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Pen & Paper Roleplaying Central => Pen and Paper Roleplaying Games (RPGs) Discussion => Topic started by: Arkansan on August 12, 2020, 04:43:09 PM

Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Arkansan on August 12, 2020, 04:43:09 PM
There is a new post as of yesterday, a review of Mork Borg. I note that the comment section is turned off as of now.

http://grognardia.blogspot.com/ (http://grognardia.blogspot.com/)
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Brad on August 12, 2020, 06:01:19 PM
I really like the blog post with the apology about his Kickstarter fiasco...
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Ratman_tf on August 12, 2020, 06:15:56 PM
This should be good for a few yuks.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: SavageSchemer on August 12, 2020, 07:26:51 PM
I always enjoyed his blog back when. I have to admit that seeing the first post since 2012 was for freaking Morg Bork was disappointing. I am totally not a fan of the game and have no interest in reading about it. Still, I wouldn't mind seeing more from Grognardia.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Arkansan on August 12, 2020, 09:51:12 PM
Quote from: SavageSchemer;1144603
I always enjoyed his blog back when. I have to admit that seeing the first post since 2012 was for freaking Morg Bork was disappointing. I am totally not a fan of the game and have no interest in reading about it. Still, I wouldn't mind seeing more from Grognardia.

I feel the same, I don't really have any particular interest in Mork Borg, but I did enjoy his content back in the day. Still, it's hard to look at it through quite the same lens given all that happened.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: mAcular Chaotic on August 13, 2020, 04:07:10 AM
I always loved his blog and don't care what happened in the past, I'm all in for more posts.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Spinachcat on August 13, 2020, 04:53:00 AM
I may know less about Mork Borg after reading his review.

It's colorful, hard to read, based on doom metal (maybe) and allegedly fascinating, but based on the review, the actual game sounds almost tacked on as an afterthought.

Any Mork Borg fans here?

If so, start a thread.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: HappyDaze on August 13, 2020, 08:42:16 AM
Quote from: Spinachcat;1144661
Any Mork Borg fans here?

I feel like we're talking about something the Swedish Chef put on the RPG menu.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: PencilBoy99 on August 13, 2020, 10:22:33 AM
He was on a podcast a few months back and was pretty candid and apologetic about his kickstarter.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Ratman_tf on August 13, 2020, 10:56:26 AM
Quote from: PencilBoy99;1144694
He was on a podcast a few months back and was pretty candid and apologetic about his kickstarter.

Got a link?
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Mistwell on August 13, 2020, 11:41:57 AM
Might be this one (I have not listened yet):

https://hobbsnfriends.com/2019/12/03/57-james-maliszewski/
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: PencilBoy99 on August 13, 2020, 12:15:46 PM
Yes. He didn't blame his mistake on anyone else.

What always weirds me out about these Kickstarter things is that they don't get help sooner. Grognardia's thing eventually got fulfilled, but had to get fulfilled by another organization. Same thing with Cortex Prime. You're never going to get ANY money if the product doesn't get out.

Like with the Lotfp thing. Are you seriously telling me he couldn't find any fans or other developers that he couldn't give a % of future profits to to finish it?
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: RandyB on August 13, 2020, 12:18:55 PM
Yeah. He's owning his mistakes, which is a damn sight better than a lot of people do, with Kickstarters or any thing else.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Ratman_tf on August 13, 2020, 12:32:29 PM
Quote from: PencilBoy99;1144718
Yes. He didn't blame his mistake on anyone else.

What always weirds me out about these Kickstarter things is that they don't get help sooner. Grognardia's thing eventually got fulfilled, but had to get fulfilled by another organization. Same thing with Cortex Prime. You're never going to get ANY money if the product doesn't get out.

Like with the Lotfp thing. Are you seriously telling me he couldn't find any fans or other developers that he couldn't give a % of future profits to to finish it?

Part of the critique is that he didn't have an exit plan if things went south, and bailed instead of passing off the work before dropping off the radar.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on August 13, 2020, 02:33:38 PM
I'm only familiar with his blog because I used his Dwimmermount campaign setting as a source for more creative takes on fantasy races. I liked how he made dwarves asexual males who reproduced by carving new dwarves from stone.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Arkansan on August 13, 2020, 05:10:58 PM
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1144734
I'm only familiar with his blog because I used his Dwimmermount campaign setting as a source for more creative takes on fantasy races. I liked how he made dwarves asexual males who reproduced by carving new dwarves from stone.

That is cool. I've always like fantastic origins for fantastic races.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: hedgehobbit on August 13, 2020, 05:23:45 PM
Quote from: Spinachcat;1144661
It's colorful, hard to read, based on doom metal (maybe) and allegedly fascinating, but based on the review, the actual game sounds almost tacked on as an afterthought.

On Twitter, Mork Borg is part of the "Post OSR" whatever that means. I think it's a revival of the 90s "Games as Art" fad.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Slambo on August 13, 2020, 06:56:42 PM
Quote from: Spinachcat;1144661
I may know less about Mork Borg after reading his review.

It's colorful, hard to read, based on doom metal (maybe) and allegedly fascinating, but based on the review, the actual game sounds almost tacked on as an afterthought.

Any Mork Borg fans here?

If so, start a thread.
They say its based on doom metal...but to me it feels less Candlemass and more Gloryhammer for doom metal. Kinda like an affectionate parody i guess. Maybe they're using it the same way people likento yell about punk rock and dont listen to it.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: mAcular Chaotic on August 13, 2020, 07:00:56 PM
Well, let's be real. The Kickstarter fiasco happened when all this Kickstarter stuff was new, and people didn't really "get" how it was supposed to work yet. It was easy to get in over your head. Nowadays everyone knows what you're supposed to do.

From what I saw of Mork Borg, it's a super short boutique game in the sense that it's fun to enjoy the aesthetic and play it once for a bit, but it's not really a long term game. It's something you buy because of the vibe.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Spinachcat on August 14, 2020, 04:06:48 AM
Quote from: Slambo;1144770
but to me it feels less Candlemass and more Gloryhammer for doom metal.


Gloryhammer is the RIFTS band! It's music inspired by the crazy in Kevin's head.

And Mork Borg uses colors. There's no colors in doom metal!
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Slambo on August 14, 2020, 09:29:03 AM
Quote from: Spinachcat;1144824
Gloryhammer is the RIFTS band! It's music inspired by the crazy in Kevin's head.

And Mork Borg uses colors. There's no colors in doom metal!

There are colors sometimes but its usually muted not all this neon pinks and yellows.

Also Gloryhammer is a great, but im so tired of hearing people who dont listen to doom metal ttying to justify the book layout by saying "its a doom metal album of a game" when i really feel like it isnt.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Brad on August 14, 2020, 11:08:25 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKlVYJTSzuU

Had no idea wtf Gloryhammer was, Googled that shit, and pulled up that video.

Still trying to figure out how I'm supposed to feel right now...
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: LiferGamer on August 14, 2020, 01:57:49 PM
Quote from: Brad;1144864
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKlVYJTSzuU

Had no idea wtf Gloryhammer was, Googled that shit, and pulled up that video.

Still trying to figure out how I'm supposed to feel right now...


Wow, thanks for that - I laughed out loud, I -think- I liked it, but not necessarily the way the band intended.  I can see it as the RIFTS Band.  It's more adderall and pixy stix than cocaine, with a FUCK YEA attitude, but I hesitate to give it 'badass'.

Doom metal would probably be my favorite genre if I could find more of it that was heavily instrumental - I really dig Sleep, and of course original Sabbath - if I had a deeper library of instrumental Doom Metal, it'd be my campaign soundtrack.

I recognized Napalm Records Logo, here's more WTF or maybe a Palate Cleanser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34CZjsEI1yU
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Slambo on August 14, 2020, 02:04:52 PM
Quote from: LiferGamer;1144893
Wow, thanks for that - I laughed out loud, I -think- I liked it, but not necessarily the way the band intended.  I can see it as the RIFTS Band.  It's more adderall and pixy stix than cocaine, with a FUCK YEA attitude, but I hesitate to give it 'badass'.

Doom metal would probably be my favorite genre if I could find more of it that was heavily instrumental - I really dig Sleep, and of course original Sabbath - if I had a deeper library of instrumental Doom Metal, it'd be my campaign soundtrack.

I recognized Napalm Records Logo, here's more WTF or maybe a Palate Cleanser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34CZjsEI1yU

Gloryhammer is a parody band so theyre meant to be silly. The funniest part is their albums are all concept albums that tell a nonsense story about a scormttish prince named Angus McFife
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: 1989 on August 14, 2020, 04:45:44 PM
Quote from: Brad;1144864
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKlVYJTSzuU

Had no idea wtf Gloryhammer was, Googled that shit, and pulled up that video.

Still trying to figure out how I'm supposed to feel right now...

Holy cow. Never heard of these guys. It's like Hammerfall mixed with Dragonforce mixed with ... I don't know.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Pat on August 14, 2020, 05:39:39 PM
Quote from: 1989;1144914
Holy cow. Never heard of these guys. It's like Hammerfall mixed with Dragonforce mixed with ... I don't know.
Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Spinachcat on August 14, 2020, 06:19:42 PM
Gloryhammer is the brainchild of Chris Bowes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4LNJfFjEvw), the leader singer of Alestorm (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z2yNxfBRM4). He is/was a RPGer and even statted himself out in an interview. I've seen Gloryhammer in concert twice and they're great fun and do LARP the album with the Angus McFife battling goblins on stage and fighting the evil wizard. It's all very serious stuff.

