Post in the RPG forums and other places where the false allegations were made and point out they've been disproved. Contact the administrators of the various entities that've gotten involved and tell them they need to help out. Work to deplatform the people who supported the harassment.
I didn't cut content, I just decided on a larger format overall--so the book will have larger dimensions. I figured it'd be more usable at the table for this particular content at that size.
It will be system-agnostic, like Maze of the Blue Medusa
"Work to deplatform the people who supported the harassment."
So, fucking everybody in the OSR, then? Because you were quite thoroughly rejected by a lot of people. Are you declaring war on the OSR? On Skerples? Geist? Scrap? Patrick? McDowall? Milton? Is that what this is? Because that's what this sounds like.
Of course, yes. I was very clear: Bad actors must face accountability. Not just inside the OSR but outside as well--anyone in the RPG sphere who supported the false accusations must be deplatformed.
I mean: when people say that crooked cops should go to jail are they "declaring war" on them? That's some wild rhetoric--but the fact is: there should be consequences for doing bad things.
Okay, sure, but my question is more, what exactly this looks like to you? All those people banned from Gen Con, and every sight? No safe harbor? No selling books on DTRPG? In a sense - getting what you got? Is that what you're actively encouraging people to do here?
And why are you comparing crooked cops to people that don't like you?
the consistent conflation of “people who got caught not telling the truth” with “ppl who don’t like you” is a bad faith tactic and you should publicly apiligize for doing that.
as for the consequences: they should publicly apologize or face far worse consequebces than what you outlined.
people who lie or don’t fact check should be pushed out of all intercourse with other people
It's clear from even this short comment that you don't really know what you're talking about and are just dogpiling.
This blog is not "full of" videos by any means, and the only photos of my harassers here would be some photos of Mandy from years ago and a few other gamers who jumped on her bandwagon--mostly on like one Gen Con post.
At any rate i won't delete them until this is resolved, to prevent any suspicion of tampering with evidence on my blog.
The same as the resolution of any other false accusation.
Mandy and the other harassers publicly apologize, or are deplatformed or otherwise face decisive accountability (fines court orders, etc) for harassing and smearing me and the various RPG platforms forced into disavowing me undo that.
Fwiw it seems like (hard to tell) you ask these questions and are constantly surprised by the answers.
If this is not true--ignore what follows in this comment. If it is true, then try a mental experiment: Imagine you yourself are falsely accused in a way that gets in the way not just of a hobby business you have on the side, but also fucks up the lives of lots of your friends.
Imagine that situation actually occurs. Imagine that now.
Then ask yourself: What do you do next? What do you want next?
I don't think any of my answers are too far off what any person would do in that situation: I'm going to fix the problem and undo the harm.
"Mandy and the other harassers publicly apologize, or are deplatformed or otherwise face decisive accountability (fines court orders, etc) for harassing and smearing me and the various RPG platforms forced into disavowing me undo that."
I'm kind of interested to know who has reached out to you, like, Gen Con, and said "sorry zak it's not you it's them."
Well since they did take the trouble to get in touch and say so, the various people who said "Yeah, sorry, for my career's sake I have to bow to the harassment campaign" I don't want to get them in any more trouble than they're already in at the moment.
These were difficult conversations for the folks involved, because thy had to weigh their own career vs what they knew to be true.
However: please do hold me accountable for my claim. There may be circumstances in the near future where it's ok to talk about and won't hurt anyone unnecessarily.
It's impossible to say, but things will definitely have progressed by then due to what's going on now. At any rate there's no advantage to announcing the publisher early and there's a definite advantage to them being able to work in peace without having a hatemob attacking them 24/7.
not sure what "blown the fuck out" is supposed to mean in this context but since it might be a personal attack on people i deleted it.
If it isn't you're free to clarify your meaning and re-make the comment.
Anyway, as always: all morally and legally valid ways to address the current wave of harassment and create accountability for those responsible are being attempted, beginning with the least disruptive first. Those have to be given time to work.
No, but depending on the topic, it has certain analogous parts.
For instance if you're discussing "What's your favorite color?" it's not like a courtroom
If you're discussing like whether a company paid the people working there a fair wage or not--an issue with real-world consequences and implications, where the people talking may take morally-significant action based on it--then it should be more like a courtroom, since, just as a court can inflict real-world consequences on a subject with its judgment, so can a group of people in a discussion of a commercially-relevant issue.
Why do you keep doing this? What part of apologizing and moving on is too hard for you? Why do you need to pursue grudges? What do you gain from endless pointless arguments?
Short answer: Because I'm innocent and neither insane nor stupid. If someone walks up and kicks you in the head repeatedly, seeking to make them face accountability for that is not "holding a grudge"--its the most basic kindergarten level justice-seeking and self-preservation.
Long answer:
Your question inaccurately presumes either one of two things--
1. I did something wrong so should just apologize.
Since I didn't do anything wrong, that makes no sense plus it would be morally gross to let various aggressors go unpunished and remain unaccountable for falsely accusing me. That only encourages more people to try to hurt their enemies by inventing false accusations.
OR
2. Even if I didn't do something wrong, accusations which hurt basically everyone you know, your income, your future prospects in the world and which set a terrible precedent for everyone coming after are a petty and minor thing and you should just let them go and live in the new, shittier world they create.
I don't know what kind of conflict-averse nerdworld you live in, but I'm not going to accept that for a minute and no halfway-decent person would.
Outside a fiction context, every reader deserves to read nothing but the truth or as close as we can get. We fail other people when we let a lie go unchallenged, especially in a space where we have influence.
If someone lies, someone needs to show up and fact check. That's civics 101.
And you think people care enough to take up your cause? Your reputation has proceeded to levels you never imagined and now you're seeing how karma truly plays out when you make one too many enemies.
You're a lesson to us all Zak. One, that will never be forgotten.
If karma plays out I will be sitting pretty soon, as I've only "made enemies" (i.e. upset) shitty people. And, of course, none of this is over.
-------
But, really, let's take a moment and assume (since you're commenting around the same time the next day or so) that you're the same Anonymous who commented yesterday.
Does it bother you --as a human, as a person, as someone interacting with another person--that this same cycle repeats over and over:
You make an accusation
The person you're accusing addresses it
You don't acknowledge the response and change the subject to a new accusation.
how does it feel, unironically, to become a meme content creator on the level of the pundit? You will always have supporters, but lots of people in the OSR won't ever touch you with a ten foot pole. You've hurt so many people with the events of February. Like I'm actually genuinely curious how you feel about being ostracized harder than ever before. I know this shit isnt new, but this is different from before.
I always felt a little responsible for these folks--I wanted this guy to do well, I wanted that guy to do well, I felt like it was important that people see that so-and-so's work is more than meets the eye.
Now that so many of them have proved to be just random hivemindy nerds under the surface I can stop worrying about them and concentrate on what I have to do.
As for the money--RPGs were never my main business and I suspect Demon City will make wayyyyy more than the drama llamas think--especially after the story develops and some accountability starts to happen. They want this to be a story? It'll be a fucking story.
I for one just want to know exactly what the hell your thought process was in releasing AR&PL with basically no content in it. That's not a troll post, you literally release settings with two(!!!) clearly defined areas and then just cut and print it. What's the deal with that? Shouldn't you have provided more than literally two locations? I feel like your book is a rip-off.
I fear you've been ripped off. If you read a book with "two(!!!) clearly defined areas" or "literally two locations" you didn't receive a copy of Red & Pleasant Land, you received some other book and were deceived by some scalawag into believing this was the award-winning, best-selling Red & Pleasant Land. Perhaps a cover was switched on you. Anyway: seek the perpetrator.
@anon 2
James wants LotFP to be low fantasy, so even though F&M has the Necrobutcher, Nidhoggr, Bjara et al, rather than fill the Devoured Land with traditional monsters I included nasty versions of ordinary animals--as in myths.
And in playtests I've found actually pretty fun when a 6th level party starts realize a pack of wolves will rip them to shreds and they start to respect wolves and--sometimes--bargain with them.
Your mileage may vary. If you don't like it, replace them with traditional monsters on the encounter table--or don't buy it.
Hey, different guy than than the last two. I don't know if it's awkward or rude to ask this, but I have been wondering since the announcement that Raggi won't be reprinting your work if you had any plans for reprinting it yourself. Obviously with the LOTFP logos and stuff removed.
Not to say you have to, of course, considering its still available in PDF and stuff, and I'd totally get if you wanted to just move on with your next project instead of focusing on all that.
Curious to see what this new book you're working on is!
Its never rude to ask questions. It's rude not to--the person who, when they have a question, runs off to some forum rather than asking the person who knows needs to apologize, not you.
Anyway:
Raggi severed ties with me basically because:
1. Pushback from Mandy's hatemob, and
2. Links in the supply/distribution chain fell for her hoax, making it harder to sell new stuff through them
...leaving him with a pretty shitty choice.
He still has and sells the old stuff--by the time current stock of my LotFP stuff runs out and a new printing is called for, there will have been several major new developments in the Mandy Not Telling The Truth And Gamers Being Stupid Enough To Believe Her situation, which very likely will change the size of the hatemob and the attitude of the supply chain.
