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 Peregrine wrote:

 Taarnak wrote:
Paulson went to Harmony Gold who own the IP (for the US anyway; messy situation...) in good faith to see about obtaining a license to produce a miniatures game.

So how is it Palladium's fault that he went to the wrong people to try to negotiate a deal for the license he needed?

He didn't. Harmony Gold owns the IP, not Palladium. Until they told him that they couldn't grant him license for this because of prior agreements, he had no way of knowing that he should talk to Palladium.

~Eric

 Taarnak wrote:
Palladium does NOT own the Robotech IP. They have an incredibly (too) broad license for it in the US, that is all. See above for why Paulson is NOT an idiot or incompetent.

No, they just own the one thing Paulson needed to make a miniatures game. It would seem that if he isn't incompetent, his lawyer is, or Harmony Gold is. The one group here that isn't confused on who owns what, it seems, is Palladium. You can get mad at the wrong people all day if you would like, but that doesn't make you seem reasonable, and it certainly doesn't make you right. Paulson is a good guy and a good company as far as I can tell, but they screwed up in this instance, not Palladium.

 Ahtman wrote:

 Taarnak wrote:
Palladium does NOT own the Robotech IP. They have an incredibly (too) broad license for it in the US, that is all. See above for why Paulson is NOT an idiot or incompetent.

No, they just own the one thing Paulson needed to make a miniatures game.

Which, until he talked to the ACTUAL owners of the property, he had no way of knowing.

This would be like me going to FFG to get a license to make a Space Marine action figure. Would that make any sense? Nope. I would go to GW. And things would progress from there.

~Eric

 Taarnak wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Taarnak wrote:
Paulson went to Harmony Gold who own the IP (for the US anyway; messy situation...) in good faith to see about obtaining a license to produce a miniatures game.

So how is it Palladium's fault that he went to the wrong people to try to negotiate a deal for the license he needed?

He didn't. Harmony Gold owns the IP, not Palladium. Until they told him that they couldn't grant him license for this because of prior agreements, he had no way of knowing that he should talk to Palladium.

~Eric

And, again, how is this Palladium's fault? Why are they responsible for a separate company's failure?

 Taarnak wrote:
Which, until he talked to the ACTUAL owners of the property, he had no way of knowing.

Then he shouldn't have done all that work on the project until after he has secured the license, or been damn sure who owned the license. This is basic, non-complicated business 101 stuff here.

 Taarnak wrote:
This would be like me going to FFG to get a license to make a Space Marine action figure. Would that make any sense? Nope.

And yet, that is essentially what he did, and you are trying to make GW out for being the bad guys.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Taarnak wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Taarnak wrote:
Paulson went to Harmony Gold who own the IP (for the US anyway; messy situation...) in good faith to see about obtaining a license to produce a miniatures game.

So how is it Palladium's fault that he went to the wrong people to try to negotiate a deal for the license he needed?

He didn't. Harmony Gold owns the IP, not Palladium. Until they told him that they couldn't grant him license for this because of prior agreements, he had no way of knowing that he should talk to Palladium.

~Eric

And, again, how is this Palladium's fault? Why are they responsible for a separate company's failure?

That isn't their fault. The way they handled it from there was.

You don't have to agree with me at all. I couldn't really care less. I do care about a guy who seems like a decent fellow and competent producer being called an idiot for following the right steps.

~Eric


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ahtman wrote:

 Taarnak wrote:
Which, until he talked to the ACTUAL owners of the property, he had no way of knowing.

Then he shouldn't have done all that work on the project until after he has secured the license, or been damn sure who owned the license. This is basic, non-complicated business 101 stuff here.

 Taarnak wrote:
This would be like me going to FFG to get a license to make a Space Marine action figure. Would that make any sense? Nope.

And yet, that is essentially what he did, and you are trying to make GW out for being the bad guys.

I wasn't making GW out to be anything other than the owner of the Space Marine IP. Not sure what you are after there.

He knows who owned the property, but I'm still not certain you do.

~Eric

If we could/can take this particular tangent to a different thread please folks, that way we can keep this one focused more on the Kickstarter.

Thanks.

Edit: Sorry Red, i was writing while you were posting.

