Goodman Games: Our Efforts Have Been Mischaracterized

Goodman Games' CEO Joseph Goodman made a statement via YouTube over the weekend*. The video itself focused on the content of the controversial upcoming City State of the Invincible Overlord crowdfunding product, but was prefaced by a short introduction by Joseph Goodman, in which he reiterates his company's commitment to inclusivity and diversity and its opposition to bigotry, something which they say they "don't want to be associated with".

Goodman goes on to say that the company's efforts have been "mischaracterized by some folks" but does not go so far as to identify the mischaracterization, so it's not entirely clear what they consider to be untrue other than the "inaccurate" statements made by Bob Bledsaw II of Judges Guild about Goodman Games' plans, which Goodman mentioned last week.

For those who haven't been following this story, it has been covered in the articles Goodman Games Revives Relationship With Anti-Semitic Publisher For New City State Kickstarter, Goodman Games Offers Assurances About Judges Guild Royalties, and Judges Guild Makes Statement About Goodman Controversy. In short, Goodman Games is currently licensing an old property from a company with which it claimed to have cut ties in 2020 after the owner of that company made a number of bigoted comments on social media. Goodman Games has repeatedly said that this move would allow them to provide backers of an old unfulfilled Judges Guild Kickstarter with refunds, but there are many people questioning seeming contradictions in both the timelines involved and in the appropriateness of the whole endeavour.

Despite the backlash, the prospects of the crowdfunding project do not seem to have been harmed. The pre-launch page has over 3,000 followers, and many of the comments under the YouTube videos or on other social media are not only very supportive of the project, but also condemn those who question its appropriateness. In comparison, the original (failed) Judges Guild Kickstarter had only 965 backers.

The video is embedded below, followed by a transcript of the relevant section.

Hi everybody, I'm Joseph Goodman of Goodman Games. We recently announced our City State of the Invincible Overlord crowdfunding project for 5E and DCC RPG.

In the video you're about to see, some of our product development team is going to tell you about what makes the City State so amazing and why we're bringing it back to 5E and DCC audiences nearly 50 years after it was first released. It really is an amazing setting.

But we could have rolled this project out with a lot more clarity. Now, to be clear, Goodman Games absolutely opposes any sort of bigotry, racism, anti-semitism, homophobia, transphobia. We don't want to support it. We don't want to be associated with it.

Our well-intentioned effort to launch this project in a way that refunds backers of a former failed Kickstarter from another publisher kind of backfired in the way we announced it. Rest assured, the funds from this crowdfunding will actually fund refunds to backers of the original City State crowdfunding for the Pathfinder edition from 2014.

Unfortunately, our efforts have been—you know, I didn’t clarify them perfectly when we rolled it out—and they've been mischaracterized by some folks since then. But please rest assured, we stand for inclusivity and diversity.

You can read a lot more detail in the post that's linked below, and there's another video linked below where we talk about this in even more detail. But for now, we hope you will sit back and enjoy as some of the product development team tells you about really what makes the City State of the Invincible Overlord so amazing, and why you might want to check it out when it comes to crowdfunding soon.

Thanks, and I'll turn it over to them now.

The statement refers to a post about this that is supposed to be linked below, but at the time of writing no post is linked below the video, so it's not clear if that refers to a new post or one of Goodman Games' previous statements on the issue.

I reached out to Joseph Goodman last week to offer a non-confrontational (although direct and candid) interview in which he could answer some ongoing questions and talk on his reasoning behind the decision; I have not yet received a response to the offer--I did, however, indicate that I was just leaving for UK Games Expo, and wouldn't be back until this week.

*Normally I would have covered this in a more timely fashion, but I was away at UK Games Expo from Thursday through to Monday.

 

[dragoner]

Fiction/Novels are a good way to help people understand the setting, I recently made a short fiction piece for Solis People of the Sun, pwyw on DTRPG, and people were thankful for it.

Marc W Miller stated that 50% of Traveller fans were just collectors a long time ago, the situation isn't new.

 

[The Firebird]

So, Ben, the 'bold, keywords, and bullet points' guy, surveyed his audience and found they want to run mods with bolding, keywords, and bullet points? It's good advertising but I don't think we can take anything from it.

 

[Morrus]

Me neither. One of my pet peeves is the Google Maps voice instructing me to "Head North" when giving me directions. How am I supposed to know which way that is? Please don't assume I spent my starting gear gp on a compass!

I think it’s a very much American thing.

 

[mamba]

They may be in tension, but I don't think it is as dire as all that.

can you name an example that achieves both to a high degree (without basically duplicating things)?

I do not see this as dire, being a good read to me means the text flows well with very little interruption, whether for technical reasons (stat blocks, possible DC checks and their outcomes) while being structured well so random information you need in the moment is easy to find very much does not like flow but structure.

GG is far towards the wall of text end of this, they could improve usability with a few changes in formatting and layout while not losing any advantages of their current approach. OSE is pretty much at the other end of the spectrum, highly usable but not a fun read for oneself (at least to me).
They could be more evocative and add read aloud sections or similar to increase the ‘solo reading’ part without really losing much of their usability.

If I were to write an adventure to publish, I’d probably land in the middle. I do not like long texts (outside of a novel) and prefer a concise focus on the essential. Part of the essential is conveying a feeling to the player, OSE outsources that to the DM. I’d retain some form of read-aloud descriptions for that. I’d definitely keep some structure so things are easy to find however instead of burying all details in a wall of text, without even a clear order (important and immediately apparent parts first, details later).

