The only person who has explictly said they left for morals left because they were asked to commit fraud

Protip: If you're an accountant/book keeper, and it comes out you committed fraud, your career just went up in flames. Even if you had no moral objections, it's still a 'high risk' move.

This is the speculation thread, enough with all of your facts already.

/sarcasm

Love the protip line, classic.

And yes, how dependent a freelancer is on their CGL checks really runs the gamut, which is why there's no universal point of view among the freelancers. It was pretty easy for me to walk away from CGL, at least financially. For others, not so much.

I don't think any part of this can be summed up as neatly as folks would like. Another example why someone might keep working without pay is that this is the role-playing game industry, folks. It isn't exactly a big money business. When you're working for a game you love (before the trouble hit) and someone says "Hey - money is tight, but we'll definitely do right by you given time. But right now we really need help on this next project." there is a good chance folks will say "Yeah, that's cool. I understand." and help out.

In my experience, people are generally trusting barring clear evidence that they shouldn't be. They will give others the benefit of the doubt. They want to help where they can. This might not fit with good, cold, business reasoning, but it's a pretty human response - and a pretty laudable one IMO.

In the end, the reasons people have done what they've done in this mess are as many and varied as the characters we play in our games. No one "archetype" is going to work to explain any of it.

IIRC, the accounting manager at WorldCom got four years just for making an entry in the books at the direction of the masterminds of the whole WorldCom scandal.

There's no hard and fast ethics requirement for an accounting degree, but the upper-tier teachers definitely include it in all of their courses.

What people know and what people say differs from time to time, you know?

Fuchs, you are such a broken record. The discussion you are quoting from has nothing to do with LLC but rather wit hthe the JH v. AH issue, and yet you bust in with your standard "co-mingling" response. Is that really the only argument you can think of?

And I understand that completely and would likely have that exact same attitude. What I wouldn't do, is later, after I found out that someone had been dipping into the pot and poorly managing the money, dwell on the fact that I hadn't been paid for past work. Especially if I gave a "yeah, that's cool" remark at the time.

I guess that the one part about the disgruntled freelancers that bothers me the most. That at some point they had to have okay'd not getting paid. And once money/bookkeeping became an issue at CGL, freelancers cried foul. Its a logical reaction, but a volatile one.

It kind of reminds me of being in a rock band. When our front man started skimming money for personal stuff, planning to pay it back later, I had to make a decision on whether I would continue playing or leave. While I wanted to leave at first, I also knew that getting into another band would be tough and I liked my bandmates and liked gigging and the lifestyle. Music wasn't my main source of income, so it wasn't as big a deal. We ended up taking the band funds away from the front man and gave it to someone else to manage and kept on playing music.

And in fact, there were also plenty of venues that promised us a certain amount of money and then didn't pay. We still liked playing at the venue, so kept playing there, in hopes of getting paid the "next time". Sometimes we did and other times we didn't. If we were upset enough about that, we wouldn't have booked another show...

Quite parallel scenarios the more I think about it.

I've responded to this a few times in earlier versions of this thread, but I'll repeat it again because people appear to be missing it.

First, in my experience, there was no situation where CGL came to me and said, "Hey - money is tight, but we'll definitely do right by you given time. But right now we really need help on this next project." Period. There was no communication. I've said in an earlier post on an earlier iteration of this thread that if there had been communication from CGL management saying something to that effect, I would have gladly asked CGL to focus on paying the freelancers who depend on their checks more than I do first. Instead it was always me e-mailing CGL to find out what was going on with checks and not getting any replies back. Except for replies for the line developers, who themselves would not get replies back from management when they asked about checks on my behalf.

And hell, it wasn't just the pay. The same thing happened with the contracts. The incident that most directly led to me terminating my contracts with CGL in 2008 was a situation where I was being harassed to turn in drafts on a project while I was simultaneously being ignored in my requests for a contract. I hadn't signed anything yet, but I was getting nasty e-mails to turn in my work immediately.

