This is correct. I'm happy to go ahead with stuff that has been written, but some writers do not believe they will be paid for it and have terminated their contracts. That means I cannot use what they have produced, and I don't have many other options besides generating new text.

As part of my regular reminders, I'm going to point out that I was a freelancer for years before I was line developer. I still do some freelancing. A lot of my perspective is based on being a freelancer. Thus, I have no interest in screwing over freelancers.

Jason H.

Knasser hit the nail pretty firmly on the head here. Rather than approach AH with a check and an apology (a check for under $4K total, I believe, for multiple products), they decided to rewrite entire portions of books. I will speculate there were hot emotions on both sides - hey, Bobby and Jason are both red-heads, what do they expect? - but there is a simple solution. Was it explored? Not to my knowledge. It does prompt the question that perhaps it financially makes sense to pay someone else far, far later than to pay now... for whatever reason. I don't believe it has anything to do with spite; I'm sure Jason would much rather everyone be paid. So if you rule out spite, and you rule out convienence, what is left?

Politics....

Keep the Faith

The key sentence here is "not to my knowledge." Jennifer has not been a part of discussions between Bobby and myself. It comes down to this--I was willing to publish Bobby's stuff. Bobby, as he has stated, does not believe he would ever be paid for things published by Catalyst. From his perspective, he would rather hold on to his work rather then let it go for what he believes would be no compensation. Further, he has stated he believes there will be opportunities to publish some works elsewhere and be compensated for them. He has every right in the world to do what he believes is best for his work and to feel comfortable about any business relationships he is in.

If someone does not want their work to be published, I cannot force them to publish it.

Jason H.

I'm glad I could put a face on the situation, hopefully for everyone. But it isn't just me. It's the new dad with a baby and a mortgage who could use the money for medical bills. It's the single mom paying her way through school who could have really used the money for Christmas presents for her daughter. It's the man facing bankruptcy who just lost his job, and could have really used the money to make a few house payments until he found another job, as the bank threatened to take his house. It's the student who desparately wanted to go to GenCon and couldn't. It's the man who's been out of work for 6 months and can't pay rent. It's all the employees of CGL who took late paychecks, or skipped getting paid altogether, because they were told "the money isn't there."

These are a real examples of people, who I won't name, who begged and pleaded with Catalyst for even a portion of their back owed pay.

There are hundreds of people who have freelanced for Catalyst. Writers, artists, editors, layout artists. All of them fans. All of them who provided work for Catalyst in good faith. People who have written pleading letters to Catalyst asking for money, people who have threatened to sue, people who have just walked away, burned by the company.

When you read about what's happening now, think about all those people. Not just me (although I will admit to being far more touched than I could imagine by all the incredible offers of well wishes and support).

Then think about the two people who took that money -- as has been stated in letters released by folks other than me (I wasn't ever even sent that freelancer letter).

If Catalyst can't--and hasn't in years--met it's contractual obligations to all the freelancers who poured their hearts into their work, why can't they? Where did the money go? I know. You know. If they can't even pay a few thousand dollars to get products back into production, how can they pay for the larger debts? How are they supposed to pay tens of thousands of dollars for printing? For shipping? For royalties? For all the other expenses a printing company faces?

Yes, there is a face on this entire debate. It's the face of a hundred people like me, who really could use the money they're owed. And who, most likely, will not see it. There's the true tragedy.

I don't blame him holding out at this point. While I want Runner's Toolkit as soon as possible, I want it right. The version AH wrote for sounds right, the version currently in production... it's a mystery.

Jason,

Would you mind giving us some freelancers names? I think a good portion of us would recognize them and knowing who is working on upcoming products may help ease fears of a lack of quality moving forward. You don't even have to tell us how is working on what or how much, just drop some names here.

Edit: Just read Jennifer's post. Screw it. I'm holding out on buying Shadowrun products until the license passes on.

I suggest we wait a bit before saying such things. Give it a couple weeks, so we see the developments of the story. It's not that I don't trust Jennifer Harding, but it's always better to keep one's head cool and know the whole story, because we might actually rush to the wrong conclusions. If the next days confirm our fears and bad opinions concerning CGL, then it'll always be time to make such statements.
(To the freelancers and ex-employees: this isn't criticism against you - at all. I tend to be on your side here, but we don't have a picture as clear as the ones involved in this whole mess can have.)

Especially since you can't buy much in the way of new books right now anyway.

I don't think that is the right approach, either. It's your personal decision and I will do hell to tell you otherwise. I even understand where you're coming from and from a purely emotional viewpoint I even agree.
That said, not buying products, means not getting money into CGL. Not getting money into CGL also means less of a chance for those writers, still waiting on their paychecks to ever be paid.
Do I expect CGL to pay the moeny they owe? I don't know. I really don't have enough information to form a proper opinion here. There are many sides to a story and while I doubt anyone involved is outright lieing to us (including current CGL employees), personal testimony is always biased. That's the nature of how we store and process information.

