RIP, Guardians of Order

I don’t think I’ve had a chance to mention that I’m a role-player. I’ve been in the hobby since ’85, and have played almost every RPG you can imagine.

Which is why I’ve very saddened to hear that GoO–a.k.a. Guardians of Order–has gone out of business.

For those unfamiliar: GoO is (was) the publisher of a number of very good RPGs, including:

• Nobilis (I just played this for the first time last Friday, and loved it)
• Amber Diceless
• Big Eyes Small Mouth
• Silver Age Sentinels
• A Game of Thrones RPG (based on the books by George R. R. Martin)
• Tekumel: Empire of the Petal Throne
• Tri-Stat dX system. A universal system in the mold of Hero System or GURPS, GoO’s “house” system was used for the bulk of their RPGs. Tri-Stat was supported by genre books such as Ex Machina (cyberpunk) and Dreaming Cities (urban fantasy).

One of the things I liked about GoO was their open communication policy. The company president, Mark McKinnon, was very good about letting the fans know what was going on with the company, even going so far as to publish a “state of the union” address at the end of each year.

Last year McKinnon announced that GoO was facing serious financial problems due to the weak U.S. dollar (GoO is in Canada, with the bulk of its sales in the USA, so it really hurt them when the U.S. dollar went into freefall in ’04). That resulted in the entire staff being laid off. However, he continued to talk about release schedules and take pre-orders for AGoT products. But the last official communication anyone got from GoO on a public forum was in February of ’06. It’s not like GoO to suddenly go to complete radio silence, so after a while people got worried. When McKinnon disconnected his phone number, some people started to get mad.

Last Friday, George R. R. Martin posted on his web site that he had finally gotten hold of Mark McKinnon, and McKinnon had confirmed to him that yes, GoO was going out of business.

I’m sad, but I’m frustrated and disappointed, too. I’m sad because GoO was a promising company with a strong product line. They had great original material, and publishing rights to a lot of great properties. Their fan base appeared to be growing–heck, I saw their fan base growing just among my own friends. I was introduced to their work by friends who are big fans of the d20 version of Silver Age Sentinels. One friend is a Nobilis fan, another an Amber Diceless fan–yes, both properties that originated at other companies, but they were excited to hear that GoO was taking them on. Still another friend liked their d20 BESM material. And soon they had me as a fan: I own the Tri-Stat dX rules (softbound), Dreaming Cities, SAS d20, BESM 2nd ed Revised, Amber Diceless, and Nobilis.

According to McKinnon’s old news releases, GoO’s business was continuing to grow. And ironically, AGoT was just nominated for several ENnies. I keep thinking that if GoO could have just held out another year, they might still be in business.

At the same time, I’m reading posts over on RPG.net’s fora from people that McKinnon owed money–a LOT of money, to hear some freelancers tell it. And it appears that McKinnon’s “radio silence” extended not just to the fans, but to his business associates as well. People who pre-paid for some RPGs are out maye a couple of hundred dollars, but some freelancers are apparently owed thousands of dollars–and McKinnon never returned calls or e-mails to them. Given GoO’s previous policy of openness, that’s not just a shame, it’s downright criminal.

Add to that the fact that McKinnon continued to take pre-orders from gamers long past the point where he shouldn’t have, and you’ve got a lot of very angry people out there.

It’s frustrating to see a company pour gas on its own fire like that. Had McKinnon told folks what was going on, he might have escaped a lot of ill will, maybe even gotten advice from others on how to survive as a business. Instead, he’s being vilified on the boards by freelancers who might have worked with him to resolve the problems.

And it’s disappointing how all this is playing out. Finding out that GoO is out of business from a third party? Mark, what were you thinking? (yes, it’s technically hearsay, but Mr. Martin licensed A Game of Thrones to GoO, and reportedly is a gamer as well–plus, he’s owed money by McKinnon.) The silence he’s maintained is simply appalling, and has only lead to freelancers and customers assuming the worst. Reportedly, there are freelancers talking to lawyers and customers with outstanding orders talking to the authorities. There’s no excuse for continuing to accept orders on the web site, or refusing to contact the people from whom he has taken pre-orders money.

A lot of fans are expressing sadness at the news, but I can’t help but think how differently this played out when Palladium Games announced they had been the victims of employee embezzlement and theft and asked the fans to buy something from them to keep them from going under: the responses by some gamers on RPG.net were just vicious. What if McKinnon had made a similar plea–would those gamers have been equally cruel?

