Quote from: EOTB;1145462There's a 180 page thread here that ran contemporaneous with the entire fiasco, where Macris and Tavis commented extensively.  

https://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?24039-Backers-pissed-at-James-M-and-Dwimmermount&highlight=dwimmermount

Started by the other guy who blew all his deadlines on his never-ending masterpiece.

Here is estar's timeless wisdom from that thread:

Quote from: estar;582164The work on a RPG Projects increases geometrically not linearly with the size of the locale being covered. Writing nine levels of a mega dungeon is not nine times the work of writing one but more. So it not surprising the deadline on this was going to be badly blown.

And here is mine:

Quote from: Some Guy;582166Also, one way to avoid that kind of thing is to start the Kickstarter with a completed or close to completed manuscript.

funny though, how framing today basically ignores most of what happened between the end of the KS funding period until Autarch's financial uncertainties were resolved.

I am beginning to think Kickstarter is just a crutch for people with no real drive for creation. Real artists and authors have day jobs until they can afford to not have a day job, and some of them never get that opportunity to support themselves with their works. That's life. But they still produce things because it's important for them to produce it, regardless of the sacrifices made. Gygax was writing D&D at night and playtesting it in his garage and he bankrolled the first printing himself with some help from other people; pretty sure he was still working his regular job at the time. D&D was made because Gygax wanted to make it, and was willing to give up some things to make it a reality, and he believed in the product. Contrast this with numerous failed Kickstarters..."Hey, I have this idea that could be pretty cool. Pay me some money so I can pursue my dream, unfettered by the confines of reality." That is just a bunch of horseshit, and no author worth one fuck will ever produce anything of value with that mentality.

It's one thing to have a manuscript and zero layout or art ability and want money to fund those things, but even then someone like Kevin Crawford has apparently taught himself enough about Indesign to lay crap out, so some of these people are just lazy fucks. Say what you want about Kevin Siembieda, by all accounts he is a 100% self-taught publisher and successful by RPG standards because he believed in his product and invested in it. The Pundit has produced over 100 TheRPGPUndit Presents and a bunch of RPGs, and I don't remember seeing a KS anywhere.

Basically I see tiers of Kickstarters as it relates to RPGs:

-Layout, art, editing, etc., are all done. Author has basically produced a final product and needs a small investment to get it published at a higher quality than POD can currently produce. I have no problem with these for the most part because I am essentially getting a close to at-cost item in exchange for a small investment. That's a good trade off. I'd still prefer they took out a loan themselves and paid for it, but the KS is a good gauge of commercial interest, so again I can see the benefit.

-Manuscript is done, but layout and art need to be completed. Here I'm a little more wary, but at least there is something tangible that demonstrates a product will actually exist at some point if the KS is successful and not mismanaged. Typically this is an author who just has no time or inclination to do the layout or art, but sometimes that's a good thing because at least they know they need help making something of quality.

-Partial manuscript, lots of ideas. Well, okay, I get it, you have this good idea but maybe you should develop it more before you hit me up for money. It'd be like going to a book publisher and showing them a chapter of a novel before you're a published author; they're going to need the whole book before they'll bankroll your next uncompleted one. This is getting into the gambling territory.

-"I have this fabulous idea, but want to quit my barista job to make it a reality!" Yeah, fuck you. No author worth anything has been able to just quit a normal job to produce a work and get bankrolled UNLESS they had a proven track record of creating quality products. And none of these dudes have or else some RPG company would hire them. These sorts of people are typically lazy morons. Some of the most prolific fiction authors wrote that crap at night or early morning before they went to work. It was important enough to them to fit it into their schedule. If the barista can't be bothered to stop posting on Facebook and playing videogames and devote an hour or two a day to their project, why would I care? They don't seem to.

Anyone claiming backing a KS isn't actually investing in a tangible profit is a goddamn moron.


All that crap said, fuck JMal. I am beginning to think Pundit's assessment of what happened is closer to the truth than not. His blog was fun to read, but it was a whole lot of, "I never played this game but I read a copy yesterday and here's my opinion." Retrospective analysis that wasn't even retrospective. The fact that he convinced everyone he had this megadungeon ready for publication and it turned out he was totally full of shit lends one to think it was a scam. Him taking the money and producing nothing means it indeed was a scam. He can try to apologize all he wants, but in the end he's just a huckster.

Quote from: estar;1145454Considering this
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/autarch/dwimmermount/posts/434984

in light of this statement by you

So either you contend that the above is true which would preclude the possibility that James transferred any of the $48,756 that the kickstarter to Autarch thus making the update post I linked to a false statement by Autarch.

