WHY I SUPPORT ZAK

 

WHY I SUPPORT

 

 

 ZAK

 

I think I finally am fully on board. It took a long time, and a lot of looking things up and reading comments and statements and talking to people and asking questions, but I think it is as clear as I can get it.

Read it and then the pertinent other bits are at the bottom.

My Experiences

Initially I was introduced to LotFP by my father by way of the Veins of the Earth.

After a half year or so series of sessions, the group decided to do other things.

But my mind was still on fire. I had begun to watch people free solo, began to watch caving videos and documentaries. I started thinking about dungeons as underground spaces like caverns, and eventually began to obsess over the simplicity I had experienced when making my character for lamentations. In AD&D, Into The Odd, Rifts, and Savage Worlds, making characters had been the worst thing ever. The mechanics were long and referring to the rulebook was a necessity. Death was scarce or not even really a possibility. Not in lamentations.

So about a year after the sessions I asked my father if I could borrow Veins to read about the creatures and things I had encountered since we would likely never play there again.

It blew up my head.

The 100 art piece civilopede list.

The climbing rules.

The CREATURES!

I started to work on something vague.

About two years later, I had more ideas but all were still vague, and I got my own copy of Veins of the Earth. I was familiar with most all of it from my first reading, but now that I had a copy I read it as closely as possible, and tried to understand some more of the mysteries. I tried to grok the Der0, marveled at how much the Aelf-Adal had went over my head, looked in depth at the I search the body chart and tried out the caving maps.

Something that stood out.

The acknowledgments.

I recognized none of the names.

I went and looked at Patrick Stuart's blogposts about the veins.

I went and looked at Scraps princess's blog.

I went and looked at Qelong.

I went and looked at goblinpunch.

And most importantly I looked up Zak.

I saw Patrick and Scrap’s posts about him and went and looked at Mandy’s statement.

I thought, ok, Zak is now a BAD person.

I read Deep Carbon Observatory.

I read LotFP Rules and Magic, and got my fathers Kinko-bound copy.

I read Fire on the Velvet Horizon.

I saw a lot of great work from Patrick.

My dad got Silent Titans and told me about it.

Eventually I read Maze of the Blue Medusa, and thought “My dad bought this before Zak was outed as an abuser, So I Can Read It, Mostly for Patrick and his wonderful prose and vision.”

It is and was my favorite RPG book ever.

And I could see Patrick’s touch, his words, his descriptors.

But then a crack formed.

I looked at the art.

I saw Zak’s art.

And I looked up his other books.

And A Red and Pleasant Land was where my dad got my moms class from, the Alice, when we played LotFP.

And Vornheim was a quintessential part of LotFP.

And so was the rewrite of Death Frost Doom.

And Frostbitten and Mutilated looked good, and won awards.

And so I wondered, "Should I read these?"

"They are linked to the people I like, and were all done before the allegations became public."

And so MotBM was read in soft copy because my dad owned it, but here it gets messy.

I thought, “I do not want to support Zak S, but I want to see what he did irregardless.”

So I went online and stole his work. I stooped so low as the Trove and the 4chan RPG board, looking online and asking anyone if they knew where copies could be found, because I did not want to give money to an abuser.

I found a PDF of Vornheim, a PDF of A Red and Pleasant Land, and searched high and low for a pirated PDF of Frostbitten and Mutilated, and eventually found them.

I read them.

And suddenly, I saw Zak’s voice in Maze of the Blue Medusa.

I saw his art better.

And I was entranced.

Evil or not I thought, this is the best of the best.

And then I researched.

Why is his stuff so good? Why did so many support him? Who is he really?

I reread Patrick and Scrap's statements.

I read many others takes and posts and comments and experiences.

I read about what LotFP did and didn't do.

I reread Mandy’s statement.

And then I did what most everyone else seemed to not do, and read Zak’s statement.

It was like the ending to a chapter, with a cliffhanger suddenly resolved. All the fight left me and simultaneously came back, as I realized that Zak had evidence.

I looked at all the other things I had read, had believed. None had evidence.

I tried to find I Hit It With My Axe.

Gone.

I tried to find any evidence against him.

I couldn't find anything incriminating.

I started to think about my gripes with other RPG creator's work.

I thought about how it seems they only had a couple people play it or work on it, but they obviously did not playtest it right, or include what was actually needed to play. Some seemed to never even playtest their work!

I thought about Zak's work and art, and looked at his many pieces of art in galleries on their websites. I read blogposts. I saw his influence everywhere.

I realized his work was good because it came from actually playing and making his work usable by him, and thinking about how others would use it.

I did not see this in all of Patrick’s work.

So I began to think that maybe this inability to fully test or make sure things worked or this reluctance to comment and alter and change and push forward was what everyone I disliked had.

