Nazi vampires, begone from this place!

August 1, 2018 12:02 AM

With controversy surrounding the latest edition of the table top rpg Vampire: The Masquerade a new forward in the game book will explicitly condemn fascism and white supremacist ideology and an appendix will give advice on playing a game with mature themes.
posted by fearfulsymmetry (37 comments total)

I think the author for the first article really buried the goods pretty far down behind some pretty superficial reading. The stuff about the new company hiring a Gamergater and blithely saying they investigated and cleared him - that’s solid investigation and a real problem. The part where they think the Sabbat are designed to be neo-nazis or that the use of the Humanity metric - which was done away with years ago and replaced by other virtues - is the only way to be ethical in vampire gaming is weiiiiird. That part really reads like someone who played Camarilla a little bit about two decades ago and hasn’t touched it since.

However, that new statement is awesome.

we have a global community and that everybody is welcome in that community.

“Unless you are a Nazi,” Carl continued, “or a neo-Nazi, or a member of any other hate group that uses these disgusting philosophies to advance your hateful agendas.

posted by corb at 4:41 AM on August 1, 2018 [7 favorites]

And how does one play the Technocracy?
posted by Apocryphon at 5:07 AM on August 1, 2018 [1 favorite]

I think the author for the first article really buried the goods pretty far down behind some pretty superficial reading

Almost as if the author's grievance is with that particular writer, and this new game provides a convenient vehicle to prosecute that grievance. (Zak Smith previously.)
posted by zamboni at 5:24 AM on August 1, 2018 [4 favorites]

>And how does one play the Technocracy?

As the unsung heroes, of course.
posted by a power-tie-wearing she-capitalist at 5:45 AM on August 1, 2018 [6 favorites]

"I think the author for the first article really buried the goods pretty far down behind some pretty superficial reading."

Pretty much like the Vampire books themselves.
posted by Billiken at 7:40 AM on August 1, 2018

Man somebody has to explain that Zach dude to me because apparently he's a goobergate-supporting serial harasser and a lovable, ceative The Toast contributor at the same time.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 8:03 AM on August 1, 2018 [3 favorites]

Man somebody has to explain that Zach dude to me because apparently he's a goobergate-supporting serial harasser and a lovable, ceative The Toast contributor at the same time.

For MeFi's last go-round with the Zak S situation, see the 2014 post Gender-inclusive language in D&D 5e raises roleplaying questions.
posted by zamboni at 8:33 AM on August 1, 2018 [2 favorites]

And how does one play the Technocracy?

Oh that's easy. Old-school Soviets in a world where the USSR won. Originally setting out to revolutionize the world, eventually the ideals are drowned out by corruption and power.

The NWO maps to the KGB, Iteration X has a very Soviet "industrialize at any cost" attitude, Progenerators are living embodiments of Lysenkoism, and even the $yndicate can fit into Marxist economic theory.

And since the Soviets have that rose-tinted nostalgia factor, you can even run a sympathetic Technocracy game.
posted by happyroach at 8:48 AM on August 1, 2018 [8 favorites]

Man, can someone provide some context around that first link, it's making my head spin. Nearly 10,000 words and I have no idea what it's trying to convey. All these weird parentheticals and repetitions of phrase and paragraphs of 'evidence' that don't support the summary conclusions. It's wicked axe-grindy and since it's unsigned and in the wayback machine, I can't even look up who wrote it. Seems like a barely sourced hit piece from someone with too much emotional investment in a tabletop game.
posted by Fidel Cashflow at 8:58 AM on August 1, 2018 [6 favorites]

Jason Carl led development and production of the live-action books for Vampire and Werewolf a few years back. I'm friends with a big chunk of those teams, so while I don't work in gaming I saw a lot of it happen in my orbit. They made a big priority out of trying to repair and rehabilitate a lot of the unexamined racism, sexism, and general stereotyping of the original source material. The original game write-ups of so many of the clans, tribes, etc. were basically "Here, play this ethnic stereotype!" and it hasn't gotten any cuter with age. The team was deeply conscious of that and wanted to repair what they could, and I think it shows in those books.

I haven't spoken to Jason in a couple years and I don't know who if anyone else from the live-action teams are on this project, but it's very hard for me to imagine him wanting to take any steps backward from that direction.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:00 AM on August 1, 2018 [5 favorites]

I believe the author of the first article pulled it because he was being harassed. We're you aware of that when you assembled the post? That's why it is only available in the archive.
posted by quillbreaker at 10:01 AM on August 1, 2018

I believe the author of the first article pulled it because he was being harassed.

