Quote from: GameDaddy;1115120Also Rob, if the comment about "...not getting off the starting line" were in any way directed towards me

No it wasn't directed at you. It was me characterizing the two main kinds of fradulant kickstarters. The first where the creator has no intention of delievering and the second where the creator starts by spending funds on unrelated expenses. Neither were the case with the Dwimmermount KS or the CSIO KS. I apologize for any misunderstanding.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1115120Rob, Thanks for letting us know about Bob Jr.

The issue arose with the grandson Robert Bledsaw III not the son Robert Bledsaw II.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1115120Unlike with James, where I knew some of the background details, I had no idea what actually occurred with the Judges Guild Kickstarter, and am not happy to hear that substantial funds vanished. I suspect something similar happened to Bob Jr., as the funds from the JG Kickstarter probably became available just exactly at the time that extra expenses were incurred in the form of bills.

 The sequence of events was
 
 

• The kickstarter was successful
• Christina and myself started on the maps.
• Nine of the 18 maps were drawn and proofed.
• The PDFs of both version of the nine were made avalible
• A print run of poster of Map 1 CSIO was done and delievered
• The bills came in for the miniature stretch goals
• There wasn't enough money to complete the remaining nine maps or to pay anybody to continue work on the CSIO guidebook.

 
 Then silence
 
 Then two years ago Bob III dad Bob II (the son of Bob Bledsaw of Judges Guild) took over. Around that time I got permission from both to distribute my CSIO map that I drew on my own time. I had intended to offer it to Judges Guild as part of the CSIO book but unlike the Wilderlands maps there was no contract.
 
 Afterwards Robert Bledsaw II (the son) got a true picture of the finances (which was near zero) and began to redirect all Judges Guild revenue to build up enough to get the guidebook written and printed.
 
 The response to my CSIO map and how I distributed it to the KS Backers was favorable enough that I proposed that I finish the 18 maps of the Wilderlands and distribute them the same way. In addition I ask and received permission to redo the original guidebooks as I was making them avaliable to the general public and needed the setting to make the maps appealing.
 
 The project was feasible because back when I did the first nine maps, I drew them as one giant map of the Wilderlands. There about a half-dozen further steps to crop out what needed for the individual maps but other than that the last maps were done. So I could focus on writing the guidebooks which took two years to complete all four.

Currently theere still isn't enough money to finish and print the CSIO guidebook however Robert Bledsaw II (the son) is releasing other Judges Guild products on DriveThruRPG to bring in revenue. It is highly likely there are other projects in the works as well. I am not privy those details or sought to learn about them.
 

Quote from: GameDaddy;1115120This also affected Necromancer Games, (and Bob Sr.) in that they could no longer reprint any of the d20 Judges Guild games and supplements that they had republished between 2004 and 2007.

I realize this is blunt but that is not accurate. What Wizards pulled was the d20 Trademark license and the accompanying mark. To comply involves a cover change. However as trival that may sound, the big issue was that in the mind of the hobby 4e was the new hotness and 3.5e was old news. That is until the hobby acutally got to use and play 4e and Paizo was able to step in with Pathfinder.

In any case the edition change to 4e and Pathfinder meant that products like the Boxed Set and the CSIO book were no longer appealing. Especially for traditional distributors. They still can be sold 'as is' with the cover change to remove the trademark. And still are in PDF form on DriveThruRPG.

As a side note the edition change that fouled up CSIO and the boxed set was the change from 3.0 to 3.5. That resulted in a lot of work that delayed the project.

This is because the d20 System Reference Document still remains to be used. Something I took advantage of in making the new guidebooks so I could hew closely to the original JG material. Everything I used was either original to Judges Guild or found in the d20 SRD. In some cases I had to put in subsistutes. For example I used the Aboleth instead of the Morkoth. Came up with the Suecuva instead of the Su-Monster. Made the Ethereal Cat instead of Displacer Beasts.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1115120at his funeral,

That was a sad day when I learned he passed. I wasn't able to go but I did send the family a custom made condolence card.  

Quote from: GameDaddy;1115120I attended solely to pay homage to his lifetime of contributing to my well-being in the form of the games and supplements he had published over the years that kept me focused on being creative, and out of the trouble that so many of my peers fell victim to being out on the streets. One good thing did come of my attendance, in that I ended up meeting Bill Owens, as we both stayed in the same Hotel in Decatur. I consider him a good friend now, and he lives in South America, I think just outside of Buenos Aires, and owns an Olive Grove there. He still games too, but mostly wargames.

