Actually the PACKS was the only thing that had me interested in the GM screen. I've never bought one before. Anything that saves the GM from the usually massive amount of work it takes to do the job is a really good investment

Battletech and Shadowrun = free money. No publicly owned corp is going to give up free money.

If the problem is that big for you, I have a bot that makes quick and dirty stat lines for NPCs - and I could add pretty much anything else to it if anyone actually used it.

Hello all,

For those of you who don't know me, my name is Randall Bills and for the last several years I’ve been serving as Catalyst's Creative Manager.

As many of you have undoubtedly noticed, Catalyst has hit a few stumbling blocks under the weight of its dramatic growth over the last several years. As I’ve become the face of the current situation, I felt you all deserved a look at the current situation and some details regarding the steps Catalyst is taking to get all freelancer payments caught up so we can move forward.

If you’ve not yet seen the press release I posted last week to www.catalystgamelabs.com, feel free to take a moment to check it out. I wanted to provide some further details.

On Monday March 15th, the Catalyst team delivered our review of the business for 2009 to the pertinent parties. Over the last several years, Catalyst Game Labs has showed a dramatic growth in terms of demand, increased total revenues and strong sales with an increasing market share in the gaming industry. A huge portion of the credit for that goes to you, the freelancers. After all, without your passion and dedication, there would be no books, no games, no Catalyst.

That growth has not come without its obstacles, however, and by Q4 of 2009 the Catalyst Managers acknowledged that a co-mingling of funds between the personal and business had occurred involving the company’s primary shareholders, the Colemans. We immediately initiated an audit of the company's historical financial records, and designed a comprehensive plan to get Catalyst's production and payments back on schedule. This process took some three months of very long days, and was overseen by our Bookkeeper and Operations Manager, in conjunction with the Colemans.

With the completion of the audit it is clear that the breadth of what occurred was significant, and would require extensive changes to correct. A detailed plan was outlined for changing the organization of the company, as well as many procedures to establish a strong financial oversight and series of checks and balances to ensure this doesn’t happen again in the future. It also included a proposal for how the Colemans will begin paying back the money involved. All of those detailed findings and action plans were delivered to the pertinent parties on the 15th of March as a key step in our efforts to move forward with full disclosure and transparency. A series of discussions are currently underway on how best to proceed.

Last week, while in the process of drafting announcements for the public, as well as our vendors (distributors, printers and so on), licensors (i.e., Topps), Catalyst freelancers, and so on, some information was leaked to the public (and, as is the way of such things, immediately took on a life of its own). Obviously I was forced to deal with that leaking of information and am just now reaching a point where I can be drafting information to share with our freelancers.

There are several critical concerns (in no particular order) that Catalyst is moving to address ASAP.

1. Re-organizing and re-structuring to prevent this situation from occurring again.
2. Finalizing a plan for how the Colemans can repay the money owed to Catalyst.
3. Ensuring the continuity of license with Topps concerning Shadowrun and BattleTech.
4. Finding additional sources of revenue in the short term to help start paying down various debts (including monies owed to all of you).
5. Working with Posthuman (Eclipse Phase) and WildFire (CthulhuTech) to determine if they still wish to work alongside Catalyst. If they do not, we’ll make every effort to spin those games off to those respective companies in a way that will best ensure future growth.

We’re moving as fast as we can in an attempt to address those primary concerns (as well as many others). However, this process simply is taking time … and will continue to take time heading into the future.

Some of you have already expressed your inability to be patient with Catalyst as we try and find solutions, and I completely understand your frustration. That frustration was mirrored by several Catalyst full-time employees who felt they simply could not continue with Catalyst after all that has occurred, including Jennifer Harding (Office Manager and Bookkeeper), Dave Stansel (Operation Manager) and Adam Jury (Head of Graphic Design), all of whom have formally left the company. We’re already moving to try to find appropriate people to take on their work and responsibilities. Though I wish their decisions might have been different—as they’re incredibly valuable to what Catalyst has been able to accomplish—I cannot fault them for the choices they’ve made. I’ve worked with them in various capacities for a long time and consider them good friends. I wish them well and hope we’ll have a chance to work together again some time in the future.

During all of this, my decision-making process has been called into question. After all, how can I accept what’s happened? Why are the Colemans still involved at Catalyst if these events occurred? Usually I would have reservations about sharing such personal thoughts. However, since I’m asking for each of you to decide if you’re willing to allow Catalyst some time to address this situation, I feel it only appropriate to give you my thought process so each of you can make up your own mind.

