The Gaming Den

At least it's not meant to be a rant, when I started typing.

If this belongs in MPSIMS, I don't object to it being moved there.

I have known for well over a year now that the moderators at RPG.net are actual fascists. I mean, that they have rules that basically amount to them being able to ban anyone they want for whatever they want and that they have a private forum where they suck each others' dicks about it. Possibly literally.

I would ask and not rhetorically who here has not (yet) been banned from the Big Purple cesspool (it's technically a matter of public record that I collected my "walking papers for life" from RPG.net in October of '15 for an opinion I expressed in a private message when the person I was having the "private" conversation with tattled to the mods: yes, seriously). The closest thing to an "occasion" for me bringing this up now is it's coming up on the one year anniversary of my ban. I've appealed it politely every few months, but I think I know for a fact that there appeals email account goes directly to a printer, which then prints directly into a shredder.

I am starting to see that there are essentially three kinds of TTRPG enthusiasts online. The 30% who have already been (permanently) banned from the Big Purple, the 30% who will be (permanently) banned eventually, they just don't know it yet, the 20% who don't bother posting there for a variety of reasons, such as that they'll just get banned if they say anything the brownshirts don't agree with, and the 20% who are capable of toeing the line and virtue-signalling correctly 100% of the time. That last 20% can swim in the big purple cesspool forever for all I care.

But what I do wonder is...how long can a system built entirely and openly on fascism hold? How long can RPG.net continue to be an authoritarian oligarchy completely high on a fucked up power trip before there is some kind of uprising or diaspora or fucking something?

And how does one have a conversation with the site's nominal and actual OWNER, Shannon Applecline about this or about literally anything that isn't giving him advertising dollars for banner impressions?

I have never been banned from said site, nor will I ever be.

After all, you have to make an account with them first right?

Kaelik wrote:I have never been banned from said site, nor will I ever be.

After all, you have to make an account with them first right?

This.

Game On,
fbmf

I've seen you post under your "work" account on the Big Purple, Neurosis and you are impressively irritating. You are here, too, but that's par for the course.

I've had an account on the Purp for six years (?) now, and only have caught a case twice. I lurk mostly, though.

It seems to me that the thing there are really three kinds of is gaming forums-
-Forums run by companies, which are obligated to moderate such to protect their brand and reputation (WotC's forums are a good example, and as I've grown, I've come to understand this reasoning)
-Forums run by people that find it a source of power and moderate such as to exercise that power (Big Purple, the GiantitP forums)
-Forums run by people who don't power trip and have no need to that moderate only as needed (here, we ain't perfect, but at least fbmf only steps in when shit gets actually out of hand)

Why do you even care? It is pretty clear from even casual inspection that the place is a closed circle jerk, and not even an interesting one, completely without interesting ideas or discussions.

As to how long it can hold on... obviously indefinitely. There are enough circle jerkers to maintain the shitty website for their natural lifespans.

I'm on there - probably more often than I am here, given the much higher volume of traffic there. It's fine. It just isn't a place to vigorously hash out whether a given RPG is shit or not. And they'll ban you if you try to make it that place.

But I already get plenty of opportunity for that over here, so the lack of it there doesn't really bother me. And no, you don't need "virtue signaling", you just need the ability to say "Someone is wrong on the internet ... meh, not my problem."

Do they hold grudges? Probably; it did seem like Frank was banned with lightning speed the last time he started posting there. "Fascism" seems overblown though. The whole OP does.

Yeah, I have no account there so unless they pre-emptively ban me (if you're reading this, Big Purple mods, go right ahead) there is no risk of it happening.

I might have once made some non-TGD game forum accounts some time after migrating from WoTC's boards and TGD's; but it's stuff like mythweavers or brilliant-gameoloists b/c those forums were hosting games I was in.

I can't recall if I even made an acct. on Rpg.net or not.

Ice9 wrote:And no, you don't need "virtue signaling", you just need the ability to say "Someone is wrong on the internet ... meh, not my problem."

