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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iosue" data-source="post: 9434605" data-attributes="member: 6680772">My point is, half the posters here are not responding to friends and collaborators about conflicting mutual memories. If you treat the people who are ostensibly important to you like Joe Rando on the Internet, I would submit that they are not really important to you.There is no context in which drudging up a 30 year insult is fair game. Which, if it was a problem, should have been addressed before Kuntz left the project (or even before he joined!), not hurled after him as he was leaving by someone who was supposed to be a friend, mentor, and one-time father figure. Hell, even someone who didn't have that kind of history would deserve a modicum of respect.See, the problem is, you're treating this as if Gygax and Kuntz didn't have all this history, and deep personal connections. As if Kuntz was just some guy disagreeing on the Internet, and just some project member with tardiness issues. And what we are saying (if I may be so bold as to speak for others who have commented on this episode) is that treating someone you've known for 30+ years, whom you've mentored and at one point even considered adopting, as just some guy on the Internet, and as just some unreliable writer, is a problem.This was the point of the episode being mentioned in the podcast. Not that Gary Gygax, designer and writer, insulted Rob Kuntz, designer and writer. But that ultimately, after the success of D&D, Gary, the man, unfortunately drove away or burned bridges to the people who were closest to him before D&D was ever thought of.This would have more force if this whole discussion had not been inspired by a podcast filled with nothing but the actual testimony of real people who knew Gygax, and his various flaws.I have no doubt that Gygax had some wonderful qualities. The same people who pointed out all his flaws in the podcast also universally spoke highly of him. But for 40 years, all that we heard about Gygax were the wonderful qualities. Often at the expense of others, be that the minimizing of Arneson's contribution, or the demonizing of Lorraine Williams. It does not take away from Gygax to recalibrate our measures of him and those other people. Understanding that (by the accounts of people who were there!) Gygax could be petty, or selfish, or short-sighted does not erase his acts of kindness and generosity, let alone his essential genius as someone who could see what Arneson had done and turn it into something tangible that could be spread around the world.</blockquote>

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