Rascal Radio Hour E30: A Postage Stamp Is Not A Paywall

Howdy, and welcome to the Rascal Radio Hour, a bi-weekly show about the tabletop industry and its associated online spaces. This is episode 30 for February 3rd, 2026. My name is Chase Taylor Carter and I'm joined on the mic today by fellow podcast Sikko, Thomas Manwell. Oh yeah, it is me, I am a male podcasted guilty. Yeah, I will get you in a little bit, but it's because you have joined me in the ranks of official hosting official Rascal Podcasts. It's you and me on the mic, baby, we're doing the projects. Yeah, yeah, my partner threatens to make her next bio like Manavashi publishes a story to be like, like three with your lives with two cats and a male podcasted. It's devastating, but absolutely true, right? Like I just have to be like, I just, you know, I apologize. She's so valid for that, you know what, that's fantastic. I hope that goes on your grave, like when you, when you finally shuffle this off this mortal coil and whatever end comes to like your remains, I hope that there is a marker there. And it says Thomas Manwell, male podcast. Glass houses too. Thank you. Yeah, I'll be right there along with you, man. Oh man. It's been a little bit. We apologize for the delay, but we are back. So if you have been setting your clocks by Rascal Radio Hour episodes, first of all, get a watch. I don't know what to tell you. That's your own fault. The second of all, yeah, we're finally catching up. How does the podcast is so inconsistent, is that's what you mean? Okay. To be fair, I think we've done pretty good job, like this is a fairly consistent podcast, you know, we're now into, we're past the, the, the double dozen episodes were heading towards 50, episode 50s and in on the horizon. Yeah, and it's only been a couple of times that we've needed to like either cancel or like reschedule a date. So all that to say, thank you for your patience. I'm glad you're back in listening, we've got a fairly specific episode because we're going to tackle, and I think we'll start off with this, Thomas, if you're ready, a larger discussion about the big investigation that we did a couple of weeks ago into possum creak games and Steve Jackson games and the contracted work and the folks involved in creating Yezabah's bed and breakfast. If you haven't read the story, it's on Rascal. You can go give it a, a big, long read, it's a, it's a fairly chunky investigation that the whole team chipped in on making happen and it's titled a battle over Yezabah's bed and breakfast contracts, leaves the book and relationships torn apart. And more so than a lot of other pieces, this is garnered a lot of like questions from, uh, from listeners or from readers and our audience, but also a fair bit of like, um, discussion and criticism that we felt was worth sort of like digging into, uh, in context. And so we're going to take a, a big chunk of today's episode to do that, but we'll also get on with some, uh, other stuff in the end. But, um, yeah, I've got Thomas on here with me to help me go through some of the larger strains of questions, uh, that we've gotten some of the, some of the bigger things that we wanted to address and just sort of just to broadly talk about the process. We do these sometimes and they are fairly unique reported pieces amongst everything else that we put out on Rascal. And so if nothing else, this is a chance for us to kind of, um, you know, part of the curtain show you how the journalistic sausage is made whenever we do a story of this magnitude and this size. Yeah. I think the thing for me is not that it's a particularly big story or anything like that, even though yes, there was a lot of labor that went into it, all of that is true, more that like there is a particular model of conversation that I want Rascal to represent, which is that I think that, uh, all the work we do can and should we criticize, I've said this sort of openly and consistently, uh, and with this story, maybe more than others, there is a very clear, I think dichotomy between the criticism that sort of like comes to us where people talk to us like directly, ask us questions, what we might call, uh, like open conversation and there, but there's also been a lot of conversation about this article that takes the form of a lot of other sort of like, uh, sort of like online, uh, discourse where there, it's not like, uh, like we are sort of like alluded to, but not like mentioned like directly and I think that model is like, before I joined Rascal, I found that, I found that kind of conversation like frustrating, the sort of like vagueness, the allusions, like all of that and one of the nice things about Rascal is that like we, uh, put our name and face to the things that we say, right? Like, you know, and so allow ourselves to be criticised, right? Like that's a part of it, like, you know, and so I, I, I want to take very seriously and engage with like, uh, the questions that have been asked to us in that same capacity, uh, because yeah, I, you know, I, I want to signal to people that we can talk like this, you know, things, things can be better, we can have a, we can have a conversation about our work that is critical of our work, like that is like very, that's very possible and like good to do. We might not do this like every time, but I think it is good to like do this at least once. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Um, I think I'm, I'm very much on the same level with you, uh, regarding the sort of like the tenor of conversations that, that can happen around investigations, uh, business reporting, especially when it involves a, a well-known company and a very well-known product within the space, like, you say, but as Ben and breakfast was, um, I think it's a failing of just like having the platforms in which to have these sort of discussions, I'll lay it at the feet of social media like that it is a, it is an ill of social media that like it, we can only have discussions that are framed by engagement and algorithmic. I know blue sky has largely dropped the algorithm, but we're all sort of like Twitter brain still and we have discussions as if we were still on Twitter. And that's not to say there's a lot of other stuff going on, but we, it does limit the kinds of conversations that you can have in, and how they might help a, an audience, if we're talking about a general audience, like teach them how to engage with information, with media literacy, when those are the avenues that we have to sort of talk about these sort of things. So hopefully this podcast and this discussion goes a long way to like, ameliorating some of that. Yeah, I think the, the first thing I kind of want to talk about in a very broad sense is the question of bias, right? Like I think, I think the thing for me is one is to make clear like, chase like you refer to these things, these stories as investigations. And I think another important thing to be here is that like, this is fundamentally like a labor reporting. All our investigations so far. I think almost all, there is one or two like, no, exceptions, maybe almost all of these things that we call investigations are, are labor stories. They are stories where people have usually approached us. Sometimes we approach them, of course, have approached us with sort of their, their stories are their experiences of, of, you know, of different things. Sometimes it's not getting paid. Sometimes it's being laid off, whatever, like NV sort of like, try to report those outright. We try to verify. We try to confirm things that we try to contextualize all of those things. And in this story, again, there are, you know, the, the freelancers, the contractors, and they approach us. They are, so they are like, for like a word, like, often from like underrepresented like identities, they come to us. They're like worried about backlash here. They're worried about being held responsible for the loss of like a beloved product, right? And the thing is like in that context of like also like, they are also losing something, right? Like they want, they, they're worried about like personally losing in something that they felt they had some creative like ownership over and they are worried about being blamed for their loss, right? Like that is some of the, some of the, the tenor in which they approach us. So we have to kind of like earn their trust as well. Because again, like, I think it's, it's important context that we have written a lot of like stories about PCG, like, you know, about Yezabah's, like, you know, we, we wrote that Brandfork story sort of like talking about, talking about how Brandfork's as a logistics company is a holding a bunch of like Yezabah stock, like things like that. Like we, like, we did all of that. So yeah, they approach us. So I think, to some extent, I think people are correct when they say that the article seems to like lean towards or take extra precautions when talking about those freelancers. Part of this is as a, as a labor story, like that will always be the case. Part of this is because PCG and Steve Jackson games didn't really talk to us. And part of this is because, like, because the freelancers were speaking to us, they can articulate to us their fears about like being harassed and things like that, right? Like I think it is, like, some extent, like the, and I, I do hope that we have sort of like, done a good job by them. Right? I think that is still like an important thing to say, but at the same time, like, there has been some, there have been some kind of unsubstantiated allegations, like against J. Reagan after this article. And that was something that we probably should have been prepared for, even though like I fundamentally do not think that we can stop these things from happening. But like the, the story would have been better if we had like full cooperation and engagement from PCG and Steve Jackson games. We did not get that. And fundamentally, that does not, people should be very careful to not let that dealage to my, like, any part of the story, right? Like that, like, like, to some extent, like two, two, if both sides kind of talk to you fully openly, like that helps you as a writer, sort of like balance that out to some extent, you know, us leaning one way with essentially caveats, right? Like I, I fundamentally don't think that we have got any facts wrong, then might, there might be something like we will, like, explore, but like, I don't think people are disputing any of the facts here. But like some of the caveats that we gave some of the, you know, there are like, like two or three clauses at the end of paragraphs, you know, that, that we gave that, like, yeah, that people sort of like point to, to, to, to talk about this bias. And like there is again, like a structural reason that labor reporting might do that for the labor in question. But yeah, I'm kind of, you know, I, I, I had to stop, like, people discussing those unsubstantiated, like allegations, like in our discord, like I do think that stuff is like, it's disappointing that that happens. And I do think that is a part of the discourse that, that internet discourse that we are trying to not do, right? Like that's very clear to be like, that's not the thing that we're doing. And like that, it being associated with us is actually bad. And like we will sort of like take efforts to, I don't know, do some small stuff, like including like just detaching, like court tweets of like a, a article that makes allegations that are not in the article. Like that stuff is just, yeah. That was a lot. Yeah. And I think we, we, it's, before this, we had not had a, a codified sort of social media policy around taking those sort of actions because we had never needed to put that into practice. And I think going forward, we are developing that so that we do have somewhere in a piece of paper within like a rascal structure of like, we can do this if there is like not just sort of like bad faith, but like demonstrably harmful or like disinformation, like someone is specifically for whatever reason, trying to reframe the information or like truthful stance of the article in a way that would be harmful to us or to the subjects. Like we can take on social media, we can, we can take use of the tools to like, it's not, I've, on blue sky, it's not a block, but it's sort of like a, like you said, a detachment of the quote tweet from the article. So like, it's just sort of like, yeah, disamp, it's, it's ambiguated from where it came from. Yeah, yeah. But to, yeah, so my thoughts on this is that like, of course, I would have very much enjoyed the article would have been a more complete story and a better story if I could have quoted responses or at least some sort of official comment from Steve Jackson games. We had what we could from the folks involved at Possum Creek Games and Steve Jackson games, but largely they did not offer comments. They were told everyone involved in the story that I could reach out to was told about what was going into the article like the, the shape of the article was not a mystery to them. No one should have been surprised about the article that came out as far as like the factual allegations, the storyline, the people involved, any of that. So we're not dealing any sort of gotcha