Quote from: Mistwell;1128270Is there any proof Mearls revealed the names of accusers to Zak S or any proof he did not do that?

If Mearls did, he didn't do it in any email I got. And the emails he sent to both me and Zak would indicate to me that he did no such thing; I mean, it could have theoretically happened, but there would need to have been a direct subterfuge where both he and Zak said one thing in emails to me, and then had a completely different private conversation alone.

Quote from: Shasarak;1128272Ray Winninger seems like a pretty random replacement.  He will probably do just as well as Mike but considering the speed that WotC publishes we will not know about it until next year.

I'm guessing the reveal happened now, without any specific reason for it to have happened now, because this is where the last products that Mike oversaw have been released. But I could be wrong.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1128251His twitter is strongly left-leaning and he has clear Trump Derangement Syndrome.

That's the baseline requirement for working at WotC, perhaps even for living in Seattle.

Have fun lighting him up on Twitter.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;1128253I don't really care because he can't retcon virtue signaling into old D&D but I do worry that someday, they're going to get someone at WotC who's going to decide that it's time to "erase the toxic legacy of Gary Gygax" and before you know it, old school D&D will be as the Germans say, verboten.  And I'm serious about that; I run gaming events and use OD&D and AD&D almost exclusively.

Gary won't be the first founder to be memory holed or have their legacy rewritten to fit the current narrative.

We've already seen the OSR declared toxic by the SJW garbage and there's no reason that won't continue.

As for future gaming, all I need is 4-5 deplorable & problematic monsters who want to play at my table and the entire hobby can go fuck itself.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;1128257Possibly, but I'm more concerned with the erasure of history.

History is written (and rewritten) by the victors.

Culturally, academically, (and perhaps politically), we've allowed the SJWs to win. It's no surprise they would gather xir spoils of war.

Quote from: Melan;1128279(This was the slogan for Underground, his superhero game set in fascist America in the far future year of...
....uh-oh! )

LOL. That's a helluva coincidence.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;1128287Mearls said gun-owners were the moral equivalent of ISIS terrorists, so nothing's really changing all that much.

Gun owners are austere religious scholars?

More seriously, what has Ray Winninger written that was actually good? He always seemed to be the industry guy who was there in the background, but never rose above the generic dross of the Supplement Threadmill.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1128316If Mearls did, he didn't do it in any email I got. And the emails he sent to both me and Zak would indicate to me that he did no such thing; I mean, it could have theoretically happened, but there would need to have been a direct subterfuge where both he and Zak said one thing in emails to me, and then had a completely different private conversation alone.

I'm very curious about your assessment of the man, since I never knew him past a name on the book credits until he did his "you're fired from D&D!" tweet.  Now that he's been thrown under the bus to appease a Twitter mob, think he'll reassess his position on who his friends are?

Quote from: Spinachcat;1128319Gary won't be the first founder to be memory holed or have their legacy rewritten to fit the current narrative.

Yeah, there was Gary and that other guy, wasisface.  You know the one with the beard.

Quote from: insubordinate polyhedral;1128267The thing that smells fishy to me is that Mearls disappeared off the face of the product last year and was replaced with no fanfare about his departure. If he's in good standing at WotC and e.g. moving on to focus on Baldur's Gate 3, where's the normal corporate hoopla about new challenges and bringing his vast experience to a new space and here's our exciting new leader, blah blah etc.?

 I first started paying attention to D&D at WotC during 4th edition, which was a shitshow for other reasons, so I don't have a good baseline to judge against.

1: Because WOTC is owned by Hasbro and Hasbro puts up with only so much stupid from WOTC before they tighten the dogs leash again. Mearls and a few others suffered from chronic foot-in-mouth disease and Mearls in particular said alot of stuff that really alienated chunks of the playerbase. Odds are someone in charge finally stepped in. Hes a good manager and a fairly nice person when not suffering from SJW disease. Just horrible at PR. All through the early release of 5e he was what felt like once a week parroting some trendy new SJW buzzword or ideal.