Does boycotting CGL ease your own conscience and/or cater towards your own moral/ethical viewpoint? Most surely it will. Does it better the chances that those people, who put all their hard work into providng you with top quality shadowrun sourcebooks get paid? Hardly. In the worst case it will even have the opposite effect.

My personal opinion: Things are FUBAR. CGL is to blame. No doubt about it. But it's the CGL upper management, not all of their employees. I doubt the situation can be rectified at this point. I am convinced that Topps will not renew the license. I am convinced CGL will try to ship out as many SR products as they can until the license runs out. I also believe Jennifer Harding about the request to falsify financial information and I am certain that the "mistaken" shipments of Midnight were far from an accident. I am convinced that the CGL upper management will sell those sourcebooks they have finished and not yet published, even without the permission of the authors.
Do I believe the CGL management to be amoral and devious? Not more than any other large company I know. They know they are on a sinking ship and they will try to get as much booty off the husk as they can before the sea swallows them whole.
That's just a personal opinion, though and as I said before, I lack the nescessary information for have a proper, informed opinion on the subject matter. Hell, I'll be the first one dancing on the streets, if CGL proves me wrong!

Jennifer makes a good point about this whole situation in that the pain of it all has been borne by the freelancers. I know this is a good point because the summer of 2009 was one of the most stressful of my life. I really needed money to come in, and it wasn't coming. It was incredibly frustrating.

So why, at the end of the summer, did I take a job with Catalyst, whose late payments were a source of a lot of this stress? Well, first, because I love Shadowrun. I've fought for it many times over the years, and if the game needed help, I was going to do what I could to help it. It's such a great setting, it deserves to shine. But another reason for taking the job is that if I wanted the freelancers to be paid, the best way for that to happen was to get the Shadowrun line running smoothly as possible.

So now we come to the current situation. Some payments to freelancers have been made, but Catalyst is far from caught up. What do I do about this? How do I respond?

Some of me responds with anger. If I'm not being paid because there's no money to pay me, that's annoying but understandable. If I'm not being paid because the money to pay me has gone somewhere else, though, that's more than annoying. It's infuriating, which explains the passionate reactions many have had.

But one of my priorities is, and will remain, getting the freelancers paid. How will we accomplish that? Well, I'm not a finance guy, I don't know the efforts that will go into raising money, finding new revenue streams, etc. I know those efforts are happening, but I don't know the details of them because it's not my thing. But I do know this--if Catalyst goes away, or if it loses the Shadowrun license, that's it. No one gets paid. It will be FanPro all over again. If a company is not a going concern, then it has no revenue to pay people. All the pain Jennifer refers to will continue.

While I could talk about my reasons to have confidence or not have confidence in Catalyst's management, that's of secondary importance to the fact I mentioned before--if Catalyst goes away, the freelancers' pain continues. The only way to get people paid what they are owed is to get Catalyst's ship righted. Yesterday, I'm told management spent 12 hours getting information together and writing checks. More payments will be going out. Why did it take 12 hours? Partly because there was so much work to do; partly because of the new systems, mentioned in Randall's letter, that have been instituted to make sure all money is accounted for properly. The work is underway to correct things, but it will take time and effort. I'll add my effort to the whole to see how much I can help it.

I cannot speak for anyone else. Others have reasons for making their decisions, and I respect the thought they put into it. But this is why I'm doing what I'm doing--to try to get all the freelancers paid, so that the pain Jennifer is talking about is relieved, and not made permanent.

Jason H.

Otakusensei i wouldn't pretend you were ever on the fence to begin with when a review of your posts indicates you never were. But I thank you for your honesty.

Jennifer: Ouch, my sympathies.

It should be apparent at this point, but Jason has far greater hope and trust in Randall and Loren than I do. While I understand that he's trying to do what he thinks is right, I don't respect how he's going about it, and I believe he is actually making the situation worse by his actions. At this point, I believe Catalyst's collapse is inevitable, all Jason has accomplished by trying to prolong the gameline under CGL is to make the situation even longer and more painful for everyone involved.

I for one, neither doubt your enthusiasm, nor your willingness to work on resolving this issue. But based on my (very, VERY limited) knowledge, you are not in a position to guide CGL's financial expenses.
I don't envy you. You're in a tough spot and no way in hell I'd want to trade places with you. You're the public face of a dilemma, you may as well had no influence on. You're the target of well founded frustration, you feel yourself as well.

