Before I go into real news, legal update/rumor control: In 2021 a judge tried to dismiss my defamation case against Gen Con—this was much celebrated by right wing douchenozzles on twitter. I appealed to a higher court, won, & the case was back on. Oddly, the douchenozzles didn’t spread the word about that. Well the same judge just tried it again. The right wing douchenozzles are celebrating again, like they forgot this already happened. Obviously I’ll just appeal again to the same higher court.
So, anyway something else that happened last week was interesting.
A couple of Gen Con's fellow right-wing hatemob members named (on Twitter anyway) panny_lines and aledlawlor have a little company called Leyline Press.
They hired someone to edit one of their RPGs.
They then fired them when they found out that they'd once worked for Lamentations of the Flame Princess, the company that published most of my game stuff. They also erased his name from the credits.
They then made a very vague announcement about their very vague right-wing problems they had with LotFP. They made the word "problematic" do a lot of work.
Now here's the strange thing, something that hasn't happened during the last 4 years of hatemobbing: people noticed--and did something about it.
Lamentations then announced a big sale.
Lamentations then sold a phenomenal amount of product:
Slorm is a goblin and a cleric who appears weekly in OSR founder* Jeff Rients' weekly game alongside a guy named Graham played by Lamentations of the Flame Princess founder James Edward Raggi IVs guy, Graham, a fighter who goes around dressed as the dungon-boss necromancer we killed in our first adventure.
Anyway Slorm worships a god that fell out of the God Maker, the Sister of Infinite Punishments.
Last time Slorm played, he was in a giant slime and got stung by an LotFP-style trap where he looked through a telescope and gained a view of the infinite universe like the Aleph in that Borges story and was incapacitated and then the session ended.
Then I spent several weeks not playing because life, then I came back and we're in a dungeon but Slorm now has Expanded Life Universe Perspective and talks like a SoCal acid guru who sees....who like seeeees, man, he sees youuuu, he sees what you're about, man, like....enTIREly.
So this game is Jeff Gameblog DMing, Zak S fresh off suing someone, James Raggi on fighter, two trans people and a Ukrainian sniper--you don't get more OSR than that.
So, this report straight from the from the seeeecret LotFP weekly game! (ssssh) :
Slorm wakes up to find the party's bard is dead. "Good!" he says. He is replaced by a blind dwarf.
We are in a Library. James' henchman El Grec has identified a sigil! its the sigil of the king!
I , theee goblinn has posted henchindividuals outside the library, theres .MAGnificent fresco of the king leading troops. Slorm, filled with a wholly fraudulent sense of the inherent spirituality of a blind dwarf, says we have to follow the blind dwarf's lead through the library.
The blind dwarf has got a book off the shelf. As has Dr Merchandise thee henchman.
(Not a real doctor just needed a name that began with D to go with previous henchfolk Astrid (R.I.P.), Boulder, and Christopher (R.I.P.).)
One d8 roll later @Jeff Rients "Does your character actually read dwarf braille is the question?". More rolls, no.
The henchmen notice one of the walls outside are bleeding. Slorm the goblin casts cure light wounds" on it, it scabs over.
Blarnibus the Ogre licks the wall. The blood tastes significantly more acidic than expected.
Slorm then casts Cure Light on the ogre's tongue.
The dwarves roll architecture. Nothing happens. Goblin cleric insists we just let the wall bleed because its dungeon dressing mannn.
Slorm can see through the veil of maya ok?
We go on. El Grec has picked up some Old Haldrani and can see a book called Lords of Gold! It says where all the local gold mines are.
I am glad I am doing this write-up because I forgot that we found this.
Slorm can read a book called the Grimoire of Par Kaare which has some spells.
I also forgot that--Jeff what spells are in there?
but WHATEVER...down to level NEXT. We're in a huge corridor. With some...passages? idk James Edward Raggi IV is mapping so I trust him.
