Quote from: Abbo1993 on February 14, 2023, 07:46:13 AM
Gonna be a sad day, CoC is great, hell, I think I bought every supplement for 7e so far, the wokeness seem to be trace to Lynn Hardy and the entourage of influencers and youtubers that make videos on the Chaosium channel, they had one about safety tools recently, safety tools in a game of cosmic horror...

While "woke" is not completely precise as a term, it's a perfectly fine word for the umbrella of culturally destructive tactics and beliefs employed, usually packaged into a philosophical pill designed to turn what would otherwise be society's immune system- regular people motivated to protect the weak and oppose intersocietal strife- against the body of the people itself.  As such, it has served anyone reading this thread (or the attached document in OP- even if that is a yucky google IP harvesting link, as all google.com links are) very well, and will continue to do so.

Your post does make me wonder if we'll eventually need to get more granular though.  If someone was mad about the 2016 election on twitter but didn't yell at customers directly, I bet someone reading this thread would use that as a reason to not use their products, and someone else would just be totally fine with that.  Similarly, during all the BLM riots, I would hold someone doing anti-police posting on twitter in a very different light versus someone who donated five figures to some communist group.

Maybe one day we'll need a way to represent this sort of nuance in a formulaic way.  One thing that bugs me a bit about the current sorting is when some employee is granted license to do a combination of wokeposting on twitter and player-banning on forums... but then that employee leaves the company and a year later is that organization still red?  They never apologized or went against the zeitgeist, obviously, but if they aren't actively pressing, should they be in the same category as one who is?  I could see some way to express such nuance being desired eventually, as some companies are fully unforgivable (WotC) whilst others, especially smaller orgs, may simply have been in the sway of someone who hath drunk overmuch from the cup of zealotry in the moment, but are not active warriors at this time.

Quote from: Venka on February 14, 2023, 12:47:03 PM
Maybe one day we'll need a way to represent this sort of nuance in a formulaic way.  One thing that bugs me a bit about the current sorting is when some employee is granted license to do a combination of wokeposting on twitter and player-banning on forums... but then that employee leaves the company and a year later is that organization still red?  They never apologized or went against the zeitgeist, obviously, but if they aren't actively pressing, should they be in the same category as one who is?  I could see some way to express such nuance being desired eventually, as some companies are fully unforgivable (WotC) whilst others, especially smaller orgs, may simply have been in the sway of someone who hath drunk overmuch from the cup of zealotry in the moment, but are not active warriors at this time.

In my head I distinguish between "clearly, objectively red" versus "ain't red yet, but experience shows that with activities A, B, and C, will be sooner rather than later".  I think that's kind of what yellow was supposed to be, but it's trying to also portray "objectively no longer green" at the same time, which isn't always the same thing. 

I doubt there is any really good way to show this in a single line.  That is, simply adding interim steps between red and yellow or between yellow and green would just make it more complicated without really addressing the core issue.  Which is partially why the context of why someone is red, yellow, green matters. 

I suppose it could be a bit more accurate to limit it to 2 colors, each with multiple states:

Red:  Red Hot Doc / Foot on the Gas / Looks Bad
Green:  Committed / Stable or Neutral / Worrying Hints

But even that is just using the last two states on each line as the Yellow slice of a single line.  So I doubt it helps much.

Sometimes after an event or somethign happens unless it is particularly egregious i do wait a little bit before changing their place to see how it plays out. As far as people who once worked that was a stereotypical wokescold for a company but doesn't anymore it depends on who and what they did as well as how the company responded. I know they usually handle these things internally but im a bit less forgiving if the company condoned the behavior or seemingly ignored it and then it went quiet. I wouldnt be opposed to have more of a way to change this but t boils down to repairing trust. Example is simply employing Mr. Adduci, Kwan or others is a red flag.

TLG had an employee recently who started yelling at people on twitter for vaccinations or something and had a "talking to" by the trolls and had to put out an apology. That was probably the best way to handle a sitation like that especially if the employee in question does good work. I have taken into account isolated incidents as opposed to consistently. A lot of people were caught up in the stupid of the BLM riots or took a position before fully understanding who they were supporting. If there are any entries you think have redeemed themselves or it's just been long enough since any incident share em. The problem with getting too grandular is how subjective any kind of rating system would be. Plus its more work for me to curate.

