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[List] TTRPG Guide to Woke Companies

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

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Brand55

Quote from: Godsmonkey on August 04, 2021, 09:37:44 AM
And what of Pinnacle Entertainment Group? Sure, they rewrote the Deadlands backstory, but supposedly there is a logical reason for doing so? Other than that, I haven't seen any woke pandering from them. I'd say at worst, yellow?
Pinnacle is yellow. They aren't like WotC or Evil Hat but they do pander occasionally. In addition to changing Deadlands, they also caved to the outrage brigade over the Science Fiction Companion cover and made sure the art in the new Savage Worlds core book was focused on not showing too many white guys.

Marchand

#46
Quote from: Ocule on August 03, 2021, 12:26:41 PM
    I was thinking on the topic of fighting back and not giving money to people that hate you, so I decided the best thing to do is make a compilation list of companies and rpgs that are woke, those that sit on the fence and those that are not. It might be helpful when looking at various rpgs to know what you are getting into before you buy in. If there are any other companies that you know of just comment with the company or rpg line and why you think it is. I'm sure ill get some stuff wrong here but it might be a good thing to have around.

Green
Not Woke or Indifferent

  • RPG Pundit (Lion and Dragon, Arrows of Indra, Dark Albion): Historical fiction and stays true to the mindset of the times. See his YT channel. Might create a new category here for anti sjw.
  • Troll Lord Games Supports vets with big discounts, generally stays apolitical.
  • Studio Agate/Shadows of Esteren No indication of any affiliation. Decent game, takes forever to fill kickstarters though.
  • Precis Intermedia: "Makers of the Genre Diversion System and a publisher of any other games. Never seen anything woke from them, and the owner seems like a really cool, level-headed guy"
  • Autarch/ACKS no indication one way or the other
  • Necrotic Gnome (Old School Essentials) Makes a point to be apolitical
  • Basic Fantasy Also keeps politics separate from products
  • OSRIC Hasn't given any indication of getting political
  • Whitebox: FMAG No indication of getting poltical
  • Goblinoid Games (Labyrinth Lord) No indication of getting political
  • Frog God Games/Swords and Wizardry Did a bit of pandering with an all female printing of Swords and Wizardry, suspect but worth noting.
  • Post Mortem Studios (Tales of Gor, Punk RPG, Grimdark) Visit the storefront, can't imagine them giving a shit what people think

Yellow
Sort of Woke or Panders- If it's there it's subtle. They "bend the knee" to the grifters, or maybe they themselves are woke


  • Fantasy Flight Games Hard to decide if it belongs here or just in the woke catagory. They gender and race swap characters, ban words that might be considered offensive like Banzai, and generally allow the woke mob to take over the forums and run away with their trade dress etc. They dont constantly harass potential customers and tell them how much they hate em at least.
  • Talsorian Games Mixed Bag imo, they lean really heavily into IDIC (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations) it's on their page rules. Lots of pronouns in bios, They havn't gone full crazy just yet
  • Goodman Games - Tried to protect itself by distancing itself from Judges Guild and donating to ADL. Other than that can't really find anything else on them. Praised BLM for a time
  • Chaosium Changed in world lore to be more for Runequest, some censorship and bending to BLM/GLBT+ demands
  • Monte Cook Games Poor Monte, used to make some good stuff. Tends to push things like consent forms in gaming, some stuff on mental illness but otherwise panders
  • Mongoose Games Had a don't be a dick section in paranoia, recommended by poster. Open for debate whether yellow or green
  • Mophidious Publishes some woke products, but doesn't seem to only publish woke products
  • Pinnacle Entertainment (Savage Worlds/Deadlands) Removed the CSA from Deadlands and removed a lot of the old art that might offend anyone particuarly anything with partial nudity or more risque outfits. Also made sure there weren't "too many white guys" in their core rulebook. Still pretty solid but they pander or cave to demands occasionally

Red
Woke,These people probably despise you if you don't fall in line and they aren't afraid to let you know it.