I wish you well and all the success in the world, for you said it very well: if CGL goes down, no one gets paid. I admire the quality of the SR products that hit the market under CGL, both in writing as well as production quality. Those were some of the best sourcebooks to come out in over a decade. I want that to continue. I want CGLs problems to be solved, the freelancers to be paid, the bad blood laid to rest and the quality products that were already in development, like the awe inspiring DoTA series to see the light of day, providing untold hours of etertainment to SR fans around the globe.
That's what I want. It's not what I expect, though. And I am fairly confident in my assumption that said expectation is something I share with a good deal of fellow SR players here. It is that expectation that makes you job that much harder. As I said: I don't envy you. Not a bit.

As I mentioned, checks were written yesterday. Had Catalyst folded earlier, those checks would not have been written. So it's a small improvement, and my goal is to get product out so that more improvements will follow.

Jason H.

If the sole issue was seeing to it that some freelancers were paid, or that some books were published, then that would be an improvement. Those are not the issues at stake here. The individuals responsible for CGL's current financial pickle remain in control of the company; the freelancers have continued to be treated poorly, and the books are currently being pushed out with an eye towards speed rather than quality, with no overall plan for the course of the game. CGL is by its actions and inaction continuing to devalue the game and do disservice to its fans.

Put it another way: I'd rather see no book out than a hackjob put out to rake in a few more bucks before Catalyst loses the license.

Though I am personally loath to discuss this with anyone, I feel like there's a lot of people piling on CGL in general, and on Jason in particular, and I'm damned if I'm going to watch that and not do something about it. At the same time, this is going to seem like I'm pouring salt on some people's wounds; this, I'm afraid, can't be helped, but it's not what I'm trying to do.

Jason's speaking the truth. Checks are being cut. I was informed yesterday that a check had been cut for my contributions to Running Wild. If this is, in fact, the case (and I've no reason to doubt it; I was informed by someone whom I respect), I'll know it by Friday. That's approximately the outside of first-class postal service between their corner of Washington and my corner of Texas. I'll know soon thereafter if the check clears. Once that happens, I'll release my hold on the book.

There is no instant fix. I feel for Jennifer and a bunch of my other co-freelancers who've gotten screwed over the years by this situation, but there is no instant remedy. I'm inclined to think the best of a situation; I'm not the cynic I was in my youth. Perhaps I'm too much of an optimist (one of the things that keeps me from writing as much for this line as I might like, I suppose; I prefer a glimmer of hope to my fiction and my gaming). But I already see some things improving, and I believe that things will continue to improve.

In the meantime, try a little faith. It'll do wonders for your blood pressure, and give you something to do besides try and poison the well.

What happens if they don't? I'm not meaning to call you out on it, but it's a sentiment I've seen a number of people (freelancers and fans) express as impacting their plans and thoughts. What changes for you if CGL retains the license?

Ken,

I didn't realize you were writing for Trek and Wars! That's good news. It's hard finding a non-BattleTech bibliography for you online, though. What SR, ST, and SW (you're mastering the S-series!) products should we look for?

- Ket

Ok, i preface this with all the respect that is due you as a a fan of your work on here in the books, but we get it, you don't like the way things are going, you don't trust the people in charge, you don't like the new writers, line developer, management, etc. But you know what, it's no longer any special concern of yours. You terminated that relationship.

You are basically trying to have things both ways, you have been dealt out of the poker game at your own request but want to critique how the other players play their hands, who plays, and to criticize the rules the game is played by as if you hadn't given up your seat at the table. You further In fact you are actively hoping the company will fold and you can sell your material to another entity buying the license so you have an active interest in CGL folding.

I recognize the freelancers who have not been paid have every reason to be upset and have every right to make that choice to terminate contracts Ethically and legally you should be paid for work completed. However you've terminated your contracts, burned your bridges and walked and are now praying for failure.

I believe Jason when he says he's working to get the freelancers paid, partially because I have no vested interest in the situation and have been happy with his efforts so far. I have no vested attachment to any author or another so I don't see it as a travesty if new writers are brought in to replace those who have canceled contracts, I wasn't cheated out of money so my concern about where money comes from is minimal. Do i love shadowrun? Surely. But CGL hasn't done me wrong in that regard on the back end, in fact they've done great as far as i'm concerned.

So at the end of the day I will say this History, welcome to the spectator gallery, have some peanuts. To all the other members of said gallery: If folks want to organize a boycott or something else that's fine, but please don't pretend like it will fix some great moral injustice or that it will actually help the game or help those people get paid, because it won't.

Full Disclosure: I have recently been engaged to begin writing for Missions so i guess in the loosest sense of the word I am now or at least soon to be a freelancer. It is my understanding I may be paid for my work, however this doesn't factor into this policy as I've more or less stated it from the get go and I've done a lot of work for other "living style" campaigns that I liked a lot less then shadowrun for free, so the fact that I'm theoretically on the payroll doesn't change much for me.

