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General Exalted Thread

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Eldagusto said:
But Jesus man I don't want to stone him or Morke. What's the point of Prison if you want to just Crucify everyone regardless of offense or severity.

Let him build a gesture of contrition. If he acts bad then remember it. But what do you want him to do crawl under a rock and die?

People aren't allowed to change or heal or evolve? Are we really going to spit on a gesture of good Faith?
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Here's the thing. We haven't seen a gesture of good faith. He doesn't even admit what he's done.

I believe that art is separate from the artist. That's often meant to defend art by lousy people, but here's the flipside: producing good content doesn't make up for bad actions. It's not a gesture of good faith, even if you're giving it away for free.

And anyway, we're not crucifying him, just badmouthing him online.

hls said:
I have an entire email string where Matt McFarland investigated my claims about not having gotten a Werewolf 20th Anniversary author copy, and found out that only Ethan Skemp and I think one other person, maybe Eddy Webb, had gotten theirs, and that everyone else had also been stiffed and that I was not the only person who'd chased Rich around on the topic until they got sick of it and gave up.
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Care to share that email chain?
 
Sanctaphrax said:
If I knew nothing about the situation, I would find this to be a pretty convincing excuse!
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What exactly do you think you know about the situation?

I'm not asking for your acceptance, forgiveness, or anything else. I made what I thought was the best decision at the time given the limited options of "try to fix the situation as the boss just asked me to," "quit," or "go public and make a huge deal about it, very definitely deep-sixing my career in the process*." I decided to keep working and try to fix the problem. I made the call I made. I have never asked anyone to agree with the call I made then, or to trust me afterwards. Nobody owes anybody that.

*Yes, I'm aware of the irony.
 
I'll admit I'm biased towards Holden because I have a lot of good faith Built up from half a decade of Exalted work on Inkmonkeys. Hell I remember arguing with him like 12 years ago quite a lot because of my inability to grock perfect defenses, and I advocated that the Eye Autochthon was a craft screw up playing with petrified Fae and older brother to the Progenitor of the Mountainfolk. And I think others seeM to have Solid grievances against him. But I don't know exactly what happened as there was no police investigation.

But Sanctaphrax seems to have a pretty sober head on his shoulders and he miraculously is able to untangle a lot of Drama knots with just investigation excellencies.

But yeah I guess Holden never apologized precisely for everything. But he seems to not believe he owes an apology for several things. It's a complicated mess.

And I do think the E vs WoD is a gesture of good Faith though.
 
Exactly how is one supposed to fix an issue with harassment if you are unaware it is happening? Like, seriously guys, I was open about working on the project and several of the people most vocal about how dangerous John was (Once the ball got rolling on publicly outing these creeps) deliberately didn't tell me about it. And when you don't know who the victims are, or what was done, just unspecified creeping or indeed "flirting with freelancers" (NOT MY WORDING OR HOLDEN'S) then exactly what does one do? What is the best path through that?

(Not even accounting for 'was at a con with other devs and saw them hitting on fans and freelancers' and telling new folk which con is the best for getting laid, affecting what people consider appropriate in that specific workplace, or that there are multiple ongoing relationships between freelancers, devs, fans, and employees, and how that all counters any actual good sense you might have)

And I got the punt from rpgnet at the same time. I am likely the person he 'coached' which mods should know more than anyone, how utterly daft that is given my history (they are in the position of being able to see posts made previous to this pseudonym on a retired account). They were the ones PMing me in the weeks prior, asking for certain details or telling me I was appreciated, so I was very salty about it.

But if I were gonna put my foot down based on ethics I would be more concerned about a child rapist still getting invites to GoH at cons, still posting on OPP, and whose boss said precisely nothing about any of his crimes, or John's, but sure wants people to know that Holden worked slow. Because John isn't in the industry, doesn't work with Holden, and had NO hand in this, so at this point the vaunted moral outrage is "didn't light yourself on fire and quit when your boss tried to get you to laterally manage sexual harassment while providing no support". Because right now almost anyone working any of the big publishers is within two degrees of a missing stair, or someone who literally enabled abuse (via blacklisting victims, attacking them for speaking up, setting up women to work with a known predator, and attacking anyone who talked about him). Aim your ire at the folk bankrolling the abusers, or literally setting them up in positions of power, not the ones also working for 3c a word and angry emails.
 
Is that a moderator instruction, or just you personally wishing for a less acrimonious thread?

Because I'd like to answer Holden, but I do respect your right to not allow this crap here.

And let's be real, two Holden-related bans is enough for anyone.
 
Yes my friend best to drop it.


Everyone leave your knives and six shooters at the door.

What happened here Holden specifically came and proclaimed a no drama hands up position oiii. We were supposed to be talking about the E vs WoD.
 
hls said:
at the risk of looking like a complete dope, I cannot find the private message function on this interface
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No I had that same issue. I think it's start conversation and you choose a name/s to add. And I think it's private if you mark it to be. Still new here too.
 
Sanctaphrax said:
Is that a moderator instruction, or just you personally wishing for a less acrimonious thread?

Because I'd like to answer Holden, but I do respect your right to not allow this crap here.

And let's be real, two Holden-related bans is enough for anyone.
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I'm not here to tell you what you can or can not talk about.

