Quote from: ggroy;637240(If you don't mind me asking).

Did this person do something like stare at the wall all day?

Or did they watch tv all day?  Or listen to the same song over and over again all day?

I honestly do not know.  I always wondered about that, but never got a chance to ask him.  He would seem fine one day, and then just disappear from all social life of any kind (and work - living on disability and his father's modest funds) for two years. And then he would just pop back up like everything was fine again.  And it would be, for a few weeks, and then he'd just disappear again.

I know his mind would often get stuck in an endless loop of replaying traumatic events.  And, I know he slept for often 16 hours at a time.  But what he did with those remaining 8 hours, other than I assume eat and use the bathroom, I do not know.

Eventually, his team of doctors found a combination of something like 7 or 8 drugs, a couple of which were experimental, that finally worked.  He lived a relatively normal life for his last 4 years or so...and then got cancer and died, possibly from the drugs.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;636783Sounds like someone is bending over backwards for a mess someone else created.

To play devil's advocate for a moment: While I appreciate everything Autarch has done in an attempt to fix this situation, they also helped to create this situation.

I've heard no clear explanation for why Autarch thought "we'll run the Kickstarter and then give you all the money" was a good idea (or what they would gain from it), but it's one of the dumbest business decisions I've personally witnessed.

On the other hand: As a backer, I'm glad that decision happened. If James had run the Kickstarter himself, we almost certainly would have received nothing. As it is, I've got at least a rough draft of the material in my possession. Tavis has done really amazing work and I've already gone out of my way to purchase Autarch products in appreciation.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;637023Out of all this new info, the thing that pisses me off more than anything is the freelancers James hired not getting paid for thier efforts.

Yeah. That's the Rubicon for me. Speaking as someone who got driven out of professional freelancing in the game industry due to not getting paid for completed work, it simply makes my blood boil.

Back in January a freelancer working for me had their payment delayed by a few weeks because it was due right in the middle of the period in which my mom was actually dying. When I got my head turned around straight I felt like complete shit.

This is how people pay their mortgage and put food on the table. It's how they pay for their healthcare and their family's healthcare. To simply vanish on them is bullshit.

(The fact that my wife just lost her job today might be contributing to my heated feelings on this topic.)

Quote from: Maltese Changeling;637234Just for clarification: James's father is not, as far as I know, dead. At last account, he was in extremely bad health, dipping toward death and back toward life again. So part of the issue here is clearly the stress of the ongoing roller-coaster that is his father's situation.

Speaking from recent experience, this period is actually a lot more difficult to deal with than the 2-3 week period after death in which you're grieving and arranged a memorial service and dealing with all the things that need to be dealt with. As my mother's health deteriorated, the amount of time I was spending helping her and dealing with her medical issues slowly creeped up from 10 hours a week to 20 hours a week and finally to 40-60 hours a week towards the end.

That's not just mentally exhausting and distracting: There are only so many hours in the week to begin with. Those hours you're spending with an ailing family member are coming from somewhere else.

So I can give Maliszewski every benefit of the doubt and understand exactly what's happening here.

But, as Mistwell says, it doesn't excuse it: Assuming the money hasn't been stolen, there's a really clear course of action that Maliszewski can take at this point to make everything right (and it wouldn't take more than a couple hours of his time to do it): Apologize to Tavis and ask him to draw up a contract that would license his copyrights so that Tavis can take care of all the outstanding issues. Then sign the contract and hand the money over to Autarch. Done.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;637221I was referring to this post




Which made me raise my eyebrows, because quite frankly, your posts read to me as if written by the Mad Hatter

http://piedpiperpublishing.yuku.com/topic/506/Winners-of-the-d20-Contest#.UUJ9VVdAOfU

Quote from: Sacrosanct;637221I was referring to this post




Which made me raise my eyebrows, because quite frankly, your posts read to me as if written by the Mad Hatter

http://piedpiperpublishing.yuku.com/topic/506/Winners-of-the-d20-Contest#.UUJ-aVdAOfV

Quote from: trechriron;637197I have to say something. Probably not going to make me popular, but here goes.

