Guess old Frank finally went full retard.

... OMFG

this is asinine.

I'll be honest that I tend to be progressive and liberal. I don't agree with Mr. Macris' politics in many situations.

But this is just absurd and awful and evil. I don't know him personally, I can only go by my minor interactions with the man, and this is just absolutely baseless accusations. My limited interactions with Mr. Macris has shown me that he is a professional and kind person.

This is just absolutely ridiculous. Where does this guy come off making these claims? Why does this person think he can do this without evidence or documentation backing it up?

Granted that Mr. Macris had had some very undesirable business interactions... but that doesn't mean he deserves this level of admonishment. Doesn't even necessarily mean that he's bad person other than have made some bad business choices.

But a terrorist? WTF?

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1108552I don't remember where exactly in ACKS you're supposed to go to the homes of "people" who look different than you to murder their asses and steal their shit.

Page 23, lines 32-44. It's all right there if you can hear the secret dog-whistles!

:cool:

Quote from: fixable;1109255I'll be honest that I tend to be progressive and liberal.

Quote from: fixable;1109255Why does this person think he can do this without evidence or documentation backing it up?

Quote from: fixable;1109255but that doesn't mean he deserves this level of admonishment.

Fixable, welcome to the Alt-Right! You're gonna fit right in!

Quote from: Spinachcat;1109256Page 23, lines 32-44. It's all right there if you can hear the secret dog-whistles!

:cool:








Fixable, welcome to the Alt-Right! You're gonna fit right in!

Meh... I'm not alt-right. Not by a long shot.

Man... you guys will latch onto anyone if they look in their direction.

I'm progressive liberal. But I'm not a witch hunter. Believe it or not, but most real liberals believe in free speech as much as you do. I have a hard time with the term "social justice warrior". Mainly because I seek better social equality among all people. But at the same time... not a fan of foolish banning of concepts that don't really help. I get pissed when SJW gets thrown about without context. I think it becomes a basket that prevents distinguishment between those who want to make real good and those who go too far.

Either way, I don't think Alex is a terrorist. He made a great game and I disagree with his politics, (I have a right to disagree) but I'll still play his game. (btw... I'm experienced with running ACKS, I have a 5 year campaign going... there's nothing racist, or fascist or terrorist about his game... It's just a better classic D&D.)

So, I'll decline your welcome. If that makes me unfit for this forum... I'll gladly refrain from posting further.

Look fixable, wayyyy up in the sky, far above your head.

That's a joke.

Quote from: Doom;1109262Look fixable, wayyyy up in the sky, far above your head.

That's a joke.

Lol.. what. You're being childish. I'm not going away. Deal with it.

Quote from: fixable;1109258I'm not alt-right. Not by a long shot.

That's exactly what those Alt-Right guys say!

Quote from: fixable;1109258I'm progressive liberal. But I'm not a witch hunter. Believe it or not, but most real liberals believe in free speech as much as you do.

Exactly. "Real liberals" most certainly do. Kudos on being one of them.

You'll find many posters here who are considered "on the right" are actually "real liberals" too.

Quote from: fixable;1109258I have a hard time with the term "social justice warrior".

Because they're bullshit clicktivists and online thoughtcrime bullies, not people who make the real world better for others.

It's why President Carter's Habitat for Humanity gets support from the Left and Right because its about putting nails in wood to give a homeless family their own home they helped build, not just wanking online on Twitter.

Trust me, I understand. I don't call myself an environmentalist anymore because the online fucknuts have embraced utter idiocy. Instead, I go help clean up beaches and trails and dumped my membership from every "environmental" group.

Quote from: fixable;1109258So, I'll decline your welcome. If that makes me unfit for this forum... I'll gladly refrain from posting further.

Actually, disagreeing and yet still discussing things makes you awesome for this forum. TheRPGsite should always be a mosh pit of ideas and never an echo chamber of mindless agreement.

Post more, not less.

And my welcome stands! :cool:

QuoteBecause they're bullshit clicktivists and online thoughtcrime bullies, not people who make the real world better for others.


It's why President Carter's Habitat for Humanity gets support from the Left and Right because its about putting nails in wood to give a homeless family their own home they helped build, not just wanking online on Twitter.

Trust me, I understand. I don't call myself an environmentalist anymore because the online fucknuts have embraced utter idiocy. Instead, I go help clean up beaches and trails and dumped my membership from every "environmental" group.




Actually, disagreeing and yet still discussing things makes you awesome for this forum. TheRPGsite should always be a mosh pit of ideas and never an echo chamber of mindless agreement.

Post more, not less.

And my welcome stands! :cool:

Fair enough.

I'm going to roll back and take it slow... sorry for that.

I will just state that Alexander Macris doesn't deserve the negativity pushed on him. Its heart breaking. He made an amazing game.

Quote from: fixable;1109268Fair enough.

I'm going to roll back and take it slow... sorry for that.

I will just state that Alexander Macris doesn't deserve the negativity pushed on him. Its heart breaking. He made an amazing game.

He made a bad copy of an amazing game (BECMI D&D). He doesn't deserve this crap because it's wild hysterical accusations that have no basis in reality.

