The Good
The guy who has translated Double Cross (The Japanese RPG) sent out errata for free. Internationally too! Nice chap, very humble and not yet tainted by the industry.

The Bad
Working on a project with a small team. Internet-based interactions through-out. Prepare and deliver content as was agreed. One guy then throws toys out of the pram as it is not up to his standard. A standard that was not adequately communicated, even though the parameters of the content to be delivered were agreed.

Fucktard.

As a customer, i've not really had any bad experiences. As a freelancer, i've had good and bad, which is probably at least half my fault.

A big shout out to Rob Schwalb who was awesome as a project manager for the WFRP v2 stuff. Encouraging, gave advice when i needed it, told me some home truths when i went wrong and an all-round good egg.

Bad experiences i won't go into too much detail, but i'll simply say that 'editing' at RPG companies seems basically to serve the purpose of lowering the freelance money they have to pay out (as most is pay-per-word work).

I've had occasional contact with James Wallis of Hogshead fame over the years and he's always been very down to earth and approachable and willing to speak to you gamer to gamer in my experience.

I'll give Modiphus a thumbs-up too because their Achtung Cthulhu Kickstarter gave out just the right number of updates, went the extra mile to get useful material in backers' hands sooner rather than later, and have done a decent job of keeping to schedule and telling ASAP where the schedule might slip a little.

Chaosium get points for giving away a 7th edition CoC adventure (Dead Light) for free to backers at Christmas as a surprise extra, so between that and the quickstart rules we could start tinkering with 7th edition CoC early on despite the delays to the main books.

Quote from: One Horse Town;749771Bad experiences i won't go into too much detail, but i'll simply say that 'editing' at RPG companies seems basically to serve the purpose of lowering the freelance money they have to pay out (as most is pay-per-word work).

Freelanced for Palladium didnt ya?

Quote from: Omega;749775Freelanced for Palladium didnt ya?

Nope!

Some years back I ordered a copy of the Wilderlands box set from RPGnow through the RPGnet portal, back when they still sold print stock of non-POD stuff.

It was three months of delays and no shipping product before they finally just unceremoniously cancelled my order. I never got my box, and they got to collect interest on my $80 for three months.

Honestly, I suspect that's the reason why even now, though they're effectively the same site with separate frontends, I tend to avoid doing much business with the RPGNow side of OBS. I just can't stand the brand anymore.

My personal experiences:

Marc Miller – goes above and beyond, extremely nice, goes out of his way to make happy customers
Carl Brodt – extremely friendly, chit-chats, helpful, even invited me to game sometime
Moon Design – the guys are friendly, but I always have to pursue them when I purchase a hardcopy from their website
Design Mech – always polite and friendly (unless provoked!), even if they don't agree with your preferences

As a small game company, I hope I'm not hijacking by posting my experiences with freelancers

Freelancers I would highly recommend for their ease to work with, communication, and quality of work:

Eric Lofgren
Brian "glad" Thomas
Bradley McDevitt
Azim Akerberali
Rich Longmore
Colin Throm

I only have one artist I would not recommend, because he never finished up the contract and took the money and ran:

Nathan Rosario

Quote from: Doughdee222;749615Most Southerners shouldn't be allowed to have a computer. The average education level in Alabama must be 4th grade, they shouldn't even have electricity.

In the immortal words of Tool, "Fuck you, buddy."

Quote from: Sacrosanct;749860I only have one artist I would not recommend, because he never finished up the contract and took the money and ran:

Nathan Rosario

This is unfortunately more common with artists than we would like.

Unfortunately it goes the other way too. Publishers have ripped off their artists. Rare. But has happened.

The few times I've had direct contact with an RPG company (WEG, BTRC, SJG, Green Ronin) they've ranged from alright to great.

My really bad experiences have come from video game companies: Bioware, Sony, Microsoft, Activision, and (of course) EA.

Bioware is on my permanent "Fuck you" list. The other's I'll still deal with, as necessary.

Harebrained Schemes (Shadowrun Returns) seem to be a great bunch of guys.

Hm, interactions as a writer, that's different.  There's a bunch of indifferent -- eh, I wrote stuff for them, they paid me -- but a couple stand out.

I had good and fair dealings with Mayfair, and I'm sure it had absolutely nothing to do with the company's then-president having a huge crush on my wife's college roommate.  

There were a couple points of turbulence in my dealings with SJG, but some of that was out of their control -- I had a book's publication (and, hence, my payment) delayed a full year from the Secret Service fallout.  The only real snarling on my side came when I was sent the proofs from the art of one book, from their new staff artist ... and a lot of it was awful -- blown perspectives, characters looking nothing like the descriptions, that sort of thing.  I fired my comments back, and not one change was made.  (Why send the author artist proofs if they're all locked in no matter what?)

A relatively minor creech, in the grand scheme of things.

Quote from: Omega;749734Yeah.

Lets see...

Bad ones.

The Inquest magazine guys: Just a bit too condescending/insulting.

InPhobia magazine: Harlan Ellison bullying people.

Green Ronin: Jerks but otherwise ok. Apparently not a isolated incident though and others had considerably worse encounters.

Sanguine: One problem after another. And definitly not an isolated incident.

Steve Jackson Games: From about 2000 on they've become progressive dicks. Also they didn't treat their artists too well according to at least two former illustrators for SJG. Otherwise nice guys as long as you keep them at arms length.

White wolf/Arthaus/S&S: For fucks sake some of them need to be punched.

The Inquest. That's a long time ago. I always read that one in my MtG time years ago. Mostly for the price list of course. Never bothered with the rest of the games at the time.

I only have experience with White Wolf considering tabletop RPG's and they are ok as long as you think their games are good. As soon as you start criticizing their games, they close down your forum topic. And the pretention of course. "It not a game about demons. It's about the stench of sulphur. It's about the breath of darkness down your neck. It about the fist of evil around your heart. It's about ... " "Yeah, whatever dude. Quit the metafor stacking, please." "That's it, we are closing down this topic. If you can't behave."

And the political correctness. Immediately sending you an official warning if you say something that might offend someone instead of just asking. Bah! :hand:

Quote from: Omega;749734InPhobia magazine: Harlan Ellison bullying people.

Gasp.

Good interactions:

From '99 until his passing, communicating and working with Gary Gygax was always enjoyable.  Yes, I know some folks had bad experiences with him over the years and I'm not denigrating or denying those, by any means.  But overall I had a positive experience.

Dream Pod 9 - positive.  They were active in rec.games.mecha and made me from an ugly cynic about Heavy Gear into a true believer.  

Mike Pondsmith - I doubt if he'd ever remember it but I actually wrote a physical letter to R.Talsorian games in the 1990s ('90 or '91) asking about heavy weapons versus heavily armored people (this was prior to Maximum Metal introducing Appleseed like power armors) and got a physical letter back...that got accidentally thrown away by my pop :/  But it was a nice engaging letter - the opening statement as I recall was "Well generally when you hit a person with a 20mm vulcan gun burst they go 'splat'." but then went on to break down the actual FNFF damage v. human and how it would work...of course, I don't remember it because I only got to look at the letter contents on the way to work when my dad drove me, and he cleaned out his truck later in the week and out it went :/

I got a free 4e Hackmaster Game Masters Guide from K&C, but then they were giving them to everyone...

Bad Experiences?

Heh...that'd be telling.