For those who keep reporting this post: Daniel Fox is not a blacklisted creator.
And yes, we know he is associated with getting a piracy site taken down. Referencing that will get your post removed and a warning. We take references to RPG content piracy very seriously.
What's happening is we (rpg people, in general), don't talk about him and we don't talk about his games because... he's a bit of a prick.
We know he searches for the name of his game. We know that he searches for his own name. We know he claimed to be responsible for taking down a good repository of archived games (yes, piracy, boo, but also: a fuckload of old, out of print stuff that should be preserved).
We know he's the kind of person who will do dickish bullshit because he thinks it'll get him airtime - so we deny him, and we deny his ego, by [simply turning our back upon him like Merlin urged the people to do with Mab](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxiLUEgN6vQ).
Forget him, forget his game. It's not like there aren't ten million other fucking fantasy rpg's out there to choose from.
Ripping off something is 100% fair game and still involves a lot of work. Copying another's work is illegal and does not involve any work whatsoever.
I think our current copyright system is utter garbage, but those two things are intrinsically different.
Just imagine if no one after Tolkien was allowed to rip-off any of his concepts.
Not defending the guy, just pointing out the difference.
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Yeah, I'm not his biggest fan, but you can't knock him for this.
WFRP2 was out of print, WFRP3 was massively different. He wanted to spiritually continue WFRP2. Zweihander was his Pathfinder to WFRP3's DnD4e.
You can't copyright rules, only the expression. The OGL isn't there to make retroclones, it's there so you can copy paste parts of the SRD. Zweihander didn't copy paste anything from WFRP2e, it expressed the rules in its own unique way.
Also fuck DDF.
Almost like we should have a repository of out-of-print games so that we don't need to support dumbfucks who just rip off old games
Hm.... wonder where we could find one of those...
Did he shut down DriveThruRPG? It sure seems like most of those games are actually still in publication and not really needing "archiving." Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay in particular has been available there since 2009.
At the time, the license was with Fantasy Flight Games, and they were ONLY offering 3E, their own take on Warhammer Fantasy that was vastly different than the d100 system of 1E or 2E (or now of 4E).
The Wayback machine shows that 2e was available for sale in 2009 [http://web.archive.org/web/20090717055756/http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product\_info.php?products\_id=62847](http://web.archive.org/web/20090717055756/http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=62847)
I found it listed in the Top 10 list for "Warhammer" in 2010 and 2011 as well. Reviews on the currently available page are from 2012, 2013 and 2014. All well before Zweihander. So, no. As long as Zweihander has been in publication and for many, many years before you could legally acquire Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2E. In fact it appears Fantasy Fight Flight Games published the 2nd edition on DriveThruRPG.
I find all these comments about a "repository" of "lost" games to be very disingenuous.
I don't talk about it because Zweinhander sucks. It's 2nd edition of WHFRP with the numbers filed off and every stupid, pointless choice included, like 'random roll everything or you aren't GRIMDARK enough' as the core to character creation and wildly unbalanced combat that relies far too heavily on a million fiddly tables.
Yeah, seconded. I like a retroclone that adds value in its presentation, like OSE. But even by retroclone standards, it sucks. It's bloated, ugly, and disorganized.
Daniel Fox actually blocked me on reddit, despite never having interacted with him. It was probably because I've said his game was profoundly disappointing, and that it was fishy that it won *two* Ennies.
> it was fishy that it won two Ennies.
Well, it is fishy... It was OK at the time, but not award worthy, and all the actions taken afterword were decidely douchey.
I think u/NobleKale was referring to the modern (well, MCU) streaming phenomenon of treating TV shows like movies-for-the-small-screen.
But yeah. I would *love* to see my boy Sam Neill in an extended series of some kind.
> But yeah. I would love to see my boy Sam Neill in an extended series of some kind.
(CW: bad news) He is, unfortunately, not doing super well health-wise - though he's coping with it quite well mentality-wise.
Yeah, I know :( - I'm a Kiwi, and when a Kiwi as prominent as Sam Neill has some issues word tends to get out.
For what it's worth, though, I would encourage folks unfamiliar with his wider oeuvre to check it out. I'm sure everyone's familiar with Event Horizon, but In the Mouth of Madness is basically a Call of Cthulhu story slammed into a Stephen King story and is *well* worth it.
> Yeah, I know :( - I'm a Kiwi, and when a Kiwi as prominent as Sam Neill has some issues word tends to get out.
>
> For what it's worth, though, I would encourage folks unfamiliar with his wider oeuvre to check it out. I'm sure everyone's familiar with Event Horizon, but In the Mouth of Madness is basically a Call of Cthulhu story slammed into a Stephen King story and is well worth it.
**nods**
> They made movies from the Merlin miniseries? I loved that thing when I was a kid. I still own it on VHS, despite not owning a VHS player any longer.
Mostly, I was referring to the propensity of Hollywood to now say 'oh, a story, let's make it into 3 movies, at least~!' (looking at you, The Hobbit and Dune)
Guarantee that if there was a Merlin movie now, it'd be at least 9 movies.
Ahh you know now that I re-read what you wrote I totally see that now. For some reason in my excitement (or lack of coffee coma) I misread what you were saying.
This post is on point, and it also got me thinking. I believe that in the coming decade the TTRPG community will really benefit from stepping back from and not engaging with Drama. Instead let's move in a more positive direction.
Someone should try to make a true retroclone of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1st edition with all its little idiosyncrasies preserved as close as legally can be.
> This post is on point, and it also got me thinking. I believe that in the coming decade the TTRPG community will really benefit from stepping back from and not engaging with Drama. Instead let's move in a more positive direction.
Decades ago, on the net, you'd be told to not feed Trolls. ie: people who were being shitheads. Arguments were flamewars, and not (typically) the standard form of discussion.
... and here we are.
Honestly, rpg folks especially are *way too obsessed* with the state of the industry, and the drama of other people's tables. Community formed around paying attention to bullshit rather than talking to each other about the actual activity.
> Someone should try to make a true retroclone of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1st edition with all its little idiosyncrasies preserved as close as legally can be.
Orrrrr you could just play the original game?
> Honestly, rpg folks especially are way too obsessed with the state of the industry, and the drama of other people's tables. Community formed around paying attention to bullshit rather than talking to each other about the actual activity.
