D&D General Gen Con, Daisy, Sleeping in the Lobby and All That

[LordEntrails]

For those who have not heard or would like to discuss, their was an incident at GenCon 2022 involving several workers/volunteers/streamers at the Con. The story as reported by the person mistreated is here:
TwitLonger — When you talk too much for Twitter

 

[LordEntrails]

Here are all (? I believe) pertinent quotes for ease of continuing the discussion here.

There is literally no connection between GamerGate/Kotaku to NuTSR. The folks at NuTSR have been trying to bring up other controversies in gaming to try and force personal connections to them. It's nothing but a weak attention grab.

They tried to make posts claiming they were somehow connected to the Phoenix/Stone controversy; when @Jedion357 managed to contact Phoenix directly, she said she had never heard of NuTSR. They tried to channel GamerGate; Lanasa's father, William Gentry, wrote an article about how the "attacks" on NuTSR are "GamerGate 2.0". But literally nothing posted makes any connection with the original GamerGate whatsoever. Earlier in the week, they tried posting about someone catching COVID at GenCon.

Most recently, they're trying to post about the "Daisy Grant" story that's coming out of GenCon. No doubt this one is high priority for NuTSR because it involves a trans person. I've only read the basics of the story, but I can guarantee you NuTSR has no involvement in it. One of the links they posted goes to a subredit heavily associated with GamerGate.

NuTSR is desperately trying to link themselves with any controversial news item they can find. Unfortunately, the only way to fight it is to ignore it.

Considering that it's really easy to find information about this Daisy Grant person and her actions--I hadn't heard of her before now--it certainly doesn't look like GenCon is covering anything up.

There's one critique I could make based on the report I have seen - the victim of an incident apparently has stated that they slept in a hotel lobby for several hours afterwards. That's a problem.

I feel like you are making a point that is evading me - beyond "having to sleep in a lobby sucks", is it that the hotel wasn't more accommodating?

That was before they reported it to anyone wasn’t it?

I think his point is that GenCon should have provided her a safer place. If they knew at the time I agree. But I think it might be a good idea for GenCon ti consider setting something aside for just this kind of incident in future. Maybe?

By the reports I read, yes. But getting someplace safe should not be contingent on reporting. Neither the hotel nor the con should support people sleeping in hotel lobbies - it poses security and liability risk. If someone is sleeping in the lobby in the wee hours of the morning, hotel or convention security should engage with them, and get them someplace safer if they are a guest/attendee, and remove them if they aren't.

I was going to argue that GenCon can’t do anything they didn’t know about except be prepared.

Which leads me to agree with you entirely.

As somebody who worked night audit at a hotel (and then later managed that hotel), I would say that this is entirely the appropriate response.

While I don't disagree with the premise, its been very common at cons, particularly game cons, for more people to be staying in rooms than are on record, and as such you have people waiting around at odd hours of the morning for their room access to rematerialize. Its not an ideal situation, but its probably been going on for 60 years now or more, and I suspect it isn't stopping any time soon as long as a lot of con-goers are on a budget.

Edit: Though admittedly in a lot of cases people will find odd corners to sleep in specifically to not attract the hotel's attention. Game rooms with draping on tables have always been popular.

"It has always been this way." is not a valid argument against change.

It’s the reason things need to change.

Edit: Ope! I misread the first post in the above.

"There's not much you can do to stop it" however, is. As I said, as long as a lot of con-goers are on a budget, this is going to be a thing that keeps happening. If you have a suggestion how you can force people not to sleep in semi-public areas in a wide spread con (except, perhaps by vastly increasing security staff), I'll be happy to hear it. In particular, given the tendency for people who don't get enough sleep to doze off in public areas at cons even when they're not actively looking for an area to sleep, I'd be really interested to see how, short of chronically harassing people, it could be prevented.

I do not believe that the Con did anything wrong in not doing this, nor that NuTSR is doing anything but deflecting. However, I think there could be an opportunity for conventions to be prepared for these situations and attempt preemptive workarounds. Perhaps a designated (well staffed/patrolled) 'lounge area' for just this scenario, allowing the hotel to state that that's where to do the public dozing, and not elsewhere.