Did I mention my goblin looked through a telescope into the infinite, got incapacitated for 3 sessions and now talks like a cult leader on mushrooms? Ok anyway. So he gets the blind dwarf to listen and he hears Sinister Laughter! To the north. We go north.
120 feet and then. Ok this dungeon is REALLLY big like it was drawn in the 70s by someone who didn't do rational architecture but its a Jeff Rients game so that is probably what it is.
(Turns out it's from Judges' Guild Journal. 2 decades of game blogging for nothing, we are still running around in some eccentric notebook dungeon written by people who know people who give out the 3 Castles Award. )
We are in a martini-glass shaped room. Slorm the goblin casts Augury and does not have the spell Augury and so randomly decides to go right and not left. Both left and right doors lead to the same room.
Score!
Goblin casts Insect Plague and sends the insects go down the corridor, they eventually find a secret door. Graham opens it.
A TEMPLE! Scarabs on the walls. The floor is made of blue marble with white veins--all veins leading toward a laughing buddha/dwarf like statue. Blarnibus the ogre approaches it. The Statue is entirely blued silver and its eyes are gems. Slorm urges any party member but himself to approach the statue. Quoth Blarnibus "i'm gonna shake it like its a piggybank".
The only image that comes up when you google "Ogre with piggybank"
When he picks it up a hidden gong sounds! There's a delay on the guards showing up (Jeff just tells us the mechanic) Blarnibus rolls...4! A bunch of weirdoes in red and black start pouring out.
I highly suspect Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is a reference here.
Weirdoes? Shaved heads and forky beards! James takes the rearguard and the goblin sends an Insect Plague to protect them.
Slorm is insane but has the Rod of something for Clerics so that's why he's casting all this bullshit.
The lowest level cultists show up first, and the plague takes them!! We get away scott free! 2500gp statue!
So far, so dungeon. But here's that real sauce:
Then--OF COURSE!--we dress the two dwarves up like the statue of the god by paying 500gp to the best cosplayer in the village. Jeff rules that by coincidence our blind dwarf has EXACTLY the same build as the god. Because: Jeff.
But the god mostly wears a loin cloth."I'm gonna fast-forward to the stupid corridor with the 2 sets of double doors". Slorm rolls a 2. Slorm casts Continual Light on the dwarf god's loincloths.
So they'll glow, naturally.
So the nonblind god-cosplaying dwarf leads the blind one to the plinth. The plinth is really tall though. One dwarf tosses the other. "Does he get up there before he sets off the alarm or not?". 1-3 or 4-6? 6.
So fuck ok the dwarves are messing around on the floor as the alarm rings. Slorm casts Insect Plague! Scarabs to the front! Protect your gods! Guards in chainmail with spears roll up.
They are not intelligent. The statue of their scarab-friendly god that's been missing has no been replaced by two gods? And a bunch of live scarab beetles.
They immediately declare--ITS A MIRACLE. The guards bow "We're not worthy!" The blind dwarf says "No you are not".
They fetch the high priest. One of the guards is confused to see two gods. Slorm casts Command. The one word command? PHILOSOPHIZE! For a round (6 seconds) the guard rhapsodizes about how there are TWO where once there were ONE!!! A holy mystery!
4 junior clerics roll up. Jeff rolls to see if they are swept up by the religious hysteria. They fail their save and begin praying.
James Edward Raggi IV asks "Um no reason, just asking....whats the dwarf gestation period?" Jeff rules 12 months.
Blind dwarf goes "I don't feel safe".
James goes..."i'm just saying, that we have the ability, at the rate of one per year, new gods!" "WE ARE JACK KIRBY!"
Jeff: "You know i don't do this very often but I'm awarding everybody 50 extra xp for shenanigans!"
After two decades of RPG theory, I have boiled down the principles of the Old School Renaissance RPG down to a single maxim.
--
(Oh wait before that, important announcement on the legal front:
That's the third case down if anyone's keeping track. Details here, anyway...)
--
This principle explains why we keep playing D&D despite the creator and copyright holders' tremendous flaws.