If not, there are other publishers who are interested.
Thanks for getting back to me so fast! Thought I'd at least have to wait till tomorrow.
Also, thanks for the 'it's not rude to ask questions,' I was worried it might be a sensitive subject and it put me off asking for a bit. Thanks for straightening out the situation!
Glad to hear that things are looking up! I look forward to those developments happening. Truth is important, and I look forward to the facts being straightened out. I've seen some people using all this as a pretext to get back for old grudges, and even some brazenly admitting/boasting to it on public forums, and I've found all that (plus their melodramatic posturing) a bit sickening.
It's good to hear that you have other publishers interested in your work. I hope this means I Am the Weapon and other projects will see publication. Attempts to fight for your projects or show support on other boards are met with downvotes, locks on threads, and threats to ban, unfortunately....
If someone gives you trouble, email me: zakzsmith AT hawtmayle . If you meet only with resistance, it's still good to have a record of attempts to suppress facts or evidence or even just to suppress fans discussing the work. As things are progressing quickly its very likely it'll come in handy soon.
Good places to post are:
Twitter (especially responding to popular hatethreads) the OSR discord reddit/rpg reddit/osr Enworld RPGnet
I promise I'm not just going to give up on games, they're fun, the girls and me are still having fun rolling, and I have a lot of projects half-finshed that'll come out. This'll be a chaotic time, but when it's over a lot of the worst things about the online game scene will have changed for the better.
One of the best things I saw vis-a-vis I Am the Weapon (I think on a G+ thread) was when you wrote of alternate dimensions and how in a given realm things might seem perfectly normal...except that Vincent Price is president.....
first-strike personal attacks and misinformation are against the rules so your comment was deleted.
As for locations: there are 2 big dungeons on pages 84-131 and three more fleshed out locations on pgs 133-138.
It's a best-seller at LotFP. Check their site.
And as for telling people to take a stance against defamation and libel and harassment in the RPG community in every available forum: activism isn't "childish". Change is good and needs to happen.
@new anon (deleted) it’s not the content of the post that got it deleted it’s the person who posted it. A person who recounts that bad things happened with glee or approval is obviously a bad actor and should not be posting on the Internet anywhere
Kind of interesting your last post on reddit is a list of people who took some pretty major shits on you last month. You reccommend them, they do this in return..
"Mandy and the other harassers publicly apologize, or are deplatformed or otherwise face decisive accountability (fines court orders, etc) for harassing and smearing me and the various RPG platforms forced into disavowing me undo that."
So is there any particular reason why a Satine Phoneix, who publically endorsed you as an abuser, is capable of redemption, yet Scrap Princess and Patrick Stuart, who you've removed from your sidebar, aren't? If Satine only signed on for you condemnation to save herself, it sounds like you're saying you're okay with someone lying if it's to save their career. Why the merciful stance on something you've pretty categorically condemned in the past?
I never made any claims about who is "capable of redemption". I was simply telling you what I knew at that point about Satine and her motives. You're doing the dumb-online-gamer-nerd thing of assuming instead of asking, which is one way people got themselves into this mess.
To wit: anyone willing to apologize fully and publicly for their participation in this harassment campaign is "capable of redemption". Anyone who doesn't, isn't.
While it's nice to be labeled a "dumb online gamer" you were much more forward in apologizing for Satine's actions rather than Scrap or Patrick's. You also deleted my original comment talking about this. I also didn't quote you on "[capability] of redemption" so I'm not exactly sure why you're quoting me there.
I didn't apologize at all. Satine's actions were totally evil and wrong--just like the actions of anyone else who supported Mandy's false claims. That doesn't mean she herself can't apologize and improve and cease to be evil later.
Here's what you did wrong:
You read something I wrote about Satine, and you read something I read about Scrap and Patrick and you didn't remember the specifics, you instead came away with a _general impression of what you guessed my intended tone was_ and then made a comment about that.
While tone exists and _perceived_ tone can sway public opinion (since a lot of the public is stupid), no intelligent person would judge another (especially morally) based on a _guess_ about their tone. They'd first do whatever they could to check the intent of the statement and the effect of the statement since they all should know judgment of tone is fuzzy.
Pronouncing a moral judgment on someone comes with a duty to actually do things check if that judgment is true. Otherwise you're basically holding everyone a loaded gun and asking them to shoot anyone they like with it--which is pretty much the status quo in the RPG scene: If you don't like a statement or product, you accuse the creator of moral crimes, and you do nothing to check and if you turn out to be wrong nothing bad happens.
Here's what I actually believe:
Scrap, Patrick, and everyone else on the planet who supported Mandy's claims is bad and should face accountability for having done that and I am taking steps--wholly within the bounds of the law--to make sure that does actually happen this time.
Accountability can take a variety of forms:
If you apologize publicly, that's accountability. This is the best and mildest outcome.
If you have your career impacted, that's also accountability. Much harsher.
If you get sued and fork over cash to your victim, that's accountability. Even worse.
If you get sued, get on the stand, claim your false thing is true, get prosecuted for perjury and go to jail for a little bit, that's accountability. That's probably the worst.
-
Scrap and Patrick did different things than Satine, though, and if you want to cease to be a stupid gamer nerd you'll try to grasp this difference:
Scrap and Patrick made false claims about my non-Mandy-related behavior and _also_ promoted Mandy's bullshit. Scrap (for instance) claimed I said tone didn't exist, and Patrick claimed I "would not survive the rules you impose on others." and that I argued dishonestly and (weirdly) seemed to imply I _didn't think I was agressive_ (I am, of course, aggressive--bad actors shold be pursued aggressively)--maybe that means something different in England.
Satine said a different thing, which may make her better or worse depending how you view it. Satine said she observed nothing wrong in my behavior but supports Mandy's claims anyway.
So you might say "Wow she admits seeing nothing but is still defaming this guy, that's worse" or you might say "Well at least she didn't pile on additional brand-new libel".
Either way, Satine claims no specific knowledge of me doing anything wrong so any argument claiming she does is invalid.
Either way: don't assume things. Ask. I'm right here.
No, but the audience for online RPG material includes a lot of people who are on the spectrum, or who instinctively spin any information that comes at them to their emotional advantage ("if I call someone out it's calling them out, if you call someone out, it's harassment"), or who willfully misread tone, that it's good to explain things in a very clear and literal way at all times.
If you have evidence you think proves your false statement true, provide it. So far nobody's ever presented a single link or 'cap where anybody claims to be another person, especially me.
Like victims of harassment are _explicitly told to do_ by all antiharassment resources--crash override, hollaback, etc, I record the harassment that I get.
Also like all activists, I make accusations.
And like anyone trying to be good, I have_evidence_ to back up accusations I make.
If this strikes you as "irregular" or wrong:
1. you have some fucked-up social norms going on wherever you hang out, and
2. you need to go yell at all the people who have lists of complaints about me
Wundergeek repeatedly and falsely accused me of harassing them and of being sexist. Wundergeek is a liar. Proof: https://armsinthewronghands.tumblr.com/post/148469806573/anna-kreider-wundergeek
There are interesting twists in your question though:
-You suggest someone would have to be evil _to me_ rather than to some other victim in order to be worth calling out. Anna's first victim was Hyun Tae Kim, not me and I first called Anna out for attacking him. It is disgusting that I had to do that and that no-one else did it first, especially people in Anna'a social circle. If someone is mentally ill and saying Nazi shit, it shouldn't be up to me and only me to call them out--Anna's friends should've done something and in later years should've apologized for not doing it sooner. Anna was being a monster, saying Kim should lose work for making art that wasn't as conservative as Anna wanted--everyone Anna knew should've immediately been alarmed and done something, The entire RPG scene should've deplatformed Kreider immediately if Anna refused to apologize for spewing propaganda like that-Anna might as well have said Jews shouldn't be allowed in the same hotels as gentiles. It's very bizarre how much more eager the scene is to deplatform people for crimes they can't prove than for ones they can.
-Also note, people are constantly alleging arguments involving me somehow start because someone's criticizing _me_ . This is actually rarely true--they start because someone's unfairly attacking some third party and I step in (usually because nobody else will). In this case it was Hyun Tae Kim, in another is was Anna and Ben Lehman attacking James Des (who was a dick, but not the kind of dick they were saying--though the urge to lie about rape is pretty strong in the RPG scene), with Something Awful they kept attacking the OSR in general, people attacked Kiel Chenier, Contessa, Raggi, Kingdom Death, etc. And none of the major luminaries in the RPG scene did shit about these right-wing attacks on creators. Monte said nothing, Mearls, Hite--nobody. So I did.
Posts containing misinformation are deleted. Your questions are addressed above: "So far nobody's ever presented a single link or 'cap where anybody claims to be another person, especially me."
Patrick's main problem--as an author as in life--is a total inability to imagine and deal with real life and the fact that he, therefore, prefers writing to thinking. He doesn't run a regular real-life RPG game at home (very common problem with the worst of the online RPG scene) and the games he runs on-line are kind of ad-hoc and silly and don't look at all like the heavy, poetic RPG stuff he writes.
