Recent content by JLowder

Thank you! The charts are great and Ben did terrific work putting them together, but often they are better understood with more context. The returns for the Dark Sun novels, for example, were triggered by TSR ending their distribution deal with Random House and then WotC declaring the books out...

I don't recall working from a calendar or having to create one in editing because of obvious inconsistencies. If those detailed notes existed, Troy would have been the one to put them together for his own use. I had already edited his novels Waterdeep, Dragonwall, and Parched Sea, and with the...

The head of Books after late 92 was not terribly interested in coordinating with Games, and at least some of the authors he brought in for the fiction were not gamers at all (and were not expected to become at least reasonably conversant in the games, as had been the norm before that with lines...

The plan from the start with Dark Sun was for the RPG and fiction content to be related. Mary Kirchoff, then head of the Book Department, was part of the initial Dark Sun team along with Brom, Tim, and Troy, and she was instrumental to that coordinated vision. Mary sometimes gets left out or...

Yes, I worked in the Book Department from 1988 to 1994 and was at one time series editor for both the Ravenloft and Realms fiction lines. I was also the go-to for RPG–fiction crossover projects, which was one reason why I got recruited to the Dark Sun team early on, immediately after Mary...

That's only true if you take the most cynical approach possible and the products do not stand alone, if you need to buy the fiction to enjoy the games and so on. In the case of Dark Sun and the other cross-media metaplot efforts at TSR, that was simply not the case. The novels stood alone. You...

And yet still far more qualified, through decades of direct experience, to speak to any part of this topic than you and to see where your hot takes are empty and cruel.

No, I don't. I do, however, regularly work with contracts in the tabletop industry, as well as with lawyers and agents. Just negotiated a successful license extension for a publisher with Disney. I wrote many of the agreements (creator contracts, licenses, translation agreements) several...

You have a lot of hot takes that turn out to be just hot takes. You claim bankruptcies are calm and orderly, when anyone who has worked in legal circles knows that's not true. You can even look at the coverage of bankruptcies in the business press to know that's not true, even before you get to...

So you have big feelings about the contracts and bankruptcies, along with the other hot takes you have offered about the way these businesses run. Got it.

You didn't answer the question about your legal background. Are you a practicing lawyer?

Which publishers? Your comment was unclear and seemed to be talking about general bankruptcy filings. Which Diamond contracts from the publishers caught in the current inventory grab have you seen? The specific contracts involved in this specific bankruptcy. And do you have a legal background...

That's not the purpose of this thread. The thread started as a news piece about their crowdfunding campaign. Your purpose has been something else entirely. If you are complaining about speculation, you should avoid the endless hot takes on things like distribution contracts you have not seen...

So you haven't seen the contracts, but still have a hot take on those documents, and have further hot takes on other related matters you are, again, speculating about. Both Disney and Warner-Discovery have stock in the same position as the stock from Green Ronin, Paizo, and the other small...

Have you seen the contracts so that you can say they are "loosely worded"? What did you spot that the lawyers at Disney and Warner-Discovery missed?