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jivjov posted:Oh I know. I just personally don't want it in my possession any longer. remusclaw posted:Sell it in an ebay lot with a couple of 3rd party D20 books. If you have a Half Price Books nearby they give a surprisingly good value for used RPG stuff. I actually made money on a crate of old d20 glut when I got rid of it all. Edit: Really, top of the page? Edited in the posts I was responding to.
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Jul 28, 2016 05:21
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jivjov posted:I am incredibly late to the discussion, and only know who Zak S is based off the posts on the last few pages...I've decided that I don't ever want to support him or his endeavours...but I see people mentioning Urban Shadows a lot in relation to him and I'm not seeing his name anywhere in the credits or acknowledgements or anything. Could someone tell me (preferably via PM; I have zero intention of starting a random thread tangent) what exactly his involvement was? From what I've heard about him, it seems worth it to purge the volume from my collection if he's some kind of major contributor. Magpie Games publushed Urban Shadows. The founder of Magpie Games is Mark Diaz Truman, and he's the person that wrote the blog post that started this whole shebang by being an apologist for Zak S' behavior. Haystack posted:Ok, reading the thread I think I have a pretty good idea of Zak's misdeeds as a harasser and demagogue, but I don't have a good feel for what his works are like. Someone want to give an executive overview (or link an article that does)? I skimmed Vornheim once, and I learned exactly one useful thing from it: When trying to come up with a basic dungeon layout, roll a d10. Then, write the result as a word, like say TEN That's your layout - the adventurers start in a corridor from the upper left corner of the T, and the first room is the intersection heading south and east. The room at the bottom of the T is a dead-end, but going to east will take you to another room at the upper left of the E, and so on.
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Jul 28, 2016 08:18
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Looking at Cam Banks in the comments of that piece still trying to be nice and conciliatory is really depressing. I mean, the dude has been pretty much the exemplar of the kind of civil behaviour Mark claims to want and look where it's gotten him. He tried being nice to Zak and playing by his rules and it went nowhere. And now a supposed friend and colleague is claiming he's letting down the industry for having the audacity to show solidarity with friends and victims of harassment. I can believe Mark's post came from a good place but the sheer lack of empathy it displays would be impressive if it weren't gross. Behaving like people's issues with Zak are that he Likes Bad Elfgames or is making good faith attempts at progressive RPG publications that sometimes miss the mark (the basis of his whole "before we criticise the OSR, let us look at our own sins" bit) is amazing in how it trivialises people's actual reasons.
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Jul 28, 2016 08:41
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Saguaro PI posted:I can believe Mark's post came from a good place but the sheer lack of empathy it displays would be impressive if it weren't gross. This is why I'm not inclined to be charitable towards the guy. Like Cirno said, the entire thing led off with him publicly throwing his friend and ostensible colleague under the bus using his company website as a soapbox to do so. Earlier in this discussion someone brought up that maybe opting to part ways with Robert Bohl was a reasonable decision from a "professionalism" standpoint but absolutely nothing about how Diaz has decided to handle this is professional in the slightest. If he does decide to issue some sort of followup I'm expecting the most tepid, anemic, and cowardly attempt to eat his cake and have it too, making sure everyone understands that of course the people who are upset with Zak have their reasons (which he will, of course, not expound upon because that would be rude) and he's very sorry if they were offended by what he said (but not sorry enough to retract it) but that he's still right.
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Jul 28, 2016 08:49
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Lightning Lord fucked around with this message at 07:54 on Aug 25, 2016 |
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Jul 28, 2016 09:25
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Lightning Lord posted:I hope no one jumps on his back for agreeing it might have been lovely to inadvertently time the walkout to when Stacy Dellorfano was making her speech, and that it's not very good if people are perceiving the walkout to have been about him. It's cool. I haven't posted anything in those comments. I don't blame him for trying to be civil, I just think it's a heartbreaking display in how Doing It Right can just not go anywhere sometimes. And I'm more than a bit annoyed at Mark for acting like Cam Banks, of all people, is an example of Doing It Wrong.
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Jul 28, 2016 09:46
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Kai Tave posted:This is why I'm not inclined to be charitable towards the guy. Like Cirno said, the entire thing led off with him publicly throwing his friend and ostensible colleague under the bus using his company website as a soapbox to do so. Earlier in this discussion someone brought up that maybe opting to part ways with Robert Bohl was a reasonable decision from a "professionalism" standpoint but absolutely nothing about how Diaz has decided to handle this is professional in the slightest. If he does decide to issue some sort of followup I'm expecting the most tepid, anemic, and cowardly attempt to eat his cake and have it too, making sure everyone understands that of course the people who are upset with Zak have their reasons (which he will, of course, not expound upon because that would be rude) and he's very sorry if they were offended by what he said (but not sorry enough to retract it) but that he's still right. I mean, he's already trying this with that dumb "don't assume I'm defending Zak" bit while also talking about how awesome and feminist and totally not a transphobe Zak is while outright calling honest criticism of his behaviour lies.
