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Siivola posted:My question is, who's out there asking for… whatever Kobold's put out? Kobold. Like, not to be flippant about this, but it seems to me the point of Project Black Flag is to have something that all of Kobold's on-going projects can still be attached to as a base game, in anticipation of no longer being able to attach it to D&D 5e with the shenanigans that WOTC was [going to be] pulling. that there might not seem to be a base of people clamoring for "5e with the serial numbers filed off" is less important than ensuring all the supplements you have in the pipe can still be sold later to compare this back to Pathfinder, even if we say that there wasn't really that much that changed between PF and 3.5, Paizo still managed to make a case for themselves by positioning "3.5 with the serial numbers filed off" as a good thing, relative to the alternative of "4e is a big departure from 3e" one potential problem, of course, is if 6e/oneD&D isn't a big departure from 5e either, such that Black Flag can't make the same case that Paizo did with PF ___ Froghammer posted:Was Armiger the one that only functioned if enemies attacked you but didn't have any way to encourage enemies to attack you / discourage enemies from ignoring you? the Armiger actually does have a way to force enemies to attack them quote:Combat Magnet: You assume a combat stance devised to draw attacks to you while defending your allies. As a full-round action, spend 2 armor tokens to enter this stance. After this preparation, should an ally adjacent to you suffer a melee attack, you may immediately spend 1 armor token to force that attack to be resolved against you instead. Each individual attack requires the expenditure of a separate token, and you must spend the token before resolving the attack. You earn additional armor tokens as normal for the damage your armor absorbs from these attacks. This combat stance lasts until your next action. You cannot make attacks of opportunity while you act as a combat magnet. the problem with the Armiger is a little different: - you gain one "armor token" for every 10 points of damage that is reduced/absorbed by your armor's DR (Iron Heroes uses variant rules where worn armor grants DR instead of AC, and AC instead only ever increases with class levels) ... - ... but this does not necessarily encourage Armigers to wear heavy armor ... - ... and more importantly, if the attack misses outright, due to rolling low against your AC, then you gain no benefit from it whatsoever - furthermore, Combat Magnet requires a full-round action - and you need both tokens to activate it as a stance, plus more tokens for each individual attack that you want to redirect to yourself the concept is there but the details of the implementation are quite bad. When I ran Iron Heroes I had to re-design the Armiger by quite a bit.
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Feb 21, 2023 03:12
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shades of blue posted:the reason for this is that there is no ongoing impetus for it to exist. whereas pathfinder was a reaction to the ongoing 4e line and it's deviations from what was the norm for d&d, black flag does not have that. the moment wotc decided to reverse course wrt the srd, black flag lost any sustaining reason to exist (especially give that 5.1 is already in development). I have a d20 product on drivethrurpg that I almost certainly would have had to change had the use rights been revoked etc. Rather than declare open war and that I'd make d20 with blackjack and hookers, with an ensuing months-long redevelopment time, I patiently waited to see if wotc would reverse course. Essentially, they did. The real work was the pressure from many other small (but bigger than my one person operation) publishers raising hell. However, at no point has "we'll make our own actually free use system in response" been terribly convincing, because those already exist.
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Feb 21, 2023 03:15
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shades of blue posted:the reason for this is that there is no ongoing impetus for it to exist. whereas pathfinder was a reaction to the ongoing 4e line and it's deviations from what was the norm for d&d, black flag does not have that. the moment wotc decided to reverse course wrt the srd, black flag lost any sustaining reason to exist (especially give that 5.1 is already in development). I'd like to add my personal qualification that convincing people that 4e was a deviation from "traditional D&D" was a big part of the ploy by that I mean, whether or not oneD&D is going to be significantly different from 5e also depends on whether Kobold (or some other publisher in a similar situations) gets to convince people that it is
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Feb 21, 2023 03:24
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It was part of the ploy, but it was also an easy ploy to make. 4E read incredibly differently from 3.5, even if on closer examimation its mechanics are the natural conclusion of the direction 3.5's later books took. One reads so similarly to Black Flag that if you blindfolded me you couldn't tell me which is which. It doesn't help that all of the new twists Kobold Press brags about, like a level 1 feat and the decoupling of species from ability scores, were already done in One. The same One that Kobold's designer has said: quote:Kobold Press Design Diary
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Feb 21, 2023 03:49
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mandatory lesbian posted:Tbhd this just seems like a marvel movie got reskinned into a different property, like this clip suuuuucks This is the way every under-written genre movie is going to be for at least the rest of this decade. The awkward campiness of weak action scripts getting punched-up with meta asides and jokes about how lame this all is so nobody feels too self-conscious about liking a shallow fantasy, superhero, or scifi movie. Disney just happened to optimize and spread the tactic around with having to churn so many interchangeable ones out every year.
