Hey Have You Guys Seen Blogspot's New "Batmanalytic" Feature?

...it's pretty cool.

You plug it in and blogger analyzes your blog's readership in Batmanological terms:

No, Seriously, WOTC Totally Did Hire Me To Work On 5E

So you know how yesterday I posted that April Fool's joke about how WOTC hired me to work on Type V D&D?

It wasn't a joke.

They really did.

All the stuff I said yesterday is completely true--including the bit about how the nerdrage-provoking sucknesses the web keeps telling me are in 5e doesn't seem to be in any of the stuff they've sent.

I hasten to add that nothing in my contract obliges them to listen to me so, y'know, don't blame me if it turns out the resolution's all done on a d9 and the only viable class/race combo is owlbear monk.

Anyway, should be a pip.

Now back to work.

So WOTC's Hired Me To Work On 5th Edition

Yep.

Monte Cook reads the blog, Mike Mearls reads the blog, I suppose it was only a matter of time.

So they send me things and I make my computer read them to me while I paint and then I write an email back telling them what I think and how I would've done it and they make me sign stuff and I then I get a check.

Obviously there's this nondisclosure agreement but I can probably say this: half the stuff The Internet thinks is in 5E is stuff the Internet made up. But, y'know, to be expected.

Hellllo Marilith.

___

EDIT: Yes, this was posted April 1st. Still not a joke though.

Do Your Dumb Thing

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Hello Again Reddit

Every once in a while someone on Reddit reminds Reddit that this blog about porn people who play RPGs exists. Hi!

It's easy to spot because suddenly there are a lot of comments by people who seem kind of confused.

Here's an orientation post.

______

Let Us Discuss A Bigot (+Joesky Tax)

This is one of my players:

This is some politically correct BS currently making the rounds and getting the standard conservative PC +115 "OhMyGodThankYouForAddressingThisImportantIssue" treatment:

This Is Mandy being a slut:

This is Mandy with one of her (900) controllers:

This is Mandy talking about this cartoon and saving me the trouble of explaining what someone who fucks with people because of their sexual preference is called:

I think the artist is a bigot through and through and I hope is getting some backlash for continuing to promote negative sterotypes abt women in general, gamer or no, and women who may be pretty, or enjoy sex along with their game-centric lifestyles.

This is some dickhead trying to defend it:

before you attempt to throw around overly aggressive trending topics like slut-shaming, perhaps you should attempt to actually digest the intent of the comic - which is to draw attention to the fact that gamer girls as shown in the media and ads are sexualized unrealities. If the term slut offends you so much, use the same for a man - whores of sexualized conquest. (This is me going: ?????) Get a clue before you insult things.

Dickhead again:

See the original thread and comments by folks like (a smart woman) who actually have the foresight to stand up for the slut shaming issue through rational means.

This is what (that smart woman) said:

Ehh, I'm not really behind the word slut because there is nothing wrong with a woman behaving like a man.
But, other than that, I'd agree. Except, I prefer showers. But you know -- we're all different ;)

Yesterday 4:32 PM

+7

This is what I said:

Hey, I'm not stopping her from being nice to the bigot who drew this and all the bigots who +1ed it if she wants. But apparently it didn't work because you still reposted this cartoon unaltered as if you didn't realize how totally fucked it was.

This is what I wonder:

What the hell is wrong with people?

Here is another woman pointing out another flaw in this cartoon:

Zelda is not a 360 game... This artist fails...

Here is a guy trying to defend the bigot:

Pointed this out before.
There are PC emulators of previous consoles (and games).
There is also a Microsoft XBoX 360 config PC controller.
It may make me a dick to say it but before 'failing' an artist for having fun, know your gamer tech.

Here is the girl again:

The chance that the artist meant that is slim and seems like an out. And to play Zelda of all games with a 360 controller (even if it is an emulator... which thanks I know what they are and have used them...) is an insult to the entire Zelda series :)

Here is me wondering why people are so fucking condescending when women talk about games:

??!

This is where I was going to post a link to where you can see this exact same stereotype in action in real life as used against the girl in the picture at the very top of this post:

(But I decided not to, because screw the intra-RPG-community drama. If you really want a link to it, hit me up via email or G+.)

__________________________

This is how awesome most of this corner of the community (male and female) is:

Yeah, it smacks of one-true-wayism; it's basically saying you're not "true" if you have hygiene or social skills. Kinda dickish.
7:32 AM +4

You nailed it.
7:33 AM

See, my problem with this is that it says to me : "If you self-identify as a 'gamer-girl' then you are also unwashed and unattractive." I have a hard enough time with identity issues, and _____ has just barely convinced me I'm moderately attractive. This kind of depiction does not help.

And yes, I may have put off chores to grind my mining and herbalism last night in WoW, but showering was not one of them, TYVM! :-P
7:35 AM +2

Damn, I think I need a chart to parse this crap out. I'm pro-slut in that I support the right to have sexy time on your terms not mine or anyone elses, but I'm anti calling people sluts as an insult. I'm pro gamers showering but on the other hand if you want to stay home and stink while playing a video game, how is that my business? I'm calling it a four-way clusterfail.
7:40 AM +6

The intent of the comic was to call out a specific person and is saying "this is what a Real gamer (in this case a girl) looks like" both of which bother me more than saying slut or whether any specific person has had a shower today.
7:42 AM

Okay, then it's just plain ordinary bullshit.
7:44 AM +3

yup. run of the mill, standard internet asshattery.
7:47 AM

Which gets +151 and 115 shares. Standard internet asshattery that gets lots of positive affirmation. Good job! ( ._.)
7:48 AM +2

You hit on the head some of the *squirm* I was having with the 'slut' tag! I didn't want to be 'anti-slut', because the Slut Walks are all about reclaiming our sexuality; and 'slut' from the right person in the right way... hurr hurr hurr!

But used as a pejorative, it really gets my back up!

And yes, showering is completely optional if you're having a lazy day (cough need to outlevel your boyfriend cough), or just don't have enough spoons. I'm not sure stench should be a badge of honor, or requirement for admittance, though?
Collapse this comment
7:51 AM

well, when you're living in mom and dad's basement, you know, you take what you can get.... ( <-- see what I did there?)
7:51 AM

Pretty straightforward "telling people what they are or what they aren't" bullshit to me.

8:42 AM +2

A shocking number of +s on this cartoon and all the shares.
8:43 AM

Some of the apparent propopents of the illo could be reading this as anti-booth babe type pandering.
8:45 AM +2

that was how I took it when I first viewed it.
8:46 AM

kirin robinson - Rather than be appalled/disgusted with humanity/whatever it's not too hard to speculate on the underlying trends for why such an assertion is popular.

Although frankly I suspect the gamer community is not actually under any real sort of assault by exploitive hot faux gamer girls.
8:48 AM +2

I'll just repeat what I wrote elsewhere:

Let's start with the fact that it's utterly unfunny. If you're going to be offensive, at least be funny doing so.

