They got in touch with the Communication Workers of America and pretty quickly gained voluntary recognition from the company. LIMBONG: The freelancers standing up for the staff was the leverage the staff needed to form a union. SEIFTER: It was putting themselves at risk potentially of some kind of repercussion for this. LIMBONG: Again, Paizo game designer Mark Seifter. SEIFTER: It was a brave and ultimately self-sacrificing move to show solidarity. They wanted the concerns of the staff addressed. LIMBONG: About 40 freelancers for Paizo told the company they would not be taking on any new assignments. REDEKOP: It ultimately reached a point where it just didn't feel ethically responsible to continue working for Paizo unless something changed. REDEKOP: Like, how do we even feel about what is happening and working - like continuing to work for this company? Redekop says she and her fellow freelancers were just as alarmed about what was going on within the company, so they started a big group chat separate from the staff. There's the staff, and there are the freelancers who first write the games. LIMBONG: Paizo has two groups of workers. Now, unbeknownst to the staff, something else was cooking at the exact same time. Allegations of sexual harassment and verbal abuse started spreading online, and staff started talking about unionizing again. LIMBONG: Kind of an important role ahead of a trade show - Seifter and the rest of the staff were shocked. SEIFTER: We found out via social media and not because the company announced that two of the most respected customer service people in the company were now gone. LIMBONG: Then, in September, just before a big trade show, Paizo fired one customer service representative, and another left right after.

SEIFTER: But they never really came to fruition. Seifter says there had been talk for years about possibly forming a union to address issues like pay equity and transparency. LIMBONG: They're elaborate games with long books detailing lore and statistics for characters and playing mechanics and all of that. MARK SEIFTER: Which is the company that makes Pathfinder and Starfinder. As NPR's Andrew Limbong reports, workers all over the cultural sector have been organizing, from music to comics to museums and amid a national wave of labor activity.ĪNDREW LIMBONG, BYLINE: Mark Seifter is the design manager at Paizo. The union is the first of its kind for tabletop role-playing games. And over the fall, the workers there unionized. Just outside Seattle, there's a small company that makes tabletop role-playing games.

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