A Brush with Zak-ness

It'd be a surprise to me if anyone reading this hasn't already seen the damning revelations Mandy Morbid has shared about her ex, self-styled bad boy of the OSR Zak Smith. If you haven't, here's Mandy's statement, and a corroborating one from Vivka Grey. Obviously, I believe Mandy, and firmly accept that it's impossible to deny any longer that Z.S. is utter garbage. Any continued tolerance or support for an abuser like him is unacceptable.

This post is mainly just sorting my emotions on the matter, and unburdening myself of some stuff. I will not try to address issues covered much more deftly by others, because I frankly do not have the depth or words to deal with them properly (go to Cavegirl's Game Stuff and Trilemma Adventures for people who do).

I feel compelled to confess there's one instance where my name sits on a credit page with Z.S.'s, the Expanded Petty Gods Companion. Not to oversell the significance, as there are hundreds of names on that project; just about everyone even tangentially part of the OSR over the span of that book's long development contributed to it, and we weren't collaborators be any stretch. Still, it's added a sour after-taste when I look at it now.

Other than that, outside of a few reddit exchanges, my encounters with Z.S. have almost exclusively been second and third hand. I didn't much care for his art style, his blog was too long-winded to keep my interest, and his books were too eccentric to suit my play style, so overall I didn't have much use for the guy. My own work wasn't nearly prolific enough to garner his comments, get me recruited into his camp or be marked as an enemy of it. Not that I was bothered by that; my casual read was he was best avoided, a typical self-declared iconoclastic artisté, more brand than substance, with an exploitative attitude towards those around him, as typical of those types. If I'd only known how bad it really was.

Over time his infamy grew, mainly due to the people he pushed out of the OSR, people whose work I liked much more than his, and was sad to see go. But I regretfully admit I didn't take it all that seriously. This is a hobby where petty drama is common, where edition wars are bloody affairs and people have formed bitter enmities over different ideas of how Magic Missile works. It's not easily apparent when, this time, "this guy's a monster," isn't just hyperbole. So as the pro-Zak and anti-Zak camps got louder and more entrenched, I just shrugged and let my attention drift elsewhere. All of which, I realize now, came from a position of unquestioned privilege. I didn't feel personally threatened by Z.S., so I had the luxury of ignoring him. And I didn't understand that for vulnerable people that wasn't an option. To everyone for whom my support would have helped even just a little, I sincerely apologize, and promise to do better.


I did have one nearly-direct interaction with Z.S., late last year. One of the consequences of the controversy that erupted when Stuart Robertson declared he'd prefer his popular OSR logo no longer be used by people known for foul moral stances (loud and ugly were the answering protestations of "muh free speech!") was me throwing together the Honourable OSR community on G+. It was a slap-dash and impulsive project, but with the bulk of the loudest voices in the (now defunct) existing G+ OSR community taking positions somewhere between "no politics" and "you ain't no boss of me," I wanted to make a firm statement that the OSR should actively disapprove of petty fascists, and promote those who felt likewise to act on that belief. It's still around and so far it's been a modest success.

Anyway, one of the first precepts of the Hon. OSR was that applicants for membership would be reviewed. And of course one of the first in line was Z.S., who tries to force an ear into any channel that might be talking about him. "I was expecting and dreading his application," I confided with the moderators. As said earlier, I didn't understand how truly vile Z.S. is, to me he was just a loud and needy personality who rubbed lots of folks the wrong way. It was doubtless that if he came in, lots of other members would immediately bale out ... yet he was a name, tempting to let in as a influencer. Ridiculously and shamefully, I almost convinced myself to let him in under the justification that it'd be a way to keep an eye on him. Fortunately, one of the first subjects raised by the members of this new community was how terrible it would be if Z.S. was part of it, so it was obvious he had to be rejected.

 And immediately after that rejection, this showed up:

Meet "Zarzonia."

Odds are that's not actually Z.S. in the picture, but that is definitely a very silly wig. And it's a damn weak attempt at a sock-puppet. "Zarzonia" was a brand new G+ account with no history, whose only activity was applying to the Hon. OSR. Even the name is a disdainful act of cartoonish deception, "hello I'm Za ... uh, I mean ... Za-rzonia, yeah Zarzonia." The mod who received this request didn't even need half-a-moment to reject it.