Well, unless mod also think that person is wrong, in which case you're free to drag him and his opininion through the mud. Rpg.net moderation not only demands hugbox mentality like GitP, they are actively enforcing a party line. If you criticise products of companies whose freelancers are mods or buddy with mods, primarily White Wolf/Onyx Path, to gulag with you, no matter how strenously you avoid any sort of impoliteness and personal attacks, as eventually happened with Jon Chung. I got topic-banned from Exalted threads myself for "negativity", because they were unable to pin any specific offense or breach of the forum code of conduct on me, and after that I stopped posting there.

I used to hang around RPGNet for PBPs until I realised that they wee pretty much tyrannical SJWs.

Now I get my jollies on RPOL and lurk here.

I have an account there. Never had any moderation directed at me. But then, I hardly ever post. I mostly log in to be able to read the forums that non-members can't see.

Big Purple is the Care Bears of forums: Fascist thought police, with manic grins, frantically singing happy songs. Frowning will be corrected.

Silent Wayfarer wrote:I used to hang around RPGNet for PBPs until I realised that they wee pretty much tyrannical SJWs.

The idea that big purple are a bunch of social justice warriors is actually quite strange to me. They don't give a shit about social justice, they are just intensely dedicated to defending white male gay furries. It's not remotely the same thing. Yes, if you say not-nice things about people who masturbate while wearing cartoon animal costumes, you will get a lot of pushback, and the mods will bring the hammer down. But that's not a social justice issue. That's a sex pervert issue.

If you say things that are pro-Confederate or pro-slavery, you probably won't get any pushback. And if you do get pushback, the mods are likely to back you up. They don't really care about rape or child abuse or rights for women or black people or any ethnic minorities. They just really really get pissed off when people tell them that cartoon rabbit sex isn't kawaii.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:

Silent Wayfarer wrote:I used to hang around RPGNet for PBPs until I realised that they wee pretty much tyrannical SJWs.

The idea that big purple are a bunch of social justice warriors is actually quite strange to me. They don't give a shit about social justice, they are just intensely dedicated to defending white male gay furries. It's not remotely the same thing. Yes, if you say not-nice things about people who masturbate while wearing cartoon animal costumes, you will get a lot of pushback, and the mods will bring the hammer down. But that's not a social justice issue. That's a sex pervert issue.

If you say things that are pro-Confederate or pro-slavery, you probably won't get any pushback. And if you do get pushback, the mods are likely to back you up. They don't really care about rape or child abuse or rights for women or black people or any ethnic minorities. They just really really get pissed off when people tell them that cartoon rabbit sex isn't kawaii.

-Username17

No really, I said, people should say their gender before sleeping with you and was banned.

I find it a honesty issue. I don't care what you dress as, but it isn't right to be another gender whether trannying or sex changing without letting the other person know who will be banging you.

Apparently that is bannable. I think it was a month or two.

Also when I defended Nintendo in firing Alison because she was a Prostitute (fact that can looked up) I was banned for a month.

I don't post there anymore after those SSJW moments. Don't trust those mods much.

Oh, I was told if I tried appealing I wou8ld be permanently banned. I think I still have the emails.

FatR wrote:Well, unless mod also think that person is wrong, in which case you're free to drag him and his opininion through the mud. Rpg.net moderation not only demands hugbox mentality like GitP, they are actively enforcing a party line. If you criticise products of companies whose freelancers are mods or buddy with mods, primarily White Wolf/Onyx Path, to gulag with you, no matter how strenously you avoid any sort of impoliteness and personal attacks, as eventually happened with Jon Chung. I got topic-banned from Exalted threads myself for "negativity", because they were unable to pin any specific offense or breach of the forum code of conduct on me, and after that I stopped posting there.

Like all facism, gitp also has right and wrong opinions. Basically if you argue that Wizards are better than fighters, and that fighters are the problem, you will get infractions for things that your opponents in the same argument won't. Like, I've literally received an infraction for quoting someone, and saying literally exactly the same words back at them, when that person didn't receive an infraction.

