Piracy, the Trove and how they affect the Hobby

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The whole "publicly available" thing feels like a red herring. I might, if I really put my mind to it, be able to find someone's phone number and a photo of their house. Actually doing so, let alone posting it, is still pretty creepy.
Same here. I am pretty public about my identity online. I use my last name as my account name almost everywhere, and my last name is extremely rare. I use a portrait of myself as my avatar. You can easily get my first name from an RPG book I worked on. And I am the only person on Earth with my first and last name combination. Anyone who spends five minutes can find me.

At the same time, if someone made a deliberate post giving my personal identity, I can't see other way to take it than as threat by the person doing so. The only reason to do it is to make someone feel unsafe in their own home.
 
Same here. I am pretty public about my identity online. I use my last name as my account name almost everywhere, and my last name is extremely rare. I use a portrait of myself as my avatar. You can easily get my first name from an RPG book I worked on. And I am the only person on Earth with my first and last name combination. Anyone who spends five minutes can find me.

At the same time, if someone made a deliberate post giving my personal identity, I can't see other way to take it than as threat by the person doing so. The only reason to do it is to make someone feel unsafe in their own home.
I'm not disagreeing with any of that.
 
Honestly, I think Pundit's an absolute joke of a little man, but I haven't seen or heard any allegations that match the way Fox operates. His main issue seems to be that he behaves like an idiot online and that his marketing is based on behaving like an idiot.

He reminds me a lot of Arnold Rimmer. And like Rimmer, his only crime is being RPGPundit and that's also his punishment.
 
I'm pretty sure that people could easily use the information I've said about myself here and find my real name (based on things I've said about my job, I have a very outwardly facing online position for the company I work for). I don't care too much about it really, like if someone found me elsewhere and was like "oh hey are you Emperor Norton on rpgpub" I'd be like "oh yeah I am!", or if someone here PMed me asking if I was x person from somewhere else where my name is publicly known I wouldn't care. But if someone publicly posted my real name here I would definitely be a little peeved.
 
I'm pretty sure that people could easily use the information I've said about myself here and find my real name (based on things I've said about my job, I have a very outwardly facing online position for the company I work for). I don't care too much about it really, like if someone found me elsewhere and was like "oh hey are you Emperor Norton on rpgpub" I'd be like "oh yeah I am!", or if someone here PMed me asking if I was x person from somewhere else where my name is publicly known I wouldn't care. But if someone publicly posted my real name here I would definitely be a little peeved.
If you don't want your name to be known you shouldn't issue your own currency.
 
On itch.io, creators will often have "hardship copies" available. Sometimes they will add a hardship copy (or more than one) to the kitty whenever someone buys a copy. That's a pretty cool system, IMO.
In general itch.io seems to foster a pretty cool community. Lots of free stuff, those community copies, plenty of money going to the creators, visually interesting store pages, all kinds of games, from weird storytelling solo diary avantgarde to hack & slash. As commercial venues go, it seems pretty cool.

The RPG industry still needs a better collaboration spirit and venue, though. Both writers and visual artists.
 
The thing that's weird to me about Jennifer Aniston is that he has these two distinct public personae that (at least to me) don't seem very compatible. On the one hand we've got the Hunter S. Thompson-pastiche shtick of being ultra-aggressive and foulmouthed and constantly going on frothing and overzealous attack against enemies real or perceived and declaring anyone who disagrees with him or even the most minor of points to be swine or a cunt and, in recent years, elevating his rhetoric into an even more hyperbolic frenzy by declaring disagreements about elfgames to be a literal front in an apocalyptic cultural war between the civilization of Enlightenment values and barbaric Maoism (and drawing a cadre of followers to his forum who apparently feel the same way). And on the other hand we've got a seemingly-easygoing New Age guru guy who's all about yoga and meditation and shit (admittedly I'm way less familiar with this persona so I'm likely missing some nuances here).

There's so little apparent common ground here that I can see why he tries to maintain a wall between the two, because it feels like at least one of them has to be a put-on, and that people who follow one (either one) would, when confronted with the other, have to wonder whether they're the ones being had. Maybe they are both sincere and he could explain how they are compatible and represent different aspects of a single consistent worldview or whatever, but the fact that (at least AFAIK - and I confess I haven't been following him very closely for the past ~5 years so maybe I'm wrong on this point) he doesn't do that and instead attacks and suppresses anyone who points out that the other one exists (note: I know that persona #1 does this, I don't know if persona #2 is the same way or not) makes it all seem fishier and more suspicious, at least to me.

