What's Up With Frank Mentzer?

[geneweigel]

I saw some link about Frank Mentzer being Ed Greenwood-like with some girl that he met at a con:

and then him shilling himself to the STRANGER THINGS producers:

and this is on top of of the whole Dragonsfoot threat thing:

knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14851

Can someone just punch me in the face?

[geneweigel]

I looked him up on FACEBOOK and he has a statement on the Twitter post:

After all this I'm still right back where I started from: Creatively ambiguous feeling about Mentzer.

That said where do you draw the line? Its not like he "Spacey-ed" her or anything.

I'm going to remain on the fence with Frank with hopes for the positive.

Because:

A) The DF guy might be trash
B) This woman might be overly sensitive.
C) Maybe he needs the dough trying to "celeb" himself into STRANGER THINGS.

[GRWelsh]

Well, that's quite a rabbit hole to go down... After wasting far too much time trying to get at "what happened," here is how it appears to me:

Frank didn't sexually harass that young woman but rather he flirted with her online with cringeworthy awkwardness. Later, he got into an argument with her on Facebook -- and she unfriended him -- and he PM'ed her -- and then she blocked him. And that was that, except she alleges that Frank made thinly veiled threats about her not being able to work in the industry again (or something like that)... And that would all just be hearsay, except what Frank really did wrong in a completely separate incident with a completely separate person about two months ago on Dragonsfoot. Some guy was questioning Frank about the Empyrea/Aquaria setting kickstarter, and Frank took the questions as trolling, and lost his temper and PM'ed the guy making all kinds of threats. The guy shared the PM with the site administrator and moderators, and they banned Frank from DF. And now that PM is making its way around the internet. Frank claimed he never saw that PM before the DF moderators showed it to him and implied maybe his account was hacked. But the DF moderators didn't believe this, because it would mean Frank's account would have to have been hacked between times he used it without his knowing, and also with the hacker using the same IP address.

[geneweigel]

Well you have to stand your ground as a dungeon master too and thats really whats important he-... Just kidding

Seriously, so the lying is another factor. Thats usually what happens when one thing leaks then someone gets the balls to speak up when the subject has already been flattened out.

Male and female friendship always devolves. Sometimes its hard for people to get around the fact that "HEY WE COULD BE HAVING SEX!" but its important for me to throw all that garbage out the window because thats never who I want to be. Sometimes because I'm so open minded that I send the wrong signal and I do it all the time. For example, a woman should be able to buy a man a drink floats past my mind and then I forget that this is a direct flirtation signal. That just happened last night and it didn't even register in my mind that the owner only bought me a drink.

[geneweigel]

OOps I meant I was the only one who got a free drink but it didn't sink in that all the friendly candor was actually something else

[geneweigel]

Man, I am the king of inadvertently misleading women (and gay men) in a romantic manner. I should have a lifetime achievement in that category. And the winner is... GENE WEIGEL IN "WE'RE JUST BUDDIES"

[geneweigel]

I've been seeing tidbits about a "Bill Webb" incident. That was the guy who did those old school feel adventures for D20 with the other guy who was more aggressive Clark Peterson called "Necromancer Games". They had this issue with Rob kUntz that no one would explain. Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, this Bill dude did some midnight attack on my forum then deleted everything super fast. His just-made forum account. Everything posted gone by morning. Basically it was "fuck you, who do you think you are?" kind of shit. Total babble. 2002? I don't know. My ironclad memory doesn't forget. I thought they were alright up until that point. Then I was like why did I buy all this shit? "Rappan Athuk", etc. I threw all their adventures in the trash after that.

Those two have always been sort of on my shit list but what the hell are the details of this? He made a weird comment to a woman about gender? Anybody know?

[Scott]

I saw a few posts where it was mentioned, but never looked into it.