I have a number of problems with that comic and few of them have to do with the word "slut."

I've got a bigger problem with the normalizing of what gamers "should" be. You're not a gamer if you're cute, girly, or even if you pose provocatively? Who the fuck are you to decide that?

This sounds like someone complaining about booth babes, which is a complaint I have no problem with, but it's being executed in a piss-poor way.
Collapse this comment
8:51 AM +3

I've never been to a gaming / comic Con with booth babes. Is the argument against them that their presence is sexism (because they're sexy) or a Holden Caulfield type disapproval of their being actors and not "authentic" enough? (You're not really Wonder Woman are you? ) As a semi-outsider I find it confusing because the Cosplay community and the Booth Babes are often impossible to tell apart. I posted a link to some PathFinder Cosplay the other day and someone said they were a booth babe. It was a model who was a gamer and had chosen to dress like that to the Con.
8:51 AM +1

Just passed that along to my non-gamer wife. Will be interesting to hear what she says.
8:55 AM

I think part of the argument is the sexifying of ladies only. "Hey, where are the hot dudes in skimpy outfits?"
8:59 AM +1

I think they're mostly in Frank Frazetta artwork. Well, at least the dudes in ridiculous armor (lack thereof, I 'spose), anyway.
9:04 AM

There was a booth babe at the IPR booth at Gen Con one year and there was consternation. It helped that the 'babe" was personal friends with the creator and played the game. It also helped when (later? next year?) we got our booth dude.

(Though, for the record, I wasn't happy with any booth models.)
9:07 AM (edited)

from my non gamer wife, paraphrasing, as she doesn't want a direct rant of her's re-posted (lol): She was pretty appalled. Basically, she points out that the gamer subculture is quick to complain about unfair stereotyping, yet continue to engage in the same behavior. Also, it pisses her off that some people "misconstrue a pretty girl for a slut." Also, she is quite sure not all gamers have horrible hygiene.
9:10 AM

I understand why people dislike booth babes, but wow, this is a horrible way to express that.
9:12 AM +1

I don't like girls who gnaw on game controllers either; it's just unhygienic.
9:14 AM

Our society is into pathologizing and categorization to an alarming degree.
9:26 AM

Here is me paying the Joesky Tax for all this blahblahblah:

1. Grub A dull and ordinary village with a sheer cliff on its western side. Contains:

A stone statue of a manticore (on the edge of the cliff). Any single individual who has bathed in the blood of 4 freshly-slain medusae and then crushes the head of this manticore while swearing revenge will become immune to magic so long as they are in direct pursuit of their vengeance until the task is done.

Nysa Null, an innocent girl who is fated to be the consort of the Insect God.
An intelligent butterfly--secretly a transformed heroine, it will help those of good will, though it cannot communicate.

Jerkin and Orp, two young boys on toy horses who pretend to be a paladin and his squire.
The village elders, who secretly consult a yellow-eyed child of 6 before making any decisions. They believe the child to be a young lamia (it crawled up the cliff toward an elder one day). Their decisions are unremarkable
A charming but apparently useless ring in the pawn shop is actually the signatory ring of a great house in Vrokk. Wearers appearing in that city will be assumed to be long lost members of that house.
A book in one of the elder's homes contains a formula for turning up to 10 cubic feet of magma or volcanic rock into pear flesh.
A field of strawberries. Gorphin, a pig that jumps through hoops during festivals.

2. Labyrinth of Ice An artificial maze, carved into a frozen mountain by eleven of the Gorgon sisters to imprison Moroschka, their eldest sister. Contains:

Luminous emerald oozes that feed on magic.

White tamarins, (monkeys the size of squirrels) full of evil mischief, charged with the task of keeping Moroscha isolated and confused. They wear jeweled gloves capable of causing grievous injury. Their red-eyed monkey king, in his crown of knives.
A glass sphere, 10' in diameter, containing their strange, writhing god.
Pale polar lampreys, 7' long.
The egg-filled nests of the "Snow Wallow Nightmares"--a species of 12' tall snow mantis. The creatures themselves roam the slopes outside the labyrinth. Their aura makes the snow viscous in a 20' radius--effectively slowing anyone trying to move or attack in melee (but not shoot or cast spells). Walls of polished ice that reflect anything inside into a distorted infinity.

Mad Moroschka herself, who roams the halls, fearing to look into the faces of her reflections, believing them to be her sisters. She pleads with the reflections of her own feet, begging to be set free, all the while tormented by the tamarins. Her (usually lowered) gaze turns living tissue to ice.

Ice statues of curious children, bandits, lizards, birds, dinosaurs, and other creatures brave and stupid enough to have entered the lonely, reflecting halls of the labyrinth over the last million years.

The possibility that they will return to life should Moroschka be slain.

The tamarin's warrens, containing whatever weapons, trinkets and treasures these unfortunates may have brought with them.

My Advice

Life's too short
Life's too short for life-expectancy calculation
Life's too short for focus-grouping
Life's too short for approving your race and your class just yes you want a jaguar man ok let's go
Life's too short for building the statblock from the ground up
Life's too short for but that guy is 3d6 and this guy is 4d6-drop one
Life's too short for oh no rolled a wimpy fighter tough mage
Life's too short for Let Me Copy Tolkienprose
Life's too short for but will the dumb people get it?
Life's too short for is it exportable?
Life's too short for No. Appearing
Life's too short for typofixing
Life's too short for whiny sad cleric
Life's too short for balancing
Life's too short for boxed text
Life's too short for Fixing Your Themes
Life's too short for Ok My Guy Is Like This Guy And He Was In The War Against Cleumeunathrian OrcTrolls And He Has A Special Bow And...
Life's too short for the set piece where you wanted the set piece to be
Life's too short for proper supported
Life's too short to look it up
Life's too short for anything but whatever pen is there and yes a pen not a pencil fine go
Life's too short for expecting stuff
Life's too short for do they even make that kind of dice?
Life's too short for pixelbitch puzzle
Life's too short for practice
Life's too short for glossy or matte or...
Life's too short for watching how a master does it at work for 75$ a day
Life's too short for calculating the masonry density
Life's too short for Oh Fuck There is No Number 7
Life's too short for negotiated
Life's too short for the cryer
Life's too short for OMG WHICH SYSTEMYEARSTYLE???
Life's too short for OMG WHICH SETTING THAT'S VANILLA???
Life's too short for That Initiative or This Initiative
Life's too short for figuring all out on the first day
Just get in there just go just do it
You have two hours find your friends run go play now!
Do it wrong first. Do it wrong nine times. Why not? Just go. Now. Go. Fall. Fail. Start over. Learn. Go. Play. Go. Play. Monsters. Go.


Just say like Look Hey I'm the GM I'm Going To Do It Wrong But You All Are In For Maximum Fun, Yes? All of you? Helping? All the fun you can? Ok We must Be Good Then, Don't Worry. And then yeah go.

That's what I decided.

