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.