D&D 5E Mearls' "Firing" tweet

Hussar said:

So, what you're saying is you have no actual context for your comments, have no actual idea what's being discussed and still expect your comments to be taken seriously?

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I know enough. Best response to trolls is to ignore them.

They employed someone with no design credits on D&D so it's not unreasonable to question that IMHO.

Much like anything it's how you say it that matters. Kate has an opportunity the proof will be in the pudding.

Zardnaar said:

4E was not the worst selling D&D, it probably outsold OD&D. Mearls was not one who pushed heavily for 4E, the primary designers were involved with the experimental 3.5 books and the D&D minis game. I think Slavisek pushed 4E (and got fired over it).

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I never said it was the worst selling, I don’t have access to those kind of figures.

Hussar said:

Well, at a guess, I would say he was thinking that he saw a group of people being complete asshats to someone he probably likes. And, like any actual human being, he stood up for something right and didn't think that the butthurt feelings of a few ignorant Internet trolls was a price too high for doing what was right.

Unfortunately, far too few people feel this way.

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Maybe he should act like an actual adult human being and, you know, support his staff.

I don’t know what scenario played out in his head that made him think “firing” random people on the internet turned into a winning play. But hey maybe Kate appreciated a man standing up for her on the internet.

Jester David said:

Final thought of the night:

If you're saying something, and the best defense of that statement and opinion is “it's not illegal” then you're probably not saying something worth being heard. When you have to invoke the first amemndmant as a justification, you probably shouldn't be speaking at all.

G'night Fellow Nerds!

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1st amendment as a justification? Is that like a intolerance x intolerance = tolerance thing?

Sacrosanct said:

I don't think we're talking about the same thing. I have no issues with the ignore button. I do find it more than a little bit eye rolley for someone to quote another person and then immediately put them on ignore so they can't see what you just said. That seems both childish and a display of lack of integrity to me. Getting a last shot in while not having the wherewithal to stand behind what you said to them directly as it were.

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The point was that even though how he did what he did warranted an eye roll, forcing a person to block him is bullying behavior. I have a personal policy of not blocking people. I don't do it. I don't want to do it. I don't want anyone else to bully me into doing it. This site makes it so that in order to block me, the person doing the block has to engage in cyber bullying and force me to block him against my will.

And for no good reason for setting blocking up that way on this site. The person won't see my response. All posts on a forum are open to discussion by anyone reading it, so even if I quote someone, when I respond I'm responding to everyone in the thread, not that person alone.

Good grief [MENTION=6867728]ArchfiendBobbie[/MENTION] talk about mountains out of molehills.

You want to completely derail this person's career so that we can use her as a poster child for equal opportunity? Are you serious? Talk about letting the trolls win. They wanted to gate keep the hobby to make sure that gurl cooties don't spread to published works and you want to make this poor woman a token?

Since when is WotC or any RPG company in the business of being at the forefront of social change? Why would you expect them to be?

No, sorry, this response is far more direct, and far more effective. As a community, when we see behavious like this, EVERYONE should call it out and condemn it. Force these people out of the community and make it abundantly clear that they will not be tolerated, catered to or even engaged.

Talk about humiliating. Someone gets a new job. Bunch of self-righteous Internet trolls jump up and down on their favorite political hobby horse and you want to force this poor woman out of the job that she applied for so that we can parade her in front of everyone to show how inclusive we all are being?

No.

There is only one proper response to this sort of thing. Complete ostracisation from the group. Publicly and openly. Let everyone know that NO, we do not tolerate this. NO this is not anything I want associated with my hobby and chosen social group. This is 2018. If you didn't already know that publicly humialiting and denigrating women was bad, well, you're (and I don't mean you, I mean that in the generic sense) no longer a paid up member of the human race. Either pay up and join the human race or piss off.

Hussar said:

You obviously didn't bother hunting down the reddit pages and whatnot. That wasn't a molehill. I mean, good grief, they locked Reddit threads because of how poisonous this got.

Yeah, go @mearls. You dun gud.

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Omg, they locked a whole Reddit thread!

Jester David said:

But, seriously, should we openly welcome misogynists into gaming? Nazis? The KKK? ISIS?
Would you host a game for them?

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Problem with these people is they don't play enough D&D OR their DM's are completely horrible.

Zardnaar said:

I know enough. Best response to trolls is to ignore them.

They employed someone with no design credits on D&D so it's not unreasonable to question that IMHO.

Much like anything it's how you say it that matters. Kate has an opportunity the proof will be in the pudding.

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"No design credits"? Seriously? Again, if you're not going to bother actually making any effort to be educated, at least have the decency to not publicly demonstrate how ignorant you are.

Shasarak said:

Maybe he should act like an actual adult human being and, you know, support his staff.

I don’t know what scenario played out in his head that made him think “firing” random people on the internet turned into a winning play. But hey maybe Kate appreciated a man standing up for her on the internet.

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I dunno. Stepping up and saying that a bunch of people are being jerks and should be ashamed of themselves seems like support to me. What kind of support are you thinking of? Perhaps just quietly telling her to ignore the trolls and be a good little girl would have been more to your liking?

No. Just no.

He did what EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE DONE. Call out bigotry for what it is and condemn it. Publicly and loudly. And often. No half measures. No waffling. No "oh, well, free speech .... err ... everyone's entitled to an opinion... oh we should respect..." NO. . These idiots publicly humiliated one of his staff and he called them out for it.

FANTASTIC.

And watching the peanut gallery try to second guess him while avoiding the issue just panders to these idiots. They count on folks like you. They NEED folks like you. You are part of the problem.

Try being part of the solution.

Sigh. I should have known better than to try to engage here. All this is doing is raising my blood pressure and annoying the crap out of me. It absolutely astounds me that this is actually a conversation that we're having in 2018. Group of idiots publicly humiliates some poor woman and you folks actually DEFEND them?

Good grief.