Evil Mastermind from grognards.txt

Come out and play.

I'm "fascinating" to you?

Come over to the comments. We will have a conversation.

EDIT:

I'm serious.

We'll talk about games and what-all.

That's what we do here, after all.

I mean, if you want to just have this all be one way: I say something, you quietly mull it over in the corner that's fine, but I think we would all have some fun if we had a conversation about how games get talked about on the internet.

I promise not to bite.

EDIT:

Listen: you can complain about how things work or you can try to fix them.

I am right here, asking you how we can fix them.

Oh,

there's somebody saying "Hey why don't we do this via email and then put it on the net"

totally cool with me. you can email me.

I just don't know any other way to contact you.

And why you?

You seem like a decent person, altogether. Maybe.

_______

Hire Women.

Let's talk about sexism in gaming again.

(Edit: There's a lot of traffic coming in on this post from various forums. Just letting you know: if you pull one of those 'I didn't really read but I am going to complain about what I thought he said anyway" things on your forum I will make fun of you.)

Let's start with a less controversial subject first. One seemingly unrelated, maybe. This is an exchange from a lit blog I sometimes write for:

Why Does No One Write About Their Day Job?
by Seth Fisher

In a manifesto (er, “ideas piece”) about the importance of the workplace in writing, Alain de Botton calls on contemporary writers to write about work. “If a proverbial alien landed on earth,” he says, “and tried to figure out what human beings did with their time simply on the evidence of the literature sections of a typical bookstore, he or she would come away thinking that we devote ourselves almost exclusively to leading complex relationships, squabbling with our parents, and occasionally murdering people.” Yet work, according to de Botton, is at the core of who we are. So why don’t we write about it?...

_______________

(in the comments)

Zak S:

Two points, at odds with each other:

-It would be to everyone’s benefit if good books kept coming out that, collectively, covered every single aspect of human existence.

-Getting writers to write about things they don’t want to write about is no way to get good books.

So:
It’s all up to luck. We’re just going to have to hope that, for every situation, there’s some good writer somewhere who’s interested in that situation.

__

Priorities.

I think the following list pretty much covers it as far as the priorities people refer to when the possible sexism in gaming art and the themes in games comes up:

A-Quality: Is the thing good? Would people choose to play it instead of choosing other activities? Would you yourself the producer choose to consume it? Obviously this is subjective (and not a popularity contest). If not even the designer wants it to be the way it is, it can only be good accidentally.

B-Justice: Does the thing promote social justice? Will the world be a more fair place due to the influence of the imagery and stories told in the product on children and whatever proportion of the adult audience takes its ethical direction from what's in a piece of fiction?

C-Money: Does the thing make money? (Also Known As: Does It Serve The Audience? Often dressed up in a million other guises. Common Alternate Guise: Does It Hurt The Brand? i.e. does the thing make money over a long period of time?)

D-Does it grow the hobby? This is distinct from making money. A product can make money by growing the hobby into a new audience and selling to that audience (like indie black-and-white comics where people cry grew the audience for comics into the uptight-assholes-in-sweaters demographic) but it can also just broaden the audience period but not necessarily make any more money because of it.

(Caveat that will probably go unread: There are, quite obviously, other priorities one could have, but we are only talking here of ones that come up in the context of sexism in games.)

____________

Priorities mean a very specific thing. If a situation arose where you had to choose between A and B, which would you choose?

For example: You are producing a game, the game needs to be illustrated and out in the next week or else your company will fold.

Only 2 artists are willing to take on the job: Artist A who is good and you like his/her art and they render with skill and marvelous expressiveness and sublime color and Artist B who is bad and you do not like his/her art but who will depict the technologically not-advanced tribe described in the text with a high degree of sensitivity. Do you choose A or B? Or do you choose artist A orB depending on what you think your audience will like best, which would be prioritizing C? Or do you think if you choose artist B then more kinds of people will buy it (Priority D)? Or different kinds of people (also D)?

That's priorities.

____________

My personal priorities when looking at a given game product go A, then B…… and I don't care about C or D.

I don't care if game companies make money and if I want new people to play a game I talk to them, I don't expect the product to talk to them for me.

I am ok with other peoples' priorities and will live and let live with them unless they don't start with A and then move on to B:

If your priorities go B...(and then anything else) then I think that is a condescending attitude toward the product you are looking at. That is: you see it as more of a vehicle of social change than a hobby you like to do.

This is true: social change is actually more important than whether a game is fun. However, in the scheme of things, an RPG game designer can do a lot more in the way of making a game fun than they can about injustice in the world so that is where the lion's share (most but not all) of their effort should be directed.

If yours start with C…(and then anything else) then, usually, fuck you. If you are a small game designer and will be unable to make any game stuff ever without pushing out some bullshit to make money, well, I suppose you get a pass. But if you are a big game designer? Fuck you. You don't need the money. Make something good instead. If you are not even a game designer, why do you even care?

If yours go D…(and then anything else) then I think this is a long-term losing strategy for you: you will be disappointed because the best you can do is attract a large variety of people to a hobby which no longer has anything good left in it and so why bother attracting them? And who wants to broaden a hobby's appeal if it ceases to have anything good in it? While I respect but do not share your desire to grow the hobby, I don't think prioritizing that over actually making good stuff is going to help you get what you want.

___________
A lot of the discussion of comic books I like--it seems to be from people whose priorities about the comic in question start with B or D. Like Concerned Parents' groups, it never even occurs to them that the comic could be, in any real sense, good: so sacrificing any element of its goodness for some larger pedagogical goal seems fine to them.

Like, they think: Batman comics will never be good, so why not turn them into effective tools for producing desirable citizens or broadening the comic book reading public so that there's a bigger audience for more black-and-white-indie comics where people cry?

___________
So that's that part: Games and the things in them should be good. In evaluating games, the rest needs to be secondary. Secondary does not mean 'nonexistent'. It just means second. Just ask Will Riker.

___________
Stakeholders

These are the stakeholders in these debates:

The Company

The Audience
The Creative People

Another thing that seems to come up a lot in sexism-in-RPG debates is this idea that the game Company is obsessed with money and the Audience is the Audience and is interested in being either expanded or pandered to or catered to and the actual people making the product (the Creative People) are performing monkeys in the middle who simply enact whatever the company tells them.

This is wrong. In terms of who is responsible for what, the creative employees need to be thought of as real artists in the following sense: they get paid so little compared to other jobs they could perform with the same skills that we have to assume they would not be in the field at all unless it was because they hoped to (and occasionally did) produce things that they liked and wanted to see.

In other words: if there are boobs in a picture, the main reason is not necessarily because the Audience wants boobs or the Company assumes the Audience wants boobs but because the artist wanted the boobs there.

Ask anyone who has commissioned art for RPGs: artists will fuck your art order right up and put all kinds of stuff in there. And the better they are at producing intense, memorable imagery, the more often they do it. They do this because it is not fun to make art unless you are doing something you care about and the job does not pay well enough to be unfun.