The Pundit shtick was already so exaggerated and overblown that it already felt like an act to me even before I learned about the other persona. But once I did it felt like puzzle pieces clicking together. I used to hope he would drop that "performance art" character and just discuss games like a normal person, but at this point I realize that will never happen because, even if it is all a put-on and he doesn't really believe it, he's got way too much invested in the Pundit "brand" to ever let it go.
 
Hard disagree. He lies about himself constantly. I suspect he lies about others as well. I will also say that Daniel Fox has categorically denied many of Pundit's charges. The foum I used to own used the same software he is using for therpgshite. Posting to a user's account, resetting the password, taking control of the account, etc., just before banning it, all are easy using the SMF software. I've also noticed that while people have made claims about certain posts from Daniel's IP there, they've never posted screenshots. Again, sus. Just knowing what I know about that software. I may be wrong, I admit, but it seems weird to me that you wouldn't just SHOW THE PROOF if you have it.

I'm usually of the opinion that there are two sides to every story, and then there's the truth. The whole Fox-Pundit sitch is probably no different IMO.

He's still Nisarg. Fun fact: rpgpundit.com redirects to his "Swami Nisarg" YouTube channel.

I agree, but if you have posted your own info in public forums, you can't really expect that no one will see or repeat it. Not saying it's nice to do so.
Dan White (One Horse Town) was a Mod then and he has talked about the shit Daniel Fox did and tried to do. If anything, the stuff Pundit has claimed isn’t all of it.

Him I trust.
 
I've seen people on therpgshite allude to his not wanting those two personas to overlap. Which is why I find it so weird that he would point the Pundejo URL at his salamisalamibaloney YouTube channel.
 
I'm pretty sure that people could easily use the information I've said about myself here and find my real name (based on things I've said about my job, I have a very outwardly facing online position for the company I work for). I don't care too much about it really, like if someone found me elsewhere and was like "oh hey are you Emperor Norton on rpgpub" I'd be like "oh yeah I am!", or if someone here PMed me asking if I was x person from somewhere else where my name is publicly known I wouldn't care. But if someone publicly posted my real name here I would definitely be a little peeved.
I'd be more than a little.
 
Dan White (One Horse Town) was a Mod then and he has talked about the shit Daniel Fox did and tried to do. If anything, the stuff Pundit has claimed isn’t all of it.

Him I trust.
As I said, I might be wrong. But absent hard proof one way or another, who can say. I don't know Dan White to trust him or not, but again, monkeying with peoples accounts is ridiculously easy using the Simple Machine Software. It's entirely possible than Dan or anyone else for that matter, was shown posts that seemed legit. Is that what happened? I couldn't say it is. I also couldn't say that either party in the Fox-Pundit feud is giving the full, unvarnished truth.
 
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I've seen people on therpgshite allude to his not wanting those two personas to overlap. Which is why I find it so weird that he would point the Pundejo URL at his salamisalamibaloney YouTube channel.
Do we know that rpgpundit.com is actually registered to him and wasn't scooped up by one of his enemies as a way to fuck with him?
 
Do we know that rpgpundit.com is actually registered to him and wasn't scooped up by one of his enemies as a way to fuck with him?
No. But why register it, and then not draw any attention to it for years if the intent was to fuck with him? Hardly an effective trolling.

Edit: domain squatter, maybe? Doubtful, but maybe.
 
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Do we know that rpgpundit.com is actually registered to him and wasn't scooped up by one of his enemies as a way to fuck with him?
Pretty sure it’s someone trying to fuck with him since it links the two personas. Of course the person who registered it, did it through a domain proxy so he stays anonymous.
 
Pretty sure it’s someone trying to fuck with him since it links the two personas. Of course the person who registered it, did it through a domain proxy so he stays anonymous.
Yeah but therpgshite registration is anonymous as well. I mean, why not go the anonymous route, it's not like it costs anything. It's didn't cost me, anyway, when I owned my site.
 
Pretty sure it’s someone trying to fuck with him since it links the two personas. Of course the person who registered it, did it through a domain proxy so he stays anonymous.
It's certainly the most logical explanation.
 