I saw storygamers and 3.5 and 4 and 5 edition D&D saying Zak was bad. I saw people who made ill conceived games and had twitter names that changed every week. I saw little spheres of influence, and inbred design, echo chambers by design.

In short, I began to see what is and was going wrong with RPGs and in particular the OSR.

So I decided to support Zak.

And lo and behold, when I finally reached out to buy Cube World PDFs, he responded. When I asked questions on his blogposts he responded. If he made assertions, he included evidence. I have continued to buy every Cube World as soon as they came out, I bought a PDF of A Red and Pleasant Land, A PDF of Frostbitten and Mutilated. I asked him questions by email and he responded. He began to post a series of what happened to Vampire the Masquerade's fifth edition.

It sickened me what people had done, with all the lies and misinformation, with all the fear-mongering and harassment.

It made me so disheartened to see people I have to call part of my community being sexist, and transphobic, and sex-negative, and racist, and just generally ruining everything because it doesn't jive with their petty and arrogant worldview.

And the posts just got worst and worse.

Everything was going down a dark hole, and Zak had been trying to prevent so much and had been weathering the storm for so long. Pearlholders and Trolls in Frostbitten and Mutilated were written about his experiences with the gaming community and it’s many problem players, its many liars and abusers and trolls. It was bleeding into HIS WORK.

And I wanted to help.

But I was scared.

I had seen that he was a no-mention subject in OSR discord, in OSR Reddit, On RPGnet.

I knew that there were people who would do what they could to harass me, or remove me, or otherwise prevent me speaking out.

Around this time I had spend a whole summer between semesters working on RPG things, and planned and still plan to finish and release them, but this clinging fear of supporting Zak and getting removed from the public eye made me hesitate.

Then Zak made this post.

dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2021/04/now-it-can-be-told-if-any-of-you-care.html

And I was and am very proud to be one of the 100.

Then Zak released Cube World #32 and later #33.

This is what it said.

The price for this one is special: it's free but you have to write a review of a Zak product to get it. The review can be good or bad but must be at least 200 words, it has to be on a gamer forum or gamer-specific social media site (not your blog or other space) and must be free of any factual errors. Screencap your review and email me to get the pdf.

And so I began to write a review.

I worked very hard on it, and tried to convey as much as I could about how much the whole situation has affected Zak but still do a good review.

I tried to submit it to RPGnet.

The response I got was unbelievably disquieting.

 

Me: "I submitted a review two weeks ago, and was wondering if that is the amount of time it takes, or if should continue to wait for it to be posted.  I saw most people in the review thread saying it takes about a week to two, but that was a long time ago, and I would like to have this review posted eventually. Anyways, thank you for taking the time to read this, would love to know what happened!"

Miss Atomic Bomb (EDITOR IN CHIEF): "Your review was rejected because we don't accept reviews of products by Zak Smith. The system should have shown you a rejection message; I'll look into why it didn't."

Me: "ok, thank you. Out of curiosity, is this rule posted anywhere? Is there a list of people not allowed? Also, why is Zak not accepted?"

Miss Atomic Bomb (EDITOR IN CHIEF):"Zak Smith is, among other things, permanently banned on this site. Thus, no reviews."

 

If one looks at the reason he is banned, it becomes scary, as the mod who banned him was Ettin.

If one looks up Ettin, you find he is a mod on SomethingAwful, and him and the SomethingAwful people are notoriously active trolls.

And I saw that I could not post here.

I could not post on the OSR Discord, The OSR reddit.

In short, I was being censored.

Eventually I posted it here.

https://www.reddit.com/r/RPGreview/comments/nonmph/review_cube_world_23_screaming_lake/

I messaged Zak about all this as it was happening. He helped me find a place by giving some suggestions, and basically told me along the way, figure something out if those don't work.

And this push in the right direction got me to understand that his whole thing is not permanent, it could be reversed to some extent.

When someone posted legal action updates and LAUGHED in Zak's and Mike's Demon City Kickstarter comments, I was furious.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/diyrpgproductions/demon-city-the-ultimate-horror-rpg/comments 

What was linked, laughed at, and totally harassment,

https://mobile.twitter.com/IHeartFargo/status/1388264231305424905/photo/1 

 

Then Zak made this post.

http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-whole-story-on-mike-mearls.html

I am proud to be someone who submitted things, and hopefully someday 100 actually submit.

I asked Zak about some of the claims these people made.

I said,

I did something small a while back.

But additionally I wanted to speak on the twitter stuff as well, but need to be pointed to the post where you remarked on it/need to be informed by you if they are saying anything factually inaccurate.

That way I can link/refute with proof.

His response was, 

 Thanks!

Bohl said it's "bullshit"--that's obviously not true.