Thanks for sharing that and the other details in your post. For me, Bob Sr's work is one of the foundational inspirations for my own material. I owe him a huge debt. His son (Robert Bledsaw II) is great to work with. I appreciate him letting me work on the guidebooks. It was a huge privlege.

Again if I seem blunt it not personal. When it comes to these things, you say what needs to be said and no more.

Why isn't Judges Guild kicking ass in the 5e era?

Quote from: Simlasa;1114961Meh. Forgive and forget. The hobby is better with him than without him.

No, it's not. Even before he cheated gamers out of thousands of dollars with a "years long megadungeon" that never really existed, he was already a pretentious douchebag.

Quote from: amacris;1115066James and I had worked together for over a year when he published a series of columns called "Days of High Adventure" for my old website, The Escapist. He was always timely and professional and we thought well of each other. I was the one who approached him to do a Dwimmermount Kickstarter. Autarch was riding high on the success of ACKS, megadungeons were hot, Grognardia was the #1 blog in the OSR, and Kickstarter was still a new business model -- the most important difference being that back then, it was quite common to Kickstart a product that *would* be written, rather than to Kickstart a product that had already been written and needed art and layout. When we set up the Kickstarter, I erred in estimating the timeline to completion for the product, as I thought Dwimmermount was more developed than it was. We also get overzealous in our expectation of what could be delivered as bonus goals.

Worse, when I wrote the contract between Autarch and James, I structured it badly in that Autarch had taken the money and had the liability to the backers but transferred all the funds to James. This was simply bad business judgment on my part justified by what I expected to be a big hit coming out of a smooth and reliable process of development and launch.

Working with Tavis Allison as project manager, James completed approximately half of the book and spent approximately half of the funding. At that point, a confluence of events occurred. First, as the book fell behind schedule, critics began to unleash a firestorm on James, blasting the quality of the work, his skill as a designer, and his position in the OSR. Second, James suffered a serious of personal family and medical misfortunes that would have been difficult for anyone to handle. The combination of the two led James to retreat from the project. For a time, he retreated from all communication, which put Autarch in a very awkward situation: We had a liability to deliver books to over 1,000 people but we had neither money, nor a finished product, nor even the right to proceed without James.

Getting back in touch and sorting it out took a while, but ultimately James made it possible for us to finish the book. I completed the last half of the product and we shipped it, about 2 years late. Overall, Autarch lost $20,000 on the product. I do think Dwimmermount ultimately came out as an excellent product and am proud that we finished it. I wish it hadn't come out so late and with such a damaged brand, because I don't think it's ever gotten the love it deserved since.

I think absolutely no one blames you guys for what happened. Though as you point out you did make some errors in judgment in terms of how you set things up with JMal. At the same time, reading between the lines, it seems pretty clear he deceived you as much as he did everyone else about his "years long campaign" and "megadungeon from actual play" that didn't actually exist.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1115101And this is why you should post anonymously, boys and girls!

That's not relevant one way or the other. No one was doxxing him, it's his ONLINE personality that will not be allowed to pretend his misdeeds never happened.  He could start a whole new career under an alt, but of course he doesn't want to do that because what he wants to do is to make a comeback trading on his name and the fools who were his previous fanboys that bought into all his garbage, and thus keep his name recognition.

The exact same thing would be happening if no one knew his real name.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1115891it seems pretty clear he deceived you as much as he did everyone else about his "years long campaign" and "megadungeon from actual play" that didn't actually exist.

I never got the impression from his blog that he had been running Dwimmermount very long, or that it was very developed - he started it while blogging and was running it and developing it at the same time, same as Gygax with Greyhawk, or Arneson with Blackmoor. He seems to have given people the impression he had a fully written megadungeon ready to ship, but he never actually said that AFICT. But he had been running it for a couple years prior to the Kickstarter so there was some material he'd developed for play.

He's back.

Quote from: Jager Fury;1115900He's back.

32:55 is when they talk about Glimmermount.

Quote from: Nerzenjäger;1115018Thing is, if James ever returned to Grognardia, he would quickly regain an audience. In this time probably an even bigger one than at the tail end of 4E, when he stopped blogging.

I certainly know I would read him again. However, I didn't back the KS, so I'm not a disgruntled investor.

I was a big fan of Grognardia and it really introduced me to the OSR, but his dogmatic reverence of Gygax really wore on me in the the blogs latter days.

I got lucky and didn't get burned, but it's foolish, IMO, to simply forgive and forget.

Yeah, his blog was interesting and I wish he would take it up again.  He just needs to stay away from kickstarter.