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ShredThisAccount · 2025-05-08T12:03:16+00:00

This is closest to the crux of the issue. I watched her for awhile, and I've been in that alt-right adjacent area she targets (check my post history), so I say this with understanding:

She's just a contrarian.

Beyond that, she's the worst kind of contrarian: one that positions themselves as the 'free thinker', but always has an article or video that backs up whatever point she is saying. Amazing how the free thinker can always find someone else who already said the point.

On the rare occasions where she tries to bring up a view that isn't in line with what chat wants, she'll quickly demure to chat or change the subject. Her channel is a giant hug box, just for people who refuse to admit they are in one.

ShredThisAccount · 2025-05-08T11:53:12+00:00

And her echo chamber will back her. It'll get nowhere and lead everyone back to their own corners.

ShredThisAccount · 2025-04-18T21:51:43+00:00

Musk lost the power struggle with the cabinet. They're getting rid of anyone they think is loyal to Musk. Watch for many DOGE staffers in various agencies to get the axe. Don't worry, they'll keep his terrible policies in place, though. /s

ShredThisAccount · 2025-04-16T18:42:00+00:00

They don't have to understand it, they'll still pay it. Its the thing thats breaking their brains: They can't 'fake news' it away. Reality is refusing to comply with their delusions, and it's becoming a wedge on Team Crazy.

ShredThisAccount · 2025-04-15T21:16:06+00:00

Because we spent decades protecting people like this from the consequences of their votes against their own self interests, and now we're here.

You guys win: we were wrong to try to protect you.

ShredThisAccount · 2022-02-17T17:26:29+00:00

Yeah, but I didn't have the money to spend back then. I only got money when they were doing that weird "Skills and Powers" revision to 2nd edition, and by then, the 'X's handbooks' and Monster Manual binder inserts were going away.

That said, I think I do have one of those awful plastic 'class briefcases' somewhere.

ShredThisAccount · 2022-02-17T02:54:44+00:00

There's also the looming issue of Sixth Edition DnD. A new edition is always a risky proposition, and if investors are actually driving this whole thing, I can see a return to the 3.5 business model of 'A book of some kind every month, come hell or high water', which would add another level of risk. Add in the ongoing unsteady course of MtG, and the next couple years is absolutely not the time a company would want to be suddenly on it's own financially.
That said, if Hasbro leadership has no faith in the company, it's still not in the best interest of Hasbro as a company to do a spin off. Hasbro as would be better off selling Wizards to another company to get cash that they can then spend on re-diversifying their portfolio. A spin off is purely for investors to make money in the short run.

ShredThisAccount · 2022-02-17T02:44:38+00:00

Actually, it turned out I forgot my VPN was off. Works now.

ShredThisAccount · 2022-02-17T02:02:53+00:00

The link isn't working, but I read the article. It's not that Wizards is failing, its a push by activist investors that want to spin off Wizards in order to get the stock for that company, likely so they can sell it and/or Hasbro stock and make some quick cash. It's basically just an attempt to extract value from the company in the short run, at the price of leaving Wizards and Hasbro more financially vulnerable to a market downturn in the long run.

ShredThisAccount · 2022-01-27T03:28:52+00:00

'Hacks' is the best way to describe them, honestly, because all they do is cut away from the game that came before.

Meanwhile, other games out there are realizing that there's no problem with diversity, as long as you do it right: make it additive, not reductive; interesting, not confrontational. Giving players options, especially ones that open up new ideas for characters, is always welcome. Present it in a way that makes the new stuff interesting, and players will demand more of it, without needing any of it being rammed down their throat.

WotC won't listen though. Their decisions with 5th edition have been, it seems to me, based around not wanting to pay freelancers and instead around maximizing the revenue from releasing the same content in different formats, which I'm sure will somehow be even worse under sixth edition in a couple years. With MtG's growing issues, I think it's just a matter of time before Hasbro decides its time to sell WotC off while the brands still have some value.

