There's a difference between casting guilt on people for supporting Coleman, and questioning their judgement for supporting Coleman staying involved with CGL.

In deed.

And of course there are moral and ethical issues with supporting someone who has co-mingled over 700K while authors and partner firms are not paid their due.

Guess it depends on your definition of support. You can support them with the expectaion that they change their ways.

And some people would say that there are moral and ethical issues with not doing everything you can, no matter how unpleasant, to try and make it right to those individuals.

Yeah, like selling your house, or taking a loan with it as collateral to pay back the money you took. Or forcing your partner do either to pay those individuals.

I would be one of those people. I make a mistake, I own up to it in its entirety regardless of the consequences to myself. Why?

Because I was raised that doing so is the honorable and right thing to do. To do anything less was to disgrace myself, my associates, and my family.

It does bother me to see people shirk the rules, break laws, violate customs, etc and get paid for it or otherwise benefit from such actions while those who do the right thing get slapped down.

Again it needs to be understood that L. L. Coleman cannot be punished the way some people want without destroying IMR/CGL in an ownership fight.

If R. Bills wants to save his company, and its licenses with Topps, he has to reach an amicable agreement with Coleman that also satisfies Topps. However we feel about Coleman that fact will not change.

There is a vast range in-between "letting Colman get away with it" and "send him to prison now while seizing his house". Being accused of being in Coleman's camp merely for acknowledging that there are shades of grey, not just black and white is annoying.

It's possible to support someone who has reformed without condoning what they've done before.

Confirming that LLC has reformed and made up for past deeds will require watching the books in a way that wasn't being, but should have been done before.

Whether or not LLC does reform and make right, IMR has to do the same for the freelancers.

So far IMR has taken a step in the right direction, but they still have a long way to go.

I mentioned it a while back. The 'easiest' way to remove LLC is probably, once his obligation gets paid down enough, to declare the remaining sum as 'payment' for his share of the company, both removing his obligation and his ownership role at the same time.

However, doing that will probably take time and require LLC's cooperation.

Did you poll all the freelancers or just some?

What for? A claim that cannot be verified cannot serve to increase trust in the one who makes it. That's simple logic. If you trust Randall because of something he says which you have to trust him to believe it... well, it all means you trust Randall because you trust Randall.

If you trust Randall beause he stated something which you could verify, then that's a different story. Hence why naming someone, or having them publically stating their support, would have helped build trust. And why the lack of such confirmation makes one question the claim itself, if one does not already trust Randall.

Trust and verification principles applied in a non uniform manner can be viewed as discriminatory.

This.

LLC does not appear willing or able to make the immediate restitution that a bunch of people on this forum think he should. Given how he has managed to position himself in relationship to the company, it seems the only way to make things "right" requires working with him for the foreseeable future, no matter how unpleasant. The people calling the shots are in the untenable position of being expected to redress wrongs AND pursue justice in regards to internal theft. It doesn't appear, to me, that you can have your cake and eat it too.

And that's why you verify stuff. Like the co-mingling, which was confirmed. And the amount co-mingled - which was pretty much confirmed as well. And the fact that people went unpaid, which was confirmed as well through multiple sources.

And then you look at the picture verified information gives, and check how much or little the unverified claims from everyone fit in.

Contrary to some opinions you don't need god himself to confirm that Coleman is the anti-christ and CGL made up from his acolytes to distrust either's character or judgement - what we do know what he did and did not (paying, mostly) is enough to justify that.

Depends on the cake. You can redress wrongs (getting money to pay the debts) and pursue justice (make sure Coleman does not profit from his co-mingling) by forcing him to pay everything he took back (or pay everything he owns, if it's not enough to cover the debts), even if it means selling his house at a loss.

You show me a viable strategy for forcing LLC to pay without destroying the company, and I might buy this argument. I wouldn't expect TPTB to destroy themselves in an act of sublime justice (if this is even what we really want), so we have to go with the next best alternative, as distasteful as it is.

Are you claiming I'm an acolyte of the anti christ because you disagree with my statement?

In context that appears to be what you are doing.

Oh, I like a challenge.

Step 1) Randall Forces Loren Out
Here's the dilly-oh - Randall, more than Loren, has the best relationship with everybody in the company. If Randall had the chutzpah to go up to him and say "You're my friend, you'll always be my friend, but you've screwed up bad and you need to step down, I think we can assuage the other owners by giving them your controlling interest in the company." it would have been the morally and economically correct thing to do. Because Randall could literally freeze the company's operations; he has a better relationship with everybody in the company, and the freelancers, than Loren ever had, and Loren can't do shit on his own.

Yes, Loren can try to rip the company apart at that point, but then it would be Loren & Heather Coleman against all the other owners.

