CGL Speculation #7 Options

[Bull]

Like I said, go read past threads. Jasons pointed stuff out, I've pointed stuff out, plenty of others have. Hell, even some of Tiger Eyes and AH's posts temper some of Frank's statements.

Like I said, I don;t care to argue this. It's not worthwhile. I've wasted too much time on this and you already.

In 3 weeks, it's settled. One way or another. And these boards will become even more unbearable to try and follow, because no matter which side "Wins", we all lose, and I'm sure tehre will be a lot of bitching and moaning regardless.

Bull

[Arclight]

I'd be willing to bet that Topps doesn't give a devil rats ass about Shadowrun or Battletech. All they want is paid. If that happens, CGL gets the license back. (And that's how you present something as an assumption rather than a fact. Becuase I don't know for certain. Neitehr does anyone else except for Topps and CGL)

[...]

In 3 weeks, it's settled. One way or another. And these boards will become even more unbearable to try and follow, because no matter which side "Wins", we all lose, and I'm sure tehre will be a lot of bitching and moaning regardless.

But, if there is another company bidding on the license, wouldn't Topps get more money from them?

Speculation again:

- CGL is in financial trouble and maybe paid Topps less royalties than they were obliged to, with intent.
- The other bidder promises the same amount of royalties but can actually pay those now without inflicting harm on it's daily operations (like firing employees).
- All the material published or paid for will belong to the new license holder anyway.
- The other bidder might have enough cash sitting around to buy "floating" material like PACKS. Heck, as some freelancer won't do business with CGL again, a new company is the only way to get these floating material published.

When the good performance of CGL was achieved by a creative pool not with this company anymore, in spite of bad business habits, why stay with this company without this creative pool but still daily operations problems?

[Kid Chameleon]

When the good performance of CGL was achieved by a creative pool not with this company anymore, in spite of bad business habits, why stay with this company without this creative pool but still daily operations problems?

That's a pretty strong leap to say the loss of a half dozen free lancers represents the basis for all the good work done on the creative side.

[Cardul]

But, given there is another company bidding on the license, wouldn't Topps get more money from them?

Source for the bolded part, please.

This is the first I have heard of another company bidding. Can you tell us who, since you have that
information(else you would not have stated it as "given")? Who is running this other company?

[Arclight]

Wording problem, which has been corrected. Sorry dudes.

[Cthulhudreams]

Like I said, go read past threads. Jasons pointed stuff out, I've pointed stuff out, plenty of others have. Hell, even some of Tiger Eyes and AH's posts temper some of Frank's statements.

Why do you think that Topps will continue a relationship with a company that has, as Tiger eyes claims, attempted to defraud them?

[Cardul]

Wording problem, which has been corrected. Sorry dudes.

In other words: You let out info you are not supposed to, people commented on
it, and you edited to cover your statement in hopes that people would not keep
pressing for the info. Well, I, for one, am not falling for one of the oldest tricks
in the political/corporate double speak book.

[Arclight]

In other words: You let out info you are not supposed to, people commented on
it, and you edited to cover your statement in hopes that people would not keep
pressing for the info. Well, I, for one, am not falling for one of the oldest tricks
in the political/corporate double speak book.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

It was a simple wording mistake. Given *g* that English is my second language, I think thats okay.

All I know about all this, I read on Dumpshock, Gaming Den, rpg.net and the Pegasus forum.

Okay?

[Korwin]

1) At least half of his assumptions of motive are wrong, especially the ones surrounding Jason Hardy. Most of the rest may be wrong, but I don't interact enough with Randall to judge those properly.

Who cares about the motives? (of criminals, since that is apparently correct you didnt say that that claim is wrong...)

2) QUite a few of his Plurals should be singlulars.

Meaning?

3) A lot of his facts are, as I said, assumptions that he presents as fact. Which makes it a falsehood.

Is that an assumption from you? If not, why dont you take this opportunity to discredit Frank?

4) I'd be willing to bet that Topps doesn't give a devil rats ass about Shadowrun or Battletech. All they want is paid. If that happens, CGL gets the license back. (And that's how you present something as an assumption rather than a fact. Becuase I don't know for certain. Neitehr does anyone else except for Topps and CGL)

Bull

Yeah they want to be paid. Do they get paid? Frank claims not. Do you claim otherwise?

[Delta]

It was a simple wording mistake. Given *g* that English is my second language, I think thats okay.

Oh, yes, I'd play that card, too (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Don't even try to deny it, this forum is on to you and your secret insider business knowledge!

[Athenor]

Why do you think that Topps will continue a relationship with a company that has, as Tiger eyes claims, attempted to defraud them?

If I may?

Didn't Tiger Eyes leave because she was asked to defraud Topps, but refused?

Doesn't that imply, perhaps, that Topps never saw the defrauding get to their offices? IE, her leaving and this whole shitstorm has had the positive effect of a true, accurate proposal for keeping the license get put forward?

[Athenor]

This forum needs a 30 second "double-post" protection in the worst way.

[Arclight]

Oh, yes, I'd play that card, too (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Don't even try to deny it, this forum is on to you and your secret insider business knowledge!

