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Seawolf, this was included in the Palladium Weekly Update 21 Feb 2013, which is what I think you referred to, being just prior to the KS launch when Kev was rallying the PB White Knights to his cause

Quote "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."

With a large dollop of hindsight nearly five years on this is a pretty damning/damaging staement that kevin is totally accountable for and perhaps does need a lot of explaining regarding the usage of RTT funds to support other non kickstarter PB product/staff/wages

Morgan Vening wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
I think we actually did learn the amount in "cash" that was stolen during The Crisis® of Threachery™ - and it didn't seem like it was that much?

"Only" $16K or something like that?

And wasn't the culprit caught, and forced to pay it back?

And not sure if the Fridge Artwork was also part of The Crisis® of Threachery™ though - and estimates of their value was, let's just say, great exaggerated.

According to Wiki, Kevin claimed 850K-1.5M. That he had a 650K variation indicates he's f'n clueless. 10% differential? Fair enough. A more than 70% variation? Yeah, wishful thinking.

The judge awarded a settlement of 47K. Or barely 5.5% of the minimum "claimed" value. Kevin complains he had to take it, or get nothing, and he needed to keep the company afloat. Which appears to be utter crap. Why? Because most reports seem to say that most of the theft/embezzlement wasn't cash. It was stock and collectibles. Still bad, not arguing it. But not something that is liquid capital for operating expenses, and therefore not necessary to keep the company afloat via donations. The collectibles are a distraction, and the stock issue at BEST, is a timeframe one that could have been solved by PB running a pre-order for reprint of any items that had low stock levels as a result ("We've only got 14 copies of Rifts Book 17. We'll do a print run if we can get 200 pre-orders").

It's possible the situation was worse than being reported, but I've come to accept that Kevin Siembeda is innately full of crap. It's what he gets for dissembling for at least 4.5 years (since I've been listening), and probably the entirety of his career.

Ah, so I was a little off too - I'm no better than PB!

But yeah, $47K is a ways away from $650K to $1.5M!

Also, from the link you gave us, I found what will probably be the epilogue here as well:

Having made this last ditch appeal, he seems willing to accept the results. 'If Palladium Books should come to an end, I have no regrets,' he said. 'I'll know I did everything possible to keep going and do right by everyone.'

Morgan Vening wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
I think we actually did learn the amount in "cash" that was stolen during The Crisis® of Threachery™ - and it didn't seem like it was that much?

"Only" $16K or something like that?

And wasn't the culprit caught, and forced to pay it back?

And not sure if the Fridge Artwork was also part of The Crisis® of Threachery™ though - and estimates of their value was, let's just say, great exaggerated.

According to Wiki, Kevin claimed 850K-1.5M. That he had a 650K variation indicates he's f'n clueless. 10% differential? Fair enough. A more than 70% variation? Yeah, wishful thinking.

Considering his usual retirement strategies, I assume it depends on the vagaries of Ebay and whether or not certain comics get reprinted.

If only they invested in inventory software, or just made a friggin' spreadsheet...

 warboss wrote:
I don't recall seeing Forar ever argue otherwise beyond softening the same blow to simply be allowed to continue posting on the Palladium forums without getting banned.

Not sure where I implied or inferred that he did. I was discussing a point he made, if I misconstrued Forars' point, then my apologies to Forar and my thanks to you for pointing it out.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

wilycoyote wrote:
Seawolf, this was included in the Palladium Weekly Update 21 Feb 2013, which is what I think you referred to, being just prior to the KS launch when Kev was rallying the PB White Knights to his cause

Quote "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."

With a large dollop of hindsight nearly five years on this is a pretty damning/damaging statement that kevin is totally accountable for and perhaps does need a lot of explaining regarding the usage of RTT funds to support other non kickstarter PB product/staff/wages

Yep ... that be the one. I still get a chuckle out of it. This is a lesson on why Palladium should be avoided like the plague.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 n815e wrote:
If only they invested in inventory software, or just made a friggin' spreadsheet...

Problem with that, n815e, Kevin would want to do his own inventory software and his own spreadsheet, because his vision cannot be matched by the plebe's.

 n815e wrote:
If only they invested in inventory software, or just made a friggin' spreadsheet...

I doubt that would have helped. The guy embezzling from PB was the one in charge of the inventory.

 Desmodus wrote:

 n815e wrote:
If only they invested in inventory software, or just made a friggin' spreadsheet...

I doubt that would have helped. The guy embezzling from PB was the one in charge of the inventory.

