Thread by @GauntletRPG

I wanted to post a follow-up thread about our statement yesterday re: Zak S. These are more my (Jason's) personal thoughts than official Gauntlet thoughts, but still highly relevant to the overall discussion.

(Thread)

First of all: still waiting to hear from @DriveThruRPG and whether they are going to continue to carry his books in their marketplace. I have a feeling they will try to just ride this out in the hopes it will blow over, but I hope I'm wrong. The time to do the right thing is now.

Next, I'm pleased that people read our statement and felt inspired by it. I'm pleased it got some traction. But I must say: I take no joy in any of this. What happened to Mandy was horrible. Reading about all the Zak-related trauma in the ttrpg community is exhausting, miserable.

Yesterday, The Gauntlet Slack was like a fucking funeral home. No one was celebrating the possible downfall of Zak S. Most people were just trying to process their emotions and manage their stress. It fucking sucked.

But I continue to be amazed by the care and consideration of the people in The Gauntlet community. We have built the best place in ttrpgs—I say that all the time—and yesterday proved it.

Other thoughts...

I am not happy to see people in the indie ttrpg space use this moment that should be quite unifying to turn their fire on each other. That bothers me.

Like, I get that there are a lot of hurt feelings out there about Zak. There is a lot of unresolved bullshit. I get that some people have not always acted right when it comes to Zak. I understand all that.

But right now feels like the wrong moment to litigate it.

But I'm not here to take away or invalidate people's anger. People can be angry and process it however they want. It's just not what I'm going to do.

(Mind you: I come from a restorative justice background, which informs a lot of my feeling here—YMMV)

As for the substance of the Zak S. statement itself, I want to clarify and expand on some of its points.

The main thing here: this was a statement about The Gauntlet's internal standards and practices going forward.

Some people interpreted it as a boycott of people who did not cut ties with Zak. Umm, no. That is not at all what the statement was. Obviously, we would like for industry types to re-evaluate their relationship with Zak.

But the statement was about The Gauntlet and who we choose to associate with. We felt the need to take a strong stand and set a good example. And, ultimately, we think that will be enough. But this was not some "OMG, boycott Ken Hite because he loves Zak!" thing.

Speaking of who we choose to associate with...

Many folks on Reddit and other places seemed to misunderstand the part of our statement where we said we would not work with people who work with Zak.

I'm not sure where the misunderstanding comes from, because it is really fucking clear. Reproduced for your convenience:

"We will not work with people who work with him. For example, Codex will not publish an artist or author who is actively working with him. Folks who have worked with him in the past must promise to not work with him again in order to have a professional relationship with [us]."

There is nothing about the above statement that is unclear, Big Brother-like, censorious, or anything else. If you're working with Zak, we won't work with you. If you worked with Zak in the past, you need to commit to not doing so in the future. Nothing confusing about that.

Anyone who can't understand that is reading that very simple statement in bad faith. And in any case: this is a statement about our internal standards about who we choose to work with. If you feel pressed about that, there's a good chance you're not a good fit for us anyway.

Continuing the theme of The Gauntlet gets to associate with whoever we wish...

Do we nuke negative comments? Yep! Do we block and ban people who say obnoxious things on our social media? Yep! Immediately, in fact.

We're not a public good and we don't owe you shit. Your obnoxious opinions don't get equal time, especially when those opinions are in defense of a serial abuser and credibly-accused rapist. Sorry 'bout it!

Next up: the people who are all like "But whatabout this abuser over here? Why single out Zak???"

Those people can fuck right off. Our statement was about Zak, not anyone else, that's why. We reserve the right to discuss/make policy on other abusers as we choose, when we choose

As it turns out, we had provided coverage of Zak's products in the past and regretted it. We wanted to make a statement about fixing that and how we intended to move forward. And we further wanted to set an example for others.

We have felt this way for awhile but Mandy's post pushed us over the edge to making it official. That's why the statement is about Zak and only Zak. This is not difficult, folks, and trust: I know those people hollering about other alleged abusers are just trying to distract.

Some people have questioned how open to interpretation some of our new policies are. What counts as one of Zak's books? What counts as working with Zak? What counts as a convention that supports Zak?

You know what? These are broad statements because we want some flexibility in how we implement these policies. We'll handle things on a case by case basis if we need to. And that's totally fine! Because these are policies about our internal standards. We can do as we wish.

We don't owe people outside The Gauntlet any particular specificity or rigor with these policies. And people inside The Gauntlet have plenty of opportunities to get in touch with us or litigate a particular point as they wish.

But the policies as enumerated in the statement do serve this very important function to people outside The Gauntlet: they communicate our values and who we choose to associate with.

So, that's it for now. I just wanted to elaborate a bit on some of the points related to the statement. You can read the statement here in case you missed it yesterday:

gauntlet-rpg.com/blog/the-gaunt…

(End thread)