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.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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?

Fair enough. For one thing, however, adventures often include a great deal of setting info, so you can easily do both. Also, just because reading pleasure is more important to some writers than gameability doesn't mean making something playable doesn't matter. People can care about more than one thing in different amounts. Some people really care about art in TTRPGs, for example.

 

[mamba]

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

there is, I said how imo both GG and OSE could move towards the middle without compromising much / anything

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.

Too much duplication for my taste but definitely possible. My compromise was more do some of both, ie have a description, but not overly verbose, that gives you the important and immediately noticeable things first (with bold or something to highlight if there is more detail available) and then the structured parts add all the details to those parts but are (hopefully) easy to find

 

[mamba]

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.

the writing the novel bit? That was both a hypothetical and a question, not a ‘the GG guys should write novels instead’.

Specifically, if you forego a lot of usability purely so you can present a story that is enjoyable to read by oneself, wouldn’t you accomplish your goals better by writing a novel instead.

 

[Micah Sweet]

the writing the novel bit? That was both a hypothetical and a question, not a ‘the GG guys should write novels instead’.

Specifically, if you forego a lot of usability purely so you can present a story that is enjoyable to read by oneself, wouldn’t you accomplish your goals better by writing a novel instead.

Not if worldbuilding and strong focus on setting is your goal, no.

 

[Riley]

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!

When I am outdoors, I almost always know which direction is north. I have an almost-always-on, constantly-updating mental map in my head. (I am told most people do not do this.)

But indoors, especially in an imaginary dungeon? No way.

In a dungeon, “north” at best means “at the top of the paper map”

 

[Lanefan]

I don't think in terms of cardinal directions. For me, at least, that reduces immersion. I have to stop and think and mentally construct the image, which people don't have to when they just see things.

"A set of stairs leads up to the left" is instinctively visual to me.

"A set of stairs leads up to the west" -- I have no idea which compass direction the stairs in my own house go. All I know is that they're to the left of the door as you enter. When somebody asks if they can use the bathroom, I don't tell them to follow the hallway to the east and then turn north at the end; I say "down there, turn right".

In real life, sure.

But in a situation where narration really ought to be both direction-of-approach agnostic and at least somewhat precise, it ain't good enough. That, and the players will be making a map anyway and so they'll already know which way is north*.

* - in situations where they're unsure where they are, e.g. they've just been teleported into an unknown area, I'll assign an arbitrary "north" for mapping and narration purposes until such time as actual north can be determined in-character (which is often pretty quick as "lodestone" is a cheap and common piece of adventuring gear).

Generally speaking, I don't read out boxed text. I make sure I'm aware what it says, but I use my own words and that means I can say "left", "right", "above of you", "behind you" etc. in natural language.

Maybe you don't get left and right mixed up when looking at something upside down but when I'm forced to think on the fly while reading out the text (which I usually do) I'll get 'em mixed up a lot of the time. I'm not great at Roborally for the same reason.

I guess people process things differently, but I much, much prefer being told relative directions rather than compass directions, unless we're talking long distance overland travel.

Part of it also is that I cut my teeth on games like Zork and Advent, where all descriptions are given using cardinal directions (plus up and down).

 

[mamba]

Not if worldbuilding and strong focus on setting is your goal, no.

depends, there definitely are novels with strong world / setting building, but as I said earlier, writing a novel instead was something to consider, not something they definitely should do instead

 

[Lanefan]

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.

You must have run different 4e modules than I did. The ones I ran were a very mixed bag in their information conveyance - really good in some parts and utterly awful in others.

That said, I was converting them to run in a more 1e-like system which means in some cases I probably needed different information than if I'd been running them as stock 4e.

 

[Morrus]

In real life, sure.

But in a situation where narration really ought to be both direction-of-approach agnostic and at least somewhat precise, it ain't good enough. That, and the players will be making a map anyway and so they'll already know which way is north*.

* - in situations where they're unsure where they are, e.g. they've just been teleported into an unknown area, I'll assign an arbitrary "north" for mapping and narration purposes until such time as actual north can be determined in-character (which is often pretty quick as "lodestone" is a cheap and common piece of adventuring gear).

Maybe you don't get left and right mixed up when looking at something upside down but when I'm forced to think on the fly while reading out the text (which I usually do) I'll get 'em mixed up a lot of the time. I'm not great at Roborally for the same reason.

Part of it also is that I cut my teeth on games like Zork and Advent, where all descriptions are given using cardinal directions (plus up and down).

I understood you. It did not require explanation: I simply disagreed with you.

 

[HatWearingFool]

I think my comment on Bob’s video was deleted… at least I don’t see it there.

Now I’m even more sad

So I asked in the comment section of the video if my comment had been deleted and Bob replied:

“Nope, though it could have been auto-hidden by YouTube if it had a link, blocked words, all caps, or for other unclear reasons that YouTube sometimes hides comments”

My comment did have a link to this thread in it, not sure if that’s the truth but I will give the benefit of the doubt for now.

Not sure if I want to craft a link free comment or not.