As for chaosium i'm not sure if they should go under yellow or red. Because on one hand they definitely have the woke mind virus, but on the other they havnt been attacking people far as i know so far this is what i have

• Sex changed to pronouns for character sheet revision
• Masks of Nyarlotep condemned as racist by Lynn Hardy with a warning included on the inside
• Gender and Race swapping of older content in reprints [/i]
  
  • Darkening of Runequest art skin tones, to the point of excuding lighter skinned Mediterranean people
  • Threw sandy petersen under the bus
  • Core assumption of Pendragon being changed to allow female knights, as opposed to optional. This needs verification because i've heard the opposite
  • Claim to have a wide range of viewpoints working for them, i wonder if this includes conservative authors
  
  Yeah this is sounding more and more like red to me. Thou

Don't know much about the other Chaosium products but as far as CoC goes, the community is largely in the "Don't give a shit" field, I guess that is a combination of CoC books being worth their price 9 times out of 10 and the fact that Chaosium employes don't really act like assholes most of the time (as a matter of fact they seem pretty nice).

My guess is that, unless the quality takes a dive (which is usually what happens when the woke takes over) then the fans won't really care, the pronoun things was quietly mocked but people didn't lose their mind on is since they have not come out with non binary characters in the 1920's or some bullshit like that, wouldn't say it's close to red but the potential is still there...

Feelin' Groovy vs SwineCon 1-4?

You'd need to add mods for a wiki style list, with final say given to OP when someone's inconclusive.

Quote from: Ocule on February 14, 2023, 02:34:18 PM
Sometimes after an event or somethign happens unless it is particularly egregious i do wait a little bit before changing their place to see how it plays out. As far as people who once worked that was a stereotypical wokescold for a company but doesn't anymore it depends on who and what they did as well as how the company responded. I know they usually handle these things internally but im a bit less forgiving if the company condoned the behavior or seemingly ignored it and then it went quiet. I wouldnt be opposed to have more of a way to change this but t boils down to repairing trust. Example is simply employing Mr. Adduci, Kwan or others is a red flag.

TLG had an employee recently who started yelling at people on twitter for vaccinations or something and had a "talking to" by the trolls and had to put out an apology. That was probably the best way to handle a sitation like that especially if the employee in question does good work. I have taken into account isolated incidents as opposed to consistently. A lot of people were caught up in the stupid of the BLM riots or took a position before fully understanding who they were supporting. If there are any entries you think have redeemed themselves or it's just been long enough since any incident share em. The problem with getting too grandular is how subjective any kind of rating system would be. Plus its more work for me to curate.

As for chaosium i'm not sure if they should go under yellow or red. Because on one hand they definitely have the woke mind virus, but on the other they havnt been attacking people far as i know so far this is what i have

• Sex changed to pronouns for character sheet revision
• Masks of Nyarlotep condemned as racist by Lynn Hardy with a warning included on the inside
• Gender and Race swapping of older content in reprints [/i]
  
  • Darkening of Runequest art skin tones, to the point of excuding lighter skinned Mediterranean people
  • Threw sandy petersen under the bus
  • Core assumption of Pendragon being changed to allow female knights, as opposed to optional. This needs verification because i've heard the opposite
  • Claim to have a wide range of viewpoints working for them, i wonder if this includes conservative authors
  
  Yeah this is sounding more and more like red to me. Thou
  

Goodman Games being in the Red is a tad puzzling. They don't seem to attack fans. One of the points bringing them there is distancing themselves from Judges Guild. Yet you also have Judges Guild in the red for the thing that they were distancing themselves from. Very odd.

They're also red for using neutral language in the reprint of DCC. Yet Pinnacle Entertainment continues to coast by in the green while they bowed to social pressure and removed a giant part of the Deadlands mythology because it involved the South in the Civil War.

As for giving to BLM, that's certainly regrettable. But they seem to have been caught up as you say at the time and I don't believe they are continually spamming that message. And if this is the standard you may not want to look too closely at everyone's darling, Necrotic Gnome, and some of the causes they support as well as who they employ to work on their game (*cough* Diogo Nogueira).

In my opinion Goodman Games should be yellow...and so should Pinnacle. [/list]

Quote from: Abbo1993 on February 14, 2023, 07:46:13 AM
Gonna be a sad day, CoC is great, hell, I think I bought every supplement for 7e so far, the wokeness seem to be trace to Lynn Hardy and the entourage of influencers and youtubers that make videos on the Chaosium channel, they had one about safety tools recently, safety tools in a game of cosmic horror...