So just as his ideas of real-life solutions are stupid ("Oh my friends are fighting, instead of, like, talking to them, I'll write a blog post screaming at them!" "Oh, half the online RPG scene lies all the time--let's help them by lambasting people for trying to stop them!" "Libel you say? If it involves talking I want in on that!") his ideas of how any even kind-of complicated RPG scenario or presentation will work are pretty foggy because he can't play out scenarios in his mind.
For example, in Maze of the Medusa he invented the Cannibal Critics and gallery of dangerous artworks and I'm sure he thought they were all very clever--but he didn't really give players much reason to interact with them, so I had to invent the time-dilation and make at least some of the art do something other than just attack on sight so that the gallery wasn't just a monster zoo with boring 2hd cannibals.
Another example: While I was editing Veins of the Earth, I noticed nearly every creature is described as the Nastiest Most Vicious Horrible CryptoTerror Ever and then the stats were like... AC: 10, 2 HD--it took a lot of work to remind him to develop mechanics so things would actually play the way he wanted.
And, of course, all the descriptions were wayyyyy too long and disorganized to use quickly at the table.
Deep Carbon succeeds to the degree it does mostly because it was short, presented very limited options and because Scrap at least knows how to run a game.
So Silent Titans is ultra high-concept (as befits a hyperactive imagination that never goes outside) and has distinctive (if kind of picasso-ugly) art, but very little thought has gone into how someone picks up that book and makes it into a game anyone would want to play, including, weirdly, the writer.
Why someone would want to spend all that time making RPG stuff they don't even use escapes me. But I'm not a shrink.
What has bothered me a lot is amid all the "Zak S is an abuser!" posts back in February, anyone who popped their head up and asked things such as "If Zak is actually innocent of what Mandy has accused him of, what sort of public response would people want to see from him?" got piled on or just banned on the spot from the thread or forum.
Doesn't sit right with me.
Neither does people working their way through someone's follower/friend list and contacting them to 'encourage' them to unfriend/unfollow/block Zak.
In your first comment you falsely claimed I did not include any thoughts on Silent Titans and then in your second comment you acknowledged that I did include them.
1. Your recent message was erased for containing misinformation.
2. The "no lying" rule is not a "techicality"--it's what any responsible website should do.
3. All my statements about Patrick are warranted
4. " can you prove that patrick doesn't run games like his books?"
Unlike accusations of, say, internet harassment--which leave a written record--Patrick's GMing style isn't recorded in text. So barring some extension of the post-Tony-Blair extension of the British Orwellian Surveillance state this has to rest on the claims of people who played them. Ask Patrick, ask Zedeck Siew, ask me, ask anyone else.
That is as far as I can go with evidence, and I am stating it clearly. If you interview other players and their account conflicts with mine I will happily answer any further questions to explain any conflicts and establish the truth of my story. The last game I played involved a lot of flamingo-people and other talking animals being really silly. There was only one complex monster. I do 100% make this claim under penalty of perjury and am willing to go to jail if its proved to be untrue, and I'll happily go through all the trouble to sign a statement to that effect if you will also go to the trouble to do the same about your own claims.
5. "What the everloving FUCK did patrick do to you to make you say: "his ideas of real life solutions are stupid"
Example: two people he liked online didn't like each other. The nonstupid solution would be to contact them and talk about it, the stupid solution would be write a blog post about it where you lie. I said this in my original response.
6. " Im pretty sure you implied he did a libel. "Libel? If it involves talking I want in on that!""
Let me clarify then: Patrick committed libel. He says stuff about people that isnt true and shitty in public all the time, thereby passing at least the definition of "libel per se" all the time and possibly trad libel where you have to prove damages.
"Libel per se" is a legal term for when someone writes a shitty false thing in a fixed medium (usually public text or video) that's so fucked up you don't have to prove specific damages.
If y'all want to pretend I don't have lawyers and that you know more legal stuff than my lawyers do I don't actually see any advantage in taking the time or effort to disabuse you of that.
So why were you being vague about Cavegirl's "crimes"?
Like couldn't you have just said "It's fucked up people support Cavegirl after she chose to believe my four exes over me that I am a am a rapist and a psychological abuser." ?
If your goal was to try to do that it hasn't worked.
You're trying to imply I've done something wrong but because you apparently know I haven't actually you can't be specific. So you keep followng this pattern like
"Hey Zak, you fuck don't you know people who kick puppies are bad?"
"Um yes, I do"
"Well then, yknow, yknow, lol"
The effect of your vagueness is not to remind me of anything or make me feel bad, it's simply to make me feel confident that even people hell-bent on the idea i did something wrong can't actually articulate anything I did wrong.
If you think I kicked a puppy: accuse me of it, and provide proof. When you dance around it like this the only thing it reminds me of is that the people trolling me are morons
I, of course, posted my response to Mandy in order to give the RPG community members who jumped on her defamation train a chance to jump off once they knew the truth and give the various companies involved the opportunity to roll back their participation in the harassment before things like legal action took place.
As for me not having lawyers:
Are you willing to sign a document under your real name under penalty of perjury saying I don't have any lawyers under retainer? And print a full public apology if you find out it isn't true?
Let's be real:
You aren't and you currently believe you exist in a universe where there are no consequences to you getting caught lying.
This is a familiar problem--gamers kind of think in a trolls-vs-george-lucas paradigm where they are lowly anons and they are just snarking at some untouchable celebrity creator somewhere who won't notice them or at some fellow anon with neither the time money nor inclination to sue them. Plus they are usually in a situation where it'd be hard to prove monetary damage.
None of that is true this time.
Things are going to change.
Now this change may not affect you Jesus Gomez personally: you may be so anonymous that you can just hide and not in any way be accountable for lying here, but it is going to completely affect the narratives you are able to push and get golf claps from your fellow trolls for. And it sure as fuck is going to affect some of the other people reading this.
When you post little mosquito bite snarky posts you know are just going to get erased you can only be thinking one of three things:
1-"With this shitty comment I shall slowwwwly harm Zak, though it be erased eventually these thousand cuts will destroy him haha!"
2-"I could just think this in my brain but when i hit publish i know its Real"
3-"There's some troll place on the internet somewhere where I'll go 'Hey guys I said Zak was like Trump!' aren't I cool"? And they'll all go haw haw yes king oh my god you posted a Insult i did not know you could do that wow here is some troll cred
If 1,it isn't working: comments like that just reinforce your target's sense of superiority to you: Wow the people trying to whale on me don't even have any good arguments
If 2 or 3, probably some part of your brain realizes how sad that is and is lowering your self-esteem even further as we speak, and so it will only get sadder in the coming months.
Every troll like you has a real name and is a real person--and so you must be aware that all of your comments are either:
-insubstantial shitposts and so just a reflection of your own life not providing you with anything better to do, or -legally actionable and false, so you know you won't win (so you stay anonymous)
I said exactly and precisely what Cavegirl did on twitter:
Cavegirl supported Mandy et al's false accusations-that makes Cavegirl a harasser.
What's more, she did it in public, did it without even bothering to investigate the accusations, didn't ask about the other sid,e didn't make a good faith attempt to contact witnesses or otherwise establish the accusations' truth before saying anything, wrote a completely nonsensical sanctimonious post claiming that the only empathetic response from me to this harassment campaign would be to claim responsibility even if I didn't so it, responded to attempts to hold her accountable with trolling and lolmemes, and claimed that previous good things I'd done meant that it was ok for her and her pals to lie about me.
Notice that while you won't explicitly say "Ok, it's obvious the accusations weren't true but I still hold obscure resentments against you so I'll keep trolling" you have stopped even pretending you think the accusations are true or defensible and moved on to trying to think of other reasons the people responsible for the harassment shouldn't face accountability for it.
As for what I'll do: obviously I'm not going to discuss details of legal strategy in detail online before they happen.
But here's a question for you:
Knowing now for a fact that Cavegirl committed defamation against an innocent person, do you think she should escape accountability?
If so, why do you think that?
If not, what kinds of accountability are appropriate for her and what will you do to enact them?
Also notice the rhetoric of "lol u don't hav a lawyer, u won't sue" has disappeared.
It's almost like y'all realize you're full of shit on every level but just want to keep finding some goalpost you can stand behind which won't get annihilated as the truth comes out.
It's gonna be a real interesting summer in RPGland.
erased because you aren't allowed to lie in the comments.
But if you were ACTUALLY sure of your statements and sure that the only person I can win against is Mandy, then you'd provide your name and juridiction along with your comments.
But you're not: so you just proved you were lying.
"But if you were ACTUALLY sure of your statements and sure that the only person I can win against is Mandy, then you'd provide your name and juridiction along with your comments.
But you're not: so you just proved you were lying."
Boy I can't wait for you to pull this kind of shit in a court of law.
Do you seriously not know that in a court you have to say who you are?
Did you think it was like the comments where you can fill out the charging documents with Name: EvaPilot53 then answer a few Captchas and then you're done?
You need to head back to whatever forum you and the other trolls hang out at and get your story straight:
Is Zak:
a) a nightmarishly devious Machiavel who manipulates legal technicalities and the hearts of men who will win the case not because he's telling the truth but because he's somehow tricked literally everyone who was ever close to Mandy including her family into believing him
or
b) a staggering buffoon who has no lawyers or never listens to them even if he does and will therefore lose in court
Did skerples ever actually send you his information so you could hash this out in a courtroom like adults, or did mister "I'm looking forward to it" promptly back out of the conversation after getting his bravery kudos?