journalism. We're not, you know, dealing in any sort of like intentional muttsling or anything like that. Where the context falls away from one side of the story and then we necessarily have to lean on the sources that would talk to us, that is because of the choices of the folks involved. And I, I don't think that only getting one side of the story in this case made this story not worth telling. There was never a point at which like, well, if we can't get Steve Jackson games to comment on it, we can't publish this story. Because ultimately, like you said, Thomas, this is a labor piece. This is a piece about workers in the industry alleging and personally feeling like they were dealt a bad hand. Like they were dealt wrongly by their employer and were seeking redress, whether emotionally or financially. In this case, both. And it was the journey of them, the journey of them seeking that. And over the course of reporting it, we reached, we finally did reach a conclusion. Like there was a version of this piece that sort of ended open ended because we did not have that sort of final conclusion. They're still in the process of negotiating that with Steve Jackson games, but like they've made their decision. And, you know, for them, it's distressing. And for folks who wanted Yoseb's bed and breakfast to exist in the way that the first edition did, it's also distressing because I think that book is done. But it, for all of those reasons, it made it necessary, I think, to tell this story even if possum creak games and Steve Jackson games declined to comment. Because I think, and I stand by this reporting that we did not print anything that is like intentionally, factually untrue. If we've made mistakes, I, I welcome anyone to reach out so that we can make corrections on this. I already had to correct misspellings of names and all that. These are the things that happen. You know, we're human. We're under deadlines and stress. I apologize for those. But like, factual errors, I'm happy to correct and we'll do so. But like, I think the thrust of the piece, generally speaking, I will stand by. And the question of bias is like, this is the nature of these pieces sometimes whenever the power differential, which was the people who employed the contractors, wouldn't speak up. I'm not going to let someone empower not speaking, kill a story. That is, I think that is the larger like malpractice of journalism than like what some people might think as far as like being objective and representing both sides equally. I think it's, I think the last thing I'll say on this is that like fairness and equity are not the same thing. Is this a fairly reported piece? Well, like obviously no, because we have more from one side than we do the other. Is it an equitably reported piece? I think so. I think like on the subject of criticisms of the piece that, you know, that I think we're very ready to take on board. This is a thing that happens there is a line from Mercedes Acosta where I think Acosta uses both he and she pronouns like she sort of says, you know, who is this hyper capitalist pretending to be a software indie communist or something like that? And this is a situation where like it is not a literal statement, right? And we've had we've had this problem before in other stories where I think like we read a line and where like this is very clearly not a literal statement. This is the representation of like somebody's like feelings like on this matter. But I think we have consistently seen like there is a there is a very clear example I have from a previous story as well where people are fixated on something that I was understood to be non to be non literal. But they were like, how is this possible? And I was like, oh, we have a misunderstanding here. And I think when I read this line originally like in the draft, I was like, okay, sure, I know, I know what this is trying to say. But then I think when you made it a pull quote, you drew extra attention to it. And it did come across as like, and I was unhappy with it as well. I was like, why is this sort of again, so too in my head like insignificant line, like, why is this pulled out as like a pull quote? Why is this like a big deal here? Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I think it's in there. I can understand I can have some sympathy for people who felt that that was unfair to pull out, especially and we'll get into this a little bit later with how the rest of the article was structured specifically around like where the furry pay wall ended. And I think like, you know, we talk about internal policies and one that we should have and that we are going to have going forward is that like whenever we do negotiate the editing of the story, structural editing in the CMS that no pull quote should be exist above a pay wall that isn't already like in the context of what's available in there. I think that's just that's easy to do in fair and doesn't interrupt our process at all. And so I will I will do a maya culpa here that I should have checked that. And so I can understand folks who are upset that a pull quote was detached from its context. That said, I agree with you that this is a quote that characterized the emotional state of our sources. And I think it's very clear that that is the case. But because of the subjects involved, because of the nature of, you know, possum creak games and its identity, it's sort of like intentional public identity of like who they make games for, the kinds of games they make, the people making those games, that it did feel like a sort of character attack, especially attack on queerness, transness, all these sort of like an identity attack on the people involved. And I think that that is at best a slightly naive at worst, it is an intentional misreading of our intentions of like how the story was structured. Pull quotes are important in a sort of like selling the emotional impact of a story. And I will be more aware of the significance of where they sit in the story and how we structure them. But like I think it was a fine quote to include, because I think it mattered for where these, how the breakdown in relationship between the contractors and possum creak games had gone. This was not a sort of like attack out of the blue. This was a, this was frustration put into words that I felt succinctly added up to how they were feeling. Yeah, and I think I still think that like as a pull quote, it is like a bad like pull quote, because again, it's just, I think it is regardless of this paywall thing which we were talk about, like you said, I just think that there is something about, including it in the article itself, I think I was, I was, I was fine with like in its context, I think I was like, it came after a lot of things that already been said, but I think like as a pull quote, it, yeah, it floats in this sort of like context less way. It also like draws attention to it. And maybe this is the kind of thing of like, it doesn't regardless of whether it's wrong or right. The thing is what it does kind of thing of like the end result being like a lot of people seeing this like very contextless like critical statement being made, like out of nowhere, like that's, like that's, yeah, that's not, that's not a thing the article like needed, you know what I mean? Like I think it did sort of like, it is like a bad like reading experience, I think like when stuff like that like hits you. So yeah, if I can ask you Thomas, like what do, how do you personally feel about like what's your approach to pull quotes? How do you decide which quotes to pull out and where what like purpose do you think they serve in a piece? I personally like hate pull quotes, like I almost never, I never use them, like I never use them, my piece like fundamentally because I think like my reading experience is always like I'm reading a paragraph then this is some random line in that's from later on in the piece and I have to go back to reading the paragraph, I think it's like breaks flow. And this like I was not, I don't, I wasn't thinking of this like specific kind of instance where it sort of like feels nefarious. And I think we have to like, yeah, we will, we have to, we have to talk about this sort of like the criticism of, like some of these choices being read as like incendiary or like sensationalist or like nefarious, but like in this instance, yeah, like of all the things that people say, like this is the one that I feel like, like I'm most like on board with them, just like, yeah, you know, like I don't, yeah, I don't like the contextless statements, like I think they, they, they do sort of like attract this attention, especially when they're non literal, like I think this is a learning that we have to take on, like non literal statements are tricky to include at all, but like using them as pull quotes, like actively kind of like, you know, to put it mildly distracting to put it sort of like very harshly like misleading, right? Like I think, yeah. Moving on to the next point here, I think a one of the other larger strains of confusion and sort of questions about the piece was around the figure of money that Harrison Acosta specifically requested for the buyouts of their rights by Steve Jackson case, which came to the initial ask from the piece was $200,000 each, totaling 400K for rights in perpetuity, which included rights to any sort of transmedia that might have happened. And I think there was people thinking about like films and TV shows, cartoons, all that sort of stuff, which I guess makes sense because there was a cartoon stinger that was made for the Kickstarter or the Indiegogo video, which it's not something you see very often in RPGs. So it's no worthy in itself. As far as I'm aware, there was no active projects involved at the time. And even now, there's no active projects to sort of like adapt, you say it was bed and breakfast into anything other than an RPG. But still, people were wondering why we didn't sort of criticize that number or interrogate that number a little bit more, why for some folks, it did just sort of like exist detached from a sort of like larger context or real discerning eye into why that big number was the way it was. And at least for me, I felt like in the context of the piece, it was fairly obvious that like, yeah, it's a big number. But almost immediately they say, we know we were aiming high. And I think it's fairly obvious that most people, like even if you don't have much business sense within RPGs are going to go, that's still way too fucking high a number to to suggest. And whether they were bad negotiators, I think is not a, that's not an interesting material question for us to spend time on for you to read. What matters is that they made an offer and almost immediately the steel jaws of negotiation shut around them and Steve Jackson games was done. There was no sort of like even, there was a light correction from Steve Jackson games. There wasn't a like, listen, this is a ludicrous number. We have former Steve Jackson president Meredith Placo saying, yeah, it was a ridiculous number as a sort of after the fact, quote, talking about it. But that was never communicated to the contractors. They got no other communication. And instead their number was shut down. And Steve Jackson games through their lawyer said, you get, we are not going to be negotiating any further. Here's your buy-out offer. Take it or leave it. And so like for me, in the context, the number doesn't matter so much as like how Steve Jackson games chose to treat the freelancers afterwards. And I think the sort of like, whether that was because they did not take them seriously or because Steve Jackson games doesn't want to negotiate at all with contractors in this way. I don't know. I would love for them to answer questions that I sent in, you know, to that point. The more interesting question is the fact that like the tender of the conversation, the tender of the relationship between the contractors and these companies changed at that point. Yeah. I think again, nothing should take away from the fact that like it is the prerogative of people to ask for whatever number they want. Sure. And it's the prerogative of the other person to like respond, right? In some way, like I think, you know, I, I think some people read this number and read how the, how much the contractors were paid and actually actively lose sympathy for them. Like, and they go like, Oh, you're being paid a lot. And that's like that, that makes me care about like you less actually, which is like a weird, it's a weird thing politically, like it's a weird thing to be like, Oh, there's a number. If you ask for at which I stop, I think that you have, you, like you deserve whatever, like happens to you after that or something, like I've, you know, like I don't, you know, as a freelancer, as someone who will always be the person who has to like say their requested salary and like a job interview, like I don't, I think it's sort of like, like silly to be like, you know, there is a, there's a number you can say, which, which sort of like requires to like a breakdown, like in communication, like I think it is completely fair to say no, right? To even just straight up say no, like I think we're on very different wavelengths, like