The whole farce is - they did. To "aid" in shipping out Wave 1, they bought a whole new inventory software package, and Wayne had to take classes (mentioned somewhere around Update 149).

 Seawolf wrote:

 Forar wrote:
Plus, frankly, I don't think it costs them hundreds of thousands of dollars to do a book run. There was the chatter so very long ago assuming that NG-2 allowed them to finish NG-1, and perhaps *some* funds went into Atlanteans or some other elements, but I doubt that sum was the difference between finishing wave 2 and not finishing wave 2.

If memory serves, just before this Kickstarter came into fruition, Kevin was supposedly 'betrayed' by a former partner/employee/mushroom though exact figures were never truly mentioned. He had lamented that without the help of the PB fan base there wouldn't be a company. Some sort of anniversary/special edition book was created at a rather idiotic price was offered to help Kevin recoup some of the lost funds that were supposedly stolen from him. Additionally he made reference to this in an RRT Update that said if this Kickstarter is successful, it would ease some of the financial issues he was supposedly facing. Not to beat a dead horse made into tartar... but it does sound to me like the money specifically for this Kickstarter was not used entirely for this Kickstarter. Without seeing Palladiums' financials on the Kickstarter, we'll never know more than what is said after the fact.

 Forar wrote:
HOWEVER, funds redirected to a book (or books), keeping the lights on, spent on making and overstocking wave one on a hedged bet that it'd sell enough to make the money back and then some, paying for people and services and prototypes, I CAN imagine it being nibbled away, bit by bit, over the last 4.5 years.

So can I... but since this is a privately held company and the owner clearly has no intention of being transparent... we'll never know. He has said that none of the funds were used inappropriately but his word says otherwise. The less said about his reputation (or what little, if any, remains) the better.

 Forar wrote:
I don't think they can afford to fund wave two, but I don't think any single element was the cause, I think they all were the cause in varying amounts. No easy AH HA! IT WAS THAT THING to declare, just an easy bank of money to draw from a little at a time until suddenly there's pocket change left (or maybe more, but likely not the hundreds of thousands it'd presumably cost to make, let alone ship, wave two).

Forar, I think there is enough circumstantial evidence built over the course of this Kickstarter to draw upon that would lead me to believe that its a perfect storm of incompetence and hubris of Kevin Siembieda. At the end of the day when everything is said and done on this matter, it falls on Kevin Siembieda's huge egotistical and narcissistic shoulders. He won't accept the responsibility for bad decision making, he won't admit he abused the backers' trust (Gak, this is the same needle-noggin' that blamed the same backers for Carmen Belleair's attempted suicide for crying out loud), he won't admit he will do nothing to finish the project, and he won't admit he failed. Simple as that.

I'm trying not to be confrontational here (it's late, and I recognize I may be missing something super obvious), but I'm not sure what was really added beyond 'yeah, feth those guys'. As I catch up on this thread, others are correct, the Crisis Of Treachery was indeed many years prior to the RRT Kickstarter (and the alleged Crisis of Fridge Art came substantially later). Yes, much of the fault here can be laid at Kevin's feet, and no, we'll probably never get full disclosure without something exceptional happening (read; I win a couple million dollars in the lottery and decide that it's totally worthwhile to spend a portion of it dragging PB to court and getting full discovery, which will probably never happen, but if someone has a couple million laying around I will eagerly put it to use travelling the world like a playboy... I mean seeing justice done for the backers).

That said, I do occasionally miss or mistake something, but a few friends and folks around here (y'all know who you are) are generally quick to keep us all on the same page, and I do the same for them where possible.

Our little support group has been an immense help, even if it's just commiserating over lost potential and something akin to public service that this topic never go too far from the community's collective mind. That Palladium (in general) and Kevin (in specific) may never actually see substantial punishment for their endless lies and failure to show the very transparency and honesty they claimed would be present while drawing our money in during the campaign and leading up to the pledge manager is a shame. But I like to think that the toxic mess this has become (based on reasonable responses to their actions and inaction) will remain a taint on their already sullied reputation for years to come.

I mean... everyone needs a hobby.

 Forar wrote:
Our little support group has been an immense help, even if it's just commiserating over lost potential and something akin to public service that this topic never go too far from the community's collective mind. That Palladium (in general) and Kevin (in specific) may never actually see substantial punishment for their endless lies and failure to show the very transparency and honesty they claimed would be present while drawing our money in during the campaign and leading up to the pledge manager is a shame. But I like to think that the toxic mess this has become (based on reasonable responses to their actions and inaction) will remain a taint on their already sullied reputation for years to come.