If there's ever a speculation thread on German Army Aviation, I could offer some insider knowledge. I wouldn't post it, though. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/spin.gif)

[JM Hardy]

People asked for flaws in Frank's argument, so here you go. I'm reluctant to engage in this, but there are some rather defamatory things said about me, and I'd like to clear a few of them up. That's the stuff I'm going to concentrate on, but keep in mind that Frank slants most other arguments negative. Interpretations could go back and forth, but the best way we'll know if Frank's version works is what happens with the license. As we'll see when it comes to the stuff about me, his interpretation of what he believes to be "facts" is often quite slanted.

1. "[Jason Hardy] was appointed for loyalty to Randall Bills rather than knowledge of Shadowrun or writing ability." As I stated in the previous thread, I wrote over 200,000 words for Shadowrun and edited portions of 9 books before I was hired. I've also done writing work for over half a dozen companies, most of whom hire me repeatedly. My loyalty to Randall was not covered in the interview for the job--things like my plans to communicate with people and plans to get product moving were.

2. "He has continued that tradition by pushing writers out of the pool for showing insufficient loyalty to the company." I haven't pushed a single writer out of the pool. I had one writer removed from the forums, on the philosophy that it likely is not a good idea to share confidential information with someone working at cross purposes, but I stated that I was still willing to work with that author. The change from the freelancer forums to a Google group has also not definitively pushed anyone out--I can remain in contact with writers who have not yet joined the group and gauge their interest in writing future product. However, I should point out that I believe that not working with writers who broke NDAs is a valid thing to do, should I make that decision.

3. "regardless of knowledge of the subject, writing ability, or loyalty to the Shadowrun line." Incorrect. All writers I work with are writers who I have seen samples for. They have varying levels of knowledge, but most have a good background in the setting. Their loyalty to the SR line is important--that's why most of them have signed up to do writing in the first place.

4. "What he is doing is pushing low quality products as part of a deliberate and very petty attempt to push through a published versions of books without the work done by people who refused to work with Loren." Incorrect. What I am doing is trying to get products finished. I'm running drafts by other freelancers and proofers to make sure they are of good quality. I don't believe I'm being petty--I believe I'm working to get books out, which is what the line requires.

5. "Heck, at this point there are a number of people who straight up will not work with Jason Hardy." That may be. But what is that number? He doesn't say. By my count, I've got around 20 or so freelancers--most of them with previous SR experience--still willing to work with me, along with several new freelancers who have expressed an interest.

6. "So... what does that mean for Shadowrun? It means that Topps is going to award the license to someone else, and everyone who ranted about the Cult of Frank or whatever is going to get to like the taste of crow." We'll see on that one, but from what I have heard this is definitely slanted toward Frank's POV and not real conversations with Topps.

7. "War!, Corp Guide, and Attitude are under current formulation basically wastes of paper. They need rewrites, and even reconcepting." Do I need to point out that this is just opinion? And that Corp Guide was nearly done before these problems hit, and the vast majority of the text that was going to be included from the beginning is still being included?

8. "[Randall] promised several other dates [for when the LE would street] in the past and never delivered." Please show evidence of another street date for the LE. There wasn't one. This was the first specific date announced

9. "So... it's anyone's guess how long it would take for [LEs] to actually reach anyone in particular." People have already seen their order statuses change. Perhaps they could also post info when they receive their copies.

Again, I left most of the Loren stuff alone because I don't know enough to comment one way or the other. But based on the horrible assumptions Frank makes about my motives, I have trouble trusting the assumptions he makes about others.

Jason H.

[TW]

That's a pretty strong leap to say the loss of a half dozen free lancers represents the basis for all the good work done on the creative side.

IMO, said loss still represents a rather large chunk of the supporting column of that basis.
Take a look through the credits pages of the books released by Catalyst and do the math.
The number of freelancers regularly contributing to the Shadowrun books in a significant amount was / is very small

[Kid Chameleon]

IMO, said loss still represents a rather large chunk of the supporting column of that basis.
Take a look through the credits pages of the books released by Catalyst and do the math.
The number of freelancers regularly contributing to the Shadowrun books in a significant amount was / is very small

But that's ignoring all the talented people working on the other lines.

[TW]

But that's ignoring all the talented people working on the other lines.

I'm not ignoring them, but regardless of how familiar these people may be with the Shadowrun universe and the specific writing style, there will be a learning curve. The loss of the so-called 'core freelancers' (like Jason Levine, Peter Taylor, Bobby Derie and Jennifer Harding) in terms of writing resources, kowledge, criticism and advice works against that learning curve.

[Kid Chameleon]

I'm not ignoring them, but regardless of how familiar these people may be with the Shadowrun universe and the specific writing style, there will be a learning curve. The loss of the so-called 'core freelancers' (like Jason Levine, Peter Taylor, Bobby Derie and Jennifer Harding) in terms of writing resources, kowledge, criticism and advice works against that learning curve.

But that response wasn't about SR in particular, but about CGL as a whole (it responded to Bull talking about both SR and BT).

[Demonseed Elite]

I don't see commenting on the product roadmap as particularly bad or anything - It's a routine part of most technology industries - including comenting on the non-public version of the same roadmaps.