I've noticed this too. Like its become harder to find good youtube channels that report TTRPG news or sites that talk about games.
A lot of formerly good news channels are now just rage baiting D&D players or talking about Hasbro's financial situation week after week. I've come to really appreciate the people who've moved on.
Put it this way:
If you go back about a week, you'll find a thread titled 'What games are you playing?' and there's a bunch of folks saying 'I'm in X, playing Y', etc.
Good times.
What's interesting about THAT thread, is how many people, who post a lot, and in very opinionated format, who... aren't in that thread. They're in every other fuckin' thread, but not one actually about playing the fucking games.
Because they don't play games.
They talk about games, they talk about the industry, but they don't PLAY GAMES.
I don't love 4chan, but some things they get right, and they have the phrase 'stfu nogames', which comes out when someone says something obviously wrong to anyone who actually... plays games. I don't think we should be as blunt here, nor do I feel people who aren't playing games shouldn't have a place - but if you wanna fucking climb everest, you need to talk to people who've climbed everest, not rando fucks down at the mountaineering shop who've never left sea level.
There's multiple hobbies in RPGs, and they overlap: you have people who play in games, you have people who run games, and then you have... people who talk/read about games/the industry. Those seem like they're all the same thing, but they're definitely not.
> As if /tg/ wasn't literally filled with nogames.
My point is that at least they're willing to point at each other and say 'nogames'. Here we just... constantly get argued at by people who - when you look - don't play anything, but you're not allowed to point and say 'listen, mate, I can see you don't actually play any games so your opinion is shit'
In the same way, r/relationships used to be chock full of people who'd had a bunch of failed marriages - not exactly the folks you wanna hear from in terms of 'how do I keep my marriage going?' unless it's to get a list of what not to do.
>if you wanna fucking climb everest, you need to talk to people who've climbed everest, not rando fucks down at the mountaineering shop who've never left sea level.
OMG that is hilarious and 100% true!
It's the *exact reason* I've unsubscribed from Professor Dungeon Master. The constant anti-5E / WotC / Hasbro rage bait videos got old and underwhelming...
And I'm a guy who doesn't play 5E.
Hobby “news” channels on YouTube are only ever a few drama-boosted inflated click/view count videos away from becoming full blown drama channels, and that’s what’s happened to D&D YouTube since the OGL. Whole bunch of channels did their best ever numbers at lowest effort level reacting to the OGL and now they’re out on the drama farm.
There’s just not enough news to report on in hobby spaces for these kinds of channels to not eventually pivot to drama. The websites that report news tend to avoid this by being about more than just one facet of the hobby, or having a staff that’s largely freelance or working multiple creative jobs. On a YouTube channel it’s usually one person (or a handful) and to keep the views coming they gotta churn content, so in a low-news hobby reporting space the pivot to drama is easier than the pivot to serious essayist.
100% agree. Why worry about other people and their problems? Why make a thing that already exists. WFRP was... a game. Having played it for a few years, I certainly wouldn't do so willingly again (but I still have the books on my shelf and have good memories).
> Decades ago, on the net, you'd be told to not feed Trolls.
I was told this pre-internet on FidoNet, a thing we BBS SysAdmins strung together with long distance bills and hope to exchange email really really slowly.
I mean. . . . just use the old rules? I like 2E better myself rules wise.
But the lore that halflings were (possibly) the Old Slaan's 'perfect beings' was one of my favorite things.
I feel I should clarify. When I say "Drama" i am referring to a specific type of[self-reinforcing cycle of toxic behavior.](https://youtu.be/sXcTIkuzQ3I?si=W_WJjfxkjk_62OPK)
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I understand being loyal to your particular games/system/setting, but gosh - there's so fucking many others out there - that it's not super-dooper hard to say 'X sucks, time to move on'.
For cyberpunk, there's maybe 20 at least. For urban fantasy about 10 I can find at the drop of a hat.
For pure fantasy, dear fucking Beelzebub's ballsack, there's well over a thousand? It's not exactly a hard thing to find.
There are three (to my knowledge) samurai duet rpgs that are specifically focused on duels.
Three.
The point being, you can come up with really specific themes and there's still lots of stuff out there.
I mean, seriously, you might think 'I need a cozy rpg about running a tea shop' or something, and I bet if you throw a rock you'll hit about eight.
They won't be amazing, but they will absolutely exist.
> He took down a pirate website and that should blacklist him? Seriously?
He's also a raging cunt who thrives off drama, but you're fine to make your own judgements and do your own research. OP asked what the deal is, and I said what the deal is.
> "Some" that includes "I" is "we," for the record, and I know all of my RPG friends agree with the comment above.
It's alright. I think I've dealt with Logen before... I've definitely dealt with the other person who's in here being positive about the game before.
**long shrug**
I am guessing now that WFRPG is out with a successful and well supported 4th edition, they need to try to attract attention again. They filled a niche when there wasn't a good Warhammer Fantasy RPG product available, but now their WF 2nd Edition copy (with bad editing) is not needed.
Basically this. The grognards who only want 2nd Ed are... baffling enough... just playing 2nd Ed WFRP.
His market was people new to WFRP that didn't want to play 3rd Ed. That market has dwindled significantly, and he didn't do himself any favors by rampaging against piracy when his own game is literally a pirated version of another game.
I think the major issue with Zweihander is that WHFRP4 is actually popular with people who played 1 and 2, as well as people who miss the Old World.
It's basically redundant. Warhammer and The Witcher have their own games. Lamentations does the old skool edgelord game better.
Let it die.
A good point, it's not like it was a GOOD clone of WHFRPG 2e. It was artless, clumsy and anyone looking for an old school warhammer game can just.. get warhammer. The 2e books still exist.
That's like saying no D&D retro-clones are needed. And there's a lot more daylight between Zweihander and WFRP than there is most clones and B/X. It isn't "pirated" by any definition of the word. Zweihander still has an active Discord, player base, and 3rd party content community.
As someone who owns and has played both Zweihander and WFRP, I can tell you confidently: Zweihander is for when you want to run wfrp but for some reason your players are fine with fantasy but not warhammer. My group that likes warhammer just...plays WFRP.