I call bullshit on the grieving thing. BULL. SHIT.

I've been working in the professional computer nerd biz for 12 years now. NO ONE. NOT. ONE. of my colleagues who suffered a death in the family (wife, father, brother, CHILD!!!!) left work for more than two weeks, and it DID NOT effect job performance. These people stoically and professionally soldiered on through their grief. In fact, keeping to routines, completing deadlines, and what not actually helped them cope with the loss.

Folks, death is a natural part of life. As is divorce, break-ups, accidents, weather, illness, and a whole long list of "shit". Shit happens. Murphy rules, everyone gets their turn, and for FUCKS SAKE we all WE ALL have to fucking deal with it.

This DOES NOT excuse ripping people off. Period.

This ding dong needs to pull up his big boy shorts up, pull his head out of his grieving pucker hole, MAN UP, and get his shit done. GIT. IT. DONE. This isn't only a fucking travesty of justice but could harm future Kickstarters.

I really don't care about the particulars. Either this dude produces what he promised or he's a fucking douche bag. Period.

Just my two cents, sorry for the spit on the screen.

I've been leaning in the same direction. I've never worked for any company that gave more than a couple days off for a death in the family. I've also never heard of someone dropping off the face of the Earth because a parent died.
However, I have some experience with mental illness, so while it's easy to conclude the dude is faking his sadness and just ran off with the money, it's equally likely to me that the death triggered a massive bout of depression, perhaps followed by substance abuse. Creative types, writers, artists, designers, etc, stereotypically have issues with depression, manic behavior, ADD/ADHD, alcoholism, drug abuse, etc.
If he's not an outright thief, my suggestion would be for him to see a psychiatrist, get some good drugs, and get back to work. Sticking your fingers in your ears, closing your eyes, and saying "lalalalalalala" isn't going to make the bad things go away.

Now, all that being said, I think it's pretty useless and a waste of time to speculate, as most of this thread is basically just shit-talking some guy. Hell, most of the people here apparently didn't even buy into the Kickstarter anyway.

Look on the bright side though.

Quote from: Zevious Zoquis;637027Also, I think I read somewhere that JMal's dad had substance abuse issues.  If that was the case, its pretty possible he had no health insurance.  I could see a terrible situation where JM's dad is in the hospital room in terrible pain and the doctor says that can be alleviated but it'll cost 5 grand a week and James starts writing cheques.  It wouldn't take long to burn through $40,000 in medical expenses.  

"Jmal" doesn't live in the US.  In the rest of the world, health care doesn't really work that way.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Mistwell;637231Your experience is not universal experience.

...

Don't care. I was not suggesting a "universal experience" only my experience. This situation is inexcusable regardless of the what if's. I hope people who make plans like this in the future think about the potential problems that could derail the potential completion of the project.

Quote from: trechriron;637197I have to say something. Probably not going to make me popular, but here goes.

I call bullshit on the grieving thing. BULL. SHIT.

I've been working in the professional computer nerd biz for 12 years now. NO ONE. NOT. ONE. of my colleagues who suffered a death in the family (wife, father, brother, CHILD!!!!) left work for more than two weeks, and it DID NOT effect job performance. These people stoically and professionally soldiered on through their grief. In fact, keeping to routines, completing deadlines, and what not actually helped them cope with the loss.

Folks, death is a natural part of life. As is divorce, break-ups, accidents, weather, illness, and a whole long list of "shit". Shit happens. Murphy rules, everyone gets their turn, and for FUCKS SAKE we all WE ALL have to fucking deal with it.

This DOES NOT excuse ripping people off. Period.

This ding dong needs to pull up his big boy shorts up, pull his head out of his grieving pucker hole, MAN UP, and get his shit done. GIT. IT. DONE. This isn't only a fucking travesty of justice but could harm future Kickstarters.

