Palladium Weekly Update Feb 26 2015

[Jaymz]

Ok, new update, new commentary...I believe it is pretty clear I do not care if some do not like what I say so...away we go...

www.palladiumbooks.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=771:palladium-booksr-weekly-update-february-26-2015&catid=52:weekly-updates&Itemid=183

"Holy smoke, the days are flying by much too fast. We have all been working away like crazy on many, many fronts"

MAN we work SO hard

"the engineering/tooling for Robotech® RPG Tactics™ Wave Two items, additional support for RRT on several fronts, "

I hate to say this but all things considered,show don;t tell as your word in regards to anything RRT related does not hold much trust...

"LAST 3 Days of Rifter® Super-Subscription Drive"

If you can, and live in the US, you should take advantage of this.

"UPDATE: Chaos Earth® Rise of Magic™ – Available now"

Good....still not liking how it's being touted as a new release...

"UPDATE: Chaos Earth® Resurrection™ sourcebook – spring release"

Well.....I said before spring technically runs until June so it IS possible this will be a spring release...

"UPDATE: Bizantium and the Northern Islands™ – Getting close"

We heard this last week too.....so you now have about two weeks to get to the printer in order for it to be out "next month"

"UPDATE: Bizantium and the Northern Islands™ – Getting close"

Two weeks....tick tock tick tock

"UPDATE: The Rifter® #70 and beyond . . "

End of April? You don't even have 69 at the printer yet and have been working on it how long and you think 70 will be out in 8 weeks?

HAHAHAHAHA Ahem, sorry that was funny.

"UPDATE: Robotech® RPG Tactics™"

"We need to make EVERYBODY aware of Robotech® RPG Tactics™, so please spread the word, and talk the game up,"

Have you not been listening? Word of mouth for your company is ineffective and falls on deaf ears. How about YOU do some advertising instead of depending on us to do it for you all the time?

"and soon in Europe and Australia"

You still do not get this do you? IT HAS BEEN AVAILABLE THERE FOR MONTHS.

"UPDATE: Shipping to Overseas Kickstarter Backers
RRT Europe!"

Only what, 5 months behind US and Canada?

"Australian and all other Overseas Backers, we must have any address change by February 28!"

So Saturday....not for nothing but you guys have these people's email addresses.....how about emailing them all as a reminder instead of posting the reminder here?

"UPDATE: Podcast interview with Kevin Siembieda on ThisWeekInGeek.net"

I'll be listening...and likely writing a commentary on it.

"UPDATE: ROBOTECH® at AdeptiCon – March 19-22, 2015, Chicago – www.adepticon.org"

Good luck to those running it (y)

"UPDATE: PenguiCon – April 24, 25 & 26, 2015 – Southfield, Michigan"

Good.

"UPDATE: DriveThruRPG.com – FREE Robotech® RPG Tactics™ color guides, detailed, comprehensive RRT building instructions, The Rifter® #60 and more are available now"

I'm not going to beat this dead pulped horse again....

"UPDATE: 2015 Palladium Open House (POH) – May 15-17, 2015 – at the Palladium warehouse in Westland, Michigan"

Passport being processed

"Final words this update . . ."

"If I tried to cover everything cooking on every front, these Updates would be three times larger and I’d have to spend an entire day writing one instead of working on getting product out. "

Last you talked about it you already said these take you hours (plural HOURS) to write as it is....i think you underestimating how long longer ones would take you....likely a whole weekend maybe...

And that is, as they say, it.

I hope you all have enjoyed these to one degree or another. Stay tuned to the Worlds of Palladium proboard gong forward for these weekly update commentaries. Cheers everyone.

MacKenzie​, Tricia​, Chris​

[Sci-Fi]

I'm not a professional writer and I can type out posts larger than that in less time. One wonders about them sometimes. Heck if nothing else I routinly write out forums posts here and on the official forums many times the size of their updates in minimal time.

Acting like the weekly update is some onerous all day task is disingenuous at best.

We've said it before and will say it again. BETTER TIME MANAGEMENT. Yours sucks.