2: 4e was a marketing disaster. Probably a try at outrage marketing that did exactly as predicted. It insulted and turned away a chunk of the customer base and they did not recoup that loss with new players enough at all. And what they did get for 4e turned into some of the most wretched idiots in RPG fandom sufficient that it eventually came to the attention of the execs as this was hitting them where it hurts. Their wallets. Since customers were now putting their cash in the hands of Paizo who was still producing 3e. The execs were, from first hand accounts, a bit appalled.

Quote from: Melan;1128320More seriously, what has Ray Winninger written that was actually good? He always seemed to be the industry guy who was there in the background, but never rose above the generic dross of the Supplement Threadmill.

So, just like Mearls then.

Quote from: Shasarak;1128322Yeah, there was Gary and that other guy, wasisface.  You know the one with the beard.

We don't talk about that other guy and his Basic assed system. The Advanced game is the only one that matters even if we no longer call it "Advanced".

Quote from: Omega;11283272: 4e was a marketing disaster. Probably a try at outrage marketing that did exactly as predicted. It insulted and turned away a chunk of the customer base and they did not recoup that loss with new players enough at all. And what they did get for 4e turned into some of the most wretched idiots in RPG fandom sufficient that it eventually came to the attention of the execs as this was hitting them where it hurts. Their wallets. Since customers were now putting their cash in the hands of Paizo who was still producing 3e. The execs were, from first hand accounts, a bit appalled.

  The 'outrage marketing' part has been considerably exaggerated by Internet myth and the passage of time, IMO. There were some jabs at 3E, yes, but people had been making the same sort of jabs before the announcement--Order of the Stick's first appearance in Dragon was a poke at the 3.X grappling rules that was pretty much the same joke made in the infamous video. There are a whole host of things that went wrong with 4E's design and marketing--

• veering too far from established D&D lore and overestimating the fanbase's tolerance for change,
• relying too much on the digital component after spending years both focusing on the miniatures and hyping up the 'in-person experience' in previous marketing,
• probably launching a year too early from both a design and marketing standpoint,
• hesitating on and finally overconstricting the licensing to the point that it alienated their third-party network and made things ripe for Paizo to swoop in and snatch up anyone feeling dissatsified,
• underestimating the desire for at least a figleaf of backwards compatibility,
• releasing an intro module that by all accounts was pretty badly done,
• and launching an edition full of expensive new books and components just in time for a global economic collapse

--but as I said, I think the 'outrage marketing', 'insult the fans' rhetoric has been exaggerated, largely by a fanbase that had gotten restive and unhappy and was just looking for a reason to dump on WotC.

Ugh....read the twitter comment from mearls just now about how the NRA is a terrorist organization.  I wish I had read it before our game group loaded up on 5e books and stuff...I am going to end up unable to buy any rpg products if this keeps going.  I salute GURPS for one thing, I have no idea where their line editor s politics fall.  I do not want to know.  I think media companies (naughty dog....) need to understand what ESCAPIST fun means.

Quote from: oggsmash;1128346Ugh....read the twitter comment from mearls just now about how the NRA is a terrorist organization.  I wish I had read it before our game group loaded up on 5e books and stuff...I am going to end up unable to buy any rpg products if this keeps going.  I salute GURPS for one thing, I have no idea where their line editor s politics fall.  I do not want to know.  I think media companies (naughty dog....) need to understand what ESCAPIST fun means.

Hang out on the GURPS boards for a while. It's not blatant, but it's detectable.

I have for years, but have not visited for a few years.  I know he is canadian, but at least prior to 2016, not much pushed.  I dont care if he is left as can be.  He should be that at home and in personal life.  At work,  not so much.  TDS perhaps caused alot of them to melt down.

Greetings!

Mearls believes that the NRA is a ISIS terrorist organization? Mearls is a fucking moron for believing that. Most of these latte drinking game designers seem to be a bunch of coddled, effeminate, sacks of animal cookies.

It is especially sad how uneducated so many of them are. They don't know real history; they don't have a fucking clue about the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights; and their comprehension of sound philosophy and logic is pathetic.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: oggsmash;1128350I have for years, but have not visited for a few years.  I know he is canadian, but at least prior to 2016, not much pushed.  I dont care if he is left as can be.  He should be that at home and in personal life.  At work,  not so much.  TDS perhaps caused alot of them to melt down.

Agreed. Best to keep politics out of your business.

Guess who won't let you get away with that?