked me a few days ago about Tekumel I would have enthusiastically told you all about it. I've been into that world for almost 40 years; it was one of the first things I discovered about rpgs, and what caught my interest was the way it was all about interesting cultures that weren't just a rehash of Tolkien's Northwest European stuff. It was uniquely cool at the time, and it heavily influenced what I like in game settings. But now? Don't bother, and to hell with Barker's nazi apologist bullshit and anyone who tried to cover it up or excuse it.
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Mar 18, 2022 16:28
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MockingQuantum posted:I always feel for LGSs and small retailers when stuff like this happens and creators are outed as horrendous people, it seems like it's almost always a lose-lose situation for them, because they're faced with either keeping that stuff on the shelves and hoping they don't get raked over the coals for it, or pulling games/comics/whatever and just eating that loss. Though the LGSs around here are generally really conscious of that sort of thing, the one I frequent pulled all the LotFP stuff they used to carry when it became apparent Zak S and James Raggi are both piles of poo poo, but I'm guessing there are probably just as many that either leave the stuff on shelves and insist they're "apolitical," or lean into the controversy for sales. Maybe a museum or archive could buy it? Would be nice for an institution not involved in covering his Nazism for a decade to be able to use it or make it available for research, and it'll keep it away from the Nazis.
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Mar 18, 2022 16:33
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Maybe a museum or archive could buy it? Would be nice for an institution not involved in covering his Nazism for a decade to be able to use it or make it available for research, and it'll keep it away from the Nazis. That's the problem, there seems to be existing archives both for Barker AND specifically for Tekumel and BOTH of them have been covering it up already.
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Mar 18, 2022 16:40
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Arivia posted:That's the problem, there seems to be existing archives both for Barker AND specifically for Tekumel and BOTH of them have been covering it up already. Which is why I'm suggesting maybe a more general RPG archive could benefit from holding it, so it's not all held privately or gatekept by people who perpetuated Nazi coverups.
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Mar 18, 2022 16:53
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MockingQuantum posted:I always feel for LGSs and small retailers when stuff like this happens and creators are outed as horrendous people, it seems like it's almost always a lose-lose situation for them, because they're faced with either keeping that stuff on the shelves and hoping they don't get raked over the coals for it, or pulling games/comics/whatever and just eating that loss. Though the LGSs around here are generally really conscious of that sort of thing, the one I frequent pulled all the LotFP stuff they used to carry when it became apparent Zak S and James Raggi are both piles of poo poo, but I'm guessing there are probably just as many that either leave the stuff on shelves and insist they're "apolitical," or lean into the controversy for sales. I think it's at least a little bit easier to justify in the case of used RPG retailers, since money they made acquiring the stock wouldn't have gone to the original publisher. There's obviously still the larger ethical question of making money off the works of a lovely creator, but knowing that neither the consumer or retailer's money is going into the pockets of said lovely creator is at least a less dubious situation.
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Mar 18, 2022 17:38
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Cessna posted:If you had asked me a few days ago about Tekumel I would have enthusiastically told you all about it. I've been into that world for almost 40 years; it was one of the first things I discovered about rpgs, and what caught my interest was the way it was all about interesting cultures that weren't just a rehash of Tolkien's Northwest European stuff. It was uniquely cool at the time, and it heavily influenced what I like in game settings. This doesn't make you a bad person, FYI. I think as geeks we've all had that moment when we discover a favourite setting or author is built on a solid foundation of arseholery. Tekumel was always on my list to check out for precisely the reasons you cite, and I guess I'll be scrubbing it off that list.
