My Old School Brothers* in Dice,
Do you want our corner of the hobby to die? Is that your goal? Because shit like this?
And that's not even going into the classic assholes like Venger, Zak, and Pundit. (if you don't know who they are count yourself lucky!)
This
is how you drive people away. This is how you make your tables
unwelcoming. The RPG hobby has seen spectacular growth recently with 5E,
and that's allowed a lot of very cool OSR and OSR adjacent projects to
flourish. I have a shelf full of cool zines and boxed sets and rule books
because people have been excited and able to make quality content for
classic D&D type games.
Assuming WotC
doesn't ruin that first, your behavior will. That dumb PBS article that
you're so up in arms about? They're talking about you. And I don't give a
damn about your claims that "there's no politics at my table" and
"everyone has always been welcome" because that's bullshit.
How
do I know it's bullshit? Because I've seen the other shit you talk
about, the things you post with #brOSR and #SparkleTroll. I've seen the
things you've liked and retweeted. You aren't subtle, and you aren't
fooling anyone.
And yeah, I can just block you
and happily play my games, but I'd like to be able to get people
interested in the hobby without getting a side eye when they find out
the corner of it I generally play in.
It's
2023, and time to stop acting like it's still 1979 (it wasn't good
then, FYI). Your racist, misogynistic, homophobic bullshit needs to go.
Your gatekeeping isn't helpful or wanted. Your puritanical zeal for a
game written before most RPG players were even born is going to
increasingly see you relegated to the same dank dark corners of musty
old basements that hold the embarrassing collection of Nazi &
MAGA paraphernalia that your kids or grand-kids will be embarrassed to
have to deal with when you die.
Kicking in
the door, killing horrible monsters, and taking their treasure is a fun
way to play. Get your heads out of your asses, grow up, and for fuck
sake stop being colossal dicks so I can focus on making cool stuff for
my game.
*Yes, brothers, because it's always a bunch of guys, usually older, and usually white.
Sad to say I recognized all three names you listed, their reputations precede them. I never heard of the twit dude you linked to, but his posts you show just pissed me off, what a creep. Worst part is, I was alive in 1979 and I started gaming in 1981. No one back then would have said something like that in polite company in my memory or experience, it was just as creepy then as now.
ReplyDeleteIn complete agreement with you. I do not believe that D&D was created for white male Christians, and if it was it soon passed out of their hands and into those of a much larger crowd. In the pages of Alarums & Excursions, starting in 1975 or 1976, you can read about the D&D played by the famous Lee Gold, who is female and Jewish. Historically, D&D travelled to Japan and in the hands of players there spawned unique new games, and inspired generations of video games, manga and anime. D&D became global, multicultural, open to all races and sexes and beliefs. D&D inspired decades of games, video games, novels, comics, animation and movies. It is not the small, limited, weak thing that these people want it to be.
ReplyDeleteAh, Jeffro. When I first came across him on G+, he was mostly posting about Appendix N literature appreciation. So I followed him. Then I started reading his garbage regressive Right-wing posts, and stopped following him. Looks like he hasn't changed (not that I expected he would).
ReplyDeleteFunny, I have no memory of encountering him on G+. Or maybe I did, but then immediately dismissed him. Sad that he's still kicking around making us look bad.
DeleteLuckily, I know none of them. And gladly so.
ReplyDelete