I mean... everyone needs a hobby.

This.
Oh, so very much this.
Performing a "public service" to warn people off PB is not really needed since there is sufficient public record.
Trying to push PB into action to make good on the KS rewards we are pretty sure is a fallacy never-mind refund.
PB's ability to repeatedly lie and stall has stopped being shocking other than how insane the pretense looks as years roll past, it feels insulting.

Moving forward, the good:
- Seeing Robotech related efforts from anyone here is a happy thing: making the idea of Robotech fun despite their worst efforts is a bit of a fan obligation.
- Being a resource to help those get their hands on Robotech gaming "stuff" has been invaluable.
- Support group work of being a positive voice is important especially when we ask "Was that latest PB post just crazy or am I not reading that right?" (Yes, you are fine, they are not).

Moving forward, the bad:
- Keeping an eye on PB to then "slap them down" when their next get rich quick scheme surfaces.
- I am thinking I should restrict my postings to here, the best thing I can do now is not participate in any PB official forum of any kind: the less "buzz" they get, the better.

I should be focusing more on painting anyway speaking of hobbies: my ratio of un-built kits vs assembled vs painted is way out of whack.
Have a good day.

I discovered the Rifts Boardgame kickstarter and I was idly considering backing it as Rifts was a huge part of my childhood. Then I came across this thread.

So yeah, this thread is doing some public good

For some time, I had let the state of this KS get to me; it was unhealthy. Now, I can just come here to laugh and poke fun at the state of affairs.

I always love to see the positive stuff that does trickle in here - Mike’s game, the great paint jobs, folks efforts to make their own models. The small signs of survival despite PB’s best efforts to quash interest are heartening. We know, at least, the game could survive if it were in more competant hands.

*sigh*, so hard to put a positive spin on things, but PB is such an antithesis to help the situation.

 feeder wrote:
I discovered the Rifts Boardgame kickstarter and I was idly considering backing it as Rifts was a huge part of my childhood. Then I came across this thread.

So yeah, this thread is doing some public good

Glad it could be of a help. Another company BTW to watch out for is Prodos/Archon who are pulling almost the same schtick with their 2013 AVP crowdfunding customers (although they do dribble out rewards on occasion over the years unlike Palladium's full stop since 2015).

For the mods still left reading this (mainly Alpharius), is it a good time to retire this thread with the new year and start the third one? Maybe Forar could copy/paste (in honor of Mr. Siembieda himself!) one of his most recent recaps as the start and link both of the previous multihundred page threads? The restart that precipitated this second thread never happened and the rusted engine has seized long ago.

So.....with recent crisis of treachery discussion...

Kevin declares shenanigans by fan friend employee occurred to the tune 850k to 1.5mil over a two year period.

States he needs 100k asap just to keep the doors open.

Fan friend employee is charged and Kevin is awarded a whopping 47k in damages.

Days afterward public court documents indicate the VAST majority of said shenanigans was collectibles and items that should have zero to yo do with day to day ops of the business.

Thread with links to said documents deleted within day or two of being posted.

Add that this is about the same time Kevin was going thru his divorce......

As a person with an education in business as well as having run my own businesses.....events as kevin describes them did not pass the cursory "sniff" text to me then and still dont.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh and he raised the 100k on short order by selling copies of a pencil art piece he did for 50 per copy. Sold 2000 of them.

I also check this forum about every week to see what is going on..Better minds than me keep me up to date on what is truly going on.
My care for RTT has long left me, but I don't feel Kevin should be able to walk away with a few million because he feels he has the right too..
Most of the comments here and on the kickstarter page are of the same points of view.. Reasonable and more or less thought out...
One day I might get my wish and they will come clean on the train wreak.. Hopefully when they do.. Harmony Gold will sue the pants
off palladium games for damaging their licence.

I hate the fact that every week Scott posts something that mentions the kickstarter in hopes that it qualifies as a kickstarter update.
With all of us knowing he is just kicking the can down the road, so Kevin can keep doing what he is doing...

Sad thing is, Most current players are not asking for any of their product; so nothing is ordered or stocked in the game stores, plus their "we will
try again next month" on their release dates makes dealers not want to deal with any type of pre order. Yet the company and their fain friends sit
and wonder why its so hard to find someone to play the game.

Plus the image quality alone has really went down hill the last decade.. Once high end painted cover art that someone would want a poster of.
Is now crappy low end digital art or Scanned in ink drawing that looks like it was colored in using Microsoft paint.