say no or whatever, but like this, I think also reflects the, the youth of both parties, right? Both the owners of PCG and the freelancers like are both young and I think the, like saying a high number is, I think, understandable for them, sort of like the the theoretical, like sort of like exaggerated sort of like reaction from like PCG, like and sort of going like I think at this point, like there is, you know, it's just, it's time for lawyers or whatever. But and I think that moment is, is the crux of it, it is not the number, like people, again, thinking about the number are sort of, like mistaking that what, what the contractors are really saying is that initially when they were brought on board, especially the two writers who were, who were given a royalty percent, right? They were brought on board, they say and the royalty does back this up as, as kind of part owners of the project, right? Like what does a royalty mean? Like why are you paid a royalty? You are paid a royalty because like you are being invited in some way creatively as a, as an, as an owner of the project, as a, as a, as a collaborator in a very fundamental sense. And it's a kind of equity. Yes, yeah, it is, it is, it is, it is a statement of creative like equity and ownership. And the fact, the fundamental, I think, what they are alleging is that they were treated not like that, right? They had a sense of how they would be treated, that they would be kept informed, that they would be like kind of like treated as co-owners in a sense, but like that did not occur. And like when they were told that they would have to be bought out, right? Which is again, not something that caught them by surprise, something that they were not intending, like they thought that they would continue to be co-owners, to be told, like the here's the thing that you are the co-owner of. And now you are going to lose that co-ownership, like that conversation not happening in like a professional or actually even more like in a friendly manner, right? Because that's a part of this. They were like, we thought we were friends, we thought like this would be handled, like we would be treated as, as like friends in this conversation. But then, you know, it turns out like like actually like we've been bought out or something like that. And yeah, I think that emotional reaction is actually like what the contractors at that point really had a problem with. Yeah, that's why I spend a lot of time talking about the breakdowns and communication between Possum Creek games, like lead employees and the contractors because in the article I specifically state that like they were granted, what they felt were material equity in the project. And that was like, this was a significant reason why they wanted to be a part of, you say it was bed breakfast and Possum Creek games because it was at that point a team of queer creators lifting each other up and giving each other like shared ownership of what they really believed in. And then along the way this breakdown of communication that happened in dribs and drabs, the fact that they were cut out or they felt cut out of big conversations around the project, around the rights to the project on all that. And then finally, the, you know, not negotiating, renegotiating their contracts, which they felt was a necessary step whenever Possum Creek games sold publication rights were like agreed to, republication rights to Steve Jackson games. It's worth noting here because I think like this, I don't know the exact wording around that because those contracts were never shared with us. We have requested them. The contract that like legally explicates the relationship between Possum Creek games and Steve Jackson games, I've never seen. I can only guess at what that means. And people at both companies have said like, contesting statements at different times. It's very unclear. And that is part of the reason why these folks, the contractors made some of the allegations that they did because they were very confused about what was actually going on. All of that to say, you can have an opinion. You the reader, the listener can have your opinion about whether or not the people involved in this story on either side were good or bad at business. That's fine. You can have your opinion about like whether that number was ludicrous. In making the story, the team did discuss about how do we talk about this without patronizing the, the sources for that number because it is very easy to frame it in a way that does make the numbers seem ridiculous. I understand that. But we had to treat them seriously because they were treating themselves seriously. This was a serious ask of former employers of a figure that they had faith in, even as a like an opening gambit. How they approach this does not delegitimize their hurt, the professional breakdown that they occurred, and their desire and like need for for redress. And so that ultimately for me is where that ends. And that's why the sort of like bombastic size of the number requested is a detail. It can be a striking detail in the story. Certainly, it ultimately didn't matter as much as I think a lot of people are hanging on that, on that number. Yeah. I think one thing you touched upon is like a thing that I keep coming back to, which is like people reading these stories, looking for like the good ones and the bad ones. And I think that is sort of exhausting as reporters to deal with. It's exhausting as people living in the world. The inclination that like happens in like wider society, where every time anybody does something in a public space, it's always like, they're either a good one or a bad one. And I think people shouldn't read stories like that in a very bottom line. That's not the goal of these things. I think if you read a business story as a business story, it works out better. But it's also something that happens to us. And I'm kind of very tired of I explicitly don't want anyone to think of me as one of the good ones in any sense. Not one of the good ones as a journalist, as a man, whatever the hell. It's not something that is sustainable. And when people criticize us for making mistakes, because that's what these things are. I think fundamentally the allegations of sensationalism and nefariousness. At some point, we can explain certain decisions, we can own up to mistakes, biases, things like that. But if some people are like, oh, we'll wait for the good journalists to come. If anybody is hoping that the problem with us is that we're one of the bad ones and one of the good ones is coming. It's not going to happen. That's not the way the world works. People make mistakes. Again, it's also, if I can can I make a short diversion? Yeah, always. Okay. Yeah. I think about like nine years ago, something some time around 2017, I wrote an article for this website called The Wire. And it was about it was about a court case, again, a sort of a, but there's a factory owned by a company called Precall. And there was a labor dispute at the factory. And then things went, things escalated in a very severe way till one of the head of human resources at the factory was killed. Oh, right. Yeah, was killed. And eight, eight suspects were arrested. And they were tried. And as they were being tried, there was a list of a sort of almost like unending list of peculiarities. And and surprises that came up. There were CCTVs everywhere, but not in that room where the murder took place, right? Like there was like, there were active cops on the scene. They were protecting the factory from the labors who were like striking outside, right? There was a there was an inspector of police right outside the room when the when the incident occurred, like at that almost like at the time, the incident occurred, but they don't like, they didn't hear anything or like see anything. There's like and eventually the the piece I reported was like about the court case itself, like six out of the eight were was sort of like, let to go free because there was no evidence that said they did. Fundamentally, the basically what the company had done was like arrested all the union leaders, right? Like the thing that we've seen many times. So I wrote this piece. It was very it was very straightforward. Like here is why six of these eight have been like, let go. Like here are the sort of like inconsistencies. Like here's why it's like hard. And like I got a comment on the piece, right? This was I think the first the first comment or like I don't know like now now that if you try to look at the article, there are no comments on it like the site redesign like all the comments got lost. It was the wife of the guy who was murdered and seeing that like I was like like in that moment like I actually like I can't say I was like young or whatever, but like this is this this is like 19 years ago, right? I'm not that young, but I was like in that moment, I was like I really in my heart head forgotten, right? That like someone was still murdered here. Like there's nothing wrong with the piece. Again, like what I'm saying is like in my head, like I never thought for one instant like that the wife of the person who was murdered would like read this story, right? And they were sort of going like, you know, basically saying that oh, like, you know, why I they're not attacking like me or anything like that, but sort of like the site, it's a whole like as a journalist for a big site, like you're kind of anonymous, like you know, like it's the it's the site that is the thing, but like they were like, you know, like sort of like why you defending again, I'm hazy memory, but sort of like why you defending like these people who did it, right? Like that was sort of like her thing. Now there's no evidence that these people did it, but at the same time someone was killed and at worst the company is obfuscating what happened, right? Like and like this guy who died, like he's, you know, based on his name, he could be from the same place. I was like, you know, he could be distantly related to me for all I know, you know, it's a very small community of like, you know, Syrian Christians. So like there is there is a there is a thing that happens like well being a journalist where like, you know, the people involved in the story can like reply to it and you can be like, yeah, I have to, I have to deal with the fact that like someone is having an extreme emotional response to a thing that I wrote even though I think everything I said was completely correct and like wrong. And I sort of like the end of this like very long anecdote is the fact that like the some of the reactions to this story like feel worse, like I actually felt worse about some of the responses to this story even though I didn't even write it like compared to like what happened there, right? And like it is just like a very strange way that in the RPG scene like it is like like normalized like this this this this sense of the sense of like like the the thing is to find the good person and the bad person here and I think the bad person in the situation is actually the journalist like, you know, I think it's like I you know, having having done other work it is it is strange that it happens so much in what is essentially a hobby industry. Yeah. Yeah, I think I agree that moral dualism has like very few like practical applications, especially in the modern day and within a hobby like tabletop games, I think it served you even less and yeah, that's a really tough story. I'm very fortunate that I've never had to like feel that because I think most of my journalism, the hardest journalism I ever did was like working for like an an alt weekly in Dallas and writing about some of like the policy decisions regarding like unhoused people in Dallas and stuff like that and even then, you know, you're writing and getting comments about a group that is so disenfranchised that they they're not commenting on these stories. They have bigger struggles than that, but it is it is so pressure to remind of that like even factually accurate, your journalism is going to affect real people who are living their lives and sometimes that emotional reaction can be valid while also having no real bearing on the work that you did and having to square those circles is extremely tough. Like it is it is a it is a tough job and like that's a it's a really kind of like murky and imperfect part of the work that we do. Yeah, I think like one of the things is that like investigative journalism is like it's a feared activity, right? Like I think when I do it, I sort of always do it I think as as obligation like I study I'm like this is my job like this is something that I do like this is a like you know some kind of like like service, right? And I feel like shit every time I publish one like it's like like there's a you know there was a kind of discomfort in the pit of my stomach like it is very like a very actively sort of physically uncomfortable thing to do like it's you know you worry about being sued you like worry about like getting it wrong you worried about like hurting somebody's feelings like there's like there is like there is like there is a lot there and I have the feeling that you don't feel like this. Yes, you're right, I have largely inured myself to that