Not great at either imo, but at least not a strikeout on them either when GG basically fails the usability side and OSE the ‘fun read’ one

 

[mamba]

Worldbuilding is a different experience than just writing a story. It focuses on setting rather than plot or character. I really wish people would stop telling fans of it that they should just write a novel.

Worldbuilding has nothing to do with this.

I brought up writing a novel in case the goal was to present an entertaining read for a single person to enjoy reading it and being willing to disregard usability to achieve that.

If you want to worldbuild without too much concern about usability at the table, write a setting book, not an adventure

If that's what they wanted that's what they would do.

maybe, maybe they satisfy their urge by writing adventures the way they do because they failed as a professional writer

To me that reads as just another way to try pushing people with different preferences out of the hobby.

I doubt GG is going to change how they write adventures based on my posts here. If they sell, they will continue making them.

Me having a preference among the different styles of adventure writing and publicly stating which one it is is not pushing anyone out of the hobby, it is not even an attempt at that

 

[the Jester]

Credit where credit is due- as terrible as most 4e adventures were, they included descriptive text (what was once boxed text) that specifically called out changes based on what direction you might have entered from or what your Perception was. I remember several "If the party enters from the west" kind of passages in them.

 

[Argyle King]

can you name an example that achieves both to a high degree (without basically duplicating things)?

I do not see this as dire, being a good read to me means the text flows well with very little interruption, whether for technical reasons (stat blocks, possible DC checks and their outcomes) while being structured well so random information you need in the moment is easy to find very much does not like flow but structure.

GG is far towards the wall of text end of this, they could improve usability with a few changes in formatting and layout while not losing any advantages of their current approach. OSE is pretty much at the other end of the spectrum, highly usable but not a fun read for oneself (at least to me).
They could be more evocative and add read aloud sections or similar to increase the ‘solo reading’ part without really losing much of their usability.

If I were to write an adventure to publish, I’d probably land in the middle. I do not like long texts (outside of a novel) and prefer a concise focus on the essential. Part of the essential is conveying a feeling to the player, OSE outsources that to the DM. I’d retain some form of read-aloud descriptions for that. I’d definitely keep some structure so things are easy to find however instead of burying all details in a wall of text, without even a clear order (important and immediately apparent parts first, details later).

Not great at either imo, but at least not a strikeout on them either when GG basically fails the usability side and OSE the ‘fun read’ one

I think there's a lot of room for a middle ground.

In my head, I was trying to imagine placing the abbreviated keyword version on a page by itself, along with the map.

Then the more-prose version could be elsewhere, on whatever page deals with that specific section.

Ideally, if you had time, you could read through the adventure to gain a basic familiarity with everything and prep beforehand. But, if you're short on time, you'd also have the Cliff's Notes version.

I'm not sure if that would be annoying to flip back and forth though. I suppose you could again print the keywords right before each prose-y description. But then you have print and production cost concerns from being to add page count.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Worldbuilding has nothing to do with this.

I brought up writing a novel in case the goal was to present an entertaining read for a single person to enjoy reading it and being willing to disregard usability to achieve that.

If you want to worldbuild without too much concern about usability at the table, write a setting book, not an adventure


maybe, maybe they satisfy their urge by writing adventures the way they do because they failed as a professional writer


I doubt GG is going to change how they write adventures based on my posts here. If they sell, they will continue making them.

Me having a preference among the different styles of adventure writing and publicly stating which one it is is not pushing anyone out of the hobby, it is not even an attempt at that

It is IMO if you are telling people who don't share your preferences to do something else with their time other than engaging with the hobby.

 

[Argyle King]

Credit where credit is due- as terrible as most 4e adventures were, they included descriptive text (what was once boxed text) that specifically called out changes based on what direction you might have entered from or what your Perception was. I remember several "If the party enters from the west" kind of passages in them.

Yeah...

Funny enough, while I certainly had my moments of being a 4E-hater in the past, conveying information is among the things (along with cosmology and encounter design) that I felt the edition did very well. I'm in the minority, but I especially enjoyed Pyramid of Shadows.

The only place where 4E was sometimes lacking is that some of the monster entries could have benefited from more fluff. I didn't need a lot, but something to give me context to explain how one chunk of numbers in a stat block was different than another would have been nice. Though, oddly, the edition also did well at giving some very similar creatures (formians vs giants, wood elves vs 4E high elves/eladrin, etc) a defined place. When the edition did something well, it did it very well. When the edition did something poorly, it did it very poorly.

 

[Mannahnin]

It is IMO if you are telling people who don't share your preferences to do something else with their time other than engaging with the hobby.

That doesn't seem like an accurate description of what he wrote.

It comes off as a bad-faith misrepresentation, and I know you're normally sincere, so I'm going to assume you misread him.

You pushed back on Mamba's suggestion that people who want to write primarily for readers should maybe consider writing novels by suggesting that worldbuilding is different from story writing. Mamba took that on board and suggested that maybe a setting book is a better thing to write then, rather than an adventure, if the writer wants to focus on reader enjoyment without consideration for usability at the table.

How is writing a setting book doing something else with their time other than engaging with the hobby?