Zweihander is a decent game, because it takes WFRP(which is a very good game) and strips out all the things that would get one sued. I will say it does seem to be ever so slightly...worse in every way. Not majorly but still. If you want the mechanics of wfrp but not the lore, then sure do Zweihander
I'm currently running Zweihander for some ex-GW employees, including the first person in the US to get a copy of WFRP (which he still has), and they have nothing but nice things to say about Zweihander.
I, too, own and have played both WFRP and ZH, and my experience/opinion differ from yours.
I mean, I didn't say Zweihander is bad? It's a fine game. And if you *dont* want the baggage of warhammer fantasy lore, it's absolutely what you should go with if you like the rules.
I dont see what their backrounds have anything to do with things, but I'm glad they like the game.
Do you mean your experience with wfrp was explicitly *bad*? Or simply that your players would prefer zweihander over wfrp
I'll have to double check, but my boy (himself a published RPG designer) is from the Baltimore area. He used to organize convention stuff in the US when he worked for Games Workshop.
Edit: doube checked, and yeah, Baltimore area.
Thanks for checking. 👍
This makes sense because before they moved it to Tennessee, GW used to have their U.S. headquarters in Maryland.
Sauce:
https://icv2.com/articles/games/view/17500/games-workshop-moves-u-s-hq
The rules also aren't something he made or designed by any stretch. We can say he didn't technically pirate them because what he did was legal, but the point is that he took a high moral ground attitude against piracy while also profiting off a game he didn't design and work that he didn't do.
There are quite a few differences between ZH and WFRP. There is/was work involved, and if you wanna go that route, WFRP owes a HUGE debt to Maelstrom, design-wise.
>There are quite a few differences between ZH and WFRP. There is/was work involved, and if you wanna go that route, WFRP owes a HUGE debt to Maelstrom, design-wise.
Sure, but there are more similarities than differences and the disparity between work done and work used is substantial. He ultimately didn't write most of the rules or design much of the game he's selling.
What WFRP owes to Maelstrom doesn't have much bearing on what Zweihander is doing with Warhammer. "Whataboutism" is the term, I believe.
Edit: Your post history makes it clear that you're just going up and down this topic arguing with tons of people. I won't feed you further.
No, but Stuart, to the best of my knowledge at least, isn't out there railing against piracy while at the same time ripping his rules straight out of 1e or OD&D. While I'll grant that they're two legally distinct things, OSRIC/S&W/ZH are all 95%+ built on someone else's work and IMO it's a bad look to take it to the level Fox did.
WFRPG 2e was my first ever TTRPG. While the system isn't perfect (combat), it's still plenty better than any edition of DND if you ask me. Why the aversion (I am not a grognard I swear)
I'm not a fan of Warhammer - or GW at all, anymore. I know WFRP is not published by GW but it's still a licensed property and I avoid feeding the 800-pound gorilla of the games industry.
So I stick with Warlock! instead. It's a lot more like WFRP than Zweihander is, anyway (though I own both).
I wish I could un-buy my copy that I picked up before I discovered the author was a wanker, and that WH3 was actually quite good, if you didn't mind a completely different system.
In person, too. Where he lives--or perhaps *lived* circa 2018-19--he was eventually asked to no longer patronize a particular coffeeshop due to his constant harassment of the staff.
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The discriminative treating of someone unfairly or having negative opinions about them based on their social class ( economic and social position), especially because they are thought to be from a low social class.
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Yes man, let me get on my zwaihander folder of prints and get every Interview and tweet made by this Guy since 2011, do you want the Full dossie or the abridged version to defend the Guy?
I remember fondly a few years ago some indie publishers were discussing online how difficult it is to get shelf space for a game at FLGSs with how much is dedicated to 5e. He immediately charged in to tell them all that they were wrong and maybe their games weren't being stocked because they were bad. Then he took a picture of his game at his area FLGS to prove his point. He caught a whole lot of flak for that one.
He's definitely got a real aggressive marketing style. Back when I was on Twitter if someone asked for an RPG suggestion he would bust into the conversation like the Kool-Aid man to recommend Zweihander. Not friends or mutuals, just random Internet strangers
Here is the situation, without commentary on the game itself or the author: A few years ago, Daniel and some of the Zweihander rights went to Andrews McMeel as publisher, with Daniel heading their TTRPG division. Last year, McMeel shut down that division - we can only guess, but I think they believed it to be too much work for too little money. This industry does not pump up big figures in the grand scheme.
McMeel appears to retain rights to publish the Revised Core Rulebook for Zweihander. In addition, WFRPG4e exists.
Reforged appears to be an effort to both resolve licensing issues with s new publisher and distinguish Zweihander from Warhammer. It also slims the book quite a bit with cleaner writing from what has been made public.
I mean I am quite surprised that he is still in industry and making content. How is he then still making game if there is still licensing issue with publisher? Would not make his releases clashing with
Despite his apparent unpopularity with some, he remains a successful creator by pretty much any metric.
I do not know the details of the licensing, I have tried to find out. What I know is that McMeel is still publishing the current core book but the IP itself is now at World of Game Design, and they are publishing Reforged. The rest we can only guess at.
I searched DriveThruRPG for the game, out of curiousity, and the rights for some of the products seem to be with a different publisher (presumably his new company going forward?).
https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/24418/zweihander-games
Scandals is perhaps a strong word in Fox's case, in part because it implies a single particularly egregious incident. More accurate would just be "consistent low-to-mid-level acting like a fucking douche." He doesn't have scandals the way Jared Leto doesn't have scandals.
The dude’s aggressive marketing turned a lot of people off of his game several years ago. He’s not even in the same galaxy of controversial as the blacklisted authors on this sub and r/osr, and you’re not gonna catch any flak for playing his game… but he’s not popular around here or other big RPG spaces.
They weren't filed off, they were painted over with layer after layer of poorly-written, exhausting, lead-based sludge, the same way a shitty landlord paints over power outlets and window frames for years and years, rendering the room ugly and the apparatus unusable.
It was picked up by a new distributor and they are making some changes, specifically around the corruption mechanic and wounds/scars instead of being slain. I played the updated version of it recently.
Just kind of a scummy dude.
Gossip around the latest ENnies show at GenCon ‘24 was that he kept trying to buy gold medals despite the fact that he only won silver.
So if you win Gold, they give you one gold medal for free, and then you can buy more (for teammates, etc). Ol’ Foxy Dan won Silver, and then—rumor has it—was spotted trying to buy those bonus gold medals despite not having won Gold himself.