[MacrossMike]

"We have all been working away like crazy on many, many fronts, and things are moving along with them all: the engineering/tooling for Robotech® RPG Tactics™ Wave Two items, additional support for RRT on several fronts, several new book releases, conventions and new business opportunities."

Why do I get the feeling this is another collection of half-truths and exaggerations better suited to manuring a field than to human consumption?



"Right now, we need to get a couple of books wrapped up and sent to the printer, so I’m going to keep this Update short and to the most immediate items of interest."

The list of books that are long overdue to be "Wrapped up and sent to the printer" is probably longer than I am tall (and at 2m, that's a heck of a list!), so you'll need to be more specific.



"LAST 3 Days of Rifter® Super-Subscription Drive – ENDS Midnight on Sunday – March 1, 2015 –"

Kevin... if people haven't subscribed by now (and this subscription drive has been going on for at least a month now), they're not going to.

There is quite literally no incentive to subscribe to the Rifter.  It's an antiquated dumping ground for ideas too rubbish to make it into proper game books, and would be outdated even by 1990s standards.  Take a course or two on design for publication, start printing your shit in color on decent-quality glossy paper, and we'll talk.  Until then, my forty bucks will probably be spent by my girlfriend at Pier 1 or some other godawful hive of ugly furniture and foul odors.



"The guy who wrote this book did a pretty good job."

... what a ringing endorsement.



"Awesome book. Lost secrets, lost treasures, ancient gods, sea serpents, monsters, animals, political intrigue, updated stats and information on key places, the Great Ice Shelf and my new favorite villain, the Iceborn — you will love hating them."

I'd hazard a guess that those of us sharp enough to see through the plagiarism will love/hate them a lot less than we did when they were (and still are) a faction in the Warhammer Fantasy game, with much better writing behind them.



"UPDATE: The Rifter® #69 – will probably ship at the same time as Bizantium in March"

Would it be impolitic of me to remind you again that you promised to stop doing this over-optimistic release timetable?



"UPDATE: Robotech®: Expeditionary Force Marines™ Sourcebook



It’s coming, it’s coming. In fact, we’re working on many ideas for Robotech® products this year. Keep your eyes peeled."

So is the heat death of the universe, Kevin... we're more concerned about which will come first.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, what you're churning out IS NOT Robotech... it's bad Robotech fan fiction attempting to adopt material unrelated to Robotech.  I'll also reiterate that, with Robotech essentially on the ropes and not more than a few years from franchise-death, pouring more energy into Robotech development is going to end badly for you.



"We need to make EVERYBODY aware of Robotech® RPG Tactics™, so please spread the word, and talk the game up, because while we’ve been working on getting Wave One shipped and Wave Two advanced into manufacturing, we have been developing plans for all kinds of future releases."

Word of mouth advertising only works if association with the product doesn't instantly get you branded as an ignorant twatjacket in hobbyist circles, Kevin.

As you should know well, Robotech is a brand that seems to have been on some kind of quest to make sure that it has the direst reputation imaginable.  Harmony Gold's jackass behavior has attached an insurmountable freight of bad karma to the Robotech name, alienated the Macross, Transformers, and BattleTech fandoms, and helped Robotech's fanbase achieve a reputation for idiocy that causes many to brand them trolls regardless of whether there is malice behind their (often innocent) ignorance.

Word of mouth advertising ain't gonna cut it when you're peddling a brand owned by a company whose reputation is one step above "Puppy-kicking used car salesman".



"Everything from game pieces to broaden the scope of battles (like tanks, trucks, the Comanchero Helicopter, other aircraft, etc.) to scenario books and advanced rules and new battle-fronts. As you know, Robotech® RPG Tactics™ (RRT) – which starts with the Macross mecha and setting – is NOW AVAILABLE in stores across the USA and Canada (and soon in Europe and Australia). But we have big plans for all eras of Robotech® and ideas that have NEVER been done! (And you are going to love.)"