Not a whole hell of a lot. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. I won't write SR professionally under Jason, Loren, or Randall again, and frankly after my salt-the-earth-behind-me approach, I doubt they'd want to work with me either. Such is the way of things.


The joys of a public forum. I can still voice my opinion, even if my opinion currently has no more weight than yours or anyone else's. I make no pretense about that.


This is the nut of the issue, I think. In a very real sense, you're write. Catalyst doesn't owe its fans anything. They have no obligation to cater to the fanbase, either products or information. They have certain business obligations, but that's it. Plenty of players feel entitled to answers and whatnot from Catalyst or those that work for it, but nobody has a requirement to tell the public jack squat. Nobody's entitled.

But according to what's been posted, these checks are for only a select group of freelancers. Obstensibly, payments are made in order of the importance of their projects; the cynical part of me says they're going out to those who are toeing the party line.

More seriously, here's my problem. Your own accountant, someone with a more complete financial picture than you, says the situation is dire. You're not able to pay off all your freelancers, for reasons you either don't know, don't understand, or cannot reveal. And even then, only a "special" group of them are getting paid: the one who quit due to ethics, for example, isn't getting paid; while Patrick Goodman, who has staunchly defended CGL, is. So the question is: who's deciding which freelancers get paid? Is it you? If not, then who, and why are they going over your head on this one?

I'm beginning to get the picture that you may just be the Line Developer on paper; the actual decisions are made by others. (Namely, Mr. Bills and Mr. Coleman.)

Jennifer: I applaud your integrity. We know there's a lot of freelancers out there who are suffering right now, but you were the one with the courage to speak up. That's why we want to help you. Let's see what Dumpshock can come up with for you. If there's only a token amount, you can keep it or return it; if there's a lot, you can share it with the other freelancers who did not get paid. We know you're capable of honest accounting so you're the best person for the Freelancer Relief Fund.

That's the problem. If CGL goes belly up and has to be liquidated, everything that is left of the company funds and acquired during the sell-out is distributed among the debtors as a percentage of their demands. A low, one-digit percentage usually.

The fact that many freelancers chose a course of action which could lead to precisely that situation, instead of waiting for CGL to fulfill their contract obligations, probably says a lot about their confidence in the company.

In my experience, Shadowrun Line Developers have never really had control over who got paid when. I know Rob Boyle and Peter Taylor struggled with that also, because they would contact FanPro or Catalyst management on my behalf and would often get the same lack of reply that I got.

It will all come down to the license renewal.

To my knowledge, a Line Developer merely sets the course for new products of a particular line and insures they are in conform with existing products(canon). If I am wrong about that, by all means, someone please correct me.

I've been holding my peace for a while and I have little interest in wading into the CGL controversy at this time However, as an someone with first hand knowledge of the development process and what Shadowrun went through at FanPro and following the transition to Catalyst, there are certain things I would very much like the fans to keep in mind. In fact, I'm not sure how clear Jason and the folks at the top of Catalyst are on these matters because though I repeatedly made these issues a point of discussion they were never satisfactorily addressed.

Following the release of SR4 the vast majority of freelancers that carried this game through SR3 "retired," in fact, for almost all the people involved in the writing of the corebook that was their last contribution to Shadowrun in the last few years. Note that I'm not complaining or aiming to dish on anyone. All those authors made invaluable contributions to Shadowrun through the years, some putting up with a lot of problems during the FanPro years and several of them getting burned at when FanPro closed and failed to pay outstanding freelancer debts. We owe these guys a lot, I know I wouldn't have gotten into freelancing without them.

However, the fact remains that even before I took over as Shadowrun line developer the freelancer pool had shrunk to such extremes that - pull out your SR4 books boys and girls - for the last five years less than 6 people have been responsible for 80%+ of the material written and released by FanPro and Catalyst. I actively worked to recruit new talent but the learning curve is not easy and I must admit I'm a perfectionist and refused to hand over what I felt was key material to untried and untested talent. The learning curve for writing Shadowrun is steep by industry standards and there are plenty of ewll-meaning and enthusiastic people wanting to freelance for Shadowrun. Unforunately for each one writer who knows his stuff there's two who ask questions like "can all augmented people see Augmented Reality? "or insist on calling all Awakened folks "psychics." That said, John Dunn's Missions crew provided some awesome emerging talent and some new blood sought us out and produced some outstanding material (as you've seen in Vice and will get to see in Corp Guide - I hope).

