Smear Math for Morons

 One very weird thing I've noticed when people discuss the smear campaign is people saying these two thing, often in the same breath:

• lol Zak is so cancelled we sure destroyed his life lmao!
• lol Zak is suing people saying he lost millions, what an idiot lmao!

Now, if you're not a moron (and it should go without saying that anyone participating in the smear is a moron) you'll realize these are basically opposite statements.

If you smear someone and so completely destroy anybody's ability to earn a living doing their job as long as there's an internet, you've likely cost them over a million dollars. That's not about me specifically, that's anyone.

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The math:

Let's say you, like me, live in California.

Minimum wage is 16$ per hour.

That's 128$ per day.

That's 3,840$ per month.

That's 46,080$ per year.

Assuming the person lives a minimum of 30 more years and (like most artists) never retires, that's 1,382,400$.

That's assuming no inflation and just using minimum wage--and I did make more than minimum wage.

(Just for the development of I Am The Weapon alone, I was making 3000$ per month before the smear. If that less-than-minimum-wage figure seems high remember I'm contracted for all the writing and all the illustration. If you would like the documentation on that--just ask. This is also in every court record. I also had two projects in development with LotFP at the time--Bards and Violence in the Nympharium. Both of those included a cash advance and then I make a percentage after. Or ignore all these numbers and look at how much the artists and writers make on literally any mid-tier indie RPG kickstarter.)

Now, I am publishing again and so that income's not all lost, but that's only after having successfully sued three people who smeared me.

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And here's probably the main thing seem to forget or not realize:

RPGs isn't my main job, I've never claimed it was. I am a painter. I paint paintings for a living that people are supposed to buy. That is my job and was long before any game stuff I did ever existed.

Just because the people who smeared me were themselves in RPGs doesn't mean that I only lost RPG work. You'd have to have brain damage to think that only people in games noticed your smear campaign. All that work disappeared as well.

This is all in the article Dr Weisman wrote (missing audio here).

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And, of course, on top of that, destroying someone's reputation doesn't just destroy their income, it destroys their entire life.

And the non-monetary damage to their life is undeniably worse than the loss of income.

Since death is preferable to my current situation, if you're me, basically this cost me however much my entire life is worth. That's a price higher than any dollar amount. The only reason I am sticking around is the very slim hope it gets undone.

Again: this isn't special. I assume you think your life is worth a lot to you, too. If someone offered you a million dollars to die, you probably wouldn't take that deal.

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There are a lot of things that are really obvious about the situation the hatemob created that seem to be lost on everyone talking about it online, this about money is just one of them. But it fits in a blog entry so there you go.

If you lie about someone being a felon and put it all over the internet and that person's entire life is working in public, you did way more than a million dollars worth of damage.

It's not about me being special, that's just life.

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How To Fix Everything

This is a really interesting article about how some people managed to talk like adults about a piece of art they didn't like. Whether or not you like their solution: it appears they came to a solution that made a variety of people who disagreed but who all cared happy.

Basically, they solved this thorny public art problem by not allowing drive-by comments.

Without fail, people arrived at these events primed to make public comments, only to be surprised when they could not find a formal body to make a speech to, as there were only small-group conversations to join. They didn’t want to spend their time having to speak and listen at human scale. Indeed, listening, in small groups or one-on-one, over long periods, tried the patience of some participants. But it also bled out the cursed public discourse that had surrounded the issue for so long—exhausting those who had just one point to make and no interest in connecting or communicating, only in winning.

They point out that the usual process--people lining up to give a speech to an assembly of other people (most of whom were also there to give speeches) was tried and, as usual, didn't work. 

It's worthwhile thinking about how many online platforms are basically that: someone who will monologue but is not expected to engage getting access to a big audience of people who all want to engage or, themselves, monologue. Forums are like that, Twitter is like that. (People who write blogs but don't answer the comments are like that.)

And it's worth thinking about which kinds of people thrive in specifically those environments--people who have a deep belief in one-way communication and not being fact-checked. People who are twitter-famous or familiar forum-faces but not well-known as creators tend to be, basically, righteous trash.

So that's that.

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Anybody curious about court news with Gencon--it's on appeal to the higher court now. If you didn't see that coming you haven't been paying attention.

