(Lucky you, there is a scheduled post happening later today, and now BONUS CONTENT.)

I don’t keep up on RPG drama anymore because I literally cannot handle it.

Last night, I was informed about the situation with Luke Crane and his Kickstarter drama. I was not able to sleep very well after that.

You can read about the details here and here.

There is absolutely no benefit for me to say anything I am about to say. It can only bring me grief.

But I still must say it.

How people have treated Adam Koebel is a disgrace. His “crime” was at worst saying a dumb thing during an RPG session. That’s it. Nothing actually happened to anybody. At most all that should be required is an “oops, that was dumb, won’t do it again.” At most. Or maybe that’s the sort of thing he likes in his games. That’s fine too.

But he’s apparently been blacklisted from the industry. Working with him is enough to transfer his stain and get you fired from your actual job.

How Luke Crane has been treated is a disgrace. Luke Crane did nothing wrong in wanting to work with Koebel, and in fact it is to his credit that he extended a hand to someone having a rough time. Everyone who jumped ship because they found out they’d be in the same anthology with Koebel is an asshole. Every potential customer that decided to make their decision to not back the project was not personal, but a community issue, is an asshole.

This is insanity. No exaggeration: Demanding consequences for the offense of working with a person, any person, is something only a cruel and thoroughly sick mind would ever even think to do.

Oh no, the person might write a book! The horrors!

And because I hate mental stability, after hearing about this I took a look-see over at rpg.net, because I knew this would be a topic of discussion over there. Look at this shit. The scariest thing is RPG publishers stating that it’s completely normal for people working on a project to not know who else is working on it… but now they will change that policy.

The entire world is poorer for this attitude to have any power at all, and right now it seems to have all the power.

And looking at Crane’s apology… I really do get it. When you’re the featured character in the day’s internet drama, it is no exaggeration that you will hack off your own leg with a rusty pocket knife if you think that will make it stop.

But in reality he had jack and shit to apologize for in the first place.

On learning about this last night, I made a comment on my Facebook page: “This latest thing I've been shown really makes me think that when our next releases are put on sale, forget being canceled, I am going to be fucking BURNED.”

I’ve perhaps overreacted before (hiring security at Gen Con one year, having protocols of what to do if confronted by hostile people at the booth, asking exhibitor services if the insurance we are required to buy for the booth covers medical expenses if we are attacked… these are all things I’ve thought I had to do because people don’t like that we publish our make-believe), but maybe this time I’m not.

Then I was also shown this last night:

(the redaction of the poster’s name was done prior to it being sent to me)

Grim’s response to one of his collaborators being harassed is here.

For the record, the most annoying thing about my standing in the RPG industry right now is that this is what I’d thought I was going to be from the beginning. That would have been fine. But no, I had to have great success and accolades and awards and all that jazz, and then get put back down in the gutter.

Assholes.

Personally disavowing another person — especially a former collaborator or friend —is cowardly and evil, and any efforts to unperson someone or make them untouchable is just evil. I know it’s a big scary nonsense word, “evil,” but I can’t think of any other word for it. The people who do this are psychopaths as far as I’m concerned.

I haven’t been a man of principle and morals, as it turns out I am quite weak, but at least I have refused to join in enthusiastically kicking another human being while they’re down in order to save my own skin.

And more:

I am proud with having worked with Zak on three excellent books, and I do not regret one second refusing to speak negatively about him when I was forced (yes, forced, I refuse to lie about that) for the sake of my business and my life to stop working with him. Every day, every damn day, I wonder if the threats to my livelihood would have been any worse if I’d told the crowd to fuck off and published his next books. And though it may have been unwise and ill-considered, I do not regret Zak Has Nothing To Do With This Book, because even if it wasn’t the best way to say what I had to say, I still had to say it and frankly there wasn’t going to be any way to say it that was ever going to be received as wise.

Pundit’s a weirdo but that’s fine. I have no problem with grumpy chumps being grumpy chumps even during those annoying times when it’s me he’s being a grumpy chump at. In fact, one of his publications might have come out under the LotFP banner if we hadn’t disagreed over the details of the project.

My only problem with Venger was that nonsense O5R branding/statting on his books that turned me off of his products.

Desborough was the first person to publish a third-party LotFP adventure and not only do I have no problem with him, I quite like him and was sad when he stopped showing up at the UK conventions. Back in 2012 I was going to make a point of getting a picture with him in the wake of the In Defense of Rape debacle because the treatment of him at the time was disgraceful. As clumsy as the titling of that post may have been, it was about fiction, not real life… and I published Fish Fuckers, so am I supposed to ever pretend I didn’t essentially agree with him on the whole issue?

That any of them might say something I find objectionable is irrelevant. That any of them might have beliefs I find foolish is irrelevant. Those things would give me a frowny face.

You don’t treat people like this.

Destroy the gates and kill all the gatekeepers.

That anybody mentioned in this post (or not mentioned, for that matter) is somehow too undesirable to make books, or make books with, is fucking nonsense and the people promoting those views are nonsense people who shouldn’t have a say in picking out their own socks, let alone hold sway over anybody’s livelihood. But they do.

Yet people tell me I can fix my reputation. All I need to do is aggressively distance myself from all the bad people and affirm the consensus that they are bad and apologize for not having done this in the first place, and I could step back into the sun.

fucking hell. Coward though I may be, I have some fucking dignity. And doing any of that would be wrong. As troubled as my sleep has been for years, doing that would mean I could never sleep again.

The only thing I have to apologize for is how unconscionably late the Referee book is, and that’s still slated for the big release cycle after next. As pissy some people rightfully are over that, nobody will be happier than I am when I get that red off my ledger.

The LotFP Substack

I condemn the blacklisting of any human being…