I was actually very surprised in the CGL #6 thread when someone said that commenting on the non-public roadmap was bad, I think of it as good, as it informs customers/re-sellers (i.e. DMs) about what is going to happen next for their game.

That person was probably me. And yes, I do think it's bad if it's not the publisher itself commenting on the product roadmap. Basically, what Frank is doing is delivering a judgment on books that have not been published yet. I strongly encourage reviews of books that have been released, I've even listened carefully to critical reviews of things I have written, but as a writer, I would tend to appreciate that those reviews come out after I finished with the book. Criticisms during production of the book are called editing and there are editors for that.

And note that none of what Frank spoke about impacts me directly. I have no hand in any of the books on the product roadmap. But as a writer, I do have a strong feeling about what Frank did.

[Cthulhudreams]

That person was probably me. And yes, I do think it's bad if it's not the publisher itself commenting on the product roadmap. Basically, what Frank is doing is delivering a judgment on books that have not been published yet. I strongly encourage reviews of books that have been released, I've even listened carefully to critical reviews of things I have written, but as a writer, I would tend to appreciate that those reviews come out after I finished with the book. Criticisms during production of the book are called editing and there are editors for that.

And note that none of what Frank spoke about impacts me directly. I have no hand in any of the books on the product roadmap. But as a writer, I do have a strong feeling about what Frank did.

Yeah, see that's just weird to me - people who are not intel, microsoft, AMD or Apple make calls about their product roadmap all the time, including praise and harsh critique. What seperates a RPG writer from an Intel chip designer, an MS software engineer or an Apple product designer?

[Ancient History]

Well, hell. One of us might as well do it.

Note: there's an upper limit on quote boxes, so Frank's quotes are gonna be in bold, m'kay?

Here's the short version of the Shadowrun Situation:

Loren L. Coleman (the Battletech author, not the Cryptozoologist), is the majority shareholder of InMediaRes LLC.

As far as I know, this is true. The numbers I've heard are between 50-62%.

There are approximately 16 minority shareholders, a tally which is in no small part "approximate" because there have been at least two pieces of shadiness involving Mr. Coleman unilaterally transferring ownership of other people's stock.
As far as I am aware, there were sixteen shareholders total. There have been some weird allegations about whether or not the stock was sold correctly (i.e. if there was any actual transfer of ownership), and the question of "who owns what percentage" is currently being argued. Call it speculation until the dust settles.

Over the last three years, Mr. Coleman has been making more and more unauthorized draws on the corporate accounts.
Not entirely true; to the best of my knowledge the Colemans were the only one with access to the accounts and the books for a long period. So he essentially authorized himself. The part about the draws is totally true, though.

While doing so, he has had a mansion built for himself in a gated community in Snohomish, Washington. This construction project was paid for not only out of his own pocket, but also by contractors that were billed directly to the corporation as freelancers.
The Colemans did build a house in a gated community during this period (their old home is used as the Catalyst office); the part about the contractors is something I've heard as well, but I don't have details - so call it speculation.

During this period, IMR has been subcontracting for books to be translated and published in German, French, and Japanese with Pegasus, Black Book Editions, and ArcLight respectively.
True.

These companies have turned royalties in to Mr. Coleman and he has voluntarily declined to ship the royalties up the chain to Topps.
If you believe Jennifer Harding's statements about why she left, this is also true. Of course, it wasn't just the foreign companies not getting paid their royalties.

This is a continuation of a practice engaged in by FASA where the foreign royalties would simply be lost and not distributed. However, in this case it is directly demonstrable that malicious intent was held - in that Mr. Coleman directed his book keeper to leave foreign royalties unreported on the grounds that Topps "didn't care about them anyway."
I had heard about FASA doing that kind of thing, but it was before my time. The other part, Jen Harding attests, is true.

Also during this period, the reported income from conventions and direct sales has mysteriously fallen from nearly forty thousand dollars a year to less than six. This comes from Coleman selling things for cash and then simply pocketing the money rather than reporting it as corporate income. This means directly that royalties were not paid on those materials either.
Speculation. This is something I heard about, but there's literally no way to tell if it's true without seeing the books.

Even after the real estate collapse, Mr. Coleman's house was appraised at a value of approximately $650,000.
True.

Over the last few years, he has consistently told creditors and investors that finances were much tighter than such extravagant expenses would indicate. Many creditors were not paid at all. And by "creditors" I don't just mean printers and advertisers and other "corporate" creditors, or even simply financial creditors such as the investors and poor suckers who made personal loans to IMR or Coleman directly - I include the actual creative staff. There are seriously Battletech writers whose checks are three years late, and given current financial problems may never be paid at all. Coleman's draws on company funds were so fast and heavy that some checks he wrote to writing and artistic staff actually bounced. My own personal checks were months late, and short by about a hundred dollars. And that was years ago (my last check actually arrived in 2008, though of course I stopped being a Freelancer there in September of 2007).
I can't speak for investors, but yes, Catalyst has long played the cash-dry angle with freelancers and was habitually late in payment. With the recent spate of checks, I'm not sure where everyone stands now, but there were freelancers that were not paid for products printed years ago at the time I left. Yes, some of the checks that Catalyst has written in the past have bounced. Whether this was all due to Loren and his increasing cash draws, I couldn't tell you without looking at the book.

