@urgru

That's a good point.

I think it would be ideal for everyone if the SR property was spun of from Catalyst into a subsidiary entity that Randall and Loren had no direct control of.

I don't mind them continuing to own a stake, if Loren pays back what he owes all well and good, but neither should be in a position to control the financials of the company ever again.

I think if everybody who has found themselves on one side of this or the other through no fault of their own could come together and bury the hatchet then perhaps they can get some of the products that have already been produced out the door and get all the freelancers paid what they are owed in a timely manner.

Funny, Fanpro did quite some.

The german licensee, again?
A new company of people formerly involved, again?

@crizh: That presumes a spinoff would have the funds necessary to secure the license.

@Rotbart: WizKidz didn't immediately give the license to FanPro. As I recall, there were several months of NOTHING. Absolute opacity as to the future of Shadowrun and much wailing and gnashing of teeth re: ClickyTech. The continuation of the lines as we knew/know them was not at all a certainty. The current German sublicensee is in essentially the same position as FanPro used to be, has relationships with at least some of the writing stable, and could rise to the top. FanPro was a bad experience for the licensor, though, and they may not be interested in shipping the rights overseas again. If the current staff tries to form a new company . . . great, but they'll need seed money. Catalyst was kickstarted largely with Loren Coleman's funds. Funny how white knights can be tarnished so quickly :-o

Time will tell. I do hope the current writing and development teams stay largely intact, somewhere, somehow.

I am rather assuming that Catalyst has the funds to retain the licence.

If not then the entire suggestion is moot.

I could even envision a situation where Topps made such a spin-off a pre-condition of continuing the licence. If Catalyst are asking for a discount or a payment plan or whatever, Topps might be sympathetic but want guarantees that the situation won't be repeated.

With the Freelancers, Adama and Jennifer leaving, i doubt that somehow.

At least the german licensee has invested a lot into 4th edition, so this might be a solution without immediately switching to a 5th edition and it has a much better financial standing than Fanpro had.

I think that option would be a good one for SR, if they can get most of the Freelancers to work again on SR. That would be better in my eyes than SR staying with CGL while loosing a lot of creative input.
Still i think BT should remain with CGL because CGL did a very good job with it and will hopefully continue doing

Personally, I see a situation where someone is blocked (at the request of "management") from having access to resources that they would need to do their job effectively (especially in a situation where the person in question can't, in a traditional sense, be "fired") as a situation where you can say that someone was "forced out".

While I'm sure that someone could theoretically produce materials for SR supplements without having access to any of the content of either the freelance message boards or the project management software used to coordinate works in progress, it's highly unlikely that someone could contribute to anything other than a stand-alone work effectively without having at least *some* idea of the work that other people are doing on the same project. It's already been made fairly clear that the NDA would be considered applicable to any discussions on the freelancer message boards, so such a developer wouldn't even be able to get information second-hand (from other writers) without putting someone else in jeopardy.

This bothers me. I've long appreciated Peter Taylor's work and his readiness to answer questions and provide insights here on Dumpshock. Not to put too fine a point on it, he's been a big part of Shadowrun 4th Edition. When the goodbye thread appeared on Dumpshock, it was a real loss to see him go but there was never any hint from him that the reason was other than his choosing to take on different things.

If Peter Taylor left because Catalyst were mucking him around, then I'm even more pissed off with them than I am now. I don't know the guy, but I know his work.

K.

"The sky is falling, the sky is falling!"


And if CGL ceases to exist will they all commit seppuku?


Sounds serious, we should take up a collection so that CGL can hire some private investigators to bring this traitor to justice. Non-payment for services rendered is completely understandable but death's too good for someone who leaks a memo.


Anyone this critical will be around after Catalyst as well. Just maybe not in a business capacity.


I'm still betting on Jordan Weisman.