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Feb 21, 2023 03:54
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https://twitter.com/Chaosium_Inc/status/1627650342073794560 I think this is an expansion of their earlier position against using AI art in anything they're actually publishing, but I can't find that tweet/statement right this second.
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Feb 21, 2023 04:11
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somewhat unrelated but I've been working on a theory about this, how every Ryan Reynolds or The Rock movie is just them playing themselves and winking and going, hey isn't this a hoot? and the reason stuff like John Wick and Mad Max hit so hard is that they were like, "yeah were just gonna unironically do the thing and not be embarrassed about it. Its a corollary to"The New Sincerity" Shrecknet fucked around with this message at 04:18 on Feb 21, 2023 |
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Feb 21, 2023 04:12
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Shrecknet posted:somewhat unrelated but I've been working on a theory about this, how every Ryan Reynolds or The Rock movie is just them playing themselves and winking and going, hey isn't this a hoot? and the reason stuff like John Wick and Mad Max hit so hard is that they were like, "yeah were just gonna unironically do the thing and not be embarrassed about it. Avatar gave me that vibe big time. Is it some groundbreaking story? No. But its a rare big budget movie that isn't frozen in mid wink.
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Feb 21, 2023 04:19
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The Bee posted:Avatar gave me that vibe big time. Is it some groundbreaking story? No. But its a rare big budget movie that isn't frozen in mid wink. So what I'm getting that 4e is The Expendables, pathfinder is John Wick, and 5e is Thor Ragnarok? Which makes Black Flag....uh.... Love and Thunder?
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Feb 21, 2023 04:22
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Shrecknet posted:somewhat unrelated but I've been working on a theory about this, how every Ryan Reynolds or The Rock movie is just them playing themselves and winking and going, hey isn't this a hoot? and the reason stuff like John Wick and Mad Max hit so hard is that they were like, "yeah were just gonna unironically do the thing and not be embarrassed about it. I read a piece on the writing of Forespoken and it was basically this - the quips and the meta references make it sound like the character themselves don't believe in the world they're in, that they're not invested in the world, which is grating to the viewer because if even the protagonist doesn't want to be there, doesn't want to engage with the content, why should we?
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Feb 21, 2023 04:28
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Sincerity and a complete lack of irony is also why things like Kingdom Hearts and Undertale work. They’re ridiculous on so many levels, but they take themselves seriously and are made without any attempt to say, “man isn’t it silly to have feelings and care about stuff?” The version of Undertale that goes “lmao isn’t this dumb, we’re better than this amirite guys” never becomes a generation-defining game, it just vanished into the depths of the Steam sale, never to be seen again. This is also why Stranger Things is the best depiction of a roleplaying game in film or television: it’s not accurate to the game and it embraces some of that lovely irony-poisoned nonsense, but it is unfailingly, lovingly devoted to the experience of being a kid in a social group formed around D&D. Same goes for the stage play Of Dice and Men. Until someone makes a D&D movie that takes itself and the hobby seriously (even if it’s funny!), we’re going to keep getting trash like this. (This will not happen in this generation.)
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Feb 21, 2023 04:43
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Shrecknet posted:somewhat unrelated but I've been working on a theory about this, how every Ryan Reynolds or The Rock movie is just them playing themselves and winking and going, hey isn't this a hoot? and the reason stuff like John Wick and Mad Max hit so hard is that they were like, "yeah were just gonna unironically do the thing and not be embarrassed about it. It's that, yeah, plus a thing I forgot to add where the quick and easy jokes get slotted in just to fill dead air. Some keys jangling to keep the audience's attention because nothing compelling is happening. Like you can look at the most recent trailer for this Dungeons and Dragons movie and immediately know the broad plot beats: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGvv-Hhft3U Some D&D adventurers stumble into a looming catastrophe they caused, and the Red Wizards of Thay revive Szass Tam. Our plucky misfits have to learn to work together to stop this threat! There's some contractually obligated sequences where they dungeon crawl and fight #iconic D&D monsters. Roll on a d100 table to find out what Forgotten Realms notable gets teased in the mid or end credits stingers for a possible sequel. How do you mix something like this up? You can't, really, so aim to make it a serviceable distraction.
