Quote from: Omega on December 31, 2021, 07:53:38 AM
Jesus he allways uses this excuse. One of these days hes going to have something real happen and no one will ever believe him because hes cried wolf for so many years.

GMS - "I've finished Far West"
Sound of crickets as no-one listens.....

Quote from: Plotinus on December 31, 2021, 08:17:04 AM
I have a question: do you guys think that "Kickstarter creator" is the most dangerous profession on the planet?

I mean, it has to outstrip active-combat military, firefighters, sanitation workers. And by a lot. Especially "woke Kickstarter creator."

I mean, the sheer number of health problems that afflict these individuals is staggering. I can't tell you the number of Kickstarter creators I've seen who immediately start struggling hard with sickness, physical ailments, serious mental health issues, and even personal tragedies 18-24 months after they acquired tens of thousands of dollars of other people's money. It can't just be a coincidence. Maybe Kickstarter should put out some kind of health advisory?

I've had this suspicion for some time that at one point in kickstarter's history that a number of people suffering from various nervous complaints thought to themselves, well I can't work a normal job. This looks like a way to combine my love of rpgs AND make money. How hard can it be?

Oh, its actually far harder than it looks.....

Induces panic attack and kickstarter death spiral.

Quote from: thedungeondelver on December 31, 2021, 11:34:10 AM

Quote from: Almost_Useless on December 31, 2021, 10:05:58 AM
Oh, he's been publishing.  I know he did one thing for ICONS and some Savage Worlds stuff.  He just hasn't done Far West.

Yes it is odd that he's been able to write a half-million tweets and work on 4 other RPGs but his Fibromyalgia, PTSD, Panic Attacks, toxoplasmosis, rheumatism, grippe, colic, schizophrenia, fear of helicopters, and frequent near-death experiences have prevented him doing what he took $48,000 of people's money to do.

Thats the other thing these frauds do alot.
Work on other stuff instead of the thing they were payed for. Our Far West fraud has been doing that since nearly the get-go. Oh boo-hoo-hoo! Another tragedy! We just cant work on that kickstarter! Sorry! (suckers) But... wait... we can work on these other books and finish them!

Quote from: ponta1010 on December 31, 2021, 04:49:20 PM
I've had this suspicion for some time that at one point in kickstarter's history that a number of people suffering from various nervous complaints thought to themselves, well I can't work a normal job. This looks like a way to combine my love of rpgs AND make money. How hard can it be?

Oh, its actually far harder than it looks.....

Induces panic attack and kickstarter death spiral.

It is alot harder than 90% think.

But in all these fraud cases the claims of tragedy after tragedy year after year shows itself to just be stalling.
No different from the usual "Going to printers soon! Working on it! Going to printers soon! Working on it!" gag people like Hagen have pulled.

What kills alot of honest KS campaigns is that the person never realized game production was so costly. Nearly all had it in their head that the publisher keeps all the money. Then get sticker shock when they either end up having to spend nearly everything on producing the game. Or as is often the case, actually run out of funds.

And on rare occasion its just a totally unforeseen fluke that derails things. A few years ago a game I was playtester for got stalled for quite a while. Why? Because the designer changed printing factories and discovered that this one demanded all the files to be in a different format. Everything had to be retooled. But the game did eventually go out to the backers.

Another similar good example is the guy behind the Katanas & Trenchcoats RPG Kickstarter, Ryan Macklin.  The project is well over 5 years late while he continues promising it is being worked on and about to release.  He got a friend (Tim Rodriguez) to help him try to complete it.  This friend of his is also fairly despicable.  He regularly ridicules and talks down to backers in the Comments and threatens them with not receiving the item they long ago paid for in full if they as too many questions or show their displeasure with how things are progressing.  He is horrible.  I've reported him to Kickstarter numerous times but honestly, Kickstarter doesn't give a #$*@ if you get the items you paid for or not.  Kickstarter does not care at all if you get literally robbed by these people.  Ryan Macklin defrauded 895 backers of $32,766. 

Here are some links to some of the vile things he has been saying to backers since robbing them:

https://ibb.co/album/Rpfgmt (simply click on an image to view it and use the left and right arrows on the left and right of your screen to scroll through the images)

I also backed Rosemont Bay (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/topherg/rosemont-bay-a-gothic-horror-soap-opera-roleplayin) a while ago on Kickstarter and its creator, Topher Gerkey.  He did the same thing as Gareth-Michael Skarka, taking our money and then pretending to get sick and suffer from all kinds of ailments until he disappeared with our money and never provided any product.  I heard later he had his kitchen cabinets replaced....with our Kickstarter cash, no doubt.  He even has a Patreon page where he was working on other RPG stuff while supposedly being too sick to put out the Kickstarter game he promised and collected our money to produce (https://www.patreon.com/topher)  Topher Gerkey defrauded 313 people out of $10,085.

Then theres Katalyka. The designer was nutters to begin with but at least amiable and entertaining. The game made 7k on KS.

Then came the delays, then the designer moved, or was nearly homeless. The games were never sent despite claims some were and several boxes shown near completed. And takes down all the PNP files so no one can just make the game.

Then the designer KS'd a new game and tells the Katalyka backers they will get that instead...
Then she kind of implodes in a rather unpleasant way and so far that is the end of the tale.

Quote from: Omega on January 01, 2022, 08:14:10 AM
Thats the other thing these frauds do alot.
Work on other stuff instead of the thing they were payed for. Our Far West fraud has been doing that since nearly the get-go. Oh boo-hoo-hoo! Another tragedy! We just cant work on that kickstarter! Sorry! (suckers) But... wait... we can work on these other books and finish them!