But my favorite is still when a Mod said that by stating that someone else was wrong, I was implying that they were a liar, and that implying they are a liar is against the rules, because it's flaming. Yes, I literally got reported for a post that said "That is incorrect, the sales figures are more than 6000% what this post claims they are and this has been corrected before in previous threads [link]."

I got banned from the Escapist forums for telling people that women were not trying to destroy gaming and they shouldn't get upset when feminists critique video games because they critique everything, that's kind of their job. This was during one of my misogynistic phases so I find it funny.

re: Slade: To be fair, there are non-insane people that believe Ms. Rapp got fired because of harassment because gamers do in fact harass women for the crime of saying things. I kind of feel that actual trans people (not just tumblr trannies fishing for asspats) don't actually keep their birth gender secret from partners because they tend to get murdered at a disproportionately high rate because of the fear of those issues.

Slade wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:

Silent Wayfarer wrote:I used to hang around RPGNet for PBPs until I realised that they wee pretty much tyrannical SJWs.

The idea that big purple are a bunch of social justice warriors is actually quite strange to me. They don't give a shit about social justice, they are just intensely dedicated to defending white male gay furries. It's not remotely the same thing. Yes, if you say not-nice things about people who masturbate while wearing cartoon animal costumes, you will get a lot of pushback, and the mods will bring the hammer down. But that's not a social justice issue. That's a sex pervert issue.

If you say things that are pro-Confederate or pro-slavery, you probably won't get any pushback. And if you do get pushback, the mods are likely to back you up. They don't really care about rape or child abuse or rights for women or black people or any ethnic minorities. They just really really get pissed off when people tell them that cartoon rabbit sex isn't kawaii.

-Username17

No really, I said, people should say their gender before sleeping with you and was banned.

I find it a honesty issue. I don't care what you dress as, but it isn't right to be another gender whether trannying or sex changing without letting the other person know who will be banging you.

Apparently that is bannable. I think it was a month or two.

Also when I defended Nintendo in firing Alison because she was a Prostitute (fact that can looked up) I was banned for a month.

I don't post there anymore after those SSJW moments. Don't trust those mods much.

Oh, I was told if I tried appealing I wou8ld be permanently banned. I think I still have the emails.

Can't speak to your banning on big purple over that, but I can say that your opinions are backwards, bigoted bullshit, and if you keep using slurs like tranny, I wouldn't be surprised to see fbmf ban you too. We don't have a lot of rules, but bigotry can get you banned here. Look on Shadzar's works, ye foolish, and learn.

Prak wrote:Can't speak to your banning on big purple over that, but I can say that your opinions are backwards, bigoted bullshit, and if you keep using slurs like tranny, I wouldn't be surprised to see fbmf ban you too. We don't have a lot of rules, but bigotry can get you banned here. Look on Shadzar's works, ye foolish, and learn.

I suspect he is basically completely ignorant as to why anyone would be offended by the things he said, and is going to interpret your post as advocating for secret gender hiding sex, because he does not understand the word gender, or the reality that literally no one does that.

Or the reality that we often get murdered for both "lying" about our gender, and being "honest."

Kaelik wrote:Like all facism, gitp also has right and wrong opinions. Basically if you argue that Wizards are better than fighters, and that fighters are the problem, you will get infractions for things that your opponents in the same argument won't. Like, I've literally received an infraction for quoting someone, and saying literally exactly the same words back at them, when that person didn't receive an infraction.

Wait, do you mean GitP or a different forum? Because GitP "orthodoxy", such as it exists, is that the tiers are roughly correct and Wizard is infinitely better than Fighter. To the extent that you can pretty much propose any homebrew ability for a martial class, up to and including 9th-level spells at-will as Ex abilities, and people will say it's still not up to par with casters.

And while opinions on where the balance point should be do vary, IME the likelyhood is "a midpoint between them", followed by "at Wizard level", with "balance to Fighters" as a distant third.

