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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Whizbang Dustyboots" data-source="post: 9669379" data-attributes="member: 11760">Yes and no. Goodman Games is a business, but from their beginning in the 3E era, it's been one laser-focused on keeping a certain style of gaming -- basically TSR 1978 through 1982 -- alive.That's been manifested in their 3E Dungeon Crawl Classics modules, which absolutely nailed the early 1E D&D tone, and the later Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG line.The OAR books are a product, but they are very clearly mostly aimed at an audience of one: Joseph Goodman. Prior this past month, 99% of the complaints about them were "you got peanut butter in my chocolate/you got chocolate in my peanut butter" when the people who wanted 5E adaptations of Isle of Dread discovered there was a giant history book about the module taking up the first third of the book and vice versa. I don't know how many people were demanding oversized books going into laborious detail about the origins of Keep on the Borderlands, combined with a big 5E adaptation and expansion of it, but Goodman did it.I think it's highly likely the OAR books would have sold much better than they did -- and they seem to have all been big sellers -- if they had been normal sized, on less heavy duty paper and didn't come with a built in history book. And, conversely, I don't think a history book version of each adventure would have sold very well if it wasn't attached to a big 5E revamp. We already have Shannon Applecline's very nice histories of most of this stuff over on DriveThruRPG for free, for instance.The extremely idiosyncratic nature of the line is because it's what Goodman seems to think is necessary to get these histories out into the world for others to enjoy. It's not a product most of us would create, even within the TTRPG space, but it's very clearly one he feels strongly about.I'm also not sure there is a museum or academic who would be interested in compiling and archiving this material if Goodman wasn't doing it. (Especially in the current moment, when I suspect a lot of the more idiosyncratic collections at colleges and universities are going to either be cut by the budget axe or make administrators nervous about sudden unwelcome attention from Washington, DC.)Until this most recent project came to light, the OAR line was the harmless eccentricity of a small business owner. Business owners, broadly speaking, are entitled to pursue their pet projects when no one else is getting hurt.But is it worth what he's doing to get this next one out? The broad consensus seems to be "good lord, no." Bledsaw II certainly seems to think he's benefitting from this project. And when an unrepentant racist, sexist, homophobe, etc. is celebrating something, it's almost certainly hurting those people he hates.In Goodman's mind, this isn't just business. But that's unfortunately true in a way that he doesn't seem to have intended. He seems to have deeply, deeply lost his way on the CSIO OAR.</blockquote>

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