Regardless, there's too much money in this game for it to sit on a shelf and only a fool would try to D20 it now -- that ship has sailed.

that's nice. i don't see what it has to do with this situation though. mr coleman isn't a CEO. mr bills has been running the battletech side of things with great success, from everything i hear. and certainly, last i checked, none of us fans have any direct business dealings of any kind with mr coleman (though the unpaid freelancers certainly have a legitimate beef, since whether or not the money was directly earmarked for them or not, it's still money that could have been paid to them). and none of us fans are planning on hiring mr coleman as a CEO. frankly, while the original post was very informative and useful, the later post where the private letter was posted didn't add anything new and relevant.


the freelancers not being paid was confirmed by the freelancers long ago, without any need to resort to posting private correspondence.

additionally, going back to talking about the letter, this isn't because of the letter. if it was just some undefined person who had taken the money, and the freelancers were unpaid (which is the situation as we were aware of it before the private letter was leaked) you would (or should, based on your proclaimed moral stance) have likewise refused to buy their products.

and while i agree that ancient history would have been an excellent choice for writing on many shadowrun projects, and especially the 6th world almanac, i cannot fairly say that the new version won't live up to what he would have produced, because for all we know the new guy is some sort of prodigy when it comes to digging up hundreds of obscure references, meshing them all together, and creating a readable history out of them. or they could go an entirely different route and still produce excellent product. we don't really know, because we really don't know anything at all about the new guy.


why randall? he hasn't stolen anything from anyone. in point of fact, he's the one who's been stolen from. lots of people here are screaming bloody murder over what mr coleman did, but if anyone has a right to be doing that, it's randall. he's the one who's had his money stolen. he's the one who's been betrayed by a close friend and business associate. he's the one who loses even more money and his job if catalyst goes down the drain.

i find it interesting that he, in spite of all that, knowing all the information that he knows, he has chosen to not call for a witch hunt, whereas the rest of us, most of whom (and by most of whom, i mean "everyone who isn't an unpaid freelancer") have no real grievance against mr coleman, are wanting to get out the pitchforks and torches. honestly, let's suppose for a moment that the worst happens, and CGL tanks but nobody picks up the license or CGL doesn't tank but quality drastically drops.

what exactly have you lost? you still have your books, i trust. certainly, i haven't received any emails from catalyst advising me that my books are going to go to their creditors. you still have the fun you've had. you still have all the same setting. it might stop coming, sure, but then again, who knows, it may actually improve or maintain the quality. one way or another, you (again, meaning "everyone who isn't an unpaid freelancer") haven't actually lost anything.

Seppuku.
Well, seing how Weisman has stated interest in Battletech/Mechwarrior/Shadowrun, why not?

Last time Jordan got the properties, he raped BattleTech for quick cash during the collectible game craze. ShadowRun was ignored, then sent off a a licensee as part of the Classic BattleTech package. If he's buying the rights, it's so he can harmonize the games with the universes he's plotted out for Smith and Tinker video games. Thanks, but no thanks.

Is his statements being true irrelevant to whether you consider it right or wrong for him to made them? To most of us, that comes first.

K.

i am unaware of any indication that peter taylor left for any reason other than wanting to work on eclipse phase instead (in fact, i'm pretty sure he said something to that effect on the eclipse phase site somewhere, that eclipse phase resulted from him wanting to take shadowrun in that direction and the people in charge saying "no, that wouldn't be shadowrun anymore"... which i happen to agree with. eclipse phase is a cool idea and a good RPG, but it definitely isn't shadowrun)


- you asked, you got an answer. you can wine and moan about it, and pretend like it isn't a legitimate answer, but you really didn't even respond to the point.
- if CGL ceases to exist, who's going to pay them to do the work? who's going to pay the printers to print the book? who's going to co-ordinate everything? perhaps you didn't notice, but the RPG industry is not typically one that lends itself well to having vast sums of money to buy out other businesses.
- as was pointed out, repeatedly, leaking the information HARMS the freelancers. it reflects badly on all of them, not just the one who leaked the information, and it means they can pretty much forget about hearing any further information about the subject, because they (as a group, not individually) can no longer be trusted.
- perhaps. then again, perhaps if you treat someone like crap and throw them out, they also won't want to be around.
- that's nice. is Jordan Wiesman sitting on a huge pile of time and money that he can sink into less profitable businesses? does he have an already existing working relationship with topps? maybe. maybe not. we don't know. on the other hand, we do know that catalyst already has those things.

edit: to clarify, CGL already *has* invested those things. clearly, they don't have a huge pile of money, or they'd be paying their freelancers, if only to stop the bad press.