[geneweigel]

It sounds like he raped her from what I'm reading here. Second post:

paizo.com/threads/rzs2uoph?Open-Letter-From-Paizo-CEO-Lisa-Stevens

[foster1941]

My third-hand understanding is that Webb (whom I've never met and had no prior opinion of) got drunk at Paizo's con in May of this year and started aggressively hitting on the woman (not clear to me if they already knew each other or were strangers) and started following her around when she tried to get away from him, at which point he was escorted out by con security, but wasn't actually banned from the con (or maybe was banned from returning to that particular con but not from future cons?), and everybody agreed to keep it quiet at the time, but it eventually became public a couple months ago (via a third-party witness account) and Paizo got a PR black-eye for their handling of the situation.

[geneweigel]

I was beginning to wonder specifically what happened but I just checked out a few You Tube videos of the dude and he's public DMing in pajama bottoms.

WHOOT!!! ALARM!

His persona from the videos seems like those D&D players who refuse to DM but insist on playing constantly. Knows all the rules then finally DMs and its the most aggro piece of shit session ever.

[geneweigel]

I still don't know exactly what happened between Rob Kuntz and Necromancer to this day. That might be a subject of my blog one day the history of my interaction with the rpg industry, designers and fans. That would be interesting to see whatever happened to some of these angry people.

What really gets me weirded out was what happened to many of the vocal people that were on my forum. Some just seemed to have completely disintegrated.

So much energy wasted on PMing people who never panned out or even existed. Where did they all go? Crazy people?

[GRWelsh]

As I recall, Rob agreed to write the "City of Brass" adventure for Necromancer Games and either never provided it or only provided a portion of it. I don't want to say any more than that, because I never knew the precise details and there are usually two sides to every story.

For me, the moral of the story is simple: never pay anyone in advance for creative work that hasn't been produced yet. Avoid the entire drama!

[geneweigel]

Dec 6, 2017 12:15:47 GMT -5 GRWelsh said:

For me, the moral of the story is simple: never pay anyone in advance for creative work that hasn't been produced yet. Avoid the entire drama!

Yeah, what was normal for Rob is a dimension unknown for these later opportunistic publishers like Kenzer, Troll Lords and others. Its hard to translate.

I gave him nothing but product and that was very annoying that he could not fulfill his promises in any way. Me and GT never received any material from him much less the interaction we had discussed. I had sent him some of the planar stuff and that was the last interaction. That is not a time for total silence when your handed something to evaluate. So it might have been a scenario like that where they handed him something and he never got back. It was great talking to Rob but I should have just ignored the business propositions. If anything, he took the gaming wind out of my sails, for sure.

But I'll be back on the horse in no time... wait, who ate the horse?

Seriously, I actually find Rob refreshing compared to some of these latter end Gygax associates. BARF! And if anything he needs help and support because he deserves it. Who else does?

[GRWelsh]

I agree. I like Rob's gaming material. I bought his El Raja Key archive, and it gives me a glimpse into a time and place I've always wanted to see. More than anything, I loved the way "Bottle City" was presented. I wish... I wish... (Djinni appears with arms folded: "Be careful with your wording") I wish Rob and EGG had done that approach in the Dungeons of Castle Greyhawk, and I wish for more wishes!

POOF!

And I'm in an eternal time loop!

[foster1941]

That's how Rob wanted to do Castle Zagyg and is apparently what led to his and Gary's falling out over it (since Gary was insistent on the more traditional module-style presentation that we ultimately got - well, that we ultimately got one level of...). The rumor on the grapevine is that relations between Rob and Gail Gygax have thawed a bit recently (as, presumably, her dreams of raking in Big Hollywood Cash from Gary's IP have repeatedly failed to materialize) so there's perhaps some slight glimmer of hope that something like this (or at least like Rob's DVD Archive) might still emerge someday - images of the original maps and whatever keys still exist along with some "designer notes"-style commentary and historical anecdotes to provide context and help fill in at least some of the blanks.

[geneweigel]

I thought she sold the whole shebang?

Anyway, who is there besides Rob? The whole Gary assist squad was bent.