The Shadowrun Situation

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The Shadowrun Situation

Post by Username17 »

Here's the short version of the Shadowrun Situation:

Loren L. Coleman (the Battletech author, not the Cryptozoologist), is the majority shareholder of InMediaRes LLC. There are approximately 16 minority shareholders, a tally which is in no small part "approximate" because there have been at least two pieces of shadiness involving Mr. Coleman unilaterally transferring ownership of other people's stock. Over the last three years, Mr. Coleman has been making more and more unauthorized draws on the corporate accounts. While doing so, he has had a mansion built for himself in a gated community in Snohomish, Washington. This construction project was paid for not only out of his own pocket, but also by contractors that were billed directly to the corporation as freelancers.

During this period, IMR has been subcontracting for books to be translated and published in German, French, and Japanese with Pegasus, Black Book Editions, and ArcLight respectively. These companies have turned royalties in to Mr. Coleman and he has voluntarily declined to ship the royalties up the chain to Topps. This is a continuation of a practice engaged in by FASA where the foreign royalties would simply be lost and not distributed. However, in this case it is directly demonstrable that malicious intent was held - in that Mr. Coleman directed his book keeper to leave foreign royalties unreported on the grounds that Topps "didn't care about them anyway."

Also during this period, the reported income from conventions and direct sales has mysteriously fallen from nearly forty thousand dollars a year to less than six. This comes from Coleman selling things for cash and then simply pocketing the money rather than reporting it as corporate income. This means directly that royalties were not paid on those materials either.

Even after the real estate collapse, Mr. Coleman's house was appraised at a value of approximately $650,000. Over the last few years, he has consistently told creditors and investors that finances were much tighter than such extravagant expenses would indicate. Many creditors were not paid at all. And by "creditors" I don't just mean printers and advertisers and other "corporate" creditors, or even simply financial creditors such as the investors and poor suckers who made personal loans to IMR or Coleman directly - I include the actual creative staff. There are seriously Battletech writers whose checks are three years late, and given current financial problems may never be paid at all. Coleman's draws on company funds were so fast and heavy that some checks he wrote to writing and artistic staff actually bounced. My own personal checks were months late, and short by about a hundred dollars. And that was years ago (my last check actually arrived in 2008, though of course I stopped being a Freelancer there in September of 2007).

As this situation has boiled to a head, smaller and more agile companies have already divested themselves of connections with IMR and Mr. Coleman. Posthuman Studios (Eclipse Phase), and WildFire (CthulhuTech) have both cut themselves loose. WildFire has been quite public with the terms they have agreed to on splitting from Mr. Coleman, and he has broken those agreements twice. Three times if you include the fact that he didn't pay them their royalties in the first place. The first splitting agreement was that IMR couldn't make any new books, but they would sell off the remaining stock that said "Catalyst" on it and use some of the money to pay the owed royalties to WildFire. Coleman kept selling the books, but didn't pay the royalties. Then they made a new agreement where IMR had to give WildFire their remaining Cthulhutech stocks and that would count towards the royalties debts. However, when they opened those boxes, the books were still tens of thousands of dollars short of what was still owed. WildFire has now pressed for Chapter 7 against IMR.

Other creditors may yet follow suit. Topps is pressing for an audit of IMR and Mr. Coleman's funds. The things they will find in that are... less than hopeful. IMR's Payables are currently much larger than their Receivables. Years of not paying corporate debts while the primary shareholder milks the company dry has left them in arrears to everyone they've had any contact with. And the books are literally unauditable. So much stuff has been rewritten or simply never written down at all that making sense of it would be a Herculean task of its own. There is no sales data - it's seriously just a list of money in and money out.

Meanwhile, the company has been hemorrhaging employees left and right. Some of them have been straight up asked to falsify financial documents or quit, while others have simply seen the writing on the wall and fled like rats on a sinking ship. Most hilariously, a good amount of corporate property has actually gone with the employees, since the employees often went and got equipment on their own to be "reimbursed" later on - reimbursements that likely as not never came. Most hilariously, the shipping computer left with the employee who used it.

Mr. Coleman has been paying debts only when forced, and even then those debts have been paid late and often short. The only reason that any freelancers got paid in the recent days was because they were withholding copyright on books that they had been owed monies on for some time and which were in turn scheduled to sell for more in the remaining weeks than their own contracts. Nevertheless, a lot of high quality talent, and even medium quality talent, has stated that come hell or high water, they will never work with IMR again.