The author spent almost 10,000 words coming up with a dozen ways to insinuate that a handful of people are Nazis and pedophiles based on the thinnest evidence. It just reads to me like character assassination. How did they not expect blow-back?
posted by Fidel Cashflow at 10:08 AM on August 1, 2018 [3 favorites]

I didn't really want to jump in on this but ever since the new White Wolf started talking about what they'd bought (or what Paradox had bought for them, more accurately), it's been a procession of red flags. Early optimism (of which I was possessed, foolishly) has given way to the effects of approving references to werewolves as cryptofascists and numerous bits of edgelordery that suggest the new WW team is a bunch of 90's edgelords for whom the transgressive and often gross bits were the appeal originally. Good people don't want to make a new edition of World of Darkness: Gypsies, you know?

The original piece gets some details wrong, and that's really bad- for a post like that, you need your shit impeccable. But nothing about the allegations is out of line with what's been flowing forth from White Wolf over the past couple of years, and as somebody who's been watching closely in that time, they were far, far more right than wrong.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:15 AM on August 1, 2018 [5 favorites]

I will say, be careful here, Fearfulsymmetry et al. Last time I posted a thing here involving Zak S. (2014, that long ago really?), even as a part of a broader thing, he did notice, and sent his usual internet harassment party my way. (Ended up at one point getting a screenshot of him just linking to the above prior MeFi thread with the directive: "DESTROY.")

Handily, I'm not his preferred type of target, so they moved on fairly quickly (I've gotten worse doxxings from Tory politicians), but, y'know, as a heads-up. He's prone to namesearching, watches Metafilter, and has no qualms directing abuse against what he sees as justified targets.
posted by CrystalDave at 10:31 AM on August 1, 2018 [9 favorites]

The other thing I would note is that the kind of LARP beloved by the new White Wolf people is nothing at all like the Mind's Eye Theater LARPs that White Wolf (and now By Night Studios) has supported for twenty-five years. BNS (of which the aforementioned Jason Carl is CEO) bought the license to make new MET rules from CCP (the former owners of White Wolf) and the impression that I get is that new White Wolf doesn't care about MET at all and is happy to let BNS do their thing for the time being.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:52 AM on August 1, 2018 [1 favorite]

After spending an inordinately large amount of time on looking into this I have come to the following conclusions:

1. The world is not lacking in creative people;
2. The world has an overabundance of harassing shitholes.

That Zach whoever whom I had not heard of before today is apparently a rather creative dude who is a systematic harasser and doxxer.

If the world loses one creative dude who is a serial harasser, nothing much is lost.
If the world endorses serial harasses because they are ceative, an untold number of other creative people may be suppressed as a result.

Therefore, fuck that random fuck.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 10:55 AM on August 1, 2018 [19 favorites]

the impression that I get is that new White Wolf doesn't care about MET at all and is happy to let BNS do their thing for the time being.

This has been my impression, too, and I wasn't sure how to articulate it or if I should include it in my comment above. The license has been sent out in a few different directions, some for good and it seems some maybe not so much. Like I said, it's super far-fetched to me to think Jason is down with going fascist on a new game, but I also don't know the internal politics of the project, who is on it and why, etc.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 11:11 AM on August 1, 2018

Yes, Fidel, it's a shit article. I had to.dissect it for some friends prior. My issue is with dragging it back into the light when the author shut down his whole blog because of the responses to it.
posted by quillbreaker at 12:17 PM on August 1, 2018 [2 favorites]

The Polygon article comments makes repeated references to 1488 but nobody seems to indicate where they actually put 1488 in any game documents. It that just horseshit?
posted by Megafly at 2:29 PM on August 1, 2018 [1 favorite]

Thank you, we had no idea, the link you provided is great help! The numbers are in the V5 Alpha playtest document we released at GenCon 2017.

posted by zamboni at 2:53 PM on August 1, 2018 [1 favorite]

Jesus fucking Christ how did I lose so much of my day to investigating years-old claims of shitbaggery in role playing games.
posted by klangklangston at 3:28 PM on August 1, 2018 [2 favorites]

Zak Smith is a guy who makes art and pornography, plays tabletop RPGs, and writes about all of them. He’s not a GamerGator and he’s never doxed anyone, but he is argumentative. Can we call it good on the Zak Smith derail?
posted by um at 3:56 PM on August 1, 2018 [1 favorite]

Anyway here's the /r/rpg thread where Zak got caught impersonating Shannon Applecline to say nice things about himself.
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:13 PM on August 1, 2018 [4 favorites]

he’s never doxed anyone
I'm standing right here, you know. (Well, metaphorically.)
posted by CrystalDave at 4:17 PM on August 1, 2018 [11 favorites]

Zak Smith is a guy who makes art and pornography, plays tabletop RPGs, and writes about all of them. He’s not a GamerGator and he’s never doxed anyone, but he is argumentative. Can we call it good on the Zak Smith derail?