  • Wizards of the Coast - Harasses customers, diversity checkboxes, hires based on race, pedo judges, bans anyone they disagree with on social issues from all sanctioned events. True dumpster fire.
  • Paizo- Has whole pages in their books telling you how you must play there game and be inclusive. Harasses customers, aggressively moderates forums against anyone to the right of stalin, Retconned Golarion lore to be more inclusive, starfinder even had an adventure where you needed to get a professor at a university to apologize for being insensitive despite being factually correct. No lie, first adventure path. Another AP for Pathfinder showed all men as incompetent, read like a tumblr blog and all the women were super powerful and if you didnt bring the black, lesbian, disabled ranger with you then you automatically lost. Iron Gods or something like that.
  • Zweihander/Grim and Perilous Games- Freakin Dumpster Fire,
  • Cubicle 7 - Not as bad as the others on this list, they're definitely woke. Their art design generally shows it, having extremely odd choices for portraits in warhammer fantasy line and ignoring in world cultural practices like female dwarven artisans arent generally a thing. Ticks diversity checkboxes, pronouns in the bio. I havn't seen them harassing customers yet so that's a win.
  • Renegade Game Studios/Vampire the Masquerade 5e Not sure where to start with these guys, woke in their products and openly hate you
  • Onyx Path Publishing/Chronicles of Darkness
  • New White Wolf Publishing Not sure if they're still around, see Mophidious and Onyx Path they're all sister companies.
  • Green Ronin- Chris Pramas is a full-on member of ANTIFA, has a vitriolic hatred for white people, and his products reflect this. Publishes "Blue Rose", the gay RPG
  • Monkey House Games/Jeff Dee: Enormous asshole and activist. If you are republican or conservative or Christian this hates you.
  • Evil Hat Productions- Another poster child for woke gaming. Embedded in everything from their forums, to their products and staff. Openly tells you if you don't like their politics don't buy their games. Too easy
  • Ockult Ortmastare Games/Stockholm Cartell (Mork Borg) - Uses OGL to shoot down authors they disagree with. Supports BLM and bailing out rioters
  • Free League See Mork Borg
  • Sigil Stone Publishing (Five Torches Deep) Just read the last page in FTD Origins. Titled: "BIOESSENTIALISM, RACISM, AND COLONIALISM
  • Reaper Miniatures Fired a guy from criticizing antifa on a personal page. Antifa supporters are automatic red
  • Pelgraine Press (13th Age)  "The thing about SWGs (Straight White Guys) is that they make great punching bags. " Still need a citation for this but for now its going red


Unknown

  • GURPs/Steve Jackson Games
  • Palladium Does what they have always done
  • Zak S. (Lamentations of the Flame Princess)

  • For Gold and Glory Nothing to suggest going woke
  • Immersive Ink (Delving Deeper)
  • Atlas Games (Ars Magica)
  • Lion Rampant (Ars Magica) Devs turned into huge sjws, though i dont think it shows in the original games
  • John Wick Presents (7th Sea) Dead Company
[/s]



[/list]

Reaper Minis? FFS. Oh well.

I would suggest Far Future Enterprises, Marc W. "Traveller" Miller's current outfit, for Green. Not aware of any Woke tendencies. Original Traveller 1977 has "a note on gender and race" that basically says they have no game mechanical effect. Clean, done, move on.
"If the English surrender, it'll be a long war!"
- Scottish soldier on the beach at Dunkirk

Godsmonkey

Quote



  • John Wick Presents (7th Sea) Dead Company
[/s]



John Wick was acquired by Chaosium.[/list]

Aglondir

#48
Steve Jackson Games is Green. They refused to bow to the Cancel Mob over the Bill Webb incident. Phil Reed got a ban (temporary?) for trying to explain to the purple idiots that the disad "slave mentality" in Gurps has zero to do with slavery, but they were too infantile and scared of words to comprehend.

Autarch is ACKS, right? It doesn't get much greener than that. AMacris posts here. Well known anti-woke libertarian. Banned from big purple because they hate him.

Hero Games is green, unless something has changed. I think some of the (former) designers are woke but it doesn't creep into the books.

Zweihander dude claimed his game was part of the woke Sword Dream movement. Created rainbow logo.

Ocule

Quote from: Aglondir on August 04, 2021, 12:07:13 PM
Steve Jackson Games is Green. They refused to bow to the Cancel Mob over the Bill Webb incident. Phil Reed got a ban (temporary?) for trying to explain to the purple idiots that the disad "slave mentality" in Gurps has zero to do with slavery, but they were too infantile and scared of words to comprehend.

Autarch is ACKS, right? It doesn't get much greener than that. AMacris posts here. Well known anti-woke libertarian. Banned from big purple because they hate him.

Hero Games is green, unless something has changed. I think some of the (former) designers are woke but it doesn't creep into the books.

Zweihander dude claimed his game was part of the woke Sword Dream movement. Created rainbow logo.

I'll update them here in a few, glad to hear it. Some of these companies are new to me or like Steve Jackson games I just never followed them closely. I havnt been to the big purple in years, before it even went full sjw. Went there a few times just to see how bad it got and wanted to bleach my eyeballs after that
Read my Consumer's Guide to TTRPGs
here. This is a living document.

Forever GM

Now Running: Mystara (BECMI)

Klytus

You don't have to boycott Free League for the shit the creators of Mork Borg post on their Shitter. Free League are just the publisher and this is about as close to going woke as anything I've seen from them:

https://freeleaguepublishing.com/en/about/fair-play-policy/
Klytus, I'm bored. What plaything can you offer me today?

An obscure body in the S-K System, Your Majesty. The inhabitants refer to it as the planet... "Earth".

Armchair Gamer

#51
Quote from: Aglondir on August 04, 2021, 12:07:13 PM
Hero Games is green, unless something has changed. I think some of the (former) designers are woke but it doesn't creep into the books.

