RPG Net is a Cult Compound. Come Out of It.

Totally happened. For people who preach inclusivity, they sure can be exclusive. #Gamergate pic.twitter.com/76uz8CdXsj

— Jak Atak (@atak_jak) May 10, 2016

Once upon a time, RPG Net was a decent play to talk about tabletop RPGs and how to go about playing them. Then, much like how the Social Justice cult of Cthulhu-like crazies (and about the same time) took over the Hugos and its WorldCon, they came into tabletop RPGs and began poisoning their way to positions of influence. As RPG Net was the online discussion forum for many years, it got targeted and converged.

I witnessed this, as I witnessed the consequence--the purging of WrongThink--first hand when I got perma-banned in the wake of their takeover a few years ago. I could take the lies and subsequent fraud no longer, and the same code words used to slander resisters elsewhere were in full use then. That's how I recognized the similarity when Gamergate hit, and thus signed on to the Ride What Never Ends.

As the pinned Tweet shows, the cult compound has only gotten worse. This, motherfuckers, is what a Safe Space really means: Mean Girls, for-fucking-ever, final destination (with a side of Heathers so they can justify driving you to kill yourself). No one with any sanity or decency wants this.

Fortunately there are good alternatives now to RPG Net. Besides The RPG Site, where I'm often found, we have the RPG and Gaming subreddits at Reddit (and counterparts like Voat), the /tg/ boards at the various Chans, and plenty of blogs now (such as mine) also write about tabletop RPGs. You need not ever bother with that concentrated crazy cult compound to get your itch scratched.

Instead, you just have to deal with the fact that a lot of the writers, designers, and developers current big in the scene (or related ones; a lot of SJW cultists in vidya came from TRPGs where RPG Net's convergence infected them). That's a tedious task, but not a joyless one; you folks already know how to deal with them, so meme-bomb them out of position and it'll be good thereafter.

RPG Net, as bad as it is, is already fading in relevance. More on this, and how to use it, tomorrow.