feeling. I think about this sometimes. We had a discussion about this last week when we were kind of like preparing to talk about this. Yeah, yeah. Regarding a different issue and I said something to the effect of like I think I'm sick in the head because I really want this smoke talking about a different investigation that what you know we don't have to talk about it but like I was just like everyone else in the team went oh I don't know about that and I went I was like wiping my hands together like I had put I had put my bib on I was getting out the steak knife and the fork and going I'm ready for a meal because like yes I think over my career and chalk this up to either a specific brainworm that I have or the fact that I did for all my sins go to J school and I have an undergraduate degree in journalism and I have a master's of journalism I got student debt to do more journalism maybe has part of that education is sort of like developing that the sort of thick moral skin that you need to sometimes be able to stomach some of the work that you do and I actually think it's like more than that I think it is like personal like psychology right like if you think about like I this is not this is not a one-to-one analogy but I like said something like this like you know like like in the same way that if you watch the pit like you see these emergency doctors and you go like these are like not normal people and that you know like I can't do this and we need we need people who are like this to do this like social function like to some extent investigative journalism is also like that I think like I think normal people don't want to do it and that's me putting myself in the normal box but like you know like I tried to say but I'm just like you know like I think like you you have to be a certain kind of person to like even do the work and it's sort of like our job to like like do it at the same time like yeah just you know have all the kind of like the the the godrails or whatever yeah which speaking to that like we have sort of discovered that we maybe need more guardrails internally to help the team deal with these sort of things because like yeah members of the team have been made very uncomfortable by this work over the course of reporting this reporting other projects I think doing these sort of like larger like labor stories these larger investigations whatever you want to call them has helped the team figure out their individual appetites for that kind of dirty work and we're not all the same as you said I think I probably have the largest appetite amongst the team for it and I think that is something you got to know about yourself you know if you're going to be a journalist is like what kind of because you're right at like some people are going to be opticians and they're going to fix people with glasses and some people are going to be Dr. Robbie in the pit who shows up every day uh and does that job and um you know it's all medicine but it's different levels of medicine and then none of them are like better or more morally correct in the others it's just like where you find that you can do this work um I sometimes feel like journalists use that sort of like oh um they use the truth capital T in both cases the truth has like a pole star to guide their way through this sort of like moral merceness sometimes and I have done this before that like whenever I begin to question like whether what I'm doing is this is comfortable work whether I'm like being a good person whenever I do these sort of things because sometimes you have to be very mercenary with relationships I say all the time the journalist can be friendly but you're never going to be friends with people that you talk to and that can be difficult for folks and you hang on to the fact that like well your job is to seek out the truth and like sure yeah but I also think that that is a convenient shield against like extending too much an uncomfortable amount of empathy towards the people you have to deal with and I'm getting very naval gazing here but I think it all goes to say that like um we think about these things we are not not having these discussions both with ourselves and with the team whenever we report these stories it was very much a part of reporting out this you say it was better practice piece from the beginning all the way through to hitting publish yeah yeah I think I think part of the problem with like when people say things like oh like like this work is like of the of the kinds of work we do this is the sensational kind or whatever like I think there is a sort of like again from the inside the experience is more that like like people generally have like very sort of like they had a very devastating but sort of like had a was sort of devastated through this process right rather than being sort of like excited and like you know trying to like uh trying to sort of like exaggerate what I kind of saw from the outside was were people kind of like feeling sort of bad as they went through the whole thing right like more and more like just sort of like being unhappy with the details that were being discovered like you know just uh it was it was a it was a it was a it was a burden it was not like a thing that uh you know it was yeah it was not a thing that people were waking up every day and going like you know this is uh you know they hit the jackpot or something like that which again how some people seem to be talking yeah and I think like just looking at our notes to to book in this discussion I think reducing down any reporting we do to finding the bad person is a boring question to ask if you're if you're reading a piece and going okay who's the villain in this story um that's just a boring way to approach like the truth and relationships between power uh and people um because I think to that point that you were just saying Thomas like I that's how I feel in both of the chapters of the brand Foxage if we want to content like kind of like frame the stories this way I have just felt bad for everyone involved as a person um this is that everybody who's made decisions were at some point like bad at business or weren't familiar enough with how things can go bad to protect themselves from everything going to shit and people did bad things they were maybe selfish they were maybe like uh truly like not thinking about everyone else they it could even have been like intentionally malicious in some cases but to say that there was a villain in the sort of like moral dualistic sense in this sort of like biblical snake in the garden of Eden sense like that is just not an interesting way to approach these stories because I'm more interested in like what happens when people are given a small amount of power uh in this case whether that's publishing books the rights to publish a book the rights to enact or exact on contracts with uh freelancers what they do with that power and what that says about you know the place that we hold them within an industry they make money they create art they employ people they you know have an actual material impact on tabletop as an industry and as a hobby and I think it's much more interesting to have these stories illustrate what people do with power and how they learn lessons when that power is unintentionally or intentionally misused um bad guy story yeah you know I yeah it's it is like worth pointing out that like a lot of people seem to like again like read this article and be like oh you didn't mention uh like how how how brand fox like affected PCG like enough and we're like I just one of those things that you're just like oh like there are there are paragraphs about it there's paragraphs about like the rising cost of paper there's also like a whole like article about it and there is this other thing where like people like read it and learn all their facts from the story that's written and then say why didn't you talk about this in a in a in a in a sort of like weird sense of like we did talk about that's how you know it like you there is no way that you knew any of this stuff unless you read it from us but then you say why didn't we say it more or louder it's like a very strange like thing that I've seen like yeah the piece was already long long enough homies you know we're trying to save your time as well as anyone else as we link to it we there was a draft of the piece that had more context and we decided as a team that like that was too much context like it it it distracted from the uh getting to the actual story at hand so like yeah yeah it's a weird it's a weird reflex um I don't know I don't know much more much more you want from us than like you know mentioning it and linking in the piece yeah I think before we get to like some specific like questions that we got from from readers like I think the last thing to talk about is like how people discuss the paywall like and I yeah I read this kind of like know this conversation well enough because they've seen it now like dozens and dozens of times like we see it basically like every week they they also like grumble about it in the discord which thank you thank you for being our soldiers in this way yeah like there is something weird about how like like even like really sort of like well intentioned people like seem to truly like work against this the idea of the paywall right it seems to be like like like conceptually like fundamentally like a thing that like seems to like uh seems to be like something that they kind of like circle around again and again like just struggle to accept and like it's kind of humiliating to like keep having to like explain it but like I think it is like you know worth like doing that once you know more uh probably not for the last time but uh there is like I I there is there was statements about the placement of the paywall I think this is something that's going to keep happening so we have discussed that in any future sort of like labor stories or investigations there is just nothing above the paywall you just get the headline and then you get like you know people talk about it sort of like being the the paywall as being like again like a like a wall that like people can't cross it costs one dollar to jump it like I think that's a really weird thing to say also to be like yeah this is a significant burden of access or something like that uh and that may be like I think you know like I'm not trying to say that like one dollar is an insignificant amount of money but I don't think anybody criticizing us is is actually saying that even though like is actually considering the fact that it's like one dollar to jump any paywall and I think we've I've also seen like people say that the story is like too important to paywall and I think I want to like fundamentally sort of like again forget forget forget anything forget the fact that like we like live on this and we're still trying to like get like every the company to make enough money to pay everybody like a living wage like that's still like a thing that we have not reached like it's a good to just say that again and again to like remind people that like when they're talking about like removing the paywall they are talking about like the only thing that like justifies I mean that sort of like gives us an income but like yeah I want to think talk about this thing that it's like too important a story like I this is maybe this is sort of like like sort of like an outrageous claim I just don't think it is like I already talked about a story where somebody was murdered like and also like on their day that this story released the incidents in like the US like somebody Alex Freddy was executed by like ice-off certain Minneapolis like that would happen on the same day like so to people to be like oh like actually like this stuff is like so like important or this is hobby news is like industry news yeah right like it none nothing we ever really report rises up to like like this is so important like it's a public service that this needs to be like available right I would love for us to be a public service I would love for us to get public funding I would love for hospitals to be free and for education to be free yep I would love for the post office to be free I will not think of the postage stamp as a paywall for postage like it is just fundamentally like a strange conception of like reality to frame it like that like that is not you know when you charge for games you're not paywalling access to your game like it'd be weird to call you against paywalled games like it's just like this is like it is partially a service but like using the idea of service to delet customize like our desire to like charge for our work is like I think fundamentally an argument that will like crumble if anybody really sort of like thought you know had it out to the full extent yeah yeah I can sympathize with that point of view and but like you Thomas I fundamentally disagree with it I think it is something that I really wish the internet had developed in a way where the information could be freely available while journalists and the people who archive that information so I'm putting us in Wikipedia editors in the same bucket here people that do like internet labor around information and information sharing could still make a living