theironjef posted:

You're right, thanks for that.

I'm just saying that poo poo a known Grognard doesn't isn't automatically grog. Having a fanbase that hates a guy for not liking a film franchise is pretty far removed from gettin' salty over elfgames. It's more like a headline of "Breaking news: Known public rear end in a top hat still rear end in a top hat."

Terrible Opinions posted:

It just seems like weirdly politicized terminology. Like when Ubisoft PR guys were harassed over Assassin's Creed not having women in one game. Like I wouldn't claim that the journos who confronted the initial guys "sicced a harassment mob" on all other Ubisoft PR guys, but the actual events are identical. Twitter feed full of angry people hating you and telling you to kill yourself. Though this could just be that I hate Ubisoft and don't naturally use sympathetic language toward them.

theironjef posted:

You're right, thanks for that.

I'm just saying that poo poo a known Grognard doesn't isn't automatically grog. Having a fanbase that hates a guy for not liking a film franchise is pretty far removed from gettin' salty over elfgames. It's more like a headline of "Breaking news: Known public rear end in a top hat still rear end in a top hat."

FRINGE posted:

Potentially doing more for RPGs than SA ever will.

The only thing I know about that guy is "I hit it with my axe" and the article on on combat-as-sport that people here hated, but yeah, Its ironic that SA is calling someone on having followers. Although it looks like most of the people (or at least the regdates) in the thread are 2008+, and maybe they dont remember when Lowtax could shove around the internet using "goon justice".

Like Zak sounds like a dick, but this thread is literally dedicated to trolling things they dont agree with. There were posters here that used to brag about how they would go to other sites and get banned for being assholes. Then other people would follow them over there and follow up.

Like really, no ?

Error 404 posted:

It's not impossible that most of us who did that poo poo back then have since come to realize how hosed up doing that poo poo was, and have since stopped.

Just because we used to do that stuff doesn't mean we should condone it now

Error 404 posted:

There's also a couple tiny points to be made.

1. I don't recall us sending death threats to people (prank calls and goatse yeah) and doxxing people (aka internet detectiving as it was called back then) was always bannable.

2. It's not impossible that most of us who did that poo poo back then have since come to realize how hosed up doing that poo poo was, and have since stopped.


Just because we used to do that stuff doesn't mean we should condone it now, and I'd argue the poo poo going on right now is worse than back in the day when a goon told a lady she was making heaven too loving crowded with her poison womb.

Error 404 posted:

Just because we used to do that stuff doesn't mean we should condone it now, and I'd argue the poo poo going on right now is worse than back in the day when a goon told a lady she was making heaven too loving crowded with her poison womb.

FRINGE posted:

If everyone is on the same page with you then I agree.

Error 404 posted:

Here in trad games on sa? I feel pretty confident.
On SA as a whole? Most of the really bad ones left for 4chan, reddit, something sensitive long ago but there are enough goobergate dudes around that I have to admit we're statistically like to have goons who are just fine with doxxing.

Terrible Opinions posted:

I really hope you're not trying to claim a rapist isn't as bad as internet harassers because he isn't raping people right now. Polanski should have been hanged and no amount of not raping someone will change that.

paradoxGentleman posted:

The impression I got from reading that was that he meant that it's okay to like and support things that a dead rear end in a top hat produces, because that money does not support his rear end in a top hat lifestyle and encourage him to act like an rear end in a top hat; whereas ignoring Zak's... let's be generous and call them political views because you like what he produces as a TTG developper means supporting that kind of activity.

Bedlamdan posted:

Polite disagree. If anything, crappy people know they can just buy their way back in with and the userbase hasn't really changed all that much since the good old bad days, instead just couching what they do in progressive language. Helldump was the worst for that sort of thing, but it's kind of consistent. I don't think it's much, if at all, a problem with SA TG, mind you, but GBS right now is kind of a shining example of how this never really went away.

The people leaving are usually either bored with SA, or the weird/quiet sperglords who were basically bullied out.

quote:

If We Don't Define the OSR, Ron Edwards Will - 10-05-2015, 08:22 PM
Currently Smoking: Lorenzetti quiete + Dunhill 965
Not only will he define it, but he'll simultaneously claim:
a) it doesn't actually exist
and
b) inasmuch as it does exist, HE was actually the sole architect responsible for its existence.