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The Zak Conspiracy Theorists Admitted They Lied

If you read his blog, this is the most important thing that's ever been on it:

I started this blog in 2009 to document my mostly-porn-stars' game group's D&D game and my game ideas.

A little while later, I started getting asked to make my own game stuff, and I did.

As is typical for someone a little internet-famous, lots of conspiracy theories about me started spreading.

Most of these didn't affect much until 2019, when basically they destroyed my life

An Oxford-educated psychotherapist and researcher wrote a story about all this, documenting the conspiracy theorists harassing me, doing extensive interviews with the harassers where they openly admit they know they weren't telling the truth:

http://archive.is/0Nv3c

The researcher got harassed as soon as she published and got scared and took it down. However the audio clips of the folks admitting they lied are here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GJAJNbF2Tg

Interviewees confirmed they talked to her here:

and here:

https://x.com/pjamesstuart/status/1751884833867890952

https://x.com/machineiv/status/1752010444712128749

Goatmansgoblet/Brian Yaksha/Brian Richmond deleted his twitter after he was exposed.

Others apologized spontaneously:

...others had to be sued before they apologized:

Because Mike Mearls (formerly of offical WOTC D&D and someone else targeted by the conspiracy theory described in the article) was recently hired by Chaosium, the conspiracy theorists are having a field day again, lying all over again, and being believed all over again.  

I've successfully sued three times over this. The research is done, it's public. People involved directly admitted into an audio recorder that they lied, didn't check sources, spread things they didn't confirm.

This should matter. This should end. 

Claims like this are basically attempted murder--and they will succeed unless the people who don't want me dead take this as seriously as the people who do.

I am at the limit of my ability to communicate the seriousness of the situation. I don't know what to do.

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Collectivity, Cooperation and Challenge

Failures of Collective Spirit

Everyone on the internet, and many people who aren't, have had an experience like this:

-"Hey guys don't we all love this boat we're on!"

-"Yes we do! Or, at least--it is better than having no boat!" all agree

-"Ok, do whatever, have fun doing your thing just please nobody press the red button or the boat will explode!"

-Someone--just for funsies, or for clown clout--presses the red button.

-Boat explodes. Everyone regrets this.

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This is a failure of collectivity.

That is: a set of behaviors that everyone involved acknowledges benefits everyone, including themselves, and someone just cannot stop themself from putting some other short-term personal goal first.

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In a role-playing game one of the fun parts is having your PC do weird or funny stuff, things you wouldn't do in a more practical world--the fun of being someone else.

In a role-playing game with a heavy challenge element (one where there's a real threat that you will lose a character and therefore no longer be able to play the game in the specific way you were having fun playing it and have to start over and do it a different way) the usual best strategy to succeed in the challenge is to engage in collective thinking.

This can involve explicit planning--"We all benefit if we kill the monster and get the treasure, so let's pay attention to who we each are as a group and figure out how to use those aptitudes to best do that", but it can also involve just, as a player, being aware of who the other peoples' characters are and what they can do.

Many people experience a mild conflict here in the moment:

• They want to succeed!
• They also wanna do what they wanna do because its playtime, dammit!
• (Also sometimes failing because one PC cannot help but be the squeaky wheel they are is fun, too.)

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Outside a role-playing game online there are other obvious examples of this in forums online:

For example, there's no piece information that can be passed on via namecalling on a forum that can't be passed on in some other way, but someone will, eventually, always do it even when there's an explicit rule against it. Somebody gets bounced and nobody is hurt but them.

Every time somebody does one of these things they're failing to act in a way that's best for everyone--including them--and they know it, but they just can't stop themself.

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D&D and Cooperation

D&D is very much a game about cooperation.

It is much more so than most triple-A video games or nearly any other popular entertainment you'll be involved with outside of actual sports.

This is an oddly-smothered point.

The Lord of the Rings is a trilogy about cooperation, as is Star Wars. The ideal that people with diverse skillsets and attitudes need to work together to achieve laudable long-term goals is deep deep in the DNA of the media that inspired most RPGs.

The current post-5e, post-Critical Role, post-D&D The Movie temperature of conversation about D&D broadly online emphasizes many things including:

-Character-creation options (related to conversations about peoples' interest in video game character gen options) and the ability to use them to express yourself

and

-Progressive social principles.

