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You just know that guy wants to fly his piss-breathing dragon over the piss forest.FMguru posted:Let's check in on what our favorite Gaming Industry Professional is up to, shall we?
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Jun 1, 2015 16:39
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paradoxGentleman posted:Okay, look, I agree that the guy is a complete rear end in a top hat, but what part of "dragon and dragon rider with magical bond" screams fetish to you? It's part of fantasy archetypes 101. Yeah, I think it's a pretty lazy, easy joke. Dragons are cool.
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Jun 1, 2015 16:43
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I didn't know Gareth Michael-Skarka was still doing stuff. I have some great memories of playing the original Hong Kong Action Theatre! The system made no sense, but I love the concept of roleplaying as actors playing movie roles. What's the poop on him? paradoxGentleman posted:Okay, look, I agree that the guy is a complete rear end in a top hat, but what part of "dragon and dragon rider with magical bond" screams fetish to you? It's part of fantasy archetypes 101. I just found it oddly specific. (Also I thought it was funny.) edit: also I've run into enough loving furries in the games ~community~ to just kind of expect it at this point.
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Jun 1, 2015 16:44
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Psh, yeah, whatever dragondick nerds, go jerk off with your Anne McCaffrey novels some more.
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Jun 1, 2015 16:45
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paradoxGentleman posted:Okay, look, I agree that the guy is a complete rear end in a top hat, but what part of "dragon and dragon rider with magical bond" screams fetish to you? It's part of fantasy archetypes 101. Yeah, maybe dude saw How to Train your Dragon and thought "hey that looks like a neat character."
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Jun 1, 2015 17:01
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Wikipedia Brown posted:I didn't know Gareth Michael-Skarka was still doing stuff. I have some great memories of playing the original Hong Kong Action Theatre! The system made no sense, but I love the concept of roleplaying as actors playing movie roles. Oh boy. He's pretty much always been an Internet Tough Guy, sometimes even to fans who ask innocent questions. He seemed to get more belligerent as RPGnet got less so, presumably because they and everyone else was less willing to put up with his poo poo. Then he took preorders for a Buckaroo Banzai game. Still waiting on that. Apparently he finally contacted the rights-holder after about a year of radio silence. He got the license to Bas-Lag a few years ago. Still waiting on that. His big ICONS project limped across the finish line after someone else took it from him. None of the preorder customers got their physical books. The big turd in his punch bowl, at the party where he's the only guest, is Far West. It was one of the first "big" RPG Kickstarters, and was supposed to be the start of a TRANSMEDIA EMPIRE. He got $50k and it was supposed to be out after a few months of the KS ending. Then updates like "started writing X" began to come out. Woops! As he slipped farther and farther past the original release date, he started getting testier with the people who became angrier about both his failure and his attitude about that failure. But, the thing is, he kept promising, he kept setting deadlines. He has literally set and missed many dozens of release dates. And then he'll talk about what he's doing in an update, and it's clear to any person with even moderate knowledge of how bookmaking works that he was nowhere near completion. One Far West product has been completed: A fiction anthology written by other people. I think it came out in mid-2013? Some highlights: • His art is mostly poo poo he's doing himself. The artist he's aping was slightly better, but that guy left the project after I think the first year, and he was still compositing a bunch of Google Image Search results to make steampunk cowboy kung fu bullshit. Take a look at this. • Near the end of last year he made a huge show of guaranteeing that he was going to be done by Dec 17, 2014. He put up $25 pre-order PDFs for sale on RPGNow. His KS updates still had him creating new pieces of art and writing the loving material. He announced he wouldn't make his deadline like a week before it hit. The pre-order page, last I checked (about a month ago), had been updated to say it would be out in January  • At one point last year or the year before, he teamed up with Cubicle 7 so that they could distribute Far West when it was done. That's a pretty good sign that he doesn't have the funds to fulfill physical books anymore. After the better part of a year of more of the same, the relationship ended with nothing to show for it except a defunct Far West product page on C7's website. • After the Monte Cook game with racist Native American crap brouhaha, Skarka did an informal poll in his Kickstarter updates about whether he should add a single, tiny paragraph to his setting chapter to mention the existence of Indians in his Wild West setting. You see, it's specifically based on wuxia and spaghetti western movies, which only infrequently had Indian characters, so he was just going to exclude them completely. Somehow this didn't apply to black people, who he felt fit-in just fine even though they aren't exactly all over the place in spaghetti westerns or old wuxia movies either. He is a poster-child for the Comfortable White Straight Male brand of moralizing. He'll go on about social justice and inclusivity, but he meets nearly any complaints about that in his own games with slavish devotion to genre conventions or the even worse "IT'S JUST FANTASY JEEZ!" • Okay, not so recent: GMS spent a noticeable amount of free time arguing on the internet with ~SJWs~ and what he termed the Outrage Brigade. Like, clearly enough text flung over enough hours that it had to be eating into actually finishing his goddamn game. This is where a good portion of his animosity toward Something Awful and Ettin comes from, because THE GOON SQUAD  (about 10 people) would bump into him in the same public RPG communities, and they would make fun of him for basically lecturing them about being angry about the wrong things while himself getting pretty pissed off about their opinions on elfgames and social justice.