I'm on it... What an excellent idea, Bobby, thanks!!! (Hey, you guys know that the Tir picture in 6WA is just a horse, right? The artist took out the spiral horn...)

I don't quite understand why people are having o.O-type issues with a cop on a unicorn. If a dragon can win the presidency and trolls, orks, and elves are found walking down Main Street on a daily basis, is the existence and sensible use of a unicorn really that weird? Their ability to protect against magic via counterspelling and magical guard would be pretty invaluable for a police officer in the Sixth World.

Just sayin'. I bet they'd get a bit more respect if they weren't called unicorns, though. I mean, just change it to "pegasus" and it suddenly becomes a bit cooler for no real reason...

Occasionally, you have someone show up who's knowledge is so encyclopedic, you don't have to train them; but as far as I know, AH was the only one.

Rule 34? *runs for his life*

That brings up a good point. Is the whole metaplot documented somewhere? Anyone who has played the game and read any of the novels for any length of time knows that in about 2000 game years it gets real ugly real fast, but how much of that future has been planned and documented?

If there had been a "closed pool policy" for freelancers at FASA, Peter, I never would have gotten the break that I did. Mike Mulvihill was very open to giving new blood a shot. He hired me, after all, and I'd never had a professional credit in my life before I wrote for Shadowrun with FASA.

So let me chime in with a resounding "This is bogus" to the notion of a closed freelancer pool.

It is now, I suppose, time to make my eighth post on this subject. Now that the other shoe has dropped and Jennifer Harding has come out with the accusation that Loren Coleman and Randall Bills conspired to falsify earnings reports, we can all well imagine the repercussions that will come from Topps and quite possibly the IRS. But let's talk about the here and now. Now, the company has a month and a half to position itself. And more importantly, the people in the company have a month and a half to maximize their own benefit before the license changes.

Six weeks is actually a long time in the age of digital sales, and while no power on Earth can save CGL from the wrath of Topps as regards falsified royalty reports, that doesn't change the fact that when the license ends different choices made now can leave different people with different amounts of money in their pocket. Here's he short version:

Loren Coleman is not going to get the license back. The company will then have a lot of debts, negative money in actual assets, and no intellectual property. The company will cease to exist. Everyone who has not been paid at that point will not get paid. Everything that is sold from now until closing time will put money into Loren's pocket. The only way anyone is getting paid anything is if they exert actual leverage on the company with real extortion in the form of "You cannot sell this product for X dollars until you pay me Y dollars (where Y is less than X)." Anyone who is not holding out on a product whose remaining sales values in the next six weeks are are estimated to be more than their demanded fees will not see a dime.

A new company will happen. And really quite soon. They will want to get the rights to any new books they can. Thus, Jason Hardy's big push to get new books ready for publication when the company can't even pay to sell the books it has already published makes perfect sense - for Jason Hardy. After all, the more books that are "ready" that have his name on it, the better a bargaining position he will have with the next company.

So let's consider possible actions in this situation:

• Withdraw Copyright/ Maintain Silence Imagine for a moment that you understand the extortion paradigm required to ever get paid for your work at Catalyst. If you want to maximize your personal chances of getting paid, it is in your interest to begin extortion now, and also to minimize the amount other people know about the situation. After all, if two people are extorting on the same project, that increases the "Y" money, but it does not increase the "X" money. That increases the chances that Loren Coleman will simply write the project off and then no one gets paid. So people who personally withdraw copyright and then publicly tell people to "wait and see" and get angry when people release details of the situation can be seen as attempting to maximize their own position. Encouraging silence, confusion, or delays in the general population decreases the number of other freelancers who will go for the extortion option, which reduces their chances of getting paid, but increases the chances of the person advocating silence and personally withdrawing contract. Essentially, they are trying to take money out of the pockets of other freelancers and put it into their own.
  
• Support the Company There are a number of people under the mistaken understanding that it s somehow "professional" to sit around and wait, and even keep working while a company refuses to pay you your wages. Some of these people even think this will ingratiate them with the new company. This strikes me as naive. The first thing you do when you take over as a new regime is to purge the loyalists of the old regime. Anyone who stood by the old guard while they were stealing from the company is going to be a potential quisling. I understand the thought process - it's just wrong. Those people will not be paid for their old contracts and the new company will get them off the roster as fast as possible.
  