Considering this, its very odd that one of D&D's radiant innate progressive virtues--the emphasis on working together--isn't placed front and center all the time.

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Here's Why

Despite any open claims of holding to progressive principles, the people most responsible for the current conversation in RPGs absolutely suck at collective thinking. So many pay more attention to what happens to an imaginary orc than to a real human player at the table with them.

I know. I've seen them play games. I was often in games with them.

Right now the conversation is defined by:

-the post-Storygame narrativist scene which largely grew out of people being unable to communicate with their fellow D&D or Vampire or RIFTS groups, especially in challenge-oriented play and so invented games full of rules to police interhuman communication or simply gatekeep any player out unless that player wanted to play the exact narrowly-defined microsubgenre of game they themselves wanted to play instead of just agreeing they all wanted the fucking ring to go in that fucking volcano

and

-2010s OSR veterans who, when given a choice between politely asking one sacred crackpot friend to stop lying on the internet or letting the entire ship sink, absolutely chose letting the ship sink

I reiterate-I have seen these people play games. 

They are absolutely blown away by 101-level collective-success tactics. See you're outnumbered? Back up, close the door, pour flaming oil on the floor, drop marbles in the oil, have a resilient PC hold a torch over the oil (remember which PCs are resilient!), ready to drop it, protect the wizards. Works all the time.

They are filled with shock and awe by even just the most basic gestures in this direction, they will make you leader immediately.

Patrick Stuart once killed one of Zach Marx Weber's PC because he thought throwing green slime on him would help.

If the current version of progressivism in the RPG scene seems oddly fascist, I'd posit this is why--these are the people who have absolutely zero practice self-governing, who made their clout by talking about how they were proudly unable to play with anyone else and needed very new very specific new gates built to keep people out rather than just learning how to throw a party.

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Idiots With Benefits

Before I go into real news, legal update/rumor control: In 2021 a judge tried to dismiss my defamation case against Gen Con—this was much celebrated by right wing douchenozzles on twitter. I appealed to a higher court, won, & the case was back on. Oddly, the douchenozzles didn’t spread the word about that. Well the same judge just tried it again. The right wing douchenozzles are celebrating again, like they forgot this already happened. Obviously I’ll just appeal again to the same higher court.

So, anyway something else that happened last week was interesting.

• A couple of Gen Con's fellow right-wing hatemob members named (on Twitter anyway) panny_lines and aledlawlor have a little company called Leyline Press.
• They hired someone to edit one of their RPGs.
• They then fired them when they found out that they'd once worked for Lamentations of the Flame Princess, the company that published most of my game stuff. They also erased his name from the credits.
• They then made a very vague announcement about their very vague right-wing problems they had with LotFP. They made the word "problematic" do a lot of work.
• Now here's the strange thing, something that hasn't happened during the last 4 years of hatemobbing: people noticed--and did something about it.
• Lamentations then announced a big sale.
• Lamentations then sold a phenomenal amount of product:

And keeps selling a phenomenal amount:

Now this was just a pdf sale, that ends tomorrow.

A sale on printed stuff starts today.

Action is good.

Fix things.

Ask Them Why.

I sued again. It worked. Again.

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In 2019, by taking advantage of my estranged and mentally-ill ex, basically the entire tabletop RPG industry decided to start harassing me.

It worked. They destroyed my entire life. I had a career inside RPGs, I had a (much larger) career outside RPGs selling paintings. I had a social life. All that was annihilated.

This is my eviction notice--because I couldn't pay the rent because of this:

This is my food stamp card--because I can't afford food because of this::

This is where my 5 missing teeth used to be--because I couldn't afford to get them fixed because of this:

This is what happened when I sued Ettin / Paul Matijevic, a Something Awful troll and RPGnet moderator in Australia, where he lives, for claiming I abused and harassed people:

This is what happened when I sued the game streamer Vivka Grey, in Los Angeles, where she lives, for claiming I abused and harassed people:

This is what happened when Vivka Grey sued me back, claiming I was lying when I defended myself:

And, now, if you were on the internet yesterday, you might've seen this:

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I haven't lost a case yet.

