Dancey resigns as GAMA Treasurer

[Cergorach]

Also, you seem to be supporting the commision of criminal acts - go read the Electronic Communication Privacy Act - and that is totally bewildering. I don't really care how much you worship Dancey, a crime is a crime, and should never be condoned. There is no speculation on this point. Dancey admitted to "penetrating" a private email list server and reading confidential emails. The Electronic Communication Privacy Act says that this is a crime, period, end of story. The reasons for doing so are irrelevant.

Some countries don't have the ECP Act, and the countries legal system might have certain clausules that state that in certain instances of 'penatrating' a e-mail list server it isn't considered a crime. Just because it's a crime in your country, doesn't mean it's a crime in mine, even if it was, it doesn't make a difference. The law is there for a reason, that reason isn't always 'justice', just because someone broke a law doesn't make him/her a bad person.

That doesn't mean that i don't think that someone who has broken the law shouldn't be punished, you knew it was illigal when you started, so now you've got to pay the price.

 

[Paradigm]

There was enough BS thrown at the old board because some folks implied wrongdoing on their part. Looking at the expansion and success of GTS and Origins, I can only assume that the old board did a good job and they were unfairly attacked. Lets not repeat that mistake every year.

We only know that one person did something that forced him to resign. Anything more would require us to make assumptions of wrongdoing and bad motives regarding the remainder of the board.

 

[Leohat]

Jeez! I only had vague ideas about Dancey, but that Hasbro deal was disastrous to a good (and hot) friend of mine who got laid off after the acquisition...and so THAT'S where that con came from. Thanks, jackass, for doing your part in making sure that Norwescon doesn't get any bigger than a regional con. :\

As far as know, Dancy either started or took control of "Organized Play" which included the RPGA. The RPGA had been bringing a ton of people to Norwescon but also using up Con resources. About 3 years ago or so, there was a big huff and so Dancy and the RPGA started their own con on the weekend before norwestcon so as to draw off members.
BUT that is not the main reason that Norwestcon remains just a regional con. That has to do with the Norwestcon internal politics. Among other things it would involve moving the con from SeaTac to downtown which for a number of years was impossible due the manager of the downtown hotel cluster hating anything to do with Sci-Fi/Fanasty. This is the reason that Seattle had to drop their WorldCon bid (which went to San Jose)

I don't know if Ryan was a stockholder in WOTC at the time, but that's where the pressure to sell out came from (the stockholders, that is). They had invested money into WOTC when it was a wee startup, and found themselves sitting on stock that wasn't publically traded but on paper worth a whole lot. So, they told Peter Adkison to find some way of letting them turn their stock into cash, which meant either making WOTC publically traded, or selling out to some other corporation.

Yes, Dancy was one the people that got involved with WotC very very early, like around 1993-1994 when Magic was just getting started. I remember them asking for people to invest $1000 in WotC at a Con in Spokane in 1993 (I think).
I seem to remember reading that the sellout to Hasborg was a decision by Atkison to make a bundle of cash off Pokemon. There was also a rumor that Atkison or someone high up in WotC was getting a divorce and the private ownership nature of WotC was be counted as an asset and by selling to Hasborg changed it from being an asset.

As I recall, Ryan was the one brought in once the project was a near-failure after Fluid had spent a whole lot of time and money creating a mapper feature with sound effects and miniatures-like stuff and things like that, only to have Hasbro sell the electronic rights to D&D to Infogrames (now Atari), forcing them to scrap that part of the Mastertools project.

I remember Dancy and crew giving a impressive demo of a nearly complete e-tools at Gen-Con 2001. Six months later at Norwestcon at the Organized Play Booth, I asked him about it and he went on and on about how great it was gonna be and that it was almost done blah blah blah. I have NO idea why the fark it took so damn long to get such a buggy piece of crap released.

 

[Pramas]

Just to clarify a few things for Leohat here:

1) Ryan was not involved in WotC in the early days. He joined WotC in 1997, when his company (Five Rings Publishing) was purchased. This was Ryan's reward for bringing the TSR buyout deal to Wizards of the Coast. He and some associates had tried to buy TSR themselves, but couldn't get enough investors to sign on. This is how WotC entered the picture.

2) The RPGA existed long before Organized Play and is a separate organization. Oranized Play was a company founded by Ryan after he left WotC. It licensed the Living City campaign from Wizards, but relinquished it at the end of 2003. Story on that here:
http://www.gamingreport.com/article.php?sid=11206

3) Peter Adkison was perfectly upfront about his reasons for selling to Hasbro. He was trying to find a way for his stockholders to benefit from WotC's success, especially those who had believed in the company in the early days.

FYI.

 

[Nisarg]

selling to Hasborg changed it from being an asset..