Come to think of it, McKinnon did make a somewhat similar plea in his 2005 state of the union: he asked people to bypass their FLGS (Favorite Local Gaming Store) and order directly from GoO instead:

http://www.guardiansorder.com/company/press/

Regardless of all of the above, there’s a little good news for fans:

• According to Mr. Martin, McKinnon is trying to find homes for some of GoO’s properties.
• GoO only had an agreement to publish Nobilis and Tekumel material from the original developers–GoO didn’t own the content or the systems. So strickly speaking, those properties are largely unaffected by GoO going under–the owners just need to find other publishers. Not easy, I know, but at least they don’t have to fight for their IP rights.
• Best I can tell, it looks like Amber Diceless rights revert back to Erick Wujick. Unless they go back to the Zelazny estate, which is entirely possible.
• Mongoose Publishing had expressed formal interest in publishing game material using the Tri-Stat dX system. Assuming they’re still interested, this could be potentially great news for Tri-Stat fans.

Here’s the bottom line for GoO fans, in the meantime:

1. It’s over. If you pre-ordered anything from GoO and it was charged to your debit card/the check was cashed/etc., all signs indicate that your money is gone forever. McKinnon has burnt a lot of bridges in the RPG hobby and I doubt very seriously we’ll see or hear from him again. EDITED TO ADD: If you have a credit card, call your credit card company and explain what happened–you may be able to get the charges reversed.
2. If you are a fan of any GoO products, and there’s stuff from them you’ve been meaning to buy, grab it now. Don’t try to order it from GoO, you won’t be able to–Paypal has turned off their shopping cart. If you order from an online vendor, call them and ask them to verify that they have it in stock before you order. I recommend www.TitanGames.com — they just shipped me two copies of Dreaming Cities. www.NobleKnightGames.com also specializes in out-of-print RPGs and can probably help you. And of course, if you see what you want at your FLGS, get it there. Some of lesser releases in GoO’s lines–especially Amber Diceless, Nobilis, and Tri-Stat genre books like Ex Machina (ISBN #1-894938-01-1)–will be hard to find pretty soon, so you don’t want to dawdle.
3. If you’re a Tri-Stat dX fan, go ahead and download the PDF version of the game rules while you can. They’re free, and you probably won’t be able to buy the softbound version of the rules anymore. (Feel free to give it a shot: ask for ISBN # 1-894525-81-7).

Erick Wujick posted in the RPG.net fora that Mark had to return to a “real job” because he was being overwhelmed by debts once the dollar fell (there’s a similar rumor from a poster at the GoO fora here – apparently he’s gone into real estate). I hope that things work out for him. I also hope that the business associates can get reimbursement, and the fans can continue to see their favorite games published and supported.

But Will He Interview Tawana Brawley?

Oh, Lord.  Someone has given Al Sharpton his own TV talk show.  I thought his fifteen minutes were up already.

I caught part of the show on Sunday.  Sharpton and his guests talked about reparations.  Why was I not surprised?

I swear, the fact that Us Folks support people like Sharpton is why we don’t have political power in this country.   No wonder white folks don’t take us seriously.

EDIT: For those of you who don’t know (or remember) Tawana Brawley, and Sharpton’s sordid role in that whole mess, click the link.  Wonder whatever happened to her?  There’s been hardly a peep since she changed her name to Maryam Muhammed and stood in the pulpit of Bethany Baptist Church telling everyone “I’m not a liar.”

Why I’m Glad I’m Not A Journalist, Part II

Remember when I said I was glad I didn’t go into journalism?  Here’s another reason why I’m glad I didn’t pursue it:  the pay sucks.

Via PopMatters.com:  According to the Annual Surveys of Journalism and Mass Communication, enrollment in journalism programs has increased every year since 1993.  In 2004, journalism schools sent over 52,000 graduates into an economy that supported only 66,000 news professionals.

I’d heard anecdotally that the journalism field was way overcrowded, but I’d never seen hard numbers before.  Wow. 

Those figures go a long way towards explaining the piss-poor pay that journalists get nowadays.   To be fair, a lot of students with journalism degrees want to go into PR, or advertising, or law, or other fields, so the “buyer’s market” explanation of poor entry-level reporter’s salaries doesn’t completely account for the current low salaries.  But I’m sure it has an impact.  Too many people competing for a limited number of jobs means very low salaries for the average job in that field.  And remember, the elite jobs in that field–network anchor, senior correspondent for a major newspaper or magazine–are very few and far between; there’s no guarantee that even a skilled journalist will have a shot at one of those positions in his lifetime.