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Mar 18, 2022 17:43
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MockingQuantum posted:I always feel for LGSs and small retailers when stuff like this happens and creators are outed as horrendous people, it seems like it's almost always a lose-lose situation for them, because they're faced with either keeping that stuff on the shelves and hoping they don't get raked over the coals for it, or pulling games/comics/whatever and just eating that loss. Though the LGSs around here are generally really conscious of that sort of thing, the one I frequent pulled all the LotFP stuff they used to carry when it became apparent Zak S and James Raggi are both piles of poo poo, but I'm guessing there are probably just as many that either leave the stuff on shelves and insist they're "apolitical," or lean into the controversy for sales. FWIW it'd have to be a really big publisher for this to represent much of a loss. Sadly the LGS business is one in which you just sort of have to accept that you're going to have some dead inventory, since there's no provision for returning anything and a lot of things are going to have pretty bad turnover. Not to say it's not too bad when it happens, but unless your store was deep into something like LOTFP it's really hard for that to represent a significant impact on the bottom line, even for a very small store like mine. Of course, it gets more complicated when you're talking about games that are otherwise popular and controversies that are not super well known in the mainstream. Harry Potter tie-in games in particular are fraught at the moment, of course, though she's become so awful I'm okay just telling people I don't feel right ordering any of her stuff and telling them about Kids on Brooms etc. But of course there's no ethical consumption and that goes even more for ethical stocking - my store couldn't survive without WOTC products, but there's plenty to dislike about them. (Certainly including some of how they treat LGSes.) On top of all that, too, not every store is going to be able to be on top of every controversy. There's so much of it and it's pretty easy to miss, especially if you don't follow a thread like this. I suspect I've had a few things on my shelves that I would have removed if I'd known things about their creators that just never came up.
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Mar 18, 2022 17:59
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Toph Bei Fong posted:I don't have any concrete evidence for this, but I have a feeling that a lot of Zak's "friends" were there because they were nerds who wanted to I know a few of them and I can tell you that certainly wasn't the case. Ultiville posted:FWIW it'd have to be a really big publisher for this to represent much of a loss. Sadly the LGS business is one in which you just sort of have to accept that you're going to have some dead inventory, since there's no provision for returning anything and a lot of things are going to have pretty bad turnover. Not to say it's not too bad when it happens, but unless your store was deep into something like LOTFP it's really hard for that to represent a significant impact on the bottom line, even for a very small store like mine. I think it's mostly your last point. I used to be more of the video game world and for the most part, it's only recently that "normal" people who don't follow game news have started connecting names to developers/studios. I remember back when Mass Effect Andromeda was announced someone getting very angry at me for attacking "bioware" because I said I didn't have much faith in a game being made by a studio that had just been recently formed and was almost entirely new developers who had never developed a game in their lives...and that not a single person who had worked on any previous Mass Effect game was working on this one outside of a consulting role. And then he said I was being "anti-Bioware". Most people don't really think or know much about talent unless that talent aggressively brands itself, which is why people go "whycome Bethesda can't make another Fallout like New Vegas?" and they seem to be completely unaware that Bethesda didn't. Halloween Jack posted:He always conflated "I know X people" and "I have X followers online" with the idea that all those people agree with all his opinions and back him up on everything. He would wield his Google+ follower count as a cudgel in arguments, saying that anyone who disagreed with him must provide peer-reviewed academic studies to the contrary. In arguments about damage dice and flour grenades. I seem to recall back in the early 10's Raggi and Stuart and a couple others did back him up, making statements and such, although Stuart later cut ties with Zak, I suppose for asking for that kind of backup one too many times: http://falsemachine.blogspot.com/2017/09/gently caress-all-of-you.html
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Mar 18, 2022 18:32
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I can't be the only person that read Tekumel, then heard this, then thought "Yeah, duh." The setting is civilized humans living in unchanging racial stasis for 50,000 years, in a world with dozens of sentient other species, but they're almost universally flabby naked aggressive jungle weirdos living in swamps and trees. The few that aren't are only civilized in the sense that they are warlike so as to provide a target for proof of human military supremacy (with one race being like subservient lesser allies).
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Mar 18, 2022 20:21
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theironjef posted:I can't be the only person that read Tekumel, then heard this, then thought "Yeah, duh." The setting is civilized humans living in unchanging racial stasis for 50,000 years, in a world with dozens of sentient other species, but they're almost universally flabby naked aggressive jungle weirdos living in swamps and trees. The few that aren't are only civilized in the sense that they are warlike so as to provide a target for proof of human military supremacy (with one race being like subservient lesser allies). In retrospect, yeah, but without the specific knowledge of his incredible antisemitism Tekumel just ends up sounding about as racist as every other fantasy setting from the 70s and earlier. If asked I'd have guessed he probably had the latent racism of a white man born in 1929, but this is a step further. He went out of his way not only to hate the Jews, but to be the editor of a magazine dedicated to it. I'd not have guessed that.