It's really not as volatile a reaction from the freelancers as you think. Many of them were okay with the idea of delayed payments, it was an expected outcome. But when things came to light about Loren L. Coleman and his withdrawals from the bank account, the entire relationship with CGL changed. The idea that CGL might not be able to pay, ever, become a worry. Second, the idea that freelancer payments were being delayed because of legitimate production cash flow issues is completely different from the idea that freelancer payments were being delayed because an owner was drawing from the bank account for his own personal expenses.

I was going to respond specifically to this, but I think it comes back to what I said before - you can't paint any of this with the same brush. Every person is different. Every situation is different. Every event is different. My argument wasn't meant to add the "one other response" people had - it was meant to say "there are infinite reasons."

Maybe if we knew the full story behind a specific case we'd be in a position to judge based on our own values, but as someone who was inside I can assure you that most of what people are judging freelancers on here is based on extremely limited information. A literal "tip of the iceberg" scenario.

So speculate away, but know that you ARE speculating and that you pretty much have to speculate individually on a case-by-case basis because there is no such thing as a "general position" in this mess.

This is true... not many people know as much as Cain these days about the history, rules etc of long out of print books. Heck I keep finding these 4e players that think elves and dwarves transform at puberty in the old days, and I have to correct them and say they are born and always have been its the orks and trolls that transformed. Cain and I have been internet friends since, geez I want to say like 98 or something when I found Dumpshock. Well before the crash and he was just as lovingly stubborn (and usually right I must admit) back then. Unlike me who took a huge hiatus after they yanked the general talk and I found Mutants and Masterminds (I even posted Sorry guys I'm leaving and not coming back), Cain endured. He is one of oh maybe a half-dozen or so dumpshockers I will always go to if I have a RAW or Cannon question.

Specifically, to use your own words the discussion "was in response to a poster who was aghast that JH would have the nerve to kick AH out of the freelancer forums for his unprofessional behavior." I'd say bringing up other unprofessional behavior that JH has chosen to tolerate and hasn't show the nerve to take action over goes a long way to explaining why someone would be agahst over the actions that were taken.

@Endroren
Yes, I do agree, this is all speculation and there is no general position in this mess. I guess I was just trying to step through what I might have done in the situation and relate it to my own experiences. Except for my being in a band for a few years, I have nothing close to the environment conditions I perceive a freelance writer would have. Any company I have worked for, had I not received a check on payday, would have me talking to my boss, HR or payroll rep and if it wasn't resolved by end of day, well...at the very least, I'd be looking for another job. Granted, different industry, different pay model, so its harder for me to really know what I'd have done.

@Demonseed Elite
I apologize for you having to recap, yet again, but I appreciate it. From what you are saying, I find it hard to believe anyone would keep on working under those conditions. I'm still curious how long people worked like that, as that would skew my opinion. And I just don't see how someone could let consistent non-responses from management fly. I can get pretty persistent and if e-mail isn't working, phone calls, face-to-face (which obviously is harder when working remote) or other tactics...I don't know, I guess I haven't been in a situation like this, but I don't think it would last for more than a couple weeks before I just moved on...granted, I still have a fanboy writer mentality and see myself as loving to work, write and be party of the inner circle in a game I enjoy, so the money and contract end of things probably wouldn't have been as big a deal...but again, I haven't been in those shoes. I'm sure after you get enough stuff published you start looking at it more as work than hobby.

The "fan" part of it is certainly a factor; it'll keep a freelancer working for a lot longer without pay than they would for any other outfit. I mean, I enjoy writing for Shadowrun and that made me much more willing to put up with contract and payment delays, but it eventually wears you down. There's also the fact that the license-holder kept changing--I worked for three different license-holders--and each time it changed, the new license-holder would tell the writers that those delays would be solved.