___________
Now:

Why do artists put in the boobs?

The ordinary idiot answer is They are sexist They are unconsciously sexist or They exist in a sexist context etc and all this is lies.

Let us consider an example that has been attacked: Jim Lee's new Justice League comics.
We have a rare opportunity here because Jim Lee not only drew them but designed the costumes. He is the responsible party.

I think we have a legitimate case of maybe-sexism here in terms of the composition of the group: Black Canary and Hawkgirl could easily have been added without messing with the Iconicness of the JL and were not. John Stewart, the black Green Lantern, maybe, too, and Jim Lee himself might have wondered why we still don't have an iconic Asian superhero. But this isn't what I have seen jumped on...

This has been attacked as sexist on account of the costumes. That is: Wonder Woman's costume is way more revealing than the rest of the team.

Now some people, citing the ineluctable and uncategorizable variety (from a straight guy POV) of What Women and Gay Dudes Consider Sexy, might say the men here are as sexualized as the women. I am not one of them. I am going to go ahead and say, for my money, absofuckinglutely the men here are not as sexualized as Wonder Woman.

However, I think saying this makes it sexist is as much of a mistake as saying the imagery in an Enya video is sexist, and for the same reason.

This isn't (as so many people would like you to believe) about who the audience is, it's about who the creator is. Jim Lee wants to look at this Wonder Woman because he is a heterosexual male and wants to make a team that Looks Good (so he can look at it) and his sense of Looks Good is tied tightly to his nervous system and his nervous system (like everyone else's) is concerned primarily with Food, Potential Danger, Does This Baby Need Help?, and People You Want To Fuck.

It is widely acknowledged that the creative process is mysterious. You can't just say "Hey, take out this and put in that and make it work exactly the same". Alien would not be Alien if Ripley were suddenly male. It would be a different movie and making it good all over again would require responding to whatever psychoemotionalaesthetic imperatives were suddenly imposed on it by having an actor where an actress once was. You change something, you have to re-jigger things to work with them changed.

All artists work well with some limitations, none work well with limitations that keep them from thinking about what they want to think about. We don't have any choice about the fact that a great many artists are male and the majority of them want to think about and describe women they think are beautiful in their work and we don't have any choice about what about them they consider beautiful. If we ask them to be democratic and draw something else then sometimes this is a challenge they'll take, but if they don't, well, that's probably because they realize they are not going to be able to do anything with it.

Watch what happens when we ask someone to design a game they wouldn't want to play...

_______________

"How much money do you have? Well, there’s no absurdly simplistic "3d6x10gp" here. *snerk* Oh no. Starting characters have Net Worth, and Bank Accounts, and Cash on Hand, and Disposable Monthly Income, all determined by random rolls derived from their social class, sorry, SEC. On top of this they also have their Basic Possessions: Dwellings, Clothes and Furnishing, Misc. Gear, and GM's Option. We're also told to refer to the Advanced Mythus rules for even more(!) detail."

--Vaults of Nagoh on Gygax and Newton's "Mythus"


Hey there! This is Dave Newton - I co-wrote Mythus with Gary. So sorry to hear that you felt the game wasn't to your liking. One of the first things I did when I started playing was to throw out half of the rules we wrote. Most of the filler was intended for the anal-retentive GMs and min-maxing players that couldn't solve a roleplaying issue without consulting a rulebook.



Cheers,


Dave
___

An art magazine asked me to draw the women on The View once. I said Look, I am not going to parody people just because I can't think of anything else interesting to me as a draftsman about the way they look and I cannot sit and think about the women on The View for as long as I can sit and think about the women I actually paint in my pictures and I do not feel bad enough about sex to feel bad about that: get somebody else.

If Jim Lee made the team look like this because he was worried about selling comics: fuck him, he's already rich and is prioritizing money over social justice. But if he did it because that was what he thought looked best? That's him doing his job. His only job.

Jim Lee can't be called sexist and neither can his cover. He's Jim Lee being Jim Lee which is what he is getting paid to do because no matter how hard the industry tries (and it has tried very hard for a shockingly long time) you can't get anyone else who isn't actually Jim Lee to draw like Jim Lee. However...

__________
So it's not sexist? Ok, it is actually...

Now wait, other than composition of the team, there is a real problem with this Justice League cover: this team looks like a million other teams. As people so often point out, sexism is about context.

In a world where comics are read by very young people (and games are played by young people) and some female people (not many I know, but I suppose either they are out there or there's only one but she has a lot of screen names) do not like the relative revealingness of Wonder Woman's costume, there should be a variety of kinds of costumes for female characters. There kinda isn't. I mean: an infinite number of comic book costumes exist, but most women in comics that show up a lot show up in the sexy and revealing kind.

And that might possibly mess with priority B.

The sexism is not that this comic exists or is popular, but that some art director somewhere did not also order hundreds of other comics that are different from it.

You cannot blame artists for expressing their own proclivities and desires in their art. They have to (in one way or another) or else they are going to suck. You can blame companies with a mass audience for hiring the same artists over and over and not others.

Yet if we ask artists to make art they do not want to make, we are messing with priority A. Which is the most important one.

So what do you do?

______________
Hire women.

Hire lots of women. And hire gay dudes. And hire every kind of person because they make a talented version of every kind of person. They exist.

(Plus, big game companies, in addition to a handful of talented people, the fact is you're also going to hire some hacks--because you are cheap. So long as you are hiring hacks, why not hire female ones?)

That is the sole and only answer that is fair and that will get us good work while sacrificing neither of the real priorities here.

Hire women (50%!) and let them do whatever they want. Don't hire men and tell them to make work that does not appeal to them. Don't hire a writer and ask him to write a world he will not want to play in. Hire a woman and ask her to do whatever.

If you hire me to write a succubus, I will write you a nasty disturbing succubus that will chew off your neck and have teeth for nipples. By all means hire me. Just hire someone else, too. Have them write the dryad.

If we are trusting the Creatives to make worlds for us (and, frankly, begging them to do it and yelling at them when they don't) then we also have to trust that their artistic instincts are more than a set of tinkertoys that can be stuck together any old way. They know how to thread things together so the things are more than the sum of their parts. It's what they get paid to know. They are people who want and think things and their work reflects what they want and think and when it does not, it is dishonest and fucked and comes out bad and we just kinda turn past those pages.

(And, p.s., just because there is a connection, the connection between the artist and the art is not always--is in fact rarely--easy to psychoanalyze the way Naught tries to in the comments below. Does Jim Davis think all cats are fat and love lasagna? Does Giorgio Morandi hate all people because he never paints them? Move along littlebrain.)

Have you seen Wayne Reynolds' men? Meh. His monsters and babes? Excellent. Stop hiring him to draw dudes--he totally does not care about them. It makes the world worse and uglier every time Wayne has to draw a dude. I mean, if he wants to keep trying and maybe get better, let him, but if he doesn't: let the man draw what he wants to draw.