It explains why we keep playing old versions, with less detail in the characters.
It explains why we tend to disdain too much backstory or involved character creation.
It explains why we so often hack an existing game instead of playing custom-built games from scratch.
It explains why we favor compact, easily-portable and modular blog-sized bits of content that can fit lots of versions of D&D.
It explains why we don't do Session Zeroes much.
It explains why safety tools, while not incompatible with OSR play, aren't really a big thing in OSR.
It explains why "on-boarding" of all kinds--where the DM carefully explains to the players what the premise and expectations of the campaign will be, are--is disdained.
It explains why the GM is given as much power as the group will let them have.
It explains why we the OSR is so improv-friendly and the modules often ask for improv.
It explains why rulings (on the spot) are privileged over rules (new books, to be read).
It explains why 3d6-in-order, character-dies-roll-again is so common.
It explains why dungeons are so common.
It also explains why certain post-80s improvements to games have been picked up by the OSR--including expressing to-hit as a bonus instead of a chart value and improvements in layout and adventure packaging, and various rule-of-cool hacks.
It's this:
I wanna play.
That's it: I wanna play now. I want to play an RPG right away!
I am busy I am an adult. I do not have time for anything!
ROLL ALL THE DICE AT ONCE! HURRY! GO!!!
OSR PRINCIPLE NUMBER ONE
Any innovation to the RPG experience which extends the time between all the players figuring out when they can all meet to play and when they will actually start playing is unlikely to become standard across Old School play, no matter how great the other advantages of said improvement.
OSR is born of desperate, time-poor circumstances. We play 2 hour sessions before everyone goes to work or school, we play in hotel lobbies, drunk, because 3 people were all like....Hey! We should Play!!!, we play in a box, we play with a fox, we play with dice made from our own blood, we play. We need to play asap!!!!!!
----
An example
Several months ago I talked about the possibility of my suicide on this blog. This was occasion for great consternation on the part of the good-hearted people in the RPG-o-sphere.
I had a long zoom conversation with Jeff Gameblog and James Edward Raggi about the various problems in my life created by people who had been inspired to make game stuff by myself, Jeff Gameblog and James Edward Raggi. They had initiated contact because they were concerned, but they had no idea what to do.
Jeff finally said "Well...we should play a game."
I almost said "Go fuck yourself."
Like: given fake felony accusations destroying my life your plan is we play a game? Jeff my dude.
But I decided to play.
What did we play?
We played D&D. Not even LotFP.
What characters did we use? Whichever ones we could dig up fastest from games we already played.
What edition were we using? We still don't know.
What spell list are we using? Couldn't say.
Are we using LotFP or Holmes or AD&D or Moldvay versions of spells? Figure that shit out as we go!!
Why? Why not any of the other games or variants on games we have all had so much fun discussing over the decade-plus? Because we wanted to play NOW. Jeff runs his game in a tight 2-hour slot between waking up and getting his kids to work. There is not time for fripperies like playing a game we don't already know already.
No reading no figuring no planning. Get a character, get a dungeon, get a guy, get a girl, get a they, get a whatever, get in there and playyyy.
As the game expanded, we got new players.Who did out first recruit play? A henchman that was already there. Who did they play when that character died? An ogre that was already in the dungeon. What were their stats? We figured it out as we went.
Does this mean each rule we use is possibly not the most optimal one? Yes!
In 2019, by taking advantage of my estranged and mentally-ill ex, basically the entire tabletop RPG industry decided to start harassing me.
It worked. They destroyed my entire life. I had a career inside RPGs, I had a (much larger) career outside RPGs selling paintings. I had a social life. All that was annihilated.
