Green Ronin Crowdfunding Legal Defense Fund In Fight Against Diamond Distrubutors

Green Ronin Publishing has set up a crowdfunding campaign to help cover legal fees fighting to get back their inventory from Diamond Comic Distributors in what it describes as "a dire financial threat to our company, not just today, but well into the future".

Diamond, which filed for Bankruptcy in January, still holds the stock of Green Ronin and over one hundred other companies in its warehouse, and has asked the court for ownership of that inventory so that it can liquidate it and pay its creditors. The distributor, while being mainly comic-book focused, also serves as distributor for some toy and TTRPG companies, including Green Ronin, Paizo, Goodman Games, and Roll For Combat.

The GoFundMe had raised $17K at the time of writing, with over 200 donations.

Paizo Publishing, also affected, has announced that its upcoming releases will not be available at major bookstores or at Amazon because the company has stopped shipping products to Diamond. This includes 12 August releases and 10 September releases, such as Starfinder Player Core, Starfinder GM Core, Pathfinder Battlecry, and more.

The court has scheduled a hearing on July 21 to hear objections from the affected vendors.

My name is Nicole Lindroos, co-owner of Green Ronin Publishing. Diamond Comic Distributors' recent Chapter 11 bankruptcy has impacted over 100 independent publishers, including Green Ronin, putting us in a very precarious position. Diamond is attempting to use a legal technicality to claim ownership of millions of dollars worth of consigned inventory, which amounts to several hundreds of thousands of dollars for Green Ronin Publishing alone. This is stock that we still own and have not been paid for.

This is a dire financial threat to our company, not just today, but well into the future. We must secure legal representation immediately before the deadline to do so passes.

While there is no "good" time for someone to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of your property to sell for the benefit of their biggest creditors, it is especially challenging given that Gen Con is weeks away. Gen Con is not just a convention for us, it's our most important annual event for connecting with TTRPG enthusiasts, our business partners, and our community, and this year is no exception. We're launching new products and have already committed significant funds to cover everything from booth space, travel (flights, rooms), and most critically, the production of new books and merchandise specifically for the show floor.

Diamond’s bankruptcy and this legal action also mean that Green Ronin has lost its book trade distributor. We are looking for a new partner, but that will take some time. Book trade sales of literary licenses, currently The Fifth Season and The Expanse, are a key part of our strategies for those games. This is especially bad timing for The Fifth Season RPG because we recently received final approvals from N.K. Jemisin and the game is ready to go to print.

We simply don't have the cash on hand to do all of this, pay for an attorney, or participate in any collective legal actions with other publishers in our same position.

The banks are stopping at nothing to wring every last dollar out of Diamond - including taking several hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Green Ronin product to sell in order to pay Diamond’s debts - but they can't do that, and we've got a legal agreement that says as much. Now, we just need to secure a law firm to represent us in the courts.

The funds raised through this campaign will be used directly to cover the escalating legal fees associated with fighting Diamond's claim in bankruptcy court. This includes attorney retainers, court filing fees, and the costs of pursuing every possible avenue to recover our inventory and protect Green Ronin's assets.

 

[Aldarc]

That is part of why I think that from a business POV there are too many RPGs. If there were fewer of them, each would likely have a larger audience and thus make more money (and probably be able to make more supporting material as well).

You assume that the size of the audience would stay the same if these other games left the market. IMHO, that's fallacious. That aside, I can't disagree strong enough with your contention here.

 

[ART!]

That is part of why I think that from a business POV there are too many RPGs. If there were fewer of them, each would likely have a larger audience and thus make more money (and probably be able to make more supporting material as well).

I get what you're saying and (I think) why.

However, the garage-band nature of ttrpgs plus the digital age we live in has created a glorious glut/bounty of games, and of course there's no real way to stop or prevent that. There's something about the reach and niche-ability of our digital world that means any given person or group might never find the game that would really make things hum for them. Which is weird.

