Quote from: Omega;1116121It never will be. There are people eho pathologically despise Gygax. Because someone told them to. Not from any real evidence. Just because someone said Gygax was a mean ol man. Im pretty sure TSR after they got rid of him fostered this as well.

Indeed. While we're definitely living in a golden age of resentment towards anyone whose accomplished anything in their lives, Gygax hate goes back a long way. In the 90s when I first started dipping my toes into online rpg forums (this was pre-TBP), I was surprised to find that there was a whole little sub-community of people who seemed to think that GG had killed their dog or something.

Quote from: Dimitrios;1116285Indeed. While we're definitely living in a golden age of resentment towards anyone whose accomplished anything in their lives, Gygax hate goes back a long way. In the 90s when I first started dipping my toes into online rpg forums (this was pre-TBP), I was surprised to find that there was a whole little sub-community of people who seemed to think that GG had killed their dog or something.

   I was there, and if memory serves, a lot of that came from resentment of some of his more intemperate Dragon articles and the fact that neither the hobby nor the Internet will ever let go of a grudge.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1116289I was there, and if memory serves, a lot of that came from resentment of some of his more intemperate Dragon articles and the fact that neither the hobby nor the Internet will ever let go of a grudge.

Yea, Garry wrote some nasty letters. He ripped the APAs (Amateur Press Association fanzines) a new one. For this reason, I'm not fond of Garry. But that is NOT a reason for me to dismiss his contributions to the hobby. Anyone trying to write Garry out of the history of RPGs is way off base. Rob is right, the hobby wouldn't be what it is today without BOTH Arneson AND Gygax (now we can argue that someone else would have eventually come along, and that is probably true, but NEVER a reason to dismiss anyone's contribution, that could be said of ANY accomplishment ANYONE ever achieves).

I always thought of 'Gamer Gary' and 'TSR Gary'.  The latter was a raging asshole, and the former was a decent fellow with whom it would be a lot of fun to play games of any sort.  Read through his AMAs on other forums and you'll see Gamer Gary.

Quote from: Franky;1116300I always thought of 'Gamer Gary' and 'TSR Gary'.  The latter was a raging asshole, and the former was a decent fellow with whom it would be a lot of fun to play games of any sort.  Read through his AMAs on other forums and you'll see Gamer Gary.

It is hard to fit someones whole life story into one alignment box.

There'll be some painting supposedly by Michelangelo, and someone uses an x-ray to figure out it was actually one of his students, now it's gone from $100 million valuation to $100,000. If you can't tell the difference without an x-ray then really there is no difference. Believing that inanimate objects are possessed of a spirit or essence is animism, thus the value of the thing to us depends on things which we cannot see with the naked eye.

Likewise, the value to some people of D&D lies not in the game itself, but its spiritual essence, its authour. This animistic thinking puzzles me. For a non-animist, the value of something lies in its beauty and utility, not in its authourship.

I always find it interesting how strong animism is in modern supposedly secular Western secular society.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1116241There were other problems besides that. I stopped posting over at Murkhill, because the mods over (including perilous dreamer) there either deleted, or managed to lose a number of threads and discussions related to old school gaming, original D&D, Blackmoor, and the Wilderlands that had content contributed by original old school authors, as well as gamers (...including myself) and fans. One of my Pet Peeves is censorship by omission where inconvenient conversations are arbitrarily deleted by mods with no good cause and without remorse. You don't like what you hear even though it is the truth, too bad. Not my problem, and you better not censor me for telling the truth, or speaking my mind because I live in a free country.

Interestingly enough my account was banned from the 0D&D Proboards in October of 2018, another old school D&D board because Rafael (one of the Mods over there) over there wasn't happy that I refused to close my Murkhill account, just because they have a hard-on for killing their internet friend the  "Sockpuppet" and anyone associated with him, regardless of the actual status of the relationship (of which they are completely ignorant, by the way). He actually PM'ed me directly and told me to stop associating with Perilous Dreamer, and threatened to delete my account, and I just told him politely to fuck off, and get off my lawn.