You're referring to an incident where Skerples made various fake accusations on twitter and someone asked me about suing them. I said:
" Playing D&D W/PornStars @IHitItWithMyAxe
I don’t know skerples gender but legal action is certainly on the table for everyone involved in this harassment campaign and i will note each time you repeat these false claims (years after they were disproved by information that is publicly available) makes that easier to do
2:14 PM - 10 Jun 2019
Skerples @Skerples1 Jun 10
Looking forward to it.
Playing D&D W/PornStars @IHitItWithMyAxe Jun 10 Then please give us all your full name and place of residence so legal proceedings can start
Playing D&D W/PornStars @IHitItWithMyAxe Jun 10 if you're reticent to reveal it publicly you can email me at zakzsmith AT hawtmayle dawt calm and if you're worried about giving it to me then your country (and state if relevant) should be sufficient
"
And, of course, Skerples did not answer. That's pretty much standard troll procedure: accuse, get caught, flee.
You're making a basic mistake common to trolls: "What trolls think" (or even "What the online RPG community thinks") isn't an accurate description of the stakes here. If every troll in the world thought LotFP was cancelled, so long as the money keeps rolling in, it doesn't matter. The important things are:
-Good creators are able to create in relative peace and -People responsible for harassing them face accountability
...and regardless of what the day's gossip is in whatever internet circles you personally travel in, things are developing toward making those situations a reality.
Check in in a few months. Since you're a troll, the idea that you said something and it turned out not to be true won't make an impact on you, but you will have to at least find something else to troll about.
yeah you keep yapping about accountability but i doubt you have the resources or interest in suing anyone but exs and ex-friends. if ya did you'd go after ettin or guyll etc, but your focus is on stewart, geist, allen, etc. So.....why not the literal trolls who you know amd why these people instead? ;) answer the questions pls
You've made a number of bizarre, left-field assumptions there.
Troll assumptions about what I want to do in the future or about what I am capable of doing never been right in the last 10 years, so a good guide for you here would be:
Whatever you think I am going to do, assume it is wrong and that I am going to do something else.
I regret to say I can't discuss the details of any legal action with you aside from ones already revealed.
When there is more I can say, I will say it, and you are undoubtedly the kind of person who'll find out about it right away and eagerly burn to develop a Take on it.
But if you can't help but speculate: the golden rule enunciated above won't steer you too wrong.
But even if it were: the feelings that stupid nerds have about their stupid assumptions aren't important. What's important is they're held accountable, one way or another.
Dear Zack, I'm a huge french fan of your rpg work for Lotfp (luckily, most of it has been translated lately in my language) and I bought all the volumes (in french and in english - for the translation is sometimes a bit questionable). I've also been following your blog with big interest for a long time (especially the topics concerning meta-gaming and your thoughts about Dmastery). I had great expectations concerning "Violence in the nympharium" (originally scheduled for Fall) and I was very sorry to see it going into oblivion (although I understand that the circumstances don't help). Is there still hope to see it eventually published ? (through Lotfp or put on line by yourself ?)
Best regards & Good luck
Peggy
PS : Don't give up rpg writing, you're a gasp of fresh air in a dull and smoggy landscape.
Nympharium will be published if you fight for it and it won't if you don't. Likewise: I will continue RPG writing if fans fight for the right for the work to be out there and I won't if they don't.
Don't get me wrong: I appreciate messages like yours and fans have shown a continued willingness to send them and to buy my stuff and to vote for me for fan awards.
What fans -have not- done is shown a willingness to take action with anything like the level of organization and single-mindedness shown by the harassers who contacted Gen Con, the Ennie awards, LotFP, WOTC, White Wolf, sent the smear campaign against me viral on reddit and twitter and generally tried very hard to destroy my life in every way possible this year.
The haters care far more than the fans, and while I definitely will be making an effort to be sure they are held accountable for their harassment campaign, continuing to publish for the benefit of an RPG community which wouldn't spit on me if I was on fire is another prospect entirely.
If you want anything other than what I've already promised, then you've got to write to people other than me and write about the problem in places other than in the comments to this blog.
I like the waning candles. It's a puzzle, right?
ReplyDelete@Luke K
ReplyDeleteYeah--it has a puzzle element--it's something that has to be figured out by players one way or another.
You can probably figure out at least what the set up is by looking at the spread.
Wow !
ReplyDeleteLooks cool!
ReplyDeleteLots of detail crammed in there! Looking awesome. Also, I hope the supers game is still a go.
ReplyDeleteDitto on the supers game.
ReplyDeleteLooks awesome Zak! And here's another person still looking forward to your Supers game.
ReplyDeleteLooks great! Keep us posted.
ReplyDeleteIs the superhero game still happening?
ReplyDelete@Linda Maria
ReplyDeleteIf you fight for it.
Looking forward to it, and Demon City.
ReplyDelete@Zak Sabbath
ReplyDeleteIn this case, how do you mean fight for it?
@Linda Maria
ReplyDeletePost in the RPG forums and other places where the false allegations were made and point out they've been disproved. Contact the administrators of the various entities that've gotten involved and tell them they need to help out. Work to deplatform the people who supported the harassment.
I am curious, What kind of stuff did you cut to fit better in 140 pages? And it will be system neutral or it will use lotfp as your other works?
ReplyDelete@saci
ReplyDeleteI didn't cut content, I just decided on a larger format overall--so the book will have larger dimensions. I figured it'd be more usable at the table for this particular content at that size.
It will be system-agnostic, like Maze of the Blue Medusa
"Work to deplatform the people who supported the harassment."
ReplyDeleteSo, fucking everybody in the OSR, then? Because you were quite thoroughly rejected by a lot of people. Are you declaring war on the OSR? On Skerples? Geist? Scrap? Patrick? McDowall? Milton? Is that what this is? Because that's what this sounds like.
@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteOf course, yes. I was very clear: Bad actors must face accountability. Not just inside the OSR but outside as well--anyone in the RPG sphere who supported the false accusations must be deplatformed.
I mean: when people say that crooked cops should go to jail are they "declaring war" on them? That's some wild rhetoric--but the fact is: there should be consequences for doing bad things.
Come on--this is kindergarten stuff.
"Come on--this is kindergarten stuff."
ReplyDeleteOkay, sure, but my question is more, what exactly this looks like to you? All those people banned from Gen Con, and every sight? No safe harbor? No selling books on DTRPG? In a sense - getting what you got? Is that what you're actively encouraging people to do here?
And why are you comparing crooked cops to people that don't like you?
@anonymous
ReplyDeletethe consistent conflation of “people who got caught not telling the truth” with “ppl who don’t like you” is a bad faith tactic and you should publicly apiligize for doing that.
as for the consequences: they should publicly apologize or face far worse consequebces than what you outlined.
people who lie or don’t fact check should be pushed out of all intercourse with other people
"people who lie or don’t fact check should be pushed out of all intercourse with other people"
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely. That is exactly what is happening too.
To you.
@anonymous
Deletethen provide proof that i lied
also you still havent apologized for your conflation
you must do those things in your next post or be erased
@anonymous
ReplyDeleteyou assume wrong
no good person sends traffic to harassment sites
Your blog is filled with pictures and videos of your harassers. Are you going to take them down eventually?
ReplyDelete@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteIt's clear from even this short comment that you don't really know what you're talking about and are just dogpiling.
This blog is not "full of" videos by any means, and the only photos of my harassers here would be some photos of Mandy from years ago and a few other gamers who jumped on her bandwagon--mostly on like one Gen Con post.
At any rate i won't delete them until this is resolved, to prevent any suspicion of tampering with evidence on my blog.
"At any rate i won't delete them until this is resolved,"
ReplyDeleteWhat constitutes "resolution" to this matter, in your view?
@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteThe same as the resolution of any other false accusation.
Mandy and the other harassers publicly apologize, or are deplatformed or otherwise face decisive accountability (fines court orders, etc) for harassing and smearing me and the various RPG platforms forced into disavowing me undo that.
Again: duh.
@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteFwiw it seems like (hard to tell) you ask these questions and are constantly surprised by the answers.
If this is not true--ignore what follows in this comment. If it is true, then try a mental experiment: Imagine you yourself are falsely accused in a way that gets in the way not just of a hobby business you have on the side, but also fucks up the lives of lots of your friends.
Imagine that situation actually occurs. Imagine that now.
Then ask yourself: What do you do next? What do you want next?
I don't think any of my answers are too far off what any person would do in that situation: I'm going to fix the problem and undo the harm.
By the way, I will check for your reply to that message, but I will not post on your blog again, out of respect to you.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading your reply, I will move on from your blog altogether.
@anonymous
ReplyDeleteYour question contained false claims, therefore you lose your right to get an answer or comment here.
If you want to insist I have no self awareness or have "harmed" anyone then you must provide evidence.
Taking an activist stance is not a "lack of self awareness", and calling out bad actors is not "harm".
If a Nazi kicks you in the stomach and you tell people that's not "harm"--no matter how sad it may make the Nazi.
