Aeronautic Primates and Other Delights

There is Drama going around in the indie TTRPG community. Some people accuse a game designer of being a jerk, a cheat (someone who doesn't pay contractors, not someone involved in relationship shenanigans), a liar, and weaponizing their fame to harass other people in the community.

Others say the above comments are nothing but hate-speech aimed at a person of a marginalized identity, and this person has written great works and brings creativity and fresh insights to the community at large.

I'd love to figure out which is true, or if they both have elements of truth.

The details are apparently covered in a Rascal article, possibly some posts at Medium, and of course, in multiple Discords. If I joined the right ones, I might be able to find out who actually said what. (I will not be joining any Discords over this.)

I can confirm:
• Creator in question has written some amazing stuff, not only much-lauded but also unique improvements to the TTRPG-sphere
• People I respect (but do not know personally) are calling aforementioned creator a scoundrel and abuser

( My analysis )

Found a nice gaming article on Bluesky (Three Tiers of RPG Publishing), which led me to another article, which I found insightful and clever (and a bit sad, as accurate talk about economics these days tends to be), and then hit the bit that blew my mind.

They Killed Normal and Called It Progress: "Julia Roberts, Applebee's, Bandcamp, your manager, and the death of everything in between. (Also, Sweetgreen is the A24 of dining and I will die on this hill.)"

Have you noticed that the middle is gone from everything? Restaurants, companies, careers, music, retail, the economy itself. What replaced it is a barbell: one enormous weight on each end, nothing in the center, and most of us trying not to get crushed by the bar.

And the replacement does look better every single time, I grant you that. The A24 film is better than the $40 million adult drama from 2007, yeah, we can all agree on that. The Sweetgreen bowl is better than the Applebee’s chicken parm, sure. Your favorite Substack is sharper than the mid-list magazine that folded in 2019. Every replacement is a genuine upgrade. But every replacement serves fewer and fewer people.

That's not the mind-blowing part. That's the thesis, the baseline, the part that he spends half of the ~3000 word essay explaining, giving examples of, making neat comparisons across different industries.

( It's amazing that it doesn't get boring because it truly is the same damn pattern )