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Jul 28, 2016 09:48
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Kai Tave posted:If he does decide to issue some sort of followup I'm expecting the most tepid, anemic, and cowardly attempt to eat his cake and have it too (i.e. "I'm so wise and above it all, harassers and harassees are equally to blame for the current state of events, my gutless kumbaya bluberring makes me the natural heir to King Solomon")
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Jul 28, 2016 11:37
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Threaten to cut the industry in half, whoever quits the internet in disgust is the true heir to Gygax.... But they've left the internet so give it to the lovely guy who's favor I'm inexplicably courting.
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Jul 28, 2016 14:06
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Mostly I'm just laughing now because Grimjim came in to the convo on the Magpie games site itself (Comments are, apparently, still open there, if not on Google+) and was all "White supremacists are more sympathetic to me than so-called SJWs!" GEE I WONDER WHY THAT IS.
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Jul 28, 2016 15:49
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unseenlibrarian posted:Mostly I'm just laughing now because Grimjim came in to the convo on the Magpie games site itself (Comments are, apparently, still open there, if not on Google+) and was all "White supremacists are more sympathetic to me than so-called SJWs!" I love how he refers to this white nationalist as "open-minded". Y'know those Nazis: always so tolerant of other ideologies and willing to listen to opposing viewpoints.
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Jul 28, 2016 15:57
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FMguru posted:My prediction: Boy, that last thing I wrote sure generated a lot of strong feelings! We should probably all try to cool it a notch or twelve. There's clearly a lot of blame to go around. Things would be so much better if everyone just chilled out and remember that it's all supposed to be about having fun with elf games, not fighting culture wars! Okay, I'm gonna fully admit, I'm giving the man the benefit of the doubt, because making a poorly thought out blog post is easy. If you know nothing about the depths of Zak S, then it's easy to pretend that he's just a normal bad actor in our hobby. There are already lots of those. Given that I made a similar blog post back when livejournal was a thing to a smaller group that didn't matter (deleted because even 20-year-old me realized after the fact that I got too deep in my own head and up my own rear end), I'd rather assume that people are having moments of stupidity and be proven wrong every time in this hobby rather than the alternative of dismissing people as eternal fuckups for their first strike. Call me an optimist.
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Jul 28, 2016 16:02
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unseenlibrarian posted:Mostly I'm just laughing now because Grimjim came in to the convo on the Magpie games site itself (Comments are, apparently, still open there, if not on Google+) and was all "White supremacists are more sympathetic to me than so-called SJWs!" Fun fact - Mearls has made the exact same argument! thelazyblank posted:Okay, I'm gonna fully admit, I'm giving the man the benefit of the doubt, because making a poorly thought out blog post is easy. If you know nothing about the depths of Zak S, then it's easy to pretend that he's just a normal bad actor in our hobby. There are already lots of those. For me, the thing that separates this - well, other then the fact that Truman isn't some 20 year old on his Livejournal - is that this actively involved making GBS threads on his friend and using him as a vehicle to display his own self-righteousness. This wasn't him just randomly trying to appear above it all and make a bland placation of "can't we all just get along," this involved him intentionally surfing his friend's body through the street. For me, that's what takes this from "well meaning but slightly ignorant" to "actually malicious." You don't get to claim you didn't mean to stir up problems when you just threw your friend into a wood chipper. And I will reiterate - I cannot understand people who see this and remain his friend. He's just shown exactly how little that means.
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Jul 28, 2016 16:09
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ProfessorCirno posted:For me, the thing that separates this - well, other then the fact that Truman isn't some 20 year old on his Livejournal - is that this actively involved making GBS threads on his friend and using him as a vehicle to display his own self-righteousness. This wasn't him just randomly trying to appear above it all and make a bland placation of "can't we all just get along," this involved him intentionally surfing his friend's body through the street. For me, that's what takes this from "well meaning but slightly ignorant" to "actually malicious." You don't get to claim you didn't mean to stir up problems when you just threw your friend into a wood chipper. And I will reiterate - I cannot understand people who see this and remain his friend. He's just shown exactly how little that means. Because you get a bug up your rear end. You feel like the world's a bad place and you think one blog post will make everything better. It's dumb, but it's the sign of someone thinking they're having a moment with God or something similar, but instead you're just having a wank and you don't realize it until you're done, there's a mess and now you have to clean up. It feels good to be self-righteous. When you get in that zone, you think you can do no wrong, despite the fact that you're throwing people under the bus left right and center and you're doing nothing good. Some of us I'm happy to look like an idiot if he gives some  response to all this, and then he'll probably lose my business. But as someone who's done the same poo poo, who's held my own friends to higher standards than I should in an rear end in a top hat manner and felt miserable about it after the fact, I'm giving him a chance. Call me naive for thinking that two to three hours of someone's life doesn't define them as a person, even if they're dumb enough to broadcast it to the entire internet, but this is how I live with the hobby we have, toxicity and all.
