Hello everyone, Darryl here with this week’s gaming news! Knights of the Dinner Table: Live Action Series may finally have an ending (and the man who started the controversial crowdfunding campaign digs himself deeper), new Magic: The Gathering products, Asmodee buys Lookout and Mayfair, and more!
Earlier this week, Kenzer & Co announced with Zombie Orpheus Entertainment that they would be releasing the Knights of the Dinner Table: Live Action Series to backers of the unfulfilled Kickstarter run by Ken “Whit” Whitman. Emails went out to backers with instructions on how to download the newly edited cut of the three episode series and to purchase an at-cost physical DVD. The episodes were edited from a mix of raw footage, assembly cut footage (which is a “rough draft” edit usually made in a lower resolution to speed up post-production), and heavily-compressed draft edits of the episodes. This came out-of-pocket for both Kenzer & Co and Zombie Orpheus as neither company had access to the over $70,000 raised from the Kickstarter, all of which was in the hands of Ken Whitman and his D20 Productions studio. At this time, the episodes are only available for backers of the Kickstarter, who have been contacted via email to receive at least part of what they were promised. This isn't the first time Zombie Orpheus has spent their own time and money to make up for Whitman's missed fulfillments, as they hosted a last-minute party for backers to meet the actors of the series following a screening at Gen Con in 2015.
And you know…this story would’ve ended there if, less than 24 hours after the announcement, Ken “Whit” Whitman hadn’t decided to make a statement of his own seemingly to attempt to take credit for this partial fulfillment he was not part of. The statement, published on David Flor’s BrainClouds website, is reproduced as presented on the site:
Ben Dobyns, the CEO of Zombie Orpheus Entertainment, provided a rebuttal statement to Flor.
Whitman agreed to answer comments posted on the post and, surprisingly, actually answer questions. In the comments section, Whitman admitted that he still has the raw footage but has decided not to return the footage as required by his license contract. When Jolly Blackburn made a statement in the comments, Whitman again attempted to claim that he offered to provide the raw footage if Blackburn would purchase a $200 4TB hard drive for him to do so two years ago (in late 2015, a 4TB hard drive cost about $150, while a 1TB hard drive well under $100 and that would easily hold over 120 hours of raw high-definition high-bitrate video footage). Ken “Whit” Whitman has also been in the public eye recently as video game reviewer Daniel Ibbertson of Slopes Gameroom released a 25 minute video highlighting the multiple failed and unfulfilled crowdfunding efforts of Whitman. Whitman is also the person behind six other failed crowdfunding campaigns which went unfulfilled to this day and has been banned from launching any crowdfunding projects on every major crowdfunding website.
Disclosure: The author of this column has previously worked for Zombie Orpheus Entertainment as a freelance copy writer.
Asmodee North America has acquired both Lookout Games and the intellectual property assets of Mayfair Games. Mayfair released a statement last Thursday:
We are pleased to announce that we have sold our games to Asmodee North America, who have acquired all the assets of Mayfair Games, Inc. This acquisition includes the product line for both Mayfair Games, Inc and Lookout Games, GmbH.
Moving forward, Mayfair product will continue to be available through previously established distribution channels including Alliance Game Distributors for all sales in the USA to the hobby market and with Esdevium Games now Asmodee UK for the UK market.
Mayfair had previously sold the rights to their biggest seller, Settlers of Catan, to Asmodee. Lookout is best known for the Agricola series and the 2016 Kennerspiel des Jahres winner Isle of Skye. Also included in the deal for Asmodee is the North American distribution rights to Lords of Vegas, Downfall of Pompeii, Steam, and more.