As for Wind Rose dressing up like WoW dwarves and singing about Diggy Diggy Hole...well, let's just say D&D fans starting power metal bands has gone to weird and cheesy places. And yes, I've sung along many a time! I'm a dwarf and I'm digging a hole!!!
 

Quote from: Slambo;1144850
Also Gloryhammer is a great, but im so tired of hearing people who dont listen to doom metal ttying to justify the book layout by saying "its a doom metal album of a game" when i really feel like it isnt.

Outside of Black Sabbath, Doom/Sludge/Stoner metal never took off like other subgenres, like Death metal or Black metal. It's a hard subgenre to nail down too, and I've been in metal forums with "sludge isn't doom" guys. I can appreciate the genre (especially fun live), but I'm too high strung for it usually.  

I have a hard time imagining what a Doom Metal RPG world would even look like? Everybody only takes one action every other round? All terrain causes half move?

But I do want to hear some actual play experiences with Mork Borg!
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Morblot on August 14, 2020, 06:42:58 PM
I feel that Fucking Wizard by Reverend Bizarre (https://youtu.be/sKlzA_8qTM8) merits a mention in this thread.

I don't know if they used to play but I wouldn't be surprised...
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Omega on August 17, 2020, 02:15:25 AM
Quote from: PencilBoy99;1144718
Yes. He didn't blame his mistake on anyone else.

What always weirds me out about these Kickstarter things is that they don't get help sooner. Grognardia's thing eventually got fulfilled, but had to get fulfilled by another organization. Same thing with Cortex Prime. You're never going to get ANY money if the product doesn't get out.

Like with the Lotfp thing. Are you seriously telling me he couldn't find any fans or other developers that he couldn't give a % of future profits to to finish it?


This one is unfortunately easy to explain.

The reason why they have a hard time getting an assist is because others have pulled a "sorry we outta money!" stunt... ALOT. And more and more seem to be actually counting on being bailed out by someone else. And people are catching on to this and getting ever more increasingly unlikely to lend assist.

Also there is the whole "Why should someone else have to bail them out?" factor that can make people reluctant.

Add on anything that makes it look shady at all and the barrier for help gets ever harder to surmount.

So like with everything KS/CF its been ruined by crooks and con artists.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: RPGPundit on August 17, 2020, 08:51:07 AM
Quote from: Arkansan;1144573
There is a new post as of yesterday, a review of Mork Borg. I note that the comment section is turned off as of now.

http://grognardia.blogspot.com/ (http://grognardia.blogspot.com/)


Someone let me know if the coward ever opens the comments section so I can go point out how he's a lying fuck, a fake swine-turned-OSR guy because he saw a way to fleece money from the rubes, and that he stole tens of thousands of dollars from gaming while leaving a decent gaming company hanging.

No one should give a shit what this piece of human garbage has to say.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: RPGPundit on August 17, 2020, 08:54:27 AM
Quote from: Spinachcat;1144661
I may know less about Mork Borg after reading his review.

It's colorful, hard to read, based on doom metal (maybe) and allegedly fascinating, but based on the review, the actual game sounds almost tacked on as an afterthought.

Any Mork Borg fans here?

If so, start a thread.

I'd love to get a review copy of Mork Borg to be able to confirm, but I have the strong impression that the game is really not a coherent product at all but entirely about "Style" and hype, much like Vornheim was (that is, two or three little slivers of useful material, a ton of fluff-heavy garbage with no mechanical support and a metric fuckton of edgy art and attitude which was the only real reason people bought it, to feel like they too were mohawk-headed badboys of the mountain-dew slurping basement-dwelling hobby and might someday get to play D&D with a pronstar).

I mean, in Mork Borg's case I could be wrong, but it's very telling to me that NOT ONE DAMN PERSON has been able to coherently tell me what it even is, never mind what's in it.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: RPGPundit on August 17, 2020, 08:56:38 AM
Quote from: PencilBoy99;1144694
He was on a podcast a few months back and was pretty candid and apologetic about his kickstarter.


Did he admit he didn't give a shit about the OSR, thought his gamers were idiots he could manipulate with fake stories of his awesome megadungeon and pseudo-intellectual drivel about gameplay cribbed from his decades as a White Wolf player with slight modifications, and that he stole the money on purpose?

Because if not, he wasn't being candid. He was just making up a new story in the hopes you'll be stupid enough to believe him again so he can steal more money from you.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: RPGPundit on August 17, 2020, 08:58:38 AM
Quote from: RandyB;1144719
Yeah. He's owning his mistakes, which is a damn sight better than a lot of people do, with Kickstarters or any thing else.


Owning your "mistakes", when by "mistakes" you mean fraud and theft, getting close to a DECADE after having run off with the money and remained completely silent about it since then, is not even slightly better. It's just something you do when you hope enough time has gone by that you can once again make money off the dumb rubes you fooled once.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: RPGPundit on August 17, 2020, 09:03:27 AM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1144772
Well, let's be real. The Kickstarter fiasco happened when all this Kickstarter stuff was new, and people didn't really "get" how it was supposed to work yet. It was easy to get in over your head.


In 2012 I already knew that you're not supposed to pretend you have a huge megadungeon you've been gaming in for years that's already fully-created and waiting to be released as a product, when in fact you just made it all up, haven't written almost anything, and hadn't played D&D in decades until you thought you could get prestige and money by convincing imbeciles that you were a deep thinker about old school.
Actually, I knew you weren't supposed to BLATANTLY LIE since at least a year or two before kindergarten.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: LiferGamer on August 17, 2020, 09:22:51 AM
Pundit, tell us how you really feel.

Yikes.  I was going to ask for a summary; but I was able to infer it pretty clearly.  =D  

Sounds like he's made a politician's apology, learned nothing, and wants to forget it all happened.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Slambo on August 17, 2020, 10:22:01 AM
Quote from: RPGPundit;1145217
I'd love to get a review copy of Mork Borg to be able to confirm, but I have the strong impression that the game is really not a coherent product at all but entirely about "Style" and hype, much like Vornheim was (that is, two or three little slivers of useful material, a ton of fluff-heavy garbage with no mechanical support and a metric fuckton of edgy art and attitude which was the only real reason people bought it, to feel like they too were mohawk-headed badboys of the mountain-dew slurping basement-dwelling hobby and might someday get to play D&D with a pronstar).

I mean, in Mork Borg's case I could be wrong, but it's very telling to me that NOT ONE DAMN PERSON has been able to coherently tell me what it even is, never mind what's in it.

This is pretty much my impression of it, its like it doesnt even want you to play it.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: mAcular Chaotic on August 17, 2020, 10:28:45 AM
Yeah Mork Borg is a coffee table book.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Mistwell on August 17, 2020, 10:52:58 AM
Quote from: Brad;1144864
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKlVYJTSzuU

Had no idea wtf Gloryhammer was, Googled that shit, and pulled up that video.

Still trying to figure out how I'm supposed to feel right now...

Looked like Thor cosplay to me.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Mistwell on August 17, 2020, 10:56:09 AM
Quote from: RPGPundit;1145215
Someone let me know if the coward ever opens the comments section so I can go point out how he's a lying fuck, a fake swine-turned-OSR guy because he saw a way to fleece money from the rubes, and that he stole tens of thousands of dollars from gaming while leaving a decent gaming company hanging.

No one should give a shit what this piece of human garbage has to say.

Oh well as long as he's fake-swine
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Slambo on August 17, 2020, 10:57:16 AM
Quote from: Mistwell;1145239
Looked like Thor cosplay to me.

Thats kinda funny cause he's in a Nanowar video as Odin, apparently he ascended to godhood after dying at the end of Beyond the Galactic Terror Vortex when he sacrificed his life by diving into a volcano because he was stabbed with the knife of evil.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Mistwell on August 17, 2020, 11:22:09 AM
Quote from: RPGPundit;1145217
I'd love to get a review copy of Mork Borg to be able to confirm, but I have the strong impression that the game is really not a coherent product at all but entirely about "Style" and hype, much like Vornheim was (that is, two or three little slivers of useful material, a ton of fluff-heavy garbage with no mechanical support and a metric fuckton of edgy art and attitude which was the only real reason people bought it, to feel like they too were mohawk-headed badboys of the mountain-dew slurping basement-dwelling hobby and might someday get to play D&D with a pronstar).

I mean, in Mork Borg's case I could be wrong, but it's very telling to me that NOT ONE DAMN PERSON has been able to coherently tell me what it even is, never mind what's in it.

I've gotten a lot of practical every day use out of Vornheim. It's far more blue collar utilitarian than you make it out to be.

And if you wrote something which had as much utility as Vornheim, I'd buy it. I don't need more campaign settings. I need shit that helps me throw together something on the fly seamlessly when my players make an unexpected turn. Vornheim sometimes helps me do that.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Mistwell on August 17, 2020, 11:23:13 AM
Quote from: Slambo;1145241
Thats kinda funny cause he's in a Nanowar video as Odin, apparently he ascended to godhood after dying at the end of Beyond the Galactic Terror Vortex when he sacrificed his life by diving into a volcano because he was stabbed with the knife of evil.

OK I am sold. I need to watch more of these videos.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Armchair Gamer on August 17, 2020, 11:41:49 AM
Quote from: LiferGamer;1145228
Pundit, tell us how you really feel.

Yikes.  I was going to ask for a summary; but I was able to infer it pretty clearly.  =D  

Sounds like he's made a politician's apology, learned nothing, and wants to forget it all happened.

