Clarification. Certain of the authors very obviously were at least handed a list of locations taken directly from my drafts and told to write them in. I don't know which ones were yours, and I'm not claiming plagiarizing. I'm claiming Jason is a weasel without professional ethics.

And we are now back to the Ax Grinding... I thought that we were done with that...

Oh well... Where is the Popcorn?

Keep the Faith

I've been a huge fan of 4th and SR4A particulally, even though I cut my teeth with pen and paper games playing SR2 when it came out. To me, Shadowrun has always been the game that the rest of the hobby revolves around. When I mention things I don't like, I'm talking mostly about the rewritten sections of Corp Guide, most of Spells and Chrome and the quality of the finishing work done on both. For the vast majority of Jason's tenure he has been pushing through work that others have already done. If his job as line dev is to see that things are done to a high level of quality he has failed.

What you have described in no way shows a person who is a weasel with no professional ethics.

Gotcha... I have yet to read the two references you have provided (I have a singular lack of resources, and am holding them for the 6WA). As for Quality... 2 out of a lot (Specifically Corp Guide and Spells and Chrome) is not a lack of high quality across the boards in my opinion... Produced works will always have a cross section of people who like/hate the particular work in question. For 4th Edition, in my opinion, the works have been of a much higher quality than what has come before...

Keep the Faith

Let me make this clear: my drafts (hey, you can go read them) specifically mentioned cities and particular places. When I first saw the drafts, I was a might concerned - and addressed the situation with Jason privately, and Randall assured me there was no copying. Later on I considered that the maps drawn for my draft were being re-used, so of course there would be some overlap - that's fair, I understand if two drafts have Hellbender Valley, that's fine.

What gets my goat - really gets my goat - and which I consider unprofessional are two things:

1) The inclusion of places not on the maps which were unique to my drafts. The chances that two drafts on the Carib would happen to prominently feature both the Cayman Trench and Phantom Islands (the last one I made up) are close to nil.

2) One of the authors told me they were given a specific list of cities and places to write about, and it's pretty bloody obvious that these were taken directly from my drafts. Several of the drafts list the exact same cities, in the exact same order as I gave them. That's a hell of a coincidence.

So yeah I think it's unprofessional - not just because Jason was lazy in ripping an outline from my drafts and handing it to the new writer, but Jason was either so oblivious or just didn't give a damn that he didn't even bother to check and see if any of those places had ever been mentioned in Shadowrun ever before. Especially considering I had specifically brought those concerns to his attention in an e-mail.

So yeah, I think that's unprofessional and shows a demonstrable lack of ethics and judgment.

A little off topic but slightly relevant to a few comments so far and figured there might actually be someone here that could answer this.

I have read a lot about BT being favored over SR in this thread. One area where SR is apparently favored over BT is in the book binding, and being as we are talking about a book publisher it seems important. I just received six SR books and three BT books from Amazon today. The binding in the BT books is completely sub-par from the SR books. Why do the BT books lack a headband? Why does the crash look almost non existent on the BT books?

On a side note, I got my EP book today as well. Absolutely amazing stuff, just outstanding, I cannot wait to play that game. CGL completely screwed the pooch letting that IP go. One minor criticism, I swear, like a lot ie. all the time, but in the first few sections some of the f-bombs felt forced and didn't really add anything to the writing. It doesn't diminish the pure awesomeness just felt like throwing it out there.

I agree completely on the quality of SR4 up to this point. But the thing is we're only really now seeing what Jason is capable of as a line dev, supported by the staff that are left over at IMR and the freelancers that will work for them. Judging the capability of IMR right now off the quality of anything before Spells and Chrome is a false comparison.

Well, no. Jason hasn't actually developed anything from conception to completion yet. He's just been rushing products that were already started and/or almost complete. I guess you'd really have to wait for War! at this point - which, even though conceived a couple developers before, is nothing like it was originally conceived now.

Which is why I am taking a wait and see approach to their product output rather than just panning them because I do not like them...

Keep the Faith

I'll admit to panning them prior to Spells and Chrome coming out. But that was only after the embezzlement came to light and I had a chance to talk to Jason. Prior to that I was sitting in my FLGS talking about how I loved Catalyst and the games they were putting out. I was running SR4A and talking up Eclipse Phase. When they picked up C-tech I pointed out what a great opportunity it was. I knew that the schedule of SR books was crap, but I trusted them and figured they had a good reason. They had a reason. It wasn't good, and it destroyed that trust. And yet, I waited to see what the story was before I decided on my present position.