Quote from: fixable;1109268He made an amazing game.

Quote from: JeremyR;1109271He made a bad copy of an amazing game (BECMI D&D).

Somebody start a pro/con ACKS thread!  

My retroclone of choice is Swords & Wizardry: White Box because OD&D is my jam, so I have no horse in the ACKS race, but it would be interesting to hear everyone's thoughts about the game. Especially actual play experience.

Same with Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

Quote from: Shasarak;1108587Sorry but I can not take anything said by someone called "Troll"man seriously.

Its like someone wants to turn real life into a parody.

That's my hot take. I'm not taking Trollman seriously.

Quote from: fixable;1109258Meh... I'm not alt-right. Not by a long shot.

Man... you guys will latch onto anyone if they look in their direction.

I'm progressive liberal. But I'm not a witch hunter. Believe it or not, but most real liberals believe in free speech as much as you do. I have a hard time with the term "social justice warrior". Mainly because I seek better social equality among all people. But at the same time... not a fan of foolish banning of concepts that don't really help. I get pissed when SJW gets thrown about without context. I think it becomes a basket that prevents distinguishment between those who want to make real good and those who go too far.

Either way, I don't think Alex is a terrorist. He made a great game and I disagree with his politics, (I have a right to disagree) but I'll still play his game. (btw... I'm experienced with running ACKS, I have a 5 year campaign going... there's nothing racist, or fascist or terrorist about his game... It's just a better classic D&D.)

So, I'll decline your welcome. If that makes me unfit for this forum... I'll gladly refrain from posting further.

As near as I can tell, many if not most of the so-called "alt-right" were people who grew up being "left of center" progressives. As a teen in the 90's, I very much considered myself the same. Then, one day I woke up and found that the generation that followed mine went completely completely off the deep end of the extreme left and started calling anyone right of them "right wing" and, later, "alt-right" (because reasons?).

So, yeah, welcome to the fucking alt-right.

I am quite constrained with what I can say about these things because of a variety of non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreements. But since I read and post here regularly, I thought it would be odd not to comment at all. For what it's worth, I think I can say the following since the facts are public record.

QuoteAlexander Macris was the actual owner of the company created for Milo to tour the country radicalizing potential racist terrorists.

This is factually incorrect as follows:

1. No, I was not the "actual owner" of the company. I was an employee hired by the actual owners and investors - a wealthy family of billionaires - to run the business operations of the company. Like other executives, I was given some stock. But at no point was I the investor, the majority owner, or the beneficial owner, or the controlling stakeholder. This is public record - Buzzfeed leaked the name of the investors.

2. The business wasn't created "for Milo to tour the country radicalizing potential racist terrorists". It was created to move Milo (who had been tarred by accusations of pedophilia) into the position of tastemaker-comedian like a right-wing Bill Maher. Specifically, the premise was that humor and celebrity was a key element to left-wing influence and should be countered with the same. This is public record.

3. The so-called "Dangerous Faggot" tour of America actually took place from 2015 to February 2017. I had no affiliation with Milo during that time. MILO Inc. was founded in May 2017, three months *after* the tour was over. I had nothing to do with the tour. The two events I was involved in organizing were (a) Coming out Conservative, a party for gay New Yorkers to admit they were Republicans, and (b) Free Speech Week, an event in Berkeley CA to discuss free speech in the 21st c., held in conjunction with the Berkeley College Republicans. The latter event was cancelled due to safety and regulatory issues. In any case, neither the New York gay community nor the bow-tie wearing Berkeley College Republicans are right-wing jihadis. Most of the Berkeley Republicans though Mitt Romney was a bit too far right-wing for them...

4. The investors terminated any further funding of the company in October 2018 when a BuzzFeed article was published with evidence of ties between Milo and white nationalist groups dating from 2015 to 2017. The article, and the investor's departure thereafter, are a matter of public record.

5. With the investor's permission, I was also able to resign from the company, taking no severance and returning my stock back to the corporation without compensation. I have not been involved in any capacity for more than 18 months. Milo continues to own and operate the company. I cannot add any further comment other than to say that I am grateful to now be focusing on making RPGs.

QuoteThere was a time that I thought all the weirdness about racial character classes was just a bloody minded adherence to old school tropes for its own sake. Turns out that he's a racist shitheel who financed a terrorist network and is personally responsible for the deaths of dozens if not hundreds of people.

1. I find it tiresome to debate people who call others racist, because the people who fling the accusation don't use the word to mean what it commonly means. Critical race theorists and their ilk claim that all white people are racists, because a racist is one who benefits from systemic racism, and all white people benefit from systemic racism in America. Since I am quite pasty indeed, ergo, I'm a racist. I, personally, am a committed libertarian individualist, so I reject the entire paradigm under which they operate. In my framework, a racist is a person who personally discriminates against other people on the basis of their race.  Since I don't do that, I'm not a racist. I will leave it to the reader to decide what label to apply based on their worldview. I could provide ample evidence of my actual behavior vis-a-vis other human beings in work and life, but that only matters if you think individual behavior matters.