What I am saying here is that if you wish for this thread to not degenerate further into a shitstorm that will then have to be locked, y'all can simmer the heck down.
hls said:
at the risk of looking like a complete dope, I cannot find the private message function on this interface
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Click on user's name or avatar, look for "start a conversation".
 
In other news I found the perfect Lunar, Otocyon Megalotis - eardog bigears in English. I have always wanted to run a social lunar whose primary defence was being adorable enough that people either underestimate them, or feel bad for disappointing/hurting them.
 
Ahhhh... At work so I can't actually read it, but if nothing else it should provide inspiration for some fanfics that, if I'm being honest, I'll never actually write.
 
Alright, I received the email string. Unless Holden is much better than I think he is at faking images, a bunch of people did indeed get jerked around on their free W20 copies.

Anyway, I don't feel completely right taking it to PM. I feel like I might actually be making the situation worse if I leave vague accusations hanging. Reading my own posts, they seem to imply worse than is deserved.

So, hopefully this will de-escalate the situation.

hls said:
What exactly do you think you know about the situation?
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Here's what I can say with confidence:

That for a long time you were very active in online conversations related to harassment, John Morke, and the problems of the RPG industry. You consistently defended the guy, and spun the issue to make everything seem as harmless as possible. Often, it seemed that you were trying to use other bad actors to distract attention or to make John look better by comparison.

Not raising a big career-ending stink is one thing. I believe you should've gone public, but I've never been in a situation like that, and I don't want to be too judgemental.

Being the guy's PR department is another matter. I get that he's your friend, but that just gives you a good motive. It doesn't make it okay.

hls said:
What is it you figure I did? A lot of people have tossed a lot of accusations around.
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The above, plus years of general toxicity. You're just not very nice!

Also, I have complaints regarding how you wrote and developed Exalted. Most of them, I can't reasonably expect an apology for. But there is one I hold against you: I don't believe that you believed the schedule you promised during the Kickstarter. I think you lied to us.

As you say, there are a lot of accusations around. I'm inclined to believe some of them. But these are the ones that come from me, and not from secondhand repetition.
 
Sanctaphrax said:
Here's what I can say with confidence:

That for a long time you were very active in online conversations related to harassment, John Morke, and the problems of the RPG industry. You consistently defended the guy, and spun the issue to make everything seem as harmless as possible. Often, it seemed that you were trying to use other bad actors to distract attention or to make John look better by comparison.
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Brother, I have never once denied that he was guilty, or denied what he did was dead-flat wrong. I don't care about who is a bigger smellier shithead than who.

I -did- step on an attempt by Green Ronin to run interference for their pet sex pest by listing like half a dozen different sex scandals in the industry and trying to make it sound like they all referred to John (none of them did). That is the only defense I've ever run. I don't generally get into qualifying specifics or quibbling definitions because harassment is harassment. It all hurts careers, demeans people, and has no fucking place in this hobby.

Not raising a big career-ending stink is one thing. I believe you should've gone public, but I've never been in a situation like that, and I don't want to be too judgemental.
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That's your prerogative, and I won't say you're wrong. All I can say is that 1) my boss would have taken it as a direct attack on him and his company, and would have burned my career to ashes. He did it to Plague of Hats for resigning over the Abyssals preview in private. 2) I was given to understand that at least one of the people involved wanted the matter resolved internally and without any public fuss. I'm not going to bullshit you, the motivating factor was that I preferred to try to rehab my friend and keep my career, but there also would have been ethical issues with just shoving it all out in public and setting the company on fire.

Being the guy's PR department is another matter. I get that he's your friend, but that just gives you a good motive. It doesn't make it okay.
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I don't run defense or make apologies for him. Colin Suleiman's friends spend a LOT of time asserting that I do, but that does not make it so.

The above, plus years of general toxicity. You're just not very nice!

Also, I have complaints regarding how you wrote and developed Exalted. Most of them, I can't reasonably expect an apology for. But there is one I hold against you: I don't believe that you believed the schedule you promised during the Kickstarter. I think you lied to us.
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I never promised a schedule during the Kickstarter. Rich Thomas did. The only delivery date I ever promised was "when it is done, and done right." But I'll do you one better: No, I never believed the schedules Rich kept announcing were possible, and we told Rich as much at the outset of the project. We told him EX3 would take two years to write, if we were going to do it right (which is indeed what it ended up taking). He then turned around and promised delivery of the finished book in six months, and then made another impossible promise during the KS. I thought if we hustled like mad bastards, maybe, just maybe, we could get within like six months of his second target but... no, it ended up taking the full two years.

What I did not anticipate was the book spending a whole damned additional year in art and layout. That's a process that took six to eight weeks under CCP North America. But the 9-15 month art and layout phase has since become a regular feature of literally every OPP book. I dunno what exactly is wrong with that part of their delivery pipeline, but something is.
 
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I'd be happy to leave it at that. No point letting this devolve all the way into he-said-he-said.

Except for this one thing:

hls said:
I never promised a schedule during the Kickstarter. Rich Thomas did. The only delivery date I ever promised was "when it is done, and done right." But I'll do you one better: No, I never believed the schedules Rich kept announcing were possible, and we told Rich as much at the outset of the project.
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Can we at least get an apology for playing along with the deception?

Because that is something I would take as a genuine gesture of good faith.
 
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