Quote from: Omega;903166Found part of it. Waybacking to the safe version.



http://web.archive.org/web/20130522200448/http://misfit-studios.com/blog/press-release/pd46fx-update-mark-mackinnon-deserve-money-chance

And this. Watch out for any links back to Misfits site as dont know if its still virused.

https://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/962952/can-you-trust-designer

And heres Mac posting on RPGG not long after that and James Lowder spoke up pretty quick.

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/963033/mark-mackinnon-addresses-guardians-order-closure-c

Total mess.

Wow, quite the read. Thanks for that.

From what I heard Mark MacKinnon was doing everything he could to hide the financial problems of the company. It took a public post by George R. R. Martin for him to finally come clean about them being out of business. Its a shame as I still rank this as one of my favorite systems.

Quote from: Omega;903162There used to be a site up by one of the former staff (or just freelancer?) with all sorts of details on some of the scams run by someone at GOO. Not sure who now gone and last I checked it was a virus trap. Too bad as there were articles on other RPG and con scams too. Whatever happened I know artists werent paid, possibly designers werent and when MacKinnon resurfaced with a KS there was some angry folks warning not to trust his "Ive Changed! Trust me!" claims a few years back.

MacKinnon never really scammed anybody. He had a business that went bankrupt and was unable to pay its debts. He didn't publicly announce the financial state of the company because that would have precipitated a run by creditors which would put the company out of business. (Which is ultimately what happened.)

The only thing I've seen that seemed like an actual ethical problem was that GoO products were still being sold on DriveThruRPG years after MacKinnon lost the rights to them. But as someone who similarly has online store accounts with a couple dozen different online venues (including a Lulu account which continues to accrue incredibly tiny amounts of cash), it's actually not difficult for me to believe that the marginal sales on DTRPG simply accrued to an online account that MacKinnon simply forgot still existed. According to all accounts, MacKinnon immediately closed that account when it was brought to his attention and paid the money in that account to the creators who owned the rights to the PDFs in question.

The witch hunt demanding that MacKinnon should never publish another game because he had a company go bankrupt is intensely distasteful.

What I heard is that he got hit with the American to Canadian exchange rate that effectively killed him.

Huhn.  Still, wish I had the money for the 3e PDF.  Being poor sucks.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;903314The witch hunt demanding that MacKinnon should never publish another game because he had a company go bankrupt is intensely distasteful.

According to some of the participants he hasnt tried to make good on what he owes and has in at least one case ignored one of those people. How far or not out of wack it is will likely never be known for sure. But as it stands people havent been paid and will probably never be paid since GOO is DOA as its original entity. MacKinnon's been dodgy about certain particulars which is never a good sign.

Could it be he was just utterly incompetent instead of a crook? Sure. Wouldnt be the first and wont be the last.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;903314MacKinnon never really scammed anybody. He had a business that went bankrupt and was unable to pay its debts. He didn't publicly announce the financial state of the company because that would have precipitated a run by creditors which would put the company out of business. (Which is ultimately what happened.)

The only thing I've seen that seemed like an actual ethical problem was that GoO products were still being sold on DriveThruRPG years after MacKinnon lost the rights to them. But as someone who similarly has online store accounts with a couple dozen different online venues (including a Lulu account which continues to accrue incredibly tiny amounts of cash), it's actually not difficult for me to believe that the marginal sales on DTRPG simply accrued to an online account that MacKinnon simply forgot still existed. According to all accounts, MacKinnon immediately closed that account when it was brought to his attention and paid the money in that account to the creators who owned the rights to the PDFs in question.

The witch hunt demanding that MacKinnon should never publish another game because he had a company go bankrupt is intensely distasteful.

As an observer reading about events after the fact its impossible to know the truth, but the claim made by many, many people is that even though MacKinnon knew the company was going under he was still taking money from people as part of the Magnus Opus program setup ostensibly to help independent designers and then abruptly ceased all communication. But anyone can read the same links I did posted above and decide for themselves.