But the truth remains that if you've read and appreciated Street Magic, Augmentation, Arsenal, Unwired, Runner Havens, Corporate Enclaves, Feral Cities, Emergence, Ghost Cartels, Runners' Companion, Dusk, Midnight, Vice (not to mention the unpublished Runners' Toolkit and Corp Guide) you owe much of your enjoyment to a very small number of people. Do yourself a favor and take a look at the credits. The same names come up again and again as writers. These guys knew the setting inside and out, they did their research, they enjoyed playing off each other's ideas, they shared a vision for the game, and they were team players. If Shadowrun is alive and thriving today, if the fanbase has had reasons to be as enthusiastic now as it was 20-odd years ago it owes a huge debt to these people. Not only did they carry the brunt of the load but when other authors dropped out they consistently stepped up to the plate and produced quality material. They have always been there and gone above and beyond the call of duty (or paychecks). They were behind some of the coolest twists in the setting in the last few years, keeping Shadowrun fresh and innovative. And although I haven't always seen eye to eye with some of them, my respect for all of them is without bounds and I personally believe this wouldn't still be the game we know and love without them.

In case you're wondering, yes, those names include Jennifer Harding and Bobby Derie. And it saddens me that of those 5 or so names have repeatedly not been given their due by Catalyst and are unlikely to work for the company in the future.

I think that is an excellent idea (even better than my original idea)!

Well done!

Don't put words in my mouth, Cain. (Emphasis is, of course, my own.)

While I've not been of the doom-and-gloom school here, and I've been vocal in places about people feeling that they're entitled to know a hell of a lot of things that they're patently not entitled to know, I don't know that I've "staunchly defended CGL". I'm pretty pissed off with them, in fact, about the whole damn situation; I just don't take it out on them in a public forum, since I think such actions lack a good bit of (read: any) professional decorum. I've withheld copyright on material I've written, keeping my deathless prose out of the hands of those who might actually get some use out of it and making the situation worse in the process (no copyright means they can't sell the book, which keeps revenues from coming in to help others get paid).

I've also watched professional colleagues of mine, many of whom I consider friends, turn on other professional colleagues of mine, again many of whom I consider friends, and present themselves in what I consider the worst possible light (Bobby, I'm looking at you). I wind up having to take sides against friends, people I respect and admire, and that is another intolerable something else for which I hold CGL responsible. And I've talked to them about it...behind the scenes, in private communications, the way it should have been handled in the first fucking place. I think the whole goddamn situation has been handled abominably, from Frank's initial hatchet-job until this very moment. I haven't helped much, though I've tried to calm things a bit along the way.

Make no mistake, though, I have not staunchly defended CGL. They've got a lot to answer for, but I believe that steps are being taken to make those answers in the due process of time.

Now, that being said, I have staunchly defended waiting to see what happens, none of us to my knowledge actually having a functional crystal ball. And I have staunchly defended people who I think are getting a lube-free assfuck from this community for no reason other than this community thinks they're somehow entitled to something that nobody outside of a person's employer and immediate family are entitled to know. None of you...not a single goddamn one of you...has any business knowing what I'm owed by CGL. Nobody here has any goddamn business knowing what CGL owes any of the freelancers. That they've decided to share is their call.

But there's a whole lot of people here in this thread who seem to have as their sole motivation tearing down CGL and their representatives, not because CGL's done wrong (and they have), but because they think it's their right to destroy. And you all know who you are. And it's because of people like you, who want to destroy things just because you can, more than anything else, that I don't like writing for this game.

I'm really, really furious right now, and I'm rambling, so I'm going to stop now...but don't put words in my mouth again, especially when you don't have the first clue what I'm thinking or feeling.

EDIT: Just fixing typos.

I think you summed up for all of the fans what we want.

One option that comes to mind is that a new license holder would honor all the CGL contracts to have the content. Another option is that TOPPS requires a change of management for CGL for them to retain the license.

Or it could be because Patrick is withholding copyright on material that's right now at the distributors or in the sales window, huh, reading comprehension vice accusation, who'd have thunk. ALso by Jennifer's own admision, former accountant, she was never Jason's accountant as she quit before he became line developer, so nice facts check there as well.

I'm honestly not going to dignify the rest of your post with a response and would understand Jason feeling the same way as you'd more or less have to work at misrepresenting the facts as handily as you've done.

Actually, in my understanding that's not entirely true. I am not a lawyer nor do I claim to be. In the past few weeks, though, I have learned more than I ever hoped to about laws bankruptcy, copyright violation

I am not saying this applies to this case, but in cases where individuals have blatantly "pierced the corporate veil" civil suits following a successful criminal trial can sometimes result in garnishment of the wages of the individuals involved until those debts are paid.