unfortunately that's not the case so I I'm just going to be just completely allergic to any argument that says that my livelihood matters less than me being able to read words for free yeah so um and yeah and also there's this thing about like like the idea that like uh like it's clickbait or like sensationalized like fundamentally if you have like a paid subscription model like the idea of clickbait comes from a time where like engagement or impressions like later revenue level you know things like CTR for like banner ads and things like that like there was there was a value in making you click something and go to a site they were stealing your data whatever they were doing there was there was a value in making you click and even if it was bad which is what clickbait means right you click it because of a thing you go there and it's not the thing right or like you know or it was like a one word that could have been in the headline but it did like some dumb shit like you you you feel cheated when you read the article because it does not hold to the thing that they told you it was for whatever reason like we can't exist like that for you to pay us month on month there is we have to we we can't trick you into doing that like the nobody who pays has been tricked into this right like we can't write a headline so sexy that like you open your like wallet or whatever like it has to be like month on month like you have to like what we do we have to like earn like your like trust in dollars and like that that means like doing stuff like this as well like that means kind of like engaging with you and like you know saying like oh we messed this up and like you know and also defending ourselves like I think like you know that's that's also an essential part of this because I I don't know like there is some there's some danger like not commenting on things but yeah I just hope people understand that like that's like I wish we could just write sexy headlines and like make money yeah there's a version to this argument as well that like sort of says I I've read this from people who have commented and so if that was you I'm not single new out I also saw people talking about this online that we did journalistic malpractice by putting a paywall at a certain point because I caught off context that the reader needed in order to quote post it on blue sky and understand the full story and I just got to say that's not my fucking business my ability to inform you enough for free that you can discourse properly is not my job you can pay a dollar to read the full story and then you can go off half cocked on social media for for attention but if you decide that you read 200 words you reach a paywall and you say no I don't want to pay for journalism and then you make some sort of like wrong headed claim I have no responsibility in that endeavor you go with God that's fully on you it can it will never ever be my job and so if you believe that way I would urge you to think about the way you discuss information online in a fundamentally different way yeah yeah I think there's like all of these things I would love to never make mistake I would love to be able to like like control like how people talked about this I'd love to be responsible for it if I if I if I had the ability to like do anything about it but given that I literally cannot given that like once an article comes out like I have to move on to the next article and just given that like social media is not something I want to spend six hours like reading like fundamentally that is not an acceptable like request to make um but yeah I will in this discussion with one more thing just saying because I know some people have said like and we will book in this I mentioned earlier that like paywalls are important to think about and you are correct you are correct insofar as like we are going to like redevelop and rethink some of the strategies around how we the editorial process decides where and how we pay well things we are thinking about those we are constantly thinking about that stuff we will think about it in the light of this article um but that's it that's just to say like we also believe it's important to a certain degree and we will put we will invest that import going forward um we got some specific questions from readers uh I know we've gone out for a very long time but let's get through these questions I think it's again the to go back to the thing I set up top like you know if if people ask us questions like we should respond to it because it's the right way to do things uh so first question is from Mazz I believe this is Mazz from Roe and Rook and Deckard uh Mazz is a is a former journalist I believe I'm not I'm not completely sure but like I don't you know I don't know they yeah yeah so yeah they ask us uh uh should we read the whole thing yeah do you want to do that you want me to I can I'll read the whole thing and then you can kind of respond to it um and then we can trade off so Mazz says there seems to be a substantial imbalance in the way figures and financial positions have been presented between the two sides of this issue a lack of context to help the reader understand the larger picture for except for instance the rascal concludes that that it's quote impossible to know how reasonable the writers request was when referring to a request for a total of 400 000 more money than Yaziba's made during crowdfunding and over 10% of uh Steve Jackson gives yearly revenue and the other hand the writers then later represent without context a contractors opinion that offering 10% for full ownership rights to everyone's work was bad shit crazy it's unclear how that 10% figure is calculated to the contractors were offering $5,000 each were offered $5,000 each did they receive a total of $50,000 from the original print run uh there is the there is a breakdown did they get $3,000 flat fee $20,000 profit share for example the royalties uh the math that does not add up is is uh the gist of that um there's there's two more paragraphs here I'm just gonna read all those and then we've kind of work our way point by point here um in addition Mazz continues the graphic artist's skills 100% to 300% fee estimate is presented as though that is a reasonable guiding principle for the contractors 200,000 requests when according to rascal's own reporting as when the piece that figure is somewhere between 400% to 6,667% of the original fee depending on how that fee is actually defined can you share more about why you chose to present the financials in this way and what bracket on work was done to contextualize the financial situation and business position of all parties why doesn't the Mazz in this piece add up or due diligence was done to confirm contextualize and fully understand the figures given that they are the primary source of the dispute yeah so Mazz thank you very much for sending in the question uh and for the breakdown um I think this is this is a good uh interrogation of a piece where we could have gone in a different direction with this piece and and really heavily laid into the numbers around the conflict um because Mazz is correct that at least for the um the contention between the uh Steve Jackson games and the contractors regarding their contracts this was the main dispute as like figures and what figures what amount of money is going to be accepted so to take the question sort of point by point um why do we choose to present the financials in this way um let me let me let me let me let me let me ask you and then you you respond oh sure sure yeah okay why did we say that uh for the the contractors request of 200k why did we say it's impossible to know how reasonable the writers request was because a lot of the financials of Steve Jackson games although it is shared publicly it shared publicly by Steve Jackson and it's not sort of like fully publicly available um and also that like the reasonable fee was in the context of the writers Acosta and Harris specifically giving away full and complete rights which did include royalties on any other thing that might have been made with Yezabahs and so the $400,000 figure 200k each wasn't just 300% of the original money that they got from the Possum Creek games contract which if you remember from the piece did have the original $3,000 flat fee the profit share from the Kickstarter that was 15% but then was sort of renegotiated partway through the project to a $20,000 flat fee um instead it was a figure that represented future profits future revenue and equity on other things that Yezabahs might have created and Acosta and Harris at least said to us that they felt confident in the potential of Yezabahs bed and breakfast to realize some if not all that especially under Steve Jackson games I believe that I did a fairly good job of of of listing the confidence they had in Steve Jackson as well as putting that up against what we know of Steve Jackson's actual revenue and profit I think I think the the the question like Maz is asking is why again uh there's this sort of caveat and again it is it is a brief caveat here like this caveat of like of of suggesting that maybe the writers request could be reasonable right like that's right that's the thing here like there is a clause that suggests it could be reasonable yeah why did you say that because a later point when one of the contractor in a quote says uh uh offering 10% for full ownership rights is bad shit crazy we did not say uh actually offering 10% for full ownership rights is uh you know rather the equivalent of that would be to like respond to that being like uh you know how reasonable is that like to sort of like you know say something about the reasonableness of offering 10% I would I would argue that like in both situations we have actually we have done a similar thing of not stating whether something is reasonable or not reasonable but like in the previous example we we stated that we didn't know whether it was reasonable or not you know what I mean like there's a there's a thing here of like like like if we deleted that line uh the the the the piece the clause you know would be the same but like so yeah I think again this goes back to I think like the something of like some some defensiveness we had about like the the freelancers being seen as like asking for too much or something like that yeah yeah I mean I I guess I could have broken down the numbers more um and you know really spelled it out but in the end like we talked previously in our bigger discussion our broader discussion is that like um even if the math doesn't add up on like on paper as far as like they like the two sides of the equation don't equal to me the larger truth is that like they felt that they were owed more than they were being offered and they tried to negotiate that and then negotiations immediately fell apart as soon as there was any pushback from the contractors on what they felt they were owed um it could be any number this could be um 1.5 million this could be 80,000 um I I I don't know how those go down but the there's nothing in my reporting that says the specific number of 400,000 is what triggered Steve Jackson games response so we chose to present the financials that way to at least give you all the information that we had I tried to give as many of the numbers as I had without sort of inundating the piece and turning it into a spreadsheet while still putting them in the context of the larger truth of how the negotiations broke down. I yeah I think yeah I think that uh maybe the question of reading it's impossible to know how reasonable the writers request was to read that clause as being it's a reasonable request the writers made a reasonable request I think that's that's that's a that's a little bit like of a stretch it is there it is there I think in a kind of like defensive like posture but like I think it's important to be clear what it is not um so yeah the next the next section is the graphic artist skills 100% 300% estimate is presented as though that's a reasonable guiding principle for the 200,000 when actually like it's not clear how much the writers got so it's not actually clear whether 200K is 100% to 300% I think just do we know how much the writers got like fundamentally like do we have did they reveal this to us um yes so I have and this will partially answer some of like the the primary sources for the dispute that mass asks about later which we have we were given copies of the contracts that the writers and artists signed with Possum Creek Games and we have copies of the buyout offers that Steve Jackson game offered the artists and the writers through their lawyer Vandenberg is there a specific one that you're asking about Thomas that you want to you know I so I think I think there is a there is a question here of like do we know exactly how much the writers have been paid so far like do we know like uh so basically mass is sort of asking that for the writers to say 200K is 100% to 300% of a certain number that suggests that there is a certain number in mind what is that number do we do we know I don't I don't think we ever say anywhere this is how much the writers aren't because I don't think we have that information I don't think they revealed that um no is that correct yeah because at least