Feel free to delete my other comments on this post as well.
ReplyDeleteI'm out.
"Mandy and the other harassers publicly apologize, or are deplatformed or otherwise face decisive accountability (fines court orders, etc) for harassing and smearing me and the various RPG platforms forced into disavowing me undo that."
ReplyDeleteI'm kind of interested to know who has reached out to you, like, Gen Con, and said "sorry zak it's not you it's them."
@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteWell since they did take the trouble to get in touch and say so, the various people who said "Yeah, sorry, for my career's sake I have to bow to the harassment campaign" I don't want to get them in any more trouble than they're already in at the moment.
These were difficult conversations for the folks involved, because thy had to weigh their own career vs what they knew to be true.
However: please do hold me accountable for my claim. There may be circumstances in the near future where it's ok to talk about and won't hurt anyone unnecessarily.
Who is publishing this book? Are you?
ReplyDelete@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteThe publisher would prefer not to be harassed so is remaining quiet for the moment
Ah, you're still counting on this having blown over by fall 2019?
ReplyDelete@anonymous
ReplyDeleteIt's impossible to say, but things will definitely have progressed by then due to what's going on now. At any rate there's no advantage to announcing the publisher early and there's a definite advantage to them being able to work in peace without having a hatemob attacking them 24/7.
@anonymous
ReplyDeletenot sure what "blown the fuck out" is supposed to mean in this context but since it might be a personal attack on people i deleted it.
If it isn't you're free to clarify your meaning and re-make the comment.
Anyway, as always: all morally and legally valid ways to address the current wave of harassment and create accountability for those responsible are being attempted, beginning with the least disruptive first. Those have to be given time to work.
@anonymous
ReplyDeleteRe: deleted comment. Yes, so an inaccurate statement and it was good it was deleted.
Conversation is not a competition and it's not accurate to describe it that way.
No, it's a courtroom, yes?
ReplyDelete@anonymous
ReplyDeleteNo, but depending on the topic, it has certain analogous parts.
For instance if you're discussing "What's your favorite color?" it's not like a courtroom
If you're discussing like whether a company paid the people working there a fair wage or not--an issue with real-world consequences and implications, where the people talking may take morally-significant action based on it--then it should be more like a courtroom, since, just as a court can inflict real-world consequences on a subject with its judgment, so can a group of people in a discussion of a commercially-relevant issue.
zak i have a question
ReplyDeleteWhy are you like this?
Why do you keep doing this? What part of apologizing and moving on is too hard for you? Why do you need to pursue grudges? What do you gain from endless pointless arguments?
@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteShort answer: Because I'm innocent and neither insane nor stupid. If someone walks up and kicks you in the head repeatedly, seeking to make them face accountability for that is not "holding a grudge"--its the most basic kindergarten level justice-seeking and self-preservation.
Long answer:
Your question inaccurately presumes either one of two things--
1. I did something wrong so should just apologize.
Since I didn't do anything wrong, that makes no sense plus it would be morally gross to let various aggressors go unpunished and remain unaccountable for falsely accusing me. That only encourages more people to try to hurt their enemies by inventing false accusations.
OR
2. Even if I didn't do something wrong, accusations which hurt basically everyone you know, your income, your future prospects in the world and which set a terrible precedent for everyone coming after are a petty and minor thing and you should just let them go and live in the new, shittier world they create.
I don't know what kind of conflict-averse nerdworld you live in, but I'm not going to accept that for a minute and no halfway-decent person would.
@anonymous
ReplyDeleteas for "pointless arguments"
Outside a fiction context, every reader deserves to read nothing but the truth or as close as we can get. We fail other people when we let a lie go unchallenged, especially in a space where we have influence.
If someone lies, someone needs to show up and fact check. That's civics 101.
And you think people care enough to take up your cause? Your reputation has proceeded to levels you never imagined and now you're seeing how karma truly plays out when you make one too many enemies.
ReplyDeleteYou're a lesson to us all Zak. One, that will never be forgotten.
@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteIf karma plays out I will be sitting pretty soon, as I've only "made enemies" (i.e. upset) shitty people. And, of course, none of this is over.
-------
But, really, let's take a moment and assume (since you're commenting around the same time the next day or so) that you're the same Anonymous who commented yesterday.
Does it bother you --as a human, as a person, as someone interacting with another person--that this same cycle repeats over and over:
You make an accusation
The person you're accusing addresses it
You don't acknowledge the response and change the subject to a new accusation.
Does this pattern bother you? If not, why not?
@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteShe hasn't filed anything and there's no order of any kind.
Does it bother you that you make such inaccurate assumptions?
And of course there's no "ammo" to be used against me and my hair is great.
@Anonymous (april 27)
ReplyDeleteNobody's allowed to post misinformation on this site, so your comment was deleted
how does it feel, unironically, to become a meme content creator on the level of the pundit? You will always have supporters, but lots of people in the OSR won't ever touch you with a ten foot pole. You've hurt so many people with the events of February. Like I'm actually genuinely curious how you feel about being ostracized harder than ever before. I know this shit isnt new, but this is different from before.
ReplyDelete@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteThat part is nice.
I always felt a little responsible for these folks--I wanted this guy to do well, I wanted that guy to do well, I felt like it was important that people see that so-and-so's work is more than meets the eye.
Now that so many of them have proved to be just random hivemindy nerds under the surface I can stop worrying about them and concentrate on what I have to do.
As for the money--RPGs were never my main business and I suspect Demon City will make wayyyyy more than the drama llamas think--especially after the story develops and some accountability starts to happen. They want this to be a story? It'll be a fucking story.
I for one just want to know exactly what the hell your thought process was in releasing AR&PL with basically no content in it. That's not a troll post, you literally release settings with two(!!!) clearly defined areas and then just cut and print it. What's the deal with that? Shouldn't you have provided more than literally two locations? I feel like your book is a rip-off.
ReplyDeleteIf we're asking questions, why the hell did Frostbitten and Mutilated have such a boring bestiary? Wolves? Pigs? Snakes? What was the deal with that?
ReplyDeleteAh good questions!
ReplyDelete@anon 1
I fear you've been ripped off. If you read a book with "two(!!!) clearly defined areas" or "literally two locations" you didn't receive a copy of Red & Pleasant Land, you received some other book and were deceived by some scalawag into believing this was the award-winning, best-selling Red & Pleasant Land. Perhaps a cover was switched on you. Anyway: seek the perpetrator.
@anon 2
James wants LotFP to be low fantasy, so even though F&M has the Necrobutcher, Nidhoggr, Bjara et al, rather than fill the Devoured Land with traditional monsters I included nasty versions of ordinary animals--as in myths.
And in playtests I've found actually pretty fun when a 6th level party starts realize a pack of wolves will rip them to shreds and they start to respect wolves and--sometimes--bargain with them.
Your mileage may vary. If you don't like it, replace them with traditional monsters on the encounter table--or don't buy it.
Hey, different guy than than the last two. I don't know if it's awkward or rude to ask this, but I have been wondering since the announcement that Raggi won't be reprinting your work if you had any plans for reprinting it yourself. Obviously with the LOTFP logos and stuff removed.
ReplyDeleteNot to say you have to, of course, considering its still available in PDF and stuff, and I'd totally get if you wanted to just move on with your next project instead of focusing on all that.
Curious to see what this new book you're working on is!
@anon
ReplyDeleteIts never rude to ask questions. It's rude not to--the person who, when they have a question, runs off to some forum rather than asking the person who knows needs to apologize, not you.
Anyway:
Raggi severed ties with me basically because:
1. Pushback from Mandy's hatemob, and
2. Links in the supply/distribution chain fell for her hoax, making it harder to sell new stuff through them
...leaving him with a pretty shitty choice.
He still has and sells the old stuff--by the time current stock of my LotFP stuff runs out and a new printing is called for, there will have been several major new developments in the Mandy Not Telling The Truth And Gamers Being Stupid Enough To Believe Her situation, which very likely will change the size of the hatemob and the attitude of the supply chain.
If not, there are other publishers who are interested.
Thanks for getting back to me so fast! Thought I'd at least have to wait till tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteAlso, thanks for the 'it's not rude to ask questions,' I was worried it might be a sensitive subject and it put me off asking for a bit. Thanks for straightening out the situation!
Glad to hear that things are looking up! I look forward to those developments happening. Truth is important, and I look forward to the facts being straightened out. I've seen some people using all this as a pretext to get back for old grudges, and even some brazenly admitting/boasting to it on public forums, and I've found all that (plus their melodramatic posturing) a bit sickening.
It's good to hear that you have other publishers interested in your work. I hope this means I Am the Weapon and other projects will see publication. Attempts to fight for your projects or show support on other boards are met with downvotes, locks on threads, and threats to ban, unfortunately....
ReplyDelete@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteIf someone gives you trouble, email me: zakzsmith AT hawtmayle . If you meet only with resistance, it's still good to have a record of attempts to suppress facts or evidence or even just to suppress fans discussing the work. As things are progressing quickly its very likely it'll come in handy soon.
