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There is a petition being started over on Robotech.com to ask Harmony Gold to allow Palladium Books to release the Robotech RPG Tactics rules to the backers. Join in the conversation over there, or discuss it here.

Nightfactory wrote:Petitions rarely have any effect. Just saying.

Yeah, I can't see this having any effect... if anything, it'd just increase the impatience of the backers over the perpetual slip of the release targets for the minis.

Further delays?

Hell, give me an hour with a pdf editor and I'll have every last image either deleted or blanked out, as they desire.

This isn't rocket surgery.

Forar wrote:Further delays?

Hell, give me an hour with a pdf editor and I'll have every last image either deleted or blanked out, as they desire.

This isn't rocket surgery.

No, but it IS asking two legendarily disorganized companies, one of which has an approvals process that its own employees admit is SO obstructive and byzantine that the company's own official website was almost invariably the last site to have any news about its own products for close to a decade.

Even if they decided to listen to the petition - and there's a pretty significant track record to indicate the petition on the Robotech.com forums won't even be noticed by anyone in authority - the ensuing mess of considering the petition and then getting every responsible party to sign off on it would probably set back release of the rulebook to the point where it could very well end up coming out later than it would have if the petition had never been noticed at all. You'd just be pissing into an ocean of **** so vast that it just about defies Euclidean concepts of geometry... one more idle request added to a bureaucratic nightmare that makes the Adeptus Administratum from Warhammer 40,000 look on the ball.


Believe me, you're better off waiting for it to come out with the game.

There is something to be said for recognizing the limitations of the people/companies we're dealing with.

That doesn't mean they get a pass however. Across a long enough time frame, and with enough feedback, it merely exemplifies those shortcomings.

It means that nobody should be surprised when they continue to struggle, fail or flail with things they have done so historically, but an inability to recognize and rectify those failings is another problem on its own, and becomes all the more damning when stretched out over a year in front of thousands of backers and thousands (tens of thousands? Hundreds) of potential customers.

Am I surprised when PB or HG are slow to act or reluctant to change? No. But that doesn't mean I can't look at the business model and just sigh deeply at the lost opportunities they are watching go by, from my perspective at least. It's their business, their project, their IP, they're entitled to deal with it as they see fit. Doesn't mean I can't look at other successful business models and wonder at what might be otherwise.

Nightfactory wrote:If you write poetry, I'd love to read it. And I'd love to play chess with you sometime.

Nope, I can't say I write any poetry... I'd probably be too direct for that. I suppose I might feel a certain kinship with rappers in that I couldn't spend thirty stanzas on flowery euphemisms when all I really want is to get my mack on.

(It probably comes as no surprise to you that Hunter S. Thompson is one of my favorite authors, and my favorite comic is Transmetropolitan.)

Forar wrote:There is something to be said for recognizing the limitations of the people/companies we're dealing with.

Especially in this particular boondoggle... where all parties involved are wrapped up in enough red tape to carpet Brazil and bogged down in enough bureaucratic busywork and managerial intransigence to leave a Vogon questioning its sanity.

Forar wrote:That doesn't mean they get a pass however. Across a long enough time frame, and with enough feedback, it merely exemplifies those shortcomings.

To be fair, I think a basic knowledge of their corporate culture is enough to more than earn them a pass (for all the wrong reasons). Ignoring the petition from the backers is the best thing they could possibly do to ensure the rules get to you at the fastest crawl possible. Mind you, Harmony Gold has at least demonstrated in the past that they're willing to ignore petitions to do self-destructive things... like develop Masters Saga toys.

Forar wrote:It means that nobody should be surprised when they continue to struggle, fail or flail with things they have done so historically, but an inability to recognize and rectify those failings is another problem on its own, and becomes all the more damning when stretched out over a year in front of thousands of backers and thousands (tens of thousands? Hundreds) of potential customers. [...]

Eh... it's more fail than flail where Harmony Gold and its Robotech franchise are concerned. The way they're still desperately trying to push a brand with a thirty year long, utterly unbroken streak of the most abject and total failures imaginable speaks volumes. Boldly plowing ahead with forcing Robotech into a second industry that has hated it for decades before the tabletop game was even announced sounds to me like assisted suicide... the only question being who is assisting whom.

Forar wrote:Doesn't mean I can't look at other successful business models and wonder at what might be otherwise.

Not a day goes by I don't wonder why Harmony Gold hasn't taken Robotech out behind the shed and shot it, Old Yeller-style, as a peace offering to Japan so they can maybe license a show that actually has sales potential.

Macross alone is a setting that might actually JUSTIFY the sharp divide between MDC and SDC... and there's enough material there to keep Palladium's collective noses to the grindstone until half past the crack of doom.



EDIT: Second section has ambiguous language cleared up.

Seto Kaiba wrote:Ignoring your petition...

Excuse me?

MY petition?

Would you care to cite where I've said I started or even signed it? Because I'd like to know who is attributing things in my name.

I didn't even start it. I suggested it several times and my poll got locked. Then someone else started the thread on the Robotech site so I thought it relevant to repost a link here.

