First, a disclaimer: to the best of my knowledge, Mike Mearls *enabled* an abuser, while the rest of the people on this list are actual abusers, and if we listed everyone in the industry who enabled/protected abusers, it'd be at least in the hundreds.

That said: https://twitter.com/LiliSparx/status/1263689550058196992

The reason the list of both abusers in the TTRPG community and people who protect(ed) them is so long is the same reason that almost everyone in senior positions is older white men:

the level of nepotism is off the charts

overWHELMingly, the way people get hired into senior creative/management positions in TTRPGs is that they're buddies with the people doing the hiring.

and to be clear: I was probably a nepotism hire at Paizo. I was friends with the CEO.

And I've also been in positions where I had multiple internal recs for a position from people on the team, and had friends of the hiring manager send my resume directly to him, and not even gotten a call back because...

...a dude who gamed with him applied.

And nothing:

neither the freedom abusers have to treat conventions, organized play, TTRPG companies, and their fanbases

nor the inability of almost anyone who isn't a white cis man to get into senior creative positions

will change until that does.

But changing that actually means pretty drastic changes to the entire culture around TTRPGs.

(The same could be said about video games, incidentally.)

It means introducing a level of formality into the culture that's anathema to most of its participants.

The game industry, whether analog or digital, has always prided itself on being casual, homey, fun, friendly--all the stuff that other entertainment industries aren't. On not being stuffy. No formal clothes, no formal manners.

When I first broached the idea of having a code of conduct for PaizoCon that was more detailed than "don't be a jerk" (no, I'm not kidding, that one phrase was literally the entire code of conduct), Erik Mona was offended at the very suggestion.

Having a formalized code of conduct was, to him, suggesting that the player base wasn't made up of good people. And he knew these people! He'd been going to conventions with them for years. And it was still a "small" con--600ish ppl at the time, IIRC.

It was Friendly & Casual.

You'll also see this at a lot of video game companies: let's try and make the office homey. We have a game room with beanbags! We spend time playing foosball! We're just a bunch of friends who make games together!

And, like, look:

When I *started* in games, I loved that it was casual and homey and didn't stand on ceremony, and you could swear in the office. And we'd have booze during the day at company events. It wasn't a JOB, it was fun I got paid for.

But here's the thing:

The *entire point* of having rules in a society, in a club, in a company, is that *not everyone has the same comfort levels.*

As it turns out, professionalism and formality and all that stodgy stuff basically boils down to "we don't trust everyone to read the room."

And yes, maybe the implication that you, as an employee, may not be able to read the room is a little uncomfy.

But as it turns out, gamers actually largely *suck* at reading the room.

And here's the thing: they aren't unusual in that regard. I don't know, if I hadn't worked at a very formal law firm, how good I'd be at it.

But that's the thing: you get out of high school or college and head into your first stuffy job with all those annoying formal norms for what is and isn't appropriate in the workplace and... you learn to behave in ways that are designed to not offend the largest number of people.

People who work in games don't get that, though. We graduate from college all shiny and stupid, and if we don't work somewhere that trains us to behave like adults first, we're on our own to learn, and a lot of people *don't.*

And the industry is going to keep being a safe place for harassers because it's set up to be a safe place for people with no social skills, and harassers and general assholes can use that for cover.

And as long as the priority is "we want this to be a *fun* place to work" rather than "we want this to be a professional, effective, and safe place to work," the nepotism is going to continue, because what's more fun than working with your buddies?

And nepotism means cover for abusers.

It also means locking out most of the people who would institute culture change.

Like POC, like women, like people from other industries.

Because whether or not they can say it--and they're learning they can't say it out loud any more--"culture fit" is going to continue to define who gets hired into senior positions.