Quote from: Mostlyjoe;398571This is true, but they do support a lot of the fileshare community that destorys the smaller publishers. (Or at leasts cuts into their bottom line.) I'm less worried about what the channers do the larger developers. But the small 1-2 people companies that are in the indy side of the business it's not a nice thing.

Than again, most channers wouldn't know an indy game if it came up and bit them on the ass...so. Ya. Channers folks.

Just empirically, most chan people are pirating copies of PF & 4e, not indy-press stuff.

Quote from: Shazbot79;398613I don't think that Ron Edwards or pundit have that kind of exposure or influence.

Right, and if they go on the list, then so should RPG.net, in my estimation. Their "darlings" tend to go right off my radar of potential interests.

Quote from: Shazbot79;398613I don't think that Ron Edwards or pundit have that kind of exposure or influence.

Ron actually didn't call people braindead. That's hardly even an insult, really. Plenty of you here are probably already braindead, I'll just say that right now. I mean, it's an opinion.

No, what Ron said was that people had become brain damaged by years of exposure to the wrong games so that they were creatively stunted and could not appreciate the brilliance of forgie-ism.

The forgie paradigm (at the time) was based on this sort of "convert the primitive savages" kind of belief that people simply don't know know how bad they have it until they are saved, and the ones who refuse to be saved - that refuse to convert- (and convert means "never to go back to their old and wicked ways) are explained away as being beyond help. They tried to sanitize the term after the big controversy, but the meaning and context are important.

Well, as I don't work in the Industry, it's hard for anyone to be a Villain, who hasn't somehow denied me some fun/books (else, yeah, Lorraine Williams would be on the list; I've never heard anyone having something nice to say about her). So...publishers that have denied me the awesomesauce of their books:

1) Mark C. MacKinnon of Guardians of Order (I want more SAS, dammit!)
2) Eric Gibson of d6 Games (I want Septimus in dead tree, dammit!)
3) Kevin Siembeida of Palladium (I want Mechanoids: Space & LOD#3, dammit!)

"They" is kind of vague, AM.  Only a handful of people initially defended Ron's position, and Clinton's initial response was a big "WTF Ron?"

RPG.net

The culture there is consumeristic, derivative, shallow and focused on high concept games that are unplayable. The "What System for [Ephemeral Pop Trend]?" threads are paradigmatic of this problem.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;398626RPG.net

The culture there is consumeristic, derivative, shallow and focused on high concept games that are unplayable. The "What System for [Ephemeral Pop Trend]?" threads are paradigmatic of this problem.

I almost agree with you, but then again I find it a decent resource for support of some of the indy market of very playable. I don't think ORE would have gotten off the ground for not the helpful community there and a few other sites. Savage Worlds and FATE also get loads of support there.

That said, it is a big shiny red target for astroturfing, one true-isms, and high concept snobbery. But I think The Forge acended in that department long before RPG.net ever took up the crown.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;398626RPG.net

The culture there is consumeristic, derivative, shallow and focused on high concept games that are unplayable. The "What System for [Ephemeral Pop Trend]?" threads are paradigmatic of this problem.

In general, true. There are some good posters that remain, but the signal-noise ratio isn't great.

Quote from: Mostlyjoe;398629I almost agree with you, but then again I find it a decent resource for support of some of the indy market of very playable. I don't think ORE would have gotten off the ground for not the helpful community there and a few other sites. Savage Worlds and FATE also get loads of support there.

That said, it is a big shiny red target for astroturfing, one true-isms, and high concept snobbery. But I think The Forge acended in that department long before RPG.net ever took up the crown.