Well, at least we know there's someone with a vision, and, more importantly, the funds to actually PAY the People that are going to write the books for his stuff.
And if the vision of that one guy does not fit the vision of the writers, then i guess it's probably the writers who will put their visions into the IP more than him right?
And with Weisman, we might actually get a good shadowrun computer game . . And a new Mechwarrior. Yes, i will admit, Clickytech was . . reallybad.
And Dark Age too. And Shadowrun Heroclix too.

I think you're confusing Peter Taylor with Rob Boyle. Rob's the EP guy, the one with the green hair. Can't miss him.

in general, when the vision of management conflicts with the vision of notmanagement, the vision of management is what you're going to get. only it's probably going to suck even more, because at least management would have put some effort into it instead of just going through the motions.

Something that I have not seen mentioned (and I am surprised that I have not) is that now is the perfect time for someone to try and "steal away" the license. If someone(s) with enough start-up capital could grab a few of the former employees and freelancers, they could easily launch a bid for the license. It seems as though CGL would have little recourse to counter offer. Especially if they are already asking for concessions. Not certain who it could be, but the oppourtunity is there.

oh. right.

fwiw, i've never seen most of the people who work on shadowrun.

edit: on a side note, it still seems unlikely... from what i recall, that would be around the time the audit (or whatever they're calling it) got started, and it didn't seem to be troubling adam or jennifer. still a possibility, i suppose, but i just don't consider it likely.

then again, perhaps a review of his farewell would be in order?

Now that's a fallacy if I've ever seen one. I may agree with you that the license changing hands might potentially be a good thing (but with most of the staff from CGL - including those who left), but that doesn't justify a strawman.

From what I've seen Randall has done nothing wrong but it would appear that at some stage he has made decisions regarding what has happened that have caused Adam and Jennifer to quit. To quit actual jobs that were presumably putting food in mouths. As to whether or not they were 'forced out' that is something we can only speculate about until the next leak, or the one after that.

While he is indeed one of the victims here, there are many others and it seems likely that Randall will get his money back, I'm not so sure about all the freelancers.

I've lost many things that I consider valuable. More than I can be bothered to detail here but how about we start with Ancient's PACKS material. I've been waiting a long time to see that in print and to have the opportunity to discuss it on DS. It should have seen print long before the likes of Running Wild, as far as I know it's been finished for months. God knows how Jason plans on having that work replaced if AH retains the copyrights.

He says.



I don't know anything about Randall's personal circumstances or finances. I don't know how much money he's made out of Catalyst up till now or what other jobs he does or doesn't have. It's really irrelevant. He chose to forgive his friends for taking that money. What bearing does that have on what anyone else should or shouldn't want. Besides, spiritual forgiveness is a separate thing to recompense. Do I harbour deep abiding hatred for Loren Coleman? Not particularly. Does that in any way affect what I would like to see regarding him? No. He's endangered a game I care a lot about through his theft, I know that some hugely talented people who have put masses of work into the game can no longer work with him. As MadMan says, the company is replacable. People like Adam Jury and the freelancers, less so. Therefore the best thing is to see the money reclaimed from him so that the freelancers can be paid and Shadowrun removed from association with him so the talented people can resume their work and we can see the currently unpublished material they produced in a proper format.

Randall deciding to forgive his friend is all well and good for his soul (assuming that you believe what he says and hasn't profited himself), but it has no bearing on the legal implications of any of this or what is best for Shadowrun.

Don't argue what should or shouldn't happen on the grounds that "so and so says he's forgiven them and he says he lost more than you".

K.

FASA? Went under and didn't pay people. WizKidz? Went under and didn't pay people. Weisman's vision is to make as much money as possible, then run. At least the Colemans are (in theory) paying things back. Weisman just starts a new company and lets the entire cycle repeat itself.

That these properties have survived his horrible management is a testament to their quality and their fanbases, not his business acumen. I think Weisman regaining control of the licenses would be worse than Topps letting them go fallow.

There are various stages of "finished." My 'final draft' was submitted sometime before SR4A went to print, because I had to revise it from SR4 to SR4A. Then several months later I added the Adept Sets. Then a couple weeks later I amended the Adept Sets at someone's request. Then, finally, it was proofed. Then I had to go back and fix the proofer's mistakes.