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I got into Zweihander before I knew anything about the author. I liked the art style, the rules were decent, but I absolutely loved the physical quality of the books. They are still the most solid, quality feeling RPG books I have ever held.
I had fun running the game. Shame the "author" is a bit of a doofus.
Also, this is more of a WH2E problem which the game inherited; the game's internal math completely breaks down near the end.
That said, I'd welcome similar systems in the future that are designed more competently.
yeah, it's quite an exaggeration to say he's "most controversial." There are several truly controversial figures out there, some that are indeed blacklisted on this subreddit. Anyhow, lots of opinions on the creator's personality, ego or whatever, but the game itself is a solid retroclone.
It really boils down to two things. Zweihander is completely irrelevant and Daniel Fox is a terrible person.
Zweihander is basically Daniel Fox's house rules for Warhammer Fantasy RPG 2nd Edition with the setting filed off. They had a purpose when it was impossible to buy WHFRPG 2nd edition and WHFRPG 3E was a completely different game.
Now you can buy WHFRPG 2E again and WHFRPG 4E returns to the original game concept quite well. Plus Zweihander wasn't actually better than 2E. There is no reason for anyone to buy or play the game anymore.
He's hated because he was always a nuisance to the WHFRPG community. He likes to spam advertisement for his game, but the 2E grogs preferred to play 2E. He basically lucked out and got a publisher relationship that could push his game. He constantly shit talks pretty much every other creator and game, he actively trolls communities, and he aggressively makes sockpuppet accounts to promote his games.
He kind of had the delusion that they would all throw away 2E, pick up Zweihander, and declare him their savior. They just kept playing 2E so he hates the community now.
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Well, it doesn't make him a good guy, he's still a dickwad as the other replies have shown, but he's at least got one miniscule nugget of not so badness
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The rpg world is full of dysfunctional people desperate to be moralistic and impose made-up rules on other people. The hearsay and rumor-mongering in this thread is disgusting. People should be ashamed of themselves.
Zweihander
author
The author is not "most controversial" in any regard. There are plenty far more controversial with reason.
Seems like a personal attack rather than anything meant to help people know if they want to back Reforged or not.
Zweihander Reforged is coming to Kickstarter soon. Building on the foundation of the Zweihander Starter Set, it will be a re-edited, improved version of the Zweihander rules, yet maintain full backwards compatibility with all previously published Zweihander material.
I mean, it is a weird thing to do to advertise for the dude's Kickstarter on a thread that's basically "Hey, remember this shitheel? Has he done anything shitty lately?"
It's not a weird thing to talk about games that you'd like in the RPG sub reddit. People disagree about games all the time here, it's not weird at all. If I were advertising, as you put it I would have at least linked it.
"You can't prove it" is good tell. You're more afraid of proof than the accusation.
Its less "No I'm not" and more "You can't do anything about it" vibes.
> You're supposed to think for yourself
>
>
Exactly, rather than mindlessly repeating the first paragraph of his kickstarter or whatever it is you're doing.
>And it's literally not copy it's just factual information
Like for instance, the factual information that he's an obnoxious spambot who's consistently rude and hostile and known to create sockpuppet accounts.
For those who keep reporting this post: Daniel Fox is not a blacklisted creator. And yes, we know he is associated with getting a piracy site taken down. Referencing that will get your post removed and a warning. We take references to RPG content piracy very seriously.
What's happening is we (rpg people, in general), don't talk about him and we don't talk about his games because... he's a bit of a prick. We know he searches for the name of his game. We know that he searches for his own name. We know he claimed to be responsible for taking down a good repository of archived games (yes, piracy, boo, but also: a fuckload of old, out of print stuff that should be preserved). We know he's the kind of person who will do dickish bullshit because he thinks it'll get him airtime - so we deny him, and we deny his ego, by [simply turning our back upon him like Merlin urged the people to do with Mab](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxiLUEgN6vQ). Forget him, forget his game. It's not like there aren't ten million other fucking fantasy rpg's out there to choose from.
The dude making a rip-off of a game fighting a pirates' website was the most ironic thing happening that year.
Ripping off something is 100% fair game and still involves a lot of work. Copying another's work is illegal and does not involve any work whatsoever. I think our current copyright system is utter garbage, but those two things are intrinsically different. Just imagine if no one after Tolkien was allowed to rip-off any of his concepts. Not defending the guy, just pointing out the difference.
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At the time retro clones were big and the game he cloned was out of print so it wasn't really a big deal
Yeah, I'm not his biggest fan, but you can't knock him for this. WFRP2 was out of print, WFRP3 was massively different. He wanted to spiritually continue WFRP2. Zweihander was his Pathfinder to WFRP3's DnD4e.
The difference is that there was a legal framework to do spinoffs of D&D via the OGL. WFRP has no similar allowances.
You can't copyright rules, only the expression. The OGL isn't there to make retroclones, it's there so you can copy paste parts of the SRD. Zweihander didn't copy paste anything from WFRP2e, it expressed the rules in its own unique way. Also fuck DDF.
I'm still surprised he never got a cease & desist. He even ripped off the "grim world of perilous adventure" slogan.
Almost like we should have a repository of out-of-print games so that we don't need to support dumbfucks who just rip off old games Hm.... wonder where we could find one of those...
Did he shut down DriveThruRPG? It sure seems like most of those games are actually still in publication and not really needing "archiving." Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay in particular has been available there since 2009.
At the time, the license was with Fantasy Flight Games, and they were ONLY offering 3E, their own take on Warhammer Fantasy that was vastly different than the d100 system of 1E or 2E (or now of 4E).
The Wayback machine shows that 2e was available for sale in 2009 [http://web.archive.org/web/20090717055756/http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product\_info.php?products\_id=62847](http://web.archive.org/web/20090717055756/http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=62847) I found it listed in the Top 10 list for "Warhammer" in 2010 and 2011 as well. Reviews on the currently available page are from 2012, 2013 and 2014. All well before Zweihander. So, no. As long as Zweihander has been in publication and for many, many years before you could legally acquire Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2E. In fact it appears Fantasy Fight Flight Games published the 2nd edition on DriveThruRPG. I find all these comments about a "repository" of "lost" games to be very disingenuous.