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Feb 21, 2023 04:47
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Kestral posted:Sincerity and a complete lack of irony is also why things like Kingdom Hearts and Undertale work. They’re ridiculous on so many levels, but they take themselves seriously and are made without any attempt to say, “man isn’t it silly to have feelings and care about stuff?” The version of Undertale that goes “lmao isn’t this dumb, we’re better than this amirite guys” never becomes a generation-defining game, it just vanished into the depths of the Steam sale, never to be seen again. In what world does kingdom hearts work and not get ridiculed into the sun for its self serious nonsense? And comparing it to Undertale feels like something that would get a lot of pitchforks out.
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Feb 21, 2023 04:50
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Angrymog posted:And those are just an evolution of the Kits from 2e's brown books. If anything, the direct precedents of PF 1e's archetypes are the endless variant class rules that Paizo published in the last few years of Dragon magazine. 99% of kits don't swap out class features like archetypes do; in post-2e editions' design space, they're effectively replicated by taking a feat or background instead of altering the class chassis itself.
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Feb 21, 2023 04:54
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Bottom Liner posted:In what world does kingdom hearts work and not get ridiculed into the sun for its self serious nonsense? And comparing it to Undertale feels like something that would get a lot of pitchforks out. There is not a single person who would call themselves an Undertale fan that would be offended at the comparison to Kingdom Hearts, grandpa.
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Feb 21, 2023 05:55
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I was cleaning out some old tabs today and noticed that Frog God Games has memory-holed the "Statement by Bill Webb" regarding his alleged misbehavior at PaizoCon 2017, and the later joint statement with BJ Hensley where they made some charitable donations to RAINN in hopes that it would all blow over. The Internet Archive has backup copies, but there's no word on whether he intends to continue abiding by the "must have a company minder" policy Webb set up there.
Cassius Belli fucked around with this message at 06:07 on Feb 21, 2023 |
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Feb 21, 2023 06:03
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Kestral posted:The version of Undertale that goes “lmao isn’t this dumb, we’re better than this amirite guys” never becomes a generation-defining game, it just vanished into the depths of the Steam sale, never to be seen again. Which version is that? Deltarune? Moon?
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Feb 21, 2023 06:06
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hyphz posted:Which version is that? Deltarune? Moon? It's a hypothetical, or if it was real, then it wasn't worthy of notice and might as well be a hypothetical (developer hours aside).
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Feb 21, 2023 08:12
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Bottom Liner posted:In what world does kingdom hearts work and not get ridiculed into the sun for its self serious nonsense? And comparing it to Undertale feels like something that would get a lot of pitchforks out. It gets ridiculed to hell and back, yes - but people still love it. Sometimes the people doing the ridiculing are the same people as the ones who love it, sometimes they aren't. But the existence of ridicule in no way negates the point being made
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Feb 21, 2023 08:40
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i think kingdom hearts is really ridiculous sometimes but like that's part of the charm? like one moment you are running around with disney characters and then in comes some anime villain who spouts something about darkness, kingdom hearts or something and then donald duck shoots a fireball at him.
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Feb 21, 2023 10:34
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There is charm in not taking yourself too seriously. Neither being ironic nor playing straight is a sure recipe for a good movie, and viceversa.
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Feb 21, 2023 10:55
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Bottom Liner posted:In what world does kingdom hearts work and not get ridiculed into the sun for its self serious nonsense? And comparing it to Undertale feels like something that would get a lot of pitchforks out. Its own, which was the point. It is 100% sincere. Yes it's 30 or so virtually indistinguishable anime dorks breathlessly talking about hearts and nobodies and stuff, but there's never a point where anyone is like "Hey, is that Goofy on your team? That's wacky!"