You know, I petitioned Finarvn "Marv" to have my 0D&D proboards account reinstated a few weeks later and he said he would, but I checked it a couple weeks ago, and my account over there is banned. They don't want to talk about old school games, and original D&D and Traveller, and they don't want me to talk about old school games, fuck'em. They want to delete messages and threads because it doesn't fit there narrative of what "original D&D" should be, fuck' em. I was around when original D&D was the only thing being played, and know what really happened, who was responsible for what, and why. Their slithering narrative, deliberate and careful omissions in order to reinvent what original roleplaying and D&D was, is duly noted here, ...a place where the truth still matters.

I sent you and The Pundit a PM months ago when you posted this claim of censorship explaining that no posts were deleted or lost. After theperilousdreamer stepped down from being owner of the forum, the new management team gave the forum a face lift and renamed the different categories of the forum (see here http://ruinsofmurkhill.proboards.com). When we did that we consolidated some areas and created some new ones, threads were moved around in a way that made sense to us. I did not post in the thread the first time I saw you made this false claim, I sent a private pm to you the The Pundit. The only reason I am posting this info in a thread is because even now that you know nothing was censored or deleted, you insist on promulgating that untrue info. Nothing you posted at The Ruins has been censored, deleted or removed, nothing! As far as blaming theperilousdreamer for your imagined censorship, you should direct that towards the management team as theperilousdreamer has not had anything other than regular member access for about 18 months at this point.

The rest of it we don't really care about one way or the other. I will confirm that the mod you mentioned at ODD74 does fully run the show over there and did in fact ban every common member between the two forums. I suspect that most of our "new" members are just old members ducking a banning at ODD74 by using a new name with us. At the time dozens of our members were banned at ODD74. We temp banned Finarvn for about a month until we found out that he was not behind any of what was going on, but just another victim and we unbanned him about 16+ months ago. At this point only three people form ODD74 remain banned at The Ruins. The ring leader and two henchman. One of those henchman was a Global Mod at The Ruins under the guise of friendship and used his access to record the email address, date of birth and IP of every members. Oh and that Global Mod that did this, had two accounts at The Ruins when we got to checking. Yeah, the Zealot's henchman had a sockpuppet of his own.

To the charge that has been made that The Ruins was created behind Finaryn's back, here is the advice that Finaryn gave theperilousdreamer a few days after the building of The Ruins started.

QuoteJan 16, 2015 at 17:01 Admin said:
Hey, David --

I like the concept and I like your organization. A couple of thoughts:

(1) In general, more discussion of OD&D is better, so I like to see lots of places like yours pop up.

(2) As you noted, however, moving some traffic there will probably dilute conversation here.

(3) You may find that your board may fail, simply because it seems like one needs a "critical mass" of posters in order to maintain interest. (I have found this out with my Amber Diceless board, where I built it and no one came.) I'm not sure how to attract enough posters, but if you don't get them it'll be a quiet place.

(4) There are other places which also discuss OD&D and don't get much traffic, either. Dragonsfoot has an OD&D section, there's a site called Platemail (I may have the name wrong?), Rafe's Blackmoor page has some OD&D space, Knights & Knaves has an OD&D area, and so on. None get many posts.

In spite of my doom-and-gloom sounding comments, I think that it's a good idea and I wish you luck with your endeavor! It looks cool and I can't wait to read some posts!

- Marv

Sorry Pundit, but we are not the censors we are being accused of and I could not let that pass a second time.

Now back on topic. I find it amusing that people seem to think that The Ruins is anti-Gygax, we are not. It is a common delusion that wanting Arneson to get the credit he deserves is somehow anti-Gygax. I am in agreement with Mr Conley about the common importance of both. I do not understand how you can look at Mr. Wittig's detailed post and come up with anti-Gygax. The point he is making, at least the way I read it, is that there was cross pollination going back and forth from multiple sources from multiple directions. That strikes me as quite believable. Whether his specific premise is as strong as he believes, I don't know. But it does give us something to think about.

Quote from: ElBorak;1116405After theperilousdreamer stepped down from being owner of the forum, the new management team gave the forum a face lift and renamed the different categories of the forum... When we did that we consolidated some areas and created some new ones, threads were moved around in a way that made sense to us. I did not post in the thread the first time I saw you made this false claim, I sent a private pm to you the The Pundit.

