Thursday, July 31, 2014

Zak S And the RPG Pundit Have Become Heroes

Zak Smith (of D&D With Porn Stars fame) and John Tarnowski (AKA Kasimir Urbanski, AKA the RPG Pundit, AKA... who really cares) have become larger than life figures in my world of gaming as of this morning. I have really only been peripherally been keeping up with either of them over the past few years, Pery watched the "I Hit It With My Axe" show a couple of times and The RPG Pundit makes a point to put out articles at his blogs that I find informative. They both mix in with a gritty, more adult role-playing milieu that I find comfortable despite all the 14-17 year-olds that keep popping up at my tables at conventions and game days. Zak is a little sensationalistic and the 'Pundit is oatmealy D&D, which get only marginal scans at the best of times by me.

Because a dude picks this as his illustration, it does not make you Len Di Caprio
  
This morning though, I've learned that they are _bad_ people. How I learned is that Peryton is on a D&D high of late, so the trappings of that game's latest release are infiltrating the environment that is our house. A certain blog, a "Fail Forward," presciently named for the new reader apparently, popped up on my newsfeed as I drank coffee. While wading through the blog, I wade through so many these golden days, I learned that certain folk who were too afraid of speaking were being spoken out for by a collective group of people, some of whom were most-likely one or more of the authors of this blog--apparently the blog only likes to name individuals when it is insulting them. The unspoken victims were antagonized folks that both Zak S and the RPG Pundit have argued with before, the entire viewing audience of cable TV's MSNBC, and the card-carrying population of the Adventure Gaming  arm of Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual, and Trans-Gendered community.

Just in case the allegations aren't complete dung, let me speak first to the MSNBC and LGBT factions first. Knock it off. Why am I reading about your victimization by unidentifiable benefactors in gaming blogs?  Especially why in gaming blogs? Not sure if you've noticed that any reactionary jackass to the 13th amendment, let alone gay marriage, will never lose money publishing a role-playing game, and your holier-than-thou notice of these sorts only sell more of their games.Speaking for myself, I've never seen Smith nor Tarnowski trying to win favor among the reactionary sorts. Of course, I've never drank with them. When I do I'll tell you what I think about them. Even if I disagree with them though, they are entitled to their own opinions as is the people that work with them. I ,as a liberal sort, don't like black-listing people.

A quick point about those that hide in groups, which leader is more popular today; Lenin or Bakunin? 

That little aside brings me to my opinion just in case this scandal is actually a big pile of crap. Now I shouldn't be lumping everything together, but looking at the intellectually-challenged lumping together of insinuation and insubstantially trivial gossip that the Avant Fail blog achieves, I feel entitled (much like the Failure to Advance group apparently does).

I really wish the "professional game fan" would disappear. By professional game fan, I mean those that fill up our hobby with what they think others like.  Not meaning games crafted by them but their opinions. My biggest example a blog where the author, probably a Tom Hatfield, must hide behind a "group" of fellows to state how he feels about something. Specifically this version of D&D has references to LGBT issues, which if you think about it, makes no sense away from the individual gaming group. This further cheapens the role-playing hobby by overly qualified folks trying to turn a sub-culture of a very small press market into their rent. While he's busy pissing in the well, he and his ilk think of a couple that he doesn't like to be included, forgetting what it feels like to not having been included elsewhere, if that was indeed ever the case for him, or them. More than likely, this person who hides in associations with others wants the rest of us collectively to suffer his falsely-collective judgement without taking responsibility. 


Who will play Mark Twain to Di Caprio's Nietzsche?

 Adventure gaming does best when is a hobby. Stop allowing it to be a cult of personality, collective or otherwise.


7 comments:

Unknown said...

Citation needed.

If you're going to call people out as "bad people" at least provide proof. Link to THEM saying/doing the horrible things (not to others claiming they did, with no sources of their own)

Honestly, I've never heard of either of these two people before today, but all of a sudden my RPG feeds are being spammed with comments about how horrible they are, with no actual proof of it.

Tom K. said...

"...but all of a sudden my RPG feeds are being spammed with comments about how horrible they are, with no actual proof of it."

From all 30 reads of this blog post since July 5th? Really?

Unknown said...

I don't recall saying I was being spammed by this particular post. I certainly don't see that in my text. What HAS happened is tons of people, just like the person who wrote this article, have exploded on various forums with a ton of heresay. All of them are saying "I heard that someone else said that they heard..." type of bullshit.

Tom K. said...

I only recall quoting you to yourself and asking a question. Pretty ideal way of dealing with someone who is used to speaking in the "passive-aggressive" stance. This does two things of equal importance to me. It shows that you're used to being afraid of actually say what you are inferring. It also verifies that you've an agenda-- or do you often find year-old opinions at obscure blogs to pedantically lecture about composition of theses?

Now it's time for you to swear at me more and say something to make yourself fell better about this engagement.

Unknown said...

So, you're hallucinating now apparently? I swore at you? When was this? Eh, doesn't really matter, I'm not into feeding trolls.

Unknown said...

So, you're hallucinating now apparently? I swore at you? When was this? Eh, doesn't really matter, I'm not into feeding trolls.

Tom K. said...

You only act as one.