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Feb 21, 2023 15:36
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Kestral posted:Sincerity and a complete lack of irony is also why things like Kingdom Hearts and Undertale work. They’re ridiculous on so many levels, but they take themselves seriously and are made without any attempt to say, “man isn’t it silly to have feelings and care about stuff?” The version of Undertale that goes “lmao isn’t this dumb, we’re better than this amirite guys” never becomes a generation-defining game, it just vanished into the depths of the Steam sale, never to be seen again. When I watched Stranger Things I assumed DnD would be a much bigger part of the plot instead of something that shows up once or twice a season and sharing some names
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Feb 21, 2023 15:44
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Jonathan Thompson, the owner of Battlefield Press (publishers of a ton of stuff) and creator of Eldritch Skies which is one of the more unusual Lovecraftian future games (and the first gaming Kickstarter I ever backed about a decade ago) has passed away. I knew him casually and he was a good, non-cringy guy who genuinely loved gaming.
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Feb 21, 2023 17:40
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theironjef posted:Its own, which was the point. It is 100% sincere. Yes it's 30 or so virtually indistinguishable anime dorks breathlessly talking about hearts and nobodies and stuff, but there's never a point where anyone is like "Hey, is that Goofy on your team? That's wacky!" The closest thing is the point where Goofy finally realises that Mulan is pretending to be a man.
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Feb 21, 2023 17:50
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Iron Heart posted:It's a hypothetical, or if it was real, then it wasn't worthy of notice and might as well be a hypothetical (developer hours aside). It just piqued interest because there was definitely a time when any work with “meta” themes was intrinsically seen as a parody, regardless of how seriously it took itself. Isekai as well. Toby Fox described Undertale as inspired by Moon and Moon was definitely seen as a CRPG parody in spite of having less deliberate laughs than Undertale does. But Donald Duck throwing fireballs was nothing new. Donald canonically served on the frontline in WW2.
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Feb 21, 2023 17:54
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:Jonathan Thompson, the owner of Battlefield Press (publishers of a ton of stuff) and creator of Eldritch Skies which is one of the more unusual Lovecraftian future games (and the first gaming Kickstarter I ever backed about a decade ago) has passed away. I knew him casually and he was a good, non-cringy guy who genuinely loved gaming.
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Feb 21, 2023 18:02
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hyphz posted:It just piqued interest because there was definitely a time when any work with “meta” themes was intrinsically seen as a parody, regardless of how seriously it took itself. Isekai as well. Toby Fox described Undertale as inspired by Moon and Moon was definitely seen as a CRPG parody in spite of having less deliberate laughs than Undertale does. Donald Duck is officially the most powerful mortal mage in the entire Final Fantasy extended canon. Honestly I find that the weird bit given Donald you'd think would be a physical fighter and Mickey literally has an iconic outfit as being a wizard. And they outright have Yen Sid show up. Like, Goofy as a paladin I can get at least.
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Feb 21, 2023 18:28
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Donald Duck is officially the most powerful mortal mage in the entire Final Fantasy extended canon. Donald Duck's most powerful spell has yet to be cast screen. It's only in the pages of old comics.
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Feb 21, 2023 18:42
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Hostile V posted:Oof, shame. One day I'll get around to finding a way to run/play in ES but that's a bummer. I have only run it using the original Cinematic Unisystem it was written around. I haven't looked at the Savage Worlds or 5e versions.
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Feb 21, 2023 21:04
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Donald Duck is officially the most powerful mortal mage in the entire Final Fantasy extended canon. When you're trying to summon mystical power, wearing pants is like grounding yourself from electricity.
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Feb 22, 2023 12:46
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moths posted:Which wasn't a terrible strategy! But Wizards overcorrected and - look, gamers will forgive loving ANYTHING if it means not having to learn a new game. Did any specific person deliberately get harassed or worse? No. Have WotC changed their course before actual damage to people got done? Yes. Have they taken concrete steps to ensure that it will never happen again? They've put the entire thing out under a CC license. I've no problems learning a new game and consider 5e very mediocre but don't see what's left to forgive. And I'm someone who refused to buy any 5e products until they took ZakS and the Pundit out of the PHB.