I wouldn't take Pundit's summary at face value--he has a serious grudge against Maliszewski for some reason, and may not be the most objective witness.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: SavageSchemer on August 17, 2020, 05:57:20 PM
I think Pundit needs to quit beating around the bush and give us a straight-up, unambiguous summary of what he's really thinking.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Arkansan on August 17, 2020, 07:22:48 PM
Quote from: RPGPundit;1145218
Did he admit he didn't give a shit about the OSR, thought his gamers were idiots he could manipulate with fake stories of his awesome megadungeon and pseudo-intellectual drivel about gameplay cribbed from his decades as a White Wolf player with slight modifications, and that he stole the money on purpose?

Because if not, he wasn't being candid. He was just making up a new story in the hopes you'll be stupid enough to believe him again so he can steal more money from you.


Woah, I'd be interested to know more about that.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Snowman0147 on August 17, 2020, 09:22:04 PM
Quote from: Arkansan;1145307
Woah, I'd be interested to know more about that.


Seriously put this in a video RPGPundit and provide evidence.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Slambo on August 17, 2020, 09:57:11 PM
Quote from: Mistwell;1145247
OK I am sold. I need to watch more of these videos.

You really should gloryhammer is good fun
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Melan on August 18, 2020, 02:44:19 AM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1145233
Yeah Mork Borg is a coffee table book.

Confirmed. It is mostly a black metal art book with a gaming theme. As a supplement, it would run around 24-28 typewritten pages, but it is a full book thanks to the magic of modern layout. It earns some points for genre emulation.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Pat on August 18, 2020, 08:12:42 AM
Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1145252
I wouldn't take Pundit's summary at face value--he has a serious grudge against Maliszewski for some reason, and may not be the most objective witness.

He ran off with almost $50,000, and was never punished and never provided restitution to those he harmed. The inability to recognize and exclude a bad actor like Maliszewski is a classic example of the geek social fallacies at play.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: estar on August 18, 2020, 08:38:34 AM
Quote from: Melan;1145331
Confirmed. It is mostly a black metal art book with a gaming theme. As a supplement, it would run around 24-28 typewritten pages, but it is a full book thanks to the magic of modern layout. It earns some points for genre emulation.
30 to 35 pages it has 15,000 words.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: estar on August 18, 2020, 08:43:31 AM
Quote from: Pat;1145346
He ran off with almost $50,000, and was never punished and never provided restitution to those he harmed. The inability to recognize and exclude a bad actor like Maliszewski is a classic example of the geek social fallacies at play.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/autarch/dwimmermount/posts/434984

It doesn't excuse his behavior however neither it is a case where the creator "ran off" with the money.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: SavageSchemer on August 18, 2020, 08:47:43 AM
Quote from: Pat;1145346
He ran off with almost $50,000, and was never punished and never provided restitution to those he harmed. The inability to recognize and exclude a bad actor like Maliszewski is a classic example of the geek social fallacies at play.

When you talk about people being harmed, are you referring to the people who contributed to the kickstarter campaign, or to people who contributed art or content?

If the latter group, yeah. He should absolutely make some effort to set things right. However, I'd be hard pressed to pin the blame for "harm" done to campaign contributors when, by definition, joining any campaign in KS is a risk to the money involved. It is absolutely not an investment platform. People collectively need to get that through their collective heads. Some percentage of any given set of projects is absolutely going to go sideways and produce exactly nothing. You make peace with that before clicking the "give money" buttons. Nobody really has any business whatsoever dropping money into a KS campaign if the money involved isn't 100% disposable, or for which the loss of said money is going to be considered "harmful".
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Pat on August 18, 2020, 09:25:42 AM
Quote from: estar;1145352
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/autarch/dwimmermount/posts/434984

It doesn't excuse his behavior however neither it is a case where the creator "ran off" with the money.
I'm aware of that post, but you'll notice it doesn't mention how much of the money was passed to Autarch. If he returned it all, minus reasonable (and documented) expenses, I wouldn't have a problem with that. People screw up, and even established writers get over their heads trying to manage a KSer, because writing on spec is very different from project management, playing art director, handling logistics and accounting, doing PR and providing technical support, and all the other tasks that are required to bring a project to successful fruition. But we don't have that, we just have a bland statement, from someone who isn't Maliszewski, that they received an unspecified amount of cash.

"Run off" seems perfectly appropriate.

Quote from: SavageSchemer;1145353
... joining any campaign in KS is a risk to the money involved. It is absolutely not an investment platform. ...
You're seriously arguing that "investment platforms" are risk free? I don't think you grasp the concept.

A KS isn't an investment, as people often claim. Investments are high risk -- and high reward. You give money to a startup, and they give you equity. You might lose it all, but you might get rich. The Dwimmermount KS is just a product. There's no upside beyond what was promised. And that's a key word, "promised". The creator made a commitment to deliver something, in this case a megadungeon. And he failed. He actively deceived people about the state of the project before he took their money, and then ghosted them. A product was eventually delivered, but it came from a third party, who undertook the burden on their own.

Kickstarters fail, but how they fail matters. If someone screwed up, that's fine. It happens. But they owe their backers several things. First, don't vanish. Yes, when things go bad, you'll get a lot of criticism. Deal with it. They gave you money, and supported your wild idea when nobody else would. At the very least, you owe it to them to stay in touch and provide updates. Two, there should be an accounting. You need to explain where the money went, and why the backers aren't getting their product. Third, you need to explain what you can do. No art? Just a PDF? Something. A sincere apology may be a good idea as well, but honestly I don't care about that.

We need to hold KS project creators to this very minimal standard. Maliszewski is a bad actor. He has not made amends.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: SavageSchemer on August 18, 2020, 09:49:16 AM
Quote from: Pat;1145354
I'm aware of that post, but you'll notice it doesn't mention how much of the money was passed to Autarch. If he returned it all, minus reasonable (and documented) expenses, I wouldn't have a problem with that. People screw up, and even established writers get over their heads trying to manage a KSer, because writing on spec is very different from project management, playing art director, handling logistics and accounting, doing PR and providing technical support, and all the other tasks that are required to bring a project to successful fruition. But we don't have that, we just have a bland statement, from someone who isn't Maliszewski, that they received an unspecified amount of cash.

"Run off" seems perfectly appropriate.


You're seriously arguing that "investment platforms" are risk free? I don't think you grasp the concept.

A KS isn't an investment, as people often claim. Investments are high risk -- and high reward. You give money to a startup, and they give you equity. You might lose it all, but you might get rich. The Dwimmermount KS is just a product. There's no upside beyond what was promised. And that's a key word, "promised". The creator made a commitment to deliver something, in this case a megadungeon. And he failed. He actively deceived people about the state of the project before he took their money, and then ghosted them. A product was eventually delivered, but it came from a third party, who undertook the burden on their own.

Kickstarters fail, but how they fail matters. If someone screwed up, that's fine. It happens. But they owe their backers several things. First, don't vanish. Yes, when things go bad, you'll get a lot of criticism. Deal with it. They gave you money, and supported your wild idea when nobody else would. At the very least, you owe it to them to stay in touch and provide updates. Two, there should be an accounting. You need to explain where the money went, and why the backers aren't getting their product. Third, you need to explain what you can do. No art? Just a PDF? Something. A sincere apology may be a good idea as well, but honestly I don't care about that.

We need to hold KS project creators to this very minimal standard. Maliszewski is a bad actor. He has not made amends.

All your points are fine points. And I'm certainly not arguing that investment platforms are "risk free". I never made that claim. I'm arguing against the idiotic claim that "harm" was done. If anybody, anywhere, is arguing JM did harm by not delivering on his project, then said persons are fucking fools. Full stop. The blame for any harm done is on the contributor.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Pat on August 18, 2020, 09:55:05 AM
Quote from: SavageSchemer;1145355
All your points are fine points. And I'm certainly not arguing that investment platforms are "risk free". I never made that claim. I'm arguing against the idiotic claim that "harm" was done. If anybody, anywhere, is arguing JM did harm by not delivering on his project, then said persons are fucking fools. Full stop. The blame for any harm done is on the contributor.
I assumed the "risk free" implication was due to a poorly phrased pair of sentences.

But harm was definitely done. If someone steals from you, or reneges on a contract, that's harm. This should be indisputable.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Armchair Gamer on August 18, 2020, 09:58:20 AM
Quote from: Pat;1145346
He ran off with almost $50,000, and was never punished and never provided restitution to those he harmed. The inability to recognize and exclude a bad actor like Maliszewski is a classic example of the geek social fallacies at play.

   The Kickstarter went badly, but I haven't followed it enough to know if it was malice or incompetence. But Pundit seems just as concerned with 'exposing' Maliszewski as a heretic and false priest of the OSReligion.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: estar on August 18, 2020, 09:59:17 AM
Quote from: Pat;1145354
I'm aware of that post, but you'll notice it doesn't mention how much of the money was passed to Autarch. If he returned it all, minus reasonable (and documented) expenses, I wouldn't have a problem with that.
That what happened, I worked with Autarch on the cartography and they included me in some of their discussions. However to be clear it was a major hassle for all concerned especially Tavis and Alexander the two principles behind Autarch.

Quote from: Pat;1145354
we just have a bland statement, from someone who isn't Maliszewski, that they received an unspecified amount of cash.
And I am speaking as somebody who was privy to some of the discussions particularly the period of time when they were trying to setup the logistics of getting the project completed after James

Quote from: Pat;1145354
"Run off" seems perfectly appropriate.

What you call consequence free resulted in the following

1) He lost profits and fees from the main kickstarter funds
2) He lost ongoing sales from Dwimmermount itself
3) Dwimmermount was made open content under the Open Game License.
4) His reputation is trashed regards to Kickstarter projects.
5) His ability to do anything with classic D&D commercially also has severe limitations.

