Judge's Guild is not who they were. They're basically the remaining Bledsaw family members trying to eke out a living on a deceased relative's talent. They've produced basically nothing worthwhile in the last 25+ years. Their only contributions have really been 3rd party product, the best of which being the Necromancer Games deal in 2004-2005 which saw fantastic reprint/expansions from the City State of the Invincible Overlord and Wilderlands of High Fantasy. The current Wilderlands maps they produce and sell were all made by Rob Conley in 2015. Hell their most recent adventure was published in 2010 and written in 2007 by same deceased relative.
Also Bob Bledsaw II went very based and also very Mel Gibson on Twitter or some shit. I didn't look it up. I don't really care what the leeches have to say, but the blue-hairs are very up in arms about everything Judge's Guild because of it. That's not really my reason for disliking Judge's Guild. The leeches also failed to deliver on a Kickstarter for a CSIW republishing in 2010. I have a guttural reaction to those with the means to fulfill a Kickstarter not doing so. Jimmy Raggi (LotFP) can still go suck a dick, for example.
Goodman Games is not who they were. They started out producing 3pp for 3E, one of the survivors of the d20 glut and bubble and burst of said bubble. Then came Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG in 2012, at the tail end of the golden era of the OSR (2006-2012). Their product might have even signified the start of the decline, if I may be so bold. While not a terribly written game or produced product, it was what I feel as the start of the shift of the OSR from artistic to capitalistic as a core tenet of the philosophy of production. The fringe had been relatively free of this mindset until DCC. And in came DCC which required new dice and a ready-made product line of adventures. But those adventures were mostly OSR compatible so who gives a shit?
Later, Goodman hit it's own golden age. They did a deal with Jim Ward (RIP) and produced both a seminal work on Metamorphosis Alpha as well as a revamp of Epsilon City, the only city on the ship. They had a deal with WotC to produce Original Adventures Reincarnated 1-6, faithful reprints of a few JG modules, and generally were kicking ass from 2015-2021. They had the incomparable Jeff Easley do a cover for one of the core book reprints at this time! Their modules were mostly not bad, either.
Well, things changed in 2022. They decided to revamp the core book text by removing names of gaming luminaries and use more "inclusive language". This is the first time they had changed anything in the corebook other than the sample adventure. Quickly, as these things do, their adventure modules went to shit. They also produced Judges Guild Deluxe Oversized Collector’s Edition Volume 2, plastering Paul Jaquay's fake name on it.
I was surprised when I purchased the faithful GG Dark Tower reprint that Paul's name graced both the cover and inside - they spent the time to brand it with Goodman Games logos and website info, I expected them to "Elliot Page" the credits. Then I looked at the publication date: 2016. They did take his name off the cover of OAR 9: Caverns of Thracia, and I'm sure they used his fake name everywhere they could within.
Believe it or not, this was all a lead up. A discussion and dissection of history. Because these two fuckers are coming together for another goddamn CSIW Kickstarter.
It's interesting to see an OSR-ish product with this amount of completely justified hate coming at it from all sides. Bob Bledsaw II is a leech and a jerk, and stands to make money off his dead dad and dead RPG company for doing nothing (again). Joe Goodman is a virtue signaling shill absolutely ready and willing to trade artistic integrity and merit for brownie points from people who won't buy his shit on bluesky. This is supposed to be OAR 10. Oh how the mighty have fallen. If only they'd have been able to maintain their relationship with WotC we'd be talking about OAR 10: Night's Dark Terror instead.
The only good news is that for OAR1-6, the original publication was always present so there will be record that Paul wrote Caverns for example in OAR9, even if they only ever type his fake name within all over everywhere, "Paul Jaquays" will be on the cover and title page - unless this policy has changed.
There is little hope for CSIW. While the original publication will be present, who knows how long artistic merit or historic accuracy will hold the pens of the editors at Goodman. JG won't care or likely won't even know if changes are made, they're just counting their money.
While old JG products and even the Necromancer Games 3.X revisions are OSR, I hereby declare Goodman Games post-2021 products excommunicado and their lives are forfeit.
EDIT: Joe Goodman came out and said GG CSIW will not contain the original work. This is a change of the format of OAR and invalidates the entire line going forward, even more than botching the deal with WotC and losing the ability to do TSR products. I will now decree that OAR 1-6 are the only OSR OARs, the rest are garbage. If any are in your collection, burn them immediately. It's better than having the cucked product by a shill bitch game publisher on your shelf.
EDIT 1/17/2026: OTOH, there's no reason not to buy anything "new" out of Judges Guild, if you're missing stuff from your collection. JG products were a cornerstone of TSR D&D and remain an OSR staple. They regularly cycle OOP stuff back to print, I assume because they don't know how DTRPG or Lulu works to POD their product and make passive income on it. So get it while you can. BBII isn't getting any younger.
