D&D General Companies Cut Ties With Judges Guild After Owner's Racist Posts

Several game publishers, including Bat in the Attic, have said that they will no longer do business with Judges Guild after its owner posted a number of racist and anti-semitic statements. They don't need to be repeated here; but there are several examples.

Judges Guild has been around since 1976, producing products compatible with Dungeons & Dragons; the current owner, Bob Bledsaw II, is the son of its co-founder, Bob Bledsaw, and has run the company since 2008. The company is well known for 1976's City State of the Invincible Overlord, amongst other classics. Bat in the Attic and Frog God Games both license Judges' Guild properties.

Rob Conley of Bat in the Attic stated yesterday that the company would no longer do business with Judges Guild, or its properties. "Sunday evening, I called Robert Bledsaw II and discussed the issue. I notified him that I will no longer be doing future Judges’ Guild projects and will only continue to sell what I have currently listed. I stated that I will be calling the other Judges Guild licensee and inform them of the situation and of my decision."

Frog God Games, which has been working with Judges Guild for nearly 20 years, followed suit. "Recently the owner of Judges Guild made a series of racist and anti-semitic posts on Facebook. We will not reproduce them here; they are shown on Rob Conley's Bat in the Attic blog, and we are convinced of their authenticity. Rob wrote his post because, as a licensee of Judges Guild property, he felt he needed to state clearly that he would not be doing business with Judges Guild in the future. We have also licensed property from Judges Guild in the past, and we are seconding Rob's example by cutting off all future business with Judges Guild. The posts made on Facebook were completely unacceptable."

UPDATE — DriveThruRPG has severed ties. “The Judges Guild publisher account has been closed and they are no longer available on DriveThruRPG.”

A few years ago, Judges Guild ran a Kickstarter to bring back City State of the Invincible Overlord, with nearly a thousand backers raising $85K. The Kickstarter has not yet been fulfilled. The latest update was in October 2019.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

His speech really bugged me and I told him why. I explained how, as someone who is Jewish who has worked for a media company before, when he spreads that kind of stuff about how the Jews control the media, it makes me want to either hide that I am Jewish or feel the need to defend myself when working with a media company. Which is the same kind of feeling my grandfather had when he changed our last name from a Jewish sounding last name to a Catholic sounding one for his sales jobs. Hate speech impacts culture in ways that make the target of it feel like they need to adapt around it in ways that others don't have to adapt.

And that's before I saw his claim that the holocaust is a hoax, which opened up a whole other bag of damage.

Mind you, I am not someone calling for a boycott. I am just deeply disappointed in Bob and told him such.

There’s a documentary called Outback Rabbis in which the efforts of two rabbis in Australia are detailed. Their mission, to find the hidden Jews of that nation in order to rebuild their community,

As it happemed, many Jews who fled Nazi Germany (and other “cleansings”) found their way to Australia, but didn’t feel safe being visible, despite the great distances they traveled. So names were changed, jewish practices abandoned or hidden. Many didn’t even tell their kids their true religio-ethnic identities. So all these decades later, there are people there who had no clue as to their Jewish ancestry..and these two rabbis are on a mission (from God) to find them and at least reveal the truth to them, if not actually bring them back into the community.

It’s sad, but also glorious and funny.

AJFF

www.ajff.org