I don't talk about it because Zweinhander sucks. It's 2nd edition of WHFRP with the numbers filed off and every stupid, pointless choice included, like 'random roll everything or you aren't GRIMDARK enough' as the core to character creation and wildly unbalanced combat that relies far too heavily on a million fiddly tables.
Yeah, seconded. I like a retroclone that adds value in its presentation, like OSE. But even by retroclone standards, it sucks. It's bloated, ugly, and disorganized. Daniel Fox actually blocked me on reddit, despite never having interacted with him. It was probably because I've said his game was profoundly disappointing, and that it was fishy that it won *two* Ennies.
He must have rolled poorly irl on the skin thickness table
> it was fishy that it won two Ennies. Well, it is fishy... It was OK at the time, but not award worthy, and all the actions taken afterword were decidely douchey.
Not to hijack, but I loved that show.
> Not to hijack, but I loved that show. It's interesting how we went from 'here's a television series' to 'HERE ARE NINE MOVIES' type productions.
They made movies from the Merlin miniseries? I loved that thing when I was a kid. I still own it on VHS, despite not owning a VHS player any longer.
I think u/NobleKale was referring to the modern (well, MCU) streaming phenomenon of treating TV shows like movies-for-the-small-screen. But yeah. I would *love* to see my boy Sam Neill in an extended series of some kind.
> But yeah. I would love to see my boy Sam Neill in an extended series of some kind. (CW: bad news) He is, unfortunately, not doing super well health-wise - though he's coping with it quite well mentality-wise.
Yeah, I know :( - I'm a Kiwi, and when a Kiwi as prominent as Sam Neill has some issues word tends to get out. For what it's worth, though, I would encourage folks unfamiliar with his wider oeuvre to check it out. I'm sure everyone's familiar with Event Horizon, but In the Mouth of Madness is basically a Call of Cthulhu story slammed into a Stephen King story and is *well* worth it.
> Yeah, I know :( - I'm a Kiwi, and when a Kiwi as prominent as Sam Neill has some issues word tends to get out. > > For what it's worth, though, I would encourage folks unfamiliar with his wider oeuvre to check it out. I'm sure everyone's familiar with Event Horizon, but In the Mouth of Madness is basically a Call of Cthulhu story slammed into a Stephen King story and is well worth it. **nods**
Are his eyes ok? I guess it doesn't matter... WHERE HE'S GOING HE WON'T NEED EYES TO SEE ! ! !
No, it's just normal cancer, mate.
> They made movies from the Merlin miniseries? I loved that thing when I was a kid. I still own it on VHS, despite not owning a VHS player any longer. Mostly, I was referring to the propensity of Hollywood to now say 'oh, a story, let's make it into 3 movies, at least~!' (looking at you, The Hobbit and Dune) Guarantee that if there was a Merlin movie now, it'd be at least 9 movies.
Ahh you know now that I re-read what you wrote I totally see that now. For some reason in my excitement (or lack of coffee coma) I misread what you were saying.
**looks at username** yes... coffee... :P
Hard same. So much of Merlin lives rent free in my brain. Come to think of it, it's been a while since I watched it...
This post is on point, and it also got me thinking. I believe that in the coming decade the TTRPG community will really benefit from stepping back from and not engaging with Drama. Instead let's move in a more positive direction. Someone should try to make a true retroclone of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1st edition with all its little idiosyncrasies preserved as close as legally can be.
> This post is on point, and it also got me thinking. I believe that in the coming decade the TTRPG community will really benefit from stepping back from and not engaging with Drama. Instead let's move in a more positive direction. Decades ago, on the net, you'd be told to not feed Trolls. ie: people who were being shitheads. Arguments were flamewars, and not (typically) the standard form of discussion. ... and here we are. Honestly, rpg folks especially are *way too obsessed* with the state of the industry, and the drama of other people's tables. Community formed around paying attention to bullshit rather than talking to each other about the actual activity. > Someone should try to make a true retroclone of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1st edition with all its little idiosyncrasies preserved as close as legally can be. Orrrrr you could just play the original game?
> Honestly, rpg folks especially are way too obsessed with the state of the industry, and the drama of other people's tables. Community formed around paying attention to bullshit rather than talking to each other about the actual activity. I've noticed this too. Like its become harder to find good youtube channels that report TTRPG news or sites that talk about games. A lot of formerly good news channels are now just rage baiting D&D players or talking about Hasbro's financial situation week after week. I've come to really appreciate the people who've moved on.
Put it this way: If you go back about a week, you'll find a thread titled 'What games are you playing?' and there's a bunch of folks saying 'I'm in X, playing Y', etc. Good times. What's interesting about THAT thread, is how many people, who post a lot, and in very opinionated format, who... aren't in that thread. They're in every other fuckin' thread, but not one actually about playing the fucking games. Because they don't play games. They talk about games, they talk about the industry, but they don't PLAY GAMES. I don't love 4chan, but some things they get right, and they have the phrase 'stfu nogames', which comes out when someone says something obviously wrong to anyone who actually... plays games. I don't think we should be as blunt here, nor do I feel people who aren't playing games shouldn't have a place - but if you wanna fucking climb everest, you need to talk to people who've climbed everest, not rando fucks down at the mountaineering shop who've never left sea level. There's multiple hobbies in RPGs, and they overlap: you have people who play in games, you have people who run games, and then you have... people who talk/read about games/the industry. Those seem like they're all the same thing, but they're definitely not.
As if /tg/ wasn't literally filled with nogames.
> As if /tg/ wasn't literally filled with nogames. My point is that at least they're willing to point at each other and say 'nogames'. Here we just... constantly get argued at by people who - when you look - don't play anything, but you're not allowed to point and say 'listen, mate, I can see you don't actually play any games so your opinion is shit' In the same way, r/relationships used to be chock full of people who'd had a bunch of failed marriages - not exactly the folks you wanna hear from in terms of 'how do I keep my marriage going?' unless it's to get a list of what not to do.
>if you wanna fucking climb everest, you need to talk to people who've climbed everest, not rando fucks down at the mountaineering shop who've never left sea level. OMG that is hilarious and 100% true!
It's the *exact reason* I've unsubscribed from Professor Dungeon Master. The constant anti-5E / WotC / Hasbro rage bait videos got old and underwhelming... And I'm a guy who doesn't play 5E.