Proof:

https://officialzsannouncements.blogspot.com/

https://officialzsannouncements.blogspot.com/2020/04/i-got-public-apology-and-cash.html

I'm appealing it, that's important, fwiw I've never eaten at a chik-fil-a-

-Z

I then engaged the people who were linked in Zak’s Kickstarter comments, on Twitter.

Guess what they did in response?

They did one or many of four things:

#1 Nothing.

#2 Said they could say what they wanted without repercussions.

#3 Insulted me and/or Zak.

 #4 Blocked me.

No evidence, any actual attempt to respond was just assertions without backing or pointless rudeness.

Most of them, even months and months later, have never responded or concluded our conversations. 

After fact-checking what I perceived to be erroneous claims on twitter and receiving no response backed by anything but name-calling and hot air, my question became,

HOW IS THIS ADULT DISCOURSE?

HOW IS THERE STILL NO RESPONSES THAT CONTAIN FACTS OR PROOF OR EVIDENCE?

 

So this is the kind of thing that began to cement my full belief in Zak being innocent, and their being no doubt that these people were knowingly lying or internationally misinforming or trolling. I have seen so many instances of this, and so much incoherence, that at this juncture, I have no choice but to support the rational, evidenced-based side.

What made it ironclad is further conversations with others and Zak. Eventually the polite thing I kept getting hung up on was catching every time I tried to convince others and myself. 

The blogpost I first started going round and round with Zak over is here. https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=2638993969706011706&postID=3719504812543476728&bpli=1

After a long talk much later, it became obvious to me that in reality, it is much more important to tell the truth than to worry about niceties, and this is something I have been and will continue to try to rectify. Too often in today "modern" world, being truthful or honest is seen as impolite.

If you make people mad by being honest and trying to make sure they are being honest, then they were up to no good. Of course, in low stakes conversations or assertions it may be socially acceptable to gloss over things, but really, this serves no good, and with bigger and more dangerous problems, it is DEADLY. 

Trying to appeal to emotions is not safe, especially when people say things that can affect other people in SERIOUS ways purely because of how they feel about that person. When you add zero evidence and people playing the telephone game and constantly saying "I heard" and "allegedly" it becomes obvious that being honest is MUCH more important than being polite, nice, or otherwise prim and proper.

And so any qualms I have ever had with Zak are at rest.

The bottom line is that all these bannings and hate tinged views do not take both sides into account, and presume Zak guilty before he is proven innocent. This is not how our legal system works, and to do this by forcing false narratives and refusing to answer questions, mention him by name, and general disregard of his stance, rights, and evidence is extremely unfair and a miscarriage of justice.

I am reminded of this

I used to hang around with rappers at the root of the scene
It meant a lot to feel the fugitive community breathe
Maybe to sentimentalize is to be truly naive
I know some shit about your heroes that you wouldn't believe
I think we're all a bunch of weirdos on a quest to belong
The songs are echolocation up in impregnable fog
That's why it's odd to see a pile of imperfections and flaws
Ascend a pedestal to patronize the rest of the cogs
And a mess of obnoxious fantasy, posturing and pageantry
I ain't even mad, I'm impressed, shit it's baffling
God almighty chop an ivory tower to piano keys
Play your own dirge on the way to surfin' maggot beach
You fuckin' dorks ain't a source of the art
You can't be cooler than the corners
Where you source all your parts
The poker face, all it takes a couple sordid remarks
We let the manticore out, We make the sorcery bark
Life is so unfair, party over here, I'll be over there 

    Aesop Rock, Dorks 

 

 

 

Please ask questions in comments, I desperately want there to be discussion around this, because it is so vitally important. 

Anonymous comments will be screencapped, archived, then deleted.

Normal comments will be answered or read, then screencapped.

If you ask a question, I will respond, and I would appreciate anyone engaging to do the same. 

Namecalling, First strike attacks, and any kind of racism, sexism, or otherwise nastiness will be deleted. After being screencapped.

As of right now, I have no comments anywhere on this blog.

Rest assured, from this point on, these rules apply, and I will be watching comments closely.

I will have additional posts linked below, One with screencaps as evidence and other older screencaps other people did, along with links to things that are pertinent - One with questions and some thoughts that don't fit here and with questions for anybody I mention that has things to answer for, EVEN ZAK- and finally, a post about communicating with Zak's witnesses.

SUPPORTING EVIDENCE- https://systematicrules.blogspot.com/2021/10/supporting-evidence.html

QUESTIONS AND SOME THOUGHTS- https://systematicrules.blogspot.com/2021/10/questions-and-some-thoughts.html

WITNESS VERIFICATION- https://systematicrules.blogspot.com/2021/10/asking-witnesses.html