So: you want justice? Hire women.

Hire them and give them the same free hand men have had since the beginning and--rather than art directing them into a corner (the all-female creative teams on the Barbie comics complained because Mattel told them none of the characters in the cast were allowed to display any negative traits) let a specific fantastic world that is theirs aggregate around their creativity the way it has around the creativity of men for decades.

__________________

Do you know why nobody asks for this? It's the scariest option.

It's the one that demands the most work from the company (Find people, give them freedom).

It's the one where the audience gets the least certainty (Bbbbut what if we hire women and they don't give us what we want either? What if what women with talent want isn't exactly the same as what people who like to complain about art want?)

It's the one that demands that the product actually be creative, which means the artists don't get to rely on "Oh I was just giving the client what they asked for" and have to actually think and be responsible for the awesomeness or lack thereof of what they produce.

In other words, nobody's ass gets covered in this solution. There are no guarantees.

There are already a million RPGs on the market. The only reason to buy a new one is if it brings something new to the table. If we aren't willing to let artists be Artists then we might as well admit we are just buying shit to see ideas we already have reified in print rather than to experience new ones and admit we came to this show hoping for Comfort rather than ROCK.

Another Utility Post

(Note: this refers to nobody in particular, I just want this here for when I need it)

I am attempting to have a conversation with you.

Why? Because we have a fundamental difference about not just taste (about which it is easy for reasonable people to disagree), but about the nature of reality.

This can only be because:

1) We have different underlying assumptions about how the world works. Since I don't know what these differences are yet, they might be interesting, informative, or enlightening to explore (and that exploration might--hey--even change my mind),

or

2) You are insane.

Since me just assuming (2) and moving on with my life is condescending and would put me in a position where I'd have to view anything you said from now on as suspicious and probably not worth listening to and would cut me off from any wisdom or insight you might actually come out with in the future, it is way safer to assume (1) at this point.

Therefore, in order to find out what the assumptions behind (1) are, I am going to ask questions.

...because I am curious about the experiences that lead people to do, say, like, and believe different things. It's one of the very few good reasons there are to talk to people you don't know on the Internet.

If you want to answer these questions and therefore maybe make the world smarter for anyone who reads the dialogue now or in the future, answer them.

If you don't want to, don't. (And if you feel like being nice, tell me that now.)

In the best of all possible worlds (for me and my particular goal here) you'd also want to understand what creates an assumption-gap between reasonable people and you'd want to assume I'm sane and ask me questions, too. If you do, know now that I'll always answer them--but you asking questions is not essential.

_________________

You might assume I am asking you questions in order to change your mind--since asking, essentially 'In the case we're looking at, I just think X, what's wrong with X?" can look more like an attempt to explain the validity of X than an attempt to understand whether there are unexpected-but-reasonable objections to X that I hadn't thought of, but there we are. I am not trying to persuade you of anything, I probably don't even know your name and will probably never meet you.

I just would like to know how a reasonable person came to decide X was a bad idea. It may make me re-evaluate X.

Because Fuck You, That's Why.

Myxomatosis is an animal's disease,

But I got so shook up mama that it ate away my knees,

And I'm Left Hand Luke and the beggar boys,

O yes we are.

-T. Rex ("Left Hand Luke And The Beggar Boys")

What we end up with are dinosaur-riding sorcerous cavemen exploring ancient ruins and pursuing the Greys for their nifty rocket launchers while being pursued in turn by Nyarlathotep and some undead mummies.

Why? Fuck you, that's why.

-Jim Stutz (RPGnet review of Carcosa)

People talk about and think about this idea:

Are RPGs art?

Now first off: I don't care for pretty much the same reasons I don't care about the answer to another question I get asked a lot: "Is pornography art?".

Is a cake art? It doesn't matter, the only thing that matters is whether you personally would take time out of your day to eat it: the rest is academic in the most boring possible sense of that already pretty boring word.

What actually is a little bit interesting to me is why people tend to line up in the RPGs-are-art or RPGs-aren't-art camps. Mostly because they both do it for the wrong reasons.

The question rarely comes up totally by itself. It usually comes up in the following context:

Someone wants to take what happens in RPGs seriously.

Someone else does not.

The person who does claims RPGs are art.

The person who does not claims they are not.

This seems to me pretty much fundamentally dumb: the idea these people have is that if RPGs are art then we (pick one depending on which side you're on: get to-/have to-) decide they "have meaning".

And what meaning is that?

Usually a meaning like this: Whatever you do in the game is a thing you secretly want to do in real life.

(Variations: It "expresses and urge you have in real life", "vents a frustration you have in real life", "is a more exciting world than the one you have in real life", "reflects attitudes you have in real life""explores issues you deal with in real life")

This is all, if not actually incredibly stupid, then at least really not at all well thought out or democratic. It suggests that the reason we (all) like actual art (those things we can agree are art) is always something we can name and be sure about.

Check out that addled T Rex line at the beginning of this post. It makes no fucking sense at all. It is also entirely awesome. If you like T Rex you can't help but listen to that line and smile and admit life isn't always awful and no butterflies died in anybody's jars today because that line is there. That clunky, meaningless line just works. Why? Because of something mysterious. Because something in your lizardmonkeytroglodyte brain likes rhymes for some stupid reason. And the excitement of rhyme divorced from any reason sometimes (and not always) just works. And it throws it in your face that it works anyway and you enjoy it being thrown in your face that it works. After a long day of interpreting all the signs and symbols necessary to survive jobs, traffic and other people there is sometimes a glory in finally receiving a signal that is definitely not asking you to do anything with it but is still somehow compelling. Or: Because fuck you, that's why.

Maybe there is a meaning and maybe there isn't but it is arrogant to assume that you will understand your pleasure before you take it and tedious to live that way. (If not for you, then at least for everyone has to listen to you and your off-ham-handed assumptions about why they like what they like.)

Or, as this guy who wrote some things that make a lot of sense and some even better things that make no sense at all, put it:

Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.

-Oscar Wilde

__________________

This whole situation makes some people tremendously anxious. Some examples:

There are conservative religious people who are afraid they might like RPGs because they get to do bad things in them.

There are not-conservative and not-religious people who are afraid they might like RPGs because they are miserable humps whose lives are sucky and they are fleeing from these lives.

There are not-conservative and not-religious (but still, emotionally, deeply conservative, and deeply religious) people who are afraid they might like RPGs because they harbor secretly fascist attitudes deep within their souls.

Despite the variety of people who have this problem, their solution is always the same: find some other definite reason you like any given thing and then you can rest assured you're not taking badwrongpleasure. It can be as simple as: "I like escapism and I've decided escapism is ok" or as complicated as "I want to explore intergender conflict and power exchange in a postcolonial context". And then (this is the actual sad-result part) they reject any idea that isn't in line with doing that thing.

Whether or not RPGs are art, these people are making a dumb mistake that, being in the art business, I get to see people make every day: they make the criticism before they make the thing. Which is a little like deciding what's good about a cake you've invented before even baking it.