Zak Smith has attacked and directed attacks against several people, and some of those attacks included doxxing. He's a serial harasser, and as good serial harassers do he's built up a nice network of people who will blindly defend him and counterattack accusers, and as CrystalDave notes he likes to spend time looking for people who say things about him. He has harassed and directed harassment against Mefites based on things that were posted here on Metafilter. Some of those people are right here in this thread, so it would be nice if people who find themselves predisposed to dismiss victims could at least take that shit off-site.
posted by IAmUnaware at 5:18 PM on August 1, 2018 [11 favorites]

So does the current printing of the Brujah Clan in this edition mention neo nazi's and the alt right still? I'm unclear if they changed that or not.
posted by gryftir at 6:33 PM on August 1, 2018 [1 favorite]

If you really want to be exhausted: A Timeline of the Zac Wars.
posted by Zed at 1:13 AM on August 2, 2018

I recommend reading that link Zed posted as a reflection of the irrelevant nonsense people whip themselves up to in true testosterone levels, and how this dude is a shithead.

I'm sorry, um, but you are empirically wrong.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 1:56 AM on August 2, 2018

I'm so confused about Zak S. there was a post of an interview of him and everyone was gushing at the progressive nerd, now he's an harasser. Guess his "network" is doing its job. I will edge on the side of douchebag for the time being.
As for Vampire, I'm starting a V20 campaign this month, we're old we don't want to dabble in a new edition when V20 has pretty much everything that's neat about VtM in a nice clean package. The rules are good enough and the setting, besides the general clan philosophies, is all optional as far as i'm concerned. This "gothic punk" world is vague enough that you can make whatever you want out of it.
posted by SageLeVoid at 5:44 AM on August 2, 2018

Ken Hite is the lead developer on Vampire 5th and has very consistently been on the record as hating nazis.
posted by Zed at 8:30 AM on August 2, 2018

Ken Hite is amazing so it's hilarious people think Vampire is some sort of weird crypto-nazi scam. I think the issue here is they got rid of a lot of their previous writers, people at Onyx Path, etc, and those people are loud and angry.
posted by chunking express at 10:23 AM on August 2, 2018

In the original playtest Ken Hite named the Brujah weakness (tldr, one thing that can happen to vampires is flying into an uncontrollable violent rage and Brujah are particularly prone to it) "Triggered" and when people told him that that's messed up his response was that that's just what "triggered" means. I love his work but he's very much a proud Ted Cruz fan.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:42 AM on August 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

Oh hey so uh

V5 has explicit rules for manipulating someone into going further than they wanted to during a sexually or sensually intimate encounter (opposed [Charisma or Manipulation] + Performance vs Composure + Insight, page 310). So. That's... a thing.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:15 PM on August 3, 2018 [4 favorites]

If you are playing with people that want to play Rape Vampires is that on the game or the people you hang out with?
posted by chunking express at 6:04 AM on August 7, 2018

Making up rules for that exact situation is definitely on the game itself.
posted by tobascodagama at 8:21 AM on August 7, 2018 [2 favorites]

Is that why the rules exist, though? I have zero interest in Vampire. I made it through the 90s without playing it—a real feat—and this new edition also basically interests me not at all. I have even less interest in playing games where rape is a thing that comes up. It's not really my bag. But i'm not everyone. Some people want to play super heavy games with dark themes and all that jazz. Games need not be for everyone. Games can be for adults who want to explore whatever fucked up thing they want to explore. As noted in this post, this rule book has a whole chapter about how to game about darker topics in a safe way. So, back to my original point: if you're playing with people who want to play Rape Vampires and you aren't down for that nonsense, that's on you and your friends, not on Ken Hite.
posted by chunking express at 5:44 PM on August 7, 2018

That dogwithdice article reads like some weird Infowars Screed. I don't understand how people read that and are all, "yep, seems legit."

It's hard to take criticism of this game seriously because it all reads like a mix of people projecting interpersonal issues they have with people loosely connected to the game onto the game itself. Holden Shearer, who Pope Guilty links to above, is an RPGNet mod who has some long standing beef with Zak Smith. He's friends with Oliva Hill, who used to work at Oynx Path on the previous editions of Vampire related junk, who also has a long standing beef with Zak. (And is likely sour about no longer working on Vampire, and having a person she dislikes working on things related to the game instead.) Like, maybe to some random outsider the woke white people on twitter complaining about this sound totally sensible, but there is a lot of weird inside baseball here. These aren't disinterested parties talking about a game.

(Of course, I know Zak and so I'm not a disinterested party either. I just think i'm not a dope, though.)
posted by chunking express at 6:19 PM on August 7, 2018 [1 favorite]