If you’ve been following Quoth the Raven or Meeple Moments for any length of time, you’ll know that I occasionally indulge in a post that is a bit more on the personal side. This is one of those. You have been warned.

It was about four years ago that Pam and I first considered purchasing Ravenwood Castle and getting into the hospitality business. When I told my father, he just shook his head. “You’re going to be working with the public?” he asked. “Boy, are you in for it.”

I wish I could say that he was 100% wrong. But as with any consumer business, we do occasionally deal with an unpleasant member of the public. We’re dealing with one such situation at Ravenwood right now, with someone threatening to launch a social media smear campaign if we don’t provide free services.

Side note, it hasn’t worked, and it won’t. I won’t be bullied. As for the social media campaign, our clientele are smart enough to smell baloney when they see it.

Although this isn’t the first time we’ve had to deal with something like this, it still bothers me. After one particularly unpleasant interaction last week I went for a quick run (ok, it was actually a pretty slow run, I’m a bit out of shape!) to clear my head. And somewhere in the middle of the run I had an epiphany.

It dawned on me that this type of situation bothers me so much precisely because it is so rare. I thought back through the last four years at Ravenwood and the last year at the Meeple, and I can count on two hands how many issues like this we’ve had to deal with. That’s less than ten incidents, out of literally tens of thousands of guests.

On the other side of the scale, we’ve had guests who have volunteered their time to help us improve Ravenwood Castle, just because they love the castle as much as we do. We’ve had Ravenwood guests who have driven for hours to come to The Malted Meeple to share their expertise and companionship with us. We have an amazing cadre of Meeple guests who give of their time to run weekly role playing sessions for the enjoyment of all. We have guests who carve three days out of their busy schedules every February and brave the wintry Ohio weather to join us in raising money for children’s hospitals.

Best of all, we have more guests than we can count who have become steadfast friends.

So I would actually like to thank the individual who is currently trying to smear us. While he is not going to get what he wants, his efforts have not been in vain. They’ve reminded me just how awesome the overwhelming majority of our guests truly are.

So Pam and I, on behalf of the entire Ravenwood Castle and Malted Meeple family, would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our truly awesome guests for being a part of this adventure. You make running these businesses as much fun for us as we hope visiting them is for you!

Jim Reed is a lifelong gamer who started with the original red box Dungeons & Dragons. After spending 20 years in the corporate world, he decided it was high time that work be fun and struck out on his own. Jim now owns and operates Ravenwood Castle and The Malted Meeple, and spends his days ensuring his guests have as much fun as he does.