Well, safety tools fill me with horror and dread, so in a roundabout way...

Anyone know anything about Geist Hack Games / Paul D. Gallagher? A quick search turns up little about the company or designer. No Twitter account, just a blog and itch.io. The fact that Paul doesn't use Twitter is a good sign, but I thought I'd still check with you guys anyway.

Reason why I'm asking is because Sprawl Goons: Upgraded CARBON seems to be right up my alley. Really considering getting it since there doesn't seem to be many good cyberpunk games that fit my bill.

Quote from: Venka on February 14, 2023, 12:47:03 PM
One thing that bugs me a bit about the current sorting is when some employee is granted license to do a combination of wokeposting on twitter and player-banning on forums... but then that employee leaves the company and a year later is that organization still red?  They never apologized or went against the zeitgeist, obviously, but if they aren't actively pressing, should they be in the same category as one who is?

That's the thing though - they never apologized. Or retracted. Or even made a positive statement re-affirming freedom to speak on their forums again now that the "problem" moderator is gone. They never threw that person under the bus.

Silence is a de-facto continuation of whatever explicit thing came immediately prior. Once a company (including its representatives) is vocal about a thing, then they need to be vocal again if they want to take it back.

I would generally treat ushering a problem employee out the door as a de facto apology. Public statements can be a minefield, and let's be honest: we all prefer deeds, not words.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on February 14, 2023, 02:31:56 PM

In my head I distinguish between "clearly, objectively red" versus "ain't red yet, but experience shows that with activities A, B, and C, will be sooner rather than later".  I think that's kind of what yellow was supposed to be, but it's trying to also portray "objectively no longer green" at the same time, which isn't always the same thing. 

Yea I think all that works.  If I had something I thought was better I'd certainly propose it.  This thread is a great resource regardless, as it freezes in place many of the cases where performative political things happens, often in ways meant to rally the troops in the moment and then absorb into the soil, leaving everyone pointing them out gaslit and ranting.  "But they totally did racial activism, they just deleted the tweet / the web page expired!"  It's a one-stop shop for reference, which is great.  I don't actually think going woke makes you go broke, or that boycotts do anything normally, but if I spend time with a product created by people that hate me, it always bothers me, and this list is very much a fix for that.

As for Chaosium, that stuff is a pretty big list at this point.  Personally, I'm just done when I see "pronouns" as a section.  If you were really worried you'd offend someone with a "sex" or "gender" field, even one that is entirely empty space (as opposed to having M/F checkboxes), you'd either leave it out (I'm sure the game doesn't actually have strength bonuses for men, after all, it's not mechanically relevant for any of these people's games), or replace it with something even less specific, such as "physical description".  You'd only put "pronouns" there as a political statement- if your game has a character sheet with a pronouns section, you are definitely saying that anyone who doesn't feel needing to include them is a hateful bigot or lower class, or whatever.  I'd make an exception if there was some game specific reason for that, like everyone is a disembodied soul, or a robot, or something that is clearly not meant to make some specific, $CURRENT_THING / $CURRENT_YEAR, hammer-handed assault on my mind.

But I'm sure some people don't mind that much, and are only interested in avoiding products from people who go on huge rants on twitter, or write up a blog post about how white people shouldn't play their game, or whatever, or something totally egregious like that.

Quote from: mudbanks on February 15, 2023, 10:23:14 AM
Anyone know anything about Geist Hack Games / Paul D. Gallagher?

He has a reddit.  It's a very small reddit, and this post is the only thing I could find that's anywhere near the edge of the woke-o-sphere. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberpunk2020/comments/aft53f/wheelchairs_in_cyberpunk_2020/

In this thread, he helps some guy who is obviously trying to make a combat wheelchair (and it's from a few years ago, when people were putting wheelchairs into tabletop games and claiming it was for inclusion, when, based on the comments, it was really all about pissing off traditionalists and finding more people to call -isms and -ists, as opposing combat wheelchair meant you were an ableist and insensitive to whatever whatever you know how this works, it would just let them get more people to rant against).  Searching for anything related to this and a few hot-button topics in the last few years doesn't return anything either.  I've no idea of this guy's politics, and that means that, whatever they are, he doesn't feel the need to rub them up and down your face and hit you if you try to stop him.

Quote from: Zalman on February 15, 2023, 10:29:46 AM
That's the thing though - they never apologized. Or retracted. Or even made a positive statement re-affirming freedom to speak on their forums again now that the "problem" moderator is gone. They never threw that person under the bus.