The corporate veil is the distance between a person and the company he or she owns or for which he or she serves as a director. Let's say someone - an owner of a company, for LLCs those owners are called "members" - has been using company funds for personal use and that can be documented. It can be argued (perhaps unsuccessfully) that the person using those funds is the same as the company for the purposes of recovering debts and other financial issues. In the case where such co-mingling of funds can be tied to the company's (in)ability to pay the debts, and the same person is found to have avoided paying personal taxes, committed wire fraud, falsified company tax returns, committed grand larceny in multiple states, avoided paying sales tax in multiple states, avoided paying employment taxes by not properly registering employees, and so on, it is almost unavoidable that the veil be pierced. If the co-mingling is actually embezzlement, it is possible the bankruptcy court will decide these debts are non-dischargeable - thereby resulting in garnishment of wages.

That, good readers, is a source of incredible pain for one attempting to avoid debts like these by declaring personal bankruptcy after embezzlement has occurred.

Again, I'm not an expert nor am I saying this applies in the case of IMR Productions, LLC, or its label, Catalyst Game Labs. That would require someone with an MBA or other authoritative qualifications to make that judgement.

- Ket

No.

Synner,

You mention that even before you had taken over as Shadowrun Line Developer that the freelancer pool had shrunk to extremes. As one of the freelancers that date back prior to FanPro...I would suggest that you do not go there. The 'Werner did it' myth has been popularized by...shall we say...parties interested in shifting the blame of the afore mentioned limited SR freelancer pool and perpetuated by beneficiaries of the closed pool policy.

It was a very deliberate policy shift towards freelancers.

That is my understanding I'm not familiar with the exact dates of resignation and you know what, I don't really care to be, what I know as Patrick points out above is that Cain is more or less twisting the facts so hard their screaming and drawing context where there is none to be had. He's pushing his own opinion and that's fine but he's lying or at the very least blatantly misrepresenting the facts and that I take issue with.

In my opinion, that wouldn't be a bad thing to happen. But my opinion is based on insufficient information.

I'm new, an immigrant from the Battletech boards (though I don't share there same degree of optimism over the situation that most over there do), so this might not be the best place for a first post. Ah well, here goes:

The way I see it, CGL seems to be doing what it needs to in order to stay afloat. I'm curious as to what people expect the company to do differently in order to address the situation. The company wants to stay alive and continue producing books (a reasonable assumption, I hope). The question, then, is to what extent are they willing to act in order to stay alive as a company? While I would hope engaging in illegal practices would be off the table, one may still be presented with serious ethical concerns that skirt the boundary of illicit activity. Now, if I was in the same position (based on my admittedly limited knowledge of said position) as Randall Bills and stuck to my moral guns by declining to work with Coleman, I very much doubt that the company would have any chance at recovering. No freelancers get paid, justice is dealt to the person who took the money, and things get reset (hopefully with a new company). Some of you may believe that that is exactly what should have been done. But to do so would preclude any opportunity to set things right. So many people have been negatively impacted by these events that do not deserve what has been done to them. I'm sure that the leadership and employees of CGL are all too aware of this fact. And I'm also pretty sure that, for the most part, these leaders and employees are not bad people that develop games solely for the money. Most, I hope, love the franchises and earnestly believe that they are in the best position to do them justice. If I was in a difficult position of responsibility and given the choice between zealously sticking to my principles while letting my employees take a bath and subjecting something I love to an uncertain future or striking a deal with the devil to try to do right by the people who depended on me, well, that's one hell of a choice.

Some of you probably think I'm being overly dramatic, or am giving too much credit to the moral character of those that run the show. Heck, that might turn out to be the case. But it may also be that this event serves as a very serious wake-up call to CGL about how they do business. As Hardy has said, checks have already been sent, checks that wouldn't exist if CGL had elected to let things fall where they may. Either they adapt or they fail, and that's fine with me. But I can't fault them for trying their best to stay alive, even if they really dropped the ball the first time around.

For the record, I am receiving some payments along with quite a few other freelancers who forced the hand of Catalyst by withholding copyright. My beliefs may be irrelevant, but I believe that checks would not have been sent out at this time if copyrights had not been withheld. I also believe that public opinion - your all's opinion! - helped push CGL to do the right thing. The people I mentioned before, the other people I know are waiting for payment? I do not believe that they have all received payments. All the contracts I'm owed for - including Vice and Corporate Guide - I am not being paid for at this time. I do not know how the decision was made on which contracts to pay, which not to pay, and I won't speculate on those decisions. I only know that decisions were made. I'm getting paid for a few of my contracts (Dusk, Seattle 2072, and 6th World Almanac). I imagine there are a lot of authors/artists/editors/freelancers who are *not* getting paid for any of their outstanding contracts. I chose to be vocal. I got paid (partially). The other freelancers, who need and deserve and are owed the money as much as I am? Probably out of luck. Do I hate that? Yes. Absolutely. Do I think all the people who contributed should be paid in full, and hate that those of us who started screaming got paid, and those who are patiently waiting did not??? YES. Is it fair? NO. Every dollar that paid me did not pay another debt of CGL. Did I deserve it more than another person or company? I honestly don't know.