For years everyone has been telling me how hard it is to win a defamation case in the US.

Fewer than 5% of civil cases go to trial.

Viv, for one, admits to having spent over half a million dollars on her cases, yet I won while evicted, on food stamps, and missing five teeth.

You may have heard about my case against GenCon being dismissed. It was. Then I appealed. Only about 20% of appeals are successful. I appealed, it worked.

And then everybody was telling me how hard it was to sue overseas--how would you collect? You collect the same way people overseas pay for anything else, with the internet. It's 2023.

Everyone who was screaming at you about me was wrong. Again.

How long can hundreds of nerds be wrong before just admitting it?

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Both in court and on the internet, when anyone anywhere is asked to produce any proof I did anything bad they come up empty. 

This is especially significant considering how many people are claiming I did bad online things--things that should be able to be proved with a fucking screenshot. Nobody has been able to come up with thing one.

Basically, every single thing a person could possibly do to prove they're innocent, I did. In person, on video, via tweet, in court, out of court, you name it--I have been subjected to every kind of scrutiny from every direction for longer than it'd take to earn a Bachelor's.

If you still think I did something wrong, I'm not asking "provide proof" (there isn't any), I'm just asking, for the millionth time: Why? What makes you personally believe any of this shit? 

-When at least a dozen of the people who spread this bullshit have been, themselves, cancelled?

-When the original beef that all the Something Awful goons (like Ettin) had was fake allegations of transphobia against someone whose main online defenders are trans, who repeatedly got trans people hired, and gave up a 5-figure contract to protest transphobia?

-When the original beef that all the story game designers had was a bunch of shit nobody now believes about the supposed objective inferiority of Old School games or people who played them?

-When there's video evidence that the people who started this particular round of harassment turned out to be lying out their asses?

-When the excuse that I have a trust fund turns out to be bullshit because I don't?

-When the excuse that "well the laws are different there" turns out to be bullshit because I won in the US, too?

-When the excuse that I was "obnoxious" has to be put side by side with but you lied about rape?

What the fuck reason do they have left?

Ask them. Ask for the receipts that justify their hate.

Ask WOTC and Hasbro what's left of their reasons for doing this..

Ask GenCon what's left.

Ask Matt Mercer what's left.

Ask the folks at Green Ronin Games what's left.

Ask the guys at Mothership what's left.

Ask Patrick Stuart and Gus L and Arnold K and Noisms over at Monsters and Manuals and all the other OSR people what's left.

Ask Chris McDowall and the OSR discord what's left.

Ask Sandy Pug Games and Tin Star Games what's left.

Ask the Troika folks what's left.

Ask all the sacred crackpots what's left.

Ask Ramanan and Grey Wizard working on BREAK! what's left.

Ask Crystal Frasier and Jessica Price --formerly of Paizo--what's left.

Ask Andy Kitkowski--the founder of Story-Games.com--and Ron Edwards--leading light of the Forge--what's left.

Ask RPGnet and reddit/RPG and reddit/OSR what's left.

Ask OneBookShelf what's left.

When every single reason for hurting someone has been proven by time and by inquiry and by the law to be bullshit, what claim are they hanging on to?

Ask for the receipts. Ask why they ever believed any of it. Ask if they think their reasons were good. Ask if they're even capable of changing their minds.

Please ask them for me.

Ask because I can't do it because I'm busy moving because I can't live in my apartment any more, and my friends here can't because they're busy helping me. 

And when you ask these people, remind them: I will never give up. So if they've got reasons, they'd better be real sure what they are.

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A Gift To Jojiro

So, since I won, more apologies are trickling in. Which is good: every public apology is one less person I might have to sue.

But a lot of people are doing weird in-between things, here's a telling example:

Once upon a time there was someone screen-named Jojiro or Ant Wu.

In the beforetimes, they liked my game stuff and started social media-ing me.

Then they were casually in a conversation and started namecalling at someone. I was like "Hey, this is a place for grown-ups, we don't do that, you're banned" and Jojiro was like "Wait, wait! I want to talk".

So, I set up a Zoom call. On this Zoom call I patiently explained to what appeared to be an actual human adult that it is not good to announce your issues with a fellow human adult you share space with in the form of namecalling.