Just in case you didn't know, the "lets change the name of a company to something that sounds vaguely insulting" thing is neither original, clever, or particularly mature at this point.

Nisarg

 

[Umbran]

I will grant that a court has not "proven him guilty" but neither has Ryan claimed he is innocent. Ryan has confessed to his actions, one can assume in the hope that by confessing he would be treated leniently.

The press release at the beginning of this thread says nothing about how the "penetration" was done. If, for example, he'd managed to cajole some sysadmin into slapping his address into the list, or onto a BCC: line where nobody would see it, so that the mails were, in a sense, legitimately sent to him, what would the legal position be? Or maybe it was somehting else that wasn't strictly illegal. Who knows? We don't.

And while it's true that the bulk of the internet has not been graced with the complete details of the case, both the wronged parties and the GAMA membership have received enough additional information that it's becoming clear that the issue is not whether Ryan is guilty at all, but how guilty he is and what exactly will be done about it.

Well, until such time as those details are revealed to us, we are not in a position to judge him. Even then - there is a reason why we have an actual court system, rather than allowing public opinion to decide legal cases. He's sujpposed to be able to face his accusers, remember? Infraction of the law is a matter for the courts, not the masses on message boards and e-mail lists.

Remember the Golden Rule? If you'd been in the middle of something, would you like others to go proclaiming your guilt before any charges had even been filed? Probably not. So stop doing it to Mr. Dancey.

 

[eyebeams]

There was enough BS thrown at the old board because some folks implied wrongdoing on their part. Looking at the expansion and success of GTS and Origins, I can only assume that the old board did a good job and they were unfairly attacked. Lets not repeat that mistake every year.

We only know that one person did something that forced him to resign. Anything more would require us to make assumptions of wrongdoing and bad motives regarding the remainder of the board.

That doubt is why they must hold new elections. That doubt is also perfectly reasonable.

 

[mearls]

This entire thread demonstrates why a lot of people just stay the heck away from GAMA and ignore the entire mess it has become. GAMA politics are decisive, polarized, pointless, and ultimately harmful to the aims that GAMA is supposed to work towards. In the long run, all both sides have done is render GAMA a disaster zone that few people are willing to deal with. It would take a Herculean effort, one that would require a team that has nothing to do with either side of the feud, to repair it.

At this point, I'm not sure anyone who doesn't have an emotional stake in GAMA politics could be bothered to take part in reforming the organization.

A lot of people have an axe to grind with Ryan. Some of them have legitimate issues. A lot of people don't - they're just along for the ride, or for the game industry social cred, or because they hate Ryan for the success of d20. I've found that while many people in the game industry like to build worlds with shades of gray, they live in one that they see as awfully black and white. The truth behind this entire mess, not just this situation (Ryan is obviously in the wrong for accessing the list), rests somewhere in between the two sides' views.

Ryan made a terrible mistake, one that is obviously unethical. I suspect that any lawsuits filed against him will, in the end, consume a lot of time, money, and energy that would be better spent elsewhere. The lawyers I've talked to, some of whom specialize in exactly this kind of stuff (hooray for the contacts an Ivy League education gives you...), wouldn't bother prosecuting this case unless there was a clear case of industrial sabotage, one that involved actual monetary damages. That said, I expect we'll see lawsuits and charges filed - there's too many axes to grind for this to just go away.

The current board made a mistake in not immediately calling for Ryan's resignation. Their failure is an obvious blow to their credibility, especially since they promised to bring transparency and accountability to GAMA.

Personally, I think GAMA should sell GTS and Origins to Peter Adkison (if he'd take them... I doubt he'd want to run Origins. Maybe the Gamefest people would take it.) and disband itself. Mike Stackpole's work to correct whacko, fringe charges against gaming could continue under a charitable organization that Stackpole or some other volunteers oversee, funded by a trust created with the money raised by the sale of GTS and Origins. Let the ENnies cover d20 awards, and recruit the GPA (an industry organization for small press companies) to create and manage a body of non-d20 RPG awards.

The only thing that could truly save GAMA is if it comes under the control of a group that can build bridges between disparate groups and form a consensus. The current administration would have to pull off a dramatic turn around to achieve that. I'm hard pressed to name a group of 5 people who have the willingness, never mind the skills and contacts, to do that.

 

[Dogbrain]

As I recall, Ryan was the one brought in once the project was a near-failure after Fluid had spent a whole lot of time and money creating a mapper feature with sound effects and miniatures-like stuff and things like that, only to have Hasbro sell the electronic rights to D&D to Infogrames (now Atari), forcing them to scrap that part of the Mastertools project.

You have things out of order. Hasbro had already sold all those rights. The project had overstepped its intent and boundaries.

 

[Alzrius]

This entire thread demonstrates why a lot of people just stay the heck away from GAMA and ignore the entire mess it has become.

Amen to that.