In the end, that's what this is all about, isn't it? We can split hairs all day long about whether GenCon has done everything perfectly, but at the end of the day, none of that changes that this is a risibly blatant attempt by some of this hobby's least respectable actors to steer the conversation away from their own bad behavior.

Indeed. I'll add that the harassment by Daisy Grant has been jumped upon by all the "usual suspects" in the "anti-inclusion" brigade.

Oh yeah. I am convinced without a doubt that they jumped all over this based on who was involved.

A lot of cons do have lounges, but often when held at a hotel the hotel will have issues with people sleeping there, which paradoxically means its the easy place to run into problems doing so (barring even more low hanging fruit like the lobby).



I'm just thinking, as someone who was involved in security at more than one medium-sized gaming cons on the West Coast back in the day that people are having kind of naive ideas of how easy this is to address.

Oh, absolutely. These are not simple problems to solve. Large scale social event planning -- complete with safety, liability, competing financial interests, and acknowledging/planning for people not always doing what the event/venue would like without encouraging it -- are all massive hurdles I don't wish on anyone. I volunteered several years for my local municipality's yearly Irish Fair, and it was always amazing to me that it was possible to achieve at all, much less in a way where anyone would want to volunteer twice.


I am usually the first to bemoan that the people who are often the worst to nerds are other nerds fulfilling a need to stake out some territory/exercise a sense of control/relitigate high school. Still, I'd like to think it would only take a few paying customers departing with grievance before the would be Napoleons would get pulled aside by the chief Napoleon and reminded of their actual purpose.

Yes, some care would need to be taken. But, in my experience, even minor cons already take care.

Remember that, due to the large amounts of money involved, there's generally a company behind the convention (for many local cons, this is technically a non-profit charity, actually). That means that if things go seriously pear-shaped, there's someone to sue. So, if security people botch it, there's legal liability for the convention. Cons that have been around a while are well-aware of this.

GenCon, for example, has a harassment policy already in place, and has for years, as I understand it.

Its always compounded by the fact that security at a con is in many ways kind of a crap job, so getting people to do it even for pay is often difficult (and usually a con that even wants to pay has to make a decision between how many security it wants and how much to pay them, if it even can) so there's always a certain amount of security that, well, shouldn't be doing it. And its rarely the same group from year to year.

Its actually easier at small cons. There are issues of scale that are serious here.

"Smaller" from my point of view, still gets into the thousands of attendees. GenCon is gigantic, and yes has issues. People *sleeping in hotel lobbies" still shouldn't happen.

That's probably an issue with the hotels, though, not the con. Unless the con takes place in the hotel, of course.

I've been to a couple of cons (mostly comic conventions, not gaming cons) that take place at the same time as other conventions or major events which makes it somewhat harder for the hotel to know if the sleeping person is there for the geek con or the other event. At least if the person is wearing "normal" clothing and doesn't have a badge on.

Ah, yes, I was thinking in terms of the 5-600 size local cons; I'd class multiple thousands as medium sized cons.

And I've already explained the difficulties with people sleeping, I don't see any reason to repeat myself.

That isn't that uncommon at medium to small cons. Plenty of cons can't really rent a convention center. And I can't even say its the hotel's fault; often when a decent sized con is going on, they're effectively swamped, and their own security is busy watching for misadventure in other parts of the hotel or working with con security to do the same (some of the things con goers will do range from rude and stupid to outright hair raising. In comparison I can see why even that person who's been dozing in a chair in the corner of the lobby for an hour can seem a small priority). And that's when, as you say, some other kind of convention isn't going on locally (in a few cases even in the same hotel with small conventions).

I already allowed that it should be one of them. If it isn't the convention's direct responsibility, the con still has a vested interest in the safety of its people. Especially when, if I read correctly, the whole thing took place in housing arranged by the con for people working for the con.



If they are in the hotel, they should be able to show they are, you know, supposed to be in the hotel.

True. And if they knew about what happened and did nothing, then that would be bad.


I can't find the original response from the person who was harassed by Grant but... wasn't she supposed to be at the hotel?