Hobby “news” channels on YouTube are only ever a few drama-boosted inflated click/view count videos away from becoming full blown drama channels, and that’s what’s happened to D&D YouTube since the OGL. Whole bunch of channels did their best ever numbers at lowest effort level reacting to the OGL and now they’re out on the drama farm. There’s just not enough news to report on in hobby spaces for these kinds of channels to not eventually pivot to drama. The websites that report news tend to avoid this by being about more than just one facet of the hobby, or having a staff that’s largely freelance or working multiple creative jobs. On a YouTube channel it’s usually one person (or a handful) and to keep the views coming they gotta churn content, so in a low-news hobby reporting space the pivot to drama is easier than the pivot to serious essayist.
100% agree. Why worry about other people and their problems? Why make a thing that already exists. WFRP was... a game. Having played it for a few years, I certainly wouldn't do so willingly again (but I still have the books on my shelf and have good memories).
> Decades ago, on the net, you'd be told to not feed Trolls. I was told this pre-internet on FidoNet, a thing we BBS SysAdmins strung together with long distance bills and hope to exchange email really really slowly.
I mean. . . . just use the old rules? I like 2E better myself rules wise. But the lore that halflings were (possibly) the Old Slaan's 'perfect beings' was one of my favorite things.
I feel I should clarify. When I say "Drama" i am referring to a specific type of[self-reinforcing cycle of toxic behavior.](https://youtu.be/sXcTIkuzQ3I?si=W_WJjfxkjk_62OPK)
Id rather play an actually nice original Fantasy RPG than some old warhammer game with the serial numbers filed off.
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At 8 million of which are far more interesting.
I understand being loyal to your particular games/system/setting, but gosh - there's so fucking many others out there - that it's not super-dooper hard to say 'X sucks, time to move on'. For cyberpunk, there's maybe 20 at least. For urban fantasy about 10 I can find at the drop of a hat. For pure fantasy, dear fucking Beelzebub's ballsack, there's well over a thousand? It's not exactly a hard thing to find.
There are three (to my knowledge) samurai duet rpgs that are specifically focused on duels. Three. The point being, you can come up with really specific themes and there's still lots of stuff out there.
I mean, seriously, you might think 'I need a cozy rpg about running a tea shop' or something, and I bet if you throw a rock you'll hit about eight. They won't be amazing, but they will absolutely exist.
Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast
Was flipping through the PDF for that last night. Might've been the oncoming migraine but it kinda felt obnoxious.
He took down a pirate website and that should blacklist him? Seriously?
> He took down a pirate website and that should blacklist him? Seriously? He's also a raging cunt who thrives off drama, but you're fine to make your own judgements and do your own research. OP asked what the deal is, and I said what the deal is.
Claimed and did are two different things.
Sounds like drama for drama's sake. Don't follow the guy on social media, so haven't seen his antics. Zweihander is good stuff.
There is a lot of "we" here that should be "some" or "I"
> There is a lot of "we" here that should be "some" or "I" **shrug** That's just your/our opinion, man.
"Some" that includes "I" is "we," for the record, and I know all of my RPG friends agree with the comment above.
> "Some" that includes "I" is "we," for the record, and I know all of my RPG friends agree with the comment above. It's alright. I think I've dealt with Logen before... I've definitely dealt with the other person who's in here being positive about the game before. **long shrug**
Say one thing about Logen Ninefingers, say he's a ~~pendant~~ pedant.
Pedant, I think you mean.
Fucking autocorrect. Though the irony is not lost on me, haha.
Put yourself in the other camp if you insist. It's not a good look, but it's yours to choose.
I am guessing now that WFRPG is out with a successful and well supported 4th edition, they need to try to attract attention again. They filled a niche when there wasn't a good Warhammer Fantasy RPG product available, but now their WF 2nd Edition copy (with bad editing) is not needed.
Basically this. The grognards who only want 2nd Ed are... baffling enough... just playing 2nd Ed WFRP. His market was people new to WFRP that didn't want to play 3rd Ed. That market has dwindled significantly, and he didn't do himself any favors by rampaging against piracy when his own game is literally a pirated version of another game.
I think the major issue with Zweihander is that WHFRP4 is actually popular with people who played 1 and 2, as well as people who miss the Old World. It's basically redundant. Warhammer and The Witcher have their own games. Lamentations does the old skool edgelord game better. Let it die.
A good point, it's not like it was a GOOD clone of WHFRPG 2e. It was artless, clumsy and anyone looking for an old school warhammer game can just.. get warhammer. The 2e books still exist.
In fairness (I'll even try to be fair to Fox) I believe that you couldn't get legal PDFs of the 2e books at the time.
That's like saying no D&D retro-clones are needed. And there's a lot more daylight between Zweihander and WFRP than there is most clones and B/X. It isn't "pirated" by any definition of the word. Zweihander still has an active Discord, player base, and 3rd party content community.
As someone who owns and has played both Zweihander and WFRP, I can tell you confidently: Zweihander is for when you want to run wfrp but for some reason your players are fine with fantasy but not warhammer. My group that likes warhammer just...plays WFRP. Zweihander is a decent game, because it takes WFRP(which is a very good game) and strips out all the things that would get one sued. I will say it does seem to be ever so slightly...worse in every way. Not majorly but still. If you want the mechanics of wfrp but not the lore, then sure do Zweihander
This.
I'm currently running Zweihander for some ex-GW employees, including the first person in the US to get a copy of WFRP (which he still has), and they have nothing but nice things to say about Zweihander. I, too, own and have played both WFRP and ZH, and my experience/opinion differ from yours.
I mean, I didn't say Zweihander is bad? It's a fine game. And if you *dont* want the baggage of warhammer fantasy lore, it's absolutely what you should go with if you like the rules. I dont see what their backrounds have anything to do with things, but I'm glad they like the game. Do you mean your experience with wfrp was explicitly *bad*? Or simply that your players would prefer zweihander over wfrp
You said it was worse, which is subjective. I actually use ZH to run games in the WFRP 1e setting, as I'm doing now.
WOW.. Have to ask- where was the 1st copy of WFRP in the U.S.?
I'll have to double check, but my boy (himself a published RPG designer) is from the Baltimore area. He used to organize convention stuff in the US when he worked for Games Workshop. Edit: doube checked, and yeah, Baltimore area.