When I first got into construction in my 20's I worked for a guy that was like this. He would have to take payments on materials from upcoming jobs to be able to finish previous jobs that had already been paid for but pissed away the money. Until it eventually caught up with him and he got his ass sued to the point that someone who had a judgment in his favor showed up with a sheriff one morning and start seizing tools and equipment because he hadn't paid the judgment. Needless to say I was putting in job applications that morning. Some people just can't manage the books and should never have access to the credit cards.

These stories are why outfits like Sine Nomine and CMON do well on KS - you know they will deliver as promised because they don't fuck around and treat their backers like customers, not suckers.

Quote from: Mind Crime on January 01, 2022, 11:51:15 PM
When I first got into construction in my 20's I worked for a guy that was like this. He would have to take payments on materials from upcoming jobs to be able to finish previous jobs that had already been paid for but pissed away the money. Until it eventually caught up with him and he got his ass sued to the point that someone who had a judgment in his favor showed up with a sheriff one morning and start seizing tools and equipment because he hadn't paid the judgment. Needless to say I was putting in job applications that morning. Some people just can't manage the books and should never have access to the credit cards.

Game Salute has made a business out of this on Kickstarter and possibly other platforms. Once people caught on they then started using false front companies to sucker in more designers, then dummy companies to run false fronts and so on ad nausium. They take the money from one KS to fund, maybe, a prior KS and so on along the chain. Oft cutting corners or somehow screwing over backers. Theres a huge list over on BGG tracking them. Golden Bell is another only they are completely blatant about it and predate on failed kickstart projects quite a bit, offering to "help"...

Another year, no Far West.

He should do like the nutters gal from Katalyka and claim the Sun told him not to work on it. 

Holy crap, there was an actual update to the Kickstarter on Far West today.

Greetings, All --

Several updates in this email, and we're busy as a cow's tail in fly time, so I'll get right to it:

1) The manuscript has been handed off to Eric Trautmann (my business partner, formerly of West End Games) who is well underway on the layout, and should be done soon.


2) All additional spot illustrations requested by Eric have been delivered to him.  You can see one of them here, illustrating the "Artist" skill (in this case, a musician):

[Art shown on Kickstarter update]

3) Once complete, we'll be delivering the PDF to you.  While layout is underway, meanwhile, I am conducting reviews of US-based printing companies, checking on prices, scheduling, and quality -- the pandemic-related supply chain issues, as you may have heard, have made overseas printing problematic.  Shipping from printers in China, for example, can take as long as 18 months or more.  So US-based it will be.  I'd rather not go the print-on-demand route, so I'm looking at offset printers -- -the costs will be higher, but, to be honest, this project is already a money-losing operation, so that's not a massive concern (but I would obviously like to keep it reasonable).


4) To that end, before physical delivery, I will be asking you all to email me directly with your present address.  Obviously, since this project has taken so long, there will be many of you who have changed your residence.  I will make an announcement of when I need that info.


5) We have been the victim of some malicious bastards who decided to mess around with our websites -- last week, backer John Fiala notified me that the forum on the FAR WEST website was spitting back fatal errors.  I hadn't touched anything on the site in over a month.  When digging, I discovered that somehow, the entire database for the forum had been removed.


Today, I discovered that the Adamant Entertainment website had been vandalized.  Somehow, somebody had managed to gain access to the admin account.  Luckily, I had a "back door" account set up (in the event that I ever forgot my login info, etc.) -- so I used it to gain access to the site and I deleted the offending account before it could do more damage.  UN-luckily, that account was the genuine admin account, so literally every post and page created by the account was deleted as well.  POOF.  The entire site is now empty. 


I have changed all of our login info, passwords, etc., on every site, and increased our security.  The amount of work that is currently staring me in the face is formidable -- so much so that I'm considering just starting from scratch on the Adamant site, and foregoing a forum entirely on the FAR WEST site (in favor of a dedicated Discord channel).  We'll see.


I know that the ridiculous amount of time this project has taken has made me some enemies out there, but still -- this has really been a gut-punch.


Anyway -- that's it for today.  Back to work.  I hope that you and yours are staying safe and healthy in these most peculiar times.


Gareth-Michael Skarka

Lawrence, Kansas

1 February, 2022

Quote from: Spinachcat on December 31, 2021, 03:53:45 AM
Far West is legendary for hitting 10 years of failure, but the Yarr! RPG is about to hit 5 years of failure to deliver which is impressive because apparently Yarr! was already a finished RPG and the KS was just for a polished, expanded hardcover.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/511830989/yarr-the-pirate-arrpg-hardcover-make-100-edition/posts/3396555

I wonder how many other RPGs on KS have achieved 5 year pins? Any others competing with Far West for the title of King Failure?

The Mountain Witch 2nd edition is a few years old at this point. That one is notorious for the author promising a lot of additional content, then using the money for personal reasons, joining a religious group, and disappearing.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/timfire/the-mountain-witch-samurai-blood-opera-in-mythical

Every once in a while I check in to read the comments.

Quote from: Mistwell on February 01, 2022, 05:29:41 PM
Holy crap, there was an actual update to the Kickstarter on Far West today.

Greetings, All --

Several updates in this email, and we're busy as a cow's tail in fly time, so I'll get right to it:

1) The manuscript has been handed off to Eric Trautmann (my business partner, formerly of West End Games) who is well underway on the layout, and should be done soon.

Holy crap!

Quote from: Mistwell on February 01, 2022, 05:29:41 PM
(Kickstarter update immediately segues into wild stories about being hacked woe-is-me)

Oh. Didn't take long for GMS to return to form.

hah!

Im readiing...

"Yep. He foisted it off on someone else finally."

Im reading...

"Yep. Another crisis."

You can set your watch by him. He's that predictable.

Quote from: Pat on February 01, 2022, 11:06:19 PM
Oh. Didn't take long for GMS to return to form.

And signing off with an insult while touting his erudition.