Dramatic Failure: Serial Harasser Zak S. Joins White Wolf

Photo of Zak Smith courtesy of White Wolf.

It recently came to light that Zak Smith, the serial harasser who clings to the ass of the role playing game industry like a boil you can't lance, managed to find continued employment.

This time, Zak's managed to attach their lamprey-like mouth to the mobile division of White Wolf (WW) as the co-author of Vampire The Masquerade: We Eat Blood, as announced here. Notably, this announcement blog post from WW also includes the following concluding paragraph:

Regarding the recent accusations made against our freelancers: White Wolf was aware of and investigated the previous accusations against Zak before contracting him to write and illustrate the game script. Fortunately, these accusations all pertained to alleged online behavior: each accusation is connected to an online discussion, and the digital records of these discussions can be located and reviewed. White Wolf’s investigation concluded that the accusations are false, and that Zak did not engage in the alleged behavior. We have full faith in Zak and Sarah and are excited to see their great work with the World of Darkness spread!

It's notable because this paragraph confirms that White Wolf has not just gone creatively bankrupt but morally bankrupt, too. Aside from the fact that WW decided to hire a sentient trash pile that assumed the shape of a person, WW's decision is puzzling because Zak Smith has used his fanbase  to harass people important to WW's past, like David Hill (Chronicles of Darkness, Changeling) and Avery Adler (Monsterhearts). David Hill writes of the harassment he received:

The phone call that I received came from a cheap prepaid phone purchased in the city he lives, but millions do. The phone call directly referenced him, and things he's specifically obsessed with. Around that time, I received an email rerouted through the United Arab Emirates which featured a photo of my child's school and a number of very specific threats... it referenced things he's said about me which were not true, and at the time, he lived some 20~ minutes from me.  

I know every time he brings me up, because I tend to wake up to a stream of threats and very disturbing anonymous messages.  

For the past seven or so years, he's screen-shotted and saved everything I say online, even things I've said in private groups, in spite of thorough blocks. I've had to aggressively block people suspected of being his sock puppets. At one time, a friend of mine being harassed by him actually had an associate who is a plagiarism expert identify a few of his sock puppet accounts who write exactly like him... He's been impersonating [an] RPG net mod for over a year... When called on it, he said it wasn't him and it didn't happen. When logs were shown, his story changed and now he's saying it isn't him, but someone that shares a computer with him, who has been impersonating this community figure for over a year to defend him and talk him up. And who writes with an almost laughably similar style to him.  

My issue is that he stalks me. He saves everything I say online. His fans threaten me and my family. I have tried for the better part of a decade to get him to leave me the fuck alone, but he absolutely under no circumstances will not. This isn't some thing where I can sit down with a cup of tea and meet him half way... This is not some rational disagreement. He's a stalker. He's an abuser. I'm not going to kindly ask him to pretty please stop abusing me and everyone else he's abusing. Because I have before. It didn't work. It won't work.

In 2015, I covered Zak Smith's use of a website he ran to snipe, misgender, insult and harass anyone Zak didn't like. But the documentation of Zak Smith's harassment doesn't end there. Here's a first-hand account from another one of his targets of one incident, and then a master post of what Zak did over the course of three and a half years. Here's a 3 part post from another woman in tabletop gaming Zak Smith has harassed detailed what she was put through: Part One, Part Two and Part three.

Zak Smith also has a secret group he uses to co-ordinate his followers into his private harassment army.

And just when you thought that GamerGate's fever dream given flesh couldn't sink any lower, here's how Zak Smith used a charity to force his harassment victims to have to interact with him.

At this point, it's a pretty good idea to view seeing Zak Smith's name attached to anything in the same way you'd view watching a cockroach skitter out of a diner's restaurant kitchen: a warning sign for you to take your business elsewhere, lest you consume something disgusting.

Zak S, Roll For Harassment

Screencap from the fFacebookpage for "The Dongion"

UPDATE: Zak Smith is now working for White Wolf. You can read all about it here.

(Trigger warning for death, transphobia)
Here's how Zak Smith hid behind "parody" to anonymously snipe at and harass professional writers, bloggers and anyone he didn't like.

I previously wrote about how Wizards of the Coast employed as consultants two people notorious for harassing the marginalized in the latest edition of Dungeons & Dragons. As if the odious things Zak Smith has done with his name publicly attached weren't bad enough, there's the period of time when he ran "The Dongion".

The Dongion was like The Onion for tabletop rpgs, if you didn't want to be funny and had absolutely no grasp of nuance or satire. Whether it was talking about how people talking about how gross the implications of the Drow were should die in a fire to misgendering trans women developers and bloggers, and calling them "grotesque" and "frauds" (see screen cap above).