Or

You are wrong about what happened and made a inaccurate and inflammatory statement about the events that occurred.  

Not what happened. Read the post you linked. Here's the relevant part: "Maliszewski transferred to Autarch the Kickstarter funds necessary for us to complete the Dwimmermount project".

Note it does not say that Maliszewski transferred all the funds, minus transaction fees and payments to artists, to Autarch, as you stated in another post. That "necessary" could mean anything. $1? $50? $10,000? $25,000? Nobody knew, because that was all the information the backers had at the time. From other posts by Autarch, it sounded like the biggest holdup was getting in contact with Maliszewski and having him sign over the rights, so they could proceed on their own. Since it would have been trivial to just state they received the bulk of the funds from Maliszewski, the phrasing made it sound like Autarch just received a token amount, and ended up paying most of it out of their own pocket.

If Maliszewski did transfer over all the money, minus transaction fees and payment to artists, then that's great. That means he failed as project manager, but he did not run off with the funds. But how would anyone know that? That makes this a self-inflicted wound by Maliszewski. He could have cleared this up with a single post.

Quote from: estar;1145454Including the attempt to shift away from whether your above statement is accurate to one about whose responsibility it is to talk to the backers.

Which I never did, because we weren't talking about that specific statement at that time.

One again, you're misrepresenting what I said.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1145482The biggest mistake is Kickstarters giving out rewards.

If you wanna back some project, knock yourself out. The only kickstarter I ever gave money to was to support the artist. I got a compilation book, stickers and other goodies, but that wasn't the point.

But making it some kind of expectation of good for money, when the whole point is that some of these projects are incredibly risky, being run by one person out of their apartment or garage, is a recipe for dissapointment.

That's not a Kickstarter, though. Patreon and IndieIndieGoGo allowed "fund your life", but the KS ToS always required creators to offer some kind of reward. They were for dream projects, not "my mom has cancer", genius grants, or paid sabbaticals.

And I had very good experiences with most of the projects I backed. A couple failed, or had to scale back, but that's to be expected. There were always a few critics, but the vast majority of backers were willing to give creators an immense amount of slack.

It's the ones where the creator just ghosts their backers that led to long term ill will. I can understand the impulse -- the many-to-one nature of the internet when it comes to social media attention tends to amplify negativity. If you're a project creator, and 3 people are pissed by a delay and a 1,000 aren't, then it's really easy to focus on the 3 and miss the 1,000, because they're going to make up the bulk of your interactions. And when things get worse, it can get overwhelming, which is why there's a tendency for the creators of failed projects to vanish off the face of the internet. But that's exactly the wrong thing to do, and it's also a moral failing. These are the people who backed your crazy idea when no one else would. At the very least, you owe them an explanation and updates when things go wrong.

The problems arose when they started getting crazy with stretch goals. If you just owe everyone a book, that's one thing. But when you started adding dice, miniatures, pencils, patches, and all that other crap, it quickly becomes a nightmare. They might sound cheap and easy, but each of those has to sourced and developed separately, and often require different skill sets, which can multiply an already crazy-high workload. And the addictive F5 nature of stretch goals put a lot of pressure on creators to add one more thing, and then one more thing, and then one more thing, without fully vetting the costs.

And then big companies started to use KS for pre-orders and independent creators became rarer. That's when I mostly drifted away.

Quote from: Brad;1145498It's one thing to have a manuscript and zero layout or art ability and want money to fund those things, but even then someone like Kevin Crawford has apparently taught himself enough about Indesign to lay crap out, so some of these people are just lazy fucks. Say what you want about Kevin Siembieda, by all accounts he is a 100% self-taught publisher and successful by RPG standards because he believed in his product and invested in it. The Pundit has produced over 100 TheRPGPUndit Presents and a bunch of RPGs, and I don't remember seeing a KS anywhere.

Correct. I've never done a Kickstarter. If I ever do, it would be with extreme care to be certain that (barring a total act of god) everything is ready for it to go BEFORE I even start raising funds.

Quote from: Pat;1145515Not what happened. Read the post you linked. Here's the relevant part: "Maliszewski transferred to Autarch the Kickstarter funds necessary for us to complete the Dwimmermount project".