for the writers and this is part of the story that was piecemealed out there was the 15% profit share that was then renegotiated to a $20,000 flat fee which then had to be paid out in two different $10,000 payments because of confusion in doing that uh the artists I believe you can because theirs was just um contracted per piece so we can look back at the contracts and like I believe all of the artists at least were paid in full for their work there was no payment disputes between the artists and Possum Creek Games I don't think there's a payment dispute in the in the writers and Possum games in terms of not getting paid anything either right no yeah yeah so as far as I know like yes they got the 3000 initially and then the the 20,000 each so around 23 to 25,000 each for the writers and then it would be uh royalties royalties on book sold yeah I think there is some confusion because in the buyout where you discuss the buyout offer made you say that uh uh that the the Steve Jackson contract says that the buyout offer came with flat fees totaling no more than 10% of the original fees paid and that a cost and Harris were offered 5,000 which suggests that they were paid 50,000 and 10% is 5,000 but I think actually that totaling no more than 10% of the original fees that applies to the artists and the writers just offered a flat fee where the contact doesn't actually mention how much they got paid yeah uh that I should have clarified that more yes so the way that goes out in the buyout offers that we have all of the artists were giving the the the the language around their flat fee was 10% of the original fee or no more than 10% of the original fee and that is the rate the offer that ranges from $355 to $1,160 for uh Julia um Valke-wise or Fortson and then the 5,000 dollars each is what was offered for Harris and Acosta that was in the contract not stipulated on any like it wasn't arranging back to any figure that they were initially paid by Possum Creek games so I get some confusion around that that could have been made more clear yeah yeah I think uh yeah I think the order of the sentences does suggest some you know uh we should probably fix that um I think there's a broader question about like what uh why we chose to present the financial in a certain way or due to reasons we did like I think hopefully some of the pre-discussion has answered some of these questions but yeah fundamentally I I would like to suggest that this is not an article about the numbers I think the numbers do not like the numbers are important and if we got them wrong that is a problem but at the same time the article is about I think primarily like a breakdown in communication and why this book uh this award-winning book isn't like available anymore the idea that if we contextualize the numbers extremely well then I'm not sure what would be more clear okay to to interrogate this I think there is something to be said here about this article basically saying that we have not in the piece stated that it was completely understandable like like uh we have not stated somewhere that uh like Steve Jackson games or like possum creak games finances wouldn't allow them to pay this amount right like or something like to contextualize this amount to be like hey actually like there is like no way in the world they could have paid I'm I'm saying this in an exaggerated way because I don't mean it literally um but like yeah like and the truth is like we can't do that like there is like that was a thing that uh PCG Steve Jackson games could have said right um but I'm not sure how we can contextualize like their side of things apart from saying all the brand fox reporting we did and again talking about like uh in the article where we after the campaign like the cost of paper like all of that so we do layout some context for PCG's like financial position like it's all there like in the piece uh for us to then sort of like again like I think there's a there's a sort of like demand here for us to take a stance on this number in a way that I just maybe maybe I'm misleading mass or I again I want to uh like I uh what I want to first of all say that like I appreciate mass like asking this question like again this idea like I think I understand that some people might be afraid to like talk to us directly because they think that uh you know there is a there is a danger of like backlash or something like that so like you know I'm sure the part of it is that like mass as uh as a you know as a as a owner of row and rook and tech card is one of the people who is like in a in a position to uh like comfortably like criticize us and I think that's good like I think we do need people like this to do it uh so yeah there's not a criticism of the question but I want like I think uh like I'm not I'm not sure that there is a very specific context that we could have given to that that is not there uh already yeah yeah um as is a smart cookie when it comes to this sort of stuff they know their stuff this this they've done these sort of things before they do with row and rook and tech card they've done it for other companies um I will say that like yeah I was I understood that I was out of my depth if I went too far into the waters of talking about contract legality and stipulating on what may or may not have happened if certain negotiations you know I was I am not in a position given my current expertise to um prognosticate in that way so I didn't I think there's a version of this article that really does hinge on like the legal negotiations around the contracts and whether or not there's you know there's a bit of like Monday morning quarterbacking that I could have done around like the figures and the offers and all that stuff you could have gone to like a lawyer or somebody who like appraises like the value of IP to be like hey do you think that this number is like reasonable or not but I think fundamentally like the article we wrote is not particularly interested like in that question yeah uh because again like maybe maybe some maybe people have a very clear picture of like what would have changed if that number was was more reasonable but like given that the counteroffer was uh what like two and a half percent of the original offer like what what what what is the reasonable what is the reasonable law if they have been paid 25,000 like what is even 100 to 300 percent of that would be paid 75k like is that reasonable like I don't like wait what is the end result of this this line of thinking I'm not too sure here because again the article does not say that like doesn't say that like the rejection of this offer was was uh was was ridiculous or something like that right yeah yeah I mean there's there's a whole part of this article where if I had seen the contracts um signed between Steve Jackson games and possum creak games to make the imprint I could have at least gotten taken that to a expert a legal expert and gotten them on a source of be like hey what does this actually say about the business arrangement between these two publishers so that we could have at least at the very beginning spoken with authority on the claim that the contractors made that there was breach of contract this is why we don't spend a lot of time actually interrogating the breach of contract claim I put in there that they have made these allegations that this was the sort of opening salvo of why they got involved but ultimately that is still an unresolved question because Steve Jackson games and possum creak games took the tack of never making that clear of getting lawyers involved and not sharing that information so it is really unclear what actually is like this sort of legal standing of that breach of contract claim or that allegation so I can't speak authority qualitatively on it that would be speculation on my part and I did not feel comfortable doing that yeah I think it's going to come back and later question where we would talk about that more um do you want to read the next question artist yeah so this comes in from anonymous um and they say I have some pretty big issues with the recent possum creak games article and things it illuminated related to rascals business model and I'm trying to understand why you did what you did just to start why do you not do what every other hobby news site does and keep the serious or hard hitting journalism free and only paywall the quote fun stuff like interviews and opinion pieces this isn't some social responsibility thing they usually do uh other sites do this to entice people with those articles and avoid spreading misinformation and supporters will pay for more fun content off the back of supporting those articles and off of their quality and or to plain support news being free it just seems like the middle ground where articles get paid while halfway through only serves to spread misinformation and have formed views I would go so far as to say it's actively irresponsible and inefficient at the same time fully commit to a paywall and not this halfway measure if you truly can't operate without it and why do you call paywall where you do it seems like you deliberately paywalled often a controversial quote and before the article gets into things like brand fox being involved which seems pretty actively irresponsible just flat out why did you wall there specifically in the article you're exact reasoning and once your internal guidelines on this surely it's not just quote that's what we think we can get the most clicks last subscriptions and not quote that's the best summary of the piece as a whole relatedly why did you not elaborate more on brand fox involvement or at least more cross reference your earlier reporting on them that's a really important part of this whole story and you obviously know about them but they only get a few sentences and only after the paywall towards the end also why did you directly cite guidelines for 100 to 300 percent but then leave uncommented by itself the 400,000 total ass from contributors which is not only over that guideline literally 1000% and 100,000 over what the game even ever raised and well over any reasonable profit it just it have made and say it's paraphrasing a hefty but reasonable sum to the contributors that's just crazy you've had multiple issues with this kind of thing i.e the scum and villainy article leaving out context the terrarium board game with its much harsher claims i'm approaching this in good faith and with knowledge that ultimately you need funding to operate but most sites get by without paywalls and just donations like they just do a non tiered pay what you want patreon and do fine i feel like you're all being pretty irresponsible in what i assume is a chase for subscribers but that it's not even working just making worse reporting i really want to believe in rascal as a project and an ideal but i think at least an explanation on internal policy and some remination is required yeah first of all i think that it's first of all sad that this person felt they had to be anonymous again like the only sort of like explanation for that is they're worried about like some kind of they're worried that we will have some kind of like a reprisal that we will like do something in like a response to this or whatever and like if they think that it's hard to believe that they think that we will answer these questions honestly as well right like it's it's like if you if you think we're the kind of people that will do that like i it's hard it's hard to believe that you think that that you that you will accept any answers we give yeah same time you said it's good faith let's do this in good faith um uh why do you not do it every other hobby news site doesn't keep serious stuff free and only paywall the fun stuff just you know any site that does this um i mean i think you could probably construe it in a way that there are some hobby sites that do this um trying to think of a model that does a paywall but only for the fun stuff the fun stuff like what does that mean like i can i can't think of a single site that does this and i pretty read read a lot for the rpg newsletter i don't know if it's some other hobby i mean yeah within the tabletop it's sort of a all-the-one situation where either you do paywalls and then there are articles like a paywall or everything is free and then there's like a patreon slash pay what you want tip jar kind of situation or some other sort of membership for like the discord yeah i'm not like i i can speak to like whatever like magazines and like websites and like how they do paywalls but i you know how wired the guardian this paywalls but they don't i mean there's not there's not a hobby site so it doesn't yet like i just don't know whether there is a site that meets that does the way yes things the way that the questionnaire is asking like if i'm wrong i'm happy to hear what it is but like i don't i don't think this is like i i i would have to see which site this was and i'd have to ask them are you actually doing fine or are you actually not doing fine with this like a model yeah i just that's the answer for most people that do that sort of model is like well these are often sites that are run by people who have day jobs and they can like our like friend of the site mike did him is true over at