Sorry Pundit, but we are not the censors we are being accused of and I could not let that pass a second time.

You do censor what you don't like, and you tell lies here right now. That's pretty ballsy, so I'm calling you out. You won't get away with this here because you can't erase this forum or move things around (same difference, when it comes down to it)  so they can no longer be easily found, ...as you can over on your own forums.

A couple things happened with this that I can specifically recall where you are at best, evading the truth concerning this. Some areas were deleted entirely and perhaps their threads were moved around into other categories, where they can possibly still be found, however these threads were originally layered in a specific chronological order, and for a very good reason. We wanted the discussions to be presented to the general public so that they would understand. With the loss of chronological order comes a a great loss in meaning and understanding as everything that was originally posted is now out of context. I'm speaking specifically about two threads/categories here the thread about Judges Guild and the Wilderlands, and Bob Bledsaw, and other threads where Rob Kuntz had been posting about original D&D. You know your little "re-arranging and housecleaning stunt" pissed off Rob so bad, he stopped posting over on your website as well. Everyone here can go over and see that for themselves, you'll see he had been posting quite a bit and then abruptly stopped in April of 2018. I myself continued posting sporadically until late 2018, but was put off at first in the late summer by the threats and allegations that were coming from that douche Rafael, over on the 0D&D proboards, and later totally quit when I could no longer find my own contributions there. No point in me posting if it won't even be seen, eh?

For the record Rafael specifically refused to share data that I requested about specific IP addresses and accounts, so I could not actually confirm for myself that you all were sock-puppeting over there, but your own actions spoke for themselves and lent him an undeserved credibility.  I ended up quitting posting on Murkhill, because I could no longer find threads that I had participated in, even using the onsite search tools, and I checked last week, many of the threads from the Wilderlands discussions are still missing or cannot be easily found (Same difference...). Rob quit posting because his threads that had a prominent place were arbitrarily moved and threads that favored the mods over there and perilous dreamer were moved into locations that were easy to find, relatively speaking compared to Robs threads. The implication with this is that Robs contribution about original D&D shouldn't be considered as meaningful as, well, ...you know, yourself, perilous dreamer and his sock puppet army, even though he was one of the original authors of D&D.

Even though I have an account on Murkhill, I don't even want to post over there anymore. Pretty much the same as Dragonsfoot, where they took all of the threads from the original D&D authors and dumped them into one little subforum on their website, reducing the contributions of the Original D&D authors there to a footnote, even though they made the website what it is today, Shame on them. Shame on you for trying to do exactly the same thing with Murkhill. I at least understand why they are doing what they are doing over there, They got their little Kingsmen's Knickers in a twist, because they want to control all the discussions and IP for "old school" roleplaying and original tabletop RPGs but they (and you as well) will fffaaaaaaaaaiiilllll!

While I'm on the subject, after the fall of G+, a bunch of us gamers migrated over to MeWe, and began posting in gaming threads over there. Not content with fucking up their own website and driving everyone off who was interested in posting about old school games, the Murkhill gang and their alleged sockpuppet army (...If there ever was one, I"d still like to see some logs with some specific usernames of supposed sock puppets attached to some specific IPs so I could independently confirm the 0D&D Proboard allegations), started a bunch of old school social network circles there, and are attempting to channel and dominate the ongoing conversations, Fortunately MeWe has a really outstanding private channel system, so it is pretty easy to evade their attempts to steer the RPG gaming conversations.

Censorship: to examine and expurgate. To assess, estimate, and judge. (From the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language)

Your job over at Murkhill as mods is not to Judge what I, or anyone else contributes. You are supposed to be the guardians of our written truths, of our opinions about RPGs, and games, and you should care about the exact nature of what we wished to convey, if we are there sharing. Anything else, is, ...well, censorship with another agenda.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1116426You do censor what you don't like, and you tell lies here right now. That's pretty ballsy, so I'm calling you out. You won't get away with this here because you can't erase this forum or move things around (same difference, when it comes down to it)  so they can no longer be easily found, ...as you can over on your own forums.