Ask the baker: Different cakes do different things. Mainly the baker knows the baker likes baking and then eating what baking brings. And, yes, you can (and should) try sometimes to do a cake that does specifically this and try to do a cake that does specifically that, but you should also do a different thing too:

Just try stuff, more eggs or less flour--and then let yourself be surprised by how it is good--and if you never are, then you suck and so will your muffins and stupid bread because your fear of liking something for the wrong reasons has made you afraid to experiment.

Pleasure in the potentials of invention is its own and sufficient reward, as this or any wrinkly-cyclops-car-driving baby could easily explain.

And now for something that makes no sense and is rad:

bing.

Library of Generic Comments

Ever get tired of typing the same old thing again, even though you typed it last week and the week before?

As you know, we here at D&DWPS are dedicated to saving all of you busy game masters time. So instead of wasting those long hours you could be using to work on your Random Bullette-Sniffing Table or preparing the PDF version of Asymptote of Infinite Slaughter for print slapping buttons on your machine in an attempt to imitate articulate thought, you may now simply refer back to this page and write "GENERIC COMMENT 16" or whatever next time you are enraged by The Internet.

(this material stolen from-, written by-, initiated by-, and made possible by- a bunch of people on Google +)

HERE ARE PICTURES AND WORDS - Comment - Hang out - Share

1. ADULATION AND/OR RAGE Yesterday 7:55 AM

2. NON SEQUITUR, VERNACULAR ENGLISH Yesterday 7:56 AM

3. NO MATTER WHAT YOU SAY OR POSTED I WILL RESPOND THE SAME AND ACT LIKE TL;DR; ABOUT A FEW HUNDRED WORDS IS A VALID OPTION BEFORE COMMUNICATING Yesterday 7:58 AM

4. LENGTHY, RAMBLING COMMENT OSTENSIBLY ABOUT YOUR POST BUT ACTUALLY ABOUT ME AND HOW AWESOME I AM/MY OPINION IS/MY BLOG IS. Yesterday 8:02 AM

5. NOT GETTING THE JOKE. Yesterday 8:06 AM

6. THING ABOUT HOW WELL WHAT You SAID WAS OKAY BUT WHat SOmmmEPEOPle (UNNAMED) YOU HANG WITH SAY ON THIS ISSUE IS REGRESSIVE AND ATAVISTIC AND THAT'S WHY I CAN BARELY STAND IT AROUND HERE Yesterday 8:06 AM (edited) -

7. QUASI-RELEVANT STAR TREK REFERENCE

Yesterday 8:09 AM +1

8. HAWKWIND REFERENCE, EXPLAINS JOKE TO THREE PREVIOUS POSTER

Yesterday 8:10 AM - +2

9. DISAGREEMENT BASED ON CLOSED MINDEDNESS

Yesterday 9:24 AM

10. (a) ACCUSATION OF SOME MANNER OF -ISM! (b)AD HOMINEM ATTACK THAT NEGATES ANY ACTUAL POINT I MAY HAVE HAD.

Yesterday 9:27 AM +1

11. IRRELEVANT ANECDOTE and/or INTERNET MEME

Yesterday 9:29 AM (edited)

12. ARGUMENTATIVE CONTRADICTION

Yesterday 9:29 AM

13. RESPONSE TO ORIGINAL POST INDICATING I DIDN'T READ THE COMMENTS (W/REFERENCE TO COMMENTER'S WIFE)

Yesterday 9:29 AM

14. RELIGIOUS OFFENSE

Yesterday 9:35 AM +1

15. LOOK AT THIS CAT.

Yesterday 9:36 AM +2

16. JOKING STATEMENT ABOUT ORIGINAL POST UNDERMINING LEGITIMATE COSPLAY Yesterday 9:37 AM +3

17. POSTING ABOUT SOMETHING COMPLETELY UNRELATED TO THIS THREAD Yesterday 9:39 AM

18. DID YOU READ HUGE RUINED SCOTT'S POST ABOUT THE TOPIC CURRENTLY UNDER DISCUSSION? MAN! Yesterday 9:40 AM - +3

19. PRAISE FOR SOMETHING ZAK/JRIENTS SAID

=P Yesterday 9:41 AM +1

20. POSTING LATE TO PARTY, RE-TREAD POINTS ALREADY COVERED. DIDN'T READ PREVIOUS POSTS. Yesterday 9:42 AM +1

21. POST IN RESPONSE TO PREVIOUS POST THAT STARTS THE ARGUMENT ALL OVER AGAIN Yesterday 9:44 AM

22. ADULATION AND/OR RAGE Yesterday 9:45 AM +2

23. BLOG POST TO EXPLAIN WHAT I DISAGREE WITH IN THIS THREAD.

http://betweengoodandawful.blogspot.com/2012/02/blog-post-to-counter-things-i-disagree.html Yesterday 9:47 AM +3

24. LINK TO A FORUM THREAD CURRENTLY DISCUSSING THE TOPIC AT HAND IN A WAY I FIND RIDICULOUS AND/OR SAD Yesterday 9:48 AM

25. WELTSCHMERZ-DRENCHED HEAD-SHAKING POST ABOUT HOW THOSE POOR BENIGHTED SODS ON THAT FORUM STILL HAVE NOT GOT THE MEMO Yesterday 10:06 AM (edited) -

26. RIDICULOUS COMPARISON OF TOPIC OF DISCUSSION TO ACTUAL TRAGEDY/SERIOUS SOCIAL ISSUE/CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY and/or INVOCATION OF GODWIN'S LAW. Yesterday 9:50 AM +1

27. ASSERTION THAT I HAVE NOT DONE THE THING DISCUSSED AND THEREFORE NO ONE HAS AND IT IS IMPOSSIBLE Yesterday 9:50 AM

28. ASSERTION THAT I HAVE DONE THING DISCUSSED AND HAVE SINCE 1974. Yesterday 9:52 AM (edited)

29. ASSERTION THAT YOU ARE REVISIONIST AND ELITIST AND DON'T WANT MY FRIEND/SPOUSE/GRANDMOTHER TO BE INVOLVED IN THE HOBBY Yesterday 9:52 AM +4

30. BRIEF BOLD SMUG SMIRKING ASSERTION OF MY POSITION AS NORMATIVE FOLLOWED BY LAUGHY EMOTICON Yesterday 9:53 AM - +1

31. DECLARATION OF MY QUITTING THE 'OSR' AND ALSO WHY BOTHER Yesterday 9:55 AM

32. PERSON WHO MADE MOST OVER-REACHY STATEMENT AND WAS CALLED ON IT NOW ASSERTS MOM IS CALLING/THEY ARE MOM IN QUESTION AND SAYS THEY HAVE TO GO DO ACTIVITIES THUS HOPEFULLY IMPLYING PEOPLE QUESTIONING SAID STATEMENT ARE ONLY DOING SO BECAUSE THEY ARE OUT OF TOUCH WITH CONCERNS OF NORMATIVE HUMAN MEATWORLD Yesterday 10:00 AM -