Speaking as a person who dealt with this and with the Judges Guild fiasco, equating what happened to the level of Gareth-Michael Skarka of Far West and the Judges Guild CSIO kickstarter is inaccurate and inflammatory.  The situation that James is in is one where if he want to publish commercially again for classic D&D then he will have to prove himself every step of the way.. With each step having  a project done and ready to be bought. Even then it is unlikely any anybody will trust him with managing something on the scale of the Dwimmermount project ever again.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Pat on August 18, 2020, 10:02:20 AM
Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1145359
The Kickstarter went badly, but I haven't followed it enough to know if it was malice or incompetence. But Pundit seems just as concerned with 'exposing' Maliszewski as a heretic and false priest of the OSReligion.

It wasn't malice. He promised too much, and got in over his head. Which, as I mentioned a couple of posts ago, is understandable. Bringing a Kickstarter to completion requires a whole set of skills, because you're basically taking on the role of an entire publishing house.

The problem is how he handled it. You don't just ghost people you backed you to the tune of $50K just because the criticism is making you uncomfortable, and then expect to be accepted back into the community.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Pat on August 18, 2020, 10:10:47 AM
Quote from: estar;1145360
That what happened,

It wasn't shared with his backers, which the absolute minimum standard of accountability.

Though that wasn't the responsibility of Autarch, anyway. They're blameless, and deserve kudos for going far beyond the call of duty.

Quote from: estar;1145360
What you call consequence free

I never said that. In fact, making sure there are consequences to his behavior is the whole point of having these discussions. He hasn't made amends, so we have a responsibility to ensure people are warned that he's a bad actor.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: hedgehobbit on August 18, 2020, 10:31:53 AM
Quote from: SavageSchemer;1145353
Nobody really has any business whatsoever dropping money into a KS campaign if the money involved isn't 100% disposable, or for which the loss of said money is going to be considered "harmful".
All money spent on gaming is disposable. That doesn't mean that if I buy a $50 game at a game store and come home to find the box empty that I wasn't harmed in any way.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: SavageSchemer on August 18, 2020, 11:00:52 AM
Quote from: hedgehobbit;1145367
All money spent on gaming is disposable. That doesn't mean that if I buy a $50 game at a game store and come home to find the box empty that I wasn't harmed in any way.

Except you didn't go to the game store to buy a game. That's the entire fucking point. People tend to think of KS as some kind of pre-order platform when it is nothing of the sort. You are not exchanging money in return for a product. You are contributing funds to develop a product that may or may not ever see the light of day. Yes, people hope that the project is successful and that they get their "rewards" out of it. This is why people tend to confuse it with making an investment. What you're actually doing is more akin to dropping money into a donation bucket. Viewing it any other way is ass backwards. Which is why I maintain, and will maintain for all eternity, that the harm done here (which is a preposterous word choice, by the way - you kids need a grown-up definition of the word*) was done by you to yourself the moment you contributed to the project. Own it and move the fuck on.

Definition of the word Harm: Physical or mental injury, especially that which is deliberately inflicted.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Pat on August 18, 2020, 12:13:28 PM
Quote from: SavageSchemer;1145375
Except you didn't go to the game store to buy a game. That's the entire fucking point. People tend to think of KS as some kind of pre-order platform when it is nothing of the sort. You are not exchanging money in return for a product. You are contributing funds to develop a product that may or may not ever see the light of day. Yes, people hope that the project is successful and that they get their "rewards" out of it. This is why people tend to confuse it with making an investment. What you're actually doing is more akin to dropping money into a donation bucket. Viewing it any other way is ass backwards. Which is why I maintain, and will maintain for all eternity, that the harm done here (which is a preposterous word choice, by the way - you kids need a grown-up definition of the word*) was done by you to yourself the moment you contributed to the project. Own it and move the fuck on.

Definition of the word Harm: Physical or mental injury, especially that which is deliberately inflicted.
Kickstarters are not, and have never been, donation pails. Unlike other crowdfunding platforms, creators have to actually provide something. And a promise of goods and services in return for remuneration is a contractual agreement. Projects may fail, and it's generally not worth the effort to file a civil suit, but they still made a commitment. By backing a KS project, you're not giving money to a charity, or funding the creator's life. That's simply not how it works.

Bringing up investments again just confuses the issue. Kickstarters aren't investments. You don't invest money to get a fixed reward. Investments are high risk, high reward, generally via equity.

And
Quote from: West's Encyclopedia of American Law, edition 2
Injury
A comprehensive term for any wrong or harm done by one individual to another individual's body, rights, reputation, or property. Any interference with an individual's legally protected interest.

A civil injury is any damage done to person or property that is precipitated by a breach of contract, Negligence, or breach of duty. The law of torts provides remedies for injury caused by negligent or intentional acts.

An accidental injury is an injury to the body caused unintentionally. Within the meaning of Workers' Compensation acts, it is an injury occurring in the course of employment.

One who is injured might be able to recover damages against the individual who caused him or her harm, since the law seeks to provide a remedy for every injury.
That's how the term "harm" is being used.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: estar on August 18, 2020, 12:19:46 PM
Quote from: Pat;1145363
It wasn't shared with his backers, which the absolute minimum standard of accountability.
Autarch shared what they wanted to share. The fact they didn't share an exact amount is their business.

Quote
James Maliszewski transferred to Autarch the Kickstarter funds necessary for us to complete the Dwimmermount project and pay the artists who haven't been compensated for their work.


Quote from: Pat;1145363
Though that wasn't the responsibility of Autarch, anyway. They're blameless, and deserve kudos for going far beyond the call of duty.
Yes, Autarch did good work and James was lucky that they stepped in.

Quote from: Pat;1145363
He hasn't made amends, so we have a responsibility to ensure people are warned that he's a bad actor.
If he turns back to crowdfounding then is the time. Right now you are being vindictive.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Pat on August 18, 2020, 12:24:25 PM
Quote from: estar;1145389
Autarch shared what they wanted to share. The fact they didn't share an exact amount is their business.
Like I said in the next sentence, it's not Autarch's responsibility. It's Maliszewski's.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: estar on August 18, 2020, 02:39:02 PM
Quote from: Pat;1145390
Like I said in the next sentence, it's not Autarch's responsibility. It's Maliszewski's.

Quote
From the home campaign of GROGNARDIA's James Maliszewski to your gaming table, thanks to your support and a partnership with Autarch
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/autarch/dwimmermount

No it is both of them. Autarch went into the kickstarter as partners of James Maliszewski. Autarch stepped up to the plate when James faltered, supplied what details they wanted too, and completed the kickstarter. They and James don't owe the backers a fuller explanation as Dwimmermount was delivered. Instead you choose to believe that Autarch were lying that when they said that sufficient funds were turned over to complete the kickstarter.  

Quote from: Pat;1145346
He ran off with almost $50,000, and was never punished and never provided restitution to those he harmed. The inability to recognize and exclude a bad actor like Maliszewski is a classic example of the geek social fallacies at play.
 Again this statement is not accurate and show ignorance of the situation as I have shown. James turned over the funds that were not spent on fees (10% - 5% to KS, 5% for payment processing) and payments to artists. Everybody publishing or promoting in the OSR is well aware of what happened and the pain that it caused Autarch to deal with this.

If James want to so something on his own dime, he should be able to do it without being hassled by false accusations.  If he turns to crowdfunding then it is a different story.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Brad on August 18, 2020, 02:53:47 PM
Quote from: estar;1145406
If James want to so something on his own dime, he should be able to do it without being hassled by false accusations.  If he turns to crowdfunding then it is a different story.

That's not how any of this works...
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: SavageSchemer on August 18, 2020, 03:16:04 PM
Quote from: Pat;1145386
Kickstarters are not, and have never been, donation pails. Unlike other crowdfunding platforms, creators have to actually provide something. And a promise of goods and services in return for remuneration is a contractual agreement. Projects may fail, and it's generally not worth the effort to file a civil suit, but they still made a commitment. By backing a KS project, you're not giving money to a charity, or funding the creator's life. That's simply not how it works.

Bringing up investments again just confuses the issue. Kickstarters aren't investments. You don't invest money to get a fixed reward. Investments are high risk, high reward, generally via equity.

And

That's how the term "harm" is being used.

None of those definitions apply. Three out of four are explicitly about injury. The fourth, being the loosest, is about "damage to person or property" that's been precipitated by "breach of contract, negligence, or breach of duty". You'd still have to show damage to person or property, which you could never do here. Nice try though. Next time, try actually reading the definitions first.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Shasarak on August 18, 2020, 03:49:35 PM
Quote from: SavageSchemer;1145375
Except you didn't go to the game store to buy a game. That's the entire fucking point. People tend to think of KS as some kind of pre-order platform when it is nothing of the sort. You are not exchanging money in return for a product. You are contributing funds to develop a product that may or may not ever see the light of day. Yes, people hope that the project is successful and that they get their "rewards" out of it. This is why people tend to confuse it with making an investment. What you're actually doing is more akin to dropping money into a donation bucket. Viewing it any other way is ass backwards.


Kickstarter is exactly a pre order system.  Just look at the way it is set up - it is not coincidental that the amount of money that you "invest" corresponds exactly to the product that you receive.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Pat on August 18, 2020, 04:31:47 PM
Quote from: estar;1145406
No it is both of them. Autarch went into the kickstarter as partners of James Maliszewski. Autarch stepped up to the plate when James faltered, supplied what details they wanted too, and completed the kickstarter. They and James don't owe the backers a fuller explanation as Dwimmermount was delivered. Instead you choose to believe that Autarch were lying that when they said that sufficient funds were turned over to complete the kickstarter.  
Quote from: estar;1145406
If James want to so something on his own dime, he should be able to do it without being hassled by false accusations.  If he turns to crowdfunding then it is a different story.
Good point, I forgot Autarch was part of the project from the start. (It's been almost a decade.) I retract that part. And since the backers did receive their product from one of the people behind the project, the project itself was fulfilled. But note I never said or even implied Autarch lied. That's you, misrepresenting what I said. I only said who was responsible for providing what information.