Wizards of the Coast announced new products for Magic: The Gathering yesterday. Battlebond will be a stand-alone set focused on Two-Headed Giant Limited for both sealed and booster draft releasing on June 8. Each pack will contain 15 cards (including one basic land) with mechanics specific to multiplayer games and legal in Eternal formats with an MSRP of $3.99. Coming on June 15 will be Signature Spellbook: Jace which is the first in the Signature Spellbook line focusing on a different Planeswalker. Each pack will include a non-randomized assortment of one premium foil card and eight cards that “fit with the Planeswalker” with an MSRP of $19.99. Two new Commander sets will come out, the first on June 8 as Commander Anthology Volume II with four 100-card decks and accessories for $164.99 and the second Commander 2018 on August 10 with a single 100-card deck and accessories for $39.99.
Independent speculative fiction publisher Angry Robot has a large selection of science fiction and fantasy books available in the Humble SF & Fantasy Book Bundle. Twenty books total are available across three pledge tiers at $1, $8, and $15. The authors include Justin Gustanis, Rod Duncan, Megan O’Keefe, Carrie Patel, Wesley Chu, and many others. This bundle runs until Wednesday, February 28. In addition, there’s also the Geek Gals Book Bundle featuring graphic novels from female creators from independent press. This bundle is also across three pledge levels and includes a total of twenty-four graphic novels and four non-fiction books with series like Red Sonja, Jem and the Holograms, Hopeless Savages (which is a title I love about action, adventure, and punk rock), and a lot more. This bundle runs until Wednesday, February 21.
Strongholds & Followers is a 128-page sourcebook for 5th edition that includes rules for building and maintaining a stronghold, attracting followers, and more downtime rules. And it’s already raised more than a million dollars. What makes this project so big is the creator, Matt Colville, who is also using this campaign to fund a production studio to increase his live streamed game content. The book is available in PDF for a $20 pledge, while a hardcover is available for $30 and a Kickstarter-exclusive for $80 plus more reward levels focused on the live stream on Twitch. This Kickstarter ran out of stretch goals to hit in the first hour, but still has until Sunday, March 11 to break the record for highest funded tabletop roleplaying product on Kickstarter.
Many know Mike Shea by his Twitter handle SlyFlourish which offers some insightful social media analysis of roleplaying games and trending topics. But he’s also known as the Lazy Dungeonmaster due to his blog posts and later book focused on running low-prep games. His new book, Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, is on Kickstarter now with all new essays on how to reduce prep time for game night. The book is available on PDF for a $8 pledge or add on an at-cost print copy for $13. This Kickstarter is fully funded and runs until Friday, March 9.
The Princess Bride Role-Playing Game has a tagline that says “Have fun stormin’ da castle!”. I’m pretty sure many of you already clicked to back this one. Designed by Steffan O’Sullivan and based on his Fudge system, the 250-page book will include rules for running story-focused games in the Princess Bride universe. The game is based on the film version over the book (but does draw from both sources) and even features a mechanic called “Grandpa Wait!” that allows players to take narrative control. This rules-lite system will be great for introducing new players to the hobby with its well-known source material and the easy-to-learn Fudge system under the hood. The PDF is available for a $25 pledge, while the hardcover is available for $50 and a deluxe bundle including custom Fudge dice for $85. This Kickstarter is just shy of the halfway point to its funding goal, but has until Thursday, March 15 to cross that line and start unlocking stretch goals.
That’s all from me for this week! Find more gaming crowdfunding news at the EN World RPG Kickstarter News website, and don’t forget to support our Patreon to bring you even more gaming news content. If you have any news to submit, email us at news@enworldnews.com. You can follow me on Twitter @Abstruse where I’m been posting a lot of animated gifs from Star Trek that make it look like the characters are using naughty words, follow Gamer’s Tavern on YouTube featuring videos on gaming history and Let’s Plays, or you can listen to the archives of the Gamer’s Tavern podcast. Until next time, may all your hits be crits! Note: Links to Amazon, Humble Store, Humble Bundle, and/or DriveThru may contain affiliate links with the proceeds going to the author of this column.