A couple things happened with this that I can specifically recall where you are at best, evading the truth concerning this. Some areas were deleted entirely and perhaps their threads were moved around into other categories, where they can possibly still be found, however these threads were originally layered in a specific chronological order, and for a very good reason. We wanted the discussions to be presented to the general public so that they would understand. With the loss of chronological order comes a a great loss in meaning and understanding as everything that was originally posted is now out of context. I'm speaking specifically about two threads/categories here the thread about Judges Guild and the Wilderlands, and Bob Bledsaw, and other threads where Rob Kuntz had been posting about original D&D. You know your little "re-arranging and housecleaning stunt" pissed off Rob so bad, he stopped posting over on your website as well. Everyone here can go over and see that for themselves, you'll see he had been posting quite a bit and then abruptly stopped in April of 2018. I myself continued posting sporadically until late 2018, but was put off at first in the late summer by the threats and allegations that were coming from that douche Rafael, over on the 0D&D proboards, and later totally quit when I could no longer find my own contributions there. No point in me posting if it won't even be seen, eh?

For the record Rafael specifically refused to share data that I requested about specific IP addresses and accounts, so I could not actually confirm for myself that you all were sock-puppeting over there, but your own actions spoke for themselves and lent him an undeserved credibility.  I ended up quitting posting on Murkhill, because I could no longer find threads that I had participated in, even using the onsite search tools, and I checked last week, many of the threads from the Wilderlands discussions are still missing or cannot be easily found (Same difference...). Rob quit posting because his threads that had a prominent place were arbitrarily moved and threads that favored the mods over there and perilous dreamer were moved into locations that were easy to find, relatively speaking compared to Robs threads. The implication with this is that Robs contribution about original D&D shouldn't be considered as meaningful as, well, ...you know, yourself, perilous dreamer and his sock puppet army, even though he was one of the original authors of D&D.

Even though I have an account on Murkhill, I don't even want to post over there anymore. Pretty much the same as Dragonsfoot, where they took all of the threads from the original D&D authors and dumped them into one little subforum on their website, reducing the contributions of the Original D&D authors there to a footnote, even though they made the website what it is today, Shame on them. Shame on you for trying to do exactly the same thing with Murkhill. I at least understand why they are doing what they are doing over there, They got their little Kingsmen's Knickers in a twist, because they want to control all the discussions and IP for "old school" roleplaying and original tabletop RPGs but they (and you as well) will fffaaaaaaaaaiiilllll!

While I'm on the subject, after the fall of G+, a bunch of us gamers migrated over to MeWe, and began posting in gaming threads over there. Not content with fucking up their own website and driving everyone off who was interested in posting about old school games, the Murkhill gang and their alleged sockpuppet army (...If there ever was one, I"d still like to see some logs with some specific usernames of supposed sock puppets attached to some specific IPs so I could independently confirm the 0D&D Proboard allegations), started a bunch of old school social network circles there, and are attempting to channel and dominate the ongoing conversations, Fortunately MeWe has a really outstanding private channel system, so it is pretty easy to evade their attempts to steer the RPG gaming conversations.

Censorship: to examine and expurgate. To assess, estimate, and judge. (From the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language)

Your job over at Murkhill as mods is not to Judge what I, or anyone else contributes. You are supposed to be the guardians of our written truths, of our opinions about RPGs, and games, and you should care about the exact nature of what we wished to convey, if we are there sharing. Anything else, is, ...well, censorship with another agenda.

I will be brief since this is the Pundit's forum and will not then continue further unless he approves.

Again your claim of censorship is false. Anyone that has doubts can read the forum for themselves. We censor only bad languages and sex to keep the forum family friendly. As for Rob Kuntz he left in April 2018 and our  

Quote"re-arranging and housecleaning stunt"

took place in the latter half of June and July 2018. As for Rob's threads, we handled them in strict accordance with Rob's instructions. As to whether or not Rob was pissed at us, I do not know that to be true. I do know that he and the dreamer interact on other platforms in a friendly manner and I am told they exchange emails from time to time. I also know that the dreamer promotes Robs work. A few other people, gronan being one, deleted their own accounts on the way out as they left on their own. Other's have left on their own and deleted their own posts on the way out the door. IIRC 16 people deleted their own accounts and another 60 stopped posting at all, including most of our top posters at the time. Of the original 13 members that helped build the forum in the few weeks before it went live only one remains.

