Embezzlement in Catalyst

[Crissa]

Any purchases of the material available, except directly from the publisher, would not lead to money going to the publisher. This is because material in stores is generally already paid for, while materials at distributers and some bookstores have return clauses. So buying or not buying doesn't hurt the publisher as much as you might think, at least immediately.

-Crissa

[Username17]

The Next Phase of WildFire, Pt. I

5-April-10

As of 3:21 pm today, Catalyst Game Labs transferred ownership of all remaining CthulhuTech and Poo inventory to WildFire, the legal copyright holder of both properties.

As of January 3rd, 2010, WildFire terminated any and all business relations with Catalyst Game Labs, due primarily to non-payment of royalties, in addition to other contractual breaches.

Since that time, WildFire has been trying to work with Catalyst for that company to pay WildFire the remaining royalties owed. Things have progressed very slowly. In order to relieve a portion of that debt all at once, the best solution for Catalyst Game Labs was to transfer ownership of WildFire inventory to that company.

More changes are expected within the week, and more information will be released as they happen.

-Username17

[Caid]

Any purchases of the material available, except directly from the publisher, would not lead to money going to the publisher. This is because material in stores is generally already paid for, while materials at distributers and some bookstores have return clauses. So buying or not buying doesn't hurt the publisher as much as you might think, at least immediately.

-Crissa

What about PDF sales? I wouldn't mind having all the SR4 supplements and could only reasonably afford them as PDFs. Should I wait? Do I risk not being able to get hold of them? I'm somewhat unsure about how these things work.

[Username17]

Any purchases of the material available, except directly from the publisher, would not lead to money going to the publisher. This is because material in stores is generally already paid for, while materials at distributers and some bookstores have return clauses. So buying or not buying doesn't hurt the publisher as much as you might think, at least immediately.

-Crissa

What about PDF sales? I wouldn't mind having all the SR4 supplements and could only reasonably afford them as PDFs. Should I wait? Do I risk not being able to get hold of them? I'm somewhat unsure about how these things work.

The morality of purchasing things at this point is pretty complex, and I am not telling anyone what the correct way through the minefield is. The fact is that Catalyst does not have the money, and Loren Coleman has complete control over who gets checks and how big those checks are.

WildFire and Posthuman Studios are already out. Which means that my original predictions that they could end up staying with Catalyst longer than Shadowrun and Battetech were unfounded. I was hedging that because they were on separate contracts that they probably weren't going to be breaking it of at the same time - and at this point it is clear that WildFire for example broke it off several months back (which explains why Catalyst wasn't printing any of those books.

So here are the things to keep in mind:

• Catalyst is not completing contracts or filling all orders. If you order something now, there is no guaranty you will actually get it. Even an electronic copy, there is a very real chance that it will be cut off for one reason or another before you get your five downloads or whatever.
• Products are not being printed and contracts are being canceled. If you don't buy something now, it could be of the market for months or years.
• Money you send to Catalyst will be funding the habits of an essentially confessed thief who has been ripping off the very people whose art you are enjoying for years.
• If no money goes into the corporation, even the emergency payment checks to freelancers who are withholding copyrights will bounce, and then those writers will get screwed even more than they already have been.

So um... yeah. The situation sucks. There is no objectively right thing to do from a consumer's perspective, and I would not tell you what you have to do. Or even what you should do.

But I will say that printed copies of Vice are currently not allowed to be sold. And the company isn't even negotiating to get those books off of hold. So it looks like remaining copies owned by Catalyst will be pulped unless the next license holding company negotiates for them somehow (assuming they care). So if you see a copy of that book in a store, you should probably get it - because first sale already happened and it'll be a collector's item soon.

Midnight even more so. The only copies that were shipped were done so illegally, so even though that book is crap there are probably only a few hundred in the whole world and there probably won't be any more even if another company gets the license.

-Username17

[Username17]

The world is Surreal.

-Username17

[Juton]

For for laying out a complex situation for those of us on the sidelines Frank.

[Doom]

Funny part is, I'm more familiar with 'Crypto' Coleman than the 'Catalyst' Coleman.

