Thread by @Delafina777

So, a couple elephants in the room to address about the new Ravenloft book, as much as I can without breaking NDA.

First off, as far as I can tell, Mike Mearls was in no way involved with this book. I don't know what he's working on at WOTC now, but it doesn't seem to be print D&D.

Like, if you're boycotting all things WOTC because of him, go your way in peace.

If you're specifically boycotting D&D books, I dunno for sure, but I think you're boycotting the wrong department at this point.

I dunno, it's hard to say for sure. WOTC's big, Hasbro's even bigger, and it all looks pretty labyrinthine from the outside, but I've not seen or heard of hide nor hair of him in anything to do with this project.

Second, my knowledge of Ravenloft is far from encyclopedic, and I don't think I'm allowed to talk about what, specifically, I worked on in this book. But I'm certainly aware of problematic aspects of the IP in previous publications, and there are probably more I'm not aware of.

I *can* say, however, that there was strong awareness on the team that they had to address some of that problematic stuff, and that it involved a lot of iterating and consultation beyond the people who normally work on D&D.

I mean, you can see some of that in the author list Ajit posted.

And I'm not an expert in most of the areas in which Ravenloft was problematic--I hope that the final text ends up being something that brings people joy and not harm, but as is usual with this stuff, I suspect some people will be happy with it and some won't.

What I do know is that it's the same ethical dilemma one's always faced with when buying stuff from large entertainment companies that provide opportunities for marginalized creators to work on big-name IPs.

Whether supporting those creators outweighs supporting a company that's sheltered harassers/put out problematic material/etc. is a choice on which reasonable, well-intentioned people are going to fall on both sides.

And I don't actually think that there's a Right and a Wrong choice there... j

...just as I don't think there was a Right and a Wrong choice about buying Paizo products when Paizo was both doing what I think was a good job putting out stuff by trans creators with great trans characters AND treating their trans employees badly.

What I do know is that the team that worked on this book was incredible, brought in a diverse and badass slate of writers, *listened* to writer concerns and was willing to put money behind addressing them, and produced something I'm proud to have worked on.

(I also want to note that the list Ajit put out is great, but it’s just writers with major sections, not the full/official list of authors, designers, consultants, etc. who worked on it.)