This is my eviction notice--because I couldn't pay the rent because of this:
This is my food stamp card--because I can't afford food because of this::
This is where my 5 missing teeth used to be--because I couldn't afford to get them fixed because of this:
This is what happened when I sued Ettin / Paul Matijevic, a Something Awful troll and RPGnet moderator in Australia, where he lives, for claiming I abused and harassed people:
This is what happened when I sued the game streamer Vivka Grey, in Los Angeles, where she lives, for claiming I abused and harassed people:
This is what happened when Vivka Grey sued me back, claiming I was lying when I defended myself:
And, now, if you were on the internet yesterday, you might've seen this:
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I haven't lost a case yet.
For years everyone has been telling me how hard it is to win a defamation case in the US.
Fewer than 5% of civil cases go to trial.
Viv, for one, admits to having spent over half a million dollars on her cases, yet I won while evicted, on food stamps, and missing five teeth.
You may have heard about my case against GenCon being dismissed. It was. Then I appealed. Only about 20% of appeals are successful. I appealed, it worked.
And then everybody was telling me how hard it was to sue overseas--how would you collect? You collect the same way people overseas pay for anything else, with the internet. It's 2023.
Everyone who was screaming at you about me was wrong. Again.
How long can hundreds of nerds be wrong before just admitting it?
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Both in court and on the internet, when anyone anywhere is asked to produce any proof I did anything bad they come up empty.
This is especially significant considering how many people are claiming I did bad online things--things that should be able to be proved with a fucking screenshot. Nobody has been able to come up with thing one.
Basically, every single thing a person could possibly do to prove they're innocent, I did. In person, on video, via tweet, in court, out of court, you name it--I have been subjected to every kind of scrutiny from every direction for longer than it'd take to earn a Bachelor's.
If you still think I did something wrong, I'm not asking "provide proof" (there isn't any), I'm just asking, for the millionth time: Why? What makes you personally believe any of this shit?
-When the original beef that all the Something Awful goons (like Ettin) had was fake allegations of transphobia against someone whose main online defenders are trans, who repeatedly got trans people hired, and gave up a 5-figure contract to protest transphobia?
-When the original beef that all the story game designers had was a bunch of shit nobody now believes about the supposed objective inferiority of Old School games or people who played them?
-When there's video evidence that the people who started this particular round of harassment turned out to be lying out their asses?
-When the excuse that I have a trust fund turns out to be bullshit because I don't?
-When the excuse that "well the laws are different there" turns out to be bullshit because I won in the US, too?
-When the excuse that I was "obnoxious" has to be put side by side with but you lied about rape?
What the fuck reason do they have left?
Ask them. Ask for the receipts that justify their hate.
Ask WOTC and Hasbro what's left of their reasons for doing this..
Ask GenCon what's left.
Ask Matt Mercer what's left.
Ask the folks at Green Ronin Games what's left.
Ask the guys at Mothership what's left.
Ask Patrick Stuart and Gus L and Arnold K and Noisms over at Monsters and Manuals and all the other OSR people what's left.
Ask Chris McDowall and the OSR discord what's left.
Ask Sandy Pug Games and Tin Star Games what's left.
Ask Ramanan and Grey Wizard working on BREAK! what's left.
Ask Crystal Frasier and Jessica Price --formerly of Paizo--what's left.
Ask Andy Kitkowski--the founder of Story-Games.com--and Ron Edwards--leading light of the Forge--what's left.
Ask RPGnet and reddit/RPG and reddit/OSR what's left.
Ask OneBookShelf what's left.
When every single reason for hurting someone has been proven by time and by inquiry and by the law to be bullshit, what claim are they hanging on to?
Ask for the receipts. Ask why they ever believed any of it. Ask if they think their reasons were good. Ask if they're even capable of changing their minds.
Please ask them for me.
Ask because I can't do it because I'm busy moving because I can't live in my apartment any more, and my friends here can't because they're busy helping me.
And when you ask these people, remind them: I will never give up. So if they've got reasons, they'd better be real sure what they are.
When interviewers ask me about how I approach writing RPG stuff I usually say something like "It's a lot like writing a novel or other story, you just do it like that."
I realize that might not be the most useful way to put it, so I am going to dig a little into what that means.