Finally found that site detailing bizarreness in another gaming organization...it's a rambling read, but gets better once you get the names down: http://www.judgetruth.synthasite.com/

[Gelare]

So do we think that the next company that buys the license to make Shadowrun is going to launch immediately into SR 5th Edition and make it their own thing, or will they continue on with 4th edition?

[Username17]

So do we think that the next company that buys the license to make Shadowrun is going to launch immediately into SR 5th Edition and make it their own thing, or will they continue on with 4th edition?

The first thing to remember is that it's already time for a new edition of Shadowrun. Shadowrun is 21 years old and is in its fourth edition. The average edition time is 5.3 years or so, and the current edition is 6 years old. Now, there's a lot of blood you can squeeze out of this stone, SR4's release schedule has been incredibly slow, thanks in great part to cash flow problems at FanPro and then at Catalyst. The SR4 version of SotA (Monofilament Edge) and Shadowbeat (Destroying News) will probably never happen over the lifetime of SR4 because development schedules have gotten curb kicked so many times. Hell, I don't think they are going to get to their Tir Tairgire location book/ even more experimental magic rules book (which I don't even remember the name of). But yeah, you could keep SR4 going strong for 2 years easy with regular major releases every two months. Event books could be done every year to kick the brand into gear - I mean shit you've bee sitting on New Horizons and Earth Rise for six years. Which means that you'd probably have to start those from scratch because almost everyone who had ideas for those is gone.

But let's be serious here. If you're recapitalizing and bringing out a set of new titles in a timely fashion, there's just no reason at this point to not come out with a new edition. A new edition of the Core Book, Magic in the Shadows, and Man & Machine is going to sell better than continuing the line with Spy Games and Runner's Toolkit. You want some strong opening sales with the new company so that people take your offerings seriously when making orders for distributors and game stores. Bringing out some niche products is asking to be marginalized.

So what I would do, is to come out swinging. The very first thing I would do from getting the license negotiated (even before it was scheduled to flip to us) would be to put out some open submission requests for people to rewrite each of the chapters. Make it clear in the release that you intended to bring back Shadowrun writers who wanted to come back after the ugliness of the financial mismanagement of the previous company, and make further clear that you were interested in new talent. Ask each person to submit a writing sample to show they can write and answer a couple of questions to show that they know Shadowrun. The important thing is to make this public - because not only will that increase the number of submissions you get, but it will help convince the old guard that you're taking the game and its history seriously. For example, for the "And So it Came to Pass..." chapter, you'd have something like the following:

Disregarding spike babies, who was older - dwarfs or trolls - when the first Awakened nations were declared?

Name four important results from the Treaty of Denver.

What is the most important fact about the Treaty of Denver in 2073?

What is your favorite version of events that led to the creation of the Kingdom of Hawaii, and why?

Anyway, you get your list of important changes you're demanding (should fit on a piece of paper), and you get like 8 people rewriting the Core Book. Should be out in 2 months. You lay down the art requests at the beginning, not the end of writing, because you already know what all the chapters are going to cover. But practically speaking, that is not going to happen, because people suck at things.

What is actually going to happen is that the new company is going to fumble around trying to buy up the rights to print some of the crap that is being written and rewritten over at Catalyst now, and they are going to try to release that stuff quickly. And if we're lucky, we'll see a sixth World Almanac, and we'll see War! in pretty much its current retarded incarnation (hint: Amazonia hates people and loves trees, you can't piss them off by planting man-eating trees), and we may even see Runner's Toolkit. If we are lucky, we'll get a whole fresh new team writing Spy Games from scratch and then we won't have management demanding a big Ute-related plot that no one cares abut and makes no sense. And they'll start pitching ideas for a Fifth Edition, and we'll probably see Fifth Edition in like January of next year.

By the way, Loren's New House does in fact appear to cover most of the missing money. The five or so lawyers they are retaining is eating up a good chunk of the rest. Remember that that despite all the money they stole, they weren't able to pay WildFire any money for their royalties, and had to settle with giving away Cthulhutech product.

-Username17

[Koumei]

So what I would do...