The way I understand things, HG directed Paulson to Palladium, who holds the US rights for Macross. While Palladium voiced interest, they took 6 months to make a decision, all the while letting Paulson build up interest and hype about the idea on forums and Facebook. After all that time, they basically said "f you" and latched on to what he had started.

 Taarnak wrote:
That isn't their fault. The way they handled it from there was.

And what's wrong with how they handled it? They had absolutely zero obligation, legally or morally, to do anything other than say "we're not giving you the license".

You don't have to agree with me at all. I couldn't really care less. I do care about a guy who seems like a decent fellow and competent producer being called an idiot for following the right steps.

No, the "right steps" would be don't invest lots of work into a project unless you are absolutely 100% secure in all the licensing details you need. He decided not to do it that way, and he has only himself to blame for the wasted work.

JOHIRA wrote:When half of your core products are just photocopies of your other core products, when half your core rules are just rants by the rules writer about how he knows more about how these things work than other people, that should normally be a warning sign.

Besides, knowing Simbeida he's likely to grab a random concept sketch somewhere he doesn't understand and then make up an entirely new faction that in no way fits the story material at all based on what he thinks it is.

You can bitch about Palladium all you want to, it's combat system is clunky and tedious to set up a character. However it is literally the kitchen sink when it comes to RPG's if you want to lay a superpowered luchadore who kills demons with a guitar in a fantasy setting or a cyborg mutant weasel during a zombie apocalypse then their system can accommodate you. Add to the fact they rarely or never obsolete their books and you can count me as laughing at all the rage quitting ex-D&D/Pathfinder players.


I will support this, not because I enjoy Palladium products but because I want unseen Battletech miniatures.

Heh, I think that's going to be two thirds of the market for anything this kickstarter produces--people with no interest in playing a game by Palladium but instead want to play Battletech.

Have loved Robotech for years and would love to see it but Palladium rules are so lacking in every way so just can't see my self supporting this. Played Battletech for years till FASA disappeared now playing Heavy Gear but would love to have a good minature game based on Robotech.

 Dice Monkey wrote:
You can bitch about Palladium all you want to, it's combat system is clunky and tedious to set up a character. However it is literally the kitchen sink when it comes to RPG's if you want to lay a superpowered luchadore who kills demons with a guitar in a fantasy setting or a cyborg mutant weasel during a zombie apocalypse then their system can accommodate you.

And spend 20 minutes rolling the dice for the first round of combat, where characters will take 200 points of SDC damage and barely feel a scratch.

The ability to expand the content of a pnp RPG isn't really all that special. All it takes is creativity on the part of the GM. I once converted a Robotech Sentinels campaign to run on West End Games's Star Wars D6 system, and it played brilliantly compared to the Palladium system.

Add to the fact they rarely or never obsolete their books and you can count me as laughing at all the rage quitting ex-D&D/Pathfinder players.

Although the power creep that comes with the new books makes the old books for all intents and purposes obsolete anyway. Unless you want to take your original Rifts drifter down to Atlantis for a campaign.

I agree, Palladium rules sucks.

But Palladium isn't really designing the Robotech miniatures game.

I keep reading over the announcement and this is what I glean from it:

HEY GUYS we have the Robotech license.
Palladium only makes RPG's!
So Sodapop will make the game for us.
We'll publish it... and Kickstart it...
and make some money since our company is in debt!


Which is all well and good. Companies like to make money (whether in debt or not), and Palladium/KevinS has at least made the decision to hand development to people who will be better at making a miniatures game. He knows there is a demand for the product, wants it to be successful, and therefore isn't doing it himself.

^^^ honestly it seems like it's the best route Palladium can take for this. Basically totally hands off for designing the game. Publish it, and sit back and make money on a relatively lucrative license.

I'd rather have a Macross branded game, but I'll take what I can get.

I don't like how HG and others have basically usurped a franchise from the original owners, but at least they are doing something with the IP after such a long time.

Besides, any publicity is good publicity.

I'll buy this when Palladuim pays all the other write they ripped off first. You order a manuscript you pay, even if rewrite 60+% of it. Still can't belive so many people donated money to the company after there "friend" who keep the books empty there company acconuts.

If the figs are great, I'll buy in. This was the first RPG I every played and I may not have alot of faith in what they have done in the past, I however still have all the books from the first go around.

 Breotan wrote:
I wasn't aware Palladium was still in business. I think I might know one person who owns their stuff.

And that one person is Kevin Siembieda. Palladium is owned, operated, and mismanaged by Kevin Siembieda. He and his company are impossible to work for in a professional manner. Since his "Crisis of Treachery" he has all but resorted to pan-handling to cover his debts and I feel like any Kickstarter run by him or his company will only stoke this trend.

I love Robotech as much as the next guy, but I'd rather see it produced by a competent company, a company that is capable of producing a coherent rule-set and one that is capable of managing its own affairs discreetly and professionally.

Palladium is not that company.

I would like to see Palladium forced to sell its Robotech license instead of buoyed into mediocrity by nostalgic fans.

As a Battletech fan, it is funny to watch another set of people rage over HG business practices.

Also: I will be kickstarting if I like the minis, for the minis, for battletech.

If they are the wrong scale, or crap. I own palladiums TMNT I don't need any more books from them.

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
Going through the material on the link this point seems to be the most worrying one

3. The success of Robotech® RPG Tactics™ could be huge for Palladium Books as a company. A successful launch of Robotech® RPG Tactics™ is the final piece of the puzzle to make Palladium Books® strong again. A successful launch will enable us to eliminate debt and give Palladium the resources to hire more staff and more freelance talent and do so much more for ALL our game lines. I already have a dream team of creators lined up to bring on board. They can hardly wait. The excitement is electric.

This paragraph (and the one after it, which is even nuttier regarding all the "top secret" stuff that will take roleplaying "to new heights") would give me a *lot* of pause for different reasons...some involving Palladium and its history, and some not.


If this was about 25 years ago, I'd be all over this. His Robotech RPG (and any other Palladium RPG with similar dynamics) never worked well IMO just because of the challenge (impossibility?) of roleplaying complex combats between wildly dissimilar units traveling at wildly different speeds. I even did some preliminary work on a hex-based system for handling these kinds of combats. Again, this was almost 25 years ago that I identified this problem and tried to do something about it. Just saying.

 Grot 6 wrote:
Palladium have pulled too many gak moves in the past and squandered community goodwill twords them. The paulson thing was Icing on the cake compaired to some of the past, almost legendary Siembieda arrogance and attitude in the past. All in all he's a polorizing figure as the holder of this game company.

Not to mention that every shop that you go into has more then thier fair share of Palladium books/ stuff. The reason is that the stuff is not compatable and consistant, then when someone tries to fix it, they get bounced for it. The game background is great, but it takes honest effort to really LIKE the game and deal with the crazy mechanics.

The point of fact is that not a lot of people like the cut of Siembieda's jib. I could go on about "What they say..." but its all water under the bridge at this point.

(The real question to ask him is to ask how that movie is coming along.... :facepalm):

Then the almost movie-like quality of thier "Espionage/ theft" from some so-called "former employee", the negative way in which former contributers and writers have described as being treated, and the way in which he generally has been said to act.



If you think people have a hate on for GW, you don't know hate until you hear from some of the masses on this one. It isn't just one thing, either, there usually is a combination of issues that end up peeing on peoples shoes about Palladium...

Caveat Emptor

And yet people have given over $160,000 to Mierce, fresh off of Rob Lane ripping them off.

As a critic of Palladium's RPG systems, I don't see myself throwing money at this KS, but as a Robotech fanboy, I know it'll be hard not to.

Palladium also has a bad history of not paying freelancers or dicking them around for months before they are paid.. They sue fan websites and fanzines at the drop of a hat and have been even worse than GW at trying to extend their trademarks beyond their reach.

A while back a employee embezzled a bunch of money from Palladium and Kevin Sembeida went to the gaming public with the sad tale and solicited donations to help keep the company afloat. Unfortunately when the case ended up in court, it was shown that the amount stolen was far, far less than what Kevin Sembeida claimed. He claimed that it was upwards of a million dollars stolen, but the court arrived at the final number of $47,080.

He basically embellished his plight to solicit donations to keep his company afloat.

I have exactly zero interest in the rules coming from Paladium. I just want minis of some BT "unseen".

I'm hoping for an option in the kickstarter to buy minis that are close in scale to BT or Mechwarrior for a good price (BT mech prices) preferably without the rules or with rules as a toss-in PDF.

