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[List] TTRPG Guide to Woke Companies

Started by Ocule, August 03, 2021, 12:26:41 PM

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honeydipperdavid

Can anyone explain why this list has not been pinned?  Its incredibly useful and it should be at the top.

The Spaniard

I was just reviewing the list and saw that Kobold Press is on both the Yellow and Red lists.  Based on current events, they belong on Red IMO.

Dropbear

Quote from: Venka on September 18, 2022, 02:46:17 PM
I was looking into Shadows of the Demon Lord based on a discussion thread pimping it over reddit (I know, but sometimes I go there anyway).  I was at first happy to see it green, and then I did my cursory search and found this:
https://twitter.com/schwalb_ent/status/1269428881691488256
If twitter is annoying for you, this is the quote:
"Since founding this company, I have made it a point to keep my personal politics and my company separate, believing that my customers generally don't care for whom I vote or what causes I support. But the time for my silence is over. #BlackLivesMatter."
He then did some triple fist emoji, and linked to a (now defunct) link to his own website, and included an image of a receipt for donating 1,022.80 to The Bail Project.
This was on June 6th, 2020, and since then he hasn't exactly continued to use his platform to do further anti-white stuff.  The Bail Project, while definitely solidly something like lefty/woke, does not appear nearly as strange a beast as the actual BLM infrastructure itself.  It also got itself in trouble in 2021 for some evil thing that is outside the scope of my post- but at the time of the donation, it doesn't seem like they had nearly the same background as many of the other agents of universal destruction that were being peddled by the mainstream media.

I then came here and searched in the thread, and found several pieces of discussion about this- but difficult to find, especially as they were all prior to the Page 200 Abortion Banwave, and many other dramadrops and debates in this 215 page thread (that will likely grow to as many pages as the software allows).
Here's a good one:
Quote from: migo on March 14, 2022, 01:05:44 PM
Schwalb Entertainment is in Green. R. Talsorian Games is in Yellow.

Both donated to the bail project. https://gnomestew.com/game-companies-say-black-lives-matter/

Maybe there's another reason for R. Talsorian being in Yellow than that, but if so I don't think that has been communicated in this thread, while I have seen other mentions about why Schwalb shouldn't be in the Green.


So my request is, could there be some parenthetical in the OP mentioning some abbreviated version of this ("tweeted blacklivesmatter, donated to bail project") or something?  I get that this is nowhere near the egregious player-hating behavior of something in the red, but having people stumble in here and having to do their own search kind of minimizes the value of the list.  I feel if something is in the green list without comment, no trivial internet search should reveal open support for woke stuff.

Maybe it's because the game that Schwalb wrote does not contain or espouse any sort of modern woke politics regardless of whether he as a person does supports woke causes, whereas the game that Pondsmith & Co. wrote does contain and espouse many modern woke political points?

Dropbear

#3303
I read through this list and the posts here and get the feeling that a lot of people feel that games should be on the red list based on the personal politics of the writer, whether or not their actual works contain any sort of politics at all.

Case in point, the contentions about Shadow of the Demon Lord's status.

Schwalb has not injected any kind of modern woke politics into his game, in case you've never read the materials, despite any personal leanings. Schwalb's twitter message of 2020 isn't any sort of evidence towards his game's political leanings. Honestly, SotDL contains so much shit that would make most woke people reeeee that I'm surprised it isn't lauded more here. And I'm not even going to start on PunkApocalyptic.

I was under the impression that a game's rankings on the list were supposed to be based upon the game's content. If that's really the case, then I'd object to Schwalb's work being added to the red or even yellow list.

MadCarthos

Quote from: Dropbear on September 28, 2022, 08:19:20 AM
I read through this list and the posts here and get the feeling that a lot of people feel that games should be on the red list based on the personal politics of the writer, whether or not their actual works contain any sort of politics at all.

Case in point, the contentions about Shadows of the Demon Lord's status.

Schwalb has not injected any kind of modern woke politics into his game, in case you've never read the materials, despite any personal leanings. Schwalb's twitter message of 2020 isn't any sort of evidence towards his game's political leanings. Honestly, SotDL contains so much shit that would make most woke people reeeee that I'm surprised it isn't lauded more here. And I'm not even going to start on PunkApocalyptic.

I was under the impression that a game's rankings on the list were supposed to be based upon the game's content. If that's really the case, then I'd object to Schwalb's work being added to the red or even yellow list.

I think it is a combination of game content and an understanding of whom the game's producers are financially supporting (politically speaking) or if the game's producers have explicitly asked persons of opposing political belief to not purchase their products. Savage Swords & Sinister Spells also does not contain any woke content, but its author has asked to be put on the red list so that conservatives would not purchase it. It would stand to reason that one of the reasons conservatives might not want purchase something is to prevent their payment from being used in ways contrary to their moral, philosophical, and political beliefs.