While I was wrong about Autarch's role, that doesn't change a thing about Maliszewski. I made no false accusations about him. But that's twice in one post you've made false accusations about me.

Quote from: estar;1145406
James turned over the funds that were not spent on fees (10% - 5% to KS, 5% for payment processing) and payments to artists.
That's good to know, but it's not your responsibility to share that information, either.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Pat on August 18, 2020, 04:51:06 PM
Quote from: SavageSchemer;1145412
None of those definitions apply. Three out of four are explicitly about injury. The fourth, being the loosest, is about "damage to person or property" that's been precipitated by "breach of contract, negligence, or breach of duty". You'd still have to show damage to person or property, which you could never do here. Nice try though. Next time, try actually reading the definitions first.

There aren't 4 definitions in the quote. There is 1, and then 2 specific types of injury that fall under the broader definition. Even if we count the sub-types as separate definitions, that only adds up to 3, not 4. All of them are about injury, because the entire section is a definition of injury. If you meant physical injury, then only 1 of the sub-definitions is specifically about physical injury. Not 3 out of 4. And you're lecturing other people about reading the text? The definition clearly applies.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Arkansan on August 18, 2020, 08:06:28 PM
[ATTACH=CONFIG]4773[/ATTACH]
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: estar on August 18, 2020, 08:57:42 PM
Quote from: Pat;1145420
I only said who was responsible for providing what information.

To wit

Quote from: Pat;1145346
He ran off with almost $50,000, and was never punished and never provided restitution to those he harmed. The inability to recognize and exclude a bad actor like Maliszewski is a classic example of the geek social fallacies at play.
 

=====================================================

Quote from: Pat;1145420
But note I never said or even implied Autarch lied. That's you, misrepresenting what I said.

Considering this
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/autarch/dwimmermount/posts/434984

Quote from: Autarch
I'm very happy to announce that this afternoon, James Maliszewski transferred to Autarch the Kickstarter funds necessary for us to complete the Dwimmermount project and pay the artists who haven't been compensated for their work.

in light of this statement by you

Quote from: Pat;1145346
He ran off with almost $50,000, and was never punished and never provided restitution to those he harmed. The inability to recognize and exclude a bad actor like Maliszewski is a classic example of the geek social fallacies at play.
 

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.  
 

Quote from: Pat;1145346
While I was wrong about Autarch's role, that doesn't change a thing about Maliszewski. I made no false accusations about him. But that's twice in one post you've made false accusations about me.
I will let the readers draw their own conclusions. Including the attempt to shift away from whether your above statement is accurate to one about whose responsibility it is to talk to the backers.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: EOTB on August 18, 2020, 10:00:03 PM
There'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
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Mistwell on August 18, 2020, 10:05:43 PM
Pat, James did not run off with nearly $50K. Let it go man. We've all been where you are right now, and all regretted digging in once we realized we were wrong.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Ratman_tf on August 19, 2020, 02:07:25 AM
The 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.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Melan on August 19, 2020, 04:14:01 AM
Quote from: EOTB;1145462
There'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. :D

Here is estar's timeless wisdom from that thread:
Quote from: estar;582164
The 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;582166
Also, one way to avoid that kind of thing is to start the Kickstarter with a completed or close to completed manuscript.

;)
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: EOTB on August 19, 2020, 04:33:50 AM
:D

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.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Brad on August 19, 2020, 10:29:46 AM
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.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Pat on August 19, 2020, 01:38:09 PM
Quote from: estar;1145454

Considering 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;1145454
Including 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.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Pat on August 19, 2020, 02:14:50 PM
Quote from: Ratman_tf;1145482
The 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.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: RPGPundit on August 19, 2020, 02:41:18 PM
Quote from: Brad;1145498


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.


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.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: S'mon on August 21, 2020, 01:14:38 AM
Quote from: Pat;1145515
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.


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.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: estar on August 21, 2020, 01:44:55 AM
Quote from: S'mon;1145775
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.
Here is the post
Quote from: amacris;1115066
James 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.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Pat on August 21, 2020, 03:02:05 AM
Quote from: S'mon;1145775
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.

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.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Malfi on August 21, 2020, 03:18:01 AM
Quote from: SavageSchemer;1145300
I 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.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Spinachcat on August 21, 2020, 04:49:40 AM
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;1145359
But 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.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: RPGPundit on August 22, 2020, 03:07:09 PM
He was a faker from the start. He pretended he had a complete megadungeon that was the product of play. He did not.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: mAcular Chaotic on August 22, 2020, 05:56:23 PM
Holy crap, he's posting like crazy on that blog now.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Ratman_tf on August 22, 2020, 06:05:14 PM
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1146016
Holy crap, he's posting like crazy on that blog now.

No doubt he's got 8 years of blog post ideas stored up.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Brad on August 22, 2020, 06:08:08 PM
Quote from: Ratman_tf;1146018
No 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.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Libramarian on August 23, 2020, 02:18:08 PM
Quote from: RPGPundit;1146006
He was a faker from the start. He pretended he had a complete megadungeon that was the product of play. He did not.


Anyone who's made their own dungeons knows that the amount of detail you need in your notes for personal use is far less than what a published dungeon typically includes.

I think he made an honest mistake underestimating the amount of work needed to go from personal notes to publishable form.

Gygax of course made the same mistake with both ToEE and Castle Zagyg.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: mAcular Chaotic on August 23, 2020, 02:57:16 PM
Not to mention a megadungeon book can't really capture the "life" it has, since it's only a snapshot.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: RPGPundit on August 24, 2020, 02:16:15 PM
Still no comments?
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Arkansan on August 24, 2020, 02:45:58 PM
Quote from: RPGPundit;1146261
Still no comments?

Nope, not so far.
Title: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Pat on August 24, 2020, 02:58:03 PM
The comments on all his older posts were directed to Google Plus, which isn't an option anymore.
Title: Re: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: RPGPundit on September 02, 2020, 01:11:39 PM
The comments on all his older posts were directed to Google Plus, which isn't an option anymore.




Yea. I'm sure that's the reason, and not that he wants to hide the fact that he stole money in a Kickstarter fraud.
Title: Re: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: wmarshal on September 02, 2020, 01:20:03 PM
The comments on all his older posts were directed to Google Plus, which isn't an option anymore.




Yea. I'm sure that's the reason, and not that he wants to hide the fact that he stole money in a Kickstarter fraud.
The Kickstarter was not a fraud. It was in great danger, and James was responsible for that. I am a big critic of how James comported himself during the Kickstarter and hope he’s never involved with crowd-funding again even tangentially, but labeling the kickstart itself a fraud goes too far. Dwimmermount was delivered eventually by Autarch.
Title: Re: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Lynn on September 02, 2020, 01:37:39 PM
The Kickstarter was not a fraud. It was in great danger, and James was responsible for that. I am a big critic of how James comported himself during the Kickstarter and hope he’s never involved with crowd-funding again even tangentially, but labeling the kickstart itself a fraud goes to far. Dwimmermount was delivered eventually by Autarch.
He burned his bridges and he needs to own it and walk away from the rpg industry.

The RPG industry is a very tiny one. While Kickstarter has carefully positioned itself as a non-reseller, it takes advantage of early adopter types. A big part of the 'character' of early adopter types is self investment, so when you make them feel betrayed then they will hold a grudge until the end of time.
I've been engaged with numerous companies over the years that crashed and burned, especially in tech. Sometimes those running them emerge and get back into the industry, primarily because the crash and burn was the result of market influences and those inside those industries completely understand that.  But you don't hear of them claiming mental distress.  That seems to be almost a standard for many in the RPG community that take the money and run.
Title: Re: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: estar on September 02, 2020, 03:43:59 PM
Since he didn't take the money and run that not the issue here.


The issue as I see it, that he has his voice, his style, and it rubs many the wrong way including members of this forum. That more than a few folks are using what happen during the kickstarter to justify their dislike. Cloaking their criticism in a veneer of respectability because he "fucked" up a kickstarter royally when it really about is that they don't like how he writes or the opinion he states about the industry and hobby.

I linked to Autarch account  (https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/so-grognardia-is-back-i-guess/msg1145779/#msg1145779)which doesn't support the characterization that James took the money and ran. What it does support that James should not be the lead for any major project. Luckily for him, the technology of our times allows him to do a lot with the time and resources he has, like putting out a zine. As long as he putting his own time and dime into his project, I am content to let the man work and publish in peace.

On the other hand if he asks for support for a project that not completely done, or requires a major investment of time and resources, then at that point I will want an explanation or I will say no. In that situation I fully expect others to do the same.

If he hasn't developed a track record regarding projects on his own time and dime likely the answer still will be no even with an explanation. That how badly the screw-up is on the Dwimmermount KS.

Title: Re: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Pat on September 02, 2020, 04:17:32 PM
Since he didn't take the money and run that not the issue here.


The issue as I see it, that he has his voice, his style, and it rubs many the wrong way including members of this forum. That more than a few folks are using what happen during the kickstarter to justify their dislike.
I liked his blog, it was one of my regular RSS feeds, before Google killed Reader. He doesn't owe me anything, and I don't hold any particular animus toward him today. I just believe people should be warned. Crowd-funding works because it's based on trust. It's not a realm where legal sanctions are practical, so reputation is the enforcement mechanism that prevents the field from being overwhelmed by bad actors. That's why we as a community have a responsibility to identify them.