If the mini prices are unreasonably high or only packaged with rules I don't want to pay for, I'm fine with passing this game by.

As for the Paulson games thing, yes, he was treated somewhat disrespectfully by Paladium, but not illegally, and certainly not in an un-businesslike manner. In business you (choose to) pays your money and you (choose to) takes your chances.

I do wish him all success in his own endeavor however.

The Robotech RPG worked, for suitably kind definitions of 'worked' back int he late 80s when I was into it. From what I heard, a lot of people tried various house rules to make it more acceptable. If I was customizing rules for it, some guidelines I'd want:

1. The source material is anime, but relatively 'serious' anime (with exceptions, of course). Rules should support and encourage that characters are a bit cliche.

2. Combat rules should probably be a bit abstract, with options/powers/whatever to fit certain tropes the source material is known for such as...

4. Give a role to all weapons the canon mecha carry. So a base Veritech has a big gun pod, the head lasers, no nose lasers and some 'options' like the various armor packages, missiles on hard points, etc. Each needs a reason to favor it.

5. Support for 'Macross MIssile Massacres' that let heroes (and major enemies) unleash ridiculous amounts of missiles.

6. Characters should be just a bit better-than-human, and allow stunting. Want to catch a falling character in a mecha-sized manipulator while flying? Sure! Roll for it... if you're Elite Mecha Ace, you have a good chance of doing it.

7. Transforming mecha should matter. Possibly different skills for different modes to balance things out (or feats to differentiate. Max is amazing in all forms, while Rick is best as a fighter pilot due to his background.).

8. Make mecha 'work' by designing scenarios and abilities to take advanatge of manipulators and such.

9. Veritechs are the 'stars' of the Macross era, so add in support to differentiate different pilot archetypes/classes so an all-Veritech-Pilot group is normal. Compare to the 40k RPGs: This is like playing Deathwatch where everyone is a Space Marine, but chapter/specialty differentiates them. Not sure if Macross has meaningful canon variants of the Veritech, but other eras have multiple mecha with different specialties. (For example, in the Invid Invasion, there's regular cyclones, a melee/close combat/sneaky cyclone, etc. along with multiple variants for the Alpha and Beta flyers)

10. Use a mook system of some kind for enemies. Embrace the trope that the heroes can mow through basic bad guys, but any bad guy that makes a Dramatic Entrance, gets named, and gets a lot of GM description is probably going to be a tougher fight.

11. Encourage/reward play that isn't just a string of military missions. Any published scenarios should ideally have subplots that focus on dismounted sections, being cut-off or forced to oppose the command, or at least some investigation to encourage use of skills and abilities beyond selecting which weapon to shoot.

These are, of course, RPG suggestions not wargame guidelines.

I think generally people agreed that the best way to play the Robotech RPG was to use the text and pictures as source material for converting to Mekton II or Mekton Zeta.

Hopefully the game is 99% Soda Pop Games. Siembedia tends to be just as bass ackwards about things as GW.


I'd feel bad for Paulson, but the intro paragraph for his Kickstarter reads too much like sour grapes, and he has the same "I like Macross, except for everything that makes it Macross." attitude as too many neckbeards.

RogueRegault wrote:
reads too much like sour grapes, and he has the same "I like Macross, except for everything that makes it Macross." attitude as too many neckbeards.

My project is western styled mecha and themes, it's not meant to be Macross so I don't get where the sour grapes/neckbeards comments is from.

I love Macross, but like most other anime it has some majorly annoying characters screechy voices and rather dumb plot points. Even when I was watching it at 10 years old I found a lot of the "love drama" and "anti-war during war" devices really poorly done and unbelieveable. (It has nothing to do with Palaldium) It's how the show was written, there's just a lot of sappy and needless elements in it. As a kid I lived for Macross yet as much as I've enjoyed the show I've always felt most episodes could be cut down by 95% to just the mechs scenes and it'd make it worlds better.

I likewise can't stand the new gundam series, lines barrels or many other series for having bratty high school kids with high pitch whiney voices and psychic powers while driving multi billion dollars warmachines they happened to find in a park or some other craziness.