It sounds loving cretinous, right? But there we have it, the King gently caress Swine of all pseudo-intellectual swinery has claimed it, when he briefly crawled out of whatever rock he's been hiding under to give an interview with "runas explosivas" (who interviewed me first, though I'm sure that had nothing to do with his motives), where in this interview he said all kinds of insulting and stupid things. Things like ""Old school" is a marketing term and is neither old nor an identifiable single way to play". And that absolutely anything good about the OSR is "all the Forge".

And frankly, this unmitigated bullshit is possible because of how Edwards is choosing to define the OSR. Ron Edwards, at least in what has to do with gaming, has been absolutely wrong, and proven absolutely useless, in every aspect of his intellectual approach to RPGs in his entire life. His "success" at being the King Swine, and at creating a movement that for a while posed an enormous threat to regular RPGs (and whose ideas even managed to hijack one edition, the least successful and most despised edition, of D&D), is largely due to the fact that he has always been a master at precisely one single thing: the manipulation of language.

I can claim to have invented the Burrito, if I successfully redefine "burrito" as the mix of olives, chorizo, sharp cheese and potato chips in a lehmeyun wrap, and successfully 'undefine' anything people formerly understood as a "burrito". That's exactly what Ron Edwards does. Its standard university training these days of a bullshit pseudo-academic, following the examples of the deconstructionists.

poo poo, don't take my word for it, read the interview. He TAKES PRIDE in how he manipulated language to try to turn around the CENTRAL PURPOSE of RPG play (Immersion) into something utterly irrelevant to his NEW definition of what an "RPG" supposedly does and is about, and even gloats about how he used the equivalent of Linguistic Terrorism to deconstruct the idea of "GM" to the point that the most important power-structure of Regular roleplaying could be effectively neutered (and replaced by the "Genius Game Designer").

And this is what he does with the OSR in the interview, in order to take credit for it even as he simultaneously insults the notion that the OSR is anything other than 'marketing'. He just twists around and reinvents the structure and context of the word so that it means what HE wants it to mean, so that he can actually (absurdly) take credit for a movement that holds Rulings, not Rules as its central motto (and is therefore the antithesis of everything the Forge ever actually stood for, as the cult of Trained and Forge-Certified Genius Designers making Perfect Theory-Based Games that must then never ever be allowed to be "ruined" by Evil Unwashed-masses GMs, who must be stopped at all costs from ever being allowed to act outside of the Designer's Sacred Rules because "SYSTEM MATTERS").

So, here is your proof, of why it matters that within the OSR we create a set of boundaries, of Landmark-definitions that, at the very least, prevent the hijacking of old-school by the likes of Edwards. There are times when it is necessary, even vital, to define the OSR; particularly when others are trying to define something as "this is OSR" when it is clearly not (that is, going beyond the landmarks of what old-school design really is) or trying to define something as "this is not OSR" when it clearly is (that is, well within the landmarks of old-school design).

Otherwise, Ron Edwards would be right about the OSR not being anything other than a marketing logo (that, therefore, ANYONE could use for ANYTHING, like he just tried to do).
But he's not right (and thank Mordenkainen for that; I wouldn't want to live in the universe where he was), because we in the OSR all know when we're seeing something that is OSR, and when we're being bullshitted at. You can argue within the movement about what is "real" old school or not, but the visceral reaction all old-schoolers would feel when some rear end in a top hat on rpgnet tries to claim that "FATE run in a dungeon is totally an OSR game" gives proof to the fact that the definition of qualities, of landmarks, exists. The OSR IS a definable thing, I just reject reactionary small-tent definitions as much as I reject post-modernist 'the OSR is whatever you feel like' definitions that are all too often opportunistic moves on the part of non-old-school designers to try to get more sales for their obviously-not-old-school games by calling those games "OSR". Or of piece-of-poo poo pseudo-intellectual architects of failed, disproven 'theories' to try to somehow define their way out their track record of total fuckups.


