I'm not going to say who it was, for obvious reasons, but someone recently wrote to me privately, about how there were some of the Usual Suspects (in this case on RPGnet, but it could really have been anywhere) attacking his rpg-writing.  This particular designer had never had this happen to him before now, and he was quite concerned and didn't know how to deal with it.  They were attacking his present work, looking at old posts to find things he might have said years ago to use against him, whipping up the mob into a frenzy, etc.; all the usual tactics.  So, I thought I'd share here what I wrote to him, since other people might also benefit from it someday.
Names have been withheld, but the rest of this posted for general benefit.  You never know when YOU might be the next one targeted, because increasingly, there's no real criteria as to who get's chosen as the Pseudo-activists' next victim.


Without further ado:


Ok, first: don't apologize for anything, don't try to hide anything. Don't delete things you said in the past.  If you honestly don't believe in it any more, say so, but don't hide it.  If you do believe in it, be shameless about it.  They're going to go for the throat anyways, NOTHING will make them stop, so don't think you can try to make some kind of compromise with them.  If you show any weakness, they just get more rabid.

Second, why are you engaging them on their own territory where they have all the advantage? They get to say things you don't, they can paint you as the unreasonable one, and if you get mad they'll paint you as 'erratic', and then when they think its the right moment, they'll ban you.  
You're already banned there, it just hasn't finished happening yet.

Find better places to promote your product.  The rpgnet ruling clique has decided your game is evil, that's it.  You're dead there.  You should go promote it where you are likely to actually find an audience, in other forums, and on G+ or Facebook.

The best way to beat them is to be blatant about how they mean nothing to you, and to succeed in spite of them.  Whenever you do that, it weakens them.  When you take them seriously, or try to reason with them, it only makes them stronger.

One more thing: in my experience, in the long run, there's no such thing as 'bad press'.  Some of it can limit your options in the future, but usually only if you're very clearly a controversy-hound (along the lines of James Desborough). If you are professional about it, getting slammed by a gang of assholes just makes people pay attention to you.  You'll be crying all the way to the bank, if you work this right.



RPGPundit

Currently Smoking: Lorenzetti Solitario Poker + Gawith's Virginia Flake

Feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but in many cases like this- the people leading the charge against someone like your friend (a guy who's making a product)... there's someone whipping the mob into the frenzy with their own product, or they're at least an opportunist trying to benefit.  In quite a few of these things, I've seen a competitor at the forefront... and in one extreme case- someone that wanted a position within a company.  In the various forms of social media used (Twitter, Tumblr, forums, w/e), these folks can control a narrative and shut down not only their own critics, but launch campaigns against other creators and block off any rebuttal.

I mean, it might be just a stupid theory.  But I believe there are usually three main types of people in these little outrages:  The Gullible and misinformed person thinking they're doing the right thing, the just flat-out ass-mad person that gets off on being pissed off, and the opportunist.  The opportunists are usually always the movers and shakers, the rest are just a mob of idiots.  But my theory is that these folks have figured out a way to weaponize stupidity, and it's being used against people they either compete with or want to extort.

That's very true, there's often an opportunist in the mix.

I mean, in the RPG hobby just about ALL the Outrage Brigade are 'opportunists', because they're supporters of "alternative" and "indie" Storygames, which they want to see benefit from a 'deconstruction' of the RPG hobby.

Quote from: RPGPundit;900562That's very true, there's often an opportunist in the mix.

I mean, in the RPG hobby just about ALL the Outrage Brigade are 'opportunists', because they're supporters of "alternative" and "indie" Storygames, which they want to see benefit from a 'deconstruction' of the RPG hobby.

I guess there's the Evil Hat/FATE lot, and the Maid lot, but mostly the Outrage Brigade seem more into Exalted/White Wolf railroady stuff. But really most of the Outrage Brigade's roleplaying seems to be restricted to pretending to be a 'transgender lesbian' on rpgnet fora.

Quote from: RPGPundit;900562That's very true, there's often an opportunist in the mix.

I mean, in the RPG hobby just about ALL the Outrage Brigade are 'opportunists', because they're supporters of "alternative" and "indie" Storygames, which they want to see benefit from a 'deconstruction' of the RPG hobby.