The word dressmakers use for stuff that they're going to make into a dress is the same word comedians have for words they're going to turn into a performance: "material". Like: "I need more material,""This is great material,""All out of material," "You need new material", etc.
Material means, in writing: everything in your head that you think might interest your audience that you have not told them already. Material is unformed. It is a thing but not yet presented or presentable.
One way to think about writing that is helpful to me when I'm doing RPG stuff is to describe writing as a process of translation. Material appears in the inchoate language of thought and leaves in the language of, well, language.
When I say writing an RPG thing is like writing a story, remember a story's not just you revealing the plot points in order, it's you revealing anything you want to reveal.
Tolkien begin his whole saga with no plot at all, with barely even a description, but rather by revealing what some things in his story aren't:
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hold, and that means comfort.
The plot has gone nowhere and he's already got three lines. Rock on. He did it by thinking about what his story wasn't about, and giving us those thoughts.
If you haven't revealed it yet--or haven't revealed that's what you think yet--that's material.
One way to think of writing:
1. Know what your material is.
2. Reveal it in the most interesting order you can.
3. Reveal it using the most interesting words you can.
Old Material
Material does not have to be something you know but the audience doesn't. You know what an elephant is, but Samuel Johnson is going to tell you anyway:
"The largest of all quadrupeds, of whose sagacity, faithfulness, prudence, and even understanding, many surprising relations are given. This animal is not carnivorous, but feeds on hay, herbs, and all sorts of pulse; and it is said to be extremely long lifed. It is naturally very gentle; but when enraged, no creature is more terrible. He is supplied with a trunk, or long hollow cartilage, like a large trumpet, which hangs between his teeth, and serves him for hands: by one blow with his trunk he will kill a camel or a horse, and will raise a prodigious weight with it. His teeth are the ivory so well known in Europe, some of which have been seen as large as a man's thigh, and a fathom in length. Wild elephants are taken with the help of a female ready for the male: she is confined to a narrow place, round which pits are dug; and these being covered with a little earth scattered over hurdles, the male elephants easily fall into the snare. In copulation the female receives the male lying upon her back; and such is his pudicity, that he never covers the female so long as any one appears in sight."
How did he take something we all know and keep us entertained all the way through telling us it? Let's take a look at one part we didn't need to know:
He is supplied with a trunk, or long hollow cartilage, like a large trumpet..."
We get "supplied" which is wonderful (because although it's technically appropriate, it summons an image of a uniformed clerk carrying one under his arm to the noseless elephant), there's something great about the forensic precision of "cartilage" leading casually into the bombastic street-party atmosphere of "trumpet".
Here's Paul F Tompkins telling us what we already know about peanut brittle:
This bit--this transformation of the idea material of "Hey, the peanut brittle gag is anachronistic" into five minutes of stage time--consists of just saying what we know over and over, slowly, teasing out every bit of absurdity. "..this peanut brittle--the most common snack in the world--".
Efficiency
One thing none of these uses of material I've quoted so far is, is efficient. The information's not delivered quickly. The ratio of word to idea is quite high.
It is, however, delivered entertainingly, which is to say: memorably.
I don't have much of a head for recipes, but I certainly remember Harry Nilsson's doctor's formula for gastrointestinal relief: you put the lime in the coconut and drink em both up. Because Tarantino put it in that movie.
RPG writing has a challenge embedded in it--as I've said often, we often want to be able to access rules quickly midgame (that is: we want efficiency) but we also want the rules to be fun to read and (therefore) easy to remember so we don't have to look them up much.
Whenever possible in an RPG, I would not recommend trying to balance the imperative to be efficient with the imperative to be memorable. I would instead recommend just doing both: put a memorable version of the concept in the text, and make an efficient, referenceable version elsewhere, and then make sure you and the graphic designer find ways to tell the reader which is which.