• He often would barge into people's threads to accuse various people of being/doing something that he couldn't possibly know, in the same breath that he rails against people doing that to him. (But nonspecifically, because most of the people who poked that bear had the pretty hard fact that he hadn't finished Far West in their holsters.) He would frequently make noise about disconnecting from social media or blocking people, but he would be right back at it within a week, sometimes with the people he "blocked." Thankfully for him and the communities he shat up, he actually seems to have mostly really done that around the beginning of this year. • As part of that last years-long trainwreck, my favorite bit was when Skarka started threatening to sue Rulebook Heavily for regularly mocking his blustery attitude and inability to finish Far West. This culminated in him sending threats of legal action to one or more addresses in Iceland that absolutely were not Rulebook Heavily's address. At one point some random dude pops into one of these tire fires of a G+ thread to say something along the lines of "I don't know why you sent me this legal threat, but you guys are all weird please stop." This is all beside the fact that international defamation or libel suits mostly aren't a thing that can happen, especially not over some hobby game sniping on social media. • He still seems to be planning a • He has adamantly defended some of the rankest assholes in the RPG industry from a lot of very legitimate criticism, because you see they are fellow travelers in the dreaded wastelands of Goon Mockery. Otisburg posted:Psh, yeah, whatever dragondick nerds, go jerk off with your Anne McCaffrey novels some more.  I certainly will.
That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Jun 1, 2015 |
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Jun 1, 2015 17:26
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Plague of Hats posted:Oh boy. Thank you so much for the detailed recap! I love this hobby.
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Jun 1, 2015 17:34
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Here's a partial list of announced shipping dates for Far West. Note: it does not include anything from the last 18 months.quote:December 2011 Skarka has also claimed that 1) People who contributed to the Kickstarters for Far West and Icons Team Up aren't customers, they're backers, and as such aren't due anything resembling customer service. 2) Companies that do provide excellent customer service (like Evil Hat Games) are only doing it as a scam to try and get more of your money and lmao just lmao if you're the sort of dumb sucker who falls for that. He's the best 
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Jun 1, 2015 17:47
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The "art" in Far West I've seen wouldn't pass muster 20 years ago. I say this because it looks uncannily like the terrible art from Legacy: War of Ages, only in colour.Plague of Hats posted:• He still seems to be planning a Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Jun 1, 2015 |
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Jun 1, 2015 17:53
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I believe he also had an example of the miniatures his kickstarter would produce on a kickstarter, and it was pretty clearly just a Heroforge design.
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Jun 1, 2015 18:10
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Plague of Hats posted:Oh boy. He also namesearches on Twitter, as evidenced by several hours of him tweeting at me to stop "libeling" him during the Monte Cook debacle. When all I basically said was "of course Skarka is on Cook's side". Also, maybe the dragonguy really does want to live out some otherkin fantasy, in which case: who cares? If he can find a group who also wants to play that, more power to 'em, so long as everyone knows what they're getting into, of course. Also he literally references the Draconomicon as his inspiration, so I'd imagine he does just want some good ol' dragonriding times.
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Jun 1, 2015 18:27
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quote:I'm the DM but no player in my world would (Reasonably) want to be a Lycanthrope, for 1 major reason. My world has 2 moons, lycanthropy triggers off of either, or both, being full. quote:Here's one way to deal with a pc having lycanthropy. quote:I have a system called the "hunt" never have got to use it but I have in case I get a PC who want to play a were wolf. it pretty much a way of giving them a down side with out giving them a harsh punishment. same with vampires, but they get the "thirst". quote:TL;DR: Because GM's and 5th Edition. quote:Because as soon as your character contracts lycanthropy and decides it's a good thing that gives them a nice buff that they can control, I make them an NPC. quote:Because if my player is hounding me to let them become a lycanthrope, I'll make them a werebutterfly or something. That'll teach them for being such a munchkin. quote:Because the DM get's control of your character for 1/8 of a month, and that's bad m'kay. Okay, I get that it's bad form for a player to want lycanthropy purely for the mechanical benefits if they're also not willing to roleplay-out the narrative effects, but the number of people who'd rather rub their hands in gleeful anticipation of how they're going to gently caress over the recently bitten player rather than just saying "Bob, don't become a werewolf if you're only in it for the STR bonus" is not cool.
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Jun 1, 2015 18:40
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Plague of Hats posted:He got the license to Bas-Lag a few years ago. Still waiting on that. Oh, so that's what happened to that Bas-Lag RPG I was briefly excited about. 