As for MeWe we have four small groups (and no I do not count the Tunnels & Trolls group as being one of those) and we are drop in the bucket over there, albeit a bigger drop than we were on G+. But you are sounding like the Zealot you call the douche when you say we are trying to dominate. We might represent as much as 2% of the old school community at MeWe, but if you call that trying to dominate, then we have wildly different definitions of the word dominate.

If someone thinks we are censoring this fellow come and look. Oh, we did move his subforum into the area of all the dormant subforums see http://ruinsofmurkhill.proboards.com/board/47/campaign-listed-murkhill-archives. It was moved because it had not been touched in many months. gamedaddy/dragondaddy makes it active again, it will be moved back to the main page, but inactive it stays were it is at.

So with my apologies to the Pundit I will end this here.

Gamers can be such dorks, honestly.

Greetings!

Geesus. All the drama over posts or threads being deleted and moved at some other allegedly small website, with few members. If some mods somewhere, somehow, for whatever reason don't like you, too fucking bad. They can fuck themselves, and you move somewhere else.

I don't understand why all of this backroom whispering conspiracies, who emailed who, and who said what, who is really an ally or someone else is a shit-disturbing snake, whaa, whaa, whaa.

Why is all that remotely important?

I think some people have way too much invested in online fucking drama.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Game Daddy and El Borak, you guys aren't helping anything, most especially the memory of Gary and Dave. That exchange was bugnuts. Bannings! Memory Holes! Sockpuppets! Ruins of Murkhill and OD&D Proboards sounds like a mental institution, not a gamer gathering.  

The fandom of OD&D is such a tiny community and yet ALL we ever hear from the various "groups" is A-grade nutburger bullshit. Instead of great game discussion, we get whackass venn diagrams and "how many owlbears can dance on the head of a pin" arguments about what REALLY might have happened the week of March 9, 1972.

OD&D is a wonderful game, and thanks to Swords & Wizardry: White Box, its now remarkably accessible to everyone. But none of this ugly internecine wanking helps promote actual play.

Quote from: estar;1116175Thus Dave is the father of tabletop roleplaying and Gary is the father of D&D and there is no path to our hobby today that doesn't run through the two.

That's an EXCELLENT way to explain the situation. Kudos!

Quote from: Melan;1116269Anyway, move on, pops. D&D was written by Aretha Washington, a brave womyn of lesbian colour, whose original game, Unicorns & Feelings was appropriated by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson to deny her royalties, and turn her game into a heteromasculinist exercise in gendered political violence. You will be able to read all about it in detail in next week's Kotaku exposé.

Too painfully funny!

Henceforth, OD&D shall be known as a "heteromasculinist exercise in gendered political violence"!!!!

Quote from: SHARK;1116444I don't understand why all of this backroom whispering conspiracies, who emailed who, and who said what, who is really an ally or someone else is a shit-disturbing snake, whaa, whaa, whaa.

Why is all that remotely important?

I think some people have way too much invested in online fucking drama.

Exactly. I don't understand it either. I certainly don't understand why I should be banned from the 0D&D74 boards, just because I refused to discontinue posting over on Murkhill, and I also don't understand why my posts over on Murkhill should be deleted or moved into places where they can no longer even be found. This is important because if it is happening to me, its happening to other old school gamers as well, and what they are contributing to our discussions in making the games (and the environment for games) better is being deliberately omitted. How can gaming become better if the people that do support that have their voices either silenced, or muted? I simply spoke out here, because the narratives and the discussions around old school gaming are being carefully crafted, and I don't know why. It is affecting me directly. I spoke out here because unlike the other forums,  it is very unlikely my posts will be either deleted, or moved.