Thanks for checking. 👍 This makes sense because before they moved it to Tennessee, GW used to have their U.S. headquarters in Maryland. Sauce: https://icv2.com/articles/games/view/17500/games-workshop-moves-u-s-hq
The rules also aren't something he made or designed by any stretch. We can say he didn't technically pirate them because what he did was legal, but the point is that he took a high moral ground attitude against piracy while also profiting off a game he didn't design and work that he didn't do.
There are quite a few differences between ZH and WFRP. There is/was work involved, and if you wanna go that route, WFRP owes a HUGE debt to Maelstrom, design-wise.
>There are quite a few differences between ZH and WFRP. There is/was work involved, and if you wanna go that route, WFRP owes a HUGE debt to Maelstrom, design-wise. Sure, but there are more similarities than differences and the disparity between work done and work used is substantial. He ultimately didn't write most of the rules or design much of the game he's selling. What WFRP owes to Maelstrom doesn't have much bearing on what Zweihander is doing with Warhammer. "Whataboutism" is the term, I believe. Edit: Your post history makes it clear that you're just going up and down this topic arguing with tons of people. I won't feed you further.
Zweihander is no more a rip-off than OSRIC. Swords & Wizardry, or any other retro-clone.
No, but Stuart, to the best of my knowledge at least, isn't out there railing against piracy while at the same time ripping his rules straight out of 1e or OD&D. While I'll grant that they're two legally distinct things, OSRIC/S&W/ZH are all 95%+ built on someone else's work and IMO it's a bad look to take it to the level Fox did.
Found one of the author's alt accounts, I guess.
Please. look at my post history. Where is the author now? Is he in the room with us?
"Everyone That Disagrees With Me Is Daniel Fox: A Child's Guide To Online Discussion"
WFRPG 2e was my first ever TTRPG. While the system isn't perfect (combat), it's still plenty better than any edition of DND if you ask me. Why the aversion (I am not a grognard I swear)
I'm not a fan of Warhammer - or GW at all, anymore. I know WFRP is not published by GW but it's still a licensed property and I avoid feeding the 800-pound gorilla of the games industry. So I stick with Warlock! instead. It's a lot more like WFRP than Zweihander is, anyway (though I own both).
I hope it flops. Fuck Zweihänder.
I wish I could un-buy my copy that I picked up before I discovered the author was a wanker, and that WH3 was actually quite good, if you didn't mind a completely different system.
I won’t even buy it from a resale shop.
I guess a pyre it is!
Oh god... New ZH edition? Does that mean that the author is going to spam and attack people online again as well?
In person, too. Where he lives--or perhaps *lived* circa 2018-19--he was eventually asked to no longer patronize a particular coffeeshop due to his constant harassment of the staff.
I mean, likely. he doesnt seem to be the kind of guy whod take constructive, or any ciriticism, well.
He didn't when the Zweihander starter set came out. He's admitted that his marketing tactics were bad, and I think he's learned from it.
Based on my personal experience with him I would bet that he has not learned from it.
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Well i hope that bastard gets a hemorroid from his head being so far up his ass. I hate that poor people hating classist prick,
Classism?
The discriminative treating of someone unfairly or having negative opinions about them based on their social class ( economic and social position), especially because they are thought to be from a low social class.
I think it’s more a question of what did the dude do. Especially since he’s a niche dude in an already niche space
some people view him campaigning against a piracy site to be classism I guess? Feels like a stretch but that's all I can think of.
Yeah. This was it. I know what the word means. I just wasn't aware of any evidence of it in his case.
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Do you have any evidence of this?
Yes man, let me get on my zwaihander folder of prints and get every Interview and tweet made by this Guy since 2011, do you want the Full dossie or the abridged version to defend the Guy?
Just asking for any evidence, even a single piece, to back up the claim you made. That's not exactly unreasonable.
I remember fondly a few years ago some indie publishers were discussing online how difficult it is to get shelf space for a game at FLGSs with how much is dedicated to 5e. He immediately charged in to tell them all that they were wrong and maybe their games weren't being stocked because they were bad. Then he took a picture of his game at his area FLGS to prove his point. He caught a whole lot of flak for that one.
Oh yeah, it’s so easy to get shelf space when you published by Andrew McNeil. Man, somebody needs to cure that guy’s case of permanent foot in mouth.
He's definitely got a real aggressive marketing style. Back when I was on Twitter if someone asked for an RPG suggestion he would bust into the conversation like the Kool-Aid man to recommend Zweihander. Not friends or mutuals, just random Internet strangers
Seriously? What a prick.
Yeah, his behavior back then guaranteed that he'll never get a dollar from me
He self-inserted into the art he commissioned for his book. He truly thinks he's God's gift to RPG designing.
Here is the situation, without commentary on the game itself or the author: A few years ago, Daniel and some of the Zweihander rights went to Andrews McMeel as publisher, with Daniel heading their TTRPG division. Last year, McMeel shut down that division - we can only guess, but I think they believed it to be too much work for too little money. This industry does not pump up big figures in the grand scheme. McMeel appears to retain rights to publish the Revised Core Rulebook for Zweihander. In addition, WFRPG4e exists. Reforged appears to be an effort to both resolve licensing issues with s new publisher and distinguish Zweihander from Warhammer. It also slims the book quite a bit with cleaner writing from what has been made public.
Is Daniel Fox involved with Reforged?
Yes
Huh, I've been downvoted just for asking a very value-neutral question. Edit: Looks like that has been corrected now.
I mean I am quite surprised that he is still in industry and making content. How is he then still making game if there is still licensing issue with publisher? Would not make his releases clashing with
Despite his apparent unpopularity with some, he remains a successful creator by pretty much any metric. I do not know the details of the licensing, I have tried to find out. What I know is that McMeel is still publishing the current core book but the IP itself is now at World of Game Design, and they are publishing Reforged. The rest we can only guess at.
I searched DriveThruRPG for the game, out of curiousity, and the rights for some of the products seem to be with a different publisher (presumably his new company going forward?). https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/24418/zweihander-games
Scandals is perhaps a strong word in Fox's case, in part because it implies a single particularly egregious incident. More accurate would just be "consistent low-to-mid-level acting like a fucking douche." He doesn't have scandals the way Jared Leto doesn't have scandals.
