The Gaming Den

Kaelik wrote: To be fair, at least one person has been dysfunctional in all of the relationships Count has described having. Whether that is him or the person he is describing might require more information, but at least one of them for sure.

Typically that's been both people, speaking from personal experience.

Shrapnel wrote:I absolutely refuse to believe that the only way the board can be interesting is to allow gits like silva to run wild. There has to be a better way. There must.

This board's fortunes basically rose and fell based on what Frank Trollman was up to. I started here, as did many others, when Frank was writing up 3.5 material in book form. I came over from the WotC boards back when Frank was allowed to post there and also they existed to post on. The books dried up and he got banned, but he kept writing lots of 3.5 material for a while yet. This era was huge for traffic because 3.5 was an absurdly popular game, and because audience participation is easy. 3.5 had a lot of problems, but because it's actually a finished system almost anyone can hack out a plausible fix for any given issue. (Well, almost anyone here) (Well, a few people here) It also lets you shovelware new content easily. Frank stopped writing much 3.5 content, and then 3.5 died. Nobody on this board writes Pathfinder content, and I don't think many of us have active 3.5 games. Those who do have, I assume, pretty much figured out a rule set they like and the back list of community content is deep enough that there's little demand for more classes. Throughout this period and into the next few, Frank was also writing a lot of essays about game design. They were useful, and they elicited a lot of feedback and discussion. This doesn't happen so much any more because most of those discussions have already happened. There's new posters who weren't there and might benefit from or have comments on the old discussions, but Frank's not going to spontaneously write a bunch of new essays on old topics. It doesn't help that K is mostly gone. Back in the day you could count on him to disagree with everything Frank said, and generally present a viable alternative perspective. Phone_Lobster also used to be interesting before he descended into madness.

After 3.5, Frank moved on to projects that were doable or should have been doable. After Sundown is a pretty good game. It genuinely incorporated a lot of community input and is the closest thing there is to a functional product produced by "The Den." (Incidentally, I've always felt that I got short-changed in the credits. I put more work in on that game than most people who aren't Frank, including convincing him to rearrange entire disciplines and revise some mechanics, plus some text cleanup that went beyond proofreading. I wish I were credited as a developer) His Shadowrun fixes turned into basically a full supplement, and while he wrote them on his own, they stimulated a lot of activity. Finally, before 4E came out, he proposed that we collectively bang out our own edition of D&D. That really seemed like it should have worked, and in any event a lot of people got excited about it. It didn't work out because it turns out that we are assholes who can't work together. Also, Frank quickly became more interested in thinking about radically new paradigms in game design than in finishing a product. He proposed multiple unheard-of new systems that were both very controversial, and so unfamiliar no one else really knew how to write for them.

When 4E dropped, that produced a lot of activity and a bunch more discussions of design principles, plus an interesting attempt at a superhero 4E hack. 4E was shit, but we were invested in D&D as a thing, so it still held our attention. However, this was a paradigm shift for the Den. We used to talk about games we actually play (3.5; Shadowrun 4; After Sundown), but then we shifted to talking about games we don't. That just doesn't have the same juice. Around this time, a bunch of our right-wing posters flamed out and got banned, but not before they harassed some of our left-wingers into quitting, so we lost a half-dozen prolific posters. Over the past few years, Frank has proposed a half-dozen projects which are all basically impossible or unbelievably labor intensive, and also niche in appeal. Supposedly some of them are being written in secret, but they're so incredibly impractical that he basically hasn't produced a single shareable mechanics post for Doubt, Cyberpunk Heartbreaker, or TNE/Sumeru/Fantasy Heartbreaker. Furthermore, whenever anyone else proposes a game, he comes in with a ranting about how the game will be crap if it doesn't tilt at those same windmills. People here respect him enough that most people try to run with his proposals and then founder on the same reefs that he himself has failed to navigate since the fall of 4E.