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Jul 28, 2016 16:30
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I'm going to admit that I'm giving Truman time to see how he responds to the fallout for pretty much the same reason as thelazyblank: I've done something similar, saying something hurtful under the guise of "can't we just ignore this problem and play games?". And while I'm just Some Dude on the internet and it was just something I posted to my G+ circles (as opposed to a known industry person making a public statement), it was still a lovely thing for me to say and do. It was Mikan who put me in my place (quite deservedly), because what I said hurt her directly. And this was after she took a chance on me to write for Inverse World so I managed to score the double-rear end in a top hat combo modifier there. Now, I can sit here and say that my statement was due to overload of seeing bad behavior, or the shitshow I was going through at work at the time, and so on. But at the end of the day I said something ignorant and hurtful, and ended up hurting someone who I respected. Thank whichever god you care to name that when that happened, I managed to self-examine and realize what I'd done and how bad it was. It's not easy to do, because when someone calls you out on something like this your first instinct is to lock down into defense mode and probably double-down. But while I still regret the hurt I inflicted, I try to take the long view that it was important that it happened, because it helped me understand exactly how what you think is a call to peace is really just being a douche. So I'm hoping that's what happens here, and that Mark sees how much his post hurt people, and how the difference of what you think you're saying and what you actually said can affect other people.
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Jul 28, 2016 17:28
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thelazyblank posted:I'm happy to look like an idiot if he gives some From what I see here, no one is saying it defines him as a person. Very publicly throwing a comrade under a bus on your business blog is a very, very unprofessional thing to do. If he had an issue with this guy he could have just settled it between the three of them. Instead he wrote a thousand words on how we all need to be nice to each other no matter what. If you play apologist for the shitheads then you're culpable. It's a pity, I was kinda looking forward to Urban Shadows.
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Jul 28, 2016 17:34
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Zurui posted:From what I see here, no one is saying it defines him as a person. Very publicly throwing a comrade under a bus on your business blog is a very, very unprofessional thing to do. If he had an issue with this guy he could have just settled it between the three of them. Instead he wrote a thousand words on how we all need to be nice to each other no matter what. Making future decisions based on a single flashpoint is defining him in some way. Even if he fully and unreservedly apologizes for talking out of his rear end, it's true that it's going to affect his future business choices and he's going to have to live with that no matter what. It was unprofessional. He might lose future business for it, etc. But right there, you're saying "I'm not going to buy a thing because someone made a single extremely horrible decision". I can't live like that in this hobby. Jack Norris, one of the people working on the pretty-good Tianxia kickstarter, is a man I once thought was an rear end in a top hat beyond my willingness to give him money. I had multiple conversations with him, and most of them ended with me thinking "wow, he's a jerk". But over time, I've seen him change enough that I felt like buying from him was alright, because we both got older and, while we aren't in the same circles anymore, we both did change. Maybe I just have a high tolerance for assholery before it affects my business decisions. Maybe I'm too willing to forgive mistakes if the person who does them treat them like mistakes. Everyone has a line they need to draw for themselves on what they feel is boycott worthy. I'm setting that line on what he does next.
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Jul 28, 2016 18:03
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That's the power of an apology. I'm not holding my breath for a reversal, though.
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Jul 28, 2016 18:07
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Mike's response after this will determine whether or not people are going to buy his product, and whether or not people are going to want to be associated with him. I fall under this camp; Urban Shadows looks interesting, but if Mike isn't going to apologize for his actions then I'm going to want nothing to do with him or his products.
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Jul 28, 2016 18:17
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thelazyblank posted:Making future decisions based on a single flashpoint is defining him in some way. Even if he fully and unreservedly apologizes for talking out of his rear end, it's true that it's going to affect his future business choices and he's going to have to live with that no matter what. It was unprofessional. He might lose future business for it, etc. The point is that dragging what someone did privately out into the light and publicly shaming them for while glorifying yourself for being an even handed mediator is sort of what Zak S does. And him dissociating himself from a supposed friend scans to me like a very measured business move to court Zak S's rabid OSR supporters.