2. Mr. Tollman obviously does not actually think I finance a terrorist network, nor does he actually I think I am personally responsible for the deaths of hundreds. If he did, he would be terrified to cross me. "The BX retro-clone you just gave a one-star review to was written by a man. And that man's name is John Wick." Since he feels secure enough to make silly claims about me, we can assume he knows his own claims are silly.

QuoteBut it's also true that a bad man can paint a good picture or whatever, and ACKS has infinitely more good ideas to steal than MYFAROG or RAHOWA do. What is it about racist terrorists that inspires them to make acronymized names for their games? Should I be checking Steve Jackson's house for Confederate memorabilia?

1. I think this means I'm better than Hitler, because Hitler was a bad man who painted bad paintings.
2. To be mentioned in the same insult as Steve Jackson is a compliment. But what about the designers of MERP, FASERIP, TOR...

QuoteDungeons & Dragons has a number of tropes in it that are difficult to justify morally. Often we handwave that off with ideas that it's just a game, or that there probably is some overriding justification for whatever violence is used but that neither the justness of the Halfling cause nor the injustice of the orc position are particularly relevant to the story about dashing knights and cunning wizards fighting battles. Saturday morning cartoon morality may suffice because we're potentially telling stories in the genre and inspired by actual Saturday morning cartoons.

1. The notion that the tropes of a game need to be justified morally is bizarre to me. I don't see any sound reason that I, or anyone, needs to justify the morality of the tropes in their art or entertainment to anyone else.

QuoteHowever, we can't really extend that kind of good faith to ACKS, because it turns out to be written by a guy who is almost exactly Osama Bin Laden. I do not make that comparison lightly or in jest. He literally and specifically financed and supported a quite significant network of people for whom radicalizing potential terrorists was a full time job.

1. I frankly neither need nor want the good faith of people who think they are equipped to be the moral judge of my life or work.
2. I neither literally nor specifically financed any network of people.  No one who has ever worked for me has had the full-time job of radicalizing potential terrorists.

QuoteSimilarly you have various tropes and events in classic fantasy literature which are potentially offensive or things that give wood to white supremacists simply because of when they were made. Tolkien was explicitly against white supremacy as an ideology, but you can definitely see why actual white supremacists think his stuff about inherently noble and powerful Numenorians is him speaking their language. Tolkien writing then was him writing in as anti-racist a manner as he was able to given his time and place and background. We extend understanding and allowance for Tolkien that we would not do for someone writing the same things today. And indeed, when Alexander Macris writes Numernor expies, we don't give him the benefit of the doubt. We don't have doubt for him to benefit from. It's racist eliminationalist rhetoric that is disgusting when Alexander Macris writes this shit in 2017.

1. As has been pointed out elsewhere, the ACKS setting of the Auran Empire was inspired by the Late Roman Empire. The barbarians that sacked Rome are, in ACKS, replaced by beastmen raiders. Now, the barbarians that attacked Rome were the Germans that Hitler would later characterize as the Aryan Master Race. So the role of the Aryan Master Race in ACKS is played by the pig-men and ape-men. I fail to see how this is an example of white supremacy.

2. I'm Greek-Italian ethnicity; my father was born in Alexandria, Egypt; I lived as a child in Algeria and Greece; I studied Ancient History and Arabic in college. The Auran Empire has everything to do with my own personal interests and nothing at all to do with contemporary politics.

*****
I'm grateful for the kind words extended by several of you in this thread - thank you. I'm happy to answer questions about my actual politics for anyone who cares. I'm proud of my views and very forthright.

When I found the Den several years back, I was quite ecstatic, because the environment seemed like one that was more mechanically-minded (in terms of game mechanics), and felt like it was making progress towards development of systems - or at least ideas - that would help alleviate some of the magic tea party aspects of the game.

Before you fucking twatwaffles get your panties in a twist over that phrase, I have used MTP as well, and I don't care for it, because it means that the mechanics of the game have run out and now you're just kind of making shit up as you go. While that can work, I much prefer to have sensible systems in place that can produce reproducible results, and allow for players to act with some kind of knowledge about how the world will react to their actions. I've got enough other shit to juggle behind the screen without also having to fabricate entire subsystems out of thin air, and I'm tired of being sold products that people get paid real money to write that are incomplete piles of shit.

Unfortunately, it seems that around the time I found the Den was also around the start of its decline, and you can see the sort of garbage that Frank has been shitting out the past several years. That it has become a cult of personality over there makes it even worse: Frank apparently needs no justification for his thoughts beyond the fact that Frank uttered them. Combine that with constant injection of politics and an utter lack of any kind of mechanical or system innovation for at least the last couple years (at least that are visible to those not in the "inner party," as it were), and my interest in that hole is fading fast.

Quote from: amacris;1109404But since I read and post here regularly, I thought it would be odd not to comment at all. For what it's worth, I think I can say the following since the facts are public record.

Excellent post, thank you for the insight! So shocked with the revelation you're not a racist, terrorist-inciting white supremacist mass-murderer! :eek: