Quote from: One Horse Town;831541Cultural appropriation.

QuoteRPGG
None other than Mark Rein•Hagen, who still has a few unfulfilled Kickstarters he needs to take care of, alledgedly has expressed interest in putting out new material for the venerable setting. Notable former White Wolf and current Onyx Path Publishing designer C. A. Suleiman also seems to be involved.

QuoteIncompetent shyster Mark Rein-Hagen partners with largely uncommunicative Game Salute for a perfect storm of delays. Game funded 11/21/2012, and un-shipped as of May 2014.

A brief sampling of Rein-Hagen claims:

12/3/2012: "...don't worry, we will totally transparent in every way. ... We have everything ready to go on our end, we just need final pricing."

7/7/2013: "Hi everyone, Democracy is finally done and will be shipping any day now from China."

10/23/2013: "We just signed a deal with Game Salute to fulfill and distribute Democracy: Majority Rules. As soon as the manufacturer in China can get off their... can deliver the product (they are now promising a week now) they will almost immediately ship it out."

"Game Salute has deep relationships with many manufacturers, distrubutors, vendors and shippers, so I am sure that at this point, things are going to go well. Have no fears, this product will be delivered, and soon."

11/1/2013: "We are preparing to ship the games any day now, we are just trying to coordinate with other game shipments to Game Salute. I am trying to get them shipped in the next couple of days."

"You are for sure getting your games for xmas."

1/29/2014: "I was going to post a full update today but I decided I needed yet another night to think about my words and rarefy them to a unique level of profound sublimity wildly unfamiliar to my creative Loki. However, you first need to know – my splendiferous, so uncherubic crazies – that the game shipment is nearly there."

"I'd never leave a gamer and his wad stranded, ever. Never have, never will. Democracy is on its way.

So calm the f**k down. Subside. Please please plese"

2/3/2014: "Speaking of which, though I did not realize it, I did get a message regarding the shipment, complete with a manifest. It is on route and nearly in the USA."

2/26/2014: "You will be happy to know that the Democracy Games have arrived at Game Salute and we will be sending them out soon. I've been frantically fixing a horrible mistake I found on the Secret Agenda cards after one last playtest, but we reformatted them and that's fixed now. Game Salute is going to print them for us locally since I live so far away. I am shipping off some other Add-On materials tomorrow to them."

"You can expect another update in a day or two.

Democracy will be in your hands soon."

Bonus Rein-Hagen claim to a Danish game con that he attended: "You will be able to buy Democracy in a couple of weeks."

Exciting new non-developments!

Game Salute to backer Matthew Titelbaum today:

"We're handling fulfillment for Democracy: Majority Rules but we did not run the campaign nor handle the manufacturing. We're awaiting the backer info and funds to process outgoing shipments from Mark, so we'll defer to him commenting on this matter. We're happy to process those shipments once we have all the info and funds we need to send them."

So... Mark hasn't paid them either. Totally predictable.

Frankly, I'm shocked that he hasn't taken the 30k he netted from the I Am Zombie campaign to send out Democracy in true ponzi-scheme fashion. Perhaps he's already spent that money as well?

And even more non-update updates...

6/17/2014: "What we CAN do, is offer to completely DROP the animal meeples and entirely refund these add-on purchases (via Paypal or Check) and ship out ALL the games without them immediately. However, that would mean no one would get animal meeples and thus everyone would have to agree to this. If a single person insists on their meeples, we'll have to wait."

6/26/2014: Regarding meeple production "We did however, pay for airmail shipping so they should be in gamesalutes hands in less than a month, at which point we'll ship!"

7/25/2014: "With the meeples and cloth bags in production and all being well on that front, i'm writing you with good news; I'm finally able to offer you one of the things you've been understandably wanting for a long time. I've convinced Mark to do an ask-me-anything on Reddit." (Note: this went exactly as you'd expect, with Mark asserting that "rivals" in the game design community sabotaged the AMA)

7/31/2014: "I've been sending an amount of requests for a firm shipping date on the Animal Meeples that could qualify as spam, but as of yet I do not have a reply....The last I heard from them, just two days ago, was that production is coming along fine for them, but they again did not provide an ETA."

9/5/2014: "In the bad department, we're not actually hearing anything from the meeple manufacturer despite the deadline they provided us having passed. I'm aware of how infuriating this must be to all of our backers, and I assure you this is terribly frustrating to us as well, but even with me sending daily emails (several per day, in fact). They're not currently communicating with us in any way."

9/25/2014: "As mentioned earlier, our manufacturer is not in any way communicating with us despite our meeples supposedly being done and shipped more than a month ago according to the deadline....Having said that, everything is done on our end and we're extremely excited to finally be able to announce that we are shipping....The company we've been using is Panda Game Manufacturing, who has now gone COMPLETELY silent, thus leading to this sad situation. Emails unanswered, deadlines unmet, orders unfulfilled."

10/9/2014: "I am very sorry to tell you that shipping has been delayed slightly because Amazon Payments is not allowing to let me send money to Game Salute. I can send money to other people, Game Salute can receive money from others, but I cannot send money to them.... However with great difficulty I was able to move my own money around, that wire transfer just came in and a wire transfer to Game Salute has been sent."

Mark's creative Loki is more successful at generating excuses than generating games at this point.

Shipped finally 12/12/14
This should probably be updated as now, 2 years later, games are being delivered to backers. Certain pledge elements are missing and un-mentioned, and there are some questions of rules clarity, but the game certainly, finally, exists.
5/15/15 and still not fully fulfilled.

Quote from: One Horse Town;831541Cultural appropriation.

Quote from: One Horse Town;831541Cultural appropriation.

Quote from: Omega;831811So this should be out in what? 3 years?

Quote from: Spinachcat;831827I wonder if Blackmoor can be revived. And what do you revive? The DA series from TSR? Dave's own notes? The 3e Blackmoor?

Quote from: VectorSigma;831914Alternatively, what if they do it as Rein/Hagen's reinterpretation - not just the setting, but the mechanics?  Appeals to a whole different market, I guess.

Quote from: Spinachcat;831827I wonder if Blackmoor can be revived. And what do you revive? The DA series from TSR? Dave's own notes? The 3e Blackmoor?