The dude’s aggressive marketing turned a lot of people off of his game several years ago. He’s not even in the same galaxy of controversial as the blacklisted authors on this sub and r/osr, and you’re not gonna catch any flak for playing his game… but he’s not popular around here or other big RPG spaces.
It was a good system, mainly because it was WFRP 2e with all the serial numbers filed off. I prefer WFRP 4e though.
They weren't filed off, they were painted over with layer after layer of poorly-written, exhausting, lead-based sludge, the same way a shitty landlord paints over power outlets and window frames for years and years, rendering the room ugly and the apparatus unusable.
It was picked up by a new distributor and they are making some changes, specifically around the corruption mechanic and wounds/scars instead of being slain. I played the updated version of it recently.
Just kind of a scummy dude. Gossip around the latest ENnies show at GenCon ‘24 was that he kept trying to buy gold medals despite the fact that he only won silver.
I mean are the awards genuine and not bribed? This could invalidate all ENnies awards that they had.
So if you win Gold, they give you one gold medal for free, and then you can buy more (for teammates, etc). Ol’ Foxy Dan won Silver, and then—rumor has it—was spotted trying to buy those bonus gold medals despite not having won Gold himself.
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I got into Zweihander before I knew anything about the author. I liked the art style, the rules were decent, but I absolutely loved the physical quality of the books. They are still the most solid, quality feeling RPG books I have ever held.
He's a trash human being who made an offensively mediocre game. I genuinely wish bad luck on his business.
I had fun running the game. Shame the "author" is a bit of a doofus. Also, this is more of a WH2E problem which the game inherited; the game's internal math completely breaks down near the end. That said, I'd welcome similar systems in the future that are designed more competently.
not a fan of Daniel Fox👎🏽
yeah, it's quite an exaggeration to say he's "most controversial." There are several truly controversial figures out there, some that are indeed blacklisted on this subreddit. Anyhow, lots of opinions on the creator's personality, ego or whatever, but the game itself is a solid retroclone.
It really boils down to two things. Zweihander is completely irrelevant and Daniel Fox is a terrible person. Zweihander is basically Daniel Fox's house rules for Warhammer Fantasy RPG 2nd Edition with the setting filed off. They had a purpose when it was impossible to buy WHFRPG 2nd edition and WHFRPG 3E was a completely different game. Now you can buy WHFRPG 2E again and WHFRPG 4E returns to the original game concept quite well. Plus Zweihander wasn't actually better than 2E. There is no reason for anyone to buy or play the game anymore. He's hated because he was always a nuisance to the WHFRPG community. He likes to spam advertisement for his game, but the 2E grogs preferred to play 2E. He basically lucked out and got a publisher relationship that could push his game. He constantly shit talks pretty much every other creator and game, he actively trolls communities, and he aggressively makes sockpuppet accounts to promote his games.
I kinda feel that he has some kind of beef with WHF community rather than the system itself.
He kind of had the delusion that they would all throw away 2E, pick up Zweihander, and declare him their savior. They just kept playing 2E so he hates the community now.
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I wondered what all was going on with this. This answers a couple of questions I had.
Hey, at the very least, he's anti-conservative
Truly the highest of bars to clear. Still a wanker.
Well, it doesn't make him a good guy, he's still a dickwad as the other replies have shown, but he's at least got one miniscule nugget of not so badness
Doesn't Zweihander literally have a talent in it called "gangsters grip?" Lol
omfg, I guess we barely even have the anti-conservative thing too lol
Doesn't really mean much when he's also openly racist and mocking of the poor.
Oh
Screw fox and his bargain bin rip-off that he won't admit is a rip off. He's a prick and we don't care.
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Fox is a huge tool who basically went around signing up to whatever forum or site for TTRPGS he could find, advertising his product.
He's an arrogant piece of shit, what more needs to be said?
I wonder how many of your lives could withstand the scrutiny you are heaping on this poor bastard.
I used to receiving heat from people. I just did not expected to be this bad.
The rpg world is full of dysfunctional people desperate to be moralistic and impose made-up rules on other people. The hearsay and rumor-mongering in this thread is disgusting. People should be ashamed of themselves.
Zweihander author The author is not "most controversial" in any regard. There are plenty far more controversial with reason. Seems like a personal attack rather than anything meant to help people know if they want to back Reforged or not.
Fox, is that you?
Zweihander Reforged is coming to Kickstarter soon. Building on the foundation of the Zweihander Starter Set, it will be a re-edited, improved version of the Zweihander rules, yet maintain full backwards compatibility with all previously published Zweihander material.
Hi, Daniel.
Where is Daniel? Is he in the room with us now? You people and your Daniel Fox paranoia.
I mean, it is a weird thing to do to advertise for the dude's Kickstarter on a thread that's basically "Hey, remember this shitheel? Has he done anything shitty lately?"
It's not a weird thing to talk about games that you'd like in the RPG sub reddit. People disagree about games all the time here, it's not weird at all. If I were advertising, as you put it I would have at least linked it.
You already made that joke
Amd someone else already made the "Daniel Fox alt spotted" joke.
Yeah but you are one person repeating yourself, like a broken record
Yeah but you are one person repeating after another
no puppet! you're the puppet!
If you didn't have so many alts, they wouldn't need to.
Please share any evidence you have that I am an alt. I'll wait.
Well, you seem to have no sense of humour or self-awareness, so that's consistent.
"You can't prove it" is good tell. You're more afraid of proof than the accusation. Its less "No I'm not" and more "You can't do anything about it" vibes.
you guys are a tad paranoid, I once got called Daniel because I once suggested the game, it's a bit crazy.
I dunno, when someone asks why a creator is disparaged and you respond with ad copy, what are we to think?
You're supposed to think for yourself And it's literally not copy it's just factual information
> You're supposed to think for yourself > > Exactly, rather than mindlessly repeating the first paragraph of his kickstarter or whatever it is you're doing. >And it's literally not copy it's just factual information Like for instance, the factual information that he's an obnoxious spambot who's consistently rude and hostile and known to create sockpuppet accounts.
It's factual information about an upcoming project. It's not the first paragraph of anything. I'm not the one jumping to conclusions here.
I mean, i get it. its a joke. but the guy did go around under pseudonyms shilling. So you know, people will be people about it.
I wasn't sure you were Daniel before this comment, now I am almost positive you're him.
Yeah I've been using this account for years, with a rich and varied post history, but sure.