Meanwhile, the RPG industry self-destructed. Nobody here cares about D&D 5, or Shadowrun 5, or World of Darkness 3 (although actually some of the new books are pretty interesting), so the only vaguely interesting releases are weird art games that a few people like and most people hate. Bear World threads have actually generated some of the best design debates in 2015. With current games uninteresting, that basically leaves theory and reviews. Theory is basically mined out unless new blood revives it. I've been arguing theory with Frank and Phone_Lobster and Prak for literally 12 years; we simply don't have much left to say to each other outside the context of an actual project. The best thing left on these boards are Frank and AH's reviews, but those come out slowly and Silva certainly isn't holding them back. So that's what this board has devolved to. A bunch of people who've been friends for a decade snarking half-heartedly about new games, chatting about politics, and occasionally posting sweet essays about the history of RPGs. There are a few scenarios that could revive this board. A major company releasing a good game, Frank Trollman starting a viable project or suddenly unveiling a miraculously functional draft of one of his WIPs, an equally prolific and talented designer falling out of the sky, a dozen smart newbies interested in theory falling out of the sky, or me getting my life together enough to actually write a game. Unless and until something like that happens, why not smack around Silva a little?

Orion wrote:Around this time, a bunch of our right-wing posters flamed out and got banned, but not before they harassed some of our left-wingers into quitting, so we lost a half-dozen prolific posters.

I don't think this is correct. All the specific left-wingers who left I can think of left because they felt like the entire board/most of the board/the prominent part of the board/the prolific part of the board, including Frank and I were "against" them, not because Tzor or PR were, since those two were always trolls.

Orion wrote:I've been arguing theory with Frank and Phone_Lobster and Prak for literally 12 years; we simply don't have much left to say to each other outside the context of an actual project.

Your account states that it was made in 2008, just like all the accounts carried over from the old board. It is 2015. How did you get 12 years?

I was in touch with Frank Trollman before I came to the Gaming Den. I think I overestimated it a little bit; I got 12 from the age I thought I was when I met him, but I'm pretty sure I knew him for only 1-2 years before the Den. So call it 10 years.

The proximate cause of Crissa and Ceilingcat leaving was feeling that the board in general, and Frank specifically, had turned on them. But my recollection is that RC and PR started a lot of the conversations that generated those disputes. The general formula was right-winger says something horrible -> left wing of the board responds -> Crissa and Ceilingcat are offended by that response.

Orion wrote:I was in touch with Frank Trollman before I came to the Gaming Den. I think I overestimated it a little bit; I got 12 from the age I thought I was when I met him, but I'm pretty sure I knew him for only 1-2 years before the Den. So call it 10 years.

You know what, nevermind, I'm really bad at fucking math. For some reason I was thinking 2008 was more than 12 years. And so I thought 12 years was low. But yeah, 2008 is just the transition date, I have no idea when I actually started here.

i came here when Frank exposed the "comingling of funds" on dumpshock.

Didn't ceilingcat flip shit over something trivial? I didn't know what happened to Crissa other than one day I noticed she hadn't posted for a long time. I honestly don't remember.

Kaelik's (maybe) first post: http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=37272&highlight=#37272

Orion's (maybe) first post: http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=22759&highlight=#22759

Cielingcat's last post: http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=149336 ... ht=#149336

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:Didn't ceilingcat flip shit over something trivial? I didn't know what happened to Crissa other than one day I noticed she hadn't posted for a long time. I honestly don't remember.

CielingCat flipped out about Frank referring to labiaplasty (and maybe phalloplasty, idk) as "mutilation." I make no judgment about the gravity or triviality of that conversation.

Labia/Phalloplasty is one of those weird cases where the "offensive" side sort of has a point. Technically it is mutilation to "destroy" the genitals a person was born with to create the ones they identify with. But given that it's actually a quality of life improvement it's semantically wrong to call it mutilation, regardless of whether that's technically correct. I mean, you could call piercing and tattooing mutilation too, but most people would bristle at that.

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:Didn't ceilingcat flip shit over something trivial? I didn't know what happened to Crissa other than one day I noticed she hadn't posted for a long time. I honestly don't remember.

I wasn't there, but a lot of those old threads have been referenced before and I've binged them to see what the big deal was.

Cielingcat had the whole "I'm the one wearing the label so I'm the one whose opinions matter" thing going on. That's a pretty serious stick to have up your ass - likely placed there by life's cruelty and the pervasive insensitivity of the internet, but nonetheless it's the sort of stick that makes you self-centeredly inflexible even among people who share your cause. People without the label are going to sometimes be right about trans issues and people with the label are going to sometimes be wrong about trans issues. Experience isn't actually some magical elixir that imparts wisdom; that's why we have therapists and doctors and medical research and patient studies.