So in all of this, you may ask three simple questions: Who are the bad guys in all of this? Does Shadowrun have a future? And of course: What about all those books we were promised?

The Bad Guys: It's tempting to get very angry at the people who rant on message boards defending the indefensible. Complete assholes like Bull and Doctor Funkenstein are certainly not helping anything, and their allegiances and blatant lack of ethics will doubtless be remembered long after this saga is over. But don't fool yourself: their antics aren't unexpected or particularly relevant. You can get 20% of the people to approve of whoever happens to be in charge no matter what they do. The bad guys are still Loren L Coleman, Randall Bills, and Jason Hardy.

Loren Coleman of course is the man who proximally stole all the money. He is the center of the web of lies. It is he who demanded and received total control of the piggy bank and then sucked it dry while no one was looking. He's also trying to steal the company from the other investors. His legal defense is seriously that it only counts as embezzlement if he isn't the only owner, and that despite the fact that he took money from all his investors in exchange for partial ownership, and he has been sending them tax forms every year, that 3 to 4 years later he still hasn't gotten around to filing the forms properly to indicate that they actually own anything. So his defense against the charge of embezzlement is... interstate mail fraud. I can't even make this stuff up.

Randall Bills is Loren's best friend. And he is one of Loren's closest allies. It was he who told the book keeper that if she didn't want to follow Loren's instructions to help defraud investors and license owners and the IRS that she could quit. And he said that he was "The Messiah of Battletech" without whose blessing the franchise would collapse. He also said that he would drive the company into the ground rather than jeopardize his friendship with Loren. And he has lied to people and done everything in his power to resist efforts to remove Loren from power or the cookie jar of finances. Currently, he has his wife doing the shipping to cover for the employees who left in disgust or were forced out for lack of loyalty.

Jason Hardy is the current Developer of Shadowrun. He was appointed for loyalty to Randall Bills rather than knowledge of Shadowrun or writing ability. He has continued that tradition by pushing writers out of the pool for showing insufficient loyalty to the company, regardless of knowledge of the subject, writing ability, or loyalty to the Shadowrun line. When the scandal broke, he locked arms with Randall and told him that people were spreading lies about him. I am not sure if he actually believes this to all be some sort of wacky misunderstanding, but in a sense it doesn't matter. What he is doing is pushing low quality products as part of a deliberate and very petty attempt to push through a published versions of books without the work done by people who refused to work with Loren. Heck, at this point there are a number of people who straight up will not work with Jason Hardy. The Trees thing even more than the whole "maliciously cutting people who aren't supporting thieves from the loop" thing.

So... what does that mean for Shadowrun? It means that Topps is going to award the license to someone else, and everyone who ranted about the Cult of Frank or whatever is going to get to like the taste of crow. Unfortunately, new books have a 90 day development cycle even when people aren't struggling to find their way or picking themselves through a mine field of traitors or whatever. So it's very possible that the new company is going to miss GenCon, and not get a new product out until Christmas. That will be a shame. But it's still avoidable if Topps picks a successor early enough.

What about the books that were coming out any moment now? Don't hold your breath. First of all, a bunch of the books in the pipeline are, as currently set up, very bad. War!, Corp Guide, and Attitude are under current formulation basically wastes of paper. They need rewrites, and even reconcepting. And that just isn't going to happen without a new company coming in and purging all the Coleman loyalists (which they should be doing anyway). Randall Bills has promised a street date for the Limited Edition SR4A book of May 3rd, and those books are physically real items. But of course, he promised several other dates in the past and never delivered. He has his wife doing the shipping, and Troy left with his computer. So... it's anyone's guess how long it would take for books to actually reach anyone in particular. And of course, any books that aren't properly shipped by the time they lose the license are going to be hidden in a drawer and sold on e-bay on the down low to try to pay Loren's court costs.

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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

Query: what made Loren Coleman steal such a large sum of money in such a short period of time?

If he was just satisfied with taking the cookies and not the dust and the ceramic scrapings he might have gotten away with it for a lot longer.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by Juton »

Has anyone heard any murmurs from other publishers who might want to take up either the Shadowrun or Battletech lines?