And he owed the backers a product, and then he just vanished off the internet because it got too difficult, forsaking his responsibilities. That's clearly taking the money and running. True, Autarch did get him to sign over the IP and some of the money, but everything I've seen, including your link, suggests he didn't initiate it. He ran from his backers, until his partner went looking for him, at which point he handed over the keys. He also handed over some of the money, but it's still completely unclear how much money. You made one statement that he basically returned everything, but that's at odds with the statement from Autarch you linked.

I can understand why he did it. As I've said before, managing a self-publishing project in the public eye from start to end is tough. A lot of people, even those with extensive credits for writing in the field, have no idea how much work there is when they're going it alone. Even those with a lot of self-publishing experience can find it difficult to scale up or deal with the additional complexities (Skarka's Far West comes to mind). And while the one to many nature of relationships when you're the center of attention may be great when it's going well, when it goes bad it can be hard to deal with the negativity, because it gets amplified by the impersonality and absence of non-verbal feedback, the way posts are always there and don't go away like spoken words, and the sheer number of that "many". When that happens, there's a tendency to withdraw. But it's a bad reflex, from both a practical and a moral standpoint, because going silent is the #1 unforgivable sin, not to mention the creator took money and made a commitment.

I don't think the Kickstarter was a fraud. He did mislead people a bit, but that's common, and all the evidence suggests he fully planned on completing the project. He just got over his head, couldn't deal, and ran away to cower in a corner instead of owning up to his responsibilities to the people who believed in him enough to throw money at his dream project. They're the real victims. That they were made whole by a third party in no way absolves Maliszewski.
Title: Re: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Lynn on September 02, 2020, 05:12:01 PM
Since he didn't take the money and run that not the issue here.
The issue as I see it, that he has his voice, his style, and it rubs many the wrong way including members of this forum. That more than a few folks are using what happen during the kickstarter to justify their dislike. Cloaking their criticism in a veneer of respectability because he "fucked" up a kickstarter royally when it really about is that they don't like how he writes or the opinion he states about the industry and hobby.

I linked to Autarch account  (https://www.therpgsite.com/pen-paper-roleplaying-games-rpgs-discussion/so-grognardia-is-back-i-guess/msg1145779/#msg1145779)which doesn't support the characterization that James took the money and ran...
The part that said:
"...they received more than a token amount, but far less than 85-90%"
So what happened to the rest?  Certainly, it was good that Autarch got what they could. He didn't however deliver, they did.
Title: Re: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: RPGPundit on September 10, 2020, 07:06:29 PM
The comments on all his older posts were directed to Google Plus, which isn't an option anymore.




Yea. I'm sure that's the reason, and not that he wants to hide the fact that he stole money in a Kickstarter fraud.
The Kickstarter was not a fraud. It was in great danger, and James was responsible for that. I am a big critic of how James comported himself during the Kickstarter and hope he%u2019s never involved with crowd-funding again even tangentially, but labeling the kickstart itself a fraud goes too far. Dwimmermount was delivered eventually by Autarch.


Autarch was amazing in that whole thing. But if someone else promises a product they claim they've been developing for years, it turns out they were lying about that, and then they take all the money without delivering anything, that's a fraud; whether or not someone else comes along to take responsibility and provide a product to the backers later.

I mean, if you prefer, I could say JMal is the fraud, and HIS Dwimmermount was a fraud.
Title: Re: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: estar on September 10, 2020, 07:48:10 PM
then they take all the money without delivering anything, that's a fraud;
A person doing that would be a fraud. But that not what happened. JMal did not take all the money. Thus the chain of reasoning breaks.



Title: Re: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Omega on September 10, 2020, 08:39:18 PM
Part of the problem is the way he handled it after that set people on edge. After a while it didnt matter how much of the funds he handed off to someone else to finish it. It mattered that he had to do this and someone had to bail him out and write it for him.

And as noted. This isnt the first time weve seen this happen with games.
Title: Re: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: estar on September 10, 2020, 08:44:39 PM
Part of the problem is the way he handled it after that set people on edge. After a while it didnt matter how much of the funds he handed off to someone else to finish it. It mattered that he had to do this and someone had to bail him out and write it for him.

And as noted. This isnt the first time weve seen this happen with games.
I don't have any problem with criticism in that vein. What I do have a problem with people, like the Pundit, asserting he took the money and he ran. Trying to put him in the same boat as Far West and Judges Guild. Having been involved with helping both the Judges Guild KS and helping the Dwimmermount KS. Aside from both crashing and burning, the circumstances of both are very different.
Title: Re: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Mistwell on September 10, 2020, 11:11:50 PM
then they take all the money without delivering anything


When you lie, and I mean intentionally like you just did rather than making a mistake, it makes me not trust you anymore.


He didn't take the money. He paid others who worked on it (like artists, and Kickstarter), and gave the remainder to Autarch. There is ZERO evidence he personally ever got a dime from the whole thing himself. There are lots of reasons to criticize how he handled things, but "He took the money and fled with it," or anything which implies that, is not one of them.
Title: Re: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Pat on September 11, 2020, 04:51:16 AM
When you lie, and I mean intentionally like you just did rather than making a mistake, it makes me not trust you anymore.


He didn't take the money. He paid others who worked on it (like artists, and Kickstarter), and gave the remainder to Autarch. There is ZERO evidence he personally ever got a dime from the whole thing himself. There are lots of reasons to criticize how he handled things, but "He took the money and fled with it," or anything which implies that, is not one of them.
You're repeating falsehoods.

Estar has made a statement in this thread that Maliszewski passed through almost all the money, except for transaction costs and payments to artists. But Estar isn't one of the parties involved, and not only is that claim unverified, it contradicts what Autarch has said. Autarch, the only primary source who has spoken on the matter, said they received the funds necessary to complete the project, which was clarified in a later post to be about half the funds. That doesn't match Estar's statement. They also said they suffered a loss of about $20,000, which doesn't confirm anything, but does at least suggest the funds were short. Note any of this would have been trivial to clear up, if Autarch or Maliszewski wanted to do so. All they had to do was write a short post explaining where the money went. That they have not done so suggests it's complicated.

While that's a bit foggy, it's crystal clear that Maliszewski dropped off the face of the internet, stopped responding to backers, and ceased working on the project. As the primary author and rights holder, this put the project in abeyance. More than that, he also controlled the purse strings. So yes, he ran off with the money. There is no ambiguity here, no reasonable alternative interpretations. He ran off with the money, full stop. He didn't board a board or a plane and skip the country, but he fled the internet, fled his responsibilities, and at least figuratively, curled up in a ball and quit.

Now Autarch did eventually reach him, and got him to sign over the rights and pass over what remained of the money. That's a minor positive mark, on Maliszewski's side of the score card. It suggests he wasn't committing deliberate fraud, but that he just gave up and hid because he couldn't deal with the negativity. But it doesn't change that Maliszewski ran off with the money, and only passed it over when his partners chased him down. He hasn't come clean about that, hasn't made amends, and just laid low for a few years, presumably hoping people would forget.
Title: Re: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: GameDaddy on September 11, 2020, 05:18:49 AM
There is nothing complicated about it. The Kickstarter was for an old school style game that wasn't delivered on schedule. It was eventually delivered, ...but not by James Maliszewski.

It's clear that some of the Kickstarter monies was not spent on delivering Dwimmermoun first. The original $60 Price point included a hardback book shipped for free in the U.S. and Canada and $5 for shipping to Europe. At the time $39.95 was the going price for a D&D hardbound book, so it was not an unreasonable price for a hardbound D&D book. Free shipping is a project killer though, especially these days, and some of the high end Pledges were very expensive to produce, and in fact not enough people signed up for the high end pledges to make them profitable meaning the other pledges carried the elite pledges, and further drained the profit potential of this project.

$48,756 was collected in total from 1,023 people meaning an average of $ 47.56 was collected per person which was eventually published for Labyrinth Lord, and Autarchs ACKS system. The hardbound books were shipped in January of 2015 more than two years and three months after the original target date of August 2012, and there was some question it was going to be delivered at all because the kickstarter went dark meaning Maliszewski refused to answer inquiries, for quite some time, in fact until his project partners stepped it to rescue the project. Fortunately he hadn't spent all the money so Autarch was able to salvage the project although I would be surprised if he has managed to turn a profit on it, even after all this time and the followup PDF and additional sales this generated over time.

Kickstarter allows a person to collect money in advance for a project, but the monies should be spent on completing the project and delivering the goods. That didn't happen on Maliszewski's watch. Now he wants to return to his previous celebrity status in gaming circles. I get it. I get the medical bill problem and the lack of affordable healthcare in the U.S. That is not something that gamers should be fixing though, especially without being provided prior notice in advance, that paying unplanned medical bills was going to be part of the Dwimmermount project.

You gamers want to fix medical care in this country? Organize and make sure to elect legislators and government officials that will make the necessary changes to the existing healthcare system. That means kicking out the corrupt politicians, judges, lawyers, and doctors that are forcing this evil system upon the general public. It's a system that makes poverty a crime punishable by death and rewards the wealthy, incompetent, greedy, and morally bankrupt.

As for being a leader in gaming again? To this I say no. He doesn't deserve to be a leader, a guide, or a mentor, or any kind of authority figure for gamers. Any gamers. So no, he's not back.   