board game wire boarding wire is a sort of the a pay what you want slash tip jar situation that's because mike has a day job um this is our day job and so we have to take it seriously and you know we monetize the site in a way that feels equitable and ethical and aligns with our our principles and one of those principles that we've had since the beginning is the author of a piece gets to decide where the paywall goes whether that is a free article a members only if you have to pay to get into it and then as i've mentioned earlier we do have some like and we're revising these like editorial guidelines around where paywalls go and it's never for clicks or sensationalism ever yeah i think like i there it yeah there isn't there isn't a clear policy like i think for investigations it might be good i think for other pieces like you said we stick to uh do letting the letting the author decide i tend to do like three paragraphs or like one third of the piece something like that like that's it's if it's a very long piece i might do more than three paragraphs uh if but like otherwise i would do like three paragraphs or like find the intro uh something like that but there is not a clear policy and that's something that we will we are like potentially going to fix for the next one i think you know if if from now on interviews don't have anything uh bill of paywall which again this this person does suggest we do like that might just be like how we uh go forward um uh why did you not elaborate more on brand foxes involvement or at least craft cross reference earlier reporting on them i think again like it's there like i i really think most people who have read this story have read that like i i it's strange to do the work but say that we didn't link to it enough or something i just i i understand that it's it's it's it's it's fair but like i think within the ambit of like uh sort of like individual difference uh in how people would like write a story um uh the question about the four or a k uh is the same thing that we said to mas i think that basically covers it this person does say literally thousand percent uh and that's also like not true i think so uh again there's this question of like uh i think they are referencing a number they're not referencing um uh this last paragraph i'm not sure what articles they're they're referring to here with the scum and villainy thing in the terrier board game uh the scum and villainy piece was the one about i i think they might be actually talking about the rebel scum piece uh yes yes yeah of course at least that's where i'm kind of taking that is the rebel scum that makes sense yes yes yes that makes sense yeah um and if i remember correctly the terrier board game that was something around other allegations that were surrounding the publisher of the board game which we when we wrote about it we didn't bring that in um i i understand this um sometimes whenever there are pieces where we write about an issue and we are not aware of other unreported or at least reported within small parts of the or sort of niche parts of the of the industry and we write the story and we don't mention it now if we were say to like sort of like um write a glowing review of the the publisher and we didn't do our due diligence to find out if they're a shitty person and i don't know very quick search you can find that they are in fact a shitty person fine that is one but oftentimes what people are said about when this is like didn't you know that there was like um a four thousand comment long forum on on board game geek talking about all of the sort of like allegations against this company and i'm not saying that the ones when talking about terrier any of the ones you may be thinking of are true i'm just saying that there is a there is a amount of like time that we put into certain pieces that raised to a certain level and sometimes if they're just like cool game coming out or like we played a game and we didn't know much about the publisher we invite you to send us a tip you can email us at info at raskill.news and we will follow up on those because a raskill is not an exhaustive source of reporting we do not know everything about this industry especially if you get over into board games so we are very open to folks writing in and saying hey you wrote about this person did you know about this to make us aware thank you for that it's not because we're not yeah it's not because we decided to like not talk about how obviously shitty or corrupt certain people or companies may be yeah um the rebus company i think that would just be a really long other conversation we have done that i think this i hope so i get where this person is coming from like people weren't happy with that piece as well again like i um yeah i'm not i think i think a lot of criticism of that piece was also not all of it some of it was the content but a lot of criticism of that piece was also people going like criticizing us for other people's reaction to it whether or not it was actually included in the story or something like that like i there's nothing you know uh yeah so i actually it would just be too long to get into let's just move to the next one yeah anyway uh thank you anonymous for writing in um i hope if you if we didn't answer any of your questions you feel we didn't right back in again we're happy to take it on your face um yeah uh do you want me to read the next one yeah we can just trade off yeah cool uh the next question is from keram uh keram asks the artist used the words corporate breach of contract is there currently a breach of contract though what i'm reading is that pcg could no longer print your zebras at all so they're not and no further royalty is being earned and sjg won't print your zebras under the current contract royal creates so they're not uh because printing it including those artists work would be a breach fans should definitely consider whether sjg acted in bad faith in their attitude towards them the article didn't have anything that persuaded me to think they acted in bad faith do we have evidence that they did the artist frame the situation as sjg seeking lawyers on them is communicating to ip owners via lawyers bad form of poor etiquette etiquette uh if so how should a business talk to artists about intellectual property the thing that the artist claim would be unethical is yes it was being printed by sjg with their work excised but advertises an award-winning product does sjg plan to do that at all um i i just uh okay yeah sorry chase you you go first and i'll i'll just pass on this yeah so i talked about this a little bit earlier and how much you feel like that we were going to get to a question about this but yes there is currently no evidence um that uh steve jackson games is actively reprinting we uh meridith placo did mention that she was involved in talks about reprinting back in january i believe it's either december 2024 january 2025 and that she interceded and said until we get this contract disputes uh cleared up it would be bad form on our part to reprint these books we don't know anything that anybody else besides placo in-size steve jackson's games has said about their plans i have no information about that i would love to know um regarding the corporate breach of contract yeah again without seeing the letter like the actual wording of the contracts we we cannot what i can only speculate on whether the corporate breach of contract is true um if in the article i will just briefly some make that um possumcrete game uh staff and ownership said one thing and then they said another thing later on creating some confusion with the contracted writers and artists once steve jackson games and their lawyer got involved it became clear that there was a party line a sort of like line from the staff and they were sticking to that and then the lawyer got involved all of that gave the artists and the writers a suspicion that there was some sort of like malfeasance at play that um you know at best they were covering up for a mistake at worst they were getting actively you know colloquially saying dicked over um in in their contracts and we just don't know the truth of that because at that point lawyers were already involved steve jackson games and possumcrete weren't talking to us yeah i think on the breach of contract i think i want to be very clear the article says of course jdr again saying there is no breach of contract uh that's there like in the article the artist do use it in the final statement kerem is correct we should have probably after that statement of theirs put in brackets there is no evidence yeah uh there is a breach of contract we should have done that that's right that said again to be very very precise like chase said the lack of evidence of a breach of contract is not evidence that there is no breach of contract given that we do not know the terms of the agreement between pcg and steve jackson games uh there could be within that content within that agreement between them something that breaches these people's contract right so we cannot also say in definite terms there is no breach of contract right all we can all we should have done and kerem is correct i mean kerem didn't say this but like i think that's what they're they're suggesting that we should have qualified the artist statement saying when they said corporate breach of contract but that's not that's not something that the article says happened um the other question chase is um or do we have evidence that steve jackson games acted in bad faith towards them uh is you know seeking lawyers on them uh is that is that the thing or you know isn't that like uh normal like it's not is it bad form for adequate etiquette sorry yeah what do i mean what is evidence of bad faith i i don't i guess i my my question to response that question is like what do you think evidence of bad faith looks like um i tried to lay out as clearly as possible what the uh contracted artists and writers believe and i put the response from possum creek and steve jackson uh uh in in there in context and allow you to sort of like believe what you want because or believe what the story is trying to tell you because like uh i don't know bad faith is hard to like materially prove i think it's like this is where we get into the nastiness of like a personal and like friendly professional relationship devolving into emails between lawyers and um a former employer no longer speaking to the contracted writers and artists and them having to like you know just believe whatever they can uh like glean from vandenberg in these sort of like intermittent meetings so um i don't think there's anything like illegal or uh you know i guess like like de facto wrong with uh speaking to artists through a lawyer but what i think is um interesting about the changing relationship is that it went from a jdraggin apologizing in emails and saying and communicating in a very like uh friendly and communicative and interpersonal way to saying nothing and then getting a an email from vandenberg sjg's lawyer that says here's the final offer we will no longer be renegotiating that is a drastic change in communication about this issue and i think whatever you want to draw from that is up to you whether to decide that's acting in bad faith or not yeah i think i think again yes the interpretation of possum creak games treatment of its contractors the way that you will decide whether you uh accept that or not is going to be a combination of like uh whether you think the communication delays were fine whether you think that at the moment of the deal where the pcg imprint was created whether these people should have been included in that conversation and things like that again because like uh like uh from their point of view they were creative owners of this project right like that's again like the going back to the royalty thing so like it's basically how you will decide that uh again i hope you don't think that the article says somewhere that stjaxing games actor in bad faith like that is not something that the article says uh the article does quote the writers saying that i think uh or to something to that extent essentially but like um that is i think uh their prerogative as well to to to to make to make that claim uh and i wish uh stjaxing games had refuted it uh but yeah it's just the problem of this kind of unequal levels of communication with us not ideal i wish that wasn't the situation yeah i'm agree um okay so next question comes from chris sellers she asks uh royalties aside for a moment did possum creak games make good on their agreement to pay a cost in harris three thousand dollars plus 15% of profits above the crowdfunding campaigns baseline goal if so how much did that come to i can very quickly answer um yes but it was not the 15% profit share as i stated in the article it gets renegotiated to 20 thousand dollars for uh both of them each uh and that was paid out so both of them were eventually paid and i think it had to come in like two different payments um 23,000 for that and then their payments beyond that were then the the royalties on the book sales physical book sales but that first payment at least as negotiating the pcg contract was paid um second question that chris asks is after