The very first thing I would do from getting the license negotiated (even before it was scheduled to flip to us)...

And you wonder why people are so sure that you're the one who will be taking the reigns next?

PS. David Hill David A Hill Shadowrun Catalyst Embezzlement

[Maxus]

So what I would do...

The very first thing I would do from getting the license negotiated (even before it was scheduled to flip to us)...

And you wonder why people are so sure that you're the one who will be taking the reigns next?

PS. David Hill David A Hill Shadowrun Catalyst Embezzlement

Hey, if Frank was taking the reigns, I'd invest. I'm sure I'm not the only one, either.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Frank, you have a prefect opportunity to embezzle here! All you have to do is cash in on your reputation.

[Gelare]

Ah, so that's Loren Coleman's new house. I was wondering what it looked like after the links got scrubbed from Dumpshock.

So the house is in Washington, which means any interested parties should be looking at this: Washington Bankruptcy Exemptions
Important points:
Homestead up to $40,000
Personal property (including cars) up to about $10,000 (including $2,000 wild card)
Tools of the Trade up to $5,000
Miscellaneous stuff that wouldn't do judgment creditors any good anyways.

So if the plaintiffs can get their act together, this should be a slam dunk, and they won't get all the money they're owed, but they will get the man's house.


Also, Frank, if only you weren't in med school and didn't make people want to punch you in the face on a regular basis, this would be a golden opportunity.

[Jilocasin]

Hah, that's only like 45 minutes away. Not exactly what I'd choose to do with a chunk of embezzlement money...

[Koumei]

Well there could indeed be trouble if Frank decided to take over (I'm not saying he is, this is a hypothetical situation that the man himself has denied). Things that would suggest the "If I was to do it" means "If I was actually this other dude who is buying it up", not "If I personally decided to".

For starters: how many bridges have you left unburned, Frank? I mean, let's be honest here. You aren't easy to get along with, and are the first person to admit it, and speak poorly of a lot of others in the industry. It sounds like you've made a lot of enemies there, so it could actually be hard to get a team together that didn't consist of people who never worked on Shadowrun in the past.

[Rejakor]

I'd invest in a Frank SR5.

To be honest, it'd probably be one of the best things that could happen to the franchise.

EDIT: If he was that other guy with money and time and ego-soothing skills, yeah.

[Username17]

Well there could indeed be trouble if Frank decided to take over (I'm not saying he is, this is a hypothetical situation that the man himself has denied). Things that would suggest the "If I was to do it" means "If I was actually this other dude who is buying it up", not "If I personally decided to".

This. Also +1. And whatever the kids are using for their total agreement cliches.

There are things I think the new company should do, and I'm pretty sure they won't do them. For one thing, I think the new company should reveal themselves now in order to get people to start preparing drafts and proposals for them now. But of course, it is quite conspicuous at this point that this has not happened. Heck, you got Catalyst insiders not only flipping out trying to find who my leak is and flipping out shutting down log-ins that haven't been used in the last thirty days to purge "back doors" (hint: if it was a back door, I would have used it in the last 30 days, just saying), you even have some of them worrying that I am somehow the leader of a new company. Fuck, we even had someone drive-through troll this site to try to fish for information confirming David Stansel, Jennifer Harding, and Adam Jury as the core of conspirators to form a new company to take the SR license!

For starters: how many bridges have you left unburned, Frank? I mean, let's be honest here. You aren't easy to get along with, and are the first person to admit it, and speak poorly of a lot of others in the industry. It sounds like you've made a lot of enemies there, so it could actually be hard to get a team together that didn't consist of people who never worked on Shadowrun in the past.

That's a fascinating question. If you'd asked me two years ago, I would have guessed a number that was kind of close to zero. However, the fact is that there are people feeding me data about Catalysts's situation. Including people who I had thought I was on permanently bad terms with after I said bad things about something that they wrote. Turns out that there actually are people in the world who can take criticism. Surprising, I know.

However, I think part of the nostalgia comes with he territory of knowing they will never have to work with me. There are still people who, upon hearing about my involvement, respond by just saying my name a bunch of times with various punctuations. And I do mean "people" - not just one person.

