Let me state two things off the top that might save you some reading:

1. Zionism=/=Jewishness. What Israel is carrying out in Palestine is genocide and their Jewishness in no way excuses anything.
2. I one hundred percent support the CRIT Awards in general and there decisions around this year’s awards in particular.

If either of those statements make you mad, jog on, the rest of this is not going to make you any happier.

In a short time the CRIT Awards has solidified itself as an important community event, celebrating the true diversity of creators in the TTRPG space. This year is no different, and you can find the full list of nominees and cast your votes here. On the same day the nominees were announced, CRIT Awards put out a statement clarifying an update to their Code of Conduct:

“We at the CRIT Awards want to be very clear in our stance, and address an updated portion in our Code of Conduct, for clarity: Individuals who identify as Zionists, promote Zionist material, or engage in activities that without a doubt support Zionism are not eligible for nomination.“

I won’t go into details about who caused this addition to become necessary, frankly Zionists don’t get column inches from me, ever. A little sleuthing on social media, despite the hell pit it has become, should turn up that information for you. Update: Rascal has a great overview of the whole situation, if you’re looking for details.

The supporters of this creator, though, wasted no time in making their objections known. Which led to members of the larger TTRPG space, who previously hadn’t known there was an issue but were super excited to break out their favourite “well actually” (slanted heavily towards people tripping over 1), above, with a sprinkling of the anti-woke brigade who were just happy to be included), to begin shouting. Normally this is where the discourse would tire itself out, like an angry two-year-old finally crying itself to sleep.

But this toddler caught the attention of Zionism enthusiasts with no ties to TTRPGs at all, and it was on. CRIT Awards posts were brigaded by people delighted to tell you “that anti-Zionism is just like Nazis, actually”, ignoring the combined histories of Colonialism, Nazis, and the Middle East with gleeful abandon. Now there was an entire daycare of snot-crying toddlers, with no skin in the game except the chance to be angry that the reputation of their current favourite genocide was impugned. Not limiting themselves to social media fuckery, they started shouting at the host convention of the CRIT Awards, Gen Con.

Of course this is where it stopped, because Gen Con unequivocally supported the CRIT Awards and took a principled stance to both support the event and take a stance against genocide and bigotry. (Fuck, just writing that gave me a nosebleed)

And Gen Con folded easier than children’s origami. Behind the scenes they turfed the CRIT Awards from the convention over “safety concerns”, without any announcement or statement of their own. Which meant it fell to CRIT to give folks the bad news; the linked tweet has alt text in the replies so I haven’t reposted it here. CRIT took the high road in their announcement, making it sound like it was their choice to pull out. But this year’s host of the awards, Omega D. Jones (@CriticalBard) made it known: Gen Con pulled the CRIT Awards because of their anti-Zionist stance.

That brings us to now-ish, with the bulk of the TTRPG community in support of the CRIT Awards and rightfully disgusted by the cowardice shown by Gen Con. A growing number of creators who are able to do so have shown their support by pulling their events from Gen Con, with many others opting out of attending this year’s event. Even more folks who were thinking of attending in the future have voiced their intention never to attend. Of course this leaves many creators who can’t afford to cancel in a tough spot, having to attend an event they rely on for work, when the work may not be there.

Okay, as the title suggests this was supposed to be a bit of background to my thoughts about Gen Con in all this. Not so much. So let’s mark this as Part One, and I’ll finish up in Part Two very shortly.