everything that happened to the is abe's book by the time the renegotiations started do you think a cost of an harris is five years of royalties could have amounted to significantly more than five thousand each if so why that would be useful context i think we have one quarter's royalty amount stated in the article right yes yes that's true um i will need to remind myself of the exact figure but we do have the q4 royalty payment that did come through q3 q4 um yeah i think it's about a thousand dollars uh approximately uh for a cost of an harris that is two quarters royalty payment um yeah one thousand ten fifty that's what we call extrapolating that uh kind of in a very uh simple way that's two thousand dollars a year uh i'm not again i'm not sure that answers uh chris's question but um uh yes maybe yeah we could have i think everyone saying we could have given more context about the numbers is like you know broadly correct but uh again that was not at the top of our minds the question of whether the the freelancers were paid fairly or not was not the thing that we were trying to discern i think the bottom line is that we are trying to explicate like why the jaziba's book would look is going to go to look different if it exists right like um yeah there are two people who had equity share and who were already who were always attached to the project who are no longer going to be involved and the interior art will be drastically and demonstrably different because of three artists no longer being involved either uh and also i guess it's worth to say that like harris and acosta are quoted directly saying they didn't care about the q3 q4 royalty payments and royalty payments were like so secondary in their mind um it compared to the rights like holding onto the rights the equity share of jaziba's going forward yeah uh last question uh second last question from mark shepard how much legal advice do you seek before publishing a piece like this against businesses and private individuals how much backlash against your social capital are you willing to accept how much information do you find yourselves holding back because it can't necessarily be totally verified maybe the last question is probably the easiest like to answer like yeah yeah which is which is anything uh it's just like yeah we're not there are certain pieces and a podcast discussions are where we are more legally able and freely i think more comfortable to sort of speculate because of laws around podcasts at least in the united states but like even then we try to hold a level of professionality about this sort of stuff but in writing yeah if if a fact cannot be verified or at least corroborated with two sources two different sources we don't print it uh that information does not go in a um in a piece um how well how much legal advice do we seek it depends is the probably the the unsatisfying answer is it could depends on the piece we have to weigh the litigious risk of the subjects or the person involved in the story the person cited in the story against uh very frankly our capital to pay for legal advice which can be media coverage and media like insurance/legal coverage can be very expensive yeah um the other question of how much backlash against your social capital are you willing to accept i think this is one of those like hard things like i would like to accept none but there is no choice here like this is how uh like i like i you know i i support my colleagues i support like what this like website is trying to do and um you know i i yeah chase talks talk a little bit about how it's like hard hard to make friends as a as a journalist i was like not a not a thing that can or should happen but like yeah i i am hoping that we get to a stage where the audiences are work as complicated to do uh but having some utility and usefulness and uh like seeing that we approach it in with like good faith and intentions uh intentions and kind of you know uh holding as accountable for the things we do but not the things we didn't do right yeah my answer to that question is for myself personally and you know uh social capital risk am i willing to accept i am the cat surrounded by knives in that meme um i i i think it is always secondary to me um social capital wise like my my job is not to be popular or well regarded my job is to like inform a public and see truth uh but for the rest of my colleagues uh none because like they don't deserve that um nobody no no journalist deserves to be sort of like pulled out into the public square and flagged and tarred and feathered or otherwise like have their character assassinated to have to be stalked to be doxxed to be swatted which is all things that have happened to journalists largely people of color women and trans journalists i will say uh i have the privilege of like being uh uh statistically on the other end of that bell curve when it comes to uh social capital and backlash and all that sort of stuff uh i don't want that for any of my colleagues now on rascal or any of my peers with internalism that's just i wish we lived in a world where that was not acceptable yeah um last question thank you max uh last question from and how can any marginalized artist or writer trust pcg are any related or if they and court try to hire new people to fill gaps in the book for reprinting again like i think this is like fundamentally not something that we are qualified to answer or should be answering it is not uh we hope that sort of like readers make informed decisions based on our work like i think i again like to speak openly like i would not like like i think if anybody is thinking that they should mistrust somebody because of this article like i think that is maybe not the not the idea like outcome of this but like to then to actually just like engage in like very concrete like holistic like things right like if like uh like you know there is how to put this like there is uh if if someone wanted to work with pcg based on this like that would be of course of course they would and of course that they will and of course that makes sense like it is not like i think the idea that like this article suggests that this company needs to be like uh like that shut down or something like that it's just not it's just not the case like there is not anywhere in the in the contents i think like this is a business conversation like we have reported about right now like many institutions uh many many other companies like not paying their freelancers like laying off people like you know like like like lots of that happening and like people continue to work for this organizations because that's the you know that's one because that's on one sense the the reality of like the economy that we all live in but too also because like it's like people can do better and will do better and may do better and like all of those things have to be like considered like this is not like nobody is uh one action they took or anything like that like i think it is the the idea that like any story is the final word on something is maybe not the the approach that you should you should take right and uh yeah yep i largely agree our job is done in this case we have informed the public as much as we possibly can how you hold the people involved accountable is largely up to you um as far as like you have the power to do so um i would never at least in this case i don't want to say what never i in this case i am not going to um put my name on retributive justice i think it's just like if you don't want to buy their books anymore that is a fine decision to make but there's no boycott there's no sort of like concerted effort um but if you want to yell at steep jacks and games on social media that like they never did anything about this more power to you that is within your right uh use this information how you will our job is to inform yeah honestly i would love to see like like a more like open like conversation about this i would love to see uh whatever restorative like action can be taken i would love for that trust that's broken down between the creators of this book to be fixed yeah like all of those things like uh that is that is that is that is what i want i do i think it's going to happen no right like you know um because i think trust broken it's just hard to collect do i think that like uh yeah like i you know are we going to cover like um like future like pcg projects maybe like i think that's one of those things right like i think if people are sort of like thinking that like we weren't or something like that i think that's a that is a uh a tough question that is not at all like something that we have actually discussed uh prior to this like a moment or anything like that it's just uh i think everyone might be looking at some you know i i would i would recommend that people don't look at this in a black and white way that is not how we are looking at it yeah i get back to that good guy back guy situation and we're certainly not going to Lynn just like immediately treat anything with pcg or cjx and games name on it as like uh a mortally reprehensible artifact that can't be touched what we'll have discussions about it as we do what they need these things yeah um that's the end of our questions whoo nice work two hours i think i think i think we're done we are finished um to everyone who sent in a question genuinely thank you so much like we talked at the top of the about like wanting part of the reason we're doing this podcast and chatting about this in such length for two straight hours is that we hope that doing this will begin to like foster or continue to foster a um a culture of engaging in good faith engaging openly with us when you do have criticisms or questions or deep like you know unclear unresolved uh issues about some of our reporting we love whenever you reach out to us in this way whether that's the an email in the discord in a comment like that is what we want we want you to strife for us to be better um and the only way you do that is through conversation so thank you to everyone who reached out and submitted a question we really appreciate it uh let's go ahead and let's hit the outro right or let's go ahead and find the facts i think i think i think we wanted to like do like a regular recap of the last two weeks but i think that is just like we we have talked about this for too long uh it's you know i don't know i don't know how long it will be by the time it gets like edited out but like yeah i am i am i am exhausted uh and uh yeah let's let's hit let's hit the outro uh and get on with it yeah so i mean there's a lot of good pieces in the last two weeks that you can go read on rascal.news so please do so some of those you are only available to read uh for paid subscribers because as we talked about we's paywalls um and we appreciate anybody who subscribes so if you run across one of those articles or if you just go to the site and hit subscribe down below uh you can choose to become a paid member at three different levels and we appreciate anybody who decides to help us continue to fund this mission right now if you're listening to this as it comes out and through the rest of February we are running an anniversary uh celebration slash pledge drive it's less a pledge drive because we don't have like goals or anything but we're celebrating rascal turning two years old with a 20% discount which you can find on the site there's gonna be a big banner or if you use the code to ask to curious uh when subscribing that's the numeral two in both cases uh you get 20% off six months of a basic subscription the the friendly NPC i really appreciate it um subscribing gives you access to all the articles on the site you'll get access to our member only discord and you also will get a uh peak at and the fuzzy feeling of having made possible projects like and this is the one article i will mention your other podcast rascal reading hour which is or rascal reading club excuse me um we're keeping the name thing in the nice little siblings uh where you are Thomas it's a sort of a solo podcast at least in part reading for the first year gm manuals about like sort of gm advice you begin with the wardens operation manual from mothership and then the paired podcast the next like in the next by week thing you read responses from readers readers send in sort of like they're they have homework because like a reading club you have response questions and you're gonna read through those yeah i'm very excited uh this is the uh work that i love doing and i hope people come and check it out it's in the same feed as this so if you're listening to this you probably saw that yeah totally um if you are already subscribing you want to help more we have a tip chart but you can also get to subscription find out more about that by going to rascal.new/gift hyphen subscription all right the rascal radio hour theme is by people need goals you can find their work at peopleneedgoals.bandcamp.com if you haven't yet read us five stars everywhere that allows such a thing it really helps other folks discover the show you can find us on blue sky and tumblr and everywhere else to keep up with all the articles and podcasts that we produce throughout the week so until next time right for your die and stay trashing you