I've always respected how Battletech was handled. You could start playing with just the box set, you could play 90%+ of scenarios with just one book and a computer program to print the 'mech sheets. It's cheap to play for a miniatures game. In contrast to Games Workshop which tends to enforce WYSIWYG minis and each army having their own expensive book in addition to the book with the actual rules in it.

I wonder if that tradition will be kept up or if a new paradigm of charging for everything will be ushered in like the obnoxious Wizkids click-dial game.
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Post by A Man In Black »

Juton wrote:I wonder if that tradition will be kept up or if a new paradigm of charging for everything will be ushered in like the obnoxious Wizkids click-dial game.
Aw, I liked the obnoxious Wizkids click-dial game.
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Post by endersdouble »

Frank, you're awesome.

That said, uh, how do I put this? Unless you've got seriously hard proof of everything you've said--to the word--you might want to worry, just a tiny bit, about that whole libel thing.

I don't think you're lying. As I said, you're awesome, and if you start a cult, I'll join. But while IANAL and this is by no means legal advice, I hear from smart people that libel is a bitch to defend yourself from and even if you're right you want to be careful to avoid the hassle.

Just sayin'.
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Post by dirkformica »

Can someone condense Frank's post and add it to the Dumpshock CGL Speculation thread #7? A copy pasta would probably cause more harm than good, but there's good information here. I'd hate to see the new thread become another tangent filled derailment. Of course with winning openers about Jennifer Harding's belly button piercing already in place, it may be too late.
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Post by Username17 »

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Query: what made Loren Coleman steal such a large sum of money in such a short period of time?

If he was just satisfied with taking the cookies and not the dust and the ceramic scrapings he might have gotten away with it for a lot longer.
That's an odd question. No one took Heather Coleman hostage and "made" him steal a bunch of money, if that's what you're wondering. Basically, he was using the company as a personal account back when it was his, and once he got some valuable properties and investments of other peoples' money, he started deliberately and continuously funneling money into his own personal accounts. Once he started on his new house, the moneys being sifted take a couple of strong right turns and the rate of withdrawals goes way up. During that period, building contractors get paid on time and writing contractors do not.

But really it seems to be that as he figures out new ways to skim money, he keeps doing them and then adds new ways to skim money on top of that. So it starts with him using the company account as an ATM when he needs walking around cash, and that goes up over time. But he also decides to sell the same stock more than once. And he also decides to deposit money from company sales directly into his own pocket rather than going to the company at all. And he also decides to pay his personal expenses with company checks. And so on. Every time he found out he could get away with something, he just upped the ante. Like how upon discovering that FASA didn't pay their foreign royalties, he voluntarily didn't pay his foreign royalties.
Juton wrote:Has anyone heard any murmurs from other publishers who might want to take up either the Shadowrun or Battletech lines?
Yes.

It's a sealed bid situation. So I have no idea who Topps is going to go with or what Topps' has been receiving as bids. I can tell you roughly the shape of the contract and what Topps is probably looking for. Basically the new company will owe royalties on each book they sell. It's a contract, so they can offer a flat fee or a percentage. More money per book will be looked on fondly. Secondly, Topps gets a win/win contract, which is to say that the first thing that goes over to them are "pre-royalties" - it's a big chunk of money against the royalties you owe, and if you undersell or vaporware the license, they don't have to give any of it back.

So what do you make your case on?
  • Royalties per book. The more the better.
  • Pre-Royalties. The more the better.
  • Sales Pitches. If you can make it sound like you will sell a lot of books, that's good. If you can get named writers like Paul Hume, Tome Dowd, Jason Levine, Robert Derie, or Steven Kenson, you'll probably sell more books. If you have good production values, you'll sell more books. If you have a substantial warchest and a good production schedule you'll sell more books. More books means more royalties at whatever rate, so that's good.

Endersdouble wrote:But while IANAL and this is by no means legal advice, I hear from smart people that libel is a bitch to defend yourself from and even if you're right you want to be careful to avoid the hassle.
Libel is a civil issue. So people can take you to court for any reason or no reason at all. But th thing is: right now Loren is using his legal council to defend himself against bankruptcy and embezzlement proceedings. I seriously doubt he has room in his schedule for SLAPP lawsuits.

