Why I’m No Longer Supporting DriveThruRPG and Its Sites

UPDATE: I have changed my stance since DriveThruRPG has fixed the issue. See here.

As of today, I have removed my DriveThruRPG advertisements on Dice Monkey and will no longer be purchasing items at DriveThruRPG until their position changes. DriveThruRPG is continuing to support abusers on their platform, and are turning a blind eye to a company who continues to thumb their nose at the community by propping up an accused rapist who has largely been deplatformed. Dice Monkey will no longer review products on DriveThruRPG, I will no longer purchase products from DriveThruRPG, I will no longer post new products there, and we will no longer advertise for DriveThruRPG until such a time as DriveThruRPG removes Legends of the Flame Princess from their site. If they do, I will happily return to all of those things and will even remove this post and show my support of them. Let me explain.

Let’s start by taking a look at this screenshot of DriveThruRPG here:

Now, who’s Zak?

I’m not going to go into a long explanation, especially because so many other people already have.

Ettin64 on Twitter has a brilliant takedown explaining the whole situation, encapsulated in a (satirical?) story about how, at the Circle Centre Mall in Indianapolis, “Zak S. Shit His Pants At Chick-fil-A On The Last Day Of Gen Con 2017”

This post at Renaissance Gamer talks in detail about both Zak S. and his publisher, Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

In short: Zak S. has spent years harassing my members of the game blogging and publishing communities, and in February was credibly accused of prolonged sexual assault by four women. Zak S. posted a few pitiful defenses as everyone rushed to distance themselves and many prominent members of the RPG community were either shamed for their support of him over the years or were given a pass because they’re industry darlings (I’m happy to tell you in private who walked away smelling like a rose), then slithered back under his diseased rock to hide.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess distanced themselves from him once it seemed financially necessary to do so, but had this caveat:

“You all need to keep your eyes out for these snakes slithering among us, feigning compassion when they once spat only cruelty, loving what this has done to us, ready to take advantage of the situation for themselves and further erode what we’ve all collectively built as a creative community.

Don’t let them.

And one last thing. I’d like to thank Zak for all the work and support over the years. I am absolutely crushed that we cannot continue to collaborate.”

What complete and utter cowards.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess is a cringy and try-hard OSR game where “oooh, what’s gonna trigger and be as edgy as possible?” is all the designers write.

DriveThruRPG at the time quite weakly diverted any money they themselves would make from any Zak S. title and donated it to RAINN. Donation to RAINN? Great! (Note: Donate to RAINN) But not removing his titles is a cowardly act. However, everyone just accepted that as a necessary evil and moved on.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess continues to publish the PDFs of Zak S.’s modules, presumably still sending him the profits thereof. You know, like bubonic rats.

So, at GenCon this year they continued selling Zak’s books, and even had a new module: The one listed above. Inside was an intro by the LotFP designer, noted fan of incel-king James “Lobsterphile” Peterson, James Raggi, who decided to rant and rave about how unfair it was that he couldn’t be friends with a dude who was credibly accused of rape by four women, and, need I remind you, allegedly shit himself outside a Chick-fil-a on the last day of GenCon2017.

Everyone called Raggi out on being a worm, then it faded away.

The post got recent attention again as people noticed that Zak Has Nothing To Do With This Book cracked the top 10 downloads on DriveThruRPG.

The book apparently consists of an adventure to hunt down an “evil man” named Zak who’s been scapegoated, and you go on a witchhunt of him or some dumb thing. Basically, it’s apologia for Zak’s alleged terrible rapes.

I let my followers know, as did many others. DriveThruRPG was called out. In response, the president of DriveThruRPG had this to say on the product’s page:

Cowardly, but not unexpected. It seems like DriveThru DID do something like say, “umm, excuse me please, Mr. Raggi, sir. If you don’t mind, sir, could you… if it’s not too much of a hassle, please, change the name, sir, if you would?” as they simperingly sniveled away like Wormtongue, because the name was changed to this:

It’s the exact same module.

So, DriveThruRPG, in its continued support of a group of people who actively support credibly accused rapists, who continue to thumb their nose at the industry, and at members of our community who were targeted with harassment for years by Zak S. and his horde of troglodytes, I will no longer be supporting DriveThruRPG in all the ways I listed. I will be using Itch.io as I can and finding other ways to get products.

What does this mean for the site? Not much for all of you. I have a TON of RPGs I could review for years to come without ever visiting the site again. I am a featured reviewer at DriveThruRPG, which means that I receive free copies of RPGs for review. I will no longer be downloading any of these. If a publisher wishes for me to review their game, I’ll need a physical copy or a link to a PDF that isn’t hosted on their site.

I also won’t be purchasing any items from DM’s Guild. It is owned by the same company, so money they make there goes into the coffers of those who continue to turn a blind eye to the broken stair that is LotFP in the industry.

This really sucks. I want to support creators, especially because I have a lot of friends who sell items on DM’s Guild, but I can no longer support DriveThruRPG while the products by LotFP remain on the site. I’m not saying I want this one product taken down. James Raggi is a yellow stain on the site, and the company itself should be asked to sell their PDFs somewhere else.

I don’t know, maybe out of the dumpster behind the Circle Centre Mall in Indianapolis.