Earlier this week, Kenzer & Co announced with Zombie Orpheus Entertainment that they would be releasing the Knights of the Dinner Table: Live Action Series to backers of the unfulfilled Kickstarter run by Ken “Whit” Whitman. Emails went out to backers with instructions on how to download the newly edited cut of the three episode series and to purchase an at-cost physical DVD. The episodes were edited from a mix of raw footage, assembly cut footage (which is a “rough draft” edit usually made in a lower resolution to speed up post-production), and heavily-compressed draft edits of the episodes. This came out-of-pocket for both Kenzer & Co and Zombie Orpheus as neither company had access to the over $70,000 raised from the Kickstarter, all of which was in the hands of Ken Whitman and his D20 Productions studio. At this time, the episodes are only available for backers of the Kickstarter, who have been contacted via email to receive at least part of what they were promised. This isn't the first time Zombie Orpheus has spent their own time and money to make up for Whitman's missed fulfillments, as they hosted a last-minute party for backers to meet the actors of the series following a screening at Gen Con in 2015.
And you know…this story would’ve ended there if, less than 24 hours after the announcement, Ken “Whit” Whitman hadn’t decided to make a statement of his own seemingly to attempt to take credit for this partial fulfillment he was not part of. The statement, published on David Flor’s BrainClouds website, is reproduced as presented on the site:
About 2 years ago, I turned over the KODTLAS footage to Z.O.E. and today, both ZOE and Jolly Blackburn, announced are releasing all three Episodes of KODTLAS.
Now matter how much I may not enjoys Jolly's company personally, I can not belittle his amazing talent. Jolly is a true genius when it comes to storytelling and everyone at Kenzer was top notch to work with.
It was never my intention to take this long for people to see all three episodes, but due to a turn of events in my life, it did not allow me to financially keep working on the project. I messed up ran out of funds, and had a hard time paying for the project to continue out of my own pocket.
I could talk about the online slander/libel posed many times over the past two years about never turning over the footage, but why open old wounds, they fact is I did turn it over to ZOE.
I hope you enjoy watching them as much as I enjoyed directing them. I will continue to work on this project in my free time, hopefully finishing up the project in the near future.
To Jolly, Kenzer, the actors, the crew. It was an honor working with you.
- Ken Whitman
Now matter how much I may not enjoys Jolly's company personally, I can not belittle his amazing talent. Jolly is a true genius when it comes to storytelling and everyone at Kenzer was top notch to work with.
It was never my intention to take this long for people to see all three episodes, but due to a turn of events in my life, it did not allow me to financially keep working on the project. I messed up ran out of funds, and had a hard time paying for the project to continue out of my own pocket.
I could talk about the online slander/libel posed many times over the past two years about never turning over the footage, but why open old wounds, they fact is I did turn it over to ZOE.
I hope you enjoy watching them as much as I enjoyed directing them. I will continue to work on this project in my free time, hopefully finishing up the project in the near future.
To Jolly, Kenzer, the actors, the crew. It was an honor working with you.
- Ken Whitman
Ben Dobyns, the CEO of Zombie Orpheus Entertainment, provided a rebuttal statement to Flor.
Hi, this is Ben from ZOE with a few facts regarding the KODT situation.
Several years ago Ken mailed me a hard drive that included a) all of the raw footage from Episode 1, b) some raw footage from episode 2, and c) ZERO raw footage from episode 3, along with a Final Cut X file of his work on the edit. The plan was to complete post-production for him and return the completed project for distribution to backers.
Despite repeated requests over several years, Ken did not provide the remaining footage. His reasons (on the record) have changed several times.
Ken's rights to the KODT IP and the live action series footage contractually expired on December 31st of 2017. Following that date, by mutual agreement with Kenzer ZOE set out to release the "rescued" edition to the original Kickstarter backers.
What was released to backers yesterday was cobbled together from the hard drive that Ken originally sent, SD assembly cuts from Jolly's dropbox, and so on. It is a "rescued" edition in every sense of the word.