Ordinarily there's nothing wrong with a little healthy ambition... but one should always be careful to avoid letting their reach exceed their grasp.  Kevin, you crossed that line ages ago.  This game doesn't have the playerbase to support the kind of material you're talking about.  You barely sold 4,800 starter sets with Robotech's strongest-selling saga.  You could barely move Macross.  Who the hell do you think is going to buy the New Generation or, gods forbid, the Robotech Masters Saga?  Those two are historically such poor sellers that Harmony Gold won't even make a token effort to pretend they care about them anymore.  The Masters Saga in particular has been the most hated portion of Robotech from day one, and is so uniformly loathed that even Toynami categorically refuses to make any merchandise for it.

If you're really that eager to waste money, couldn't you just install a wood-burning stove in your house and fuel it with $5 bills?



"Collectors may want this gorgeous game just to have in their collections, because it is beautiful and contains a wealth of art and images never before offered. Take a look and spread the word."

Like many Macross fans, I did take a look.  As a long-time tabletop gamer, I took a long, critical look.

Then I laughed, because you were actually serious.

There are a lot of adjectives I could use to describe the Robotech RPG Tactics game, but "beautiful" is not one of them... "shoddy", "inferior", "cheap", "inelegant", "third rate", "slipshod", "rough", "ugly", and "amateurish", on the other hand...

I've seen the miniatures.  I've had the opportunity and the time to examine them in detail.  AT BEST, assembled by someone who really knows their way around hobby knives, green stuff, and paint, they're nothing to write home about.  A clunky, rough-looking collection in a scale so small that sheer necessity robs them of most of the surface detail they ought to have.  I've seen worse, but not by much.

[Sci-Fi]

I actually have to disagree with you on one point.

I've not yet re-subscribed to the rifter. (this year)

I -do- plan to, tomorrow.

So I 'haven't' but 'am going to.'.

I do find things in the rifter I can datamine for my games. Not all the stuff. Not 'every' single issue, but usually there's SOMETHING I can use in every issue. Very rarely is an entire issue a steaming pile. Once in a blue moon, sure, but -usually- there's --something-.

[Jaymz]

Ah but the difference with us and Mike (as I to almost always find SOMETHING useful) is we play the other games in Palladium's line where Mike's main interest was Macross II and presently Robotech. Neither of which can have material put into the Rifter.

[MacrossMike]

Feb 28, 2015 4:11:40 GMT Sci-Fi said:

I've not yet re-subscribed to the rifter. (this year)

I -do- plan to, tomorrow.

So I 'haven't' but 'am going to.'.

Okay... but from the sound of it, you were planning to re-up before the subscription drive even started, and it's only some interruption that's made you put it off this long.

They're not really bringing in anyone new to the Rifter at this point...

Feb 28, 2015 4:11:40 GMT Sci-Fi said:

I do find things in the rifter I can datamine for my games. Not all the stuff. Not 'every' single issue, but usually there's SOMETHING I can use in every issue. Very rarely is an entire issue a steaming pile. Once in a blue moon, sure, but -usually- there's --something-.

Lemme ask you this then... how often do you find things in the Rifter that you'd actually base a campaign around?  Very rarely, I'd expect.

Properly executed, the point of a company magazine like the Rifter is to promote the game lines by offering new material, clarification of existing material, trial rules, or other gaming support like painting tips for miniatures.  It's supposed to be something that is both advertisement and stand-alone resource... which the Rifter really can't do.  It never really gives the feeling of "This was new material created for this publication" so much as it is "This material wasn't good enough to merit inclusion into the actual game books, but we'll dump it here".

Feb 28, 2015 13:08:42 GMT Jaymz said:

Ah but the difference with us and Mike (as I to almost always find SOMETHING useful) is we play the other games in Palladium's line where Mike's main interest was Macross II and presently Robotech. Neither of which can have material put into the Rifter.

Well, there is that slight problem, yes... 

As Palladium Books let their Macross II license lapse, there's obviously nothing for that in the Rifter.  The real catch is that, since Harmony Gold knows full well that the Robotech fans (and particularly RPG players) have a VERY pronounced bad habit of trying to adapt material from other series into Robotech's setting, that said group has been particularly obnoxious about trying to adapt Macross sequels, and that Palladium is demonstrably too clueless to keep the art of the two separate, they have every reason to want to prevent Robotech material in the Rifter because one good lawsuit from Big West/Studio Nue and/or Tatsunoko would be enough to end the franchise in one fell swoop.