Full story here:
TwitLonger — When you talk too much for Twitter

Edit: On having now read the link, this is on a whole different level. Though it sounds more like the "sleep in the lobby" was more of an out-of-communication problem than anything else; from the poster's description, no one would have seen this as a likely problem in advance.

Yeah, reading that whole thing, there is basically nothing Gencon could have done to prevent this from happening. And in fact, the people who were notified did everything I could imagine doing as swiftly as possible. This came entirely down to the individual actors involved.

I just want to state that taking the time to discuss an incident of harassment and sexual violence not directly related to NuTSR is not a win in any case and in fact, considering that Lanasa's current narative is that this is being "covered up", this discussion is as close to the opposite of them "winning" as possible.

If anything it's deeply concerning that there hasn't been a large multi-page thread here about this incident the way there were regarding similar incidents involving Frank Mentzer, Bill Webb, Zak S, et. al. I don't know if this is because folks here feel the need to walk on eggshells around the topic given the identity of the perpetrator (in this case Daisy Grant, a trans woman) or if people here just don't know that much about her, despite her DMing the live play streams sponsored by one of the largest and most popular D&D 3PPs, and I'm not even all that sure which of those feel worse to me.

In any case, we need to be able to talk about sexual violence perpetrated by predators who happen to be trans women without also furthering the narrative promoted by transphobes that all trans women are predators. And we need to not let completely unrelated bad actors act as if they've earned a moral victory by our lack of conversation about it.

I agree we do need to point out predators. In this case however several victims have expressed a desire to move on once they made their public posts and folks in a position to do something appropriate have acted. Also Daisy has stepped back from both the hobby and industry and has all but dissapeared on the internet. It’s why I’ve, personally, refrained from posting a thread.

However there have been a few ignorant bigots who have used this as a opportunity to show thier hatred. That prompts me to say something.

Edit: note my concern is with the victims.

I think it deserves discussion, and its' own thread (FWIW, my guess is that the difference is almost all of us knew Mentzer, Webb, and Zak before things went south). My point began and ended with the realization that we were talking about it, not NuTSR, in the NuTSR thread.

As far as I understand it, the person who was harrassed doesn't have a beef with the convention once the incident was reported. Souds like they did everything right from there.

My only gripe is that leaving folks to sleep in the lobby is a security risk, and generally crappy.



Yes. My understanding is that the victim and the offender were sharing a room assigned by the convention. So, the discussion should have been something like this:

Security (con or hotel, depending on jurisdiction): Excuse me. Are you okay?
Victim: Well...
S: Are you a guest here at the hotel?
V: Yes.
S: Is there a problem with your room that you are sleeping in the lobby?
V: Well... my room has people in it that I don't feel safe around.
S: Okay, if there's something you'd like done about that, we can talk about that. But for now, let's find you a better place to be than the lobby, okay?

If you want to make a thread about it, make a thread about it. FWIW, I think the other cases you mentioned were big news only because of the people involved, and the GenCon connection is incidental. I had not heard of Daisy before this incident.

Agreed, but... we don't know all the details. The last hotel I stayed at for a con had a huge lobby with lots of artistic partitions and plants in it as well as lots of event rooms, meeting areas, and nooks in the wall, making it easy to miss a person in there. It also nearly always had groups of people hanging around and talking in the lobby, even late at night, and she could have seemed to be part of one of those groups. It's also entirely possible that the hotel recognized her as a guest, thought that maybe she was taking a quick nap before going to another event, and decided to leave her alone for a brief time. Or yes, it could have been a sloppy oversight on the part of the hotel. We just don't have enough information to go straight to "Bad hotel!"

No, we don't have all the details. I'm pretty sure, "Folks shouldn't be sleeping in the lobby," still holds.

If nothing else, it should be a security issue for the hotel to allow folks to do that. But, by all means, believe as you wish that hotels should just allow folks to sack out in the lobby. That's fine. Just maybe don't go into hotel management...

If someone makes a thread I'll go read it, but I had never heard of this person before she was mentioned in this thread and all attempts to Google her to figure out who she was came up with a character from Madame Secretary and a bunch of random other folks. Until you posted this I'd assumed she was some minor indie RPG publisher I'd never heard of rather than a livestreamer I've never heard of.