Unfortunately, I've lost thousands and thousands of dollars to this mess. But because my name and reputation were used by Ken in order to secure the KODT film rights (yes, I have the paper trail to prove this claim), I felt a personal responsibility to get this project released: for Kenzer, Jolly, and all of the KODT fans who pledged to support the original project.
I wish Ken the best, but my efforts to rescue this project are now complete.
Several years ago Ken mailed me a hard drive that included a) all of the raw footage from Episode 1, b) some raw footage from episode 2, and c) ZERO raw footage from episode 3, along with a Final Cut X file of his work on the edit. The plan was to complete post-production for him and return the completed project for distribution to backers.
Despite repeated requests over several years, Ken did not provide the remaining footage. His reasons (on the record) have changed several times.
Ken's rights to the KODT IP and the live action series footage contractually expired on December 31st of 2017. Following that date, by mutual agreement with Kenzer ZOE set out to release the "rescued" edition to the original Kickstarter backers.
What was released to backers yesterday was cobbled together from the hard drive that Ken originally sent, SD assembly cuts from Jolly's dropbox, and so on. It is a "rescued" edition in every sense of the word.
Unfortunately, I've lost thousands and thousands of dollars to this mess. But because my name and reputation were used by Ken in order to secure the KODT film rights (yes, I have the paper trail to prove this claim), I felt a personal responsibility to get this project released: for Kenzer, Jolly, and all of the KODT fans who pledged to support the original project.
I wish Ken the best, but my efforts to rescue this project are now complete.
Whitman agreed to answer comments posted on the post and, surprisingly, actually answer questions. In the comments section, Whitman admitted that he still has the raw footage but has decided not to return the footage as required by his license contract. When Jolly Blackburn made a statement in the comments, Whitman again attempted to claim that he offered to provide the raw footage if Blackburn would purchase a $200 4TB hard drive for him to do so two years ago (in late 2015, a 4TB hard drive cost about $150, while a 1TB hard drive well under $100 and that would easily hold over 120 hours of raw high-definition high-bitrate video footage). Ken “Whit” Whitman has also been in the public eye recently as video game reviewer Daniel Ibbertson of Slopes Gameroom released a 25 minute video highlighting the multiple failed and unfulfilled crowdfunding efforts of Whitman. Whitman is also the person behind six other failed crowdfunding campaigns which went unfulfilled to this day and has been banned from launching any crowdfunding projects on every major crowdfunding website.
Disclosure: The author of this column has previously worked for Zombie Orpheus Entertainment as a freelance copy writer.
Asmodee North America has acquired both Lookout Games and the intellectual property assets of Mayfair Games. Mayfair released a statement last Thursday:
As of today, the management team at Mayfair Games, Inc. announces we will wind down game publishing. After 36 years, this was not an easy decision or one we took lightly, but it was necessary. Once we had come to this conclusion, we knew we had to find a good home for our games which is when we reached out to Asmodee.
We are pleased to announce that we have sold our games to Asmodee North America, who have acquired all the assets of Mayfair Games, Inc. This acquisition includes the product line for both Mayfair Games, Inc and Lookout Games, GmbH.
Moving forward, Mayfair product will continue to be available through previously established distribution channels including Alliance Game Distributors for all sales in the USA to the hobby market and with Esdevium Games now Asmodee UK for the UK market.
Mayfair had previously sold the rights to their biggest seller, Settlers of Catan, to Asmodee. Lookout is best known for the Agricola series and the 2016 Kennerspiel des Jahres winner Isle of Skye. Also included in the deal for Asmodee is the North American distribution rights to Lords of Vegas, Downfall of Pompeii, Steam, and more.