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Post by Zinegata »

dirkformica wrote:Can someone condense Frank's post and add it to the Dumpshock CGL Speculation thread #7? A copy pasta would probably cause more harm than good, but there's good information here. I'd hate to see the new thread become another tangent filled derailment. Of course with winning openers about Jennifer Harding's belly button piercing already in place, it may be too late.
Who wants to volunteer to be Dumpshock's new punching bag?
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Post by Zinegata »

Hmmm... any chance FFG may take the license?

And will I be beaten to death for suggesting this after what happened to Warhammer Fantasy 3rd Ed?
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Post by Korwin »

If I remember my password there, I'll post it.
But I'm too lazy to condence it, so I'll post the whole Thing...
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Post by Korwin »

double post
Last edited by Korwin on Tue Apr 27, 2010 6:28 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Crissa »

Actually, we don't know if building contractors got paid on time. but they often require payments up front. Looking at the photos of the home, one might think they weren't...

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Post by Username17 »

Zinegata wrote:Hmmm... any chance FFG may take the license?

And will I be beaten to death for suggesting this after what happened to Warhammer Fantasy 3rd Ed?
Fantasy Flight is a legit contender, they have something of a warchest, a history of high production values, and a penchant for picking up distressed RPG properties. Their WHFRP... thing... is not well regarded, but neither was the previous edition, so whatever.

Remember, very likely whoever takes over the license will end up with a bunch of the same writers. All that really changes is the corporate structure and the production values. Now, that has knock down effects to be sure. A corporate structure with more transparency and better pay will get books out faster and retain talent better. A corporation that can leverage better production values will sell more copies of each book it prints. Which will justify more investment in the brand, and so on.

But while I would be OK with a Fantasy Flight chaired Shadowrun, I view them as being more likely picks for Battletech.

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Re: The Shadowrun Situation

Post by Korwin »

Is the seventh Thread allready locked?
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Post by Fuchs »

No. Here it is. I'd post the summary myself, but I am already upsetting the boat by asking how exactly, as in which of post(s), with links please, violated the ToS. Apparently, they have to review the answer to my query (which should just be a link or three) after I got already warned, which does not instill me with any confidence in their moderating procedures.
Last edited by Fuchs on Tue Apr 27, 2010 6:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Zinegata »

FrankTrollman wrote:But while I would be OK with a Fantasy Flight chaired Shadowrun, I view them as being more likely picks for Battletech.

-Username17
I hadn't really thought of that. FFG Battletech would probably be AWESOME though. It's really their cup of tea.
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Post by Korwin »

The error returned was:
Sorry, you do not have permission to reply to that topic


Do I need an minimum of post?
I apparently one red in the past at dumpshock, so I had to register a new account...


Argh, forget I said anything...
Last edited by Korwin on Tue Apr 27, 2010 8:49 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Windjammer »

FrankTrollman wrote:Fantasy Flight is a legit contender, they have something of a warchest, a history of high production values, and a penchant for picking up distressed RPG properties.
FFG would be a catastrophe of the first order for a game as intricate in its details as Shadowrun. FFG have time and again received extensive criticism for their sloppy editing which caused the current errata for their prime RPG product, Dark Heresy, to run into several dozen of pages, purely orthographical errors not counting. And instead of improving on that situation FFG then delivered Rogue Trader and Creature Anathema, two further (and you'd think, pretty central) books in the 40K line, which actually took a further nose dive in terms of editorial quality that people actually yearned back to the time when Black Industry was in charge - a company, if you care to remember, vilified for its atrocious editing. I'm talking Mongoose standards here, just to give the d20 crowd an idea of what awaits them under "FFG Shadowrun".

And it doesn't stop here. You see, it's not that the company is unaware of the problem. Every time a new book comes out and they fuck up AGAIN - yes, every time, it's an exception-less track record on their part - there are fans on their board who are professional proofreaders who'll offer their help at either a reduced rate or even free of charge (beats me how, but there you go). These fans write long posts documenting the atrocity of the new book, whatever it is at the time, saying "please stop this crapulence. here, I'll do it for you, for free." And you know what? FFG just keeps saying (on those very same boards, in letters on screen), "Thanks, we've got our proofreaders who we trust." They basically say, keep saying, and have been saying, for many years now:

FUCK YOU PROOFREADING, FUCK YOU EDITING

Why, that is OF COURSE exactly what Shadowrun needs, a rulesystem so intricate with so many repercussions in book 1, page x, to book 4, page yy, that unless you actually got people who care about this sort of consistency and accuracy, it will be one huge fucking mess.

