A few of us have been quietly questioning this for awhile. After baiting further background information from Penfold, and then dcdennis spilling the beans in this thread , it's time to ask the question. Apparently, I've been elected as the one to ask the question. Has anyone ever met Penfold in person?

He seems to recently have been at an FFG event lately, specifically Arkham Nights . And at GenCon, too — well, depending on which game you know him through, anyway. He says he was there for Netrunner (yes and yelling "Danger Zone" even though not even the current champ heard these comments), Call of Cthulu (not able to make it, but wishing he could play Damon's fun decks), or AGOT (yes, and talked to Damon at the bar for 10 minutes).

He appears to be a CCG era player who debated balance back then and a playtester now based on his detailed knowledge of unspoiled cards awaiting release .

He isn't a local to MN, but knows a lot about the local play group . In fact, despite wishing he had more than 10 minutes in a bar with Damon that he mentioned above, he seems to have significant communication with Damon, knowing his design intentions behind Incinerate , playing several games against his competitive and fun Cthulu decks as linked to above where he said he would not make GenCon, finding out what games he is still working on , knows what deck Damon was running around with for a year at tournaments , has apparently been warned by moderators for posting personal communication with Damon , and FB im's with Damon .

More than this, Penfold absolutely adores Damon. In the middle of a thread where people were expressing a lack of excitement at the new naval enhancement, the one person to “love” the idea, is Penfold . Did anyone else notice how much he completely agreed with the Damon interview ?

This all motivates the above question, has anyone met Penfold? He should be easily identifiable based on all the events he says he's been to and how long he claims to have been playing AGOT and CoC. I'm looking for responses from known members of the community to verify Penfold's existence. I hope someone can prove that Penfold is not Damon.

If you have anything to add that would lend towards the truth whether it supports them being the same person or different people, please share and discuss.

edit: The links aren't working, so I pasted them in the post. Sorry for the poor formatting now.

edit 2: Apparently if you right click the links, they work. Changed it back to look nicer. Right click and open the links in new tabs to get them to work.

if you were the prosecutor, OJ woulda went to jail the first time. To quote my hero: "…let's start the insanity."

All I can say is, if I've ever met Penfold, (s)he has never identified themselves as Penfold from the boards.

I just came here to say I hope you wear that shirt at Worlds, Dennis. Otherwise I will be dissapoint.

EDIT: Also, I've never met Penfold, and I've met pretty much everyone.

Staton said:

Ordered:

haha yes! also this is pretty moot. All they need to do is pull the IP from his posts. If they are all from Damon's house, then bam!

dcdennis said:

Supplementary evidence for fun -

Penfold defends FFGs lack of prize support at 2011 Gencon.

Penfold finds Damon's Lannister article thought provoking.

While it's a point of some amusing interest and curiosity for me, I'm curious why we would need FFG to investigate his IP and why there would be some sort of "bam?"

Well if Damon is acting so unprofessionally then will FFG really want them working for them?

___

finitesquarewell said:

This is an angle that i never even considered until reading this. In and of itself, an employee posting anonymously on the boards for a game which he works on is a bit silly, but not something that i really have a problem with in principle. Afterall, if one man's surreptitious opinion can sway an entire global meta, then we are all sheep. However if some of those posts include extremely harsh and abusive language towards members of the community, including those with which a future collaboration will have to be done, then that is an enormous problem. It takes some of the fun out of the prospect of winning one of these bigger tournies, and makes me think twice about attending and supporting future events.

HoyaLawya said:

Practically everyone knows about that card though. The new agenda that lets you start with a location in play right? I heard about it months ago, and I'm not Damon or a playtester.

Seems like most (all?) of this can be explained by Penfold being friends with Damon and not introducing himself using his forum handle IRL.

I don't think so actually. Well the weird thing is that I know pretty much everyone that goes to these tournaments, maybe he just hasn't gone to tournaments?, and the only people I've met without a forum handle are fairly new players. So either he isn't going to tournaments, which seems weird since he's such good friends with Damon and clearly likes the game, or is going and isn't telling the truth about how new he is to the game. Granted, this is all assuming that he lives somewhere in the midwest area, which seems like he does?

I'd probably scrap Penfold talking about the 'alleged new agenda' as any kind of evidence, since it has been discussed very heatedly at Agotcards for several weeks/months now. Didn't bother to do a very indepth search, but for example this conversation was already seen by the 1000+ Agotcards users before Penfold mentions it… and I think the first mentions were around something like May or June.

If I know about it here in Finland, without having talked about it actively to anybody, then that part of the evidence doesn't stand.

To me it just looks like a creepy witchhunt started because of the argument in the Agenda thread.

Signed,

Nate French

finitesquarewell said:

This is circumstantial evidence at *best* and a rumour mongering attempt at inciting a witchhunt at worst. I highly doubt that Penfold is the only one in community outside Damon to hold these opinions (I also happen to like the idea of a naval enhancement as it adds more psychology into the game). Also a strong possibility is that whatever card you are trying to design is meeting resistance because it is an NPE card.

There are many possible scenarios here including simply another established player using an alias to post more controversial comments. If you'd been on the internet since Usenet days, you would know that is quite common on many, many internet forums especially some gaming forums. So essentially this "evidence" amounts to nothing.

I am reminded of the banner flying above Emirates Stadium last year when Man City came to town:

"You can't buy class"

HoyaLawya said:

And not just quietly! I actually asked him here on FFG's CoC boards if he is actually Damon which he denied.

I started wondering because of his uncanny insight into Damon's mind. IIRC, in all but one case in rule discussions Damon confirmed Pendragon's interpretations. And as you correctly mentioned, he also usually follows the party line. In other words: Lots of indications for a sock puppet.

Alando said:

Creepy sums up my feelings pretty well. I gotta ask this: Is there anything good that can possibly come out of this thread? Anything at all? And OTOH is it conceivable that it might actually do damage of some sort?

I really hope this isn't the case, though if it is I think it would explain a good deal of the trouble Corey has had during the card design processes.

Cute. How about this explanation? I seem to recall a little bird telling me several people had issues with the design of that card, not just Damon, and a lot of work went in to balancing it.

Well, this well crafted thread started out fun and has taken a more serious turn.

Sorry, I can't join in on stalking Damon guys. 3 kids and all… 4th on the way, work, church, trying to remain relevant in Thrones, etc.

I'll keep focusing what little time I can spare on doing something positive for the game, instead of abusing it at every turn to feed my ego and prove my superiority.

You guys have fun, and play nice. Try not to throw and gold dragons at anyone.

Ratatoskr said:

Highly concievable, imho. And no, I can't see anything good coming out of it… whatever the particulars or motives. From my angle, with the lack of real evidence, it just looks like bullying (towards Penfold) and slander (towards Damon). And no, even if there was serious evidence for the allegation, a thread on the FFG forums would not be the proper way to pursue it.

WWDrakey said:

If there'd be any such way, or even any need to pursue it, at all.

As Ratatoskr said " What good can come of this " I really hope that Damon does not get the sack because of this, if its true.

Why try and get one of the designers in trouble ?

Madness.

Dennis, I hate to bring your name up again but your probably really causing trouble this time as opposed to the normal annoying game playing that you do on the forums.

Your also probably causing a bit of bad air between the players and FFG which cant be good for the game.

You and your mates should give it a rest for a while now.

Deathjester26 said:

In his defense, I don't think there is any way of knowing exactly what he is referencing specifically. I highly doubt it's a "they didn't make the card exactly like I wanted it" complaint.