Tuesday, June 28, 2022

DriveThruRPG basically has banned every RPG book

 Here are the guidelines for DTRPG, the most important online RPG book store:

Neither your Work, description, nor any promotional material, including blog posts or press releases, may contain racist, homophobic, discriminatory, or other repugnant views; overt political agendas or views; depictions or descriptions of criminal violence against children; rape or other acts of criminal perversion; or other obscene material without the express written permission of OneBookShelf.

Racist and homophobic views are bad, there are lots of arguments against obscene content in various private commercial contexts, but what's super wildcat here is this:

...overt political agendas or views...

According to their own guidelines, DriveThruRPG says you cannot have your work on the site if you have blog posts with your overt political views on them.

Now since all public social media communications by RPG creators is (as many have admitted) de facto promotion of their work and Facebook, Twitter et al are blogging/microblogging platforms and basically every single RPG creator has expressed at least one overt political opinion on one of said platforms and, so far as I know, none of them have asked for the "express written permission" of DTRPG, that means pretty much every single RPG book on their is banned.

Please begin reporting creators to DTRPG.

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7 comments:

Zak Sabbath said...

@anon

No anonymous comments allowed.

also the comment you left isn't accurate, but if you wanna talk about it, use a persistent identity.

Simon Tsevelev said...

1) What they did is objectively wrong;
2) I also wonder if they gave Olivia Hill a written permission to support genocide.

Jim R said...

@Simon, re: #2

My first thought was 'who is that', because I haven't Been Around in long enough that I only knew her by deadname...

...and the natural second thought was 'yep, called it' because when your internet presence starts is big wettie for Space Otto Skorzeny, apologism for real-life genocide can't be far behind.

Simon Tsevelev said...

@Jim
I had exactly the same moment some time ago. But that, of course, has nothing to do with why she is a problematic person.
And there are things that surprise me, when I go "well obviously they can't seriously support this - oh, look, they do".

Adamantyr said...

I think this update is a result of David Johnson (of the new TSR run by Justin LaNasa and Ernie Gygax), creator of their (perpetually) upcoming "Star Frontiers: New Genesis" RPG was outed as a full-on white supremacist and Nazi. He was subsequently banned by DriveThruRPG.


Zak Sabbath said...

@Adamantyr

Maybe. Since DriveThruRPG has itself extensively enabled antisemitic hatemongering and fascistic behavior, if that is indeed a trigger or one of the triggers for these rules, it can only be out of a desire to protect their image, rather than genuine antifascist sentiment.

Adamantyr said...

@Zak

Agreed. Definitely a business action, not a moral one. They did the same thing with Judge's Guild.