Step 2) IMR sells Loren's ownership to cover its debts.
And yea gods does it have a lot of debts. Freelancers, printers, royalties to Topps - but hey, they've got an asset (shares) and they could at least hit the most immediate debts, and then work out a schedule for paying the others off in good time.

Step 3) IMR assures this shit never happens again.
Stricter limitations on who has access to the account, actual bookkeeping practices instituted and followed, more stringent attention to the terms of contracts and accounts payable.

Step 4) A flurry of releases.
Even selling off large chunks of ownership is probably not going to be sufficient to handle all of IMR's debts, so you're probably looking at a flurry of quick releases of e-books and the like to generate some immediate cash in order to cover until, say, printers are paid and the books they're sitting on are shipped.


But that will never happen, because Randall Bills decided his friendship with Loren Coleman was more important than making the difficult but correct decision that it would be better to force Loren out of the company he helped found before he ran it completely into the ground.

Is there any evidence that some of things (esp 2, 3&4) are not being done? I think we know that #1 is off the table but how do we know for sure they aren't considering the other options?

My understanding of the situation is that despite negotiations to Loren giving up at least some of his ownership to cover at least part of his debt, he has so far refused to do so (and there are other, stranger claims about the ownership issues out there to boot). So #2 is not even really an option on the table at this point. They'd make more money by floating20-year junk bonds aimed at SR and BT fans.

#3 is sortof kindof half-assedly being done - at least they've got some controls on the finances now, even if they're probably still not keeping track of sales and they have Tara, Ghost help us, mailing out the LEs - but it's like shutting the barn door after the cows have escaped, but with the crazy insane stud bull locked inside with a few helpless calves. To whit, Loren is still involved with company operations - and Loren, in my opinion, cannot be trusted.

#4 they wanted to do. The e-book ramp up to generate fast cash was in the works before I left, and is why 10 Jackpointers was printed about one draft too early. With the loss of the people that generally make those e-books happen for CGL, however, I don't know the state of this program, at least for Shadowrun. Hell, Jason was completely ignorant of at least one of the e-books in development, as far as I know.

So your claim has no basis in fact but is based solely on your Socratic monologue? Less than impressive.

Kid, your problem is you don't know who you're kidding.

Heh. Sorry, I've been waiting to use that line.

Seriously though, I don't think you quite understand what you just posted. You basically said that you acknowledge that Fuchs made an argument based on reason and logic - the foundations of the Socratic method.

Actually, it depends on how the LLC Articles are set up. If the LLC was set up without any contingency for removing owners, then it will have to dissolve in order to remove Loren. If there are specific articles addressing the leaving or removal of one of the owners, then those articles will apply.

And if you don't discriminate between your wife and a drunken stranger in a bar I suspect things will not end well.

People do illogical and unreasonable things all the time. It doesn't make them wrong (or unethical or guilty of a crime for that matter).

Should I take what you say about my wife personally?

edit: Though I would be more worried about the non drunk strangers I met in a bar. Just what is a person doing in a bar and not drinking?

I lol'd.

Seriously though, this is true, but how does that mean it would be easy to get rid of LLC?

Ancient's business plan has one flaw.


What if he made certain he will? Should Randall ruin himself and his company (and the other owners' ownership, not to mention the fees they'd have to pay) over what is most eye for an eye?

There are no easy solutions there. I guess using Loren so long as he is needed and then getting rid of him when the company isn't in such dire straits is the best way to go, as much as this may displease the fire and brimstone mentality of some.


Eating peanuts and waiting for the end of the world?

To AH's suggestions:

One may not be possible or even feasable, two and three are possible and even hinted at during the letter.

All the rest of this sound and fury comes down to people being upset about something that have very little look down into, yet complain because they lack oversite on the process, oversite that they do not deserve. They complain about the lack of communication when the simple point of truth is the communication that did happen, to the IMR "Family" the freelancer pool effectively got brought out into the public circuit and used to lambast those who were taking those steps. Whether you agree with those steps or not you can certainly see a logical response to that kind of behavior. Same way with the closing of the freelancer forums, once it became clear that people were violating the spirit of such a place and using it for a vehicle to attack those still withint he company it got shut down.

Basically there are a couple of puzzling behaviors going on here:

1) Those that claim that their angry fan contingent represents a majority of fans or even a significant minority, even when there's no proof of same. They claim that because the company has culled DS and other sites for rules change feedback in the past that they are likely to do so for business decisions. I'm not saying it's impossible but merely that it factors into the highly unlikely camp. A) Dumpshock represents a tiny minority of the game buying public B) On dumpshock no one opinion is clearly the accepted norm.