At this point it's walked, it's flew and it continues to quack, so it's not hard to see that the duck is by all accounts a duck. If you want to wait and see if it's a cow, feel free.

No, I just wait to see if it will be a Swan or remain an Ugly Duckling (Note that they both still may sound like a duck)... it is all relative I guess... I do not change my mind that a Game System is bad, or that the quality is bad just because someone has some accounting problems and payment issues... The Quality is STILL good and the Game System is still superior to many out there, regardless of issues at the company... Nothing in that regard has changed in the slightest in my opinion except that a company is having money issues that seem to be on the mend.

Keep the Faith

They have a lot to work with in relation to the game, I agree completely with you. The management side of IMR has a lot to be desired though, and they are the bosses. Jason himself has been caught making some bad rules calls, and that scares me. It wouldn't be that big a deal if I was sure he had people around him who know and care about the game. But when I think of that the first person who comes to mind is AH, and well...

Well, t'be fair I've made my share of bad rules calls too. I'm more concerned with the shoddy editing and development of the last couple releases.

Perhaps I am a different from of ancient history but, I remember the editing of Donna Ippolito and the books of the far past.

BlueMax
/sad that I remember the editors name

There have always been a few errors here and there. But I'm five stories into Spells and Chrome and I have yet to find one story that doesn't contain a typo that would have been caught on a read through. It's sloppy and unprofessional. Shadowrun deserves better.

You have me there, I don't read the short fiction. Only the rules books.

BlueMax

Quick legal question...is the license itself considered an asset to the company?

The reason this is important...say IMR/CGL is forced into Chapter 7 and that the license was extended beyond the date of the hearing...if CGL/IMR is forced into Chapter 7, they must immediately pay off all debts and if they are unable to, any assets may be liquidated to pay those debts. If the license itself is considered an asset, could it be forced to be auctioned off to the highest bidder for the remainder of the term of the license, or would it immediately revert back to Topps?

Abstruse, that's a damn good question. One I suspect we'd need an actual lawyer, who actually practices bankruptcy or copyright law, to answer, because I don't think (after a quick skimming of Lexis Nexis) that there's an obvious answer.

I suspect it reverts to Topps.

If I were Topps, I would've built a contingency into the license stating that if something like this happens, the license reverts back to Topps or else some other form of kill switch that invalidates the license just to prevent some other company from buying the license and being able to sit on it for no other reason than to hurt Topps (only reason I can think of to bid on the license in auction rather than try to come to an agreement with Topps legit other than hoping the auction would be cheaper than buying it from Topps).

This branch of logic raises its own questions...like is Topps paid a flat fee or a percentage off the license? If the former, would they get anything from an auction? If the latter, would they get the same rate from a new company? Also, who would then get ownership of anything at the printers/in stock (Corp Guide, Sixth World, stock of current books, etc)? There's just a ton of questions this raises if it's true.

Of course, if the license itself is not an asset or if Topps has a deadman's switch sort of thing build into the license for this effect, then all of these questions are moot...

The more I think about it, the more I think you might be right there.

The license is distinct from ownership of the IP. The IP rights would work like you were talking about above, but Topps only licenses IMR ot use them, IMR doesn't really own anything by my understanding.

Of course I could be wrong. I'm interested to hear from someone who has some knowledge of these types of licenses.

That's the question though...Topps owns the IP, no question there...but is the license to use that IP considered an asset or not? The IP itself is not an asset of IMR as they do not own the IP...but the license to publish the IP might in and of itself be considered property and thrown on the auction block.

But I think I agree that we're going to need a lawyer to make sense of that bit...

Or see an actual copy of the license agreement...which is not something that's public as far as I know.

No it would not be an asset. If CGL goes belly up the contract becomes null and void and the license reverts back to Topps. Where is could be used in the argument is simply to show possible future revenue since they can definitively show the profit made from it to support them in the bankruptcy hearing.

I thought this would have made a bigger impact on the "speculation". Ask yourselves, "What does a corporation led by billionaire Disney x-CEO Michael Eisner with a yearly revenue somewhere around $300 million care about who has the Shadowrun license?"