Seriously, if FFG picks this up, I'm going to actually invest in Catalyst product.

But then, of course, FFG won't pick this up. They already got three "sci-fi" RPGs out there (beware of those quote tags, and don't even try to tell me that the nuances of genre subdivision here actually translate into a sensical market split). If at all, FFG will pick up Shadowrun the way they "picked up" Battlelore: acquire the license, run the original game into the ground (as in, discontinue it), use the IP and slam it onto your next random product. Westeros, "a Battlelore game", I shit you not. As in, 4th edition, "a Dungeons and Dragons game".

Because next to a complete disregard for proofreading, that's the second major FUCK UP that plagues FFG: they're conceited enough to think they can competently design a game in-house that is superior to all extant product, despite their impressive track record of not having produced any design, ever, that survived the test of time (in a market as shortlived as boardgames no less). Yes, FFG really think that Descent dice pools and Arkham Horror token pools numbering thrice as many as actually needed from a design POV... provide actual improvements to the original design of WFRPG. They believe that their shitty d8 system in Westeros is actually an improvement to Richard Borg's Command & Color engine. In other words, they do not have a fucking CLUE about competent design, yet are insistent to OVERHAUL designs whenever they pick up new IP. If you think Catalyst was the worst thing that could happen to Shadowrun as a game, FFG will make you wish Catalyst was back. It's seriously that bad.

In other, more hopeful news, the German license taker Pegasus has said in an interview at the recent (April 27) RPC Convention that they'd naturally be interested in the license, but (a) unsure about the cost involved and (b) certain that there WILL be a high number of richer companies interested in snagging it up. Which is a pity, somehow, for, while having the license go to Germany may create all sorts of complications for the US market, Pegasus is actually able to deliver fairly solid product in the areas of production, art order, and proofreading.
Last edited by Windjammer on Tue Apr 27, 2010 11:37 am, edited 8 times in total.
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

Koumei, I think you need to start another thread.

I was under the impression that Rogue Trader and such were GOOD.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by Zinegata »

Huh? I thought Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader were pretty good as well. FFG in fact is now the #3 RPG company in terms of Q4 2009 sales according to ICV2 - with #2 being Pathfinder.

Also, Rogue Trader has a mere five pages of errata. In large print.

Dark Heresy has 14. Hardly "several dozen" that you are claiming. I checked.

My search results aren't turning up any threads about people complaining about their editting in the forums either. Just one thread where a French guy is complaining he can't understand the book because he can barely speak any English.

I'm also tempted to say you're a bit nutty regarding the quality of FFG games.

Not all of their games are great hits, but they have a ton of great games. Runewars. Battlestar Galactica. Ad Astra. Arkham Horror. Chaos in the Old World. War of the Ring. And yes, I've played these all. Twilight Imperium, Battle Lore, Age of Conan, Game of Thrones, Starcraft, Doom, and Descent I'd put in the "mediocre" category, but not trash. The only really awful ones I've played are Android and WoW.

The Arkham Horror tokens are also something I actually like. The Descent dice pools are more meh, but they worked fine in Doom. They actually help get casual players to play the game.

Also, Command & Colors... sucks. And it's ironic you sing its praises when it also has illogically custom dice... confusing counters, and claims to simulate "Cannae" and yet the Romans and Carthaginians have the same fucking number of soldiers in that scenario. It's not that good a game, and much of Battlelore's suckage stems from Command & Colors being pretty bad.

Heck, Borg also designed Battlelore, and the only game in his series that felt pretty good was Memoir '44 - largely because for once the fucking pieces weren't confusing and he actually tried to add some historical flavor.

(Also, note: GMT has not stopped publishing C&C Ancients. Nor releasing even more craptastic expansions. So the license for C&C games certainly wasn't gobbled up and greedily held by FFG)
Last edited by Zinegata on Tue Apr 27, 2010 1:52 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by Murtak »

I can't talk about Rogue Trader but I can tell you that FFG royally screwed the entirety of the rules for Descent. The entire fucking game is full of awesome basic concepts and horrible implementations of said concepts, rule holes big enough to fly a Star Destroyer through. This cake of bullshit is then liberally sprinkled with imbalances, flavored with incomprehensible FAQs which often do not even answer the original questions and then baked until the resulting meltdown fries the brain of any participants. Keep in mind I actually like this game. But the implementation is terrible, easily on par with the Shadowrun matrix rules.

