DriveThruRPG delisted a tabletop game about revolutions over “hateful” politics
Rebel Scum's censorship reveals the limits of Roll20's apolitical guidelines.
A Warning. This game is political.
These aren’t the first words published in Rebel Scum, but they have become the most important. An obvious homage to Star Wars and the “not quite 4-inch action figures”, as publisher 9th Level Games puts it, the tabletop RPG is unabashed in both its love of 1970s licensed merchandise and its hatred of fascism. But it’s that second bit that led Roll20 to delist Rebel Scum from DriveThruRPG’s digital storefront.
Released in late 2021, Rebel Scum quietly sold digital copies of its first edition for three years. On August 8, Roll20’s partner relations manager, Meredith Gerber, reached out to 9th Level Game’s CEO Heather O’Neill and informed her that the game had received “a few reports” from customers. Gerber said the majority of the book passed their Product Standards Guidelines except for one section which contained “overt political agendas or views.” It would need to be removed before Rebel Scum could be reinstated. Attached was a file named “political.png”.
The infringing section of the Polymorph-powered game minces no words about its moral and ethical position. The author’s foreword asks if players want to “punch a spacenazi right in their stupid, jackbooting, spacenazi face.” It clearly states that Rebel Scum is not for people who believe in white power, vaccine deniers, bigots of all stripes, and cryptofascists lurking in various fandoms — especially Star Wars.
On the next page, under the header of safety rules and that initial warning, it makes doubly sure players don’t miss the hammer-blunt metaphor: “While intended to be hopeful and fun, it is shining a mirror back at the post-capitalist, post-truth, post-pandemic political idiocracy that we are currently living through… I have called the REPUBLIK the REPUBLIK so that we can say “I punched that Republikan in the face”. This is deliberate. I have called the GAME MASTER (the GM) the GOVERNMENT™ and the players the NEXT REBELLION™ because there is nothing scarier or more real than the corporatization of our lives, our philosophy, our entertainment, and even our dreams.”
It took less than a day for O’Neill and the 9th Level Games team to respond to Roll20’s request that Rebel Scum remove its foreword: “We would rather take the title down.”