Note it does not say that Maliszewski transferred all the funds, minus transaction fees and payments to artists, to Autarch, as you stated in another post. That "necessary" could mean anything. $1? $50? $10,000? $25,000? Nobody knew, because that was all the information the backers had at the time. From other posts by Autarch, it sounded like the biggest holdup was getting in contact with Maliszewski and having him sign over the rights, so they could proceed on their own. Since it would have been trivial to just state they received the bulk of the funds from Maliszewski, the phrasing made it sound like Autarch just received a token amount, and ended up paying most of it out of their own pocket.

From what Macris has said here, they received more than a token amount, but far less than 85-90%, and took a significant loss on Dwimmermount overall. So you seem to be basically right - though I don't think Pundit is right that JMal was planning a scam all along.

Quote from: S'mon;1145775From what Macris has said here, they received more than a token amount, but far less than 85-90%, and took a significant loss on Dwimmermount overall. So you seem to be basically right - though I don't think Pundit is right that JMal was planning a scam all along.

Here is the post

Quote from: amacris;1115066James and I had worked together for over a year when he published a series of columns called "Days of High Adventure" for my old website, The Escapist. He was always timely and professional and we thought well of each other. I was the one who approached him to do a Dwimmermount Kickstarter. Autarch was riding high on the success of ACKS, megadungeons were hot, Grognardia was the #1 blog in the OSR, and Kickstarter was still a new business model -- the most important difference being that back then, it was quite common to Kickstart a product that *would* be written, rather than to Kickstart a product that had already been written and needed art and layout. When we set up the Kickstarter, I erred in estimating the timeline to completion for the product, as I thought Dwimmermount was more developed than it was. We also get overzealous in our expectation of what could be delivered as bonus goals.

Worse, when I wrote the contract between Autarch and James, I structured it badly in that Autarch had taken the money and had the liability to the backers but transferred all the funds to James. This was simply bad business judgment on my part justified by what I expected to be a big hit coming out of a smooth and reliable process of development and launch.

Working with Tavis Allison as project manager, James completed approximately half of the book and spent approximately half of the funding. At that point, a confluence of events occurred. First, as the book fell behind schedule, critics began to unleash a firestorm on James, blasting the quality of the work, his skill as a designer, and his position in the OSR. Second, James suffered a serious of personal family and medical misfortunes that would have been difficult for anyone to handle. The combination of the two led James to retreat from the project. For a time, he retreated from all communication, which put Autarch in a very awkward situation: We had a liability to deliver books to over 1,000 people but we had neither money, nor a finished product, nor even the right to proceed without James.

Getting back in touch and sorting it out took a while, but ultimately James made it possible for us to finish the book. I completed the last half of the product and we shipped it, about 2 years late. Overall, Autarch lost $20,000 on the product. I do think Dwimmermount ultimately came out as an excellent product and am proud that we finished it. I wish it hadn't come out so late and with such a damaged brand, because I don't think it's ever gotten the love it deserved since.

Quote from: S'mon;1145775From what Macris has said here, they received more than a token amount, but far less than 85-90%, and took a significant loss on Dwimmermount overall. So you seem to be basically right - though I don't think Pundit is right that JMal was planning a scam all along.

I agree. I said earlier in the thread that I didn't see any malice, and it's because Dwimmermount fits the pattern of many failed Kickstarters: He overpromised, ran into difficulties, couldn't take the pressure, and bailed.

It's the last part that's the problem.

Quote from: SavageSchemer;1145300I think Pundit needs to quit beating around the bush and give us a straight-up, unambiguous summary of what he's really thinking.

Lol, the pundit may have many faults, not saying what he is really thinking isn't one of them.

I love Kickstarter (not the company, the concept) and I've been happy to very happy with almost everything I've backed, but there have been a couple of disasters.

Don't become a Kickstarter backer if you aren't cool with burning the cash.

I equate Kickstarters with going to a brand new restaurant. It's so new, there's no reviews yet. So you do what you can, smell the air, read the menu, maybe ask for sample. Then if you feel good about it, you order your meal. And sometimes, that meal is terrible and it feels even worse than just losing the money, because now you're out the cash AND you had a crapass meal.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1145359But Pundit seems just as concerned with 'exposing' Maliszewski as a heretic and false priest of the OSReligion.

That's because "False Priests of the OSReligion" is the featured monster in his next RPGPundit Presents.

He was a faker from the start. He pretended he had a complete megadungeon that was the product of play. He did not.

Holy crap, he's posting like crazy on that blog now.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1146016Holy crap, he's posting like crazy on that blog now.

No doubt he's got 8 years of blog post ideas stored up.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1146018No doubt he's got 8 years of blog post ideas stored up.

I'd bet most, if not all, of those posts were written 8 years ago and not published so he could lay low until people forgot about Dumbermount.