They can't be making much more than $100K/year off the BT and SR licenses combined. Whose balance sheet does that even register a tick on at Topps? They don't care who's dicking around with these games. They just sold $40 million in Attax baseball cards this year alone. If I had bothered to do the research on them six months ago, this would have been an easy prediction. Topps: "Scandal about what? Huh? Did they pay us the $100k each year? Yes? Ok, let it ride. Can we get back to business now? My tee time's in an hour."

Topps actually appears much scarier to me now that I realize how big they are. It would be nothing for them to shelf Shadowrun and let it die. Thank goodness it's still going!

Mesh

Big companies like Topps generally don't get where they are by ignoring property. Especially property that they can license to someone else who does all the work and sends the money back home. BT and SR make enough for Topps to pay someone to make sure Topps gets the most value out of their property.

Shadowrun and Battletech being owned by a company like Topps is really a great thing. They will survive even if the current publisher dies by it's own misdeeds. And as a company Topps seems willing to let the publisher handle the lines in house without trying to make everything all clicky or sell trading cards.

Their net income was only $1.2million in 2006. I don't see that as having improved in a shitty global economy, so they're not really growing here. If they're not operating at a normal profit, then it's more likely a loss.

Sure they may do 100s of millions in business, but they obviously have 100s of millions in fees and overhead to contend with.

The overhead for something like selling publishing rights on an already existing, already developed IP is next to nothing, so any and all profits from such are directly added to that net income.

It depends on how the license is structured. IANAL, but Wizkids is a great example here. When Wizkids closed up, the license to produce Star Wars material dissolved, however the Marvel/DC licenses remained as a transferrable property. So the answer is in how the current license is structured. I suspect it's non-transferrable, but we'd have to see the contract to know.

The license is in extension, meaning it is non-transferable.

But it can be cancelled. And if it's non-transferable, then it doesn't count as a sellable asset.

Because it's worth money. Making money is what corporations are about. And yes, even if it's only a ridiculously small percentage of their revenue, they will care about that money. No, they will not care too much, they will not assign it a high priority, but in the end, I can't imagine anyone at Topps saying "Oh, they payed us a couple 100k less than we were owed, who cares?"

Maybe there should be one, but I guess RPG/fantasy freelancing is too small a business for a union to be viable, I guess.

Also, the Tir na nOg writeup really doesn't show much research on the place done. Given how it hasn't exactly been covered in many books ... well, checking up on the relevant parts of three books is not very much to ask from a writer, I think. It contains wacko numbers and events that make no sense. No good writing at all.

1. I am of the opinion that unions are a bad thing. I do not have personal experience with unions but a friend had to join a union as part of her job. Taxes and union dues reduced her 50k+ job down to less than 35k take home.

I don't think the union membership fee could be that high. Here in Sweden (which is considered a fairly socialist state by many outsiders, although we have had a right-wing government the last 4 years) a union membership fee costs about $35 a month for a average payed worker. And being forced to join a union is not required, it's optional.

Although this is fairly off-topic, sorry for that.

-----

Even if Topps mainly cares about the money, they do care about brand too. If their logo is on a line that gets bad reputation, even how small it is, they will care about that.

Random note from an exhausted, sleep depped GM just getting home from Gen Con... It was stated by Tara and Brent at the "What's Up With..." seminar at the convention that the extension was for 6 months, which was what CGL requested, not Topps. This was several hours before the license was finalized (And it was stated taht it was still pending finalization at the seminar) on Friday.

By the same token, Iron Wind Metal, who's been running on 6 month extensions for quite some time and has been wanting a longer extension, announced that they had gotten a 1 1/2 year extension that night as well. Which is very cool for Mike and the IWM guys.

The entire convention was very positive. Tara briefed the GMs a bit about the situation and asked that we not discuss the situation with players if they ask about it, but should refer them to Tara, Brent, or Amy at the booth. Nobody really asked anything though, and those that did comment on it, it seemed to be, as I said, very positive. The players just want to continue to get Shadowrun product.

Now... I have a Shadowrun game to sleep through. I'll have more stuff to post later tonight or tomorrow. Or Tuesday. Or something. Depends on when I wake up.

Bull

Six months. Good to know.

Any reason why that wasn't included in the original release?