I really don't care about the particulars. Either this dude produces what he promised or he's a fucking douche bag. Period.

Just my two cents, sorry for the spit on the screen.

I knew a guy whose wife died, and he completely dropped out of life. Quit his job, drifted through life. Lived (or suffered without) due to the generosity of others.

Sometimes people blow their own brains out after a death in the family.

As for James M, I'm not going to pretend that I know what happened. I'm sure something will come up eventually. Maybe he took da money and run. Maybe he blew his own brains out yesterday. I sure don't fucking know.

In any case, every person with a lick of horse sense knew that some kickstarter projects were going to backfire. Some people see KS as a magic wand to turn their Great Idea into profit, with no (or little) clue how real business works. These kinds of fuck ups are necessary for kickstarted projects to face a little reality, and for pledgers to realize that a 50 dollar pledge doesn't turn a dude in a basement into a corporation.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;637329I knew a guy whose wife died, and he completely dropped out of life. Quit his job, drifted through life. Lived (or suffered without) due to the generosity of others.

Sometimes people blow their own brains out after a death in the family.

As for James M, I'm not going to pretend that I know what happened. I'm sure something will come up eventually. Maybe he took da money and run. Maybe he blew his own brains out yesterday. I sure don't fucking know.

Nope, apparently he's playing the Wii Mario he got for xmas. Really doing it tough.

I think people have said we should leave his family out of this.

But speaking of that.  HOW do we know that this woman who is blogging is James wife?  Nobody provided any proof of that.  There was nothing in that blog identifying her as James wife, and I think the only person who linked the two blogs was an anonymous poster who never provided any evidence linking them, they just posted "here's his wife" and everybody bought it as a reliable source.

I'm really getting concerned that people are connecting dots that aren't linked.

Yeah, we're not going to bring family members into this, or even people we think are family members. Let's keep this focused where it needs to be, please.

Quote from: JRT;637340I think people have said we should leave his family out of this.

But speaking of that.  HOW do we know that this woman who is blogging is James wife?  Nobody provided any proof of that.  There was nothing in that blog identifying her as James wife, and I think the only person who linked the two blogs was an anonymous poster who never provided any evidence linking them, they just posted "here's his wife" and everybody bought it as a reliable source.

I'm really getting concerned that people are connecting dots that aren't linked.

My post was purely about Jmal. Your question cannot possibly be answered with drifting into other territory.

I think the point was, you're using that source to figure out what James is supposedly doing, which goes against the "leave the family out of this".  People shouldn't be stalking the relatives if that's the case.  (And I'm still concerned this is an "unverified source").

I think we should stick to the basic facts about Dwimmermount's lateness.  Some of James critics are trying to bring in posts from five or ten years ago from some live journal entry or messageboard entry and discuss things like his opinions D&D or Catholicism or other stuff and that really has nothing to do with the issues at hand.

While I don't care about James' thoughts on Catholicism, I might care about his thoughts on D&D even they are several years old. James himself put those out there for the world to see so I don't think they deserve the same treatment that we're trying to extend to his family in not dragging them into this discussion.

Maybe some of us backers would have been more cautious about what we pledged if we were aware that for a while James strongly disliked D&D. Maybe there's a lesson for some of us that if we're going to pledge more than $5 then we should do ourselves a favor and try to research the "creator's" history a bit to understand what his relationship to the topic is, and that he might decide that his interests have changed again. I know I wish I had paid more attention to what was going on with Petty Gods before I pledged. I'm hesitant to have some of these topics precluded from this thread automatically in the same way that we are trying to stay away from discussing James' wife and kids. (James' dad kind of has to be part of the discussion since the father's health is the reason claimed by James for the delays.)

Dwimmermount is being created for D&D. I don't see how we can preclude discussing James' thoughts and relationship to D&D, and if we tried what would be that magical number of years we wouldn't go back to?