  Watts is at least somewhat progressive, as he signed on to Gamers4Her and october-surprise.com--useful, but not exhaustive, points for determining who's both left-wing and inclined to leverage their hobby credentials for that purpose. Steve Jackson signed on to the latter, which arguably kicks SJG into Yellow. Steve Long is right-liberal, but no longer directly involved with the company. I haven't looked at 6E Western Hero to see how that might have changed, but they did state that they had sensitivity readers ...

   Pelgrane is definitely red, with their inclusivity policy, hosting the 'Gaming Saves the World' seminar at GenCon a few years back (see https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/gaming-saves-the-world-seminar-doesn-t-sound-like-a-good-idea/), and publishing the #Feminism anthology.

   Anyone know anything about Triple Ace Games? Or the new management at Iron Crown?

Brand55

Free League is definitely to the left (they are Swedish, not American, if that makes any difference) but I wouldn't necessarily call them woke. They're actually being tested right now. There's a vocal group on their forums who are arguing against the use of the term "Men" in the new edition of The One Ring. We'll see if any changes are made from the alpha rules on that front.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on August 04, 2021, 12:33:02 PMAnyone know anything about Triple Ace Games?
I haven't kept up with them for the past few years, but I've got a lot of their older games and never saw a peep of political activism. Wiggy seems like a really hard worker who loves games and focuses on cranking out fun stuff. I'd definitely coin TAG as apolitical.

Klytus

Quote from: Brand55 on August 04, 2021, 11:15:59 AM
Quote from: Godsmonkey on August 04, 2021, 09:37:44 AM
And what of Pinnacle Entertainment Group? Sure, they rewrote the Deadlands backstory, but supposedly there is a logical reason for doing so? Other than that, I haven't seen any woke pandering from them. I'd say at worst, yellow?
Pinnacle is yellow. They aren't like WotC or Evil Hat but they do pander occasionally. In addition to changing Deadlands, they also caved to the outrage brigade over the Science Fiction Companion cover and made sure the art in the new Savage Worlds core book was focused on not showing too many white guys.

Once you bend the knee, you'll spend the rest of your life on your knees, just waiting for the executioner's blade.
Klytus, I'm bored. What plaything can you offer me today?

An obscure body in the S-K System, Your Majesty. The inhabitants refer to it as the planet... "Earth".

hedgehobbit


rgalex

Quote from: hedgehobbit on August 04, 2021, 02:37:14 PM
Quote from: kreegan on August 04, 2021, 12:21:45 PMhttps://freeleaguepublishing.com/en/about/fair-play-policy/

"We want everyone to have this opportunity, without exception."

Then proceeds to list the exceptions.

Here is the full text of the policy.  Not seeing the "list of exceptions".

QuoteWe at Free League Publishing strongly  believe that gaming should be for everyone; from every walk of life, every corner of the globe and any background. Games, and roleplaying games in particular, are a powerful tool to create and visit wondrous worlds in the imagination. We want everyone to have this opportunity, without exception.

Our games are meant to be used in the spirit of inclusion and equality. The subject matter of our games might sometimes be dark and explore mature themes, but around the table we should always treat each other with respect and sensitivity.

We promote fair play and safe gaming at conventions and events. Everyone should feel comfortable and secure playing our games. If this trust is broken, please let us know and we will coordinate and act together with convention management to remedy the situation.

If this is as "woke" as they get... I'm ok with that.

1989

"sensitivity" "safe"

Special, sensitive snowflakes need their safe spaces.

And if one of these special snowflakes feels unsafe, then don't worry ... Free League will "coordinate" to "remedy" the "situation".

Red flags much?

My Kindergarten was rougher than this.

HappyDaze

Quote from: 1989 on August 04, 2021, 02:58:03 PM
"sensitivity" "safe"

Special, sensitive snowflakes need their safe spaces.

And if one of these special snowflakes feels unsafe, then don't worry ... Free League will "coordinate" to "remedy" the "situation".

Red flags much?

My Kindergarten was rougher than this.
Not too different from the posters here that need safe spaces from the big bad woke game companies, eh?

1989

Quote from: HappyDaze on August 04, 2021, 03:52:18 PM
Quote from: 1989 on August 04, 2021, 02:58:03 PM
"sensitivity" "safe"

Special, sensitive snowflakes need their safe spaces.

And if one of these special snowflakes feels unsafe, then don't worry ... Free League will "coordinate" to "remedy" the "situation".

Red flags much?

My Kindergarten was rougher than this.
Not too different from the posters here that need safe spaces from the big bad woke game companies, eh?

Are you gay?

Armchair Gamer

Quote from: HappyDaze on August 04, 2021, 03:52:18 PM
Not too different from the posters here that need safe spaces from the big bad woke game companies, eh?

  More a "let's avoid forcing our money and support on companies that want us driven out of the hobby," really.  ;)