As this situation has boiled to a head, smaller and more agile companies have already divested themselves of connections with IMR and Mr. Coleman. Posthuman Studios (Eclipse Phase), and WildFire (CthulhuTech) have both cut themselves loose.
True.

WildFire has been quite public with the terms they have agreed to on splitting from Mr. Coleman, and he has broken those agreements twice. Three times if you include the fact that he didn't pay them their royalties in the first place. The first splitting agreement was that IMR couldn't make any new books, but they would sell off the remaining stock that said "Catalyst" on it and use some of the money to pay the owed royalties to WildFire. Coleman kept selling the books, but didn't pay the royalties. Then they made a new agreement where IMR had to give WildFire their remaining Cthulhutech stocks and that would count towards the royalties debts.
As linked, IMR was transferring ownership of the stock as partial payment of its debts.

However, when they opened those boxes, the books were still tens of thousands of dollars short of what was still owed.
WildFire was owed royalties, we know this much. We don't have the details of the agreement with IMR, but we know transfer of ownership of the CthulhuTech books to cover part of the debt was part of it, and as below...

WildFire has now pressed for Chapter 7 against IMR.
True. InMediaRes maintains that these are additional measures WildFire is taking to get the rest of the money it is owed.

Other creditors may yet follow suit.
Other creditors can be added to the legal action linked above, so that's entirely possible.


Topps is pressing for an audit of IMR and Mr. Coleman's funds.
Speculation. I have heard Topps is doing an audit of IMR's books, but again, this is stuff we have no way of knowing.

The things they will find in that are... less than hopeful. IMR's Payables are currently much larger than their Receivables. Years of not paying corporate debts while the primary shareholder milks the company dry has left them in arrears to everyone they've had any contact with.
Speculation. This is pretty much the situation as I understand it, though the recent spate of checks has at least squared them (or gone some way to squaring them) with many freelancers.

And the books are literally unauditable. So much stuff has been rewritten or simply never written down at all that making sense of it would be a Herculean task of its own. There is no sales data - it's seriously just a list of money in and money out.
Speculation. This is a rumor I keep hearing - literally, no track was kept of the sales data, only deposits and draws. Needless to say, we don't have access to the books, inauditable or not, so call this speculation.

Meanwhile, the company has been hemorrhaging employees left and right.
Adam Jury, David Stansel-Garner, Troy Garner, Jennifer Harding, Stephen McQuillian - that's more than half the staff I know of, so I'd call that true.

Some of them have been straight up asked to falsify financial documents or quit, while others have simply seen the writing on the wall and fled like rats on a sinking ship.
Jennifer Harding again, for the first part.

Most hilariously, a good amount of corporate property has actually gone with the employees, since the employees often went and got equipment on their own to be "reimbursed" later on - reimbursements that likely as not never came. Most hilariously, the shipping computer left with the employee who used it.
True. Specifically, Troy Garner took the shipping computer with him because it is his own property.

Mr. Coleman has been paying debts only when forced, and even then those debts have been paid late and often short. The only reason that any freelancers got paid in the recent days was because they were withholding copyright on books that they had been owed monies on for some time and which were in turn scheduled to sell for more in the remaining weeks than their own contracts.
True. Squeeky wheel gets the grease and all that. Adam explains it best.

Nevertheless, a lot of high quality talent, and even medium quality talent, has stated that come hell or high water, they will never work with IMR again.
Certainly Jennifer Harding, Jay Levine, myself, and several other ex-freelancers are of that opinion.


So in all of this, you may ask three simple questions: Who are the bad guys in all of this? Does Shadowrun have a future? And of course: What about all those books we were promised?

The Bad Guys: It's tempting to get very angry at the people who rant on message boards defending the indefensible. Complete assholes like Bull and Doctor Funkenstein are certainly not helping anything, and their allegiances and blatant lack of ethics will doubtless be remembered long after this saga is over. But don't fool yourself: their antics aren't unexpected or particularly relevant. You can get 20% of the people to approve of whoever happens to be in charge no matter what they do.
Frank has been miffed at the attitude of Bull and Doc Funk toward this whole situation. Granted, Bull and Frank have never got along, but I think he's genuinely perplexed as to Doc Funk's attitude toward the whole matter.

The bad guys are still Loren L Coleman, Randall Bills, and Jason Hardy.

Loren Coleman of course is the man who proximally stole all the money. He is the center of the web of lies. It is he who demanded and received total control of the piggy bank and then sucked it dry while no one was looking.
This is Frank's principle assertion. Certainly, the graphs linked above make the case that he was making significant draws, and we know he was late in getting payments out to freelancers, WildFire LLC, and other creditors as listed in the legal case.

He's also trying to steal the company from the other investors. His legal defense is seriously that it only counts as embezzlement if he isn't the only owner, and that despite the fact that he took money from all his investors in exchange for partial ownership, and he has been sending them tax forms every year, that 3 to 4 years later he still hasn't gotten around to filing the forms properly to indicate that they actually own anything. So his defense against the charge of embezzlement is... interstate mail fraud. I can't even make this stuff up.
Speculation. This corresponds with what I've heard, but there hasn't been an independent confirmation just yet.