As for what's going on right now, to the best of my knowledge Jason has asked another freelancer to re-write PACKS from scratch.

This does not seem accurate with the timeline of events I remember. Did not Weisman leave FASA and Wizkids before the problems started?

Which is going to be a metric shit ton of work if they can't use the material you created.

It had layout work done to it before Running Wild did it not?

Meaning Runners toolkit probably won't be out for a longer time, since PACKS was, as far as i understood, more or less a complete random encounter creation system.

edit: *points at crizh* JINKS!

I've been badgering a friend of mine to write a tool for my website that would be a kind of packs system, from what I'm guessing yours is. I actually tried to write one myself long ago with spreadsheets, but I didn't have the skills. If I'd known you were doing one, I'd possibly have held off. If Catalyst is re-writing yours, we'll probably just go ahead and put ours together and release it. I have less concern about clashing with them if that's so.

Though on a related note, it would have made more sense to pay you for the work you'd done than to hire someone new to do it. After all, they have to avoid any neat solutions that would be a copy of your work, there are deadline issues, the editing and review cycle to go through again. The only way in which it is more logical to hire someone new than to pay you for yours, is if they aren't going to pay the new person but reckon they can get the product anyway. I wonder if that has occured to your replacement.

K.

1) you never had that.
2) you still haven't lost it, yet. assuming CGL survives, there will be a replacement for the material. assuming CGL doesn't survive and is replaced, the stated plan is for ancient history to propose it to the new company.

now, if it is replaced, will it be as good as what AH would have done? i don't know. i know AH does good work, but i don't even know who they are getting to replace him, let alone whether that person or people produce quality work... but until i see it, i have no reason to automatically assume it's going to suck just because AH didn't write it.

AH is a good writer. he is not the *only* good writer.

It was in layout at one point, but given the number of changes made during proofing, it probably would have had to be laid out again.

I did something around 1,250 - 1,500 calculations for PACKS, at a conservative minimum. I think proofers found about 250 mistakes - wrong prices, bad addition, wrong word choice, etc. Of those, I think about 50 were "wrong" and had to be fixed - either because the proofers were actually incorrect in their math/judgment, or because their "fixes" screwed up the profile/kit. Mark Dynna did good proofing work, because we talked about the design philosophy and his changes were always in-line with how I built the profiles, aiming always for certain design parameters. Others, not so much.

I wonder if this has occured to ANY new Freelancers CGL hired over the last time.

CGL didn't pull the contract, ancient history did.

he was understandably mad about being told to shut up, and presumably about being given no further work as a freelancer (essentially, if not quite officially yet when he terminated his contract)

By the same logic, if nasty me decides to cancel your Christmas come next December, you've not lost anything because you never had that.

And no, the shaky promise that there will be an equivalent Winter Festival and presents does not sufficiently reassure.

K.

*points at AH*
do those numbers scare you yet Khadim? *snickers*

I'm sorry, you seem to have mistaken me for someone who needs other people's posts to be explained to him. Ah yes, there's Ancient History's post a few above yours. Hmmm. He appears to have been kicked out for making truthful statements to another person over a private 1 to 1 conversation.

Tell you what, why don't you let AH say what AH thinks and feels. He does it better than you.

K.

1) I'm not entirely sure I'm at liberty to deny that.

2) If Catalyst survives the replacement will be significantly different, the work AH did will be lost. If they don't Ancient's work might yet see the light of day.

The replacement work might be up to the same quality, who can tell, but it will be a massive amount of work and the product will be delayed. I only have so much time, I consider all of it to be valuable, I don't want to wait another year for this material and I want to get the material AH produced which I know to be good.

Random, no. This wasn't a "roll on table 3 and table 4, add the results together and there's your PC/NPC." PACKS was designed to speed and facilitate character creation, but not to the roll a couple dice/press a button level. You still had to, for example, buy attributes (though any attribute requirements for the profile(s) were given).