Wasting Material
You can waste material. You can take a perfectly good thought and reveal it in such a way that the juice of what you need to tell the reader stops feeling worth the squeeze of patiently reading those words in order.
Here's Samuel Johnson on "pig":
A young sow or boar.
Fuck off, Sam. We get a 203-word disquisition on the elephant and yet his cousin the hog--a noble, tasty beast, an ally and associate to humanity since well before the bronze age--isn't worth even a full line?
Samuel Johnson has wasted his material.
As demonstrated above, you don't waste material by telling the reader what they already know. That's fine: readers can love reading what they already know and many RPG authors make entire careers dictating readers' own thoughts back to them. You waste material by not presenting it as being as exciting or rich as it actually is to you. Vegetarians want pigs around, carnivores want pigs around, maybe even more--so, really, everyone wants pigs around. Make us know why.
Writing is revealing your thoughts, nobody wants to hear thoughts not even you think are interesting.
Let's see what else Johnson did with a pig:
Sow-- A female pig; the female of a boar.
Zzzzzz. You would not hire this man to write your monster manual.
Now:
Boar--The male swine.
Triple fuck off! Ok, fine, Johnson is bored but out of sheer bloodymindedness, let's see "swine":
Swine--A hog; a pig. A creature remarkable for stupidity and nastiness.
Finally the doctor has done something with his material. We now know two things about pigs. We don't know how many legs they have but whatever, something has been revealed, and it's interesting: pigs apparently suck, or at least Samuel Johnson thinks they do.
And a hog?
Hog--The general name of swine.
I'm belaboring the point.
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-
-
What you must say is a pig, what the audience will read is a sausage. Make the transition with grace, and honor every part of the pig.
(areas marked with a * have their own section elsewhere in the book)
1. The Collar* and The Nebulith* (east) The frozen ash-cloud and the city/flotilla around it.
2. The Collar* and The Nebulith* (west)
3. Zakimi Castle* Home of the daimyo, Lord Falling Wave, who indirectlyrules the isle of Awa Nikko
4. Iron Crag Castle Massive ruins of the home of a now-forgotten lord, its corridors and partial walls housing a series of brackish pools.
5.The Eagle’s Egg Most prominent of the bizarre rock formations that dot the Awa Nikkan coast, considered a sacred place by the Yuta and a home to sea spirits.
6. Scarred Slope The largest inland town on the island, a good place to find supplies, provisions and hirelings.
7. Crypt of the Dozen Kings / Tamaudun* A forbidden place, home to twelve past kings of Awa Nikko, they are long dead, yet it is whispered that they yet walk.
8. Dragon’s Cave* A group of pirates has somehow captured an ancient dragon and confined it here.
9. Temple of Salted Plums/Umeboshi A meeting place for the yuta, built into a cliff.
10. Dojo of the White Deer* Formerly a bullfighting arena, now home to school of archery for women.
11. Village of Four Bridges Known for its stone arena, where villagers gamble on battles between capturedjungle creatures.
12. Lost Toad Temple A cursed but once-peaceful place, the worshippers are gone but a colony of giant carnivorous toads remains.
14.Nanzan-ti Dojo* Generations of soldiers and bodyguards to great lords train in the martial arts here.
15. Chuzan-ti Dojo* The supposed “most dangerous place on Earth” where the assassins of the mid-island style train and brew their poisons.
16. Hokuzan-ti Dojo* Villagers flock from miles around to learn to defend themselves in what once was a great castle.
17. Temple of Torn Blossoms One of the most scenic of local temples, a place of generosity and mercy, where clerics will heal travelers for a reasnable donation.
18. White Jade Temple A beautiful but secretive temple, where the clerics are said to worship dark gods.
19. Nanzan-ti Castle* and surrounds- Home of King Shō Shishō and the Awa Nikko royal family, nobility, artists, aristocrats, shop keepers and foreign emissaries . Puppet monarch of the island’s old lineage kept in place by mainland interests, secretly taxed by the daimyo.