33. IF THAT MAKES ME A (gaming niche group) THEN OH WELL Yesterday 10:00 AM

34. WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN Yesterday 10:02 AM

35. ACCUSATION THAT PREVIOUS POSTER IS SECRETLY ATTACKING (same gaming niche group) EVEN THOUGH HE IS NOT. OUTRAGE OVER THE FACT THAT HE CLAIMS IT DILUTES (game x) Yesterday 10:02 AM

36. FEELINGS HURT OVER ACCUSATIONS, BLOG DELETED IN RAGE. ONLY TO REAPPEAR LATER WITH APOLOGIES TO ALL INVOLVED. Yesterday 10:03 AM +2

37. RANDOM SEXUAL INNUENDO FOLLOWED BY WINKY EMOTICON Yesterday 10:05 AM

38. JOKINGLY GENERIC COMMENT IN ALL CAPS Yesterday 10:05 AM +1

39. IGNORES PREVIOUS POSTER TO FLIRT WITH TWO PRECIOUS POSTER Yesterday 10:10 AM +3

40. LINK TO WEIRD YOUTUBE VIDEO :EMOTICON-D Yesterday 10:11 AM

41. CHEERIO PIP PIP GUMDROPS BELLYDROP RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE Yesterday 10:11 AM

42. ALL JOKING ASIDE VERY LONG LIBERAL "YOU'RE BOTH RIGHT" POST THAT CONTAINS D4 LOGICAL FALLACIES BUT GETS +3 ANYWAY Yesterday 10:13 AM - +3

43. VEHEMENT DISAGREEMENT WITH "RABBLE RABBLE" COMMENT REGARDING HOW ILL INFORMED PEOPLE FROM ACROSS THE POND ARE. Yesterday 10:13 AM +1

44. ALSO, STOP RUINING MY LANGUAGE, SPEAK MURIKAN DAMMIT Yesterday 10:13 AM +1

45. POINTLESS AFFIRMATION OF LIBERAL POST WITHOUT ACTUALLY +1ING IT. Yesterday 10:15 AM +1

46. POOR READING SKILLS LEAD ME TO AGREE, YES, BOTH ARE RIGHT Yesterday 10:15 AM

47. ^ THIS. Yesterday 10:16 AM +2

48. FATMAN ASSERTS Y'ALL NEED TO RELAX Yesterday 10:16 AM

49. ANNOYED IGNORING OF ENTIRE THREAD, STARTS IRONIC METATHREAD TO MOCK THE TROPES OF THE ARGUMENT ELSEWHERE Yesterday 10:16 AM +2

50. (a) ASSERTION THAT METATHREAD TRIVIALIZES ISSUE, (b) DEMAND THAT METATHREADER STOP TRYING TO SILENCE "US" (SET VAGUELY/OBVIOUSLY-INCORRECTLY DEFINED) Yesterday 10:18 AM

51. RESORTS TO "OH YEAH LIKE GAMING IS SRS BIZNESS" ARGUMENT, SUBTLY MANIFESTING HOBBY'S INHERENT SELF-LOATHING Yesterday 10:22 AM

52. EXTREMELY ANGRY COMMENT BUT MY AVATAR IS A SMILEY WHITE BABY I HAD Yesterday 10:23 AM - +3

53. OUTRAGE BASED ON MISUNDERSTANDING SEVERAL PREVIOUS POSTS WERE SARCASTIC CAUSED BY THE LACK OF VOCAL AND NON-VERBAL CUES ON THE INTERNET. Yesterday 10:24 AM

54. CITES DAVE ARNESON PRODUCT OR ANIME THAT DID THIS THING DECADES AGO, MAKES OP SAD. Yesterday 10:25 AM

55. REMINDS YOU ALL OF YOUR OBLIGATION TO HOW I AM RAISING MY CHILDREN Yesterday 10:26 AM +1

56. ADD COMMENT REDUNDANT TO PREVIOUS COMMENTS INDICATING NOT HAVING BOTHERED TO READ ANYONE ELSE'S. SUGGEST GAME PRODUCT YOU ARE ALREADY FAMILIAR WITH Yesterday 10:27 AM (edited) +2

57. Barry Blatt SUGGESTS WHOLE ARGUMENT IS FREAKISHLY PROVINCIAL VIA DEFT USE OF COCKNEY SLANG (aka "Pulling a Barry") Yesterday 10:28 AM - +1

58. COMMENT ABOUT HOW THE OP IS POINTLESS BECAUSE NO ONE USES THAT SYSTEM/RULE/BOOK ANYWAY COUPLED WITH A SUGGESTION OF MY PET SYSTEM THAT IS COMPLETELY INCOMPATIBLE WITH WHAT THE OP WAS ASKING FOR. Yesterday 10:29 AM

59. ASSERTION OF HOW ITS DONE IN POSTER'S RETROCLONE/HEARTBREAKER THAT CUTS GORDIAN KNOT PERFECTLY & THAT GETS +8 BUT WILL NOT BE IMPLEMENTED BY ANYONE READING BECAUSE PRODUCT IS NOT ANY EDITION OF D&D. HEARTS BREAK. Yesterday 10:31 AM

60. POSTED LINK INCITES MONOSYLLABIC TROLL REPLY Yesterday 10:31 AM

61. LONG DIGRESSION IN RESPONSE TO JOKE EXPLANATION RENDERED POINTLESS BY CONFUSING HAWKWIND WITH HAWK THE SLAYER. Yesterday 10:32 AM

62. FORGET CONSEQUENCES OF THE LAST COMMENT POSTED ON A LIVELY THREAD LIKE THIS, CARELESSLY POST SOMETHING THAT DERAILS ENTIRE DISCUSSION. Yesterday 10:32 AM

63. GETS INSPIRED TO WRITE HEARTBREAKER TO ADDRESS THIS ENTIRE THREAD'S PROBLEM. TOTALLY FUCKING PUBLISHES IT TWO YEARS LATER TO CRICKETS. Yesterday 10:32 AM +1

64. CRICKETS DEVOUR WORLD Yesterday 10:33 AM +2

65. (a)ADD POINTLESS CC TO +Zak Smith . (b)PLUG KICKSTARTER PROJECT THAT YOU WILL GET LESS PRODUCT THAN IF YOU PAID RETAIL Yesterday 10:33 AM +1

66. POST TO LET YOU ALL KNOW I JUST MUTED IT AND WILL NOT BE RESPONDING TO ANY FURTHER ATTACKS WHILE INSINUATING THAT YOU ALL ARE IGNORANT SAVAGE CURS Yesterday 10:34 AM +3

67. AFTER RETIRING FROM BLOG AND PUBLIC STATUS, RE-EMERGE AND DUMP OIL ON FIRE. ONLY TO DISAPPEAR FROM NET WITHIN MINUTES OF POSTING. Yesterday 10:35 AM +2