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Jun 1, 2015 18:45
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It's like traditional gaming is some bizarro universe where mostly-cooperative, narrative based games (RPGs) are competitive games where players are trying to defeat the GM and vice versa to "win", and the most popular tabletop wargame, which should ostensibly be a, in the strictest sense of the word, competitive experience where one side is trying to win (being a game where players are actually attempting to complete objectives while stopping their opponent from completing objectives), is actually about forging a narrative.
FrostyPox fucked around with this message at 18:49 on Jun 1, 2015 |
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Jun 1, 2015 18:45
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"D&D5 is more handwavey, therefore it's easier for me to make up whatever player-screwing rule I want" is making me pretty
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Jun 1, 2015 19:08
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Plague of Hats posted:"D&D5 is more handwavey, therefore it's easier for me to make up whatever player-screwing rule I want" is making me pretty Mike Mearls in 2011 posted:"I think we've hit the second era of RPG decadence, and it's gone the opposite way," he continued. "It's all about player power now - the DM is just the rules guy - and the DM can't contradict what the players say. [The game] is taking away from the DM, and that's where I worry because other types of games can do that better. I might as well play a board game, 'cause I'm just here enforcing the rules. Without the DM as the creative guy, what's the point?"
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Jun 1, 2015 19:29
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I've played with GMs who try to use your words against you like a fuckin' genie. You can just see the  forming like it's in slow motion as they see the opportunity to screw someone.I've also seen players who try to get away with stuff all the time, so I realize it's not a one-sided phenomenon that forms in a vacuum, but it sucks when it carries over into a GM's style in a game with new players. That gotcha poo poo will turn people off quick. edit: also gently caress traps, basically Shart Carbuncle fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Jun 1, 2015 |
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Jun 1, 2015 19:36
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FMguru posted:That was literally Mearls' main design principle for 5E - that 4E was too impartial and balanced and didn't give the DM enough scope for making his own rulings. What the gently caress?  The DM not contradicting what the players say is a good thing that's been taught as good DM practice since for-loving-ever, and having rules that are solid and procedural enough that you can always follow them and they'll always work is exactly why 4e is good and is such a breeze to DM and goes a long way towards shattering the whole "oh boo hoo DMing such HARD WORK" dick-sucking that pervades this goddamn hobby.Seriously, what the gently caress?! That quote makes me angry. Just because there's a specific, non-handwavey way to generate lizardmen NPCs and conduct combat with them doesn't mean I'm any less empowered as a DM, because we as a group still decided to move the story towards "we're going to fight lizardmen now" EDIT: I'm reading through Pathfinder Unchained at the moment, and on page 147 it says: quote:Though the rules on when to use wild magic are deliberately vague to give the GM leeway, I just thought how respectful it was to one's intelligence* that they actually went out and said that, rather than 5e's herky-jerky naturalistic writing where if you try to take them as written, they're vague enough to drive you mad, so you have to make it up as you go along in which case you're going the designers' job for them. * Yeah okay, it was insulting for them to claim Pathfinder as its own game, but baby steps. gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Jun 1, 2015 |
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Jun 1, 2015 19:38
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FMguru posted:"admitting that in trying to please gamers with a limited imagination, 4th edition might have punished those with an active one." lol wut
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Jun 1, 2015 19:46
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quote:
I'm gonna be honest, I don't know of any meaningful data to indicate da ladiez love being tiny fat thieves…and I'm guessing Frank doesn't, either.
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Jun 1, 2015 20:08
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Plague of Hats posted:I'm gonna be honest, I don't know of any meaningful data to indicate da ladiez love being tiny fat thieves…and I'm guessing Frank doesn't, either. On the one hand, my girlfriend is super excited to be playing a halfling rogue in my current campaign, because I'm pretty sure if she could be an actual hobbit living in an actual hobbit hole she would do so in an instant. On the other hand, she's playing her character as a stone-cold badass knife murderer who has about the same amount of trouble severing some rear end in a top hat's spine as she does picking their pocket, so maybe that's not quite what Frank is thinking about. Also, who wouldn't want to be a hobbit? The Shire seems like a pretty chill place to live. Think of all the pies.
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Jun 1, 2015 20:14
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Spoilers: being a hobbit in the Shire is basically just being an upper middle class Englishman in a country town in the 30s and 40s.
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Jun 1, 2015 20:16
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Everyone underestimates the halfling until rosy-cheeked pastry chef Beatrice Butterbrook or whatever flips out a balisong from her apron and cuts a bitch.
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Jun 1, 2015 20:44
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So wait being small, domestic, and appearing non-threatening are the power fantasies that women have? poo poo, feminism's over.