It's probably approaching time to just start ignoring him. He ignored the content of my original post to go of on some tangent, then he misrepresented me and then he ignored my clarification to have another go at Fuchs.

The foot is going down, there it goes, the foot is down....

The ignore button is tremendously liberating I'm finding.

Amusing.

If I understand this, I can do whatever I feel like as long as I allege or accuse someone else of doing something that could be considered worse then what I'm doing?

That's so cool. I can feel free to ignore the actual behavior and actions in front of me because there are these far more horrible people are claiming are happening elsewhere. This makes me feel so much better.

You sir have a bright future in politics.

"Officer, before we discuss this stolen car I'm in, lets discuss the real problem; BP. You see, the economic hardships caused by the oil spill are what have driven me to a life of crime just to feed my kids. So, ignore the fact that I stole this car, BP caused a HUGE oil spill."

Way to wag that dog!

Living on the east coast of Florida I politely ask we refrain from mentioning BP or the spill here. I am inundated enough with hearing about that, I don't want to hear about it here too.

Kids, I've never claimed any excuse for calling Jason a liar.

Whatever Randall or Loren did does not excuse that, but it must be remembered that it was the root cause of that. The situation with CGL was the environment that the my banning and termination of contracts occurred in, it was the backdrop for a great deal of animosity and the actions on both sides. My statement against Jason was taken as "attempting to undermine me [sic] and the company" - those are Jason's own words. My accusation to David Hill and others that Jason was lying and that CGL was in a worse position than it pretended were directly the result of what I had heard on the matter from people I knew and trusted. If CGL had not been in such circumstances, I might not have made my statements, and perhaps Jason would not have reacted as he did.

Naturally, Jason doesn't like to be accused of dishonesty, no one does. Facts of the matter are, Jason and I have argued the matter privately until we reached an impasse. Jason claims he had information, which he did not share (money matters are not discussed with freelancers) that provided the basis for the schedule he had planned. I think that statement is true and he believes that. I do not think it qualifies his original statement as true. So, we disagree. Jason once told me he thinks I'm always ready to think the worst of him, and that's likely true. I've been thinking less well of Jason for a long time.

I resented Jason's promotion to Line Developer, as I and others felt he was a relative outsider and does not have a thorough knowledge of the game, it's history, feel, or mechanics. We argued many times, over many subjects. Before the current crisis when I pulled copyright on certain books to force CGL to pay me, he accused me of being greedy and was upset I had not discussed the matter with him first. At times I felt personally slighted by his actions. If that seems unfair of me, I'd like to give an example:

For several months (since fall '09) I had lobbied for an updated FAQ, something I felt was very necessary but which are part of a developer's myriad unpaid and less important duties, to the point that several years and developers had past since the last update. I took the initiative to write the FAQ, to solicit questions, answers, and commentary from freelancers and the like, and to re-write the FAQ. I presented it to Jason, ready to post. He did not. For months. The stated reason he gave me at the time was that he did not have the time to double check everything I had written. Instead, he tried something else. His first and only question he managed to get wrong, because he was unfamiliar with the rules, because he had not asked anyone else for help or to look over his work. Jason then asked that the FAQ be redone so that all the freelancers approved of it. I did that, and submitted it again, and waited. It was not until after I had terminated my contracts - and threatened to post the FAQ myself - that it was finally posted.

This, as much as anything I hope gives an example of the breakdown in my relationship with Jason, and it is fundamentally a lack of communication and lack of trust. Jason did not, I feel, make an effort to communicate with the freelancers or build up trust. The entire episode where I called him a liar was specifically the result of Jason (and Randall, and everybody at CGL) not talking to the freelancers. I've heard more from him personally after I was out of the freelancer pool than I ever did while I was in it.

So if anyone wants to blame me for what I did, let me make it easy for you. I called Jason a liar, and I didn't do it to his face. If I'd addressed the issue in the public chat, or personally, maybe it would have been resolved. Jason for his part then went behind my back to get me banned, instead of talking to me about. Whether or not he did lie, I don't appreciate that, but I can understand it - after all, I didn't give him the benefit of the doubt either. Neither of us had much trust in each other, neither of us talked directly to each other until I was banned and I told him I was terminating my contracts and that if he didn't post the FAQ, I would.

Was I right to call Jason a liar? No. I still think he lied, that he has chosen to work with a company run by deceitful people, that he has chosen to be their agent and misrepresented himself and the situation at CGL and with SR more than he bounds of optimism would allow. I think his writing is shit and his ideas are worse. But that doesn't excuse that it was a dick move on my part. I should have addressed the situation directly, I did not. Was Jason right to ban me? Well, it was his prerogative. Of the choices available to him, that is the one he chose. In hindsight, maybe he should have been less rash, maybe he should have at least waited. But then, as he likes to tell me, I can't say exactly what goes on in his head.

That, shadowkids, is yet another long-drawn-out post expounding on a situation covered in the umpteenth detail. The point, Taharqa and DireRadiant, that some people have attempted to make is that it is also a small thing. That doesn't mean I get a pass for being dick, or Jason gets a pass for acting like Jason; that means that this small event should not overshadow the much larger and more important issue at hand: the situation at IMR. Because in any effort to derail a debate, it is a time-tested tactic to attempt and ignore the bigger and more pressing issues by focusing on the smaller issues and details. Detractors seize on these small issues and work to bring them to the forefront of the conversation in order to suppress the real issues at stake. It happens on both sides, and it is a poor excuse for not having a real counterargument to bring to bear. So since this is not a particular issue for anyone here - Jason can argue the details of my post if he feels I've been unfair (again) - why don't we focus on the actual subject, which is the latest from PACER regarding the case:

So what happened at the hearing today?

I would not use the current FAQ as something to hang my hat on as a reason why you know the rules better than other people.

???


Keep the Faith

You should re-read some of the commentary about the FAQ. Acknowledgement of mistakes has already happened. But you would already know if you had done your homework instead of lobbing insults.

AH,

What exactly does that snipper from PACER mean?

I think part of it was about a clerical error. As I understand it, a date for the actual hearing was set for August 9th.

When's GenCon this year? That's right amidst it, ainnit?

Except that is not actually how it happens. I would be delighted if you would stop airing your dirty laundry in public, but the reason this keeps coming up is because you keep bringing it up. I am beginning to think that when you log in, you first check JH's recent posts,so that you can make some snarky comment. If you want it to be a small thing that doesn't distract us, then use PMs to continue your personal feud with JH.

I wonder why u dont lead by example.

I wonder why Taharqa doesn't read the thread and realize when he's making an incorrect statement.

#1


#2
Ok, we're going to do the Good Post/ Bad post game again.

Example number one is not precisely an example of a "good" post, but it is generally acceptable. It's the expression of an opinion.

Example #2 would be an example of trolling. It adds nothing to the discussion, adds nothing positive, is inherently negative (you'll note that being the opposite of positive). AH and JH had gone to PM discussions, as was brought and and requested of them by the mods. Not because it's a distraction, but because there's a lot of heat between the two of them, and we don't want the flames spreading.
So dont' add anymore fuel.

So, I've kept my powder dry for a while. One of the moderators a few threads ago asked everyone to not keep hammering their points home over and over. I decided that since I had said most of what I wanted to say on this before, I would keep my mouth shut, and hope people would read the prior threads before they posted.

Yeah, THAT worked. So, let's tackle this grab bag (I did promise Augmentin I would do that).

First Principles
Lets begin with first principles, which many people are missing. In any long running argument (like on a message board), you have to keep in mind that events occur over time. Add that people tend to look at things through their own personal filters, and you get where we are.