So, since I won, more apologies are trickling in. Which is good: every public apology is one less person I might have to sue.
But a lot of people are doing weird in-between things, here's a telling example:
Once upon a time there was someone screen-named Jojiro or Ant Wu.
In the beforetimes, they liked my game stuff and started social media-ing me.
Then they were casually in a conversation and started namecalling at someone. I was like "Hey, this is a place for grown-ups, we don't do that, you're banned" and Jojiro was like "Wait, wait! I want to talk".
So, I set up a Zoom call. On this Zoom call I patiently explained to what appeared to be an actual human adult that it is not good to announce your issues with a fellow human adult you share space with in the form of namecalling.
Just like every other time I did this, it worked. Because there is no sane argument a person can make in real time against "If you have an issue with someone tell them like a grown up".
This seemed to have an oddly profound effect on Jojiro. For a long time Jojiro started talking to lots of people in their life like fucking adults instead of 4chan trash. Jojiro's life improved. Jojiro made this claim frequently.
But also, just like every other time a gamer troll got confronted, they eventually backslid. They joined the hatemob and were extremely active in hatemob spaces in the early days, pushing for my life to be destroyed.
But they would post conflicted things like this (from the OSR Discord)...
...where they are still very active.
After I announced won, they sent me this:
I'll open with the most relevant thing. I'm sorry. I fucked up.
This is Anthony Wu/Jojiro.
In 2019 I said I had a hard time believing your story regarding Mandy and co.
In the intervening years I maintained this position in more conversations than I can count. With the passing of time, I now believe that I was wrong. The process by which I've come to that belief is independent of evidence or the court case. It was a BPD friend of mine from childhood flipping out on me about totally false premises that convinced me - nothing like your situation, but she painted me as an abusive friend, citing events that didn't ever exist in reality. This is not ideal, I think, by your values as I understand them - ideally it would be fact-checking, and not personal hurt, that would inspire my apology to you. I've wondered if there's any point in apologizing, when my apology is so far from what you actually want people to do.
Oh well. You've said that apologies matter to you - not in a personal sense, but in the sense that you thought humanity was more normal, sane, and good when people apologized for being wrong. In lieu of that - I'm sorry. I was wrong.
You've also said that when people make public attacks, they should make public apologies.
I've not the moral fortitude for that - I've no plan to go and rescind every single wrong thing I've said about you. I've stopped, certainly, but I've done damage to you, and this is me admitting that I've no plan to go and undo the damage.
If that admission positions this email as a pointless apology - fair enough.
Still felt that I should send it.
Congratulations on your legal victory against Vivka.
---
Proof below:
So Jojiro, I will be patient and generous with you again, accept this gift.
While you not have the "moral fortitude" to go public and apologize and help fix the problem you created, I did it for you.
X-Cards
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The *X-Card* emerged from the indie/storygamer side of the hobby maybe ten
or so years ago. Originally taking the form of an index card with a simply
X dr...
The General Theory of Dragons
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As Zak put it here:
*One thing I really don't like about D&D's dragons is the symmetry of the
original dragon scheme: good metal dragons on the left--e...
Fundraiser for Jennell Jaquays
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Sad news about the health of Jennell Jaquays. Jennell's is a well known
name to most old school gamers, a highly influential game designer and
artist of ...
how i think about rules
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i think of rules as jewels, treasure, or trading cards.
Pharaoh's Treasure
when i was a little girl there was a tiny little seven eleven near my...
Scare Tactics: Shock - Doll's House
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.
.
I wanted to write about shock next and thought it was pretty clear how
horror movies get it: jump scares. Being loud and all of a sudden. Jump
scar...
Cities of Darkness
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Unlike D&D, I've got a soft spot for the classic World of Darkness lore. I
am too young to have been around while it was relevant but it's always had
the...
I'm Zak, I live in Los Angeles. Most of the people I know here are women I know from being a porn "actor"--so they're porn stars and strippers. So that's who I play Dungeons & Dragons with.