Well, Americans paymuch less taxes than Scandinavians do. They have a whole different attitude towards this than Europeans do, too, usually feeling they don't get a return on their tax, whereas we feel the taxes are a community thing and go into sensible things like infrastructure and chasing the latest trend in eco alarmism. Of course, American infrastructure in wide parts is not what we might expect it to be. You get what you pay for, occasionally.

A union would be able to pressure a company like CGL to actually pay for work easily, though. Given how this seems no isolated incident, it makes me wonder wheter 90% of something isn't more than nothing still.

In the US we send $1 to Washington D.C. with a request for street lights and the government sends us back $0.50 to add to our "Federally Subsidized Street Light Fund". I can't imagine why we'd feel that we don't get a return on our taxes.

Somewhere in Washington, someone read the RAW and has his own budget optimized.

Which opens up a new line of speculation. Why request 6 months, when the company's stated goal is to remain publishing for the license for as long as they're in business?

Possibility one: IMR requests the longest extension they can get, to have time to put their house in order, which means that Topps initially offered an extension of a shorter time frame and IMR had to negotiate them up to their requested 6 months.

Possibility two: IMR would much rather be working under a long term multi-year contract than a short term extension, and are so confident that their bid for the next contract will be the winning one, they requested just six months to limit the amount of time for Topps to consider other possible bids.

I was in a union, in the auto industry, for 9 years. My dues were 2 hours of pay every month. That works out to approx. 1.15% of my pay. Not accounting for over time or work furlough neither of which had any impact on my dues. Not that that stopped some people from complaining about them, even though we made more than anyone working in a comparable job in the area. I'm not going to go into my opinions of unions here, atm. Just wanted to weigh in with an actual fact regarding my personal experience with union dues.

Graywulfe

Wow a post from the future!

Good thing that this is still an issue then.

You ever had a week where you only had to work 5 days?

You can go ahead and thank the unions for that. Before union activities of the 1920s there was no two day weekend.

*ponders the delays if hobby game companies forced staff to take two days off a week ...*

So 30% after taxes? I'm paying 28% without a union. That's not a huge difference. I've always thought of a union as insurance. It's a cost you'd rather not pay but if you need them (and if you have a union that doesn't suck) you're glad you have them. Just my opinion though.

That said. Some industries just don't make sense unionized. I don't know much about the RPG industry, but a lot of people quote slim profite margins. A union could kill an industry like that.

One of the electrical contractors we use at work said their union is pushing for 4 day work weeks (Monday to Thursday, or Tuesday to Friday). This is ontop of their already 1 RDO every fortnight, any public holiday means half the week off on minimum (sometimes the whole week).

All of this on an extremely nice pay packet of minimum 100k . Lifes tough for some?

All of these points are very different for unions here in the US. If enough folks vote in a given office, it's not optional. You're now union, whether you desire to be or not. (Speaking only from my experience with grocery store related unions and telecommunications unions in Pennsylvania.) Union dues can also be much higher than that a month, with little return, although this varies greatly industry to industry, and union to union (in terms of cost of dues and return on said dues).

Also, thanks for the news Bull. The six month extension request makes a bit of sense, if it's being used as a "look at the changes and improvements we've made" period.

Some unions are good;
My mom worked for the US Post Office for a while. Their dues came out to approximately 0.25% of their pay with the average member making $43k per year. The dues cover the expenses of the union in dealing with complaints which involved members, ensuring that the employees were payed and treated fairly (both by management and by co-workers), and lobbies Congress to keep the private shipping companies from convincing them to set postal rates astronomically high or too low for the USPS to operate (the USPS is government regulated, so Congress has a say in how much they can charge).

Some unions are bad;
The UAW (auto workers union) has nearly ten times as many members as the USPS, charges nearly five times the percentage dues per member, who each make nearly 20% more per year on average. The UAW has an income of over a billion US dollars every year (though it might be a bit lower now with all the recent layoffs), and yet the estimated expenses amount to less than 50 million a year, fight for all members to keep their jobs, no matter how well or poorly they do at their job, or how poorly they treat their co-workers.

Some unions do interesting things. For example I'm told that the IBEW union members pension plan is much more poorly funded than the IBEW union leaders pension plan. But I'll admit I haven't ever run into an incompetent commercial electrician. Ones who didn't give a damn about doing their job, yes, I've seen them, but they did know what they were doing when they decided to actually do work.