 Genoside07 wrote:


Plus the image quality alone has really went down hill the last decade.. Once high end painted cover art that someone would want a poster of.
Is now crappy low end digital art or Scanned in ink drawing that looks like it was colored in using Microsoft paint.

Most likely, that is a case of a) it's all he can afford b) fan-friend art doesn't have to be paid for and c) most of the decent artist who actually want to get paid know better than to deal with his company. (I've read mumblings he's shafted many of his freelancers out of honest paid - or in some cases any pay)

Which gets me thinking - does anyone know what happened to Kevin Long, the artist who did most of the old Robotech RPG art? I noticed in the revised rulebooks his traced-over (cleaned-up) artwork being present (I think signed Brian Manning). A couple of Long's artwork pieces made it over to the new books, but just about one per book or so.

He started working for Raven Software after he and PB parted ways. Don't know if he's still there or not.

Long went to FASA at one point as well and was released for being too "inspired" by Anime designs from what i hear and honestly....even several of his PB works are pretty much blatant rip offs of anime designs we in north america would have largely known nothing about at the time. (I am looking at you some Gundam, and Bubble Gum Crisis)

Wasn't he generally accused of being a 'tracer'? Or am I mixing him up with someone else?

Anyway, for a guy who was tracing, he still couldn't get the battloid fingers to match what was actually on screen.

Well, seems to me that you’d want an artist whose artwork looks likes the existing property - for Robotech at least. I could see it being a problem for the likes of Rifts or Battletech “original” designs.

If he did do a lot of tracing it’s funny then that PB had another person come along and trace HIS artwork. As I mentioned, this appears to have been what was done for the revised Robotech books - take his art, trace over it and clean up the shadows/crosshatching aspect and pass it as new art.

 Genoside07 wrote:
Plus the image quality alone has really went down hill the last decade.. Once high end painted cover art that someone would want a poster of.
Is now crappy low end digital art or Scanned in ink drawing that looks like it was colored in using Microsoft paint.

Agreed. I used to have a collection of nearly everything PB had released to that point (mid 90's to early/mid'ish 2000's) and I enjoyed a lot of the artwork on both the covers and within. Sure, some of it is cheesy as hell, but generally it all suited the atmosphere of the game's setting anyway.

Triax 1, Psyscape, and Coalition War Campaign were some that I really liked, felt quite evocative of what was within.

Finding that they later moved to 'low quality Poser digital stuff' was a bit disappointing, but of course it's rather low on the lengthy list of reasons to be disappointed in this company.

Eventually my group stopped playing Rifts (moved on to D&D 3E) so I stopped buying, and eventually sold off most of what I owned after a few moves and getting tired of lugging heavy boxes of books around that I hadn't looked at in years. I still have maybe a dozen left, including much of their old Robotech line, a couple of Rifters, a few Rifts world books, and a Nightbane book or two. Basically books that held sentimental value of some sort (often tied to a character), even in the face of a company lying to me on basically a monthly basis.

Such a shame. I can imagine an alternate universe where this campaign wasn't a complete mess, and I perhaps persuaded myself to dig into an occasional grab bag for a few Robotech kits/figures and maybe a book or two/some Rifters for old time's sake, even if I'm not actively playing the RPG. I was a customer, and I can envision a world where I might have been one again. Instead, they got a chunk of cash out of my friends and I for this campaign, and it'll be the last dollars they see from any of us. Selling off most of what I got from wave 1 puts me back in the black on that arrangement, but my ire and disdain leave them at a net negative for sure.

Hi guys! I'm back.

Merijeek wrote:
Wasn't he generally accused of being a 'tracer'? Or am I mixing him up with someone else?

Anyway, for a guy who was tracing, he still couldn't get the battloid fingers to match what was actually on screen.

This cracks me up. Not sure if its this guy either, but I actually despised Battletech growing up, but for some reason, have some attachment to it. I not only hunted down a Robotech 2nd set in great shape, but I also nailed all of the old TCI Battletech model sets (more for the history and scenarios in each set). And recently, I was able to score a very old and rare FASA Battledroids set, with mint contents. All of the mechs in this set are straight from Macross with the exception of two (who's models come in the box), and all of the art is literally like someone traced the original artwork and re-positioned them in various scenes. Its terrible. I was never a fan of the weird line art that followed 2nd edition either. If Battletech suffered from anything, it was from the art and design from their own designs. Japanese designs are typically far more elegant.

I also moved my Robotech RPG Tactics box from a location on a shelf where you can see it, to behind something else to prob up another box. I imagine the next move will be out the door.