AHG/JMH Situation
The entire AH/JMH situation is a result of a long running event being played out in real time, and then people coming into it at the end and attempting to make moral judgments based on how things are now, instead of how things were at the time when the events took place. Those same people are the ones I alluded to earlier as who have come in here and stirred up this one issue to take attention away from the overall CGL situation. One of those people, in my opinion, has a habit of quoting out of context to continue the fight by trying to ignore a flame war - to distract attention from the CGL situation.

Freelancers/CGL Employees
Every freelancer and every CGL employee has to make a decision for themselves as to if they will work for the "new" CGL or not. Some have expressed their reasons for their choices, and in every case it is personal. For those staying, maybe they believe that things are changing from the "way it was" where freelancers dd not get paid. Maybe they see it as a chance to enter into the SR world which they've always wanted to do but didn't have a chance. Maybe they love what JMH is doing with SR and want to support it. As for those leaving, their reasons range from the opposite of all of the above, to just being tired of having to deal with all the shit. And there are other reasons for both. In every case, they are personal. If the freelancers choose to share them with us (the fans) so be it. If not, it's not like they owe us anything. For each of them, their choices will have consequences that will affect them personally and professionally, and effect the game we all love.

CGL/LLC
This all leads to the cause of this. The actions by LLC and CGL that lead to the financial audit and Topps appointing an executive to have operational control over the company. A statement mentioned in the press release which many people just left and moved on from. THAT is very interesting I think.

The Fans
We come into the home stretch with the fans. In the end, the choices we make individually as fans will all bubble up collectively to determine the fate of this game.

My Position
Which leads to the personal. My position. Through these threads I have not specified how I felt and have avoided being in a particular "camp". I dare some of you who think you know how I feel to use my words before today to prove that I have a particular position, other than wanting to see a fair discussion and presentation of the facts.

This is a transformational moment for Shadowrun. Any decisions any of us make needs to be made on facts, and we have several holes in the facts. We know there was co-mingling of funds. We know there was a large amount of money involved. We do not know how much of that money was co-mingled, but it is implied that most (or all of it) was. We know there was unethical behavior in the reporting of royalties to Topps.

We know that this situation, either directly or indirectly, led to people who have shaped Shadowrun into what it is to feel that they had to leave. That will change the game.

If I personally boycott the game, I diminish the possibility that the freelancers will get paid. If I purchase items, it could enrich LLC, but it could also lead to him repaying what he needs to, depending on how things are now structured. Either choice has both good and bad outcomes. Either choice can hurt or harm.

So my position is that I will decide based on what Shadowrun produces, which is how I have always decided on my purchases. The fact I have in either hardcopy or softcopy almost everything printed, and that I tend to buy the combo packs when offered, should indicate my decision to date.

My personal choice will be based on each product as I judge it. Nothing more, nothing less.

As far as this thread is concerned, all I've wanted to see out of it was honest and fair discussions. I like seeing how things behind the scenes work, and I like seeing the viewpoints from all sides. Personally, I'm a fan, a loud obnoxious, arrogant fan who will call foul when I see it, but in the end, a fan.

And I hope Shadowrun can survive.

-M&P

If someone says X knows crap about rules they made this mistake. And then they say I wrote the faq as an example of your awesome rules mastery and the faq has mistakes in it well maybe your not as awesome as you think. Either accept people make mistakes and they aren't ignorant heathens or you damn well better be perfect in your examples. Guess what JH acknowledged his mistake as well, odd how that doesn't matter.

Ye gods and hairy fishes, that it comes to this... Jason attempted to answer one question, and made one mistake because he didn't know the rules and didn't think to ask for help. I answered a few more questions, with quite a bit of help. So if you want to talk percentages, yeah I think I have a better record than Jason does at this point.