My google skills are basic, I couldn't find anything but mentions on websites I do not bring my laptop to, outside of some extremely limited and or partially deleted tweet threads.

That seemed weird, as you've provided more detail than what was readily available.

It's a bit of a stretch to jump from seeing me say that there may be reasons why this happened to me thinking that it's a thing that should be allowed.

I agree that people should not sleep in hotel lobbies. I also can't think of a single way to prevent it. There's nothing GenCon can do. Even if they're rented space with a hotel, they have no authority to police what goes on in the hotel lobby. If someone needs an alternative place to stay, where are you going to put them? The downtown hotels can't even cover for half of GenCon's attendance; most of which are sold out 6+ months in advance.

If a person truly does not feel safe, then the police have to be called. GenCon can't do anything (and likely won't even know until after the fact). The hotel might have alternate space, but they might not. It doesn't help that most cons are staffed by volunteers who have neither the training nor the knowledge to deal with this kind of thing. So, again, I think the police need to be involved in any instance of not feeling safe. I know people often have a reluctance to involve the police, but they really need to be. I think this is doubly true for something like GenCon which is so large that many resources are strained in even the best circumstances.

I've never been to a big con. Is it common for the hotels at them not to look after that themselves? Or do they just not care? (I'm pretty sure it wouldn't fly at any of the hotels I've been at for academic conferences* - including the ones in some of the cities big gaming/comic cons are held in).

*Edit: at least during those conferences

Yeah, the academic conference crowd is a bit different from the gamer con crowd. I don't know what the policies are now around Gen Con, but the last couple of times I went to Gen Con (just shy of a decade ago), round the clock gaming areas in and around some of the hotels was a feature. And if there's still any of that going on in places like the hotel lobbies, spotting the roomless sleeper is a bit more complicated.

The scale is hard for me to imagine. But the big game ones certainly do a lot more complete take-over than even the biggest of the academic ones I go to (12-15k attendees). That one might have "fifteen conference hotels" and use part of the convention center, but there are always other things going on too and plenty of non-conference folks around - and it isn't always the same city and weekend with rabid fans buying everything up a year in advance

 

[Gradine]

I do want to add as well that it is possible to name and discuss the transgressions of perpetrators of violence without directly bringing up their victims and dragging them back into a conversation they never wanted any part in, and that it actually might be the best practice. If nothing else, it prevents the nasty habit of using passive voice to minimize the perpetrator's role and maximize the survivor's (ie, "(X) was sexually assaulted" as opposed to "Y sexually assaulted someone").

I've seen a tendency (often, but not always, with the best of intentions) to point to a survivor's desire to move on as an excuse to ignore the actions of the perpetrator, as if the two are mutually exclusive. It should not be a survivor's responsibility to have to continually relive their trauma over and over again as they face the scrutiny of the interrogations that basically always follow in order for their perpetrator to be held to account. No one should be forced to go through that, and I think it is powerful enough that these individuals are willing to share their stories in their first place. A survivor's refusal to put themselves through that should not be a proverbial "get out of jail free" card for perpetrators.

This one hits really close to home for me because the perpetrator, Daisy Grant, is a trans woman, and has committed these actions at a time when political and media institutions are desperate to paint all trans people in general, and all trans women in specific, as sexual predators. And... nobody's talking about it. Despite it happening at one the biggest events in our hobby, featuring folks associated with one of the largest third party publishers for D&D right now. It's almost eerie, considering how these types of incidents almost always spark Discourse™ in a major way whenever they happen. And I'm flabbergasted as what to make of it

 

[darjr]

For those not on twitter.

Upon the conclusion of our investigation, we terminated
all relationships with Daisy Grant effective immediately.
Her behavior at Gen Con was unacceptable and we
cannot support or condone what she did.
Our thoughts are with the people she hurt.
As a company, we are revisiting a convention code of
conduct for all our staff and affiliates.
Due to the sensitive nature of the situation, and in
respect for those who are hurting, we will not be going
into further detail.