• Withdraw Copyright/ Go Public Extorting the company is the only way a person is going to get paid. Going public with this fact causes other freelancers to go for the extortion option. This effectively increases the "Y" money while not only leaving the "X" money the same, but also leaving the amount of money actually promised to the person making this decision the same as well. The extra money, if it is paid out at all, merely goes to other writers who are now on the extortion train. However, it's more dangerous even than that, because it also makes the people cutting checks (or not) angry, because it increases the amount of extortion levied against them. This increases the likelihood that the head of the company will simply swallow the loss of X and not pay the writers a dime. Spite is a powerful motivation, and if X and Y are similar, it can easily break a tie. As such, some freelancers may wish to "go public" by releasing information to an uncompromising ideologue like Frank Trollman, who will maintain source confidentiality in the face of torture and will absolutely go public with the information for them. It's the same moral position of trying to maximize the number of people who get paid, but somewhat reduces the chances of personal reprisals against the freelancer.
  
• Start Working Right Now Not as crazy as it might seem. Remember that books are normally stuck in development hell for a couple months anyway. So while Loren Coleman will never pay a dime for any work being written right now, he's also not going to be in charge of making that decision when the work is actually completed. That choice will be made by the next company coming in, and they are of course going to want to slap down production costs for books that are already ready to print and ship if they possibly can. Of course, you'll be working with scabs who don't know Shadowrun and can't tell on reading whether Shadows of Asia is set before or after Corporate Enclaves - so it's entirely possible that this gamble will fail and the new company will not want these "finished" submissions. It's essentially akin to actually writing a completed draft and using that for your proposal to a publishing company you know nothing about. But as gambles go, it's not as crazy as going to work for an average company on the verge of dissolution. The product being made is a licensed product, and the license will be taken over by a new company, who may want to buy it for the original "contracted" price or some lesser negotiated value.

But it's important to keep things in mind. Every single dollar that freelancers don't extort out of the company by holding up future sales until demands are met is going to be locked into Loren's homestead where it will be inaccessible to bankruptcy recovery. Every single dollar that is demanded in total extortion on a project reduces the cost/benefit equation on that project, and increases the likelihood that paying the extortion on that product will not pay itself off in the remaining time. Every project that is canceled outright, reduces the cash flow for this period and reduces the company's ability to pay even those extortions that they want to.

So let's consider something like Sixth World Almanac. If Robert Derie had not pulled his contract, the book would go to print in a couple of weeks. At that point, the small initial print run would get sold and the company would have 30 days to pay Robert Derie before he could withdraw copyright for failure to pay. The company at that point would lose the license and walk away - leaving Robert Derie with nothing and Loren Coleman with some number of thousands of dollars depending upon the initial print run. If he pulls his contract, that doesn't happen, and he can try to make a new contract with the new company in June. But wait! Jason Hardy is the developer. If he can get new writers to rewrite Mr. Derie's pieces, then he can sell the completed work to the new company in June. So you can see how both of them are acting in rational, professional self interest - and also why they are extremely angry at each other, because they are now in direct competition.

You can also understand the anger and vitriol from some of the freelancers at the people who are publicizing this stuff. Especially the ones who understand enough about the situation to be withholding copyright themselves on one or more projects to try to get paid. Attempting to get other people to also stand up for themselves and withhold copyright has a very real chance of making the gambits of the people already withholding copyright fail. It's the only way the people who haven't stood up yet are ever going to see a dime, but it has a chance of zeroing out the demands of the people who already stood up.

Selfishness brings out the ugly in people.

-Frank

They are Carnivorous, Hunters. Predators.

Wat?

Oh, make no mistake, there ARE Unicorns in Shadowrun.
They are just not the nice Unicorns you think you know.
They are Carnivorous, Hunters. Predators.

Habits: Unicorns are diurnal herbivores.

Everything is written from the point of view that Catalyst will lose the Shadowrun license. Has Frank overheard conversations between Catalyst management and Topps representatives? Does he know how they went? No. But he makes his assumptions anyway.

Approximately 45 seconds.

On a slightly more serious note, last time I looked at any metaplot threads, I think we might have spoken of a few things as far out as 2074. In general, though, not too much of it has really been planned out, certainly not nearly as much as some people out there seem to think.

Honestly, given verified financial mismanagement and alleged cover-ups, ruling that assumption out entirely is beyound reasonable doubt.

Does that mean it has to happen like he predicts? Absolutely not – SCO is still around, after all.

In the past, the people who have come on were partnered with experienced Shadowrun writers before they could submit their own stuff-- that's taken from the old FASA requirements, which Jay Levine can attest to. Occasionally, you have someone show up who's knowledge is so encyclopedic, you don't have to train them; but as far as I know, AH was the only one.