Good places to post are:
Twitter (especially responding to popular hatethreads)
the OSR discord
reddit/rpg
reddit/osr
Enworld
RPGnet
I promise I'm not just going to give up on games, they're fun, the girls and me are still having fun rolling, and I have a lot of projects half-finshed that'll come out. This'll be a chaotic time, but when it's over a lot of the worst things about the online game scene will have changed for the better.
One of the best things I saw vis-a-vis I Am the Weapon (I think on a G+ thread) was when you wrote of alternate dimensions and how in a given realm things might seem perfectly normal...except that Vincent Price is president.....
ReplyDelete@Anonymous (deleted)
ReplyDeletefirst-strike personal attacks and misinformation are against the rules so your comment was deleted.
As for locations: there are 2 big dungeons on pages 84-131 and three more fleshed out locations on pgs 133-138.
It's a best-seller at LotFP. Check their site.
And as for telling people to take a stance against defamation and libel and harassment in the RPG community in every available forum: activism isn't "childish". Change is good and needs to happen.
@new anon (deleted)
ReplyDeleteit’s not the content of the post that got it deleted it’s the person who posted it. A person who recounts that bad things happened with glee or approval is obviously a bad actor and should not be posting on the Internet anywhere
Who would you like to win a lawsuit against most?
ReplyDeleteOr maybe the question should be, who do you need to win a lawsuit against most, so that the other dominos fall?
If you cannot answer, due to your legal counsel's advice, that is understood.
Kind of interesting your last post on reddit is a list of people who took some pretty major shits on you last month. You reccommend them, they do this in return..
ReplyDeleteThat was fast! :D
ReplyDelete"Mandy and the other harassers publicly apologize, or are deplatformed or otherwise face decisive accountability (fines court orders, etc) for harassing and smearing me and the various RPG platforms forced into disavowing me undo that."
ReplyDeleteSo is there any particular reason why a Satine Phoneix, who publically endorsed you as an abuser, is capable of redemption, yet Scrap Princess and Patrick Stuart, who you've removed from your sidebar, aren't? If Satine only signed on for you condemnation to save herself, it sounds like you're saying you're okay with someone lying if it's to save their career. Why the merciful stance on something you've pretty categorically condemned in the past?
@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteI never made any claims about who is "capable of redemption". I was simply telling you what I knew at that point about Satine and her motives. You're doing the dumb-online-gamer-nerd thing of assuming instead of asking, which is one way people got themselves into this mess.
To wit: anyone willing to apologize fully and publicly for their participation in this harassment campaign is "capable of redemption". Anyone who doesn't, isn't.
Definitely stay tuned.
While it's nice to be labeled a "dumb online gamer" you were much more forward in apologizing for Satine's actions rather than Scrap or Patrick's. You also deleted my original comment talking about this. I also didn't quote you on "[capability] of redemption" so I'm not exactly sure why you're quoting me there.
ReplyDelete@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteLet's take a look at what you just said:
"You were much more forward in apologizing..."
I didn't apologize at all. Satine's actions were totally evil and wrong--just like the actions of anyone else who supported Mandy's false claims. That doesn't mean she herself can't apologize and improve and cease to be evil later.
Here's what you did wrong:
You read something I wrote about Satine, and you read something I read about Scrap and Patrick and you didn't remember the specifics, you instead came away with a _general impression of what you guessed my intended tone was_ and then made a comment about that.
While tone exists and _perceived_ tone can sway public opinion (since a lot of the public is stupid), no intelligent person would judge another (especially morally) based on a _guess_ about their tone. They'd first do whatever they could to check the intent of the statement and the effect of the statement since they all should know judgment of tone is fuzzy.
Pronouncing a moral judgment on someone comes with a duty to actually do things check if that judgment is true. Otherwise you're basically holding everyone a loaded gun and asking them to shoot anyone they like with it--which is pretty much the status quo in the RPG scene: If you don't like a statement or product, you accuse the creator of moral crimes, and you do nothing to check and if you turn out to be wrong nothing bad happens.
Here's what I actually believe:
Scrap, Patrick, and everyone else on the planet who supported Mandy's claims is bad and should face accountability for having done that and I am taking steps--wholly within the bounds of the law--to make sure that does actually happen this time.
Accountability can take a variety of forms:
If you apologize publicly, that's accountability. This is the best and mildest outcome.
If you have your career impacted, that's also accountability. Much harsher.
If you get sued and fork over cash to your victim, that's accountability. Even worse.
If you get sued, get on the stand, claim your false thing is true, get prosecuted for perjury and go to jail for a little bit, that's accountability. That's probably the worst.
-
Scrap and Patrick did different things than Satine, though, and if you want to cease to be a stupid gamer nerd you'll try to grasp this difference:
Scrap and Patrick made false claims about my non-Mandy-related behavior and _also_ promoted Mandy's bullshit. Scrap (for instance) claimed I said tone didn't exist, and Patrick claimed I "would not survive the rules you impose on others." and that I argued dishonestly and (weirdly) seemed to imply I _didn't think I was agressive_ (I am, of course, aggressive--bad actors shold be pursued aggressively)--maybe that means something different in England.
Satine said a different thing, which may make her better or worse depending how you view it. Satine said she observed nothing wrong in my behavior but supports Mandy's claims anyway.
So you might say "Wow she admits seeing nothing but is still defaming this guy, that's worse" or you might say "Well at least she didn't pile on additional brand-new libel".
Either way, Satine claims no specific knowledge of me doing anything wrong so any argument claiming she does is invalid.
Either way: don't assume things. Ask. I'm right here.
...are you on the spectrum?
ReplyDelete@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteNo, but the audience for online RPG material includes a lot of people who are on the spectrum, or who instinctively spin any information that comes at them to their emotional advantage ("if I call someone out it's calling them out, if you call someone out, it's harassment"), or who willfully misread tone, that it's good to explain things in a very clear and literal way at all times.
@erased anon
ReplyDeleteYou're not allowed to lie in the comments.
If you have evidence you think proves your false statement true, provide it. So far nobody's ever presented a single link or 'cap where anybody claims to be another person, especially me.
What did Wundergeek ever do to you?
ReplyDelete@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteLike victims of harassment are _explicitly told to do_ by all antiharassment resources--crash override, hollaback, etc, I record the harassment that I get.
Also like all activists, I make accusations.
And like anyone trying to be good, I have_evidence_ to back up accusations I make.
If this strikes you as "irregular" or wrong:
1. you have some fucked-up social norms going on wherever you hang out, and
2. you need to go yell at all the people who have lists of complaints about me
Blogger Zak Sabbath said...
ReplyDelete@Anonymous
Wundergeek repeatedly and falsely accused me of harassing them and of being sexist. Wundergeek is a liar. Proof: https://armsinthewronghands.tumblr.com/post/148469806573/anna-kreider-wundergeek
There are interesting twists in your question though:
-You suggest someone would have to be evil _to me_ rather than to some other victim in order to be worth calling out. Anna's first victim was Hyun Tae Kim, not me and I first called Anna out for attacking him. It is disgusting that I had to do that and that no-one else did it first, especially people in Anna'a social circle. If someone is mentally ill and saying Nazi shit, it shouldn't be up to me and only me to call them out--Anna's friends should've done something and in later years should've apologized for not doing it sooner. Anna was being a monster, saying Kim should lose work for making art that wasn't as conservative as Anna wanted--everyone Anna knew should've immediately been alarmed and done something, The entire RPG scene should've deplatformed Kreider immediately if Anna refused to apologize for spewing propaganda like that-Anna might as well have said Jews shouldn't be allowed in the same hotels as gentiles. It's very bizarre how much more eager the scene is to deplatform people for crimes they can't prove than for ones they can.
-Also note, people are constantly alleging arguments involving me somehow start because someone's criticizing _me_ . This is actually rarely true--they start because someone's unfairly attacking some third party and I step in (usually because nobody else will). In this case it was Hyun Tae Kim, in another is was Anna and Ben Lehman attacking James Des (who was a dick, but not the kind of dick they were saying--though the urge to lie about rape is pretty strong in the RPG scene), with Something Awful they kept attacking the OSR in general, people attacked Kiel Chenier, Contessa, Raggi, Kingdom Death, etc. And none of the major luminaries in the RPG scene did shit about these right-wing attacks on creators. Monte said nothing, Mearls, Hite--nobody. So I did.
Are you going to Sue Mandy or anybody else?
ReplyDelete@ erased anon
ReplyDeletePosts containing misinformation are deleted. Your questions are addressed above: "So far nobody's ever presented a single link or 'cap where anybody claims to be another person, especially me."
Thoughts on Silent Titans?
ReplyDelete@anonymous
ReplyDeletePatrick's main problem--as an author as in life--is a total inability to imagine and deal with real life and the fact that he, therefore, prefers writing to thinking. He doesn't run a regular real-life RPG game at home (very common problem with the worst of the online RPG scene) and the games he runs on-line are kind of ad-hoc and silly and don't look at all like the heavy, poetic RPG stuff he writes.
So just as his ideas of real-life solutions are stupid ("Oh my friends are fighting, instead of, like, talking to them, I'll write a blog post screaming at them!" "Oh, half the online RPG scene lies all the time--let's help them by lambasting people for trying to stop them!" "Libel you say? If it involves talking I want in on that!") his ideas of how any even kind-of complicated RPG scenario or presentation will work are pretty foggy because he can't play out scenarios in his mind.