-Username17

[Lokathor]

I haven't seen shadowrun other than SR4, and I've only heard about SR3 a tiny bit from some friends, so I don't really know a lot about the mechanical bloodline of SR, what what would SR5 even change?

I've asked you before, and you've said that there aren't really any big holes in SR4. Doesn't that imply that either SR5 will just be a bunch of fiddling small changes all over, or that SR5 will in some way be worse than SR4? Obviously not everyone agrees with your opinion on the various mechanics issues, but it seems like you've worked with most of the folks that might be the big names for SR5, so maybe you've got some info on what they'd probably want to change.

[Username17]

I haven't seen shadowrun other than SR4, and I've only heard about SR3 a tiny bit from some friends, so I don't really know a lot about the mechanical bloodline of SR, what what would SR5 even change?

I've asked you before, and you've said that there aren't really any big holes in SR4. Doesn't that imply that either SR5 will just be a bunch of fiddling small changes all over, or that SR5 will in some way be worse than SR4? Obviously not everyone agrees with your opinion on the various mechanics issues, but it seems like you've worked with most of the folks that might be the big names for SR5, so maybe you've got some info on what they'd probably want to change.

Shadowrun had a big change between SR1 and SR2, and a big change between SR3 and SR4. SR2 and SR3 material is so similar that in many cases you cannot tell whether a book is intended to be used with SR3 or SR2 without checking the logo on the spine. SR4 is far and away the most popular edition ever, so you'd almost certainly see some comparatively minor changes here and there.

Remember also that people can't help fiddling with shit. When they made the anniversary edition of Shadowrun 4th edition, they made some last minute rule changes without testing them and they were so bad that most of them got pulled, and most of the ones that even saw print got smacked down to optional rules or even errataed straight out of the game within weeks. So I can pretty much guaranty you that some asshole is going to have a "great idea" at the eleventh hour that is going to fuck something up.

That being said, there are genuinely going to be some changes that are good. There are known and identified problems that people have various ideas about what to do with. Let's go chapter by chapter:

Welcome to the Shadows
This chapter gets written basically from scratch every single edition. In the first edition they really stressed the fighting against "The Man" angle with environmentalism and hair rock. Later editions tried to be more morally ambiguous and harder. I would expect a bit more "hard edge" on this one, with some discussion of characters who did bad thingsTM.

And So It Came to Pass...
The history section gets retconned every edition without fail. Events just get dropped off the radar, and new events get penciled in. Since the next event book is supposed to be New Horizons, I expect that they would throw some more info about Horizon and maybe some hints that Communism is Bad or some shit.

The Sixth World
Also gets a radical overhaul depending on what they want to emphasize. The first edition had a whole section on Seattle! This chapter is going to be top down rewritten, and the new emphasis would be on whatever the section author wanted to talk about.

Game Concepts
Here's where we start getting into objective reality. Expect that the basic success test table is going to be expanded to 6 hits, because that's an important part of the range of normal play. I would expect the extended test mechanic to be dropped in favor of a mechanic where you only roll dice once or twice. Edge refresh rules are too generous, so expect that the SR5 Edge refresh rules would be gimped severely.

Character Creation
Costs are going to be fiddled with. No fucking question. The SR4 Metatype costs are pretty damn arbitrary - it's just the percentage of players who played each metatype rounded up to the nearest 5 and labeled with "Build Points" instead of "Percent." Skills cost too much relative to attributes, and some of the attributes don't really do much. I wouldn't be surprised to see Body and Strength merged along with Charisma and Willpower merging as well.

Sample Characters
These get rewritten every edition. I would expect a bigger emphasis on Street Samurai next time around, with at least one and probably two or three more augmented killer type sample characters.

Skills
There are too many skills, at least amongst combat skills. The "Dodge" skill, for example, was a 12th hour addition to SR4 and no one likes it because it sucks. Also, there are just too many weapon skills, and that ends up being a very large build point tax on weapons experts, who end up not being able to pull their weight. Other than that, people can't help writing up new skills to cover some jackass thing or another - that's how we ended up with parachuting. There's downright room for more technical skills, so hopefully they would go in there.