Just like every other time I did this, it worked.  Because there is no sane argument a person can make in real time against "If you have an issue with someone tell them like a grown up".

This seemed to have an oddly profound effect on Jojiro. For a long time Jojiro started talking to lots of people in their life like fucking adults instead of 4chan trash. Jojiro's life improved. Jojiro made this claim frequently.

But also, just like every other time a gamer troll got confronted, they eventually backslid. They joined the hatemob and were extremely active in hatemob spaces in the early days, pushing for my life to be destroyed. 

But they would post conflicted things like this (from the OSR Discord)...

...where they are still very active.

After I announced won, they sent me this:

I'll open with the most relevant thing. I'm sorry. I fucked up.

This is Anthony Wu/Jojiro.

In 2019 I said I had a hard time believing your story regarding Mandy and co.

In the intervening years I maintained this position in more conversations than I can count. With the passing of time, I now believe that I was wrong. The process by which I've come to that belief is independent of evidence or the court case. It was a BPD friend of mine from childhood flipping out on me about totally false premises that convinced me - nothing like your situation, but she painted me as an abusive friend, citing events that didn't ever exist in reality. This is not ideal, I think, by your values as I understand them - ideally it would be fact-checking, and not personal hurt, that would inspire my apology to you. I've wondered if there's any point in apologizing, when my apology is so far from what you actually want people to do.

Oh well. You've said that apologies matter to you - not in a personal sense, but in the sense that you thought humanity was more normal, sane, and good when people apologized for being wrong. In lieu of that - I'm sorry. I was wrong.

You've also said that when people make public attacks, they should make public apologies.

I've not the moral fortitude for that - I've no plan to go and rescind every single wrong thing I've said about you. I've stopped, certainly, but I've done damage to you, and this is me admitting that I've no plan to go and undo the damage.

If that admission positions this email as a pointless apology - fair enough.

Still felt that I should send it.

Congratulations on your legal victory against Vivka.

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Proof below:

So Jojiro, I will be patient and generous with you again, accept this gift.

While you not have the "moral fortitude" to go public and apologize and help fix the problem you created, I did it for you.

Gygax vobiscum.

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What, if anything, was your understanding of the phrase "Group titfuck bonanza"?

From Viv's "Dread" Character Sheet

Previously on D&D With Pornstars: We had a trial. I won. Details.

Today on D&D With Pornstars: A trial excerpt. Because trials are funny.

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[Context: Viv had claimed that I talked with a level of sexual frankness she wasn’t comfortable with etc. ]

(lawyer) MR SELF: Can you please help us understand what you understand to be written in the top of page 2-18?

MR SMITH: Okay. so this is -- you want me to read the whole thing from my pov?

MR SELF: Yes, please.

JUDGE: And what page are you on, two?

MR SMITH: 2-18.

MR. SELF: 2-18, top of the page.

MR SMITH: So, "re, a much more civilized means of communication." V stands for Vivid. That's Vivid's -- Viv's e-mail address. There's a date in January which I actually have a hard time reading. And it says wednesday. “Oh, fine, leave me to wallow in pain and braces and give myself post surgery boob rubdowns." She's referring to her plan to get breast implants.

(lawyer) MS. KRIEGER: I'm sorry, object to his characterization of what she was intending. Calls for speculation.

MR SMITH: Okay.

JUDGE: Overruled. Go ahead.

MR SMITH: Mandy -- then there's —I think like she's sticking out her tongue that -- I think that's what that is. "Mandy is going to school ... you guys get back, and bam, group tit fuck bonanza. Then you will be a lucky guy." Then is in all caps.

And that -- I don't know what that -- [reading viv's email] "Wow, better not have been sarcastic. threatens with thumb of fury. hearts, pretty hearts, xo xo."

Q BY MR. SELF: Mr. Smith, do you here today in 2021 recall seeing the statement you just read to us at the time that it was published?

MR SMITH: Did I read it in 2010 when I got it as an e-mail, yeah. Yes.

MR SELF: Do you remember reading it?

MR SMITH: Yeah. I remember -- I remember -- yeah. Yes.

[You’re not supposed to say “yeah” or “uh huh” at trials, because its hard on the stenographer, but I keep forgetting.)