For example, in Maze of the Medusa he invented the Cannibal Critics and gallery of dangerous artworks and I'm sure he thought they were all very clever--but he didn't really give players much reason to interact with them, so I had to invent the time-dilation and make at least some of the art do something other than just attack on sight so that the gallery wasn't just a monster zoo with boring 2hd cannibals.
Another example: While I was editing Veins of the Earth, I noticed nearly every creature is described as the Nastiest Most Vicious Horrible CryptoTerror Ever and then the stats were like... AC: 10, 2 HD--it took a lot of work to remind him to develop mechanics so things would actually play the way he wanted.
And, of course, all the descriptions were wayyyyy too long and disorganized to use quickly at the table.
Deep Carbon succeeds to the degree it does mostly because it was short, presented very limited options and because Scrap at least knows how to run a game.
So Silent Titans is ultra high-concept (as befits a hyperactive imagination that never goes outside) and has distinctive (if kind of picasso-ugly) art, but very little thought has gone into how someone picks up that book and makes it into a game anyone would want to play, including, weirdly, the writer.
Why someone would want to spend all that time making RPG stuff they don't even use escapes me. But I'm not a shrink.
What has bothered me a lot is amid all the "Zak S is an abuser!" posts back in February, anyone who popped their head up and asked things such as "If Zak is actually innocent of what Mandy has accused him of, what sort of public response would people want to see from him?" got piled on or just banned on the spot from the thread or forum.
ReplyDeleteDoesn't sit right with me.
Neither does people working their way through someone's follower/friend list and contacting them to 'encourage' them to unfriend/unfollow/block Zak.
@anon
ReplyDeleteThey have no response to those questions and so it just makes them mad. In the end it's just the old cliche:
You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
@erased anon
ReplyDeleteI erased your comments because (as always)
you're
not
allowed
to
-lie-
in
the
comments
It's not a new rule or an unusual one.
And you acknowledge you were lying:
In your first comment you falsely claimed I did not include any thoughts on Silent Titans and then in your second comment you acknowledged that I did include them.
@erased anon
ReplyDeleteAgain:
you're
not
allowed
to
-lie-
in
the
comments
I didn't say the book was "ok' by any stretch
@erased anon
ReplyDelete1. Your recent message was erased for containing misinformation.
2. The "no lying" rule is not a "techicality"--it's what any responsible website should do.
3. All my statements about Patrick are warranted
4. " can you prove that patrick doesn't run games like his books?"
Unlike accusations of, say, internet harassment--which leave a written record--Patrick's GMing style isn't recorded in text. So barring some extension of the post-Tony-Blair extension of the British Orwellian Surveillance state this has to rest on the claims of people who played them. Ask Patrick, ask Zedeck Siew, ask me, ask anyone else.
That is as far as I can go with evidence, and I am stating it clearly. If you interview other players and their account conflicts with mine I will happily answer any further questions to explain any conflicts and establish the truth of my story. The last game I played involved a lot of flamingo-people and other talking animals being really silly. There was only one complex monster. I do 100% make this claim under penalty of perjury and am willing to go to jail if its proved to be untrue, and I'll happily go through all the trouble to sign a statement to that effect if you will also go to the trouble to do the same about your own claims.
5. "What the everloving FUCK did patrick do to you to make you say:
"his ideas of real life solutions are stupid"
Example: two people he liked online didn't like each other. The nonstupid solution would be to contact them and talk about it, the stupid solution would be write a blog post about it where you lie. I said this in my original response.
6. " Im pretty sure you implied he did a libel. "Libel? If it involves talking I want in on that!""
Let me clarify then: Patrick committed libel. He says stuff about people that isnt true and shitty in public all the time, thereby passing at least the definition of "libel per se" all the time and possibly trad libel where you have to prove damages.
@other erased anon
ReplyDeleteYou're not allowed to lie in the comments. Duh.
Legal note:
ReplyDelete"Libel per se" is a legal term for when someone writes a shitty false thing in a fixed medium (usually public text or video) that's so fucked up you don't have to prove specific damages.
i dont think i've ever seen patrick say anything that fits as "libel per se" then, unless you mean he says he believes mandy.
ReplyDeletethen you didnt read all his posts attacking me
ReplyDeletewell, erm, have fun in court with that i guess????
ReplyDelete@Jesus Gomez
ReplyDeleteIf y'all want to pretend I don't have lawyers and that you know more legal stuff than my lawyers do I don't actually see any advantage in taking the time or effort to disabuse you of that.
Heh heh you couldn't afford a lawyer son or you wouldn't be posting those replies to Mandy. How's that patreon? Got enough to gas up your 93 gmc?
DeleteSo why were you being vague about Cavegirl's "crimes"?
ReplyDeleteLike couldn't you have just said "It's fucked up people support Cavegirl after she chose to believe my four exes over me that I am a am a rapist and a psychological abuser." ?
I wasn’t being vague that’s pretty much exactly what I was saying
ReplyDeleteAlthough you know it’s not just me saying I’m not— it’s basically every single person we ever met
Zak, you're not allowed to lie in the comments.
ReplyDeleteYes, I know.
ReplyDeleteWhy did you feel you had to remind me of my own rules?
@erased anon
ReplyDeleteIf your goal was to try to do that it hasn't worked.
You're trying to imply I've done something wrong but because you apparently know I haven't actually you can't be specific. So you keep followng this pattern like
"Hey Zak, you fuck don't you know people who kick puppies are bad?"
"Um yes, I do"
"Well then, yknow, yknow, lol"
The effect of your vagueness is not to remind me of anything or make me feel bad, it's simply to make me feel confident that even people hell-bent on the idea i did something wrong can't actually articulate anything I did wrong.
If you think I kicked a puppy: accuse me of it, and provide proof. When you dance around it like this the only thing it reminds me of is that the people trolling me are morons
@jesus Gomez
ReplyDeleteI, of course, posted my response to Mandy in order to give the RPG community members who jumped on her defamation train a chance to jump off once they knew the truth and give the various companies involved the opportunity to roll back their participation in the harassment before things like legal action took place.
As for me not having lawyers:
Are you willing to sign a document under your real name under penalty of perjury saying I don't have any lawyers under retainer? And print a full public apology if you find out it isn't true?
Let's be real:
You aren't and you currently believe you exist in a universe where there are no consequences to you getting caught lying.
This is a familiar problem--gamers kind of think in a trolls-vs-george-lucas paradigm where they are lowly anons and they are just snarking at some untouchable celebrity creator somewhere who won't notice them or at some fellow anon with neither the time money nor inclination to sue them. Plus they are usually in a situation where it'd be hard to prove monetary damage.
None of that is true this time.
Things are going to change.
Now this change may not affect you Jesus Gomez personally: you may be so anonymous that you can just hide and not in any way be accountable for lying here, but it is going to completely affect the narratives you are able to push and get golf claps from your fellow trolls for. And it sure as fuck is going to affect some of the other people reading this.
@erased anon
ReplyDeleteBecause you're not allowed to lie in the comments.
Someone making a true claim of defamation is not comparable to someone making a false one.
@erased anon
ReplyDeleteWhen you post little mosquito bite snarky posts you know are just going to get erased you can only be thinking one of three things:
1-"With this shitty comment I shall slowwwwly harm Zak, though it be erased eventually these thousand cuts will destroy him haha!"
2-"I could just think this in my brain but when i hit publish i know its Real"
3-"There's some troll place on the internet somewhere where I'll go 'Hey guys I said Zak was like Trump!' aren't I cool"? And they'll all go haw haw yes king oh my god you posted a Insult i did not know you could do that wow here is some troll cred
If 1,it isn't working: comments like that just reinforce your target's sense of superiority to you: Wow the people trying to whale on me don't even have any good arguments
If 2 or 3, probably some part of your brain realizes how sad that is and is lowering your self-esteem even further as we speak, and so it will only get sadder in the coming months.
Every troll like you has a real name and is a real person--and so you must be aware that all of your comments are either:
-insubstantial shitposts and so just a reflection of your own life not providing you with anything better to do,
or
-legally actionable and false, so you know you won't win (so you stay anonymous)
@erased anon
ReplyDeletebeing unpopular with bad people is good
ok but what did cavegirl actually do? On twitter you never actually said, and i'm curious
ReplyDelete@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteI said exactly and precisely what Cavegirl did on twitter:
Cavegirl supported Mandy et al's false accusations-that makes Cavegirl a harasser.
What's more, she did it in public, did it without even bothering to investigate the accusations, didn't ask about the other sid,e didn't make a good faith attempt to contact witnesses or otherwise establish the accusations' truth before saying anything, wrote a completely nonsensical sanctimonious post claiming that the only empathetic response from me to this harassment campaign would be to claim responsibility even if I didn't so it, responded to attempts to hold her accountable with trolling and lolmemes, and claimed that previous good things I'd done meant that it was ok for her and her pals to lie about me.
@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteNotice that while you won't explicitly say "Ok, it's obvious the accusations weren't true but I still hold obscure resentments against you so I'll keep trolling" you have stopped even pretending you think the accusations are true or defensible and moved on to trying to think of other reasons the people responsible for the harassment shouldn't face accountability for it.