Your post pretty much states why we might at some point want a couple more details, as I think this may actually become a bit more common.  If a company had one or two political hotheads who stirred up shit, quieted down, and eventually moved on, I don't think I'd hold that against that company five years later.  You, on the other hand, apparently would.  I don't believe you are in any way wrong for that, either.
I believe that a company that goes a long time without offense is trying to just make products, and is happy to have escaped Kung Fu Activist Grasp.  I don't think they are in favor of free speech, or equality, or whatever would get them attacked by twitterati if they said it, I don't think they are secretly good guys.  I think they just got tired of being inveterate bad guys.  But if you want to hold that grudge, go ahead, I'll get it.  As an example, I'm still mad about that "boys will be boys" Gillette ad, and I'll never use anything from Proctor and Gamble again if I can help it.  I just put small game companies in a different bucket than big corporations.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on February 15, 2023, 12:08:09 PM
I would generally treat ushering a problem employee out the door as a de facto apology. Public statements can be a minefield, and let's be honest: we all prefer deeds, not words.

I'm pretty slow to put anything on my personal ban list.  The author or company has to really prove to me that they belong on it.  However, once someone does go on it, it is almost impossible to come off.  It would take a radical change in direction, and then someone else pointing me to sustained evidence of that change. Absent that, I mainly ignore them entirely. 

I believe in giving people the benefit of the doubt, but not to the point where I'm being walked all over.  With the fuzzy stuff, the author/company isn't so much "banned' as moved down in priority for things to consider.  I really liked some of the Kobold Press products.  I'm discouraged by some of their comments.  I'm no longer in the market for 5E stuff.  And their adventures were kind of hit or miss with me.  However, if they put out an adventure or setting that was getting rave reviews, I'd at least consider it.

I suppose some would find that hypocritical on my part--in that the quality and value of the product figures into the equation.  I don't consider that in the "ban list", because those entities are right out.  For the rest, the quality has to make up for the iffy actions, or the iffy actions have to be small enough that they don't stop me from enjoying the quality of the product.   

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on February 15, 2023, 01:53:35 PM

Quote from: Ghostmaker on February 15, 2023, 12:08:09 PM
I would generally treat ushering a problem employee out the door as a de facto apology. Public statements can be a minefield, and let's be honest: we all prefer deeds, not words.

I'm pretty slow to put anything on my personal ban list.  The author or company has to really prove to me that they belong on it.  However, once someone does go on it, it is almost impossible to come off.  It would take a radical change in direction, and then someone else pointing me to sustained evidence of that change. Absent that, I mainly ignore them entirely. 

I believe in giving people the benefit of the doubt, but not to the point where I'm being walked all over.  With the fuzzy stuff, the author/company isn't so much "banned' as moved down in priority for things to consider.  I really liked some of the Kobold Press products.  I'm discouraged by some of their comments.  I'm no longer in the market for 5E stuff.  And their adventures were kind of hit or miss with me.  However, if they put out an adventure or setting that was getting rave reviews, I'd at least consider it.

I suppose some would find that hypocritical on my part--in that the quality and value of the product figures into the equation.  I don't consider that in the "ban list", because those entities are right out.  For the rest, the quality has to make up for the iffy actions, or the iffy actions have to be small enough that they don't stop me from enjoying the quality of the product.

What you are eloquently describing is a loss of trust. What ever the relationship, when trust is lost it is very hard to recover.

I may have an addition to the green list:
Wyvern Gaming LCC with their StarGate RPG.

While their character design seems to be a bit modern I only found a tiny paragraph on a single page in the StarGate rulebook about boundaries in session zero.
The rest seems to be solid. Their forum guide is also clean as well as facebook and twitter (as far as I can tell).

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wyvrengaming/stargate-roleplaying-game/description
https://wyverngaming.com/
https://stargatetherpg.com/guidelines/

What do you think?

Quote from: Ocule on February 14, 2023, 03:40:30 AM
and Steve Jackson is barely on red. Only by their own admission of certain politics being inserted hypothetically into their products but honestly I haven't seen them follow through yet. The others would take a miracle.

Have you seen 1) their pro-abortion T-shirt with Flower from Munchkin?  and 2) the game expansion Illuminati 2020?  Lists Trump as "violent, criminal" has BLM politics, and mocks anti-vaxxers, as well as other fringe nonsense that serves as porn for the left.