Edit: Also, I think your info re: confederacy on RPG.net is out of date. People get banned pretty hard for stuff that's pro-slavery / confederacy-justification on there, and that's been the case a while.

Speaking of Confederacy, slavery apologia is also A-OK on Paizo.com and calling it out gets you banned.

Ice9 wrote:

Kaelik wrote:Like all facism, gitp also has right and wrong opinions. Basically if you argue that Wizards are better than fighters, and that fighters are the problem, you will get infractions for things that your opponents in the same argument won't. Like, I've literally received an infraction for quoting someone, and saying literally exactly the same words back at them, when that person didn't receive an infraction.

Wait, do you mean GitP or a different forum? Because GitP "orthodoxy", such as it exists, is that the tiers are roughly correct and Wizard is infinitely better than Fighter. To the extent that you can pretty much propose any homebrew ability for a martial class, up to and including 9th-level spells at-will as Ex abilities, and people will say it's still not up to par with casters.

And while opinions on where the balance point should be do vary, IME the likelyhood is "a midpoint between them", followed by "at Wizard level", with "balance to Fighters" as a distant third.

You missed the part about "and the problem is with the fighter." While Gitp orthodoxy is the Tiers are right and good, they also have an orthodoxy that amounts to "and the problem is the Wizards" As part of their Tier fascination, they believe all the dumb shit about how of course all Wizards use Haunt Shift in some way that isn't even technically legal, and of course all Wizards use some RNG breaking bullshit, and that's why Wizards are always the problem, and everything should be "Tier 3" or whatever dumb shit. (Sometimes going as far as "the game is balanced for the Fighter").

I don't mean this is the orthodoxy of all the posters, I mean that if you have that conversation, one of three mods will swoop in and banhammer anyone who says bad things about the fighter and ignore people who say bad things about Wizards. Like, literally line by line, identical posts will get one side in trouble and not the other.

Also, if you post "vehement screeds" against the "bad" people who like Wizards, they will delete the offending comments, and leave the rest of the post intact, but if you post them against people who like fighters, they will delete all your actual arguments and the entire post instead. I've literally been in a CR thread where I simultaneously argued against Wizard people and Fighter people, and had the moderators go through and and completely delete every post I made about how Fighters can't keep up with monsters (including one of my "here is every single monster of this CR and how it does" things that didn't have anything even close to an insult in it, but had an "implied insult" somewhere else in the post where I was doing something else) and then had my exact same post about Wizards two pages later selectively excised of an "implied insult" but the entire rest of the post left intact, by the same mod, 40 seconds apart.

Ice9 wrote:

Kaelik wrote:Like all facism, gitp also has right and wrong opinions. Basically if you argue that Wizards are better than fighters, and that fighters are the problem, you will get infractions for things that your opponents in the same argument won't. Like, I've literally received an infraction for quoting someone, and saying literally exactly the same words back at them, when that person didn't receive an infraction.

Wait, do you mean GitP or a different forum? Because GitP "orthodoxy", such as it exists, is that the tiers are roughly correct and Wizard is infinitely better than Fighter. To the extent that you can pretty much propose any homebrew ability for a martial class, up to and including 9th-level spells at-will as Ex abilities, and people will say it's still not up to par with casters.

And while opinions on where the balance point should be do vary, IME the likelyhood is "a midpoint between them", followed by "at Wizard level", with "balance to Fighters" as a distant third.

Edit: Also, I think your info re: confederacy on RPG.net is out of date. People get banned pretty hard for stuff that's pro-slavery / confederacy-justification on there, and that's been the case a while.

I think you missed the point of what Kaelik was saying. I have experienced the same thing over there, that if you think that the problem is that fighters suck too much, then you can get in trouble with mods.

The correct answer is that everyone should be a fighter. /sarcasm

rasmuswagner wrote:Speaking of Confederacy, slavery apologia is also A-OK on Paizo.com and calling it out gets you banned.

I visit the P forums only when a new thing comes out so I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about here but I'm going to go ahead and guess it has something to do with their campaign setting.