1. Catalyst would not be enjoying its current level of success without Loren’s strategic thinking, or without the connections he’s forged in our industry. We started as a small, internet hobby company in 2003 and only officially formed Catalyst three years ago. Yet as of last Gen Con we “stole the show” and are considered one of the “up-and-coming big boys.” While Catalyst is far more than a single person and is very much a team effort (including all of you), Loren’s contributions have been crucial.
2. Would Catalyst survive if the Colemans were no longer involved? Yes, I believe it would. However, I believe that despite the horrific mistakes made, we will heal faster by keeping Loren involved as part of Catalyst’s ongoing strategic thinking. Last week that belief received a huge chorus of support when we contacted and/or were contacted by numerous people in the industry, including three titans of the industry (I’m not at liberty to share their names to this large of a group without asking their permission). Each of those three were given a blunt (albeit very brief) synopsis of what occurred, and yet each still pledged their support to Loren and me in helping move forward (both in the incredible business savvy they possess that made them titans, but also in potential revenues to bring to the company). Furthermore, two of these people are intimately familiar with Topps and with their strong advice in our pocket we’ve already approached Topps. Without getting into details we told Topps of our financial issues and made our case that despite those mistakes we have been fantastic in protecting and expanding the BattleTech and Shadowrun brands and that we are still the best possible stewards of those brands. Topps liked our attitude and appreciated our bluntness and we’re setting up a face-to-face meeting in NY, following the GAMA Trade Show this week, to present a plan for how to move forward with securing those all-important licenses.
3. I believe the best possible way to incentivize someone is to create a recipe for success. Excessively punishing and kicking someone to the curb does not incentivize anyone. Keeping someone involved in the process and invested in seeing Catalyst succeed so they can succeed is a far better path for all involved (and one I’ve seen succeed time and time again at all levels of business).
4. I’m not the only one that has seen and believes in the points above. If all the mangers, employees and investors of Catalyst had lined up in opposition to my thoughts and opinions as outlined above, then I very much believe I would’ve backed away, feeling that my decisions were compromised. However, while some have left and/or decided they can no longer work with Catalyst, we still have a very strong team of investors, managers, employees and freelancers that supports the overall direction of trying to deal with what’s occurred while finding ways to move forward.
5. Considering how long I’ve been involved, and how much blood, sweat and tears I’ve given for Catalyst, I’ve seen a lot of “How can Randall continue to work with Loren?” I’ve obviously known the Colemans for a very, very long time and been involved intimately with the company from the day the idea was born 8 years ago. And after reviewing everything and doing some massive soul searching, I’ve made a personal decision that this was a terrible, terrible series of mistakes; I bear my own weight of guilt in this in that I didn’t pay better attention to the various red flags raised over the years that something wasn’t right. More importantly, I see in the Colemans every indication I need to see in order to make forgiveness seem appropriate. This falls into a “very personal” category, but it’s key to my point of view and if you’re trying to understand my decisions, it’s important you know this. While I may not be the usual image of an LDS church member that comes to most people’s mind, my faith is a bedrock; it is the only reason I’ve survived the stress of the last several months and especially last week. But if I see a person genuinely sorrowful over a mistake (regardless of the size of those mistakes), and see that same person trying hard to make the mistakes right, I personally have to forgive them. Just as this as been the most difficult personal and professional crises of my career, it has been one of the most difficult for my faith, as the rage has had to give way to compassion and forgiveness. Please note, however, that this point is 100% a personal decision, one that deals with whether I can keep a personal relationship with the Colemans. If none of the other points above existed, then I would’ve asked Loren to completely step away from the company and he and I would’ve solved our issues in private. However, those very points are exactly why I’ve stated I believe the Colemans should still intimately be involved with the company (though a host of checks and balance are in the process of being put into place) and why I can set aside my own personal anger and disappointment to try and move forward in what I believe is the best possible way to save the company and to save the games we all love to work on.

I apologize for the length of the email and for the incredibly personal nature of it, but I felt it warranted. Ultimately each of you will need to ask yourselves whether you can still trust Catalyst to treat with you fairly and to pay the debts owed you, while ensuring that such debts do not pile up for the future. We’ve laid strong groundwork to do just that over the last week and GTS this week will give us the opportunity to further cements those plans.

We are also in the process of bringing on a new Bookkeeper who will continue the plan laid out by our previous Bookkeeper to send each of you a thorough audit of what our books show. This will allow us to ensure we’re not missing any work by anyone and will help us build a plan for how to start reducing the debt owed to each of you. However, the original plan called for that to go out by the end of March, but with the changing of the Bookkeeper that’s going to need to be middle to end of April.

I hope each of you will be willing to bear with us during this crisis and give us the chance to make this right. However, if you feel you cannot, I completely understand and of course wish you well. More importantly, even if you feel you cannot do future work for us, of course we still will work to pay the debts owed to you.

Thank you for your time and patience.


Randall N. Bills
Managing Developer
Catalyst Game Labs

Say about our dear old Frankie-Boy what you want, but he usually has the paydata . .

Battletech and Shadowrun = free money. No publicly owned corp is going to give up free money. How much effort does Topps have to put into it? Take the checks to the bank and sign them?

The thing I think that everyone should pay attention to is the fact that the people charged with setting up the repayment plan with Loren Coleman and his wife were... Dave Stansel and Jennifer Harding. Remember how 5 days after being given the task of working with the Colemans to get the company's money back they both quit over ethical violations?

