The best thing anyone can do is distance himself from Pay Postage Publishing. The very name is poison now.

islestrike wrote:
ooooohYeahh baby!   (in Macho Man Randy Savage voice)

I think you will enjoy them and your small purchase is helping to grow a market for new old school material.

If you or anyone else is interested, you can download a free a copy of Labyrinth Lord at:

http://www.goblinoidgames.com/labyrinthlord.htm

Looks really good with a lot of quality art pieces throughout, which is something OSRIC SRD (System Reference Doc) is lacking.  LL is similar in how it works to OSRIC.  Whereas OSRIC is emulating AD&D, LL seems to be a restatement of OD&D + Moldvay which people on this board should find cool.  Or maybe it is just a restatement of Modvay since those rules where a retelling of OD&D  Hmmm?

Anyways point is it is OD&D/D&D given a bit of a face lift in both rules and appearance.  Like XRP it will cost you a pittance to help support them if you so choose, and you do get value in return.  Ummm ...what did you spend on BC LE again?  Check it out.  

Cheers!

I DL'ed this last week and read through it. It's very solid from my reading, and it does have a nice Moldvay feel to the whole thing, with the font, art and system.

I plan on purchasing a full priced product, shortly, color me impressed.

bclarkie wrote:You know, everytime I think this situation can not get any worse it does.  It seems to me that Rob is almost going out of his way to make things worse then they already are.     I don't think I have ever seen any one get so creative in their attempts to piss off literally everyone.

I can't even comment anymore...!   I feel bad for those having to do the propping up and explaining, though. Honestly, if I lived with 100 miles of Rob I'd drive over one weekend and offer my services to help with the shipping and whatever else needs to be done, I do have quite a lot of experience in that regard.  The simplest method is to use FREE shipping supplies from the USPS, it may cost a couple bucks more a package but generally the items will arrive unscathed. I don't know how much a package of 100 cardboard backing boards cost, but it's a cheap and worthwhile investment. This enterprise, really, really needed a better game plan, here's hoping the "March Announcement" will still take place and things can be resolved (I'm thinking the premature birth of Allan's son has put this off, at least I hope that's what it was, and the deal hasn't fallen through).

I'm going to read between the lines here...Rob's "vacation" is a trip to find somewhere else to live, preferably someplace warmer and without 6 foot snowdrifts in the winter.  I hope it works out for him.  

Mike B.

I had been too afraid to check out this thread before, because it was so extremely long, and I didn't have an interest in the product, but I just read through it and found striking similarities to another "RPG Founding Father's" company's business practices.
Dave Arneson's Zeitgeist Games:
Not paying artists, writers, editors.
Not shipping product, including contributor copies.
Not responding to e-mails or phone calls.
Endless excuses of problems with the printer, death in the family, etc.
Stating that they all shipped and the USPS must have lost them.
Taking money for preorders and never delivering product.
A secondary publisher popping up with the stock to re-sell.
One man company working out of the proverbial garage.
It's not Dave Arneson though. He only lends his name and some saved notes from the 70's to be used to develope the products. They have been created from that by freelance talent (and it would seem by the lack of payment for the work, that it's voluntary). Then the entire business is run (or should I say mis-run) by Dustin Clingman.
Sure there have been exceptions:
Some contributor's have been paid. Some product has surfaced, albeit much, much later.
Sorry for this not being about PPP or it's products, but the thread was an eye opener to me as how this problem is more widespread than I had thought.
I was a contributor to several books for Zeitgeist Games Blackmoor line. That actually led to me being contacted to contribute work for RJK's products for PPP. After reading this thread I am very glad those plans fell through. It most certainly would have soured me from continuing in the freelance market.

kevin mayle wrote:I had been too afraid to check out this thread before, because it was so extremely long, and I didn't have an interest in the product, but I just read through it and found striking similarities to another "RPG Founding Father's" company's business practices.
Dave Arneson's Zeitgeist Games:

Not paying artists, writers, editors.
Not shipping product, including contributor copies.
Not responding to e-mails or phone calls.
Endless excuses of problems with the printer, death in the family, etc.
Stating that they all shipped and the USPS must have lost them.
Taking money for preorders and never delivering product.
A secondary publisher popping up with the stock to re-sell.
One man company working out of the proverbial garage.
It's not Dave Arneson though. He only lends his name and some saved notes from the 70's to be used to develope the products. They have been created from that by freelance talent (and it would seem by the lack of payment for the work, that it's voluntary). Then the entire business is run (or should I say mis-run) by Dustin Clingman.
Sure there have been exceptions:
Some contributor's have been paid. Some product has surfaced, albeit much, much later.
Sorry for this not being about PPP or it's products, but the thread was an eye opener to me as how this problem is more widespread than I had thought.
I was a contributor to several books for Zeitgeist Games Blackmoor line. That actually led to me being contacted to contribute work for RJK's products for PPP. After reading this thread I am very glad those plans fell through. It most certainly would have soured me from continuing in the freelance market.

Howdy Kevin,

I was actually in the same boat with ZG (maybe I'm bad luck    ). I contributed to both the Player's Guide to Blackmoor and Temple of the Frog and never received comp copies of either. I had to pester them for a couple of months about payment on the Player's Guide, but they eventually forked it over. In light of my concurrent troubles with PPP, I didn't even bother chasing ZG down for the long-overdue payment for Temple of the Frog. $80 wasn't worth the hassle after 18 months or so. Then last month, payment-in-full magically showed up in my paypal account. No note attached, just my monies. So, maybe there's hope for you yet! I heard it through the grapevine that they're handing over the Blackmoor entity to another company, so perhaps tat has something to do with it.

Regarding PPP, I dropped Eric Shook a line yesterday and he's promised to at least send out my comp copies of Bottle City and Tower of Blood, and to see what he can do to facilitate monetary compensation. So, there's some positive motion on my part, at least. I know Eric personally, and like grodog, he's a good guy who's in an uncomfortable position.

JB

kevin mayle wrote:It's bad for the creators and the customers.
It's bad for the industry.
Something will have to change.
Possibly a creator should pay creators up front, not using pre-order money, and then customers can buy a PDF or use lulu.com to get printed copies. That way all of these past issues would no longer be a problem. Will it eliminate a secondary market for original print run collectables? Probably, but just for these small companies. The bigger companies will still have actual product on bookstore shelves.

The pre-order copy can work...look at Wolfgang Baur's company, which has had no problems that I'm aware of...it just requries a level of discipline that a lot of "creative" types don't possess.  

Mike B.

Xaxaxe wrote:Interesting tales, Kevin. I think it's especially noteworthy that we could take your story and the ongoing PPP disaster, remove all the names, put them side by side, and be unable to tell which is which.

I've been skeptical for a long time of the entire trend of "XYZ's Dungeon of Blank Blankness," where "XYZ" equals "Old-school RPG guy with at least a few credits." I'm on record here, from way back, as being unsure why I should care that much about PPP's releases (the Tower one and the Cairn one, if I even have the names right), especially since I had about 3,000 dungeon crawls already.

Sadly, the more I research this topic, visit other messageboards, etc., the more I'm convinced that my skepticism is well-founded. Just because a person happens to have a few 1970s gaming credits doesn't mean they have the faintest idea of how to run a small business or, frankly, that they are even a good person to begin with. Good people pay their freelance contractors; it's important to them.

umn.....

what he said.

Hi all,

If anyone has any future issues or continuing concerns with Bottle City, it would be most helpful if he or she could take a look at the following thread:

http://piedpiperpublishing.yuku.com/top ... /master/1/

There is an account on YUKU (bottlecity) to which one can send questions, complaints, and concerns.

Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Yeah got my Limited Edition #22 in the post today ... nice one

Map was pretty creased but module is in perfect nick: all is now safely boarded and bagged so I can keep it clean until I read it and spill my coffee over it by mistake.

Between that and bagging some decent PFM and Magma vinyl life is pretty good.