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I recently found out that BJ, who helped resurrect Dark Age Games and was a major driving force behind promoting the game and putting together new content, had a falling out with CMON (The new owners of the game apparently).

I heard that he left on bad terms...

Does anyone know what happened?

First, are you sure this actually happened? I've heard plenty of stores about various falling outs and controversy, but rarely substantiated.

Read this on the dark age forums several months back.

They didn't say much beyond what you said.

Well interesting.

Companies do have to make business decisions, although I wonder what it was over.

Cool Mini or Not, if anyone remembers is the successor to the maligned Newwave miniatures store according to all the talk on various online forums. Their business practices for the previous store were legendarily bad, even to the point of illegality.

But, in this case, it may be other more cut and dry business decisions when it comes to Dark Age. I'm really not sure what the status of the game is, even with a relaunch.

Confirmed by a CMON employee that was demoing Sedition Wars for Mike McVey's kickstarter at KublaCon. I inquired about BJ as I had hung out with him (and was introduced to Dark Age by him) at GAMA several years back. He proceeded to take on a somber disposition and said that BJ had left on less than good terms, even going as far as deleting the Dark Age Facebook page supposedly out of spite as he was leaving.

BJ did allot to keep Dark Age alive, I hope he wasn't $#!T on by CMON when they took over ownership of the game/IP, etc.


On a side note, interesting info about CMON's roots as NewWave....I used to buy Rackham miniature imports(from France before Confrontation rules were translated to english, etc.) through them. I remember the service being awful...and having problems with missing items in orders, huge delays in shipping, etc.

Wow threadomancy at it's finest here. I wish I would have known about this sooner and I could have used Dakka as my anti-CMON platform earlier.

At any rate yes, I did not leave DA/CMONon good terms, but I left on my terms. The powers that be wanted a blackout of me leaving because they knew that some people would be concerned that me leaving would hurt the game, it didn't. The game is still around, but all the cool things that have come out in these recent months are because of the selfless hard work I did, almost at the cost of my family. I was a paid employee, barely, I had a pitiful salary of which I had to pay my own taxes, medicare, and social security. After it was said and done I wouldhave been better off collecting unemployment. I was not working well with some of the newer CMON employees, and the owners (two) of CMON were constantly looking at the bottom line, sure understandable for a buisness, so I can't fault them for that. But the clincher was when one of the owners and supposedly a great friend told me this: "we can't justify paying you and future development at the same time." So I took myself out of the equation. As for nerfing the DA FB page, it was connected to my account and all the work on the FB page was done through me and my efforts, I also was annoyed that despite re-creating the game, authoring the Core Rules and Forcelists books I wasn't going to have anything to show for my sacrifices and hard work, I was damned if I'd let them have the FB page so I deleted it.

Oh did I mention they cut me completely out for credit for the designing of CORE and Cult of Metamorphosis? I worked hand in hand with the two artists to create the look of the CoM and CORE, no one else. John Cadice did some early unit developement/design of some(about half) of the CORE units that's all. Looking at reviews of the book there isn't much art that I did not commission artists for.

Sorry to hear that.

Seems like CMON is place I would not want to work for.

One of my complaints about CMON is the slow and/or lack of customer service.

"Hey there CMON, I have not been refunded my 200+ bucks from my order 2 weeks ago, may I ask where it is at"

nothing for a week

ask again

nothing for a week

ask again

nothing for a week

about 2 months later after finding out I must sign up for the forum and PM on of them directly regarding me refund. The email address they list for customer service is pointless.

Why bother putting it there?

Are they understaffed or just so cheap they refuse to hire someone to take care of customer service issues?

Seems like the CMON guys are living up to their roots and pulling another Newwave.

I noticed that while they are involved with a lot of properties that are big and upcoming, gaining a lot of press, but behind the glamor they use shady business practices.

Basically, find the flashiest stuff possible, grab as much money from people buying in, then don't deliver on it. Kickstarter must seem like taking candy from a baby.

Newwave started using pretty illegal business practices well before its end. It got to the point where you couldn't just hand wave and say it's business when stuff would disappear from orders and you would never get your money back since they'd talk about it being back ordered for half a year.