I chose to draw a line in the sand. I chose to state, "I am unwilling to accept more promises of payments to come and let you keep on publishing and selling my work." I chose to. And yes, I have knowledge of the situation that may have colored my decision. Perhaps other decisions I saw being made caused me to lose faith in CGL. The other freelancers who chose to withhold copyright did so for their own reasons.

I will state, however, that I remain a huge fan of Shadowrun. I still play in a weekly game (gonna start a new one that BishopMcQ is GMing for us, in fact, can't wait, building a technomancer for it). I love the universe. I think that some of the best books have been produced in the past few years, although I still have fondness for some of my 2nd Edition books. I know that some of the products in the pipeline (let's not speculate on where the printing money is) are AMAZING. 6th World Almanac? Seriously, amazing. The rest of the DotA series? The fourth one has one scene that Aaron wrote that honestly made me laugh so hard I almost burst. Corp Guide has my write up on Horizon and Aztechnology, and I've been dying for those to go to print for months and months. I have confidence that there is a lot of great works in the pipeline.

Like Bobby, however, I have little confidence in the current Director team's ability to do them justice or to keep CGL viable. That's my personal beliefs, which, like personal ethics, are impossible to quantify.

And, perhaps because I'm a girl, or because I'm a single mother, or because I've visited Loren's house, my heart bleeds for all the freelancers who should be getting paid, and aren't.

I'm not pushing my opinion. I'm not a freelancer or CGL employee, I have no horse in this race.

What I do have is a deep and abiding love for Shadowrun, and a vested interest in knowing the condition of the company making it. I also have a bunch of *facts* that combine to paint a very ugly picture.

As stated, not all freelancers are getting paid. Only a select group are. Some of the ones who are actively speaking out against CGL are, conspicuously, among the ones not getting paid. Others, who have followed the party line of "wait and see", are getting paid. According to Demonseed Elite, it's common for the higher-ups to decide who gets paid and who does not. All of these are verifiable facts that you can check in this thread.

Like Synner said, there's been about six freelancers who're responsible for most of the material over the last few years. Bobby Derie, Jennifer Harding, and Adam Jury are among them. Ironically, these three people have been forced out over ethical reasons and/or nonpayment. That means we've got three of the people who've carried the vision of Shadowrun for years left-- not many, and not enough to support a game line.


I'm a single father. I feel for you. Would you be willing to run the Dumpshock Freelancer Aid fund? I honestly can't think of anyone better suited than you.

No at this point your straight fucking lying and putting words in peoples mouths, if you'd had a chance to see Jennifer's post before you hit submit you might have realized how blatant you were being about it. Your "love" makes you invent your *facts* or at the very least twist them until they fit your world view.

A business decision is being made to pay off those withholding copyright that are keeping books from getting out the door, that's an educated guess on my part but It requires the least number of logical leaps and conspiracy theories to make it work. Now once immediate monetary demands are met (whether through sales, loans, cash infusions from owners etc) the company should pay back all debts. Hopefully this little bruhaha has done some good to cause that, but the simple fact is you are inventing things to make your own little theory work and passing it off as gospel.

@ketjak: I think there are a couple other attorneys active in this thread and they may disagree with my assessment of this situation, but it seems to me that a civil claim of the sort you're raising is unlikely to see the light of day. We can't know whether it could succeed without intimate knowledge of Catalyst's financial situation and Mr. Coleman's actions, which we don't have. What we do know, though, is that the fees owed to the freelancers have been represented to be in the thousands of dollars (Ms. Harding, for example, claims about $3k in unpaid obligations). Attorneys rarely take simple damage civil contract cases on a contingency basis, which means any freelancer interested in litigating wold need to pay fees up front. Since the amounts owed are relatively small and would be quickly eclipsed by attorneys' fees, it's essentially a non-litigible issue. Someone who has other valid claims (intentional infliction of emotional distress, statutory damages arising from copyright violations) may be better positioned to push matters into open court, but it's MUCH more likely that you'll see a bankruptcy trustee try to get the funds via clawback. Clawback essentially unwinds fraudulent or preferential transactions (e.g. payments made to the owners when they knew the company was in distress); the reclaimed funds are apportioned among all creditors in the same manner as anything else of value that can be distributed through bankruptcy.