Ironically, this clumsy attempt at gate-crashing was the experience that really convinced me to start taking the accusations against Z.S. seriously. Seeing him be so openly petty made it a lot easier to pay attention to the testimonies of harassment and vendetta against him.

Regarding the re-asessment (and hopeful reformation) of the OSR in the wake of Mandy's statements, I'm hopeful but reserved. Mandy turning Z.S.'s own narratives against him has been particularly powerful. Further, demolishing Z.S.'s reputation removes a big justification for the complacency that has plagued the OSR community; "you could have done something about Zak, If you believed women" is going to be a cutting rebuke for a long time. But as mentioned above this is still a field that, when pushed not long ago, largely stuck with a deeply flawed idea of what "free speech" means.  it's encouraging that condemnation of Zak has been so swift and universal. There's practically been a stampede of people trying to distance themselves from the shitpile. But on the other hand, that's an easy path to choose when everyone around you is already on it. What matters is who and how many learn to to be more personally discerning, and to listen and believe much sooner when victims start speaking up.   

Veterans of the Rusty Blade

[Edit from 2021: there's a new revision of "RBV" available]

Every now and then, I'm compelled to circle back to the vast cooling deposit left over from the early 2000's D20 eruption, and poke through it once more for salvage. "There's so much here," I think as I pry apart compacted layers of feats with a geology hammer, "so much meticulously crafted work, all free for the taking. There just has to be something I can make from it." 

As is usually the case, the affair begins with The Core Elements Toolbox, an obscure 2005 work by James D. Hargrove and Butch Curry that tried to distill the d20 SRD down into an intense liquor of fast easy role-playing. It doesn't quite work at that goal, for reasons I can't fully articulate, but that may be why I keep coming back to it, trying to figure where the fix needs to go. Which leads me to rifling through the standard SRD's (Fantasy D20, D20 Modern, D20 Future and the "true romantic" SRD derived from original Blue Rose). And it's usually around True Romantic that the fatigue starts to grow, since even that lightened version of the system is a lumbering mechanical behemoth compared to the systems I generally prefer, and I start to doubt if anything D20 can be redeemed.

So then I bounce out to Mocrolite20 to get some breathing room. Which is refreshing at first, but by laying bare the core bones of D20, Microlite rather starkly forces me to (again) realize the central problems with that whole school of design. Mechanical character optimization and min-maxing as a primary mode of play, lunk-headedly linear resolution and modelling, and constant built-in roadblocks and speed-bumps intended to wring player initiative through a sieve of incremental advancement. Somehow, the whole manages to be both burdensome yet insubstantial, a expansive act of running in place to look busy.

Unsurprisingly, I always end my latest D20 tangent frustrated and jumping to some other project to clear my head of the affair. What I'm saying is, this is why I re-wrote Searchers of the Unknown over the weekend. So here's Rusty-Bladed Veterans.

Click the image to download the PDF

There's a lot to like about SotU, but I perceived issues with it. The language was loose at the cost of clarity. And while the stated goal was B/X style play, it introduced several eccentric elements leading to a much more combat-focused experience. Because I'd just been trudging through D20, it was clear that the original writer of SotU had carried over a few 3E-era assumptions upon creating it. All of which were things I wanted to change. Additionally, I aimed to make the rules thoroughly compatible with B/X resources without conversion; I wanted to be able to send a "Rusty-Bladed" party through B2 The Lost City using every line of the adventure's text as written. Also, I wanted to be able to run standard B/X classes alongside those characters, if it so happened old-hand players showed up for such a session.

On top of that, I threw in some elements from other SotU hacks I liked, the clever spell-casting system from Microlite20 and a means for characters to learn spells from scrolls (which weirdly I had assumed was already part of the original SotU; wonder where I picked that notion up).

I'm really pleased with how Rusty-Bladed Veterans came out. I dare even say I'd prefer using it over full B/X, since starting all characters on the same foot eliminates a lot of the disorienting disparities players have traditionally had to deal with (thief skills in particular come to mind, and demi-human abilities), doubly so for new players. Plus I prefer magical abilities earned as a consequence of play rather than as preordained advancements. I'm looking forward to seeing how this plays out at the table.