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Feb 22, 2023 12:47
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Outside of a few "WOTC delena est" people I don't think the aim was ever for d&d to cease existing or anything, but I do think that a reasonable and relatively supportable aim is that more people look towards other systems for playing games, including other systems for playing d&d type games, rather than defaulting to 5e/1dnd
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Feb 22, 2023 12:57
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neonchameleon posted:I've no problems learning a new game and consider 5e very mediocre but don't see what's left to forgive. It's a generalization, and it doesn't sound like especially applicable to you. The biggest brands leverage enough inertia to get away with (nearly) anything. For tabletop gamers, it's some unlucky blend of peer pressure, sunk costs, and the perception that mastering something else is going to be just as Hard as this was. IMO, that's also the underlying reason it's so loving hard to get people to try something new. To players, it's like you're effectively asking a bunch of grad students to take up an undergraduate minor in political science. It's why only WoW could kill WoW. It's why Magic was the only viable TCG for so long, Warhammer can charge $38 for one figure, etc etc. This is, I think, where the value in being the dominant name comes in. By serving as the entry point, new players are learning RPGs through the exclusive context of D&D. The overlap causes some preferences that really never go away. It's how a person's first Doctor Who or James Bond is favorite, why Sega or Nintendo is superior, why WoW is better, etc forever. It's not nostalgia it's not that consumers want to be 12 again. It's that when they were 12, they learned that RPGs and D&D at the same time and they occupy the same mental space. I learned the world of Dr Who and that he's Tom Baker at the same time. So when I saw Colin Baker running around in Dr Who's world, some part of me instinctively feels like something is wrong. So now, some part of the equation is that players asked to try a new brand (wrongly) feel challenged to relearn an entirely new hobby (and get 20 years good at it!) because that's what it took for them to get where they are with the brand leader. I'm probably all over the place, but the TL;DR is that of course you eventually went back to D&D. I did, everybody does. There are so many more forces urging stagnation than progress, and that's something brand leaders can literally bank on.
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Feb 22, 2023 13:48
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So if you don't read the kickstarter there you might not have heard, but it seems industry related. https://twitter.com/Andy_Morocco/status/1627178756639956995 Wormwood had an employee complain to management that a sexual assault took place. They then fired the complainant and the alleged aggressor, without even doing much of an investigation to find out where the incident took place (in their media room in their workplace) or talking to the victim (who wasn't an employee but got assaulted at a staff workplace Christmas party). And they just released a video that clearly shows the CEO committed victimization on the guy who complained about the assault. They released their video because other companies they do business with started asking about it. Given past performances of the CEO (didn't he step down LAST time there was a scandal?) probably won't suffer any damage, going on the very positive YouTube comments he's getting. Comstar fucked around with this message at 14:09 on Feb 22, 2023 |
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Feb 22, 2023 14:06
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Comstar posted:https://twitter.com/Andy_Morocco/status/1627178756639956995 https://twitter.com/starkidmack/status/1627892346212982784?t=-iZtuRg3tu7Oeiac5aOhtA&s=19 I remember the video about him having a giant baby tantrum about having to adhere to basic employment law, it completely changed my perception of the company.
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Feb 22, 2023 15:01
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Comstar posted:So if you don't read the kickstarter there you might not have heard, but it seems industry related. Reading the transcript of that video, yikes! My favorite is probably their addendum that states their investigation now (not three years ago when this went down) uncovered that the “alleged incident” took place on “company grounds.” How the gently caress do you do an investigation of an alleged sexual assault by an employee and never ask whether it happened in the workplace? Also, not a great look when they state that both fired employees had a history of toxic behavior. That’s not really justification when the company was aware of and had apparently done nothing about employees with his history of toxic behavior until it escalated to something that could hurt business. Toxic behavior in the workplace shouldn’t be tolerated to begin with; these guys seem to have a history of it themselves. Also giving the hairy eyeball to this assault being “alleged” after three separate complaints from three employees, plus whatever their investigation uncovered, plus they fired the accused employee.
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Feb 22, 2023 17:21
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NeurosisHead posted:the CEO is a quiverful libertarian that got rich by being an early crypto enthusiast and hates OSHA and healthcare, it's a pretty short jump imo
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Feb 22, 2023 17:31
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My main questions are still: Why is Doug apparently getting final say in this when he is pretty heavily implicated in the cover up, and what the gently caress difference does it matter if the victim was an employee or not?
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Feb 22, 2023 17:48
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quote:ADDENDUM: In the course of this investigation (3 years post-alleged incident) we discovered that the event had allegedly taken place on company grounds. Management was NOT aware of that fact at the time, and we are following up with local authorities now quote:CORRECTION: After further investigation, the CEO did indeed receive an email a week following the incident, which noted the event was on company property. The CEO missed that detail, and was incorrect in stating we were not notified of the location until present day Jesus Christ.
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Feb 22, 2023 20:01
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