Perhaps there should be an Orange category?

Dropbear

Quote from: MadCarthos on September 28, 2022, 10:12:34 AM
I think it is a combination of game content and an understanding of whom the game's producers are financially supporting (politically speaking) or if the game's producers have explicitly asked persons of opposing political belief to not purchase their products. Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells also does not contain any woke content, but its author has asked to be put on the red list so that conservatives would not purchase it. It would stand to reason that one of the reasons conservatives might not want purchase something is to prevent their payment from being used in ways contrary to their moral, philosophical, and political beliefs.

Perhaps there should be an Orange category?

Nogueiro, whom you mention requesting being put on the red list personally, and despite being undisputedly left-leaning, produces zero products that include any kind of politics yes. Primal Quest is still offered on the TTRPGs for Reproductive Rights bundle. I will say that abortion is a sticky subject with me regarding the numerous variables involved, but I won't support or buy that specific game or bundle due to the fact that the charity does support late term and abortion as birth control, both of which I will never support. So I do understand the money point you make.

It might help to have indisputable evidence that an author has made contributions to a cause you would not like to support, such as Nogueiro with the abortion funding, rather than vague claims that can't really be substantiated from a tweet that's nearly three years old before you blacklist someone though. Unless you have Schwalb's financials maybe to prove he actually contributed his game's proceeds to the bailout fund?

Conjecture based on an internet post doesn't much fit the bill for me.

Cathode Ray

The list is about woke COMPANIES, not just woke games... a company can be put on this list for content, using profits toward woke/anti-freedom causes, or both.  The list provides details for people as to the nature of the offense, so gamers can make their own decisions based on their personal criteria.
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Effete

Quote from: Cathode Ray on September 28, 2022, 01:06:01 PM
The list is about woke COMPANIES, not just woke games... a company can be put on this list for content, using profits toward woke/anti-freedom causes, or both.  The list provides details for people as to the nature of the offense, so gamers can make their own decisions based on their personal criteria.

Also worth mentioning that the tiers are: a) mostly a generalization, and b) subjective to Ocule's opinion. A good argument can be made to remove the color-coding entirely and just list the questionable things a company has done. Seems most of these posts are about assholes arguing which company belongs in which color, and even what the colors are supposed to mean. I swear, sometimes this place is worse than a sewing circle.

Dropbear

Quote from: Effete on September 28, 2022, 05:13:21 PM
Quote from: Cathode Ray on September 28, 2022, 01:06:01 PM
The list is about woke COMPANIES, not just woke games... a company can be put on this list for content, using profits toward woke/anti-freedom causes, or both.  The list provides details for people as to the nature of the offense, so gamers can make their own decisions based on their personal criteria.

Also worth mentioning that the tiers are: a) mostly a generalization, and b) subjective to Ocule's opinion. A good argument can be made to remove the color-coding entirely and just list the questionable things a company has done. Seems most of these posts are about assholes arguing which company belongs in which color, and even what the colors are supposed to mean. I swear, sometimes this place is worse than a sewing circle.

Perhaps this should be the approach taken with the thread in the future then. I'd agree that this would be the more appropriate path than assigning a color based on whether somebody on the forum thinks the author has used funds from a product to financially support a cause that they find disagreeable or whether the product itself is disagreeable, or sometimes both which seems to be way more frequently occurring here than what Cathode Ray seems to think the thread is about. The collected of intimations about where what should go are more all over the place and variegated than just based on the company itself being woke alone as has been suggested.

The Spaniard

The OP laid out the system in the manner he wanted.  You can always start a different thread if this one doesn't suit you.

Dropbear

Gallant Knight games is no longer partnered with Diogo Nogueiro. He has gone independent with Old Skull Games. Would that move GKG to Green on your list then, since the company, owner, and products do not espouse nor contain political content?

RPGPundit

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on September 28, 2022, 12:30:32 AM
Can anyone explain why this list has not been pinned?  Its incredibly useful and it should be at the top.

I haven't pinned it because thus far it has continued to be highly active. I would pin it if Ocule wanted me to, as I agree it's very useful. I would just be concerned that Pinned posts sometimes actually get less posts.
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Zelen

What'd be cool is if someone with some web dev experience would put it up somewhere on its own site. I'm imagining a nice javascript interface where you can sort by severity category and then also type of offense (e.g. Gay, Trans, anti-White, etc). Click on an entry for a company and the information is nicely presented in list format.

Ocule

That would be cool. I don't have the skill set to do it though. I'm okay with pundit pinning this thread if he wants I wonder if there's an easier way to update the list on the original post. Such a pain with drop down format
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Krazz

It took me a while to find the latest version of the list when I started reading the thread. It's in Ocule's signature on the first post, but talk about a small font.

I wonder if it wouldn't make sense to create a new thread, make the link very obvious in the first post, then close this thread with a link back to the new thread.