MR SELF: What do you remember, if at all, was your understanding of that phrase "group tit fuck bonanza"?

MR SMITH: That we were like -- Viv was going to get breast implants and we are all having sex. And that was -- having sex and specifically —I don't know if there's any other way to say “tit fucking” except for “tit fucking”. I apologize to the court, but yeah.

[I looked it up: “mammary intercourse”]

MR SELF: Based on your experience with the defendant, did Ms. Grey seem easily embarrassed or humiliated about things of a sexual nature?

MR SMITH: Not at all. in fact it was one of the things that we liked about her. She's very kind of crude and frank and --

MR SELF: Pronouns. When you say we?

MR SMITH: Amanda Nagy. Ms Nagy and I liked about that she was very frank, open, honest about everything sexual, you know.

MR SELF: Based on your experience as Ms. Nagy's husband, would you characterize Ms Nagy as having been open and frank about sexuality in matters of a sexual nature at that time as well?

MR SMITH: Almost more than any living human, yes.

MR SELF: What about you, Mr. Smith? How open, if at all, were you regarding matters of a sexual nature in and around 2011?

MR SMITH: Very open. I had just published a book called “We Did Porn," which was a memoir about working in the sex industry. So yeah.

MR SELF: Real briefly, what -- tell us -- give us a summary, synopsis of that memoir.

MR SMITH: It talks about how i got into the business out of -- I was a working artist before, and still was, and then working on movies and meeting Mandy and -- Amanda Nagy, Ms. Nagy, and other people we knew in the industry by the time I had written the book. So covered a few years of the beginning at that. It also had art in it, drawings.

Mr Self: Do you remember a song by a Detroit artist named DJ assault?

MR SMITH: Yeah.

MR SELF: That was --

MR SMITH: “Ass and Titties." Viv introduced it to us. We were trying to play a game [Dread], and it was a game where people can be eliminated. And Viv got eliminated first, and so she started playing this song "Ass and Titties." And the lyrics are just "Ass, titties, ass, ass, ass, ass, ass, ass, ass, titties, titties, titties." And she was -- you know, that was Viv.

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Another Theory Tested (Harry Potter And The Sourest Grape)

One Nice Thing

One nice thing is that for a long time I had no idea there was a new Harry Potter game out.

Nobody in my real life talks about it, nobody in my social media feed talks about it, it's--as it should be--a non-thing. Even among people I knew who used to like Harry Potter--even among people who now have hastily-covered-up Harry Potter tattoos--even from trans friends who once were deeply invested in the franchise.

But then--because I have to check on the worst people in games all the time for legal reasons--I found out there was one.

I wouldn't have thought much of it except--they are all talking about it all the time. Hundreds of them.

Congratulating each other for realizing Harry Potter is bad is now their personality in the same way complaining about official D&D's whole Open Game License fuck-up was their whole personality last week and complaining about me was their whole personality in 2019.

And the same way liking Harry Potter was their personality before that.

Lots of media is made by terrible transphobic people--but they're especially mad about Harry Potter because they fucking loved Harry Potter.

The Soft Smack

Anybody might like any thing for any stupid reason, but before JK Rowling revealed herself to be not just boring but also evil, Harry was frequently recruited by harassers in RPG circles to make a point about how bad it was to like cool, metal things like Warhammer or Jack Vance.

Harry was not like all the terrible nasty media that Old Schoolers liked a lot where push frequently came to shove and shove came to blood and blood came to axes and fire and people sometimes fuck or think, Harry was accessible, Harry was unproblematic, Harry was diverse, Harry wore sweaters, when people died it was emotional and earned because character development, Harry was Young Adult friendly and Dumbledore was gay and the only time anything was sexy it was in fanfic written by tumblr people, and Harry was, above all, soft.

Harry was a symbol for nightmare nerds of all that was wholesome and undifficult.

One RPGnet mod used to tag "10 points to Gryfindor!" when backslapping friends for outstanding feats of online harassment. Former-Pathfinder-employee-turned-professional-Karen Jessica Price once wrote about how since "spirit animal" was so problematic, we should all just say "Patronus" instead.

Which is so cringey that a joke newspaper that probably never heard of her repeated it years later as satire.