Reference:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/autarch/dwimmermount (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/autarch/dwimmermount)
Title: Re: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: estar on September 11, 2020, 06:57:43 AM
James Maliszewski is a Canadian and lives in Canada.
Title: Re: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Armchair Gamer on September 11, 2020, 08:56:26 AM
As for being a leader in gaming again? To this I say no. He doesn't deserve to be a leader, a guide, or a mentor, or any kind of authority figure for gamers. Any gamers. So no, he's not back.   



   (Why am I involved with this? Grognardia is one of the key things that turned me off the OSR back in the day. And Pundit, before you use that as a talking point, you're one of the others. :) )


  I haven't followed either the original or revived blog, but is Malisewski trying to be a leader, or even a creator again? Or is he just trying to participate in the hobby and associated discussions? Not trusting him to run any projects or have any form of fiscal benefit is one thing, but blacklisting him from any and all involvement with the hobby feels rather extreme.
Title: Re: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: KingCheops on September 11, 2020, 11:47:07 AM
James Maliszewski is a Canadian and lives in Canada.


Assuming his medical thing wasn't an emergency (ie. he needed to go to the Emergency Room and they solved his problem there) and assuming the typical dirt poor game designer then being Canadian helps shit fuck all.  If you don't have supplementary health insurance up here then once they have you stable and healthy in the emergency room then you are on the hook for everything else.


It's the big lie being fed to you folks that the US system is so bad.  We get lower level of care and if you don't have supplementary health insurance you are going to be paying a lot of money out of pocket.
Title: Re: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: wmarshal on September 11, 2020, 12:44:29 PM
If James just wants to discuss rpgs then I have no problem at all with that. People are free to follow his blog or not, and at this point I don’t see why anyone who doesn’t follow his blog ought to care about those who do. I’ll wait to get upset if he tries to jump back into crowd-funding. If a 3rd party decides to use him as part of their project his work would have to be 100% done to not cause a storm.
Title: Re: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Omega on September 11, 2020, 04:39:10 PM
I had the same feeling about Grognardia. There was something... off... about their attitude that dulled my already low opinion of the OSR. Nothing big that I can recall. Just lots of little things in how they acted and treated others sometimes.
Title: Re: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: GameDaddy on September 11, 2020, 10:59:31 PM
 
I had the same feeling about Grognardia. There was something... off... about their attitude that dulled my already low opinion of the OSR. Nothing big that I can recall. Just lots of little things in how they acted and treated others sometimes.
 

 Allow me to help you with understanding this perception. I decided to go over to Grognardia and check out the recent posts since James has been posting again over there. I just went back a few weeks, looking over his articles and then it struck me. I'll describe the differences as well, ...a bit later in my post. 
 
 In one article from September third, James goes on about Tony Baths' Hyboria, and about how Tony Bath made his tabletop wargames more interesting by creating novel NPCs. For those of you here that don't know, Tony Bath was a tabletop wargamer from the 1950's. He actually started collecting miniatures just after WWII. Bath founded the Society of Ancients in 1965. In 1973 his Setting up a Wargames Campaign was published by the Wargames Research Group. He worked as an administrative manager for Miniature Figurines, Ltd., helping them expand their selection of ancient and medieval miniatures. In 1973 I was actually wargaming while I was living in Germany using 1/72, or 20mm minis. Now I didn't learn anything directly about wargaming or Fantasy Gaming from Tony Bath until sometime in the mid-to-late eighties, but he definitely influenced my very early 70's games with his original ideas about wargame and fantasy game random campaign generation.
 
 In September of 1974 I received one of many very special birthday gifts. It was a copy of Avalon Hills' Panzer Leader a game that was originally design by Jim Dunnigan. Now this was a tactical level wargame set in the WWII era. There was a set of scenario cards so you could play through some key historical encounters, Before 1974 was through, I had played all of them, as well as a few scenarios of my own devising drawing on actual historical battle reports that I would literally read through, and then recreate from battles reported in the books. These books are available, even now, from the Army War College, and are known as The Army's Official History of WWII.
 
 You can check these out for yourself here.
 https://history.army.mil/html/bookshelves/collect/usaww2.html (https://history.army.mil/html/bookshelves/collect/usaww2.html)
 
 At that time though after school you would find me at the Base Library reading through these books looking at actual battle and AAR reports and taking notes so that I could recreate these battles in tabletop wargames, and evaluate how I would do as the commander in the field at the time. Panzer Leader went one up on that though, and in the back of the rules section, there was designer's notes. These were also taken from the Tables of Organization & Equipment that were available from the The Army's Official History of WWII. There was a Macro Game where you could set up a specific unit for a campaign, Say an American Armor or Motorized Infantry Battalion, or Regiment and then run that unit through a random selection of battles facing off against an opponent (or opposing side) to see how well the unit would fare. So very sophisticated roleplaying to determine the effective strength of an actual combat unit under a variety of situations.
 
 Now in January 1977 about the same time as I started playing D&D, Avalon Hill came out with Squad Leader. Which was an even more refined look at WWII Battles. What made this one of my absolute favorite games from Avalon Hill though, was that there was a campaign mode, where you could pick a leader, and he would advance through a series of battles leading the units featured in the battles, facing off against a foe with a similar leader that they roleplayed. They also had a random scenario construction kit built in to squad leader, that featured, you guessed it, a force draw, and victory conditions draw using a deck of playing cards ala Tony Bath. John Hill designed this, ...and of course knew Tony Bath.
 
 So, the first few months playing D&D we were sitting around dungeon delving, but by the winter of 1977 we had expanded our D&D campaign and were playing a wilderness campaign. My first D&D campaign world was a mismash of Tolkien's Middle Earth, and some other stuff picked out of literary fantasy along with some details I just made up. I had this Hobbit vale (With Dwarves nearby), a Kingdom named Brandywine in a high valley situated between two mountain chains, and just east of the mountain chain was another Hobbit Kingdom the Low Vales, then some vast unnamed steppe plains leading to a very tropical Jungle and inland sea. I remember there were Egyptians and Romans that had settled in the tropical inland sea region. To the south there was a vast desert, with lots of Dervishes, and Nomads, and a few lost cities beneath the sand. To the North was a great forest where the Elves lived, but there were some Elves that lived in the Hobbit Vales too.
 
 The mountains contained tombs, old castle ruins (with dungeons), catacombs, and caves and caverns, some of which had been worked by Goblins, Orcs, and Dragons into subterranean cities and settlements. I remember undead being very popular in our earliest games. Wizard's also liked to live out in the wilderness in isolated places, a keep with a dungeon, or a tower with a dungeon. All the NPC wizards had research laboratories in their lairs. They conducted all manner of inquiry and research as well as new spell research, and a high wizard very rarely accepted guests. With the original D&D the wizards often hired guardians to guard their strongholds, and set magical traps for unwelcome guests. Very experienced early players were very reluctant to trespass into a wizard's lair uninvited, or unannounced.
 
 In the original campaigns we had themes, and one of the basic themes of our very first wilderness campaigns was that our fantasy world was an alternate earth, one where history had been changed. The world had advanced into the modern age, or perhaps even into the future, and then some catastrophe or war had knocked it back into the stone age, where the campaign world then evolved forward with magic, mystery, and superstition (almost) replacing all the science, and technology.
 
 With all that setup, we added to our campaign worlds, and setup peripheral kingdoms using the guidelines in the Brown/White Bookset where each new hex being explored might contain a castle or stronghold featuring a noble or lord leading an Army. The original books had the occupants of a stronghold either be a Lord, Superhero, Wizard, Necromancer, Patriarch, or Evil High Priest. We very quickly added on to this, and just randomly rolled up high level NPCs, and randomly rolled the alignment of these NPCs to add variety and surprise into the mix for our players.
 
 Then of course there were wandering monsters in the wilderness, some of which were wandering, and some were in their lair, that the players just stumbled into. ...and the players were expected to rapidly establish their own stronghold, so that their treasures and research could be secured.
 
 You might be asking right about now, ...what does this have in Common with Tony Bath’s Hyboria, or with his Setting up a Wargames Campaign? Well, part of my worldbuilding, I learned from my first GM, who incidentally gave me hex paper and told me to map my campaign world. We used hex paper and it was familiar to us from our Wargaming roots. We could easily measure distances, so hex maps became the defacto standard for mapping out our homebrew outdoor campaign setting, so we could easily calculate the movement of our Player Party, as well as all NPCs, Armies, Legendary Monsters, Nomads,  etc. etc. You’ll see how this is relevant shortly.
 
 The concept of "saves" seems to have originated in the wargaming rules of Tony Bath from the late 1950s. Bath's medieval rules have a system such that after a roll is made by the attacker to determine hits, armored defenders make a separate roll to determine if their armor "saved" them from the hit; e.g. "if he has both armor and a shield, a 4, 5 or 6 will save him." The compound "saving throw" was widely popularized in the wargaming community by Don Featherstone's reprinting of Bath's wargaming rules in War Games (1962).
 
 
Gary Gygax was familiar with Tony Bath's 1966 edition of ancient and medieval rules (Gygax repeatedly credited them in the late 1960s), which use the term "saving throw" freely. From there we see saving throws integrated into Chainmail, where figures roll saves to avoid effects like dragons breath, poison and petrification. Gygax and Arneson's 1972 collaboration Don't Give up the Ship also has saving throws made after ships are hit by guns.
 
