Hello everyone!

I recently discussed with a fellow German player the current state of the RPG industry and we both think that RPG companies are overwhelmingly woke?

Usually I don't care as long as the product is good and they didn't mess it up with gender speech (you might complain about pronouns and "they/them" but you should see what they do to the German language. They use * and : nowadays. Clockwork did that in their German translation of Lex Arcana).

Now my questions are:
a) Is this impression wrong or maybe only limited to the USA?
b) If yes, why is that so?

No, I don't believe so. I am on the left side of the spectrum socially and economically and what have you, but what some companies might be is woke, for the sake of the woke dollars. They are the nazi's of the left side. That's what I think.

Well, dollars, euros, pounds, what have you.

I forgot that I won't be banned or facing a shitstorm by writing woke. I am correcting that. Thanks

It's a direct result of ESG efforts.  ESG started in the banking sector after the 2008 collapse.  The banks control more than just mortgages.  If banks cut you off then your business dies.  A lot of companies under threats from banks have brought social equity experts to change how they do business for a better ESG score.

Quote from: Coffeecup on October 23, 2023, 01:01:25 PM
I forgot that I won't be banned or facing a shitstorm by writing woke. I am correcting that. Thanks

Now my post looks like nonsense. I'm triggered.

I think most of the reason for the impression is that the two biggest companies (WotC and Paizo) are decidedly leftwing, as are many of the second and third tier--Green Ronin, Evil Hat, etc. If you were to count up numbers, you might find a balance, but in terms of the market share, the industry lists heavily to port.

WoTC and Paizo have been the 2 biggest kids on the block for the US audience and they're based in the Seattle area. It's probably pretty hard to live/work on the west coast and not be woke/go along with woke company politics. It's sort of a cult.

Games Workshop is also huge and doesn't feel woke. Neither does Fantasy Flight Games. So maybe it depends a lot on where you're located.

Quote from: Dracones on October 23, 2023, 01:54:01 PM
WoTC and Paizo have been the 2 biggest kids on the block for the US audience and they're based in the Seattle area. It's probably pretty hard to live/work on the west coast and not be woke/go along with woke company politics. It's sort of a cult.

Games Workshop is also huge and doesn't feel woke. Neither does Fantasy Flight Games. So maybe it depends a lot on where you're located.

Let's not forget we have a whole list of them

Quote from: Dracones on October 23, 2023, 01:54:01 PM
Games Workshop is also huge and doesn't feel woke. Neither does Fantasy Flight Games. So maybe it depends a lot on where you're located.

  Fantasy Flight Games is based in a hardpoint of progressivism surrounded by a more conservative region, so maybe that's why they come off as balance. OTOH, GW and FFG are also mostly out of the RPG hobby nowadays ...

I took a glance at THE LIST (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RlX78Yw9lbUMk2QwAZdpwNRGAd4Xe69eFgnFymWz6M0/edit#heading=h.jaoh4ohrikt8) and saw 2 pages of green companies, 5 pages of yellow, and 7 pages of red.  So yeah, you're probably right

Quote from: Coffeecup on October 23, 2023, 12:51:02 PM
Hello everyone!

I recently discussed with a fellow German player the current state of the RPG industry and we both think that RPG companies are overwhelmingly woke?

Usually I don't care as long as the product is good and they didn't mess it up with gender speech (you might complain about pronouns and "they/them" but you should see what they do to the German language. They use * and : nowadays. Clockwork did that in their German translation of Lex Arcana).

Now my questions are:
a) Is this impression wrong or maybe only limited to the USA?
b) If yes, why is that so?

Most of the OSR avoids anything woke.  Old School Essentials is definitive OUT of politics.  Meaning the write content for people to like, not get politically indoctrinated.

Quote from: Coffeecup on October 23, 2023, 12:51:02 PM

Usually I don't care as long as the product is good and they didn't mess it up with gender speech (you might complain about pronouns and "they/them" but you should see what they do to the German language. They use * and : nowadays. Clockwork did that in their German translation of Lex Arcana).

They did what ? There's absolutely nothing in the original Italian edition that would require something like that. Even the (obviously abundant) Latin terms are correctly gendered according to Latin grammar, there's absolutely no reason to butcher the text like that.

The RPG industry is very, VERY woke with a few counter-cultural exceptions. This is mostly because the major companies (WotC and Paizo especially) are all woke, and all the major platforms you can reasonably publish from have large Woke-brigades. I would be amazed if this hasn't infected the international markets, but I don't know that one way or the other.

I expect a lot of this is drive-by vandalism from people who do not actually play the game, as evidenced by the complete lack of adoption of Sigmata, which was practically a game made of woke virtue signals. One of the things I've learned from listening to the RPG Design Panelcast is that about a third of the speakers blow woke political-speech as a smoke screen to cover for a lack of comprehension*, and another third blow political woke-speech as a "please don't shoot me" virtue-signal, so the politics serves other purposes besides actually being political.

* I am not disappointed the panelists don't know things. I would have respected, "I don't know," even if I would prefer, "I don't know off the top of my head; give me a sec to Google that." However, changing the subject to politics to pretend you do know when you obviously don't is never the intellectually honest thing to do.

Quote from: honeydipperdavid on October 23, 2023, 03:37:23 PMMost of the OSR avoids anything woke.  Old School Essentials is definitive OUT of politics.  Meaning the write content for people to like, not get politically indoctrinated.

Which is the ONLY smart path.

I don't want nor need a MAGA RPG. I won't buy woke crap (even good stuff with a whiff of woke), so all I want/need is great RPGs without any woketardia and those companies ONLY will get my dollars.

First of all it is so unbelievable refreshing to read the posts here.
I posted the same topic in a German forum and there the usual wokies try to tiptoe around the topic.
One was the exception. His explanation boils down to "roleplaying gamers are better educated and more intelligent".

Quote from: NotFromAroundHere on October 23, 2023, 04:26:09 PM
They did what ? There's absolutely nothing in the original Italian edition that would require something like that. Even the (obviously abundant) Latin terms are correctly gendered according to Latin grammar, there's absolutely no reason to butcher the text like that.

I know. I know.
Here is one excerpt from the German quickstart:

QuoteIn der Cohors Arcana gibt es fünf sogenannte Officia (deutsch: Ämter, Singular: Officium), die davon abhängen, welchem Ausbildungspfad der*die jeweilige Custos gefolgt ist: Diplomat*in, Gelehrte*r, Krieger*in, Kundschafter*in oder Seher*in.

And the English quickstart:

QuoteThere are five offices in the Cohors Arcana, based on the training course the Custos was selected for upon recruitment: augur, diplomat, fighter, scholar, and explorer.