The Drama Club Theory of Harry Potter was simple:

1. Good people liked wholesome media where wholesome things happened and that could be shared with the children they would eventually have or already had

2. And this was somehow not a facemeltingly reactionary concerned-parent take but in fact a bold and progressive stance in These Troubled Times

The Failed Test

Just as the theory about morally improving games has been tested and disproved so has this one. They were proven wrong. Rowling's trash and so are zillions of her most devoted fans.

It's hard admit the club you were hitting people over the head with for 20 years is made of human shit.

So instead of apologizing to the people they attacked and talking up something actually cool like Adventure Time, they are rebranding as people so angry about a video-game no well-informed grown-up cares about that they have to tell everyone it exists.

I lay odds this exact thing will happen again with Steven Universe in the next 10 years and, again, no-one will learn a single lesson from it.

The Price of Painkillers

My ex- used to listen to the audiobooks and movies to go to sleep, so I know the story much better than most things I don't like.

Aside from the issue of just how every generation is going to need some relatively long and relatively literary fantasy novel readable by children written in a version of the english language they'll recognize as of-their-own-time, the only distinguishing thing about Harry Potter is its unusually full-throated embrace of the aesthetics of comfort.

Squashy armchairs, butterbeer, kids living in castles, bumbling idiot villains, shapeless outfits, plots so casual characters forget them because they keep going to class, authority figures who are not only good and wise and all-powerful yet non-threatening because old and gay they also respect you personally and say it a lot, domesticated goblins, wands instead of any more interesting or scary weapon, reading presented as the be-all end-all of fighting evil, and all this even as the stakes rise to death and genocide. All in prose so bloodless it made Peter Rabbit look like Les Chants de Maldoror.

It's as if the whole of Lord of the Rings took place in Hobbiton. The British genius for coziness-uber-alles given full vent over stressful social concerns like how to dress for a date or feed yourself--or anyone else.

If you dreamed you'd leave your shitty family and go to school and there discover you're really good at everything that matters with no work and have everyone decide you are an awesome celebrity because of your trauma and then successfully fight for what's right by pointing your finger at people and saying words while wearing glasses, Harry Potter is the power fantasy for you.

It was meant to be, by its author, a monstrous, thoughtless person who thinks she's being socially progressive by avoiding any invitation to engage her victims.

Again: there's nothing wrong with liking that story or any other--but wielding it should have always been suspicious. It's not a coincidence that all the people who did that as adults to other adults later turned out to be yes, actually, really bad at real-word problems and being adults.

It should be no surprise that, like Rowling, these people thought of "This conversation makes me uncomfortable" as a reason to leave it.

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Dear Fiona Geist,

This is the fourth time I've tried to contact you about getting paid for your work on Demon City.

Our original deal was the standard one I did with contributors: you help write a section or edit some stuff and in exchange you get whatever you want, within reason--I could write, edit or draw something for you or just throw you some cash.

Before telling me what you wanted in return for the work you did, around Februrary 2019, you stopped answering messages or emails and wrote a public blog entry saying what you wanted as compensation was for me to publicly lie about a felony.

Since that's not just morally wrong and illegal but would also make it harder to bring my abusers to justice in order to prevent them from hurting more people, I can't pay you that way. 

I've tried contacting you privately, but no answer (last attempt was 3/3/2021). I think people should get paid for their work so I am making one last effort by posting this in public--since I know you read this blog.

So, email me at zakzsmith AT hawtmayle dawt calm.

-Z

The Jeff to Patrick OSR Continuum

Basics

• OSR stands for "Old School Renaissance"--a resurgence in interest in pre-90s RPGs that began around the time blogging became a thing online and influences products to this day by people who want to do something new and creative with RPGs but don't think D&D makes people into Nazis or want to hang out with people who do. A small community, perhaps, but one still capable of running a Kickstarter
• While some products or creators or commenters that might be considered "OSR" existed before this, the most important person in the early OSR was Jeff Rients of the venerable Jeff's Gameblog. It goes all the way back to 2004. If you read it, you can see OSR ideas clarify themselves one by one in real time.
• I--much influenced by Jeff--showed up gameblogging years later, in 2009.
• Patrick Stuart--of the False Machine blog and Veins of the Earth etc.--showed up after me, saying explicitly that he was--in turn--much influenced by me, especially by Vornheim.
• Since they were both really influential OSR creators with lots of ideas (and ones I liked and got along with), it always seemed odd to me that the two of them didn't talk much.