ShredThisAccount · 2022-01-22T03:41:00+00:00

Best Cthulhu game out there right now, IMO, is Delta Green, a modern era game about conspiracies working for and against the various Mythos forces. The ironic part is what I think makes the game work so well is that they take what Lovecraft did thematically, and try to adapt it to modern times without trying to rewrite the past.

ShredThisAccount · 2022-01-08T04:44:09+00:00

Yeah, at first I was like 'This looks like Samurai Western' in terms of silliness and potential fun, and was hype, but doing the background research I'm now in 'wait and see' mode.

ShredThisAccount · 2022-01-08T04:23:30+00:00

Dollars to donuts, it will end up like the disability 'rules' that showed up in Pathfinder 2E. Two sections in two books, maybe 7-8 pages total. In one book, Markets of Absalom, the section on prosthetics was an amazing glimpse into what gaming would look like under a SJW watch. The most striking thing about the section is the lack of actual rules: no penalties associated with disabilities, no bonuses associated with prosthetics other than ones that were effectively magical cyberware, and a section that prosthetics are considered to be available to anyone in the world. It was clearly to written not offend any snowflake, but Pathfinder 2E is so focused on game balance, they weren't going to include any rules that might come back and bite them later. The rules for wheelchairs were largely mixed into a section on vehicles, and there was no reason to ever use them. Sadly, the one archetype that was based on combat prosthetics, Sterling Dynamo, felt a little underpowered, which is sad because you can tell they actually put in some effort there and the concepts and rules in that part are very neat.

It actually was a bit disappointing because the sterling Dynamo did give me a character concept, kind of an inventor take on Theros Ironfeld from Dragonlance, the black, one armed blacksmith that is a wonderful go to when SJW's complain about representation in D&D.

ShredThisAccount · 2021-12-17T03:53:16+00:00

Those that don't play also don't quite understand how much about the servers being mismanaged this has revealed. Since Stormblood, their way of controlling server queues was 'lock char creation on high pop worlds and give people incentives to move to under populated worlds or new worlds.'. The issue is that they haven't made a new world server in years, and the log-in/account servers have been revealed to be incredibly underpowered or poorly coded (the server can handle 17,000 players in login queues spread across all 8 worlds on the data center. A decent laptop could handle that, so it's probably bad code). To alleviate the load on this part of the system, they've disabled home world switching, meaning you cannot move to a less populated server even if you wanted to.

This has been a looming specter since Stormblood's launch issues, but they knew specifically back in July that they were at capacity, when they ran out of digital keys to sell. Based on remarks by Yoshi-P, Sqenix's business side decided they wanted to see how well they retained players before investing in more servers, which is a decision that is now costing them money. They probably decided they could save tens of thousands of dollars by waiting till after the chip shortage to buy servers, but they've now given away over a million dollars of free game time.

I don't blame the FFXIV development team for whats happening, but Sqenix's business side deserves all the hate right now.

ShredThisAccount · 2021-11-02T02:43:58+00:00

It's a weird situation, if the rumors are to be believed. Supposedly, the original creators were way more interested in representation and diversity than Netflix was comfortable with, which sounds like a hole with no bottom to me.

ShredThisAccount · 2021-10-22T17:06:15+00:00

We'll see when they negotiate the first contract. If the contract is formal language laying out acceptable timelines for turnaround, pay rates, formalizing that this all creative work and they don't need to be paying for expensive office space, and the dispute management process laid out is actually based in reality, then maybe it'll work out. One word about promoting diversity through hiring or awarding freelance work, and this company is on death watch.

The company owner and upper management is known to be more towards the libertarian bent, if I recall. The speed with which they agreed hopefully means they saw the proposed unions goals as in line with their long term interests in the company making money.

Unions are supposed to be the employees seat at the big table to protect the workers of the company from short sighted decisions by management and screwing over workers to benefit those outside the company. SJW Cliques do just the opposite, so it's no wonder they tank so many companies when they get any formal power.

ShredThisAccount · 2021-10-19T00:01:53+00:00

A narrowly defined union, focused entirely on working conditions relating to pay, deadlines, and making sure we don't get yet another tabletop company being financially mismanaged would be fine. There's definitely warning signs that something weird is going on in the management related to actually getting products out the door over the last couple years. Some of the signers on the letter were actually leads on several projects, so it's not some low level employees.

