RPG Sales for Black Lives Matter

If you would like to give something to the Black Lives Matter movement, there are some great RPG-related options!

• DMs Guild has a Black Lives Matter spotlight. You can buy D&D material from people of color. There are 11 items in the spotlight, including a couple of bundles. One of them, a Black Lives Matter bundle, has nearly 30 D&D supplements heavily discounted.
• DriveThruRPG (DMs Guild's sister site) has a spotlight page too. This includes some awesome products like the Cyberpunk Red Jumpstart Kit, and a bunch of bundles which include Rocket Age and Shadows Over Sol.
• Itchio's MASSIVE bundle has raised nearly $5M so far, and contains over 1,000 products for just $5! They're not all tabletop RPGs, but there's a whole bunch in there including Lancer, a mech pilot RPG I've been meaning to pick up for ages!

As a side note, as I've said elsewhere on EN World, if you feel the burning need to declare that hearing about the suffering of others infringes on your gaming pleasure in some way, or that fundraisers for charity are somehow bothering you, I'd suggest you find somewhere else to say it. It's not welcome here.

 

[Hoffmand]

Black lives matters is a terrorist organization so I am out. Can’t support these people. Bye. They destroy and riot. No thank you.

 

[Morrus]

Black lives matters is a terrorist organization so I am out. Can’t support these people. Bye. They destroy and riot. No thank you.

Time for you to leave the party, I think. You won’t be welcome back.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Black lives matters is a terrorist organization so I am out. Can’t support these people. Bye. They destroy and riot. No thank you.

I know you won't be able to respond, but in my eternal optimism, I'd hope this could be a learning movement. I'm sure there are others who have a misunderstanding like you've expressed, so I'll clarify this for everyone's benefit.

The assumption that BLM is causing damage and rioting isn't entirely accurate, and certainly isn't fair to the BLM movement. Even if we completely set aside why people riot (and phrases like "rioting is the voice of the unheard"--MLK), let's look at the actual data.

the first person to break windows and destroy property in MN was caught on film and confronted. Turns out he was a white cop trying to start stuff and make the protesters look bad.
Then we've got police reports stating how the overwhelming majority of looters and vandalizers being arrested are out of state agitators. That's not BLM, that's out of state anarchists who just want to cause chaos
We also have a lot of footage of the police themselves vandalizing and causing damage, from busting out windows when there wasn't a protester in sight, to slashing tires of parked cars as they march by them for no reason at all.
And then of course we've got several examples of arrests of right wing extremists (like Vegas) who have infiltrated protests to cause damage in hopes of starting race wars. Some of them have since been arrested for killing police and formulating bomb plots. The chatter in right wing circles, especially the new Bugaloo movement, is full of people instructing others to go to protests and cause chaos and damage.

So....knowing all of this now, would you (or anyone else reading this who held the same misconceptions) be willing to change your opinion that BLM are a bunch of violent looters?

 

[BrokenTwin]

@Sacrosanct Given the footage I've seen, I 100% believe what you're saying there, but for the purposes of putting together an informative piece to attempt to change someone's mind, it might help if you provided sources for your claims so people who don't believe you but are open to being convinced have an easy way to verify what you're saying.

But then, that can be a ridiculously large amount of work to attempt to convince someone who might not care about the evidence (not a stab at Hoffmand, just a general statement about people), so I'm certainly not expecting you to go through the effort if you don't want to.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Spoiler: Links with NSFW language

The cops slashing tires:

While the affiliations of the person in the video are as yet unknown, he is white and his actions are definitely NOT welcomed by those around him.

Masked white man vandalizing Minneapolis AutoZone raises suspicion

Who is the man in the mask? Twitter is abuzz as people try to identify a white man, dressed in tactical gear, breaking windows amid protests in Minneapolis.

thegrio.com

No pun intended, this isn’t a black and white issue. While there are certainly rioters & criminals among the peaceful protesters, they certainly aren’t the majorpity. Likewise, while there are clearly some I officers and even whole units acting in ways unbecoming, they, too, are the exception rather than the rule.

And just like the malfeasors on both sides have been caught on video, so have the actions of those whose moral compasses still generally point north- a police sergeant yanking a subordinate officer the line for escalating the situation; protesters throwing an explosive device back into the vehicle from which it was deployed, etc.

 

[Eltab]

BLM and police already had an antagonistic relationship before this year, so seeing individuals from either group trying to besmirch the other groups' reputation is not a surprise.

In both of the headline events that preceded the riots, the wheels of justice had set into motion - slowly as usual - when knowledge of events became widespread. IMO, the rioting sabotaged what had been two hopeful examples of society coming together to make right (to the extent possible) wrongs done "under color of law."

 

[Gradine]

BLM and police already had an antagonistic relationship before this year, so seeing individuals from either group trying to besmirch the other groups' reputation is not a surprise.

In both of the headline events that preceded the riots, the wheels of justice had set into motion - slowly as usual - when knowledge of events became widespread. IMO, the rioting sabotaged what had been two hopeful examples of society coming together to make right (to the extent possible) wrongs done "under color of law."

Without riots the media wouldn't have paid attention at all and deaths of innocent people would have been swept under the rug.

Rioters get a bad rap (and in some cases, deservedly so) but they get stuff done. The Boston Tea Party was a riot. Riots are why many of us are enjoying our weekends off starting this evening.

 

[Eltab]

Without riots the media wouldn't have paid attention at all and deaths of innocent people would have been swept under the rug.

Mr. Arbury and Mr. Floyd's names were household words before the first pane of glass was shattered. In Mr. Arbury's case, about two weeks before.
Protests - nonviolent - were happening in GA over the city government's apparent attempt to sweep the killing under the rug. Thanks are due to the GBI which took the information they were given seriously and began digging into "what happened".

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I don't have anything against rioting in support of these protests because it is justified. If you take away a group of people's rights, kill them, and abuse them, you cannot blame them if they loot a Macy's. This was in response to horrific deaths, and they need to get awareness of their cause.

Sure, they can peaceful protest, until police slash their tires, destroy their protestor-support stations, and tear-gas and pepperspray them. Police are doing this, and would even if they weren't rioting. The Civil Rights movement proves this. It doesn't matter how they protest, the police will try to stop it if it's protesting their brutality.

I, as a white man, cannot criticize their way of protesting, because there is no "right way to protest". That just doesn't exist. Protest, by definition, means that something wrong is going on. Protesting is a way of trying to get attention to something that is happening that should not happen. In an event as big as police brutality, where the very people that are supposed to protect us are murdering our own people, and it is difficult to hold them accountable for doing so, I have absolutely nothing against people taking a stand and demonstrating how much they want this to change by destroying a few buildings and cars.

People > Objects.

 

[Ogre Mage]

I bought the itch.io bundle just for the Hex Kit alone, by Cone of Negative Energy. It normally sells for $15 all by itself.

And I bought all three of these bundles on DM's Guild. The NAACP Legal Defense Bundle is an especially good bargain, with "Rykard's Tome of Familiars and Animal Companions," "Allies, Enemies, & Quests," and "Friends, Foes, and Other Fine Folks." I mean, who can't use more pets and NPCs in their games?

Thanks for this tip. I was trying to decide between the BLM and the NAACP bundles. Your advice tipped the scales!