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Mar 19, 2022 03:32
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theironjef posted:I can't be the only person that read Tekumel, then heard this, then thought "Yeah, duh." The setting is civilized humans living in unchanging racial stasis for 50,000 years, in a world with dozens of sentient other species, but they're almost universally flabby naked aggressive jungle weirdos living in swamps and trees. The few that aren't are only civilized in the sense that they are warlike so as to provide a target for proof of human military supremacy (with one race being like subservient lesser allies). I didn’t see it coming, but in retrospect: “The peoples of this part of Tékumel have a predilection for elaborate ceremonial, visual display, and the security brought about by knowing exactly where one stands in the social order.” “This Seal (Tsolyani: Kólumel) is more than just an emblem; it stands for the organic, living persona of the State itself.” “The nomads of Milumanayá display great tribal dignity and a fierce commitment to honour, but their predilection for ‘total democracy’ makes them the butt of many jests.” Yeah, you know…
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Mar 19, 2022 04:30
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As opaque as it is, Skyrealms of Jorune feels like a better setting as far as very old massively overdetailed worlds go because you at least get a sense that there's been some cultural exchange and interaction going on between the humans and the various alien species (both local and hailing from offworld) on Jorune and it's not an exclusively one way street.
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Mar 19, 2022 14:25
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Warthur posted:As opaque as it is, Skyrealms of Jorune feels like a better setting as far as very old massively overdetailed worlds go because you at least get a sense that there's been some cultural exchange and interaction going on between the humans and the various alien species (both local and hailing from offworld) on Jorune and it's not an exclusively one way street. Is Skyrealms of Jorune even in print anymore?
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Mar 19, 2022 15:08
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Pasha posted:Is Skyrealms of Jorune even in print anymore? Don't think so, but Tekumel is barely in print.
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Mar 19, 2022 15:25
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Warthur posted:As opaque as it is, Skyrealms of Jorune feels like a better setting as far as very old massively overdetailed worlds go because you at least get a sense that there's been some cultural exchange and interaction going on between the humans and the various alien species (both local and hailing from offworld) on Jorune and it's not an exclusively one way street. Also I've met the lead author (he dated my girlfriend's sister for a while) and he is not immediately recognizable as a nazi, so there's that!
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Mar 19, 2022 17:13
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I'm more than a little bummed out that "not immediately recognizable as a Nazi" is legitimately a compliment in 2022
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Mar 19, 2022 17:31
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The Tekumel stuff was interesting and it took me a couple days to remember who but there was another nazi who got caught being a nazi that had a reputation for being a jester, a maverick, a trickster, a truthseeker using the power of wit and irony to uh, deny the holocaust happened: David Irvingquote:According to his brother, Nicholas, David been a provocateur and prankster since his youth. Nicholas Irving has said that "David used to run toward bombed out houses shouting 'Heil Hitler!'", a statement which Irving denies.[12] quote:Irving's time as an editor of the Carnival Times, a student rag mag of the University of London Carnival Committee, became controversial in 1959 when he added a "secret supplement" to the magazine.[20][21] This supplement contained an article in which he called Hitler the "greatest unifying force Europe has known since Charlemagne". Although Irving deflected criticism by characterizing the Carnival Times as "satirical",[22] he also stated that "the formation of a European Union is interpreted as building a group of superior peoples, and the Jews have always viewed with suspicion the emergence of any 'master-race' (other than their own, of course)".[23] Opponents also viewed a cartoon included in the supplement as racist and criticised another article in which Irving wrote that the British press was owned by Jews.[24] Volunteers were later recruited to remove and destroy the supplements before the magazine's distribution.[23] Irving has said that the criticism is "probably justifiable" and has described his motivation in producing the controversial secret issue of Carnival Times as being to prevent the Carnival from making a profit that would be passed on to a South African group which he considered a "subversive organisation".[16][25]
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Mar 19, 2022 17:45
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