 Anyways, not saying that nomatter the truth MacKinnon should never publish another game, that's just absurd. But anyone who is considering investing in one of his Kicstarters should look at the fact that when things went bad with GoO, he wasn't upfront about anything, he ceased communication with people he owed money and made promises to, and eventually a bunch of people lost a lot of money directly because of his actions. And if one sees a parallel between that and the way quite a few infamous RPG kickstarters have turned out, that's probably a good indication of how far one should trust him with their money.

I would never invest money to Mark through a Kickstarter, based on what I know of what went wrong at GoO, but my chief complaint is that he didn't communicate well when things did go south (I used to have a PM over on RPG.net from Jenna Moran about the anguish she and her spouse went through over the GoO debacle). But hounding him? Well, I'll leave that to his creditors. I've gone bankrupt once in my life, and it was not entirely my fault (thank you Citibank, for nothing), and am glad I've got a chance to move on with my life. I guess my point is he wrote fun games, tried to do some good work, and then things fell apart around him. But I also believe that the quality of a work of fiction / game / whatever is not dependent on the quality of the person with the pen.

Quote from: PencilBoy99;900071Can anyone comment on BESM? It got recommended on another thread. From the one review I found for 3rd it looked pretty cool as a generic system when the characters have powers. The review did note that there's no bestiary for it.

It's a decent system for doing anime style RPGs.  The first edition is a bit sketchy.  The second, revised edition fleshes it out and refines it.  The third edition changes some thing that some people did not like about the system such as rolling low being good but added some complexity that seemed unnecessary to me.  It can be used as a generic system with some work but it is written with anime style games in mind.  A lot of the material will be of little use if you are not planning to run a game of that sort.  There's no bestiary per se but there are sample antagonists in the book that serve the same function and suggestions for designing your own opponents.  The genre sourcebooks also include antagonists commonly seen in the genre being covered too.

Quote from: Omega;903331According to some of the participants he hasnt tried to make good on what he owes

He doesn't owe anyone anything. Guardians of Order owed them money. Guardians of Order went bankrupt. That's literally the entire reason that we have limited liability corporations.

Quote from: Coffee Zombie;903515But hounding him? Well, I'll leave that to his creditors. I've gone bankrupt once in my life, and it was not entirely my fault (thank you Citibank, for nothing), and am glad I've got a chance to move on with my life.

Exactly. I was literally driven out of the industry when companies failed to pay me more than $20,000 for work I'd already completed back in the 2002-2003 time frame. Most of that was due to companies going out of business; and although that was frustrating, I never bore them ill-will. It's not like they (or Mark MacKinnon) said, "Bwahahahaha! I shall drive my company into bankruptcy just so that I don't have to pay the freelancers!"

If there was some evidence that MacKinnon took some sort of golden parachute and stripped GoO of resources, that would be one thing. But doing his best in the hopes that the company will pull through doesn't make him a villain.

I know Mark MacKinnon in passing; I gamed with him in university (though not often).  One of my good friends was one of his best friends through university up to the point of GoO collapsing.

Mark is not a mustachio-twirling, top-hatted villain tying freelancers to the train tracks, but he has a stunning lack of self-awareness over his own role in the collapse of GoO and his perceived failure to live up to his fiduciary responsibilities.  The best spin that can be put on things is that he stuck his head in the sand when things started going badly, and ran away from the collapsing house of straw rather than clean up his mess properly.  And to this day seems baffled why people are upset with him.

That sort is actually worse than the mustacshio-twirling villain.

Never attribute malice when mere stupidity can be the answer.

The most tragic thing to me was that they went under just as they were starting on Amber 2e.

Quote from: RPGPundit;905482The most tragic thing to me was that they went under just as they were starting on Amber 2e.

your not the only one iv met a number of other people who feel the same way

Quote from: kosmos1214;905549your not the only one iv met a number of other people who feel the same way

Which has always boggled my mind.  The original system is pure "DM May I?" what's to improve on??  Just reprint the original books, make a mint.