I must say, though–and I admit it’s self-congratulatory for me to do so, but hey, it’s my blog–that when I was in high school I saw this coming.   The low salaries that I heard about when I interned at a central Kentucky TV station seemed not even remotely commensurate with the long hours, the holiday work, the non-existent vacation time…yet here were all these journalism students from the nearby schools, fighting for jobs there.  

I thought it was a trend, but then I backed off my instincts.  It’s just me, I reasoned at the time.  I just don’t have the drive to be a journalist–I’d hate working every weekend for such low pay, or interupting my tiny vacation to cover a story that’s not really important but has to be covered because the competition decided to cover it.  That’s what I told myself.   Those arguments came back to me  as I looked at the forums at Jim Romenesko’s Media News blog–the gossip site for professional journalists.  Turns out today’s journalists are fretting over the very same things I walked away from in high school. 

Check out this post by Charles Bingham, a veteran journalist laid off last year:

I started scanning JournalismJobs.com and similar sites to see what was out there. What I saw was shocking.  Even though my last wage was barely one where people could make ends meet in my town, it still was much higher than what most papers of the same size pay elsewhere in the country…For example, I found a couple of jobs in northern California that wanted someone with a degree and experience, and then only pay $15,000-$20,000 a year. Let me do the math, $15,000 a year works out to  $7.21 an hour.  The state of California has a minimum wage of $6.75, and  the city of San Francisco (within 100 miles of these jobs) has a city  minimum wage of $8.50.

For this we went to college?  The fry guy makes  more money.

An editor  posts:

I happen to know of a copy editor job at a small daily not far from where I live that will pay a maximum of $13 an hour to an experienced candidate. Before withholding and other deductions, that’s $520 for a 40-hour week, $31,200 for a year. Lop off 20 percent for federal income tax withholding, Social Security, Medicare, local taxes, benefits, parking and other deductions, and I’ll be making $24,960. Subtract $500 a month in rent, and I’m down to $18,960. Knock off another $200 a month in car payments, $300 a month for groceries, $200 a month for utilities, and I’m down to $10,560. That’s what I have left for everything else — including kids, which clearly I would be unwise to have….

The same poster points out the effect low salaries have on the quality of reporting:

Only people who have absolutely no other options in life would choose to live that kind of life under those kinds of strictures.  Is that who you want to hire…?  People whose skill levels (or, God forbid, lifestyle choices) have left them in destitute entry-leveldom?  Because those are the only kinds of people who are applying for those jobs.

 

 

I know… A few years ago, I was the editor of a small paper and sorted through an ever-thinning sheaf of depressingly bottom-of-the-barrel resumes for a reporter job for which I could pay no more than $11 an hour (budget constraints, you know). And, with no better options, I got what we paid for: poor-performing, attitude-addled malcontents who didn’t think “writing” was such hard work with so many annoying little rules about how to do it…The kind of people you would want to hire — experienced, self-managing talents — have too many better options to be reduced to seriously considering working nights and weekends for $13 an hour (or much less, as is often the case).  They can go into PR, or into Internet work, or technical writing, or freelancing, or fast-food management. They don’t need crap-paying jobs for buck-squeezing publishers.

 

In the same forum, a reporter at the Orlando Sentinel suggests adopting a subsistence lifestyle, apparently oblivious to the reality that the salaries which require one live that lifestyle are not likely to go up.  Corporate ownership of the news media drives a bean-counting bottom-line mentality that results in poor salaries and we-only-cover-a-story-if-it-helps-profits editorial philosophy.  Combine that with oversupply of eager young journalists, the latest wave of mergers and layoffs,  and the fact that the under-40s ignore traditional media in favor of Internet news sources, and you can see why no one  in the traditional media feels the need to raise base salaries. 

It’s a short-sighted strategy on the part of old media, because the smart reporters have decided that it’s time to get a new gig.   Some abandon journalism entirely (see Bingham’s post above) for more fertile ground.   Others come up with a side business–the smart ones pick a business that allows them to sell their original content while maintaining IP control.  Witness Nina Munk, whose UrbanHound.com website is expanding even as she continues her career as a freelancer for national magazines (see this feature on her at the NY Times web site). 

