A Public Statement about *Open Court's* Philosophy of Dungeons and Dragons

Mark Silcox and I have received agrieved e-mails from people taking us to be responsible for issues concerning the (possibly) forthcoming Blackwell anthology "Philosophy of Dungeons and Dragons." Because of the weird way search engines are treating this, people falsely believe that we've treated authors badly. Thusfar I've been publicly circumspect about the backstory of this. But one of the philosophers that e-mailed us put up a public blog post on the issue, I need to set the record completely straight.

Silcox and I originally submitted a proposal to Blackwell series editor William Irwin for "Dungeons and Dragons and Philosophy" (note that I still have the original proposal and all relevant e-mails from the press editors). Irwin was enthusiastic but the marketing people required us to write a separate marketing justification. This was not hard since every major book store has a dedicated D&D session,  since the marketing plan of Wizards of the Coast requires new editions to be released periodically, and since similar non-fiction books about D&D get floor space and have sold. But, according to Irwin, the Blackwell marketing rejected the project because  there wasn't a "marketable moment" like a film release that they could use to sell the book. Fine, that's the considered judgment of a successful press. Mark and I retooled the proposal and pitched the project to Open Court, who accepted it. Our book is out now. You can purchase it HERE. And the Blackwell marketing people didn't know what they were talking about, as it's currently taking up shelf space on the floor of your local Barnes and Noble. Bully for us.

But then things started to get weird.

Within months of Open Court accepting the project, Christopher Robichaud (a lecturer at the Havard School of publich policy who has edited a number of Blackwell popular philosophy volumes) released THIS CFP, for a Blackwell book titled "Dungeons and Dragons and Philosophy," with many of the same issues as those addressed in our original proposal to Blackwell. [Note that there is nothing illegal about this. You can't copyright titles, and the issues are so obvious to any philosopher who plays the game that neither am I alleging theft of intellectual property.]

But still, I'm honestly just a little bit aggreived (as would anyone in the same situation) but so what. We're very happy with our Open Court text, and moreover this is apparently just how commercial publishing works. 

But I have to correct something. Because of the way search engines are working, and whatever's happend recently on Blackwell's end, some of the Robichaud authors think that he somehow imploded and that Mark and I went on to pick up the project and then ditched them in favor of our authors. Because of this, they think that Silcox and I made negative assessments about their ability to write a decent philosophy essay, acted on those assessments, and then did not inform them. This did not happen.  The pertainent points from above are: (1) Before Robichaud even issued his CFP we had a full line-up of authors. (2) Our book is a different press. (3) For what it's worth, we would never treat authors this way.

Finally, I should note that I am not making any assertions about what's happened with the Robichaud edited volume. I have no idea where it's at. Nor am I trying to adjudicate the complaints of the blogger above. I have no idea what really happened with any of this. I'm just posting this to forestall reasonable confusion that some people have.