Oh, pardon me. There is one other who might have come in with that level of knowledge, and that is Adam Jury. Adam has been influencing Shadowrun since the dawn of the internet. First as a columnist in the Shadowrun Archive, then as the editor of the Shadowrun Supplemental, then as a paid writer or contributor since about 1998, IIRC. You can't replace that depth of experience.

At the end of the day, people who want to see Catalyst's freelancers get paid should really be rooting for Catalyst.

In the past, the people who have come on were partnered with experienced Shadowrun writers before they could submit their own stuff-- that's taken from the old FASA requirements, which Jay Levine can attest to. Occasionally, you have someone show up who's knowledge is so encyclopedic, you don't have to train them; but as far as I know, AH was the only one.

Err... no, sorry, you're thinking of Earthdawn, when the unicorns got all kinds of cracked.

Legal speculation should really stop

That doesn't explain why part of management spent 12 hours on Friday getting checks ready for freelancers, both those who have been vocal and those who have not. He made his assumption without knowing that fact. This also harms his point that "Extorting the company is the only way a person is going to get paid," since as I said, both freelancers who spoke out and those who did not are going to receive some payment.

would any of the freelancers who left come back?

Actually, the core metaplots of the past twenty years and many of the minor ones were in the process of being documented when I stepped down. Unfortunately the project never got prioritized the way it deserved because there was no assistant developer for most of my run as lead developer and I had too much on my hands as it was.

One of my long-term side-projects, to ease newcomers into freelancing, was a comprehensive Shadowrun Primer, or "setting bible", describing not only the fundamentals of the setting as of SR4A, but also presenting sumarily key metaplots of the past, present and future (as SOP I mapped out metaplots over 3-4 years with a view of integrating books/products as closely as possible with the developing storyline hence Ghost Cartels playing off Runner Havens and Corp Enclaves and then Vice following on the heels of the GC shakeup and the now-unlikely campaign following up on Primeira Vaga and the Dream Seed).

I did a similar 30-page brief to convey for new Shadowrun artists just before SR4A. The SR Primer still isn't complete but it's close to 100 pages long and I do intend to wrap it up. Who knows when it might come in useful.

And, of course, Jason is correct about the size of the freelancer pool. From what I've gathered it hasn't been this big in years. There's more new blood than ever. That's not the problem.

As I see it the fundamental issue that the line, and Jason as lead developer, faces is that Shadowrun lives off the depth and continuity of its setting and there has never, until recently, been a "generation gap" in the regular turnover of freelancers and developers. There has always been an "older" generation that by virtue of their experience is intimately familiar with what has been going on in the setting and where things stand, someone besides the developer (who has his hands full) with a solid grasp of the bigger larger picture and it's myriad pieces. These veterans, all with a dozen books to their name, have been there to hold hands, critique, advise, peer-review, mouth-off, and fill in knowledge gaps. That's what I encountered when I joined the ranks of freelancers, and that's how I left things when I stepped down. Unfortunately, for a number of reasons - most of which, I hasten to add, predate Jason coming aboard - that is no longer the case. Those 5-6 people that represented the previous of freelancers (the ones I mentioned previously) simply aren't there (some like Jennifer and Bobby for obvious reasons, others because they left Catalyst, and others yet because they are disenchanted with the direction things are going and feel unacknowledged). Yes, people like Bull, whose contributions date all the way back to the FASA years, are still involved, others like Stephen McQuillan, Mark Edwards, and the Missions authors that "graduated" during the past couple of years have gathered considerable experience in a very short time. That's the way it should be. Unfortunately, IMHO and only IMHO, it doesn't quite balance out the fact that the people who wrote all those books that I mentioned, that could hand over the torch, and ease the learning curve for newbloods, just aren't there to do it any more.

Understandably, this won't be much of an issue to some of you. But as a long time fan and an insider I do view it with some serious concern and reservations.

Here is my question. If the CGL ship gets righted, the freelancers are paid off, the financial fiasco is corrected would any of the freelancers who left come back?

Um, actually...Trying not to step onto the mods' turf, so I hope they excuse me here...but it's more than 'should'.

It needs to, at least in my opinion. Urgru, I doubt you meant this, but...In case it needs to be said, everybody involved with CGL should probably chat with live, licensed, and practicing attorneys...And absolutely not rely on the words of Dumpshockers, even those who may have credentials in the legal field, or be in training for said credentials, in making decisions in that matter.