But by and large the salary picture is pretty grim for journalists, at least in traditional media.  Like  most American factory jobs, the days where a journalist could work for the same newspaper or magazine for forty years until retirement–and get decent pay doing so–are over.   The inability of traditional media to adapt to the rise of new technology is driving down salaries, and driving their talent into other areas–and hastening old media’s demise.

Once again, I’m so glad I didn’t go into journalism. 

“Who Killed the Electric Car?” Some Facts

So there’s a new documentary out called “Who Killed the Electric Car?”, about the EV1 car from General Motors.  The EV1 was an electric car produced in the ’90s that reportedly performed beautifully, and could go as far as 75 miles before having to be recharged.  The cars were leased to consumers in Arizona and California.

Then, citing lack of demand, GM stopped production and recalled the cars.  That in itself might not have been such a big deal, except that (a) they had huge waiting list for the thing, (b) consumer feedback was largely positive, and most oddly (c) GM insisted on repossessing and destroying all the cars, instead of selling them to consumers who wanted them.  Although, now that I think about it, GM may have wanted to insure there would be no liability on their end–those batteries could be very dangerous.

I believe in going green, and I’ve always believed that the one reason we don’t have more electric cars in this country is effort by the oil industry.   Documentaries like this are important because of the questions they raise, but it’s even more important for them to be factual, otherwise it’s goodbye, credibility.   I haven’t seen “Who Killed the Electric Car?” yet, but there’s already been some questions about whether or not it’s telling all the facts.

Case in point: a link (via Waxy) I came across a couple of days ago to a posting by Doug Wickstrom, who worked for Hughes Electronics, the division of GM that did the R&D for the EV1.   Read what he has to say here.

Given the current crisis in the Middle East (really, when has there not been a crisis in the Middle East in recent memory?  Better to say “ongoing crises”),  I hope that there will be a lot of interest in this movie, facts or no facts.  And I hope that interest leads the auto manufacturers to realize that their partnership with Big Oil is only going to lead to long-term failure.

Real Republicans Hate Dubya

As we approach the end (thanks be to Heaven) of George W. Bush’s reign, I am mindful of the works of former US Senator Marlow Cook (R-KY), who said in a Louisville Courier-Journal op-ed piece:

“For me, as a Republican, I feel that when my party gives me a dangerous leader who flouts the truth, takes the country into an undeclared war and then adds a war on terrorism to it without debate by the Congress, we have a duty to rid ourselves of those who are taking our country on a perilous ride in the wrong direction…I am not enamored with John Kerry, but I am frightened to death of George Bush. I fear a secret government. I abhor a government that refuses to supply the Congress with requested information. I am against a government that refuses to tell the country with whom the leaders of our country sat down and determined our energy policy, and to prove how much they want to keep the secret, they took it all the way to the Supreme Court.”

Former US Representative Pete McCloskey (R-CA) is even more blunt:

“Nixon was a prince compared to these guys.”

That quote’s from an article in the Palo Alto Weekly, September 8, 2004.  McCloskey also said of the Bush Administration:  “These people believe God has told them what to do. They’ve hijacked the Republican Party we once knew.”

The Nation has a great article (dated from 2004) containing excerpts of statement made by Republicans–some of them hard-core conservatives, not moderates or liberals–against Bush and in support of Kerry.  These are lifetime GOP-ers, who in 2004 voted outside the party for the first time ever. 

Why bring this up now?  Two reasons:

(1) The race for 2008 has already started behind the scenes.  Any real Republicans serious about making sure we wrest the party back from the Bush/Cheney Neo-Cons needs to start building their cases now.   We’ve got to bring the fence-sitters back to the fold, and force out the people who think Ann Coulter makes a compelling argument for conservatism.

(2) Note the number of quotes from bastions of the GOP.  John Eisenhower, son of Dwight D. (the former President, you heathens).   Pete McCloskey.  Lee Iacocca, who campaigned for Dubya in 2004.  Anne Morton Kimberly, widow of former RNC chair Rogers C.B. Morton.  John Galbraith, a Republican who represented Ohio for twenty years.   These aren’t fringe people with whacked-out government conspiracy theories–they are genuinely alarmed by what they see Bush/Cheney doing to this country in the name of the GOP. 

I’ve decided that I’m going to get politically active this fall.  KY Governor Ernie Fletcher (the first Republican governor here in thirty years) has embarrassed the state and the party with arguably the worst political scandal we’ve ever had–and we’re noted for our political scandals.  (Did I mention he’s an ordained Baptist minister?)  Bush/Cheney are on their way out, so the time will be ripe for change at the national level.