 Piston Honda wrote:


Are they understaffed or just so cheap they refuse to hire someone to take care of customer service issues?

Knowing what I know and being an ex-CMON employee they are cheap, most cases they expect you to just forget about it.

Wow, the man himself chimes in.

I'm sorry to hear about the fallout BJ...and the chaos that the lack of reasonable compensation for your work caused with your family. The way I see it, the game will suffer for the lack of your involvement. I cant be the only one who knows how much of yourself you poured into that game for little or no reward. I was involved with the playtest group that was testing CORE and the new Skaard faction, and I know you worked your ass off trying to tweak and balance those rules, etc. (all that after rebooting the game by re-writing the rules and setting up the new and improved look and layout of the rulebooks)

What I want to know is, if you aren't working on development of the game going forward, who is?

Also, CMON's bottom line cant be hurting too bad with them fronting cash to these 3rd party developers in order to get their games published...then running 3 consecutive Kickstarter campaigns that brought in nearly 3 million bucks total.

Also, BS on cutting out mention of your most recent involvement in the new printed materials.

Shame on you CMON

I think the $#!t!3$t thing is...going forward, you have to support the company that decided to hang you out to dry in order to continue supporting the game that you loved so much.

Good luck BJ. You should hit up Privateer Press or FFG, either one would be lucky to have you on their team.

This does make me worried for everyone who pitched in for the Relic Knights kickstarter. Or all the other products CMON is involved in.

Newwave's modus operandi wasn't only to discount heavily, then expect people forget orders, it was to use exclusive deals or grab hot properties to make people order from them. Thus all the hype would drown out the bad, and often illegal practices they would hear about.

Just what happened to Dark Age anyway? A while back I thought it was independent, I guess CMON bought it, was that around when someone made the new Apocalypse edition?

Dark Age was always owned by the owner of New Wave/CMON. He downplayed the connection between New Wave for obvious reasons. The game had been in a slump and it was my decision to push forward with a new edition hence the Apocalypse books. Despite some really bad typos and errors I did a great job considering I self taught myslf on making those books.

As for future developement of Dark Age Michael Shinal and Bryan Steele have taken over that, from what I saw of the current affairs of the Immortal Tournament I was not very impressed, they need to re-evaluate the new X'Treme format. My X'Treme format may not have been perfect, but it didn't allow one sided matches. Most of the developement for CORE and CoM was done already all they did was change a few rules here and there and maybe changed some of the fiction I commission Paul Stagg to do, I wouldn't be surprised if they cut him out either, f'ng spankers.

Oh and I was chastised for not shamelessly plugging a friends podcast, www.gubarpodcast.com. I mentioned it because Episode #9 is me talking a little about my departure from DA/CMON

I loved the game, still do, but I will not play it ever again, especially after they cut me out for credit for Dark Age: Devastation. Doesn't mean anyone else can't enjoy it, please keep playingthe game if you like it.

Eh, I liked the rules enough, but hated the monotone art direction of endless bondage fantasy. Worst than 40k's endless grimdark skull motif.

 Vertrucio wrote:
This does make me worried for everyone who pitched in for the Relic Knights kickstarter. Or all the other products CMON is involved in.

I wouldn't stress too much about Relic Knight, The main force behind that game is Soda Pop Miniatures, and they did a bang up job with Super Dungeon Explore. In fact, if SDE had had its own kick starter, the pretty good game would have been stellar. The only complaint I have with it at this point is the quality of the cards and playing boards....definitely not FFG quality. But part of the reason for the kickstarter is to drop production costs, making for higher profits and the ability to provide better quality stuff. Expect good quality things from them.

I bought in on the Zombicide Kickstarter, which was developed by Guillotine Games (former Rackham guys)...I got it in the mail a couple of weeks ago and I have to say, the game came out pretty good.

In all honesty, ever since I heard about what happened, I had ceased anything to do with DA.The figures were alot of fun to paint and BJ was really good in promoting the game. I was even starting a second faction. So sorry about how things were handled or not handled.