For those of you keeping track at home: that means that Loren Coleman still has all the money, no one is working on a repayment plan, and the only people who have seen the numbers who didn't quit in disgust are having their morale bolstered by the sock puppet of a loving Jesus.

-Frank

This is beginning to piss me off. This letter was never meant for public distribution, and you have some [expletives deleted] taking it upon themselves to air this stuff. People should be ashamed of themselves. This isn't theirs to share, and this could concievably damage people and their careers. Unless Randall actually chose to release this, this is wrong. You have people who are just doing this out of maliciousness and spite. It's intolerble.

For those of you keeping track at home: that means that Loren Coleman still has all the money, no one is working on a repayment plan, and the only people who have seen the numbers who didn't quit in disgust are having their morale bolstered by the sock puppet of a loving Jesus.

This is beginning to piss me off. This letter was never meant for public distribution, and you have some [expletives deleted] taking it upon themselves to air this stuff. People should be ashamed of themselves. This isn't theirs to share, and this could concievably damage people and their careers. Unless Randall actually chose to release this, this is wrong. You have people who are just doing this out of maliciousness and spite. It's intolerble.

This is beginning to piss me off. This letter was never meant for public distribution, and you have some [expletives deleted] taking it upon themselves to air this stuff. People should be ashamed of themselves. This isn't theirs to share, and this could concievably damage people and their careers. Unless Randall actually chose to release this, this is wrong. You have people who are just doing this out of maliciousness and spite. It's intolerble.

Say what you want, i find this sadly appropiately a pro pros for a shadowrun . .

Or maybe we're just pretty fucking angry and think that if it all burns down, we can build something else in its place. I think it's more intolerable that upper management for CGL are going to remain complacent and FORGIVE everything that's happened and continue to let somebody who has proven, WITH ACTIONS, that he is not fit to lead... stay in his position!

meanwhile you're forgiveing a man who broke confidance to spread a confidental letter to the masses, which acheived nothing but damaged someone's reputation?

my someone's a Hipocrite.

I know I'd never wanna employ Frank Trollman in ANY capacity, hope those wellfare checks are worth it frank

Take home message: Randall Bills believes that he has a sign from a personal god that massive amounts of fraud is somehow OK because it will all work out somehow. We can all sit and ponder that for a moment, but basically it looks like Randall is not an incredibly rational person, and he would not be someone I would ask to judge character or make long range important decisions. Personal gods have a distinct tendency to advise people to hate the people the disciple already hates and trust the people the disciple already trusts.

Take home message two: Yes, it's that bad.

Take home message three: while Catalyst has had huge piles of money taken out of it by the guy nominally running the store, and the second in command says that theft should not be punished and is trying to guide the company with a literal ouja board in his head - it's important to remember that Shadowrun is not Catalyst. CGL is just a company, and if they are trying to use Christianesque name-it-and-take-it sorcery to avoid criminal charges of fraud, that doesn't actually mean that anything is wrong with the game. The License still belongs to Topps, and in two months they can lease it to someone who isn't trying to transform criminally negligent red ink into black with prayer.

-Frank

Personally, when people make appeals of faith to me, I just feel insulted that they would expect me to get all gushy and misty-eyed over it. Maybe Randall Bills should've kept #5 to himself, but man it does make for some HILARIOUS reading.

"I'm ignoring theft, betrayal, and allowing the person to continue these things because JESUS SAID SO!"

Your faith in random acts of evolutionary progress requires just as much faith as that LDS fellow employs every day.

You want to put this in Shadowrun terms? If this was a 'run I'd be saying to myself "The one you have to worry about is the one you don't see." Frank burnt pretty much every bridge there ever was to burn long, long ago and still has an axe to grind, which makes him the perfect front. This is so predictably in his character he had to be the obvious one.

As for the letter itself, I've seen stuff like this before as organizations enter crisis. Odd emotions rule the roost. People end up in positions where they must make choices under extreme pressure. They'll reach for things they had come to assume were solid, even long after evidence suggests that their assumptions should no longer be trusted. *shrug* Making decisions under extreme pressure is hard to start with, not the place most people are willing to increase the uncertainty by discarding past assumptions. Obviously I'm reading between the lines but that's the sense I'm coming away with.

P.S. Some people describe their decisions in terms of "faith", it's still their decision and I don't think that really is either here nor there. I'm a little disgusted that Bill's religious faith is being dragged into this argument in the manner that Frank is doing.

Did you actually just decide to go there???? That is the place of illogical rants, general silliness, and dead threads.

1. Personal attacks, flaming, trolling, and baiting are prohibited. This includes any form of racism, sexism or religious intolerance.

It was, and still is, figured that whoever came forward would have a very real chance of having their account banned, of being lambasted as a traitor, of never being trusted to write for Shadowrun again (even if the problems get addressed), and so on.

Frank is not banned, heck, if he had steered clear of the religious attacks he would actually be in the clear right now.

Also, on rpg.net he said his account was suspended till 2037 i think . .