CRIT Awards pulls ceremony from Gen Con citing “safety concerns”

Update: The CRIT Awards provided Rascal the following statement via email.

"Thank you to the community for their outpouring of support. We will never be able to fully articulate or express what it has meant to us in the midst of a very difficult situation. We implore everyone to not attack each other for the hard decisions that many have been considering and making, as we do not condone violence or harassment. Once again, we want to thank everyone who has shown us kindness and support, both privately and publicly."

The original article continues below:

The Creator Recognition In TTRPG (CRIT) Awards were set to hold their second annual celebration at Gen Con this August. That is, until June 24, when Ivy, the CRIT Awards organizer, stated via the CRIT Awards Twitter that the in-person ceremony would be “unable to return to Gen Con,” citing “safety concerns.” Omega Jones, known online as Critical Bard, who was set to host the event, made a follow up statement ten minutes later. Jones, after stating that he was not beholden to an NDA (implying that others involved with the CRIT Awards are) alleged that Gen Con “forced the [CRIT]Awards to withdraw because of their stance and posting about being anti-Zionist.” 

Rascal requested a comment from both Gen Con and the CRIT Awards but did not receive a response before publication. We will update this article if that changes. 

Disclaimer: Rascal News and myself are both nominated for a CRIT Award. We are also currently planning to attend Gen Con and have not canceled our convention panel.

Jones’ statement comes in the wake of multiple rounds of social media backlash against the awards ceremony, which began on June 14, when the CRIT awards released their list of finalists. CRIT awards are nominated via public submission followed by an opaque committee-led shortlisting process. The first wave of social media outcry began as a call for safety after many identified amidst the nomination of a performer for an actual play by the production studio WafflesMapleSyrup, which had previously been the center of online discussion due to WMS’s support of Zionism and the studio head’s insistence that anti-Zionism equated to antisemitism. 

Zionism is a neocolonial settler project to create a Judeosupremecist ethnostate, manifesting  through Israeli apartheid and an ongoing, 75-year-long, ethnic cleansing campaign against native Palestinians. Israel’s most recent operation of aggressive, genocidal colonialism has decimated Gazan civilian infrastructure, caused widespread famine, led to the displacement of nearly 2 million people, triggered the largest pediatric amputee event in recorded history, and has reportedly killed 40,000 civilians in the previous eight months.

The studio was publicly ostracized from the online TTRPG and AP community, and has not posted on Twitter since May 9. Individuals across the TTRPG ecosystem were surprised to see the former WMS cast member on the final ballot and publicly expressed their displeasure to the event’s organizers.