Randall Bills is Loren's best friend. And he is one of Loren's closest allies.
True, if Bill's letter to the freelancers is anything to go by.

It was he who told the book keeper that if she didn't want to follow Loren's instructions to help defraud investors and license owners and the IRS that she could quit.
True, according to Jennifer Harding's post linked above.

And he said that he was "The Messiah of Battletech" without whose blessing the franchise would collapse. He also said that he would drive the company into the ground rather than jeopardize his friendship with Loren.
Speculation. Though I hear this is pretty much exactly what he said during the owner's meeting, without the actual minutes I can't confirm it.

And he has lied to people and done everything in his power to resist efforts to remove Loren from power or the cookie jar of finances.
The lies are speculation, the resistance to remove from power Loren is not (see his letter above), the cookie jar is speculation - Randall asserts in his letter that changes were made for "stronger financial oversight" and that it is planned for the Colemans to pay back the money - at the time of the letter, that last bit was not finalized.

Currently, he has his wife doing the shipping to cover for the employees who left in disgust or were forced out for lack of loyalty.
True. As far as I know, one of the owners, Tara Bills, is doing Troy Garner's old job.

Jason Hardy is the current Developer of Shadowrun.
True.

He was appointed for loyalty to Randall Bills rather than knowledge of Shadowrun or writing ability.
Speculation.

He has continued that tradition by pushing writers out of the pool for showing insufficient loyalty to the company, regardless of knowledge of the subject, writing ability, or loyalty to the Shadowrun line.
Speculation. Locking me out of the freelancer forums was the incentive for me jumping ship; and reportedly he did the same to a few others. Certainly the heightened paranoia around security and leaking drafts that led to the abandonment of the freelancer forums hasn't helped much, but I am unaware of Jason intentionally trying to push freelancers out.

When the scandal broke, he locked arms with Randall and told him that people were spreading lies about him.
Speculation. I heard that Jason when initially informed did go to Randall and take action against the individual that had informed him of Loren's "co-mingling of funds", but there's no way to confirm it independently.

I am not sure if he actually believes this to all be some sort of wacky misunderstanding, but in a sense it doesn't matter. What he is doing is pushing low quality products as part of a deliberate and very petty attempt to push through a published versions of books without the work done by people who refused to work with Loren.
Speculation, at least as far as the low-quality. I have my own opinion on the matter, but I'm more biased than Frank in that regard. Since contracts have been terminated, Jason has gotten other freelancers to re-write the missing sections in an effort to get the books to print. As Jason says, he's simply working to get books in print.

Heck, at this point there are a number of people who straight up will not work with Jason Hardy.
True. Myself, at least.

The Trees thing even more than the whole "maliciously cutting people who aren't supporting thieves from the loop" thing.
If you don't get the reference, it's to something in an upcoming sourcebook that should not have gotten out. Jason even asked me straight-up if I'd been breaking my NDA with anyone (short summary: "What NDA? No, I don't have an NDA on file. No, I haven't been sharing that kind of stuff on the forums.") This was fair, as I vehemently hate the Trees and argued against them very strongly before I left.

So... what does that mean for Shadowrun? It means that Topps is going to award the license to someone else, and everyone who ranted about the Cult of Frank or whatever is going to get to like the taste of crow. Unfortunately, new books have a 90 day development cycle even when people aren't struggling to find their way or picking themselves through a mine field of traitors or whatever. So it's very possible that the new company is going to miss GenCon, and not get a new product out until Christmas. That will be a shame. But it's still avoidable if Topps picks a successor early enough.
Speculation. If IMR loses the license, if Topps awards it to some other company, if if if.

What about the books that were coming out any moment now? Don't hold your breath. First of all, a bunch of the books in the pipeline are, as currently set up, very bad. War!, Corp Guide, and Attitude are under current formulation basically wastes of paper. They need rewrites, and even reconcepting.
Speculation. I might agree on some of that, but it's a matter of opinion, not fact.

And that just isn't going to happen without a new company coming in and purging all the Coleman loyalists (which they should be doing anyway).
Speculation. I'm unaware of any 'Coleman loyalists' aside from Randall Bills and (presumably) Mrs. Coleman.

Randall Bills has promised a street date for the Limited Edition SR4A book of May 3rd, and those books are physically real items.
True. I pre-ordered mine.

But of course, he promised several other dates in the past and never delivered.
In accordance with standard Shadowrun procedure not to give street dates until they're solid, I believe this is in fact wrong - no specific date was given before the above post. Several generous guesstimates were made that did pass, due to the books taking a long time to get from the boat to the warehouse or something.

He has his wife doing the shipping, and Troy left with his computer.
True, see above.

So... it's anyone's guess how long it would take for books to actually reach anyone in particular.
True. I'd say speculation, except I know the US Post Office. USPO, I love you, but why you gotta make me so crazy?

And of course, any books that aren't properly shipped by the time they lose the license are going to be hidden in a drawer and sold on e-bay on the down low to try to pay Loren's court costs.
Speculation.