2) Building on that, those who want the ownership and management of IMR to make business and personell decisions that they really are not fully informed on.

3) The death of innocent until proven guilty, honestly this bugs me more then any one thing about this whole mess and most of it combined.

Finally there is one troubling trend that I will address in regard to individuals rather then groups: We've got AH who has basically used this forum for a public mud slinging venue with his former employer, an employer he had difficulty with in part because he didn't like who was placed over him and chose to undercut that guy regardless of justification. Now I know this is the internet age and all that but how many of you honestly think that would go over well at your day job? How many of you would think you'd still be employable in the same field if you commented publicly on documents from your last employers internal systems? Who here thinks it's a good interview technique to rag on your last employer? People are colored by their past experiences, Fuchs is colored by his time as a debt collector so he seems to think that everyone who owes a debt should loose their house and go to jail. That in fine, in my opinion a little excessive but fine. However I'm colored by my past experiences too, if I had internal documents passed to me from my time in contracting and I commented on them publicly my security clearance would be revoked,, my name would essentially be mud, depending on the nature of the items in question I would likely face jail time. So forgive me if I'm less then sympathetic to AH's continual outpouring of Hubris against Hardy, Coleman, and Bills when he himself lacks the ethical fortitude I would need to trust someone. I can forgive him for that, i'm not really the wounded party on that one, but I find it funny that he and so many who line up with him on this issue find forgiveness and understanding such a foreign concept when applied to the Coleman's or Bills, because very few of us are the wounded party on that matter.

I hope in three weeks IMR retains the license, makes positive changes and gets back to producing quality books the details of how they do so don't matter to me. Lingering scars will remain from this whole affair, but for my money IRM retaining the license is the best option for the line.

This bit of false logic/standard deserves a bit of individual attention:

I have it on good authority that this has been a problem that has afflicted every single company that has ever touched or produced shadowrun. I'll try and dig up Stackpole's open letter somewhere but I know that this trend runs at least back to FASA and indeed affects many others in the gaming industry. You are in for a lot of distrust in your life. Anger at embezzlement real or imagined I can get even if I don't sympathize, but if this is the basis for your trust issue there are a lot of parties open for blame.

I'm in favor of the use of bad, bad puns.



Oh, it followed logic and reasoning, but had no factual basis. This is how medieval occidental medicine was based upon the body's four humors, the earth was determined to be the center of the universe and women were determined to be inferior to men. Logic based upon an assumption will not result in a correct conclusion.

Let me be clear, this isn't about vengeance. The right thing, the moral decision to be made in this instance is also the correct economic decision. CGL needs the money Loren pissed away to pay its (whopping) debts, and it needs the goodwill of other companies that can be earned by kicking his ass to the curb. Since it's apparent that Loren cannot possibly replace the cash taken from the company, the only asset he can reasonably give up is his ownership - the sale of which can at least give IMR something to work with.

Hoping beyond hope that somehow the situation can be salvaged if you sit back and let Captain Ahab drive the Pequod a little longer is not a viable business decision. You are literally better off dissolving the company, liquidating everything and hoping it's enough to pay off your creditors rather than continuing to trust someone that has proven they cannot be trusted. Because from here on out, it is a longer and more painful and financially ruinous path. Case in point: the chapter seven bankruptcy lawsuit brought against IMR by three of its creditors.

I lol'd.

Yet another eminently sig-able quote from these threads.

The factual basis?

That is a fact. Do you want to take up a poll and ask people who don't trust Randall if they trust him when he says this? Is that really necessary?

The only question of fact here is whether or not Randall's statement is factual. We have no evidence to support or refute that. That is, in fact, the entire point of Fuchs' statement - without any names or quotes forthcoming from Randall (or any other quarter) that say otherwise, you can only accept what he says is true if you trust Randall to tell the truth.

AH--IIRC isn't the total on that BK filing by Wildfire less than 50K (about 37K being from wildfire, and less than 10K for the 2 other creditors). I have a fealing that was more of negotiating tactic than anything else.

If that was all of their creditors, this would be true. But IMR still owes the printers, royalties to Topps, etc. From my understanding, those three creditors make up only a portion of the total debt.

Now, that is NOT morally right and I do NOT condone it, but if you'd please read my quote from Randall's letter above, it would seem to me (and knasser agreed, at least) they might have secured it another, less clean way, by way of buddies of LLC who work within Topps. Which would retain them their license, at least, which they need to pay off their debts. They'd need LLC for that for the time being, though. And they needn't trust him with the money for that - they'd only need him to do what he seems good at. They should take away access to company money from him. They don't need to fire him if he can still be useful.

