Hi, guys. I haven't posted on gaming websites in years, but I recently saw this post from Frank Trollman that looked so absolutely ridiculous....that I couldn't quite bring myself to ignore it. Maybe I'm making a mistake in posting this here at all, but here it is anyway:
https://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=57411&sid=38d1fc599e0852b3520c1a80eafb6301PostPosted: Sun Sep 29, 2019 6:13 pm Post subject:
ACKS is different from MYFAROG in the sense that it has some good ideas in it. It is not different in the sense that supporting it financially in any way, even indirectly is ethically inexcusable.
Alexander Macris was the actual owner of the company created for Milo to tour the country radicalizing potential racist terrorists. Since then, 8Chan has been shut down for its close links to multiple terrorist attacks killing dozens of people. In any sane world, Alexander Macris would be writing these things from jail.
There 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.
But 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?
-Frank
PostPosted: Tue Oct 01, 2019 3:26 pm Post subject:
Dungeons & 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.
However, 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.
So the stuff where in ACKS you're supposed to go to the homes of people who look different than you, murder them, and take their gold can't really be blithely accepted as being merely hockey the way the original Gygaxianisms could. Gygax was your racist but good meaning uncle, Alexander Macris is only you're uncle if you're a Saudi prince with a family fortune of blood money to protect.
Similarly 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.
-Frank
I had to reread this a couple times, because I initially couldn't believe my eyes. It looks like Trollman actually accuses Alexander Macris of being a
"racist terrorist", a "white supremacist"
(whatever that means), and
mass murderer. I always knew that Trollman was obnoxious and arrogant, but has he completely lost his mind? Is Trollman sperging out because Macris worked as CEO last year at some company run by Milo Yiannopoulos? How does this make Macris a
"racist terrorist" and mass murderer who is
"personally responsible for the deaths of dozens if not hundreds of people?" I don't understand.The reason why I would
(partially) classify this as a gaming thread, is because it looks like Trollman is very intentionally engaging in
defamation of character (or libel) against Macris....in order to cause
financial harm against both he and his gaming company,
Autarch (which produces ACKS).
What kills me is that absolutely nobody in the Gaming Den challenged Trollman on the falsehood of his statements, even though he was quite obviously being deliberately deceptive and manipulative in one of the most vicious and unethical ways I've ever seen.
Pundit, I don't know if I should have ignored this drama or not...but if this is an inappropriate thread, then feel free to just nuke it. However, Trollman's statements went so beyond the pale, that I had trouble processing it....and decided to share it.