As for what I'll do: obviously I'm not going to discuss details of legal strategy in detail online before they happen.
But here's a question for you:
Knowing now for a fact that Cavegirl committed defamation against an innocent person, do you think she should escape accountability?
If so, why do you think that?
If not, what kinds of accountability are appropriate for her and what will you do to enact them?
Also notice the rhetoric of "lol u don't hav a lawyer, u won't sue" has disappeared.
ReplyDeleteIt's almost like y'all realize you're full of shit on every level but just want to keep finding some goalpost you can stand behind which won't get annihilated as the truth comes out.
It's gonna be a real interesting summer in RPGland.
@erased anon
ReplyDeleteYou're not allowed to lie in the comments, so: erased
If you meant it and were confident in the outcome: you'd sign a contract under your real name making that bet, sign it, and post it publicly.
But you won't because you know I'm innocent.
@erased anon
ReplyDeleteerased because you aren't allowed to lie in the comments.
But if you were ACTUALLY sure of your statements and sure that the only person I can win against is Mandy, then you'd provide your name and juridiction along with your comments.
But you're not: so you just proved you were lying.
Zak it's really hard to follow the fuck along what's going on in this ridiculous comment thread with you deleting everything.
ReplyDelete@Anon
ReplyDeleteI agree, it's really hard to extract useful information from the online RPG conversation when so many people in it keep lying all the time.
"But if you were ACTUALLY sure of your statements and sure that the only person I can win against is Mandy, then you'd provide your name and juridiction along with your comments.
ReplyDeleteBut you're not: so you just proved you were lying."
Boy I can't wait for you to pull this kind of shit in a court of law.
@anonymous
ReplyDeleteDo you seriously not know that in a court you have to say who you are?
Did you think it was like the comments where you can fill out the charging documents with Name: EvaPilot53 then answer a few Captchas and then you're done?
Again, it's going to be hilarious watching you pull this kind of rhetoric in court.
ReplyDelete@anonymous
ReplyDeleteYou need to head back to whatever forum you and the other trolls hang out at and get your story straight:
Is Zak:
a) a nightmarishly devious Machiavel who manipulates legal technicalities and the hearts of men who will win the case not because he's telling the truth but because he's somehow tricked literally everyone who was ever close to Mandy including her family into believing him
or
b) a staggering buffoon who has no lawyers or never listens to them even if he does and will therefore lose in court
Comment again when you figure out which.
For non-antagonistic points, the book looks neat.
ReplyDelete@other anon
ReplyDeleteYou didn't answer the question you got asked, so you got erased.
Did skerples ever actually send you his information so you could hash this out in a courtroom like adults, or did mister "I'm looking forward to it" promptly back out of the conversation after getting his bravery kudos?
ReplyDelete@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteYou're referring to an incident where Skerples made various fake accusations on twitter and someone asked me about suing them. I said:
"
Playing D&D W/PornStars
@IHitItWithMyAxe
I don’t know skerples gender but legal action is certainly on the table for everyone involved in this harassment campaign and i will note each time you repeat these false claims (years after they were disproved by information that is publicly available) makes that easier to do
2:14 PM - 10 Jun 2019
Skerples
@Skerples1
Jun 10
Looking forward to it.
Playing D&D W/PornStars
@IHitItWithMyAxe
Jun 10
Then please give us all your full name and place of residence so legal proceedings can start
Playing D&D W/PornStars
@IHitItWithMyAxe
Jun 10
if you're reticent to reveal it publicly you can email me at zakzsmith AT hawtmayle dawt calm and if you're worried about giving it to me then your country (and state if relevant) should be sufficient
"
And, of course, Skerples did not answer. That's pretty much standard troll procedure: accuse, get caught, flee.
Hey. How does it feel that in six month you amd raggi completely nuked the LOTFP brand?
ReplyDelete@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteReports of LotFP's death are greatly exaggerated.
You're making a basic mistake common to trolls: "What trolls think" (or even "What the online RPG community thinks") isn't an accurate description of the stakes here. If every troll in the world thought LotFP was cancelled, so long as the money keeps rolling in, it doesn't matter. The important things are:
-Good creators are able to create in relative peace
and
-People responsible for harassing them face accountability
...and regardless of what the day's gossip is in whatever internet circles you personally travel in, things are developing toward making those situations a reality.
Check in in a few months. Since you're a troll, the idea that you said something and it turned out not to be true won't make an impact on you, but you will have to at least find something else to troll about.
yeah you keep yapping about accountability but i doubt you have the resources or interest in suing anyone but exs and ex-friends. if ya did you'd go after ettin or guyll etc, but your focus is on stewart, geist, allen, etc. So.....why not the literal trolls who you know amd why these people instead? ;) answer the questions pls
ReplyDelete@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteYou've made a number of bizarre, left-field assumptions there.
Troll assumptions about what I want to do in the future or about what I am capable of doing never been right in the last 10 years, so a good guide for you here would be:
Whatever you think I am going to do, assume it is wrong and that I am going to do something else.
Yah huh, so are you gonna sue them or not mr sobbth? i really want you to sue them....
ReplyDelete@anonymous
ReplyDeleteI regret to say I can't discuss the details of any legal action with you aside from ones already revealed.
When there is more I can say, I will say it, and you are undoubtedly the kind of person who'll find out about it right away and eagerly burn to develop a Take on it.
But if you can't help but speculate: the golden rule enunciated above won't steer you too wrong.
@anon erased on Sept 5
ReplyDeleteComments containing first-strike personal attacks will be deleted.
Fall begins September 23rd and ends December 21.
and what happens when you haven't won your case and everyone still hates you December 21? lol
ReplyDelete@Anon
ReplyDeleteThat's not a likely outcome.
But even if it were: the feelings that stupid nerds have about their stupid assumptions aren't important. What's important is they're held accountable, one way or another.
It's good to keep busy.
ReplyDeletewell zak it's still fall and you're still the most hated man in RPGs. You said this shit would be done - its not.
ReplyDelete@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteThe reason you might say I am "the most hated man in RPGs" is twofold:
1. Many gamers are slow enough to post things like what you just did
2. Rather than ignore them, I fact-check and write things like:
"We already had this conversation
Fall begins September 23rd and ends December 21."
This, though true and verifiable and relevant, makes people like you react emotionally and behave poorly.
It's a vicious cycle, so: fact-check yourself. The time you save may be your own.
you literally just got banned from itch and I think you'll be finding yourself banned from every single rpgbux site
ReplyDelete@anonymous
ReplyDeleteYes, the harassment campaign continues. I have lived with it since 2009 it's not news.
As I said, before fall ends I suspect things will be changing. This is the way of things in creative businesses.
The stranger thing here, really, is your psychology--you're a person who took time out to come here and type in the little box:
1. A question already answered
and
2. Information you must be aware I already had
Why do you do these things? What's your goal here?
Hey Zak after reviewing all the evidence its pretty clear you're innocent. Sorry you have had to deal with this shit.
ReplyDelete@anon
ReplyDeletethanks but, as usual, no point in telling me, find a forum and tell them
Dear Zack,
ReplyDeleteI'm a huge french fan of your rpg work for Lotfp (luckily, most of it has been translated lately in my language) and I bought all the volumes (in french and in english - for the translation is sometimes a bit questionable).
I've also been following your blog with big interest for a long time (especially the topics concerning meta-gaming and your thoughts about Dmastery).
I had great expectations concerning "Violence in the nympharium" (originally scheduled for Fall) and I was very sorry to see it going into oblivion (although I understand that the circumstances don't help).
Is there still hope to see it eventually published ? (through Lotfp or put on line by yourself ?)
Best regards & Good luck
Peggy
PS : Don't give up rpg writing, you're a gasp of fresh air in a dull and smoggy landscape.
@Peggy
ReplyDeleteNympharium will be published if you fight for it and it won't if you don't. Likewise: I will continue RPG writing if fans fight for the right for the work to be out there and I won't if they don't.
Don't get me wrong: I appreciate messages like yours and fans have shown a continued willingness to send them and to buy my stuff and to vote for me for fan awards.
What fans -have not- done is shown a willingness to take action with anything like the level of organization and single-mindedness shown by the harassers who contacted Gen Con, the Ennie awards, LotFP, WOTC, White Wolf, sent the smear campaign against me viral on reddit and twitter and generally tried very hard to destroy my life in every way possible this year.
The haters care far more than the fans, and while I definitely will be making an effort to be sure they are held accountable for their harassment campaign, continuing to publish for the benefit of an RPG community which wouldn't spit on me if I was on fire is another prospect entirely.
If you want anything other than what I've already promised, then you've got to write to people other than me and write about the problem in places other than in the comments to this blog.
For what its worth Demon City will come out, of course, as will the work I promised in this blog entry. I do what I say I'm going to do.
ReplyDeleteWorking on it...
ReplyDeleteDo you authorize me to use one of your pictures from Nympharium for a cover picture of a FB group ?
probably—if you tell me a little more about it.
DeleteYou can email if you like
Ok but I couldn't find it anywhere.
ReplyDeleteHere's mine : helf@laposte.net