68. IGNORES ALL COMMENTS AND DISCUSSION TO POST I 'JUST WANT TO THANK ORIGINAL POSTER FOR BEING SO BRAVE SAYING THESE THINGS' Yesterday 10:36 AM

69. (DOES NOT POST BUT CHECKS TO SEE IF EVERYBODY ELSE WHO IS WRONG IS G+ FRIENDS WITH CUR-INSINUATOR AND/OR DESIGNER OF OBVIOUSLY UNDESIRABLE GAME WHOSE PREMISE INDICATES OBVIOUS INCONGRUITY OF GAME'S GOALS WITH CHECKER'S GAMING AESTHETICS) Yesterday 10:37 AM (edited) - +1

70. POST ABOUT HOW MY FATHER SAYS WHATEVER PREVIOUS POST SAYS, POTTER! Yesterday 10:37 AM

71. OBSERVATION ABOUT HOW I GO AWAY TO LOCAL CONVENIENT CHAIN STORE FOR 10 MINUTES AND THREAD BECOMES SIGNIFICANTLY LONGER. CHAIN STORE REFERENCE WILL CONFUSE 25% OF READERS, ONE OF WHOM WILL REQUEST CLARIFICATION SIMULTANEOUS WITH IN-KNOW READER POSTING INSIDE LOCAL JOKE CONCERNING IT. POSTERS WILL REALIZE THEY LIVE ACROSS STREET FROM EACH OTHER. GET OFF-LINE, GO PLAY GAME. Yesterday 10:41 AM - +3

72. GO PLAY GAME OF [INAPPROPRIATE ACTION]! YEAHHHH! Yesterday 10:46 AM

73. MAKE GENERALIZED ATTACK ON THREAD PARTICIPANTS ANONYMOUSLY. EXHIBIT SEXUAL ANXIETY.

Yesterday 10:47 AM +1

74. TL;DR; Yesterday 10:47 AM +1

75. GERTCHA! Yesterday 10:54 AM +3

76. (YouTube Link) Chas And Dave GertchaYesterday 11:02 AM (edited)

77. COMMENT ABOUT HOW YOUTUBE VIDEO IS BLOCKED IN COMMENTER'S NATION OF RESIDENCE Yesterday 11:03 AM (edited) - +1

78. EXPLANATION OF YOUTUBE VIDEO THAT IS REALLY BORING AND NOT FUNNY Yesterday 11:06 AM

79. FINAL WORD THAT IS REALLY CONDESCENDING AND DEROGATORY Yesterday 11:56 AM +2

80. LATE-TO-PARTY COMMENT INTIMATING THAT I READ ENTIRE THREAD, YET ABSORBED NOTHING. TRIES TO BE QUIRKILY AMUSING, BUT IS IGNORED BY ALL AS IRRELEVANT. CRIES ALONE IN BASEMENT. Yesterday 12:15 PM +1

81. GODWIN

Yesterday 4:39 PM ........................................................................................

82. EXACT SAME ARGUMENT ONE WEEK LATER Yesterday 10:11 AM

83. (FORCED) CHUCKLE ABOUT HOW DIVISIVENESS OF ISSUE AMONG FINANCIALLY INSIGNIFICANT SUBCLIQUE OF GAMERS IS IRREVOCABLE EVIDENCE THAT 5E IS A MISGUIDED AND QUIXOTIC PROJECT Yesterday 11:48 AM -

84. (a) PERSONAL MATTER OF TASTE PROJECTED AS STRONGLY-WORDED VALUE STATEMENT. (b)PIOUS SERMON IN FAVOR OF SMALL CAPITALIST ENTERPRISE OVER LARGE CAPITALIST REPRINTS OF CHERISHED OLD GAME PRODUCT Yesterday 11:59 AM (edited)

85. YELLING AT PREVIOUS POSTER ABOUT UNINTEREST IN CAPITALIST PRODUCT BECAUSE OF SOMEWHAT SIMILAR THING ALREADY ON A BLOG THAT IS FREE BUT ANOTHER CAPITALIST IS MAKING AD MONEY OFF OF.

THEN REALIZING I MISREAD WHAT HE SAID. Yesterday 12:17 PM (edited) +3

86. ZAK EXTENDS OLIVE BRANCH TO 4E PEOPLE AND ATTEMPTS TO UNDERSTAND THEM Yesterday 12:32 PM +2

87. 4E PARTISAN DECENDS UPON THREAD WITH Fire and Brimstone (Level 5 Daily Power) AND Magic Missile (Level 1 At-Will). Yesterday 12:36 PM +1

88. DO YOU HAVE TO MAKE A TO-HIT ROLL FOR THAT? Yesterday 12:37 PM

89. Fire and Brimstone IS VS FORT OR BE STUNNED FOR ONE THREAD.

Magic Missile IS VS REF OR BE PUSHED TO UNRELATED THREAD (Save Negates) Yesterday 12:39 PM

90. WE HAD THESE STATUS CARDS THAT WERE REALLY FULL SIZED PIECES OF PAPER AND WE FOLDED THEM INTO PAPER HATS AND PLAYERS WORE THEM. IT WAS FUN. Yesterday 12:50 PM +1

91. HOPES (argument) WILL NOT BE IN 5E Yesterday 12:50 PM

92. WHY ARE YOU GOING BACKWARDS MY GOD Yesterday 12:55 PM (edited)

93. LAMENTS THE FACT THE WE ALL CANT JUST GET ALONG. PERSONALLY CAN, WARMED BY SMUG SUPERIORITY Yesterday 4:40 PM

94. QUOTES CS LEWIS OR ROBERT HEINLEIN

Yesterday 12:36 PM +1

95. STRANGE REVERIE/TANGENT ABOUT HOW WE USED TO ROLL IT BACK IN THE DAY, CLEARLY PAINKILLER-FUELLED Yesterday 12:38 PM +1

96. COMMENT IRONICALLY ASKING WHAT? IS COMMENTER NOT ALLOWED TO HAVE OWN OPINION? IN WAY THAT INDICATES COMMENTER COULD NOT POSSIBLY BE SMART ENOUGH TO UNDERSTAND HOW MANY THINGS ARE WRONG ABOUT THAT RHETORICAL QUESTION Yesterday 12:40 PM +1

97. SEX DWARF Yesterday 12:43 PM +1

98. Hello this information are like simple to learn more message to this website and also getting the wonderful to follow this message i easily to achieve this ranking position to this field. Yesterday 12:47 PM

99. COMMENT DOOMED TO BE IGNORED SINCE COMMENTER LOST ALL CREDIBILITY LONG AGO Yesterday 12:54 PM

00. COMMENT WHERE YOU'RE LIKE IS THIS JUST NOT A NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKER OR IS THIS PERSON SUCH A TWEEZER THAT HE ACTUALLY TALKS LIKE THAT? Yesterday 12:50 PM +1