There, that wasn't so hard.

[Fuchs]

Very interesting.

[Demonseed Elite]

Yeah, see that's just weird to me - people who are not intel, microsoft, AMD or Apple make calls about their product roadmap all the time, including praise and harsh critique. What seperates a RPG writer from an Intel chip designer, an MS software engineer or an Apple product designer?

Are you saying that Apple tolerates people leaking their future product roadmap? Police just raided the house of the blogger who posted the new iPhone prototype. Apple is not historically tolerate of leaks.

Which isn't to say the people don't speculate about the future of Apple's product roadmap all the time. Everyone knows a new iPhone is coming and there are tons of guesses as to what it might do and how people feel about various possible features. But that's different from some engineer posting his feeling on the design of the next iPhone based on the plans he had access to. Frank knows a good deal about these future products, he's probably seen book specs, proposals, and drafts. And apparently he doesn't like what he's seen. That's great. Since he's not a freelancer anymore, he can wait until the book comes out like the rest of us and then voice all of his feelings on it. But that wouldn't really serve his agenda very well.

I don't dislike Frank. He's a smart guy. And I appreciate that he seems to think my contributions to Shadowrun were, on the whole, strong. But he has an obvious agenda here and so I have to take each post he makes and filter it through the same filter I run any press release I see through. And I just don't think it's fair to the writers to comment publicly on material that isn't done yet, especially since I'm sure it was done without their permission. I didn't think it was very fair when AH did it either and he understands that.

[Jaid]

to those requesting a detailed analysis of frank's post to bull: i am not bull, and i obviously can't give you his analysis. but i can give you my analysis, which is based primarily on what i know from following the threads on dumpshock (at the time of starting this post, i had read all of the available information on dumpshock to my knowledge, but my knowledge of events does not extend to other message boards)

[edit: blast, AH beat me to it. as he said, it wasn't really too hard to notice much of the speculation. though i see we do have some disagreements regarding a few specific points, relating to randall bills and jennifer harding... he may have information i don't on this, i certainly don't have (much) in the way of non-public communication with jennifer ]

part 1 of (probably) 2

Here's the short version of the Shadowrun Situation:

Loren L. Coleman (the Battletech author, not the Cryptozoologist), is the majority shareholder of InMediaRes LLC. There are approximately 16 minority shareholders, a tally which is in no small part "approximate" because there have been at least two pieces of shadiness involving Mr. Coleman unilaterally transferring ownership of other people's stock.

citation needed. i can't say this is false, but i can say that we haven't heard anything about this on these forums at least (about the transfer of ownership, not about loren being the majority shareholder, which he doesn't provide a source for but which i am prepared to accept as being accurate)

Over the last three years, Mr. Coleman has been making more and more unauthorized draws on the corporate accounts. While doing so, he has had a mansion built for himself in a gated community in Snohomish, Washington. This construction project was paid for not only out of his own pocket, but also by contractors that were billed directly to the corporation as freelancers.

During this period, IMR has been subcontracting for books to be translated and published in German, French, and Japanese with Pegasus, Black Book Editions, and ArcLight respectively. These companies have turned royalties in to Mr. Coleman and he has voluntarily declined to ship the royalties up the chain to Topps. This is a continuation of a practice engaged in by FASA where the foreign royalties would simply be lost and not distributed. However, in this case it is directly demonstrable that malicious intent was held - in that Mr. Coleman directed his book keeper to leave foreign royalties unreported on the grounds that Topps "didn't care about them anyway."

again, citation needed on that last bit. Unless tiger eyes has related this conversation elsewhere, this is at best third or fourth hand information (though it may be true, we don't have any confirming information on that)

Also during this period, the reported income from conventions and direct sales has mysteriously fallen from nearly forty thousand dollars a year to less than six. This comes from Coleman selling things for cash and then simply pocketing the money rather than reporting it as corporate income. This means directly that royalties were not paid on those materials either.

again, quite possibly true, but we have no published numbers, only frank's source. still, he's been right about a fair amount, i'd say this is quite possibly true, but still not something we can know for sure.

Even after the real estate collapse, Mr. Coleman's house was appraised at a value of approximately $650,000. Over the last few years, he has consistently told creditors and investors that finances were much tighter than such extravagant expenses would indicate. Many creditors were not paid at all. And by "creditors" I don't just mean printers and advertisers and other "corporate" creditors, or even simply financial creditors such as the investors and poor suckers who made personal loans to IMR or Coleman directly - I include the actual creative staff. There are seriously Battletech writers whose checks are three years late, and given current financial problems may never be paid at all. Coleman's draws on company funds were so fast and heavy that some checks he wrote to writing and artistic staff actually bounced. My own personal checks were months late, and short by about a hundred dollars. And that was years ago (my last check actually arrived in 2008, though of course I stopped being a Freelancer there in September of 2007).

this part is essentially accurate; i don't know of any battletech writers offhand who are waiting on checks from three years back, but then i also don't frequent the battletech boards. (official or otherwise) i suspect if i did, i would know the freelancer(s) he is talking about. although this may be one of the singular instead of plural errors bull was talking about, i am in no position to know.

