Hi everyone, this is Jono speaking on behalf of the entire Goofballs & Goblins team. You’ve probably noticed that we’ve taken some time off recently. This is in part due to the state of the world right now, partly because we still haven’t quite figured out remote recording, and partly because of recent events in the TTRPG community. We’d like to take this moment to properly address those events.
As many of you may know, Wizards of the Coast, the company who makes D&D, let slip over a month ago that they were still working with Mike Mearls, who they had previously claimed was no longer employed by them in the TTRPG department. For those who don't know, Mearls was involved in enabling abuse within the tabletop community, in addition to further endangering abuse survivors by exposing them to their abuser. We firmly believe- and I cannot stress this enough- that Wizards of the Coast needs to fire Mike Mearls.
When we initially wrote our statement regarding Wizards, this was the most recent news. We were still hopeful that they would appropriately and publicly address this failure on their part and work to rectify the situation. It was our belief that once that action was taken we could perhaps continue playing D&D with a clear conscience, and what’s more we planned to use this platform (however small it may be) to uplift and showcase indie creators making D&D content. I recognize now that that belief comes from a place of privilege and naivete, especially after this past weekend.
On July 3rd, Orion D. Black, a Black nonbinary former Wizards of the Coast employee, posted a thread of their experiences working for them and the continual mistreatment they received during their time there. If you’ve not seen it or read it yet, their statement will be linked in the transcript for this recording on our website. (https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sra9pq) This was the last straw for a lot of people, ourselves included. After reading about the hypocrisy, toxicity, and unwillingness to change that Wizards has shown time and again (not to mention their deafening silence when it comes to #FireMikeMearls), we cannot in good conscience continue to play Dungeons and Dragons on this show. To do so would be to give our tacit support to them, and I speak for all of us when I say we do not now nor will we ever support this kind of behavior.
So, what does this mean for Goofballs and Goblins? The details are as of yet unclear, but I can assure you that the Frighty Fellows’ story will continue using a different system as the medium. We have found several options that we will be privately trying out over the next few weeks. Once we find something that works for us as a group, we’ll transfer this story over and get back to bringing you the content of dubious quality that you’re used to. As for the several backlogged episodes that we hadn’t released before everything went down, we’ve decided as a group that we’re just not comfortable putting D&D content into the world anymore. But at the same time, it would be really hard to recreate three to four episodes of actual-play tabletop role-playing, so as a compromise, you can look forward to what I’m sure will be a sizeable and pretty bad plot recap of those episodes from me! We will have those out shortly before we begin putting out new content, which will be all brand-new starting fresh where we as players left off.
In the meantime, we appreciate your patience as we figure out our next steps. Hopefully we’ll continue the adventures of the Frighty Fellows real soon.