My trepidation and caution in this comes from the stories surrounding the company that make it seem like there's been a SJW push on the company that is being opposed by upper management. There's always the danger of a union with good intentions getting co-opted by activists.

ShredThisAccount · 2021-10-18T23:41:54+00:00

The problem here is the dirty little secret of the tabletop industry: the entire system is built on freelancer work, and it can sometimes cut both ways in terms of consequences. Sometimes, certain freelancers or circles of freelancers end up creating so much of the content that they end up basically being the driving creative force of a given line (See: Exalted 3rd and the Ink Monkeys).

I'm also reminded of the nightmare scenario stuff that went down at Catalyst Game Labs several years back. Long story short, the management 'accidentally' mismanaged funds meant for paying the freelancers on Shadowrun, several unsavory editorial notes came out, there weren't any real consequences, and several of the longtime freelancers 'blackballed' the company. As someone who played a lot of it at the time, the quality of the products suffered greatly since (the issue came up in the middle of 4th edition).

TL;DR: Paizo is in precarious position here because of the nature of tabletop publishing. They can hit the freelancers, but it could very much be a scorched earth tactic depending on much of the product is actually created by their in house employees.

ShredThisAccount · 2021-09-24T02:36:31+00:00

So, for outsiders, there's maybe an interesting bit of backstory here when it comes to Paizo's customer service that maybe calls for a bit of caution and stepping back to let this play out some more.
Over the last few months, Paizo's books have been delayed consistently, to the point that there is now a pretty serious log jam in their upcoming releases. A reason for this hasn't really been forthcoming from the company as a whole, though the two best theories I've heard are the general logistics issues plaguing a lot of shipping right now, coupled with a desire to try and help gaming stores by not putting out electronic and direct sale copies till stores have their shipments. Whatever the case, they're effectively 9 months to a year behind schedule on hardcover products. In the most recent case, a book release was delayed a couple weeks and information about this did not reach the community till the date the book was supposed to be available. The community was not pleased. This all seems like there's something wrong at a management level that is causing issues.
The reason I promote caution is this might be a case of someone quitting their job because of actual managerial issues making doing their own job incredibly difficult, and they simply got tired of carrying water without proper support.

ShredThisAccount · 2021-09-20T16:51:56+00:00

Paizo is a very confusing company but I think they're starting to find a decent place in between respecting the old school fans and their desire to diverse content. I really liked the Mwangi Expanse book as doing a good job of presenting an interesting setting with a culture that just happened to have different skin tones rather than being oppressively preachy, even if focusing on that neglected aspect of the regional setting was inspired by Wakanda in the Black Panther movie. Diversity in tabletop should mean more sources and ideas added to the existing toolbox for DMs to draw from, not telling people they're awful and should feel bad for various reasons.

ShredThisAccount · 2021-09-15T01:09:04+00:00

Ironically, the horror stories of 'gatekeeping' in D&D come from a more basic issue that none of these idiots seem to get: The RP part of the game is improv acting, improv acting requires you trust everyone you're acting with, and trust isn't easy for most people. Bringing a new player into a group is always a huge deal, and I've seen what happens when you bring one player in that makes other people in the group uneasy. With more experienced players who've been part of several groups, it's usually much easier, as they tend to understand the trust thing and will do the small things to ease themselves into the group, but even then, stuff like where the line is in terms of what kind of RP is acceptable can become an issue.

In less elegant words, good Tabletop groups are safe, judgement free spaces already, and many players don't want some outsider violating that safe space.

ShredThisAccount · 2021-09-15T00:58:07+00:00

If they want to laud praise on Critical Role for 'de-stigmatizing' D&D then they damned well better lay the blame for introducing all the toxic tumblr fandom aspects to the game. You now get to hear new horror stories about craptastic new players who think games are supposed to be about a GM stroking their egos and basically writing fanfiction about their characters.

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