As this situation has boiled to a head, smaller and more agile companies have already divested themselves of connections with IMR and Mr. Coleman. Posthuman Studios (Eclipse Phase), and WildFire (CthulhuTech) have both cut themselves loose. WildFire has been quite public with the terms they have agreed to on splitting from Mr. Coleman, and he has broken those agreements twice. Three times if you include the fact that he didn't pay them their royalties in the first place. The first splitting agreement was that IMR couldn't make any new books, but they would sell off the remaining stock that said "Catalyst" on it and use some of the money to pay the owed royalties to WildFire. Coleman kept selling the books, but didn't pay the royalties. Then they made a new agreement where IMR had to give WildFire their remaining Cthulhutech stocks and that would count towards the royalties debts. However, when they opened those boxes, the books were still tens of thousands of dollars short of what was still owed. WildFire has now pressed for Chapter 7 against IMR.

wildfire pressing for chapter 7 we know. I'm not aware of any specific details that have been posted regarding earlier agreements, but then i also don't frequent the wildfire boards either (if any). it is possible those agreements have been made public. it is also possible that frank has sources in wildfire who are feeding him confidential information.

Other creditors may yet follow suit. Topps is pressing for an audit of IMR and Mr. Coleman's funds. The things they will find in that are... less than hopeful. IMR's Payables are currently much larger than their Receivables. Years of not paying corporate debts while the primary shareholder milks the company dry has left them in arrears to everyone they've had any contact with. And the books are literally unauditable. So much stuff has been rewritten or simply never written down at all that making sense of it would be a Herculean task of its own. There is no sales data - it's seriously just a list of money in and money out.

to my knowledge, this information is not publically available. by which i mean, we have no idea of frank's source for this information. once again, citation needed.

Meanwhile, the company has been hemorrhaging employees left and right. Some of them have been straight up asked to falsify financial documents or quit, while others have simply seen the writing on the wall and fled like rats on a sinking ship. Most hilariously, a good amount of corporate property has actually gone with the employees, since the employees often went and got equipment on their own to be "reimbursed" later on - reimbursements that likely as not never came. Most hilariously, the shipping computer left with the employee who used it.

the computer is not key, the information on the computer is. the information is property of the company, and i very much doubt that troy decided he'd get his jollies at the expense of the customers, who have done nothing wrong. and once again, i am not aware of any available source for this information, though frank may have one.

Mr. Coleman has been paying debts only when forced, and even then those debts have been paid late and often short. The only reason that any freelancers got paid in the recent days was because they were withholding copyright on books that they had been owed monies on for some time and which were in turn scheduled to sell for more in the remaining weeks than their own contracts. Nevertheless, a lot of high quality talent, and even medium quality talent, has stated that come hell or high water, they will never work with IMR again.

so far as i know, ancient history/bobby derie has stated he will not work with jason or loren (and possibly randall) again. this is quite likely one of the 'singular instead of plural' errors that bull was referring to, but there could be others (and admittedly, the loss of bobby derie is not a small thing)

So in all of this, you may ask three simple questions: Who are the bad guys in all of this? Does Shadowrun have a future? And of course: What about all those books we were promised?

The Bad Guys: It's tempting to get very angry at the people who rant on message boards defending the indefensible. Complete assholes like Bull and Doctor Funkenstein are certainly not helping anything, and their allegiances and blatant lack of ethics will doubtless be remembered long after this saga is over. But don't fool yourself: their antics aren't unexpected or particularly relevant. You can get 20% of the people to approve of whoever happens to be in charge no matter what they do. The bad guys are still Loren L Coleman, Randall Bills, and Jason Hardy.

i find it rather amusing that frank is accusing anyone of being a complete asshole. in any event, this is at *best* subjective. who's the bad guy? apparently whoever frank says it is.

This post has been edited by Jaid: Apr 27 2010, 02:06 PM

[Jaid]

part 2 of 2 (apparently i had more than the allowed number of quote blocks)

Loren Coleman of course is the man who proximally stole all the money. He is the center of the web of lies. It is he who demanded and received total control of the piggy bank and then sucked it dry while no one was looking. He's also trying to steal the company from the other investors. His legal defense is seriously that it only counts as embezzlement if he isn't the only owner, and that despite the fact that he took money from all his investors in exchange for partial ownership, and he has been sending them tax forms every year, that 3 to 4 years later he still hasn't gotten around to filing the forms properly to indicate that they actually own anything. So his defense against the charge of embezzlement is... interstate mail fraud. I can't even make this stuff up.

i am unaware of a source for most of the information about loren's legal situation. this doesn't make it false... once again, frank without a doubt has sources that i don't have. but it does mean we are only getting frank's view on this. and that we don't even know if he actually has a source for real at all.