Twilight Imperium and Arkham Horror seems much more sane, but then these are each on print run no. 50 or some absurd number.

Overall I pretty much agree with Windjammer. If FFG picks up Shadowrun we are fucked. I don't trust them to write Matrix rules that work. I don't trust them to write chase rules that work. In fact I trust them to make things worse. And I am absolutely sure they will totally fuck what balance Shadowrun has and try to compensate for any imbalance they actually acknowledge with silver bullets that utterly destroy the tactic/equipment/power in question.
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Post by Zinegata »

Murtak wrote:I can't talk about Rogue Trader but I can tell you that FFG royally screwed the entirety of the rules for Descent. The entire fucking game is full of awesome basic concepts and horrible implementations of said concepts, rule holes big enough to fly a Star Destroyer through. This cake of bullshit is then liberally sprinkled with imbalances, flavored with incomprehensible FAQs which often do not even answer the original questions and then baked until the resulting meltdown fries the brain of any participants. Keep in mind I actually like this game. But the implementation is terrible, easily on par with the Shadowrun matrix rules.

Twilight Imperium and Arkham Horror seems much more sane, but then these are each on print run no. 50 or some absurd number.
It really depends.

Rules-wise Twilight Imperium is also massively unbalanced. But people play it because the while damn thing takes 6 hours to play and it's one of the few space empire boardgames out there. And you get fucking carriers. And DEATH STARS. I personally feel that TI is also hugely disjointed, but the theme and interaction is okay enough to make it tolerable. If the game were shorter, I'd really like it.

Arkham is likewise pretty imbalanced. Some characters are definitely better than others. But if you want a boardgame that "simulates" an RPG campaign in one sitting, Arkham Horror is the best bar none.

By contrast... Chaos in the Old World is a light, wonderfully fluffy game that can be finished in 2 hours. And it's fun. And as far as we can tell, fairly balanced. And it makes you actually play like the Chaos Gods. Khorne WILL be a bloodthirsty maniac unless he's throwing the game. Tzeench WILL be a scheming bastard. Nurgle will love corruption and spreading plagues. And Slaanesh will make heroes cry.

Likewise, Battlestar Galactica? No game has ever simulated its source material so well. Hell, it is so fucking faithful to the source material that the expansion actually feels as wackily disjointed as the Third Season it's based on :P (I'm actually tempted to do a comic strip ala DM of the Rings to demonstrate this)

At the opposite extreme though... there's Android. Let us never speak of that damn game again.

So I'm not willing to say FFG will immediately make Shadowrun go KABOOM. Honestly, I'm tempted to take a look at their WHFRP 3rd Ed. It looks interesting. I just don't know if what we'll get is the sort of mind-numbing rules like "the game that shall not be named", or the same brillance as Chaos in the Old World/BSG.
Last edited by Zinegata on Tue Apr 27, 2010 2:04 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Murtak »

Both TI and Arkham have rules that mostly work. Descent does not. Shadowrun 4th has rules that mostly work. More precisely, it has rules that work very well and a few areas that are disjointed pieces of a flaming wreck of the remains of an acid trip of some poor designer forced to write a crapton of rules in a single setting. (Or at least that is what the matrix rules look like.)

I am fine with whoever picking up Shadowrun fucking up the matrix rules. By now I think I'd suspect aliens if the matrix rules were sensible. I can deal with some amount imbalance. Arkham-level imbalances (post-destinies) are workable, with a couple of houserules if need be. But liberally sprinkling session-destroying bullshit through a game is not ok. And the only FFG game I know they wrote the rules from scratch for is just that.