From 2006-2010 or so, I actually migrated over to the forums or boards that actively supported old school gaming, another words bulletin boards and forums that supported players that wanted to play original dungeons and dragons, 1st edition or 2nd edition or (now) 3rd or 4th edition. I did this because my posts about gaming on the modern high volume gaming boards like Enworld, and WOTC, and rpg.net were being deleted, and I was also being directly harassed by both contributors and mods because a select group over there decided that the games I wanted to play, were literally not the games they wanted me to play. They wanted me to play the 3.5 edition of D&D, and later D&D 4.0, and I was quite happy posting about 3rd edition D&D, and Original D&D. So I obliged them, and quietly moved over to forums or boards that supported old school gaming.

Now though, that is changing. They don't have the support on their boards, so they have been quietly opening accounts here and other old school boards and trying once again to drive the narrative concerning what games should be played, and what actually happened or occurred in the past. I'm content to let the message boards reveal the history of the past, so long as what is posted remains in place, so that the full context of the discussions remains and is not lost on the arbitrary whims of some message board mod.

I'll give you a very specific example about this, the very title of this thread "Intrinsic Evidence that Chainmail's Fantasy Supplement Contains Material Material from Dave."  You know, I actually spoke to Dave Arneson deliberately about exactly what he did contribute in making Dungeons and Dragons, ....for many, many hours, ...at his request, by the way, not mine. He never mentioned anything about Chainmail at all other than his Blackmoor group tried the rules and found them entirely unsatisfactory because they were too close to wargames, and literally weren't balanced well enough to depict the kind of fantasy games that he and his players wanted to be playing, so he did what came naturally. He tweaked the rules to suit his group, and continued doing so, until his game was much better, and provided a much more vivid and memorable experience than guys just playing Chainmail, would experience.

With Chainmail, you were either a foot soldier, a hero (worth approximately four foot soldiers), or a superhero, a very difficult to kill leader worth approximately eight foot soldiers in battle. ...and that was it. It was April of 1971, literally a month after Chainmail was first published, and in Dave's group one of his players had a hero, who was hit just once by a Troll, and died instantly. The Player called foul, and argued that given his experience in battle, his character should not have been so easy to slay. So Dave tweaked the already existing Chainmail rules.

He added levels, and hit points. The more a player played, the more experience his character had, the more hit points his character had, the more difficult his character would be to kill, and that made the characters actually heroic or superheros. Their is actually no limit to player character progression in Original Dungeons and Dragons, very unlike Chainmail. With the old Chainmail, players would do a point buy and select a fixed number of heroes to include to lead their fantasy armies in battles. With Dungeons and Dragons players would create their hero, tweaking different aspects to suit their style of leadership, and then their hero would join in battles (amongst other things, D&D took the sole focus away from fighting and battling and added an almost limitless number of additional options for the players to choose instead.) and progress, if the hero survived and leveled, it would be even more difficult to kill, and not only that, the hero could return to fight another battle. The hero wasn't some nameless mook, but a character with a background and a history, based his his/her earlier conduct in battles, and with other challenges.

Chainmail might actually contain a monster or two that Dave suggested to Gary to add, but neither of them thought enough about it ensure including Dave an author credit for Chainmail, and Dave never cared about that, or he would have mentioned it to me, when we were talking about what his contributions were to creating original D&D.

As far as I'm concerned the original statement that defines this thread is pure speculation and fantasy, and the problem with that, is Dave is no longer around to provide his insight, as well as clarify.

I think some people have way too much invested in attempting to redefine what actually occurred in the past. Gary was actually an excellent game designer, and there does seem to be a group that is constantly seeking to minimize his contributions to gaming, and I am uncomfortable with that as well.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1116447Game Daddy and El Borak, you guys aren't helping anything, most especially the memory of Gary and Dave. That exchange was bugnuts. Bannings! Memory Holes! Sockpuppets! Ruins of Murkhill and OD&D Proboards sounds like a mental institution, not a gamer gathering.!

That. Exactly. Is why I don't post over there anymore, and wouldn't post over on the ProBoards even if they reactivated my account there. I'm actually not concerned about what is happening over on them other boards anyway. Many in their original membership, which supported old school games and gamers, no longer choose to be with them, just like me. I'm simply leaving a record here, as to why.