 

[ReshiIRE]

This one hits really close to home for me because the perpetrator, Daisy Grant, is a trans woman, and has committed these actions at a time when political and media institutions are desperate to paint all trans people in general, and all trans women in specific, as sexual predators. And... nobody's talking about it. Despite it happening at one the biggest events in our hobby, featuring folks associated with one of the largest third party publishers for D&D right now. It's almost eerie, considering how these types of incidents almost always spark Discourse™ in a major way whenever they happen. And I'm flabbergasted as what to make of it

Probably because Daisy Grant faced near immediate consequences, will never work in the industry again, and is probably going to lose anyone close to her.

A trans person committing sexual assault, especially right now, is hopefully not going to find themselves welcomed in the community in the slightest.

Frankly, it's good there isn't naughty word discourse about this. The only thing that needs to be said is that Grant will hopefully face legal charges and that she's an naughty word and abuser.

I admit on a personal and selfish note that this has ruined my day even after I got my name changed from my deadname. This naughty word hurts.

 

[Scribe]

It's almost eerie, considering how these types of incidents almost always spark Discourse™ in a major way whenever they happen. And I'm flabbergasted as what to make of it

I saw just the name in the original thread, but as noted either I suck at Google, and/or, there simply isn't a lot of information out there.

I don't know why, but considering what you mention bad actors are doing, and the speed with which some will brand any who may even touch on these types of topics, especially on this site?

I'm not surprised it doesn't get traction.

After all, I've been called a racist and a misogynist for suggesting Halflings shouldn't be able to get a +2 Str ASI, here, several times.

 

[Davies]

Despite it happening at one the biggest events in our hobby, featuring folks associated with one of the largest third party publishers for D&D right now. It's almost eerie, considering how these types of incidents almost always spark Discourse™ in a major way whenever they happen. And I'm flabbergasted as what to make of it

I submit that might be because ours remains a niche hobby despite all that has happened to push us closer to the mainstream. Had this happened at an e-sports tournament, CES, or something similar, I suspect you would be seeing the Discourse™ you're talking about.

 

[Gradine]

Probably because Daisy Grant faced near immediate consequences, will never work in the industry again, and is probably going to lose anyone close to her.

Perhaps that's the thing I've been missing in all this: the near immediate and severe consequences. That is yet another unique facet to this incident. And it's good! But also suspicious? Like... would the consequences have been so severe and quickly handled with a Bill Webb-type? Because the contrast between the fallout to those two incidents are night and day.

That may be my own personal hangups. I want to believe that the outcome here is "we have gotten much better, as a hobby and industry, at swiftly and appropriately taking action in the face of such actions" and not "it's a heck of a lot easier to punish this trans woman than a more powerful white male."

I hate to be cynical, always, but the spreading influence and power of transphobes, particularly in the US and UK, have sapped me of a lot of my hope for equity in short-term on this issue.

 

[darjr]

I can’t find GenCons statement. I’m almost certain they made one.

 

[Sacrosanct]

This one hits really close to home for me because the perpetrator, Daisy Grant, is a trans woman, and has committed these actions at a time when political and media institutions are desperate to paint all trans people in general, and all trans women in specific, as sexual predators. And... nobody's talking about it. Despite it happening at one the biggest events in our hobby, featuring folks associated with one of the largest third party publishers for D&D right now. It's almost eerie, considering how these types of incidents almost always spark Discourse™ in a major way whenever they happen. And I'm flabbergasted as what to make of it

Probably because Daisy Grant faced near immediate consequences, will never work in the industry again, and is probably going to lose anyone close to her.

A trans person committing sexual assault, especially right now, is hopefully not going to find themselves welcomed in the community in the slightest.

Maybe I'm cynical, but here's how I'm seeing it.

The people who are trying to keep bringing this up over and over to paint GenCon and the trans community as predators are the same ones who when Frank Mentzer got banned from Gary Con, blamed Luke and didn't hold Frank responsible for his actions. Contrast that to the trans community which immediately voiced how Daisy should be held accountable.

And that's the difference, as I am seeing it.

edit let me clarify. With Frank, there was disagreement* on if he should be punished, and disagreement leads to conversation. With Daisy, everyone agrees she should be responsible. When everyone agrees, there isn't much conversation.

* there shouldn't be disagreement, but we all know why there was.