RPGPundit

(October 5, 2014)

"Umberto Eco posted:

Followers feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. “However, the followers of Ur-Fascism must also be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”

paradoxGentleman posted:

Who is King gently caress Swine supposed to be?

Error 404 posted:

Helldump was the worst, and thankfully the last gasp for a lot of that organized poo poo. GBS is a pool of poo poo, but posting imgay a million times a day doesn't seem on the same level as going out threatening folks.

Bedlamdan posted:

Ron Edwards, who wrote Sorcerer and had an idea for how games could be coded into Gamist/Narrative/Simulationist, and hasn't done anything relevant since then, if ever depending on how much of a poo poo you give about GNS theory.

Which I do not, which makes the antipathy for him even more bizarre to me.

Bedlamdan posted:

Ron Edwards, who wrote Sorcerer and had an idea for how games could be coded into Gamist/Narrative/Simulationist, and hasn't done anything relevant since then, if ever depending on how much of a poo poo you give about GNS theory.

Which I do not, which makes the antipathy for him even more bizarre to me.

Rand Brittain posted:

Is it? I mean, Zak is banned from basically everywhere but he still manages to have a fanbase and make a living. I don't actually see how you could isolate him much more than he is without having literally 100% of roleplaying enthusiasts agree to pretend they can't see him. I guess he's "isolated" but not so isolated that he isn't still in business.

ProfessorCirno posted:

He isn't just getting work from randos and doing indie poo poo though. He was hired on to make 5e - and was repeatedly publically defended by Mearls who, from what I've seen, still has yet to denounce him.

People talk poo poo about this industry using him as an example because regardless of where he has been banned, he's very clearly still deeply connected in the industry. People IN the hobby have tried to state "no, we're loving done with him." But that doesn't matter so long as the big dog that makes up the industry is still very much not done with him.

ProfessorCirno posted:

He isn't just getting work from randos and doing indie poo poo though. He was hired on to make 5e - and was repeatedly publically defended by Mearls who, from what I've seen, still has yet to denounce him.

People talk poo poo about this industry using him as an example because regardless of where he has been banned, he's very clearly still deeply connected in the industry. People IN the hobby have tried to state "no, we're loving done with him." But that doesn't matter so long as the big dog that makes up the industry is still very much not done with him.

Slimnoid posted:

He's connected to both Mearls and Raggi, two big names in the industry, and unless/until both of them stop working with the guy he's not going to leave.

Everyone else has made the smart move and consider him a leper, but even combined they can't equal those two people in terms of influence.

Error 404 posted:

E:^^ yeah the prank calls and poo poo were like 10 years ago. Most of us cut that poo poo long ago.


Here in trad games on sa? I feel pretty confident.
On SA as a whole? Most of the really bad ones left for 4chan, reddit, something sensitive long ago but there are enough goobergate dudes around that I have to admit we're statistically like to have goons who are just fine with doxxing.

Bedlamdan posted:

No, I think that part was Gau.

To be fair, Gau also got shat on by Zak over that argument, multiple times.

Nuns with Guns posted:

Only Gau was saying that Zak was sexist for saying the group of women he plays with don't do math well because Gau is horrible trash

Mikan at the time was trying to offer suggestions to Zak about how to post without it descending into an argument where everyone only half-understands one another and everyone gets mad. I think it was also over his own blog posts not on the grogs threads? Unsolicited posting advice may not be welcome to most people, but nothing Mikan did warranted being outed, stalked, or harassed years after the fact. Mikan had already left SA by the time there was a big blowup with Zak being a 5e paid consultant, but for some reason she became one of the main targets of blame for it all. The call-out post where Mandy outed Mikan was allegedly accidental (in that they claim didn't know she'd transitioned at that point), but even if that's the case she didn't do much to correct it or apologize for it other than edit some of personal info about Mikan out of her call-out post. Some of the more vocal Zak/Mandy supporters even said Mikan deserved it, wasn't really trans, or that it was okay to do and no one stepped in to stop that afaik.

FRINGE posted:

Like Zak sounds like a dick, but this thread is literally dedicated to trolling things they dont agree with. There were posters here that used to brag about how they would go to other sites and get banned for being assholes. Then other people would follow them over there and follow up.

Like really, no ?