Well, based on what you've shown here: http://dorkland.blogspot.kr/2014/12/onebookshelf-and-that-voldemort-card.html

And what you've said here: http://therpgpundit.blogspot.com/2016/05/christopher-helton-making-fast-gains-in.html

Yeah, my little insane theory isn't so far-fetched after all.  These guys all have their own (shitty) products.  Any time someone else comes into the neighborhood to compete, these guys circle the wagons and start smear campaigns or start fighting against their ability to sell.  I almost believe that the 'Outrage Brigade' is just a mob of emotionally/psychologically damaged loons, and without direction from these folks at the top... they'd just be wallowing in their own bodily discharges.  

The opportunists don't care about the outrage.  They're just taking down threats.

Back when I was very young in my home town, we heard about a Wal-Mart finally being built there.  Of course everyone was excited, because the nearest one was almost 40 minutes away- the money you saved there wasn't worth it once you factored in the gas, so everyone bought local overpriced shit.  Shortly after the land had been bought and the news dropped, there were folks going on about how Wal-Mart was 'destroying communities and jobs'.  Hell, Sunday morning church sermons were about how this Wal-Mart was going to ruin our little town and how they 'freely hired homosexuals' and 'donated to Satanic and New Age groups'.  And in the end and behind it all- were the people who owned the local grocery store, hardware store, department stores, etc.  And none of these bastards cared about the community- they were price-gouging and never hired anyone that didn't share their DNA.

Long time lurker. I've actually been meaning to post to some other threads, so might as well start with this one since it's about me!

I want to thank Pundit (again!) for not naming names, as well as taking the time to provide some very useful advice.

This happened last May. I'd been working on A Sundered World, I guess what you'd call a campaign setting for Dungeon World (though we’re “porting” it to d20 since that’s what I vastly prefer). My group had been playtesting it for about half a year, which helped flesh it out and clarify things that needed clarifying. I'd gotten most of the writing and about half the art done when after much prompting I started a Kickstarter.

I decided to post it on rpg.net because I’d posted other product releases there without incident. The first post was by Paul “Ettin”, who proceeded to falsely accuse me of, among other things, stalking and harassing a buddy of his, Jacob Randolph, and claim that I was ripping off Planescape because I mentioned in the Kickstarter that I enjoyed Planescape back when I played 2E D&D.

(The only things that A Sundered World shares with Planescape is that there are angels and demons, but there aren’t other planes of existence, which is kind of the deal with Planescape. There also aren’t gods or a neutral city where everyone is forced to get along with each other OR ELSE. If anything it has more in common with Spelljammer, but even then it’s really only sometimes magical ships.)

The reality is that Paul was angry that Jacob was angry for at least two reasons that I’m aware of.

The first is that my girlfriend wrote a witch class for Dungeon World, and since Jacob made a witch first I guess he felt that no one else should make a witch, ever (ours came out a good year or two after his). This also happened much later with a cultist class, because we regularly run polls on what classes people want us to tackle next, and the majority demanded a cultist (which also came out a year or so after his).

He tried lying about how we were using the same names to confuse people and drive up our sales, something that can be proven false merely by comparing the classes. Link here: http://daegames.blogspot.com/2015/02/dungeon-world-whats-in-name.html

The second is that I backed Inverse World, a Dungeon World thing that Jacob wrote, because I didn’t really know Jacob at the time and felt it would be nice to have an example on what people expect out of a Dungeon World setting. Despite coming out incredibly late, it was incredibly underwhelming, and after seeing people praising it for things it objectively lacked I decided to write a review on it.

Links:
http://daegames.blogspot.com/2014/06/an-inverse-opinion.html
http://daegames.blogspot.com/2014/08/inverse-world-my-criticisms-run-deep.html

Mind you, to this day neither Jacob nor his fans have attempted to address any of my criticisms BESIDES the weird page dimensions (PDF is only 4.6 x  inches). They’ve only tried shouting me down, ignoring, and/or blocking. So, I guess Paul figured this was a way to “get back” at me, by abusing what little status he has as a moderator to threadcrap and spread lies.

Regardless we got funded, though we’d probably have made more at the time had we just avoided rpg.net. An acquaintance of mine mentioned there’s a forum where people have talked shit about me and stated that they would never buy anything I’ve worked on, but he didn’t tell me where or name names so I dunno.