My point is not that Jason doesn't know the rules, my point was that communication and trust were so bad that we ended up in the situation where Jason posted that question, without asking anybody, instead of posting the FAQ. It comes to something when you hand a FAQ to somebody and they deliberately ignore it in favor of trying another, inferior option. I didn't delight in Jason's little slip-up, I was pissed and took it as a personal slight - which is what I was attempting to illustrate, my degree of frustration and why. It has nothing to do with Jason's rulemastery vs. mine. Everybody makes mistakes.

I'd be happy to offer my perspective on all this if anyone cares. I'd be equally happy to not say anything about it if nobody cares. Just let me know.

Jason H.

I'll shut up about it if other people will.

You know they will not let it go. Figure out why everyone is making a big deal of the AH/JMH situation and you figure out what it takes to let it drop - unless you two don't rise to the bait.

-M&P

Well said. That's about where I'm at.

It's like Vietnam. Hearts and minds, hearts and minds.

How big a list is "other people"?


BlueMax

Ok, so I just went through pages 2 to 14, so, yeah, expect some reaching back here. (Actually it's technically page 1.5-14)



Actually I'm a bit curious about this perception. I've never really noticed that they get different levels of support. They're just largely different games so they have different kinds of products released. I don't have numbers, and as has been pointed out already anecdotal evidence isn't worth the electrons to write them, but it's always seemed like to me that they've gotten equal levels of support.



Just to point out, since I know you don't care about Battletech, but 40K and Warmachine/Hordes are similar games to each other, but Battletech is largely different style of game when compared to them. Battletech is about as similar to those games as Shadowrun Duels is to Shadowrun. It has more in common with historical war games (Think Civil War, WW2, Napoleonic Wars, etc.) than it does with "Miniature" games. Miniatures are as much a requirement for Battletech as they are for Shadowrun (Which is to say, not required at all.) In comparison "miniature games" require a player to purchase miniatures to play. Their ability to field a unit is identically to physically owning the miniature for that unit, so a large portion of the game revolves around waiting for miniatures to be released and adding them to your army to have a more rocksolid strategy. It's not unlike collectible card games, except the "Cards" in this case aren't sold in random packs.



Actually that's not entirely true. That only works when you have a free market, where a business' success and failure is based upon their ability to convince consumers to trade their money for the business' goods and services and their ability to manage their business efficiently. Most developed nations sold those away wholesale to further their agendas almost a century ago. Now, if you actually wanted to hurt BP you would have stop buying their product, eliminate all their political backers, eliminate all the laws BP paid their political backers to write for them, and stop BP from purchasing new political backers to replace the ones you just eliminated.

Though not buying product from a small company like CGL should still work because they haven't gotten large enough for that.




This seems to mirror the situation at my own game store. (Which since it's anecdotal means nothing! Ha ha!) I took it upon myself to inform players I was playing with. The impression I got is they don't really care about what's going on so long as the spice.. er.. the books.. still flow.



Want to talk about behind the curve. Take a look at WotC who after finally embracing PDF releases grudgingly, promising players PDF copies of their books, slowly broke every promise about the PDFs until they finally stopped PDF releases all together after only a year.




There's a reason most unions won't touch Virginia with a ten foot pole. Generally here employers will fire employees who are found to be working with a union to spread it to the state. That's never the reason they give, but the effect is identical. It's so easy to fire someone here that generally if a company needs to downsize they'll, on paper anyway, fire someone rather than lay them off on the off chance that they might not have to pay out for the employees unemployment. (If it says firing on paper a hearing is required to challenge the companies claims. Most of the "layoffs as firings" end in the employees favor because the employer often can't show any actual evidence for the firing, but they're hoping the employee will be intimidated by the hearing and won't bother, which is surprisingly effective.)

Seeing as how I've been reading these posts for a while now, and it's now 1 AM local time for me, I'm predicting that the above is filled with typos, unclear wording, etc, and that if I were a wiser man I would print it, read it over, and make sure it was concise and clear. But since I'm not that wise a man, I'll settle for apologizing in advance.