I don't have the foggiest how it really works, but if the line developer is the person hiring people for writing and artwork they should also be the person who agrees that the work is completed as agreed and they go in the queue to be paid. When cash on hand is good is good I'd expect that a check gets promptly mailed, when cash on hand is not so good someone higher up the food chain gets to make the decision as to whether to pay the landlord, the tax collectors, printer, the staff or the freelancers.

Gentle reminder: Make your point and move on. Digging in and sniping is generally interpreted by the mods as either trolling or trying to incite a flame war; Neither are tolerated.

Man, now I gotta get all the SR guys to spell my name right. I was almost there on the BT side...
I do have a pretty good online bio, but it requires government security clearance.
You could always help 'em out, I hear those wiki things are adaptable and stuff.

But I'm a nice 185cm. The Short One has already come, he is here, among us!

Agreed. Even knowing many of the details of the happenings at Catalyst cannot make one certain civil suits would succeed. However, there may be people legally owed many times what the freelancers are individually owed (well, all but the most... dedicated... freelancers who've been working without pay on many projects, at any rate) for whom investing even a few thousand dollars in litigation might recover their tens of thousands of dollars even if it is over time through wage garnishment. If a bankruptcy court became involved and so ordered it those freelancers might see something after all if any of the people whose wages were subject to garnishment ever worked again. Since they, too, have families to feed it is quite likely they will work sometime in the future.

Again, though, I'm a layman and I'm not saying this applies to the situation or an individual at IMR Productions, LLC.

- Ket

That's the problem: being right and getting your right are two different things, and in this hypothetical scenario the difference would be hard to overcome.

There's always Small Claims court.

In Washington, if you're owed under $5,000, you don't go to district court. You go to small claims, where Washington law usually forbids lawyers and paralegals. Once you win your judgment, collecting might be a bit of a hassle, though. You can apply for wage garnishment, garnishment of accounts, and so on and so forth; but you do need to k now what to ask for.

I know that freelancers live all over the place, but filing in individual small claims courts would work. It'd force CGL to either send someone to each court date, or settle.

Bob, I don't know your real name so I don't know if any proposal from you ever crossed my desk. What I can tell you is that despite the rumors that I heard at the time about the "closed pool policy" at FASA, I had no experience with the company so I can't confirm or deny. However, what I can say is that in my personal experience (which happens to be considerable since I wrote for almost every book FanPro put out) there was no such policy at FanPro or among the ranks of established freelancers I worked with.

My first freelance work for FanPro was the book they inherited from FASA and one of the first they put out, Dragons of the Sixth World. I had no industry history or writing credits to my name, nor any friendly insider to help me get in - I was just a Dumpshock fanboy looking for a break. I became a freelancer on the strength of my submissions for DotSW's Lofwyr chapter (yeah, talk about starting off big) and the Shadows of Europe collective pitch. At least 3 other "nobodies" got their first break on DotSW that I recall. Most of that book was handled by familiar names from the tail end of the FASA years, and most of SOTA63 (but even there I/we newbies had a hand, check the credits and thanks). However, starting with SoE and through the rest of the FanPro years dozens of new writers were inducted. Heck, some of the SoE writers are still freelancers today. I personally wrote pieces for almost all the books and more than once I was teamed up with newblood (ie. SOTA64) and "established" freelancers (System Failure) When I became assistant developer (with Street Magic) I personally recruited a number of fans I felt were competent and capable freelancer material (several were writing till recently, and I'm responsible for Frank Trollman getting published.) This happened over the course of 6 years and over that time the freelancer pool continuously shrank despite no such policy being in effect.

That would be a nice thought, were it actually true. It's impossible to bring cases involving parties from different states ("diversity" cases) in many small claims courts. Where it's possible, it's usually simple for one of the parties to request by motion that the suit be "removed" to a federal court. It's true that a freelancer could proceed pro se in order to avoid paying fees to counsel, but litigants representing themselves in federal courts have a markedly lower chance of success, esp. with respect to complex legal issues like veil piercings, than folks with attorneys.

I don't want to be smug, but people who know only what they've found in the last 15 minutes on Google really shouldn't be commenting on the freelancers' legal options. If the freelancers are interested in suits, they should and will go see licensed counsel in their state(s) of residence.

Okay, that was personal.

I said as much that I didn't know about other states. However, I do know the Washington system, from a few cases I had to handle in small claims court by myself back about fifteen years ago. The rules haven't changed much since then. You can bring suits against out-of-state people to the best of my knowledge in Washington; I don't know if you can ask for it to be "removed" to Federal court, but you'd need an attorney to handle that properly, and Washington state generally doesn't allow attorneys in small claims court. At any event, attorney fees would also cost CGL more than what it's worth to settle.

You can stop being smug, now.