I have two points to make here:

1. I think of all OSR game products as existing on a continuum from Jeff-ish to Patrick-y.

2. By what is honestly coincidence, it could be fairly claimed that Jeff Rients created the OSR community and Patrick Stuart destroyed it.

The Continuum

The Jeff Rients' End

Jeff is an incredibly experienced DM (example) whose style reflects having run games for strangers and friends at home, in game stores, and at conventions for longer than many of us have been alive.

His blog, GM style, and game products reflect that experience: how to make sure people have fun.

On the other hand, his game products are few in number and relatively modest. His major thing out is Broodmother Sky Fortress, which is half awesome-adventure-with-tips-for-first-time-GMs and half best-of-Jeff's-Gameblog. The adventure's great but it's pretty short and compact.

Though both I and other people have spent lots of time asking Jeff to put out more product he hasn't--and he once told me his very Jeff reason for this: most of the dungeons he runs are composed a lot of old dungeons mashed together. It's the way he runs them that makes them work.

Jeff has lots of really good ideas for weird things to put in a game, but that's not the center of his aesthetic. The center is: make sure it's playable and fun.

I think a good example of the Jeff Rients aesthetic is the random hireling table in Broodmother Skyfortress: it's a d6 table.

Obviously, if this was a Zak table it would have 100 entries and if it only had 20 then I'd make some excuse like I was trying to fit it on the page with 9 other tables. And every entry would tell you like 4 things minimum about the hireling.

...but I also know what Jeff would say when you ask why it only has 6 entries (including pack-apes, which is cool): Jeff has run dungeons over and over and over and over and over and has found that 6 is enough--after that you get diminishing returns.

So that's Jeff's thing: doing a lot with a little to make sure you have fun.

The Patrick Stuart End

Patrick was not only capable of writing magnificent sentences, he really liked to show you that he was. When I created Maze of the Blue Medusa and wanted to save some time by not writing it all myself, I asked him to collaborate. He's good and has lots of esoteric ideas and the things he writes are brimming with exciting concepts.

On the other hand: 

He never rolls.

Last I knew: he lived alone in the middle of nowhere, UK, he's painfully isolated, his best friend is someone he's never met in real life, he's never had--as an adult--a regular RPG group he met with and doesn't even run his own stuff.

He once told me his favorite-ever session of D&D was one he played online. That's fucked up--and it shows in his work.

Patrick Stuart has not a clue how to make a functional game without help from a collaborator.

So that's Patrick's thing: Doing a whole lot with a lot but without a lot of clear ideas about how to make it fun.

Creating on the Continuum

Unsurprisingly, considering the timeline, I've generally tried to make things that are in the middle, or which have the strengths of both:

Esoteric and well-written enough to be interesting and new, but concise and considered enough to be playable. Whether I've succeeded isn't really the point--that's not up to me--it's just often a real thought I have in my head: "This needs more out-the-box playability--this needs a little more inspiring verbiage". 

That idea's in my head.

And It's Weird Because...

...the OSR kinda did begin and then end with these two guys.

Jeff showed up, wrote about playable things, handled shit right, and--to the degree he took responsibility for people or talked about other peoples' business--had a moral compass.

Patrick started out that way, but was fucking terrible at it because he had no real-life experience with real people. Around 2017 or 18 he started lashing out at basic 101-level rules of healthy human interaction like "Talk to people before assuming crazy shit about them" and "Don't lie".

Unfortunately a lot of creators followed his lead--the people he influenced took Patricks repudiation of things like facts and evidence as a cue that standards for how to treat each other were now lower--and they ran with it.

And now the OSR is not really a thing--creators and moneymaking entities are still here but the community is gone, because in a world run by Patrick rules, nobody is ever accountable for their actions and interacting with other creators is fucking dangerous.

The OSR reddit would, for example, rather just take down a critical post than figure out how to constructively criticize a game...

...

...considering one of the only things the OSR was ever good for was constructively criticizing games, this is pretty fucked up.

I hate it all and I want to die very badly.

Bye.

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