In one of the most twisted results of cosmic fate, August 5th-8th. Though it is possible the case could be dismissed, settled or dropped before then.

Nah, I get that. But the store stocks a few of those too, and I don't see them get any play either. I know everyone's experience is going to be different, but I was reporting that in my area there isn't really a demand for Battletech. And to be honest I haven't seen it played in years.

Maybe I could have been nicer about saying it. I had some friends in highschool that played Battletech, so I got to see it and I had a little taste of it. I can see why it appeals to some people. I generally went in for something with more story, leaving the pure simulation stuff to videogames. That, and the collectible nature of the 40k/Warmachine grind is what kept me out of minis in general.

Maybe it's not my game, maybe I'm bitter and resentful because of recent events. Wait, I know that last one is true.

actually, at this point i rather doubt buying shadowrun (or battletech, or leviathans, etc) material will get any money into the hands of mr coleman. largely because mr coleman already *has* a large amount of money in his hands beyond what he should, and the way to balance that out is not to hand him more money, but rather to withold the money he would have earned until it equals out (which, if the amount is indeed 750,000-850,000 dollars, will likely take quite some time).

if CGL crashes and burns, then one person (ie mr coleman) walks away with all of the commingled funds, and everyone else walks away with nothing.

now, does this mean that you should rush out and buy every last CGL-published product you can get your hands on? of course not.

but it does mean that buying shadowrun product does not necessarily mean you're lining mr coleman's pockets. it *would* be nice to know exactly how mr coleman is going to make it up to the people harmed by his actions, but it seems to me that whatever method they choose, it isn't likely to include "keep on handing all the profits to mr coleman to spend on his house"

(i'm also still quite baffled as to why everyone thinks randall bills is a villain on the same level as loren l coleman. so far as i can tell, the reason most people are upset with him is that he is not being a spiteful, vengeful, merciless bastard to loren l coleman at the possible expense of a number of other people... which last i checked, makes for a pretty crappy super power.)

Since no one on either side is crowing about it, I'm going to guess not much of significance. We'll have to wait and see if any new filing show up as a result of today.

A consensus is reached! Everyone can follow their lead!

Since things like this haven't been said enough in these threads, thanks. It's nice to see some vitriol (deserved or not) pulled back. That's fairly cool of you, sir.

Er, am I missing a post? I'm not sure what you're referring to with this.

While I tend to believe AH, I'm always willing to listen to both sides of a debate.



While it's doubtful that a boycott of the likely size will hurt CGL, I don't think that hurting them is what anybody wants. Instead, we want to send a message to CGL, that certain antics will not be tolerated. A boycott is an effective way to get your voice heard. It's not such an effective way to bringing a company down.

One good thing about Battletech is that there are no rules about the miniature defining the figure it represents. I use paper/cardboard cutouts. I know others just use figures that came in the starter box. There's also an awesome Java version of Battletech that takes out a lot of the time-consuming stuff, so you can play large battles online in a reasonable amount of time.

That's always been the one knock on Battletech for me. It can be a slow game. That was part of why I liked MechWarrior, despite its 'collectable' nature. You could play out a battle in an hour what would take a number of hours in Battletech.

There are people who play the RPG version of Battletech, and it's actually pretty cool, with a bit more focus on making battles play out as stories rather than hard core simulations. There's supposed to be an updated version of the RPG coming out sometime soon, in the style of the other core books.

Battletech as a simulation has a incredible level of scale to it at this point. It's possible to play out an entire system invasion, with various aspects of encounters and events played out in abstraction, or using various levels of rule detail or options to focus on hard core strategy or storytelling.

Well yes, but they can't have him working for nothing. I would guess payment is being made through some garnishment of wages. He will still get paid... just after a (hopefully sizeable) deduction. They can't leave him without a way to make a living. So long as he remains attached to the company we have to assume that he will profit, though presumably not nearly as much, off of the any success the game has while they hold the license.