Randall Bills is Loren's best friend. And he is one of Loren's closest allies. It was he who told the book keeper that if she didn't want to follow Loren's instructions to help defraud investors and license owners and the IRS that she could quit. And he said that he was "The Messiah of Battletech" without whose blessing the franchise would collapse. He also said that he would drive the company into the ground rather than jeopardize his friendship with Loren. And he has lied to people and done everything in his power to resist efforts to remove Loren from power or the cookie jar of finances. Currently, he has his wife doing the shipping to cover for the employees who left in disgust or were forced out for lack of loyalty.

well, the part about the wife handling shipping is accurate. and to my knowledge, the most we have on randall bills' actions towards tiger eyes/jennifer harding that has come from tiger eyes is that he said to work with loren or quit, not that she should do everything loren said. furthermore, tiger eyes herself, who i consider to be better informed as to what happened between tiger eyes and randall bills, has said that she didn't consider randall bills to have done anything unethical. if randall had also ordered her to falsify the reports, i doubt she would have said that.

Jason Hardy is the current Developer of Shadowrun. He was appointed for loyalty to Randall Bills rather than knowledge of Shadowrun or writing ability. He has continued that tradition by pushing writers out of the pool for showing insufficient loyalty to the company, regardless of knowledge of the subject, writing ability, or loyalty to the Shadowrun line. When the scandal broke, he locked arms with Randall and told him that people were spreading lies about him. I am not sure if he actually believes this to all be some sort of wacky misunderstanding, but in a sense it doesn't matter. What he is doing is pushing low quality products as part of a deliberate and very petty attempt to push through a published versions of books without the work done by people who refused to work with Loren. Heck, at this point there are a number of people who straight up will not work with Jason Hardy. The Trees thing even more than the whole "maliciously cutting people who aren't supporting thieves from the loop" thing.

well, jason has responded to this himself. i'm not clear how we can blame jason for others not being willing to work with him, but apparently it's all his fault. certainly, this is at best speculation presented as fact, as was pointed out by bull. certainly, the choice to not use the already-written material was blatantly not his choice, since ancient history has explicitly stated that it was he (ancient history) who withdrew the contract, not jason. while jason may or may not have been moving to remove ancient history from the future freelancer pool (and that seems likely, if not certain, based on earlier comments from jason), he is very clearly not responsible for ancient history's choice to not permit the material to be published. also, see jason's response to this.

So... what does that mean for Shadowrun? It means that Topps is going to award the license to someone else, and everyone who ranted about the Cult of Frank or whatever is going to get to like the taste of crow. Unfortunately, new books have a 90 day development cycle even when people aren't struggling to find their way or picking themselves through a mine field of traitors or whatever. So it's very possible that the new company is going to miss GenCon, and not get a new product out until Christmas. That will be a shame. But it's still avoidable if Topps picks a successor early enough.

perhaps. then again, perhaps Topps won't award the license elsewhere. I am not aware of Topps making any statements to that effect, and i rather doubt that frank has a source at Topps (though i suppose i can't rule out the possibility either; i have no source to the contrary). regardless, i'm going to have to say that this is likely one of bull's 'speculation presented as fact' points.

What about the books that were coming out any moment now? Don't hold your breath. First of all, a bunch of the books in the pipeline are, as currently set up, very bad. War!, Corp Guide, and Attitude are under current formulation basically wastes of paper. They need rewrites, and even reconcepting. And that just isn't going to happen without a new company coming in and purging all the Coleman loyalists (which they should be doing anyway). Randall Bills has promised a street date for the Limited Edition SR4A book of May 3rd, and those books are physically real items. But of course, he promised several other dates in the past and never delivered. He has his wife doing the shipping, and Troy left with his computer. So... it's anyone's guess how long it would take for books to actually reach anyone in particular. And of course, any books that aren't properly shipped by the time they lose the license are going to be hidden in a drawer and sold on e-bay on the down low to try to pay Loren's court costs.

-Frank

so far as i know, we haven't heard anyone other than ancient history comment on any manuscripts, and the only one he commented on is part of the corp guide. and that was not the final draft, it was a rough draft, which could still be refined or even redone. so we don't really know if any of those books will come out good or bad. it is, again, possible that frank *has* seen the submissions (i wouldn't be surprised if the same people who sent ancient history a copy also sent frank a copy), but frank's opinion isn't inherently my opinion, or your opinion, and it has been my experience that having relatively minor flaws seems to really get under frank's skin. as jason has said, apparently some of the orders have already been put in the mail. also, the part about the future fate of the SR4ALEs is, once again, speculation presented as fact.


now, some of you may argue that frank was merely using hyperbole or similar, which are accepted literary methods. the thing is... when you want to present yourself as someone who is delivering factual information, without bias, you don't use hyperbole. you provide hard information, with sources for that information, so that people know you aren't making stuff up. it's fine to use hyperbole, but it isn't fine to use hyperbole and exaggeration to prove your point, and then claim you don't have a point, that you are completely impartial, and that you have no agenda. or, in other words... you don't put spin on the information and then accuse others of putting spin on information and retain a lot of credibility when it comes to claiming your information is of superior validity, in my opinion.

i will grant that some of the information presented is likely accurate (or close enough to make no meaningful difference). certainly, frank has sources that i do not. but unless some of those sources are provably psychic, there just isn't any way he can present this information as facts, and even with such a source, he certainly couldn't claim that his perspective is unbiased. and i do recommend that you take everything that frank says with a grain of salt (just as i recommend you take anything CGL says with a grain of salt, for that matter) because it has plenty of spin on it.