Also, if they are actually a working company again and not a mess,a s they'Re now, the shares would also be worth more and then could be taken from Randall as payment for his debt to the company and sold for more money which would give them more money to pay their own debts with, right?

This would not be captain Ahab, it would be Loren doing some work to make good what he did to CGL.

Of course, this may or may not be workable given these lawsuits hanging around - the US judical system being the wacky thing it is, I cannot begin to estimate the effect this may have on the above mentioned idea of a business plan. If everything's liquidated, though, Ranfdall and the others lose all their investment too, right? If so, it is conceivable that would NOT be their first course of action.

How fitting considering CGL has become your white whale.

You're still thinking about this from a throwing good-money-after-bad standpoint. Whatever money the owners have invested in IMR, it is gone. It cannot be reclaimed at this point. This is not a salvageable situation with Loren still attached because he is an albatross. You're basing your hopeful claim on a letter from a guy (Randall) that avowedly knows the extant of Loren's fuckup ($$$), and still wants to work with him because he's his friend!

This isn't a chance of "give Loren the chance to make it right" or "we all know Loren is an asshole but we need him," this is a case of "Loren cannot and will not even attempt to make it right" and "Loren is going to be the doom of us all." Ousting Loren is the morally correct decision, because he's proven he cannot be trusted and will not pay back what he owes. Ousting Loren is the financially correct decision, because he cannot trust him around the piggy bank, you no longer have to pay whatever salary he has set up for himself, AND at least if you have his shares you have something to sell to put toward your debt.

How fitting, that you ignore the substance of a post for a half-assed shot at the wording of it.

No. Because - in my scenario - he has buddies in Topps pulling strings for him over the license. Backroom deal sorts of stuff happening and all that. Because LLC is a fucking sneaky weasle like that. Loren, in that case, isn't an albatross, he is CGL's last best hope. He may well be a class-A asshole too, or at least someone where you'd better count your fingers after shaking his hand, but such is life in business, more often than not, revolting as it may be.

That is, I think, why he is being kept around for the time being.


Of course. But it may be necessary to not do this immediately because you need his connections to remain in business. Which, doomed or not, seems to be what Randall intends to do. I don't say it will win him the price for best business decision of the fiscal year, but it would fit with what he has shown of his personality, especially the stubbornness with which he clings to decisions he once made.

20 bucks to get the articles of incorporation online. We could find out for sure how it's set up. Though it doesn't look like there were any amendments since 2003 so I would think the transfer of ownership clauses were either included initially, which is uncommon, or any subsequent share transfers weren't accompanied by the Amendments. Or I could be wrong, but I'm not spending the money to find out.

Yes it's ironic too on a couple levels. The person whose made his business plan going forward to see CGL fold in the hopes that he will get hired/be able to sell his material to his successor issuing business advice that they are completely non-salvageable? That doesn't sound like an ulterior motive behind biased, and perhaps uninformed statements at all does it?

I actually did the research last year for another project. $20.00 gets you the incorporation. It does not set up company bylaws or articles of incorporation. The basics do NOT include how people get out of the LLC. Per IRS tax law and several other resources buried somewhere in copious notes I made, once an owner leaves or dies (which is the point covered by most laws), the LLC is dissolved if no other arrangements have been made as part of the company's setup.

Of course, the company can always add this information into their articles later on with votes on the matter. But they have to get it into the setup *before* they can actually follow through on firing or removing an owner.

EDIT: When I say research, I actually talked to lawyers and accountants about this whole thing once I found what I could on my own.

No, it was an example meant to show that we do not need proof that Loren is the devil, and did all sort of crimes, and that all his riends are in it just to distrust their character or their judgement.

People always say "but you don't know he is a thief" - yes, we do not know if he actually comitted a crime. And we do not know if anyone was in it, and what exactly happened with every last one involved in IMR or CGL.

What we do know that happened - leaving freelancers and partner firms unpaid while Coleman co-mingled funds and withdrew a fortune - is enough of a reason to distrust Coleman's character and the judgement of everyone who trusts him. It is bad enough.

Nah, that's more of a prediction.


I've always been very straightforward with my motives, and I wear my biases on my sleeve. As far as uninformed goes, I know at least as much about the situation as you - and more, since I've actually spent some time talking with the people that actually know the state of CGL's finances and has been watching what they've been doing.

I am arguing against Fuchs's contention that "the letter does not succeed in increasing trust and confidence where it needed to." The fact that most of the CGL freelancers are still working for the company lends me to believe that the letter did succeed.

That the questionable practises go back to FASA just means there are more morally questionable people involved in Shadowrun than I thought.

Or that they were already trusting Randall anyway.

Or that the letter came after those who were going to leave already left.