Urgru, speaking only from my limited experience as a paralegal in training, my gut says that post veered uncomfortably close to UPL (Unauthorized practice of law), probably without intending to. It's probably not outside the realm of possibility that any freelancer or CGL employee, former or present, could be called to testify in any bankruptcy proceeding or any litigation which may even potentially arise from this mess, or may even be a potential party to any such proceedings. It would be horrible were Dumpshock (or you) put on the hook for anything because people relied, even unconsciously, on that post for anything. I think even Frank Trollman might agree that among his many talents, or among the talents of anyone posting here, a law license valid for practice in every jurisdiction that may be at issue here is not among them.

Anyhow. Yeah. I Am Not A Lawyer. Urgru may not be a lawyer.

Even if he is, he ain't the lawyer of anybody posting here, I would suspect. So, yeah.

Can we not make this into a live example of how most states hate the unauthorized practice of law? Please?

Here is my question. If the CGL ship gets righted, the freelancers are paid off, the financial fiasco is corrected would any of the freelancers who left come back?

[snip]

A more pertinent question is, would the be accepted back? Individual freelancers have individual motivations, but Mr. Hardy sets policy on freelancers. Would *he* accept any of them back?

I am ABSOLUTELY NOT providing legal advice to anyone, nor do I intend to I've intentionally commented generally (drawing analogy to other situations, noting differences between states that raise uncertainties of law), and I've noted on more than one occasion that people involved need to seek advice from counsel in their jurisdictions of residence who can review relevant documents and correspondence.

My main point is that many folks have thrown about terms like bankruptcy, RICO, veil piercing, and homestead exemption without an understanding of how they function in different states and in different scenarios. It's dangerous, perpetuates impressions with respect to likely outcomes that aren't grounded in legal or factual reality, and should come to an end. No one should rely on ANYTHING they read here when considering their future course of action.

I just found neon pink works on 95% of backgrounds to get attention. I use it a lot in power point presentations, GIS maps and drawings.

My main point is that many folks have thrown about terms like bankruptcy, RICO, veil piercing, and homestead exemption without an understanding of how they function in different states and in different scenarios. It's dangerous, perpetuates impressions with respect to likely outcomes that aren't grounded in legal or factual reality, and should come to an end. No one should rely on ANYTHING they read here when considering their future course of action.

As I've said before, that would be between me and various freelancers, and does not need to be a matter of public discussion.

As I've said before, that would be between me and various freelancers, and does not need to be a matter of public discussion.

Jason H.

If only some of the freelancers themselves agreed with that last sentiment.

Relax, man. No one has thrown about RICO to the best of my recollection. I also don't recall "Homestead exemption" being bandied about. I may be wrong, but I think you're the first one to bring up those laws. Bankruptcy and Veil-Piercing have been mentioned, but not nearly as much as nonpayment; and nonpayment isn't an obtuse legal situation.


We're not discussing specific freelancers, we're discussing hypotheticals. If *any* of the freelancers involved wanted to come back, would they be welcomed? Individual freelancers will or will not post on their willingness to come back.

You are, of course, free to say that you won't answer even a hypothetical question; but by doing so, you do realize how the rumor mill will take it.

It depends. If by "getting the ship righted", Catalyst returns to business as usual, circa 2009, then no. Because my problems with Catalyst occurred before this current mess. Business as usual a year ago was still a shameful, disorganized mess that often left freelancers with the short end of the stick. There is no way in hell I'm going back to work with any organization like that.

If Catalyst became a company that got contracts out to freelancers on a timely basis, paid those freelancers on time (every time), and had open communication between management and freelance staff, then yes, I would. I don't see that as a likely scenario, but I would write for a company like that.

Why should they?
It's their god given right to be of another opinion and to voice that opinion as vocal as they like.

...others like Stephen McQuillan, Mark Edwards, and the Missions authors that "graduated" during the past couple of years have gathered considerable experience in a very short time. That's the way it should be.

It depends. If by "getting the ship righted", Catalyst returns to business as usual, circa 2009, then no. Because my problems with Catalyst occurred before this current mess. Business as usual a year ago was still a shameful, disorganized mess that often left freelancers with the short end of the stick. There is no way in hell I'm going back to work with any organization like that.

If Catalyst became a company that got contracts out to freelancers on a timely basis, paid those freelancers on time (every time), and had open communication between management and freelance staff, then yes, I would. I don't see that as a likely scenario, but I would write for a company like that.