ProfessorCirno posted:

He isn't just getting work from randos and doing indie poo poo though. He was hired on to make 5e - and was repeatedly publically defended by Mearls who, from what I've seen, still has yet to denounce him.

People talk poo poo about this industry using him as an example because regardless of where he has been banned, he's very clearly still deeply connected in the industry. People IN the hobby have tried to state "no, we're loving done with him." But that doesn't matter so long as the big dog that makes up the industry is still very much not done with him.

quote:

I'm curious how claiming people you don't know are virgins based on what, their internet habits and writing style is somehow "reportage"?

I can think of no other possible explanation for their behavior, can you? Like if the cockpit of a dc-10 suddenly appears where your bedroom wall used to be it only makes sense to assume a plane just crashed.

Bedlamdan posted:

Which I do not, which makes the antipathy for him even more bizarre to me.

Nuns with Guns posted:

she started getting death and rape threats. The GBS thread was also full of comments about her lying about her illness and other stuff, which we'd brush off as normal GBS shitposting but looks pretty bad when any normal person reads it

Lightning Lord posted:

wasn't Red_Mage involved with that?

Nuns with Guns posted:

Coincidentally enough, when GBS found one of Mandy Morbid's posts with her take on the Zak vs TG she started getting death and rape threats. The GBS thread was also full of comments about her lying about her illness and other stuff, which we'd brush off as normal GBS shitposting but looks pretty bad when any normal person reads it. When GBS had that subtitle about being a "for-profit 4chan-like site" that came from the tumblr post that thread found. It was enough to vindicate her and Zak's accusations that SA were just out to get them and start up the counter-harassment again for people who were already targeted by Zak.

FRINGE posted:

SAs rep is pretty loving abominable. Any 'serious' internet gamer/person I meet in real life has usually heard of it and is shocked that I would have an account "at that place".

Pope Guilty posted:

How much of that is based on stories from ten years ago and how much of that is based on being mad about goons trolling their favorite MMO?

Really Pants posted:

I heard once that SA is nothing but a bunch of filthy SJWs

Pope Guilty posted:

How much of that is based on stories from ten years ago and how much of that is based on being mad about goons trolling their favorite MMO?

Error 404 posted:

I had forgotten about that thread until just now. Fuckin goons.

Pope Guilty posted:

How much of that is based on stories from ten years ago and how much of that is based on being mad about goons trolling their favorite MMO?

Error 404 posted:

2. It's not impossible that most of us who did that poo poo back then have since come to realize how hosed up doing that poo poo was, and have since stopped.

" Jim Butcher in his reddit AMA posted:

WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT IF I ROLLED A D&D CHARACTER. Oh my god. I don't even know if I can respond to that coherently.
I have played everything, including an original first edition Bard who legitimately rolled psionic powers. (Caveat: everything does not include 4E. 4E was New Coke, and probably needed to be a video game, not a table top game.)

Elfgames posted:

Slimnoid posted:

He's connected to both Mearls and Raggi, two big names in the industry, and unless/until both of them stop working with the guy he's not going to leave.

Everyone else has made the smart move and consider him a leper, but even combined they can't equal those two people in terms of influence.

Traveller posted:

IIRC Ron Edwards was also defending Raggi and publishing that dumb REALISTIC DARK AGES thing with literal rape camps, so it's a John Wick situation where Tarnowski and his object of hatred could get along just fine with their horrid opinions if they ever got over that little thing called D&D.

Elfgames posted:

Why is 3.X still so popular? posted:

For me, and a lot of gamers I know, 3X is the last traditional D&D game. It is the closest to 1E/2E. 4E really went the wrong direction with all the video game and new ways of thinking crap. And 5E is just boring and too full of the new way of thinking.

3X does not have the video game/new wave stuff as rules. So sure a lot of people play the game with that mind set, they do so by house rules, but it is not forced on everyone by the rules.

4E/5E are great for the casual gamers. You want to sit in someones basement for a couple hours and fight monsters? They are the games for you. 3X is much better made for long campaign lasting years.

3X is the only one that feels like D&D.

Some cynical guy in the same thread posted:

Sunk cost and aversion to trying new things or learn new systems mostly, and a hefty dose of peer pressure.