 There’s more… Tony Bath’s Hyboria campaign began in 1963. In 1973 he published Setting up a Wargames Campaign. This was published before D&D, by the way. Does any of this look familiar to you?…
 
 Purchase costs: (worked out on a regimental basis, which under my system is same 600 men)
Leather Armour 25 Gold
Armour 50
Full Mail 100
Plate 200
Shield 25
Horse Armour 100
Sword 20
Spear 10
Lance 15
Axe/Halberd 15
Short Bow 10
Composite Bow 15
Longbow 15
Javelin 5
Pilum 10
Pike 15
Crossbow 25
Sling nil
Ponies 50
Horses 75
Heavy Horses 100
Elephant 120 each
Elephant Armour 125
Light Siege Engine 50 each
Heavy Siege Engine 75 each
Gamets 75 each

 
It was also necessary to work out the going price for slaves, since players soon developed the nasty habit of selling off prisoners or eking out revenues by same slave raiding in hostile territory! I
established that values fluctuated from time to time, and that if large numbers were thrown on a local market at once, prices would drop!
Averages were:
Fieldworker 5-10 Gold Crowns
Workwoman 10-20
House Slave 10-20
Concubine 20-100

 
Since I operate in Hyboria on regimental levels and not in individuals, pay was generally quoted on a regimental scale; and to save the trouble of working this out, for anyone who requires it I quote
the regimental pay scales here:
lnfantry 100 Gold crowns per quarter
Cavalry 200
Camel Squadron 50
Chariot Crew 25
Elephant Crew 30

 
These were peace-time rates of pay, and troops have to be paid regutarly every quarter. In war-time, pay rates are increased by 50%. Guard troops receive double rate at all times. In addition to their pay, troops have to be fed, and forage provided for their horses.
 

 
...And so on. Tony goes on to describe shipbuilding, stronghhold building, and making NPCs which he describes as CHARACTERISATION. To wit;
 
 The subject-matter of this chapter is really only for those who have set up a mythical continent of their own, so historically minded readers can skip it if they wish! Even those who have only made up a map for one brief campaign will probably not wish to adopt the whole system set out here, though there may be a few points which would be of use even in this situation. But for those who intend to use their continent, island or whatever it is for a good period, with continuing campaigns, some degree of characterisation is essential.
 
 
 And later…
 
 You now have your families set up and all their members named. You now need to create personalities or characters for all these people, and this to my mind is the most fascinating part of the whole thing. Various methods can of course be used for this; you can if you wish assign arbitrary characters to suitable people, or create personalities and then dice to see who they belong to. The system I use is based on assigned values and playing cards. Originally I also used the number of letters in a person's name, dealing one card for each letter; but later 1 found it was better to use an arbitrary number of cards, and I decided on seven, which gives you a good variety without over-doing things.
So, for each person's character you deal out seven cards. The first card dealt will decide upon his or her's mast outstanding characteristic: a Heart will indicate Good Nature, a Diamond Love of Wealth, a Spade Ambition, and a Club Lave of War in a man, Patriotism in a woman. The value of the card will determine the depth of this passion, a high card being very strong, a low card relatively weak. The rest of the cards are used individually, and each has a value of its own, as given below:

 Ace: Spade ar Club, a disloyal intriguer. Diamond, loyal intriguer.

Heart .exceptional good nature.
King: Spade or Club, Energy: Heart or Diamond, Courage · Great lever
Queen: Great lover
Knave: Spade/Club, Unreliability, oath-breaker, liar. Heart/Diamond, Merciless, revenge-prone.
Ten: Loyalty, absolute in Diamonds, grading down through Hearts, Clubs, Spades.
Nine: Physical beauty, except for Spade, which is Ugliness.
Eight: Spade/Club, Cruelty Heart/Diamond, Generosity.
Seven: Spade/Club, Personality Heart/Diamond, Jealous of Family Honour.
Six: Spade/Club, Lazyness Heart/Diamond, Charm
Five: Spade/Club, Wisdom Heart/Diamond, Cunning
Four: Spade/Club, Stupidity Heart/Diamond, Cowardice
Three: Spade Club, Bad Temper Heart/Diamond, Good Temper
Two: Spade/Club, Arrogance, Pride. Heart/Diamond, Merciful

So Tony has an random generated alignment system including characteristics, and equipment and troop price lists, all of which were added to Blackmoor (...and D&D) much later, and and which were also being used in tsome in early Chainmail games, but Tony had worked out many of these campaign level detail at least a full decade earlier, and even published before TSR Did. What TSR had, that Tony Bath didn’t was a magic system, and legendary monsters, and that’s pretty much it.
So when I see james Malizewski talking about Tony Bath’s wargames, like it’s the greatest thing since sandwiches and sliced bread, I’m all like, WTF? ???

We literally were playing this game, and figuring our way through the lack of rules back in the mid to late 70’s. Even though I didn’t even know about Tony bath until the mid to late 80’s, and not really well until about 2010 or so, we had all been playing an organic version of his wargame as part of our RPG since the time we started playing D&D. It was only later, that D&D changed, and moved away from that model of representing RPGs.

 
Title: Re: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Omega on September 12, 2020, 03:43:46 AM
So again we have this fascinating little mystery of what the seed was that sparked this idea off from multiple angles. at around the same time as academia was just starting to spread the "classroom simulation" idea as a teaching tool. Part proto LARP, part town sim. A younger Gary is doing the same with friends and we have the beginnings of elements that would eventually come together to form actual RPGs.
Title: Re: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: S'mon on September 12, 2020, 03:54:42 AM
Re 'health issue', I never saw anything about JMal having a health issue. He was supposedly feeling down because of his father's sickness AIR. Might have had some depression. But I got the impression he mostly just got stressed over the Kickstarter and gave up.
Title: Re: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: S'mon on September 12, 2020, 04:00:38 AM
So again we have this fascinating little mystery of what the seed was that sparked this idea off from multiple angles. at around the same time as academia was just starting to spread the "classroom simulation" idea as a teaching tool. Part proto LARP, part town sim. A younger Gary is doing the same with friends and we have the beginnings of elements that would eventually come together to form actual RPGs.


Military sims, Free Kriegsspiel, Major Weseley, Braunstein.
The you-are-there play came much more from Arneson and the Braunstein setup, which derives from how Prussian Free Kriesspiel and military training sims work, than from Gygax & Chainmail AFAICT. Military training simulations focus very much on the players being in the roles of the commanding officers, with referees adjudicating, rather than the more abstract board-wargaming style you get with games derived from regular Kriegsspiel.
Title: Re: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: jeff37923 on September 12, 2020, 06:43:58 AM
James Maliszewski is a Canadian and lives in Canada.


Damnit estar! GameDaddy was on a roll!
Title: Re: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: estar on September 12, 2020, 08:47:37 AM
James Maliszewski is a Canadian and lives in Canada.


Damnit estar! GameDaddy was on a roll!


(shrug)  :)
Title: Re: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Omega on September 12, 2020, 02:59:15 PM
Military sims, Free Kriegsspiel, Major Weseley, Braunstein.
The you-are-there play came much more from Arneson and the Braunstein setup, which derives from how Prussian Free Kriesspiel and military training sims work, than from Gygax & Chainmail AFAICT. Military training simulations focus very much on the players being in the roles of the commanding officers, with referees adjudicating, rather than the more abstract board-wargaming style you get with games derived from regular Kriegsspiel.
What I meant when referring to Gygax was what he related playing with friends and siblings well before D&D was even a concept. What he described was a proto-LARP with a sort of DM or referee. No rules were mentioned but the person running it had a sort of basic system much like school sims did.
Title: Re: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: Myrdin Potter on September 12, 2020, 06:13:28 PM
James Maliszewski is a Canadian and lives in Canada.


Assuming his medical thing wasn't an emergency (ie. he needed to go to the Emergency Room and they solved his problem there) and assuming the typical dirt poor game designer then being Canadian helps shit fuck all.  If you don't have supplementary health insurance up here then once they have you stable and healthy in the emergency room then you are on the hook for everything else.


It's the big lie being fed to you folks that the US system is so bad.  We get lower level of care and if you don't have supplementary health insurance you are going to be paying a lot of money out of pocket.


The only out of pocket is prescription meds and home care. Hospital care and doctor fees are all covered. Supplemental insurance for meds is covered by most provinces if you are poor (or young or elderly).


As someone who grew up in Canada and Moved to the USA, the care in Canada is decent. Primary care is much better. Lower population means less chance of finding a specialist on something more rare in Canada than the USA.
Title: Re: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: KingCheops on September 13, 2020, 12:20:45 PM
James Maliszewski is a Canadian and lives in Canada.


Assuming his medical thing wasn't an emergency (ie. he needed to go to the Emergency Room and they solved his problem there) and assuming the typical dirt poor game designer then being Canadian helps shit fuck all.  If you don't have supplementary health insurance up here then once they have you stable and healthy in the emergency room then you are on the hook for everything else.

It's the big lie being fed to you folks that the US system is so bad.  We get lower level of care and if you don't have supplementary health insurance you are going to be paying a lot of money out of pocket.


The only out of pocket is prescription meds and home care. Hospital care and doctor fees are all covered. Supplemental insurance for meds is covered by most provinces if you are poor (or young or elderly).


As someone who grew up in Canada and Moved to the USA, the care in Canada is decent. Primary care is much better. Lower population means less chance of finding a specialist on something more rare in Canada than the USA.


Yes you aren't likely to be bankrupt from needing life saving stuff.  Also varies from province to province (I'm in BC which is the cadillac of Canadian health care) not sure where he is.  But I'm under the impression (possibly wrong) that this wasn't life saving stuff for this dude.


EDIT:  Although to be fair I haven't really ever been sick so I have no real interaction with the health care system.  Most of this is coming from my former coworkers at a Group Benefits brokerage I worked at 2 years ago.  Possible its skewed as they were trying to sell supplemental health care.
Title: Re: So Grognardia is back I guess?
Post by: ponta1010 on September 13, 2020, 04:24:37 PM
I think comments are back on on Grognardia. Will see what happens to them from here.....