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Jul 28, 2016 18:34
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Honestly I kinda suspect he got Zak S'd himself and just doesn't realize how the dude works. Like "Got an tip from someone deniably not Zak that "Hey, your collaborator is going on a real tear against another game dev, that's super unprofessional, maybe you should say something" and since, of course, like half or more of what the guy was replying to was deleted it probably looked like someone having a breakdown.
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Jul 28, 2016 18:42
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Lightning Lord fucked around with this message at 07:53 on Aug 25, 2016 |
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Jul 28, 2016 19:08
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Kurieg posted:The point is that dragging what someone did privately out into the light and publicly shaming them for while glorifying yourself for being an even handed mediator is sort of what Zak S does. And him dissociating himself from a supposed friend scans to me like a very measured business move to court Zak S's rabid OSR supporters. It's something that he does, but it's not really "what he does."
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Jul 28, 2016 21:12
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thelazyblank posted:Making future decisions based on a single flashpoint is defining him in some way. Even if he fully and unreservedly apologizes for talking out of his rear end, it's true that it's going to affect his future business choices and he's going to have to live with that no matter what. It was unprofessional. He might lose future business for it, etc. Here's the thing, when it comes to elfgames I'm not starved for choice. If I decide I don't want to give Magpie my money after this I'm not cutting off my nose to spite my face and consigning myself to a hell of warmed over 3.5 forever, even if we limit things to *World hacks specifically. I can afford, and am perfectly happy, to not patronize Magpie Games because of "an extremely horrible decision" because there are plenty of publishers who at the very least have the good graces to keep their extremely horrible decisions private instead of smearing someone they claim to be a friend in public like an rear end in a top hat, and in the extremely limited and largely insignificant ways afforded to me as a consumer, I choose not to reward lovely behavior wherever I can.
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Jul 28, 2016 21:52
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Mark just posted a short followup: https://plus.google.com/+MarkDiazTruman/posts/2aRBa37wEtf
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Jul 28, 2016 23:17
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Caedar posted:Mark just posted a short followup: https://plus.google.com/+MarkDiazTruman/posts/2aRBa37wEtf At face value, this looks good. Basically "oh poo poo, I did not know everything that was going on. Lemme reassess a bit"
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Jul 28, 2016 23:20
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Caedar posted:Mark just posted a short followup: https://plus.google.com/+MarkDiazTruman/posts/2aRBa37wEtf "Oh well, uhhh hey it looks like I may have really stepped in it here, huh folks? Turns out when you stick up for a serial harasser, people have a lot to say about it." *wrings hands* "I'm just gonna need a little more time before I can find an appropriate way to cover my rear end here, so you all just hang tight. Trust me, I've been listening, and and excuses are forthcoming." *tugs at collar* "And there's no way I would work with the man I wrote a whole post defending. No way at all. Just gonna slip on out this back door here, no, I'll totally be back soon with a good explanation for all the terrible poo poo I said. Real quick, I'll be right back." If this dude doesn't actually come up with an apology before the end of the week I'll be pulling my Masks pledge.
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Jul 28, 2016 23:49
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I've met and worked with Mark Diaz-Truman, and from my interactions with him, I'm willing to give him a little benefit of the doubt. If he doesn't put up a major apology, and soon, that benefit of the doubt will be extinguished. I can only hope that he had been insulated from Zak S' behavior and action, and thus acted out of ignorance rather than out of tone policing. But time will tell. No matter whether or not he apologies, I am deeply disappointed and will be more wary of supporting Magpie games in the future. And for what it's worth, Robert Bohl is a friend of a friend, and I've heard nothing but amazing things about both him and Mispent Youth, so if he winds up self-publishing, I would definitely recommend picking it up.
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Jul 28, 2016 23:59
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Meinberg posted:I've met and worked with Mark Diaz-Truman, and from my interactions with him, I'm willing to give him a little benefit of the doubt. He's unfortunately just yet another well-intentioned, sheltered idiot with geek social fallacy up the wazoo, so regardless of how nice or sensible his opinions normally are, this is the end result. 
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Jul 29, 2016 01:24
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In other TG industry news: http://www.polygon.com/2016/7/28/12309084/dungeons-dragons-virtual-tabletop-ios-android-tablet-roll20-browser-online quote:Roll20, one of the most popular virtual tabletop solutions, will now offer officially licensed Dungeons & Dragons content from Wizards of the Coast. The browser-based software includes both video and voice chat, and even integrates with Google Hangouts. A version will also be available for iOS and Android tablets. I'm surprised they did this considering they're already also licensed to Fantasy Grounds. I imagine FG was probably far too expensive to have made an impact.