Crissa declared herself the arbiter of what was and was not derogatory. That got her into an argument with Frank about the mutable connotations of labels generally and the word "trap" specifically. And he was right, both generally and specifically. 99% of the time the word trap is used it is used positively to title 4chan threads full of men posting pictures of other men that they find bangably feminine (or pictures of themselves attempting to be bangably feminine). When people want to shitpost in those threads, they don't shitpost "you're all a bunch of fucking traps," they shitpost "you're all a bunch of fucking [that word that also means cigarette]."

Prak wrote:But given that it's actually a quality of life improvement

I wouldn't call that a given. Studies on SRS are sparse and unreliable, but for the most part people continue to report the same problems post-SRS as they do pre-SRS - they have trouble finding relationships, their friends and family still don't respect their choices or have entirely abandoned them, and they still aren't totally satisfied that their physical body matches their desired gender. Most trans people have their daily dose of indignities inflicted on them while they're wearing pants, so it's not clear how changing what's in those pants will make those indignities go away.

Honestly, how many trans people are so amazingly, incredibly lucky that their biggest problem is that when they take their pants off in front of potential lovers they have the "wrong" genitals? Because that's about all SRS fixes - and even then it's something of a coinflip.

Well, given that I've pretty much decided, for various reasons, that I'm not going to pursue SRS for the foreseeable future, I can't speak on that from personal experience. However, generally, from the trans people I've spoken to online, there is a certain amount of piece of mind that comes from making their bodies match their minds. Sure it doesn't magically fix everything, but the people I've spoken to/read pursue it for the "well, it's one less problem I have" thing.

Edit: Ok, maybe I should have said "given that it's an elective cosmetic alteration pursued as a quality of life improvement(...)" Tattoos and piercings can turn out bad and be regretted and cause problems too, as can boob jobs. This doesn't mean that you would typically call getting a tattoo or piercing or boob job "mutilation," even if you could say that it is technically correct to do so.

So, what I got from Orion's post was this: Frank did some stuff with DnD when it was good, then he stopped. Then he did some other stuff. Then he stopped. So did RPG's. Since Frank isn't doing anything, the Den needs to bait trolls in order to stay alive.

I'm probably wrong; that was a lot of text with a lot of references I didn't get.

We argued with the idiots even when there was plenty of content to shit out and/or shit on. We just like arguing.

I've only been here for the last paragraph and a half of Orion's sum up, but from what I can tell the arguing with idiots is part of the background ambience of the Den and it's gotten noticeable lately because we aren't doing anything else.

DSMatticus wrote:We argued with the idiots even when there was plenty of content to shit out and/or shit on. We just like arguing.

No we dont you blithering idiot!
/sarcasm

radthemad4 wrote:Kaelik's (maybe) first post: http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=37272&highlight=#37272

I'm fairly certain that is not my first post, because I used to read only IMHO, without reading any other threads for a while, and then only later started looking at the other subforums.

Also pretty sure I'd been posting about D&D well before Star Wars SAGA came out.

Prak wrote:This doesn't mean that you would typically call getting a tattoo or piercing or boob job "mutilation," even if you could say that it is technically correct to do so.

Sure I would. Same goes for scarification and branding. At present, it simply isn't possible to create genitalia, all we can do is make a relatively crude imitation of them, and destroying a perfectly healthy organ to replace it with a crude imitation of another is mutilation, pure and simple.

I came here after Orion, but around to see everything that was in Orion's write up.

Kaelik wrote:

radthemad4 wrote:Kaelik's (maybe) first post: http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=37272&highlight=#37272

I'm fairly certain that is not my first post, because I used to read only IMHO, without reading any other threads for a while, and then only later started looking at the other subforums.

Orion wrote:Also pretty sure I'd been posting about D&D well before Star Wars SAGA came out.

My bad. It's what I got from the search function set to ascending order.

It was a fucking long time ago... but I think I may have had a different account, lost the password, and made a new one. I think I might have been called Boolean or something.

Orion wrote:It was a fucking long time ago... but I think I may have had a different account, lost the password, and made a new one. I think I might have been called Boolean or something.

I thought your name was changed to Orion from Boolean. Not a new account, but I don't know.

Also, are we seriously gonna rehash all this? I almost restrained myself from saying why Cielingcat left, and I probably should have. Even know I'm typing out in my head my position on "trap" and "mutilate" (basically pro and con, respectively) but... sharing those thoughts seems like a bad plan.

It's the fault of parasites like me - who consume content, but don't provide anything worthwhile in return.

Alternatively, there are bugger-all of us (and so the responsibility lies even more heavily on me).