My impression is that, outside of a few people, there's not actually a lot of gaming experience there. The most valuable stuff I get from RPG.net is almost _never_ stuff like "I did this in this game and it worked", but rather "Let's all share cool ideas". Since I don't like the ideas most of those people have (too much pop culture, pastiche and JRPG influence), it makes the website very low value for me except for the PbP forum.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;398634My impression is that, outside of a few people, there's not actually a lot of gaming experience there. The most valuable stuff I get from RPG.net is almost _never_ stuff like "I did this in this game and it worked", but rather "Let's all share cool ideas". Since I don't like the ideas most of those people have (too much pop culture, pastiche and JRPG influence), it makes the website very low value for me except for the PbP forum.

That's true. Open Roleplaying is usually rather too chaotic to be useful all the time. But I LOVE going there when a new product gets previewed as some of the posters are really good at ferriting out details of the system, class/power builds, etc. I just turn the brain on and download. The hitch is...you have to filter out system/developer bias.

Quote from: Peregrin;398624"They" is kind of vague, AM.  Only a handful of people initially defended Ron's position, and Clinton's initial response was a big "WTF Ron?"

I know. Also, to his credit, Fred Hicks got pretty pissed. Even John Wick had issues with it.  The word "bigot" was even used. Most of the holdouts who loudly agreed with Ron have all but disappeared by now.

But when I say "they" tried to sanitize the term, just watch how much the term brain damage comes up later in a different context. Like (and this is a purely hypothetical example) "I never could get into superheroes, guess I have too much indie comics brain damage, heh heh.."

Which- ok, I understand why people do things like this. It was an embarrassing episode. Making it funny is a way to sort of drop it. I actually laugh sometimes when (Vampire fanatic and presumably a prime suspect of brain damage) JD Corley keeps bringing it up over and over again. But at the time, I really thought it was one of the most vicious and manipulative things I'd ever seen. Watching ron's apostles step up and say "yes, I had been brain-damaged.. than you for saving me.." was just mind boggling.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;398641I know. Also, to his credit, Fred Hicks got pretty pissed. Even John Wick had issues with it.  The word "bigot" was even used. Most of the holdouts who loudly agreed with Ron have all but disappeared by now.

But when I say "they" tried to sanitize the term, just watch how much the term brain damage comes up later in a different context. Like (and this is a purely hypothetical example) "I never could get into superheroes, guess I have too much indie comics brain damage, heh heh.."

Which- ok, I understand why people do things like this. It was an embarrassing episode. Making it funny is a way to sort of drop it. I actually laugh sometimes when (Vampire fanatic and presumably a prime suspect of brain damage) JD Corley keeps bringing it up over and over again. But at the time, I really thought it was one of the most vicious and manipulative things I'd ever seen. Watching ron's apostles step up and say "yes, I had been brain-damaged.. than you for saving me.." was just mind boggling.

Were Baker and Crane around at that time? I sort of came in at the tail end of the rumpus and never bothered delving much deeper.

Well, I think the administration at rpgnet certainly qualify.  Especially given that they closed this thread's progenitor on nothing more than a premonition that it would not end well.

Honestly it seemed to be moving along just fine without any spite or nastiness for what ? four pages before Darren popped in with his Mod complex.

Really for that matter, specifically Darren McLennan as the guy who was almost solely responsible for creating rpgnet's culture of vulgarity and personal attacks and then got made a mod as a reward after which only he was allowed to be vulgar and make personal attacks which led to the mod wars and the departure/banning of most of the interesting people and the draconian moderation policies that dominate the place to this day.

I also think that companies that create deliberately incomplete and incompatible new editions are villains.  Especially when they bring out yet another new edition while the last one is still painfully incomplete.

Quote from: One Horse Town;398646Were Baker and Crane around at that time? I sort of came in at the tail end of the rumpus and never bothered delving much deeper.

I think they were around but they weren't as big as they are now. This was a few years ago.

Speaking of Luke, did he ever engage directly in the hardcore Forge theory stuff?  I always felt he was sort of friends with the people there, but only took the bits and pieces of discussion he found useful, and ignored the rest.

I also think he made a comment once to the effect that he's rejected a lot more theory than he's accepted in a lot of his work (although whether he was speaking about his actual job or design was a bit unclear in the discussion).