Even so, there are plenty of people that buy our stuff and ask us for Dungeon World advice (despite me no longer being part of the DW community), so I guess Pundit was right on that mark: even bad press isn’t so bad in the long run!

At this point, I'm fully convinced 'that site' is just a place for scummy developers to tear down competitors and lash out at critics.  

Is it wrong that I want to build a database of these folks and openly show folks what kind of scumbags these guys are?  I don't have a lot of influence at all, and the most I could do is show it to the few FLGS's back home (the owners have a dislike toward the outrage brigade because they start arguments on game days) and just kind of put it online.

EDIT:  Good to see you here, Guyll.

Quote from: antiochcow;900596Regardless we got funded, though we’d probably have made more at the time had we just avoided rpg.net.

A lesson that more and more of the gaming community is learning.

JG

You want an answer? Pony up a $20 bill and go buy (and read) "SJWs Always Lie" from Amazon. Vox Day nailed that shit.

Quote from: antiochcow;900596Long time lurker. (...)

Pardon me, but wouldn't you be that guy who wrote "God of Social Justice" article? If so, good work. That was funny thing to read.

In addition I had plenty of fun laughing at people who stopped reading it too early and assumed you were honest-to-God SJW. Which brings me to...

QuoteAn acquaintance of mine mentioned there’s a forum where people have talked shit about me and stated that they would never buy anything I’ve worked on, but he didn’t tell me where or name names so I dunno.

I recall there WAS a thread where people swore they won't ever buy anything written by you, because the relevant article convinced them you're a SJW. Fortunately, it happened in a place harboring people with low attention span, constantly angry about something for no apparent reason, who prefer to complain about things more than actually using them (not to mention buying it), and near the end - after they actually finished reading the article - they changed the narrative from "that SJW piece of shit" to merely "that Dungeon World piece of shit".

Not saying this was the thread your acquaintance wrote about, but it fits.

While I don't agree with David's criticisms of Jacob Randolph's works (I like his rpg material, to be blunt) I was not very impressed with how this rivalry was handled. There are LOTS of Dungeon World playbooks that overlap in theme. Hell, you could say the same out of any home brew community (OSR anyone?). So I thought that Jacob and Ettin's outrage over the Cultist and Witch were kind of stupid.

A Sundered World is a very dense, rich book. It takes a very different approach to a setting than Inverse World. The former is full of detail and pre-made concepts, the latter is more open ended and DIY. A little too open-ended for some, obviously. I don't think that either work is perfect (I wish that there was a bit MORE material in Inverse World, and I thought that many of the Moves in Sundered World were superfluous and added unnecessary complexity to Dungeon World). But I'm just happy that indie developers are producing so much content for me to play with.

Now this isn't to say "let's all just get along!" because I don't think that reasonable, mature discourse is really possible at this point within our fractured, lines drawn in the sand, gaming community. I just wish that an individual's criticism would end at that and that they would stop trying to convince their fans and/or allies to boycott others' works. That doesn't make me too hopeful as an aspiring game writer. What the fuck am I about to get into? Will I have to include a comment in the fine print about which faction I support? White Rose or Red Rose? Fuck that shit.

Welcome, antiochcow! May you post more and lurk less in your future!

(Also, I had a brain slip and thought your name was ariochcow, which if you're a fan of Moorcock and Jeff Dee's Deities & Demigods art would make for an interesting speculative image... )

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;900605You want an answer? Pony up a $20 bill and go buy (and read) "SJWs Always Lie" from Amazon. Vox Day nailed that shit.

He's also released a short version for free.

http://www.voxday.net/mart/SJW_Attack_Survival_Guide.pdf

Quote from: RPGPundit;900562That's very true, there's often an opportunist in the mix.

I mean, in the RPG hobby just about ALL the Outrage Brigade are 'opportunists', because they're supporters of "alternative" and "indie" Storygames, which they want to see benefit from a 'deconstruction' of the RPG hobby.

   I think there may be some overlap, but on the other hand, Paizo--which is about as grounded in traditional gaming as you can get--has a strong contingent of SJWs and reportedly caters to them in their material. See also Green Ronin, and WotC's design staff has made SJW-sympathetic noises. Then again, all three of those companies are centered in the Seattle area, where the political spectrum seems to place Lenin as 'center-right'.

Quote from: antiochcow;900596The first post was by Paul “Ettin”

Say no more