I started battletech with the 2E set and have those 2D standees stored somewhere. Over the years, I collected a lot of battletech, but looking back, didn’t like the game so much (especially the randomness of the hit locations). Loved the models and TROs though, even to this day.

I’m curious - I may have asked this before, but who here has played the old Robotech RPG?

I personally vaguely remember running a campaign (the players had in their group an NPC spartan that was a prototype AI that got them into all kinds of trouble) that was set in the aftermath of the Zent war. It didn’t last long because we felt the system was ...not that great, and the group went back to playing Battletech.

Still have the books - in fact, the KS inspired me to pick up the revised books. But I expect I’d never use them except as reference material or have them for nostalgia’s sake - for the cartoon, not PB as a company.

I played in a robotech campaign for 2 years while at university. We didnt have a problem with the system but that may have been because we had a really great GM who made everything run smoothly. The campaign only stopped because we all finished college and went our separate ways.

I played Battletech back when it was called Battledroids.

I used to race home from school to watch the latest Robotech episode as they premiered on TV.

Big fan of the early PB rpgs, like Mechanoids and TMNT. Never really played RIFTS or the Robotech RPG, but still picked up the books to enjoy.

My bitterness with how RTT turned out is directly proportional the fondness I once felt for Robotech, mecha gaming and PB in general.

This thread provides some entertainment and chuckles. I suspect it or its successor threads will continue longer than RTT does.

Robotech was my introduction to Anime and Mecha. Not long after I got into Lodoss and Gundam.

I wanted this to be such a success. I wasn't into Tabletop RPG's at the time, so I'm completely in the dark to Palladium. Even after Getting into RPG's all I have with his name in it that isn't an ad is a Judge's Guild Journal in which he did the cover art.

Now That this fiasco has happened, I won't buy any products with Palladium on it. I've got about 300 RPG books and Palladium won't grace that shelf. I don't like giving scammers positive recognition.

I remember first playing Robotech RPG when i was sixteen. The chances that i could find others players at this time in France in a middle town (Rouen Normandy) were very small but it happened. I found my first fellow player in the bus, he was reading Robotech RPG Sentinels !
We were able to launch some campaigns for Robotech with 5-6 players.
I've been running a campaign for one year and half (South America during the invid invasion) and a friend was running a Sentinel campaign during that time too.
I don't even remember exactly why we stopped playing. Some of my friends and i simply had to deal with our studies and we moved on.
When i was at university i have played maybe half a dozen times with others RPG like Call of Chtulu, Vampires the mascarade and Gurps. I begun more interested with wargamming and especially mini painting.
Sweet memories.

Mid Nineties was the last time we played robotech RPG; Funny thing is after backing RTT kickstarter, I got out all my old robotech books and started reading on them again..
One of the guys that I played with started talking about campaign ideas once the game was released.. But now just like most of you.. I don't buy anything assouated
with it... Both companies need to close their doors.
But before that happens I am keeping my fingers crossed the Harmony Gold Sues Palladium Games for damaging their licence on the way that the kickstarter
was handled

As for where the money went.. I imagine Kevin saw it as a windfall being able to pay up things; Here are a few things I think that burned up the money that we shouldn't have paid for.

Lets not forget; Harmony Gold is paid a licencing fee.. I would bet they paid for extending their licences till 2020 or when ever it ends for Harmony Gold. (again something
not to be used for the kickstarter)

Any money you make has taxes..I would hope they know this so they should adjust the price for that difference.

Poor planning on shipping.. Just like anything.. the later you buy it and the faster it gets there the more it costs.. Kevin was convinced that wave one would arrive in time
for Gen Con.. but again didn't take time to consider delays with customs. I think they did not shop prices or do any upfront planning.. just saying "just ship it here"....

Someone mentioned from one update Inventory software.. Having worked in manufacturing, that type of software is an important tool.. but use your own money to buy it.

As many release dates they miss tells me they miss payment dates also.. so I am sure a chunk of money went to catch up on bills

Plus Kevin thought with the "profits" from the kickstarter he could go ahead and spend money on getting some backlogged books published..

Also have a strong feeling that Ninja Division had 98% done but single pose models that would use a zombicide type plastic and Kevin wanted more GW style of model
and plastic; not having any idea how to do that.. plus having to pay of previous designers can take a chunk of money.

so those are my few guesses I am sure there is more...

And possibly they overspent on making extra stock thinking it would sell like hot cakes. Then got confused when it didnt and they got stuck with dead stock.

I played the old Robotech RPG in high school for a bit.

Embarrassing, really.

Why, what did you do during those RPG sessions?