My robot genre preferences are based on more gritty realistic stuff like fang dougram, votoms, armored core, appleseed, and the pure military elements present in small amounts within macross. (not the soap opera parts) I think there's a large differance in how those settings are approached as a more serious sci fi genre.

I fully supported Paulson games in his Robotech endeavors (hell, I started most of those threads here). I was QUITE upset at how Palladium handled the situation and had been long since done with the company even before that despite being a longtime fanboy. However, I'm not sure any of that could possibly keep me away from an actual Robotech miniatures game. Robotech was the entire reason I started watching anime, started reading for fun (I adored those old Jack McKinney books everyone hates). Robotech got me into gaming via the RPG and playing miniatures via Battletech AKA Robotech & Pals: The Game. Playing the Robotech RPG back in high school got me some very good friends I still have to this day.

I'm of course incredibly worried about it being done by Palladium as I'm all too familiar with their abysmal track record, but it sounds like Soda Pop/Cryptic is doing all the important work on this one which leads me to have some hope for it. The Soda Pop figs are fantastic, and I had a MAJOR nerdgasm when Siembieda mentioned a possible 28mm Cyclone. Robotech minis are something I've wanted since I was a little boy, and if they're half as good as the Relic Knights stuff I'll trade my own mother for any one of them. Even a bungled, unplayable product would be a decades long dream come true. I will probably be supporting Paulson's Mecha Front kickstarter. I will almost certainly be buying into the Robotech Tactics kickstarter.

Lucifer himself could run this kickstarter with Hitler writing the rules and Games Workshop making the figures. I'd still buy into it.

Being someone who owned entirely too much of Palladium's Rift setting, and every sourcebook for Robotech (even bought the new stuff out of a sense of nostalgia), and a good deal of their other worlds, I can safely say I am... wary of giving more money to a company that seems to be actively fighting against the idea of moving into the modern age, even more so than Games Workshop.

Having read multiple interviews with folks who have worked with Palladium, I found myself more and more disappointed... not upset... just disappointed, with how the company was being run. And sadly, it made a lot of things that my friends and I always wondered on make a tremendous amount of sense; from rehashed rules and artwork, to power creep the likes GW has never even hinted at, to years long delays of books announced.

It's true, that they've never made a book invalid... because they also refuse to update a system that is, at best, clunky, and at worst completely unintelligible. The skill system advancement is described differently in at least 2-3 books I can think of off hand, and the combat ranges from laughable to unbelievably deadly. Palladium was able to get away with this for quite some time for much the same reason that GW has... for the longest time, they were the biggest kid on the market. There were other systems, sure, but as someone said... you can take any character, from any setting, and toss them into another and at the core level the rules will transfer over. Your fantasy elf archer with the magic bow? Yeah you can play that. Oh, you want to run your mutant hero with fire powers and super strength? Sure, that'll work, here's the conversion. Giant mecha run by a psionic mind mage who will feed off the souls of those he kills? That's the core rulebook. A knight empowered to battle starships in space? Here's a sourcebook. Demigod... dragon... mage... you name it, they had a book for it.

The problem? Balance was a laughable concept. The other problem was all the other systems that Palladium basically pushed around decided to grow, expand, rethink their rules and work them into fine and streamlined systems in many cases (this brought on its own share of issues, but that's another topic for another day) while Palladium stubbornly stuck to its guns, refused to even admit the system had even the most basic problems, and was left behind. Picking up books that only came out a couple years ago... it has not been improved.

So while I may look at the miniatures I will be very, very wary of giving more money to a company that, while a source for fond memories in high school, has left me saddened that they cannot grow past a wall of arrogance and irrational behavior. Even GW grudgingly has taken some steps forward to keep up with modern media (recent actions notwithstanding), while Palladium, to my knowledge, looks for methods of hand binding books rather than use PDFs and or digital printing, which would save them innumerable amounts of capital.

 NoseGoblin wrote:

 Cyporiean wrote:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/463682.page#4551657

TLDR, Paulson was talking with Harmony Gold about making Robotech minis, made some fantastic sculpts. Palladium cock-blocked him.

Yep, count me out as well for the same reason.

Id like to say the same, but at the same time the Battletech fan in me yearns for some unseens. If the minis were really great Id have a hard time turning away from a handful. If they made Invid...that would only make it even worse.