Jason offered to continue to pay me for my work on PACKS and other drafts. I don't believe that I (or any other freelancer) would actually get paid, despite Jason's promises, so I terminated the contracts entirely. I'm not willing to get down on my knees and beg to be paid, and no one else is going to get down on his knees and beg me not to take my drafts and go home. (Honestly, I think Jason was glad to be rid of me. We butted heads a lot.)

ok, that actually makes it worse.
what with SR4's creation rules, this has to be an metric ass load ton of work x.x

this isn't anything new. AH has said what happened in this situation several times in this discussion already. not in a hidden way either, he flat out told us exactly what he did. given you were acting in a manner that indicated you didn't know that, i felt it cogent to point out that we already have that information, and that no speculation is actually required. if you don't want me to tell you what information is already given to us, then don't ask for it.

Ah that's interesting. This is different to what we're cooking up then. What we are planning is something tentatively called the 'GruntMeister' (I wish I'd thought of that name). Basically, it's a four or five click process to making grunts or fairly generic NPCs. Pick a metatype, pick a base attribute profile (medium physical, advanced mental, etc), pick an implant package (none, cheap close combat, advanced tank package, etc) and pick a gear package (cheap ranged, heavy weapons, etc). Press download and you get your grunt sheet. Yours sounds a great deal more sophisticated.

This is where I say I hate to speak for Peter, but despite the farewell thread on this forum, leaving as line developer wasn't his choice.

There's been a few mentions of the freelancers still not being paid, especially after books were pulled. And that seems to be an ongoing concern, in a lot of this discussion.

Jason, is it possible to mention to management that it would be possibly beneficial to drop another press release when repayment has begun? It might help to give a little feedback to the community that way. Not that numbers or anything would be needed, simply just "Hey, that plan we set up...we started it. Checks have been cut." I realize GAMA/Topps meeting will delay things, but just a suggestion to pass along.

I also realize there's some folks who think that repayment won't happen. And you might very well be right, I have no idea. I'm just asking if it does, it'd probably help to let the fanbase know. Since you know, it's been an oft-discussed issue.

I didn't. And given that his own post is just a little way above yours, I wonder why you felt the need to start telling people what he said. All you did was change it to put a different emphasis on it, saying how "he got mad", etc.

K.

Hey, AH, would you be willing to post some builds on the Cast of Shadows thread using some of the kits as a basis? You wouldn't be releasing any of the material, just a character built using it.

Some of the more eclectic stuff was fascinating.

(cough###Gunsel karc*st##cough##)

This is pretty similar to the original idea behind PACKS, something called "Tier-based Character generation." The initial idea was, basically, to simplify character generation by having three preset "tiers" that would present several options instead of the typical point system, and you would add the options from the different tiers up (the math worked out ahead of time so you didn't break any of the regular chargen rules, which is the tricky part). I don't know if I have my notes on it still. Anyway, PACKS was an offshoot of that, designed to be mostly compatible with the third "tier" - a 100 BP "profile" of a character in a certain career.

So, instead of 'memo', replace it with 'bank account balance and a portion of production expenses'. I wasn't referring to the email Frank posted. If it was, indeed, sent to people who were not under an NDA, then it was eventually going to get to the public somehow. I was referring to his original post that started this all, which included some hard numbers which would not have been sent out in a memo but would have been known by only a select few who actually work for Catalyst.

He has further hinted at getting additional insider info from people who work or at Catalyst.

Non-payment for services is indeed bad, and it's breaking a contract.
Disclosing private information is also bad, and it's breaking a contract.

Both can be justified under certain circumstances, but I don't think that anything in this situation justifies either.

I'm gonna hold off on it for just the moment because a) if CGL folds I can sell it to the next company and b) if CGL doesn't fold, someone else has already expressed a modicum of interest ($$$) in it, so they get first dibs. Worst comes to worst, I'll just publish the whole thing online, warts and all.

Good.

Bloody right too.

Assuming that info doesn't get leaked first!

But seriously, that is probably a good idea. Hopefully it'll come to pass.

Something that could be awesome is an app version of it. I don't know what sort of deal is in place for the Heavy Metal Pro guy to do what he does. I know when you buy the software, you buy it from him, so he doesn't have to worry about Catalyst's financial situation, other than having to deal with some new license holder should his license come up for renewal.