On second thought, FFG have been smart enough to largely leave games intact before. If they just pick up 4E, hire decent background writers and just continue the fine tradition of fucking up the matrix rules, and leave the rest of the rules alone, the game won't really suffer. So I guess we might actually get lucky, even if FFG does get the Shadowrun license. I'd still be happier with someone else though.
Murtak
Wesley Street
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Post by Wesley Street »

Zinegata wrote:At the opposite extreme though... there's Android. Let us never speak of that damn game again.
Hmmm. Glad I received that game as a gift then.
Jason Hardy wrote: People asked for flaws in Frank's argument, so here you go. I'm reluctant to engage in this, but there are some rather defamatory things said about me, and I'd like to clear a few of them up. That's the stuff I'm going to concentrate on, but keep in mind that Frank slants most other arguments negative. Interpretations could go back and forth, but the best way we'll know if Frank's version works is what happens with the license. As we'll see when it comes to the stuff about me, his interpretation of what he believes to be "facts" is often quite slanted.

1. "[Jason Hardy] was appointed for loyalty to Randall Bills rather than knowledge of Shadowrun or writing ability." As I stated in the previous thread, I wrote over 200,000 words for Shadowrun and edited portions of 9 books before I was hired. I've also done writing work for over half a dozen companies, most of whom hire me repeatedly. My loyalty to Randall was not covered in the interview for the job--things like my plans to communicate with people and plans to get product moving were.

2. "He has continued that tradition by pushing writers out of the pool for showing insufficient loyalty to the company." I haven't pushed a single writer out of the pool. I had one writer removed from the forums, on the philosophy that it likely is not a good idea to share confidential information with someone working at cross purposes, but I stated that I was still willing to work with that author. The change from the freelancer forums to a Google group has also not definitively pushed anyone out--I can remain in contact with writers who have not yet joined the group and gauge their interest in writing future product. However, I should point out that I believe that not working with writers who broke NDAs is a valid thing to do, should I make that decision.

3. "regardless of knowledge of the subject, writing ability, or loyalty to the Shadowrun line." Incorrect. All writers I work with are writers who I have seen samples for. They have varying levels of knowledge, but most have a good background in the setting. Their loyalty to the SR line is important--that's why most of them have signed up to do writing in the first place.

4. "What he is doing is pushing low quality products as part of a deliberate and very petty attempt to push through a published versions of books without the work done by people who refused to work with Loren." Incorrect. What I am doing is trying to get products finished. I'm running drafts by other freelancers and proofers to make sure they are of good quality. I don't believe I'm being petty--I believe I'm working to get books out, which is what the line requires.

5. "Heck, at this point there are a number of people who straight up will not work with Jason Hardy." That may be. But what is that number? He doesn't say. By my count, I've got around 20 or so freelancers--most of them with previous SR experience--still willing to work with me, along with several new freelancers who have expressed an interest.

6. "So... what does that mean for Shadowrun? It means that Topps is going to award the license to someone else, and everyone who ranted about the Cult of Frank or whatever is going to get to like the taste of crow." We'll see on that one, but from what I have heard this is definitely slanted toward Frank's POV and not real conversations with Topps.

7. "War!, Corp Guide, and Attitude are under current formulation basically wastes of paper. They need rewrites, and even reconcepting." Do I need to point out that this is just opinion? And that Corp Guide was nearly done before these problems hit, and the vast majority of the text that was going to be included from the beginning is still being included?

8. "[Randall] promised several other dates [for when the LE would street] in the past and never delivered." Please show evidence of another street date for the LE. There wasn't one. This was the first specific date announced

9. "So... it's anyone's guess how long it would take for [LEs] to actually reach anyone in particular." People have already seen their order statuses change. Perhaps they could also post info when they receive their copies.

Again, I left most of the Loren stuff alone because I don't know enough to comment one way or the other. But based on the horrible assumptions Frank makes about my motives, I have trouble trusting the assumptions he makes about others.

Jason H.
Any response? Counter-counter-arguments?
Zinegata
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Post by Zinegata »

Murtak wrote:Both TI and Arkham have rules that mostly work. Descent does not.
Akham does. TI... is debatable. The VP rules in TI can send me into fits of rage. Fortunately, other players often do things that make it totally cool (and profitable!) to simply genocide them and let me get rid of the rage. Seriously, the main thing TI has going for it is the fluff. Death Stars man.

I don't really understand what you mean by Descent's rules not working though. They work fine for single sessions. It's basically a close-ranged Doom.
But liberally sprinkling session-destroying bullshit through a game is not ok. And the only FFG game I know they wrote the rules from scratch for is just that.
What sort of session-destroyers?
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