Forar wrote:Excuse me?

MY petition?

Sorry for any confusion... the "you" was meant to be a collective "you", meaning the backers in general. I've amended the post accordingly.

That cleared up, what I'm reading repeatedly seems to boil down to "Palladium's reputation for being late and poor communication is notorious". I don't believe that excuses current and future delays and poor communications. Explains, yes. Absolves of responsibility? Not at all.

But we have danced around that enough times that I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree. You're welcome to that stance, but it's not one I'll be adopting.

Forar wrote:That cleared up, what I'm reading repeatedly seems to boil down to "Palladium's reputation for being late and poor communication is notorious". I don't believe that excuses current and future delays and poor communications. Explains, yes. Absolves of responsibility? Not at all.

Er... I'm actually pointin' the finger more at Harmony Gold than Palladium on this one. It's Harmony Gold who's got the legendarily obstructive approvals process that would likely bog any "quick release" of the rules down until the backers wished they'd left well enough alone.

Yeah, I don't buy that either.

HG has a vested interest in this hitting shelves and starting to rake in whatever share they have coming to them, as I can only assume they get (royalties or whatever the equivalent might be).

Holding things up to ensure the quality meets their standards would be one thing. Doing so extrodinarily beyond the time frame that would be necessary to blot out some images just because "who needs money right? lol" would be insanely against their own best interest.

Like, yeah, we can rag on HG for a lot of things, but I'd believe they were deciding to have their shoes for lunch first over a product launching to drive interest in the franchise/IP.

Forar wrote:Yeah, I don't buy that either.

Whether or not you "buy it" is irrelevant... I'm just pointing out the reality of the situation.

Forar wrote:HG has a vested interest in this hitting shelves and starting to rake in whatever share they have coming to them, as I can only assume they get (royalties or whatever the equivalent might be). [...]

Harmony Gold may have a vested interest in this hitting shelves so they can collect royalties, but in reality their bureaucratic intransigence is often at odds with what's good for business. Like I said, their own web site has historically been among the last to post news about their own products. Their marketing director, the guy whose sole job it is to make them look good, made no secret of the fact that it took so long for a news post to make it through the chain of approvals that they petitioned to get a Facebook page so they could try and do an end-run around the whole mess. They make no secret of the fact that the people on the Robotech creative staff have almost no actual authority, and everything they do has go through a lengthy management review and approvals process. They've even admitted, on occasion, that Harmony Gold's own management doesn't think Robotech is a sound investment and won't allocate more than the bare minimum amount of money necessary to keep it from going under. They've even admitted, once or twice, that their management won't even let them update their web site because they don't think that anything Robotech that doesn't result in a direct and immediate return on investment is worth doing.

You see now the kind of organization that the backers are essentially asking a favor of?

If they broke the habit of a lifetime and actually paid attention to what's going on on their own website, and they didn't reject the petition out of hand as unnecessary extra work because you're just a captive audience and they already have your money, the approvals process necessary to give permission to the Robotech creative staff to authorize Palladium's staff to prepare and release a version of the rules could easily drag on for weeks or months. Ultimately, even if they shoot through that atypically quickly, getting Palladium to get its ducks in a row and get something released could take just as long or longer.

This petition is a request made with the intent of speeding things up that could only end in slowing things down.

If the situation didn't suck, it wouldn't be Robotech.

Seto Kaiba wrote:HG has a vested interest in this hitting shelves and starting to rake in whatever share they have coming to them, as I can only assume they get (royalties or whatever the equivalent might be). [...]
Harmony Gold may have a vested interest in this hitting shelves so they can collect royalties, but in reality their bureaucratic intransigence is often at odds with what's good for business. Like I said, their own web site has historically been among the last to post news about their own products. Their marketing director, the guy whose sole job it is to make them look good, made no secret of the fact that it took so long for a news post to make it through the chain of approvals that they petitioned to get a Facebook page so they could try and do an end-run around the whole mess. They make no secret of the fact that the people on the Robotech creative staff have almost no actual authority, and everything they do has go through a lengthy management review and approvals process. They've even admitted, on occasion, that Harmony Gold's own management doesn't think Robotech is a sound investment and won't allocate more than the bare minimum amount of money necessary to keep it from going under. They've even admitted, once or twice, that their management won't even let them update their web site because they don't think that anything Robotech that doesn't result in a direct and immediate return on investment is worth doing.

Well said. Interesting how this is fairly common, known knowledge, yet here, on the Palladium boards, Kevin and crew get blamed for every delay, like they are the only issue.... just saying...

zyanitevp wrote:Well said. Interesting how this is fairly common, known knowledge, yet here, on the Palladium boards, Kevin and crew get blamed for every delay, like they are the only issue.... just saying...

Yeah, I know... I think for the upset backers, they're so used to blaming Kevin for things that are actually Kevin's fault (delays in book releases) that it's a bit of a culture shock to suddenly have a situation where there are other parties screwing things up too, some of whom are even more dysfunctional than Palladium itself. Some of them just don't want to accept it.