Wizards of the Coast announced new products for Magic: The Gathering yesterday. Battlebond will be a stand-alone set focused on Two-Headed Giant Limited for both sealed and booster draft releasing on June 8. Each pack will contain 15 cards (including one basic land) with mechanics specific to multiplayer games and legal in Eternal formats with an MSRP of $3.99. Coming on June 15 will be Signature Spellbook: Jace which is the first in the Signature Spellbook line focusing on a different Planeswalker. Each pack will include a non-randomized assortment of one premium foil card and eight cards that “fit with the Planeswalker” with an MSRP of $19.99. Two new Commander sets will come out, the first on June 8 as Commander Anthology Volume II with four 100-card decks and accessories for $164.99 and the second Commander 2018 on August 10 with a single 100-card deck and accessories for $39.99.
Independent speculative fiction publisher Angry Robot has a large selection of science fiction and fantasy books available in the Humble SF & Fantasy Book Bundle. Twenty books total are available across three pledge tiers at $1, $8, and $15. The authors include Justin Gustanis, Rod Duncan, Megan O’Keefe, Carrie Patel, Wesley Chu, and many others. This bundle runs until Wednesday, February 28. In addition, there’s also the Geek Gals Book Bundle featuring graphic novels from female creators from independent press. This bundle is also across three pledge levels and includes a total of twenty-four graphic novels and four non-fiction books with series like Red Sonja, Jem and the Holograms, Hopeless Savages (which is a title I love about action, adventure, and punk rock), and a lot more. This bundle runs until Wednesday, February 21.
Strongholds & Followers is a 128-page sourcebook for 5th edition that includes rules for building and maintaining a stronghold, attracting followers, and more downtime rules. And it’s already raised more than a million dollars. What makes this project so big is the creator, Matt Colville, who is also using this campaign to fund a production studio to increase his live streamed game content. The book is available in PDF for a $20 pledge, while a hardcover is available for $30 and a Kickstarter-exclusive for $80 plus more reward levels focused on the live stream on Twitch. This Kickstarter ran out of stretch goals to hit in the first hour, but still has until Sunday, March 11 to break the record for highest funded tabletop roleplaying product on Kickstarter.
Many know Mike Shea by his Twitter handle SlyFlourish which offers some insightful social media analysis of roleplaying games and trending topics. But he’s also known as the Lazy Dungeonmaster due to his blog posts and later book focused on running low-prep games. His new book, Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master, is on Kickstarter now with all new essays on how to reduce prep time for game night. The book is available on PDF for a $8 pledge or add on an at-cost print copy for $13. This Kickstarter is fully funded and runs until Friday, March 9.
The Princess Bride Role-Playing Game has a tagline that says “Have fun stormin’ da castle!”. I’m pretty sure many of you already clicked to back this one. Designed by Steffan O’Sullivan and based on his Fudge system, the 250-page book will include rules for running story-focused games in the Princess Bride universe. The game is based on the film version over the book (but does draw from both sources) and even features a mechanic called “Grandpa Wait!” that allows players to take narrative control. This rules-lite system will be great for introducing new players to the hobby with its well-known source material and the easy-to-learn Fudge system under the hood. The PDF is available for a $25 pledge, while the hardcover is available for $50 and a deluxe bundle including custom Fudge dice for $85. This Kickstarter is just shy of the halfway point to its funding goal, but has until Thursday, March 15 to cross that line and start unlocking stretch goals.
That’s all from me for this week! Find more gaming crowdfunding news at the EN World RPG Kickstarter News website, and don’t forget to support our Patreon to bring you even more gaming news content. If you have any news to submit, email us at news@enworldnews.com. You can follow me on Twitter @Abstruse where I’m been posting a lot of animated gifs from Star Trek that make it look like the characters are using naughty words, follow Gamer’s Tavern on YouTube featuring videos on gaming history and Let’s Plays, or you can listen to the archives of the Gamer’s Tavern podcast. Until next time, may all your hits be crits! Note: Links to Amazon, Humble Store, Humble Bundle, and/or DriveThru may contain affiliate links with the proceeds going to the author of this column.