"But Ironhead Shawn," that site is run by 'E Gary Zweibel' not Zak Smith, whick are completely different names!" Blogger Ettin details a number of ways that this pseudonymous blogger writes articles that talk about how great Zak Smith is or how the people that Zak Smith doesn't like are also people the site makes fun of and how both The Dongion used exact Zak Smith slang like "Monocole Droppers" and how after there were public request for specific complaints in the wake of the controversy of him being a paid D&D consultant, The Dongion posted articles calling accusations of Zak S being an awful person were all trolls, including naming a specific pro writer. Once that pro writer went to WotC about it, the Dongion suddenly announced it would stop updating before deleting the site altogether-- and yet, the site's still listed on Zak S' blogroll! Why does this matter? How does this help Zak Smith? As Ettin points out:

Zak’s usual tactic is to harass in ways that give him plausible deniability... It’s how Wizards of the Coast credited him as a consultant in the Basic version of a game they’re trying to make more inclusive, how a guy who left the Escapist over their handling of Gamergate can still blow it off as “an impressive ability to rub the tabletop community the wrong way”, and how bigger names like Kenneth Hite and Monte Cook can be comfortable writing ad copy for his books. The Dongion cut out the middleman, letting Zak harass people himself without hurting the persona he presents to others.

If we're going to make gaming-- whether it be the dice-chucking, card-flopping, or button-pressing kind-- more inclusive, we have to make it know that behavior like this is unacceptable.

Critical Failure: WotC Employed Toxic Harassers As Consultants On New D&D

Last week, I cast a spotlight on the newest edition of Dungeons & Dragons and praised the Player's Handbook for taking the bold step to have inclusive language on gender and orientation right in the handbook. I heralded it as a great step forward and said "Kudos to WotC."

I take it all back.



The blog Fail Forward details how beneath the positive press for its inclusive language, the latest edition of D&D also counts among it consultants two men that have a long history of engaging in harassment, homophobic and transphobic behavior: RPGPundit and Zak S.

Seeing their names there in black and white was just too much, and people began to speak out. Most did so in private, others posted publicly but without naming names. This, I became aware, was because anyone who criticized the pair found themselves subjected to harassment, abuse and real world stalking... This is where Zak excels. He has in the past posted lists of people who he feels have displeased him in some way, complete with their real names. Those people then lists find themselves subjected to sustained campaigns of harassment.
...
While this behavior is alarming, it the choice of victim that is the most telling. These attacks nearly always target women and LGTBQ individuals, mostly freelancers and independent designers. Zak and Pundit have taken pains to defend themselves against accusations of transphobia, but I know several trans people who their fans have attacked and harassed. Zak described one of them as ‘mentally ill’, both he and Pundit told others they would be better off committing suicide. Recently, in a post defending Zak and accusing his detractors of misogyny, his girlfriend attempted to out a trans designer.

The anonymous tumblr Problematic Tabletop started cataloging some of their more public behavior. Fresh waves of hate mail forced designers to delete and hide social media accounts to escape. At the same time Zak put his setting book on sale, using promotional quotes consisting of people calling out his behaviour. This was not unusual, Zak’s business model revolves around publicly being a jerk. He is, quite literally, a career bully. 

Eventually, Mike Mearls, the lead designer of the newest edition of D&D, asked for people to come to him privately with any stories of harassment on the part of Zak S. and the RPGPundit had engaged in. Days later, Mike Mearls said that he considered of the claims didn't matter, because he couldn't find any evidence of either man using explicit slurs, so the matter was closed as far as he was concerned.

 Meanwhile, Zak was publicly speaking on Mearls’ behalf, saying that WOTC had found the claims against him to be baseless. Those who sent Mearls information began to panic, had he just shared their complaints with their harasser? Mearls responded that he had told Zak the claims were baseless, but hadn’t shared any names or details with him. Nevertheless they were not pleased, nor did they feel safe. Why had Mearls consulted with Zak before replying to them? Why was it more important to re-assure Zak he was in the clear than respond to allegations of harassment? Mearls again replied, saying that he was not taking the accusations seriously because some of the people stating them were members of the Something Awful forums... Meanwhile, The RPG Site, operated by someone Mearls hired as a consultant, currently contains such topics as: “Bruce Baugh can go fuck himself with a rusty spoon”, “Why I dislike feminism” and a thread defending the use of the word ‘Jap’ in WW2 settings...  

In investigating this story I heard the same tales over and over again. The RPG community is small enough that almost every woman, person of colour or LGTBQ individual seems to have had a run in with Zak or Pundit. The only reason I hadn’t heard about this before is because they are too afraid to speak out. Discussions happen in private, or with the names left out, because both Zak and Pundit are infamous for googling their own names and attacking their critics. Zak even now tries to portray these allegations as prudish conservatives out to smear him due to his involvement in pornography. Yet for that to be true almost every marginalised voice in the RPG community would need to be part of a secret right wing conspiracy. At a certain point you have to accept that that is implausible.

WotC has not made a public statement on the matter. All communication has been through private emails and a now-deleted G+ discussion. It's been nearly a month since this brought to light. WotC has been content to soak up praise and admiration for using inclusive language, but wants to dodge responsibility for using two poisonous people as consultants for that same new edition of D&D.

You don't get to have it both ways. Inclusive language has to accompany inclusive behavior-- otherwise, you're doing nothing but paying lip service with empty words.

Shape up, WotC.