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Jul 29, 2016 06:08
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At the least it's a move that both makes financial sense and jibes with WotC's current "gently caress it, let's just be lazy and subcontract everything" policy. In this case, they've got a ready-made platform that requires little effort on any given actor, which for them is a nice contrast to the headaches of the previous digital initiatives of 4E and 5E. (DDI still made them a fair bit of money, but likely not as much as they wanted due to certain features getting shelved after the infamous murder-suicide of a developer.)
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Jul 29, 2016 07:01
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Fantasy Grounds is loving awful in my experience, at least with 5E. I've played in a few sessions of it and every time we have to spend quite a bit of time just getting the drat thing to work. Corrupt cache files, connection problems, figuring out the weird interface, etc.
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Jul 29, 2016 18:48
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I saw that, and couldn't help but think that this is going to lead to Roll20 monetizing playing D&D in some way. I'm not sure how they would, and maybe that's unfair to WotC. Their not GW, but I vaguely remember them doing stuff crappy in the past in this vein.
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Jul 29, 2016 19:20
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Foolster41 posted:I saw that, and couldn't help but think that this is going to lead to Roll20 monetizing playing D&D in some way. I'm not sure how they would, and maybe that's unfair to WotC. Their not GW, but I vaguely remember them doing stuff crappy in the past in this vein. I don't think it's going to be any better or worse than Roll20 currently is. They have their special galleries which already have a cost, they have subscriptions for better features, they already monetize playing RPGs on there in useful but not required ways. If they start charging people to try and play DnD, the most likely result is a lot of people filing their games under Pathfinder or Other while using homemade macros to keep playing their DnD games for free if they so desire. They could try locking that down, but it's so easy to start a new game that I doubt the effort would be worth it for Roll20. I also doubt they're getting a big enough cut from the sales to police this willingly, because that's less money for WotC.
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Jul 29, 2016 19:36
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Digital modules that are compatible with roll20 are a great idea. Especially if they find some way to implement premade tokens and maps for the campaign. I could see that becoming a huge selling point of running games in roll20 and even encourage other companies to make similar digital products.
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Jul 29, 2016 20:02
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Yeah a module with all the assets you would need on roll20 is a great business idea. Whether you can sell enough to make back your expenses is something we probably won't find out for a while though.
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Jul 29, 2016 20:05
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Kwyndig posted:Yeah a module with all the assets you would need on roll20 is a great business idea. Whether you can sell enough to make back your expenses is something we probably won't find out for a while though. The upside of roll20 modules is they'd be account-tied, too, I imagine. So you couldn't buy one module and share it like a pdf or share/sell like a physical book. Port the module and assets, make sure it all works and put it up on a web store for as long as you please. People might even buy them just to have nice high-quality (I hope) tokens and maps for all their games.
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Jul 29, 2016 20:13
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Nuns with Guns posted:The upside of roll20 modules is they'd be account-tied, too, I imagine. So you couldn't buy one module and share it like a pdf or share/sell like a physical book. Port the module and assets, make sure it all works and put it up on a web store for as long as you please. People might even buy them just to have nice high-quality (I hope) tokens and maps for all their games. Yep. Roll20 sells modules like this already, the big announcement is the official D&D adventures are being presented as one. I don't buy them, but from what I've seen of them they look pretty great.
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Jul 29, 2016 20:28
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Speaking of Vornheim...it just popped up in the current Bundle Of Holding. On a whim, I contacted the BoH Facebook page and suggested they not give Zak S any exposure due to his actions. Sadly, the canned response I got back was "Vornheim the book isn't objectionable and has provoked no complaints."
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Jul 30, 2016 00:50
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clockworkjoe posted:Fantasy Grounds is loving awful in my experience, at least with 5E. I've played in a few sessions of it and every time we have to spend quite a bit of time just getting the drat thing to work. Corrupt cache files, connection problems, figuring out the weird interface, etc. That was pretty much my experience as well. FG is okay if you're like playing absolutely by the book since everything is laid out and precalculated for you, but roll20 is so much more plug-and-play. Foolster41 posted:I saw that, and couldn't help but think that this is going to lead to Roll20 monetizing playing D&D in some way. I'm not sure how they would, and maybe that's unfair to WotC. Their not GW, but I vaguely remember them doing stuff crappy in the past in this vein. It'll be fine I think. If they ever price it too high people will just go back to using roll20 as a whiteboard, shared dice roller and voice chat connectivity.
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Jul 30, 2016 02:54
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