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Jun 1, 2015 21:21
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Darwinism posted:So wait being small, domestic, and appearing non-threatening are the power fantasies that women have? I'm glad to know the patriarchy was really empowering murderous housewives all this time.
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Jun 1, 2015 21:28
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Harrow posted:Also, who wouldn't want to be a hobbit? The Shire seems like a pretty chill place to live. Think of all the pies. No way. Like Max Headroom and Michael Jackson, I need electricity to function.
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Jun 1, 2015 22:01
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I like how D&D still treats wanting to be a werewolf as something that needs to be punished, because we clearly haven't had any fantasy material with werewolf protagonists. That sorta is 5e in a nutshell. "You can be anything!" "How about this?" "gently caress you."
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Jun 1, 2015 22:26
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ProfessorCirno posted:I like how D&D still treats wanting to be a werewolf as something that needs to be punished, because we clearly haven't had any fantasy material with werewolf protagonists. As usual when someone mentions this, I have to poke in and bring up Night Howlers. Too bad that was fake D&D for dumb kids!!!!
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Jun 1, 2015 23:03
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The real problem with RPGs is with all those players who want to do things like "make choices" and "have fun". loving bastards.
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Jun 1, 2015 23:08
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I have settled into comfortable grognardery with the edition that lets you play a double or even triple dracula or a double wolfman, or indeed several combinations of the two.
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Jun 1, 2015 23:21
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Plague of Hats posted:Fake edit: Holy poo poo this guy's blog.   quote:Well it's official, I was banned from rpg.net. It's not like it was a complete surprise since the moderators over there abuse their so called power and dislike anyone who dares to point out that they are abusing their power. Once you shine a light on their power abuse you become an enemy to the rpg.net staff PS He added some right click-blocking Javascript to his blog  EDIT: Tags: abuse, abuse of power, adminstrators, moderators, power, rpg.net That Old Tree fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Jun 1, 2015 |
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Jun 1, 2015 23:31
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quote:Nope, it was on here in the comments section. So the power abusing moderators on rpg.net, who have no jurisdiction (or power) over here banned me for something that wasn't even said on rpg.net. 
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Jun 1, 2015 23:36
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Plague of Hats posted:
I'm sure rpg.net will miss the contributions of a most boring human being. Also this part loving gets me: quote:Oh and a final note, I saw two of blackhat_matts favorite games: Dresden files (FATE, A story game) and Monsterhearts, based on Apocalypse World yet another story game so I can see why he was out to get me banned. He is a lovely storygamer (not that that's a surprise) so he most likely is as lovely of a gamer as I imagined he would be. He's like a less entertaining Pundowski.
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Jun 1, 2015 23:45
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It still amazes me how salty people get over RPGnet having an off-topic GBS-esque subforum. I've lost track of the number of people decrying Tangency as some cancer killing discussions about games or petitioning for Tangency to be expunged from RPGnet as though the existence of a place for people to discuss E/N stuff and current events is a personal affront to them.
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Jun 1, 2015 23:46
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quote:What the gently caress did you just loving say about me, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I'm a veteran gamer since 1983, and I’ve been involved in playtesting the Tomb of Horrors, and I have over 300 confirmed TPKs. I am trained in sandbox gaming and I’m the top player in the entire RPGA. You are nothing to me but just another upstart. I will wipe you the gently caress out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my loving words. You think you can get away with saying that poo poo to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my network of game designers across Google Plus and your gaming credentials are being audited right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re loving dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can own you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with a Level 1 Magic-User. Not only am I extensively trained in Dungeon Mastering, but I have access to the entire support of EN World and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable rear end off the face of the blogosphere, you little poo poo. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your loving tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will poo poo fury all over you and you will drown in it. You’re loving dead, kiddo. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Jun 2, 2015 |
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Jun 1, 2015 23:57
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JFC, "I have a 4th dan black belt in GAME MASTERING, BITCH! Which will destroy your blog, somehow!" That's precious. Where did you find it?
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Jun 2, 2015 00:05
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What even is that
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Jun 2, 2015 00:05
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It's paraphrasing this.
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Jun 2, 2015 00:07
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Kai Tave posted:It still amazes me how salty people get over RPGnet having an off-topic GBS-esque subforum. I've lost track of the number of people decrying Tangency as some cancer killing discussions about games or petitioning for Tangency to be expunged from RPGnet as though the existence of a place for people to discuss E/N stuff and current events is a personal affront to them. It's sullied and awful, unlike "The Pundit's Own Forum" which is a pure and good 'free speech' off topic forum!
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Jun 2, 2015 00:10
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Mormon Star Wars posted:It's sullied and awful, unlike "The Pundit's Own Forum" which is a pure and good 'free speech' off topic forum! Where people can freely discuss Red Pills and Cultural Marxism without being immediately banned, as the Founding Fathers intended. 
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Jun 2, 2015 00:12
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