Maybe I'm just not as aggressive as the Pundit, or maybe I just don't have as much of a platform as he does... but I still rub a lot of people the wrong way. (Case in point.) And I've got real-life reasons to protect my identity, or at least to protect my current legal/digital identities from association with my prior legal/digital identities... that I knowingly only do a half-assed job of protecting, because I don't like hiding who I am or presenting a false image to the world.

It would be trivial to doxx me, and it would compromise my personal security in a meaningful way. There are some people out there who would do it just because they can, or just because they believe they're on a righteous crusade. Point fucking blank, saying that it's okay to do this to the RPGPundit because he's a "bad man" is saying that it might be okay to do this to me because, for some arbitrary reason, you've decided (even temporarily) that I'm a bad man.

No. There are Right and Wrong behaviors, and they are clear and simple. We only get confused when we label people Good and Evil so that we can rationalize our own Wrong behavior against people we don't want to have to treat Right.
 
Meanwhile, Tristram's earlier post has me off to watch 'The Singing Ringing Tree' again.

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That movie has one foot in "delightful classic fairytale" and the other in "Pure Nightmare Fuel". I love it.

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Why are we talking about the Pundit again?


There's so little apparent common ground here that I can see why he tries to maintain a wall between the two, because it feels like at least one of them has to be a put-on, and that people who follow one (either one) would, when confronted with the other, have to wonder whether they're the ones being had. (…)

The Pundit shtick was already so exaggerated and overblown that it already felt like an act to me even before I learned about the other persona.
There is no wall. And Pundit is not a schtick. I assure you: he is absolutely true to his convictions offline.

Definitely less inclined to profanity, gracious even as a host and quasi-tour guide, but still very much the juxtaposition.

I would actually dispute the “New Age” label and suggest that he sees himself as serious, learned occultist. The best template for the Pundit persona is a 19th-century liberal arts intellectual — the anticlerical Freemason enamored of Western occultism and Eastern mysticism.
 
I've always used my real name on-line except that one place but there's a Swedish rock star who shares my name so you really have to dig to actually find me.
 
T The Butcher thanks for that additional info. I feel like that added context helps me understand him a little better. Alas, that understanding if anything makes me like him even less...
Funnily enough he mellowed out on me after we met and went out for coffee when I was in Montevideo. Then one day we disagreed over something and it all went downhill again. *shrug*

But that was before he doubled down on the politics and threw his lot with the alt-right.

Ah well. The empanadas were great.
 
I don't use my real name on forums, but I have used the exact same user name on, I'm pretty sure, every forum I've ever posted on, from Warhammer to Basketball to RPGs. I don't think I'd be hard to find. Wait .. shit.
 
Why are we talking about the Pundit again?



There is no wall. And Pundit is not a schtick. I assure you: he is absolutely true to his convictions offline.

Definitely less inclined to profanity, gracious even as a host and quasi-tour guide, but still very much the juxtaposition.

I would actually dispute the “New Age” label and suggest that he sees himself as serious, learned occultist. The best template for the Pundit persona is a 19th-century liberal arts intellectual — the anticlerical Freemason enamored of Western occultism and Eastern mysticism.
So... Bipolar.
 
I don't use my real name on forums, but I have used the exact same user name on, I'm pretty sure, every forum I've ever posted on, from Warhammer to Basketball to RPGs. I don't think I'd be hard to find. Wait .. shit.
I'm the complete opposite. Every forum I'm on for my different interests gets a different screen name, and I try hard not to cross the streams. There are certain people from my past I would just as rather not have any further association with, and avoiding repercussions from random asshats online who think I like the wrong RPGs or whatever is a bonus.
 
I'm the complete opposite. Every forum I'm on for my different interests gets a different screen name, and I try hard not to cross the streams. There are certain people from my past I would just as rather not have any further association with, and avoiding repercussions from random asshats online who think I like the wrong RPGs or whatever is a bonus.
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I am not really very good at keeping a low profile. I do try, but sometimes I get lazy. It wouldn't be too hard to find my info tbh. Anyone in my life who would be swayed by a "doxxing" of me probably thinks I'm an asshole already, and anyone who wouldn't be I'm not worried about. But that's just me. Just the same, I do fly under the radar when I can. As I said, I've had my deets in the hands of some f'd up people, I'm not really worried about it. I totally understand why some people are, and what is potentially at stake. I've had online frenz trust me with their IRL info before, and so far, I haven't violated that trust.
 
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