Combat
It's well understood that the recoil rules don't do what they are supposed to do. Very good chance you'd see a Strength Minimum thing like nWoD or aWoD. There are a number of changes that I'd like to see, of which the most likely to go through would probably be to go to fixed hit points like aWoD. The variable hit points thing was a new introduction in SR4. All three previous editions, everyone had ten health levels. And that at least, was better back then. So expect this 8 + 1/2 Body bullshit to get rolled back. Hardened Armor is almost certainly going to work differently. I would personally expect it to be reduced in size and turned into auto-hits on the soak.

The Vehicle rules will be ground-up rewritten.

There's an optional rule for getting rid of the dodge roll by rolling it into the attack threshold. I would not be super surprised to see that made the law o the land like aWoD.

Magic
SR4 Spirits are too powerful. There will be a series of limits put on them. I would be fairly surprised if they don't have their skills cut in half. I would also expect them to have their mental stats decoupled from Force, for fairly obvious reasons.

Foci are going to get an overhaul, they always do. Mystic Adepts and Adepts will have their numbers juggled again. They keep making the Astral Perception power cheaper for adepts. I wouldn't be surprised if they get it for free. Other powers will be made cheaper as well. Hopefully they'll stop overcharging for combat skill improved ability, but whatever.

The Matrix
The Matrix Rules have been rewritten ten times since 1989, and they will be rewritten again - from scratch - in SR5. Whether they are more crazy or a solid improvement is entirely a province of who they get to write it.

Running the Game
You'll probably see the diseases ported back into the core rules from Augmentation. If we're lucky, the poison rules will get converted to work more like the diseases and less like fucking instant death. Karma costs will get moved around, they always do. Probably you'll see a slightly different and less generous set of healing schedules.

Enemies and Allies
I would expect a revamp of the Contact table, such that starting available contacts bottom out at like drug kingpins and not at heads of state. Also, expect to see some variance in monster stats - although probably not by much. I would expect to see Plant Spirits at the least go into the core book's spirit list and bump Earth spirits for the Shamanic Tradition's core five. Immunity and Immunity to Normal Weapons will be split into two different powers.

Gear
Expect the SimModule and SimRig to do something completely different. The description of trodes and other Matrix gear will similarly be totally different. Some gear will be folded in from Augmentation or Arsenal - but honestly not that much.

---

Obviously, if I were calling the shots, I know what I would do with a lot of those questions. But I'm not.

-Username17

[Koumei]

The Matrix
The Matrix Rules have been rewritten ten times since 1989, and they will be rewritten again - from scratch - in SR5. Whether they are more crazy or a solid improvement is entirely a province of who they get to write it.

How about Lars and Rob? *trollface.jpg*

[Username17]

The Matrix
The Matrix Rules have been rewritten ten times since 1989, and they will be rewritten again - from scratch - in SR5. Whether they are more crazy or a solid improvement is entirely a province of who they get to write it.

How about Lars and Rob? *trollface.jpg*

Googly moogly no. Rob Boyle is a very talented writer and he has a very strong vision and can make some amazing things happen. But his track record with matrix subsystems is pretty poor. My suspicion is that he is limited to 3 dimensional thinking. Which is not even a thing in the Matrix, since you can have as many orthogonal connections as you want.

-Username17

[Koumei]

I said that simply in reference to what you said in the Eclipse Phase review, about petitioning the UN to get them banned from writing hacking material, and that one could probably get several countries to sign it.

[Quantumboost]

Maybe we (in this case, some non-Frank person acting as a super-secret obvious ninja representative of The Den) could present a Matrix subsystem with playtesting results and so on to whoever ends up owning the license as a "party interested in the Matrix in the new edition not being crazy nonsense".

[Parthenon]

Rather than having some Den sockpuppet, how feasible would it be for Frank to just write the hacking section? Or in some other way do some of the writing as himself?

[Quantumboost]

Rather than having some Den sockpuppet, how feasible would it be for Frank to just write the hacking section? Or in some other way do some of the writing as himself?

This is sounding less and less like a mad, multi-leveled evil scheme. Is that really what we want?