The main thing I do at game conventions isn't play games, but rather systematically go up and down the aisles in the exhibitor area and look at all the things people have made, and chat with the creators. There's seems to be no end to it, and I love it - but I don't wind up buying much, mostly for practical reasons of money, time, and wondering who would play it with me.

Anyway, yes: there are too many games, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

 

[Morrus]

That is part of why I think that from a business POV there are too many RPGs. If there were fewer of them, each would likely have a larger audience and thus make more money (and probably be able to make more supporting material as well).

It’s a small but very crowded market, for sure. It’s hard to stand out.

 

[Sacrosanct]

It’s a small but very crowded market, for sure. It’s hard to stand out.

It is. I have a somewhat related conversation going on in discord because we noticed that several folks are using the same image of Stock art on DTRPG. Stock art is great for small publishers with small budgets (and even mid-sized publishers), but boy, it sure does make it hard to stand out.

It's kind of a running joke on that conversation now, because a few years ago when I did B&B, I had toyed with using it for the OGL version. Glad I didn't in hindsight. I have a rule to not ever use stock art for a cover.

 

[Autumnal]

We have fifty years of outdoors, wide-open experiments to show that very few game companies ever grow very large. There are a wide variety of reasons, among them the reality that great business managers willing to work on gaming’s small scale are scarcer than great game designers and artists. In times when the market is smaller, we get neither a lot of consolidation nor a lot of growth on the part of existing companies. We just get fewer companies.

At least, this has been my observation.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Aside from the glut of material out there, the RPG hobby is badly designed from a business perspective.

The basic consumer unit is the gamer group, or table; however, this unit can operate with a single copy of the game system.

While that probably isn't the norm, it does exist, and there are many groups where only the GM is buying game material.

Very few commercially-supported hobbies are set up so that a sizeable percentage can play without cost.

I have six players; two are also GMs for other groups, and four only play in my group. The latter four don't buy any gaming products (not even dice, as we use Roll20). Other than digital tokens and my Roll20 Pro account, I don't usually purchase RPG items, having amassed a sizeable library of systems over the years, and harvesting free stuff off the Net.

So it ends up that only a portion of the user base actually supports the industry. The fact that anyone is making money at all shows just how large the pool of gamers actually is, IMO.

 

[Reynard]

I have no experience in the business of RPGs outside of being a freelance writer on occasion, but it strikes me as unlikely that reducing the number of games would necessarily increase the players of the remaining games. My gut says people play niche games in addition to other games, not instead of.

 

[Mournblade94]

And what's your source for them (or Marvel/Disney, or Warner Bros-Discovery/DC or Dynamite, or Fantagraphics, or Dark Horse, anyone else whose product is caught in this mess) not having filed that statement?

Diamond SAID they didn't. Diamonds lawyers would not go with them on a lie in court. All any of those publishers need to do is show their Form. But the form is very difficult to do. It would be a hired position alone to complete this paperwork. Its not a tax form. Every item on consignment needs one. That's why distributers can use this. Its not always worth it for companies to fill out this form. Also just assume people are presenting their information in good faith. We're not at an academic convention.

 

[Mournblade94]

Just a note here - I work in finance at my day job and the notion that a UCC-1 filing would significantly eat into profit margins is simply untrue. In Maryland (where I believe Diamond is located), it costs $75 maximum to file a UCC. Any business lawyer would charge no more than a billable hour to complete the paperwork. Also, anyone can file a UCC filing, so it's not limited by licensure.

I feel for anyone impacted by Diamond's bankruptcy and hope they get their stock back, but trying to say that filing this kind of paperwork was cost prohibitive is very misleading.

I was under the impression that EACH item on consignment needed this form. So if you are publishing 60 titles a month you would have to fill out a UCC form for each title. IF my impression is correct that is indeed cost prohibitive. If that is not the case then it seems a silly thing to NOT do. From what I hear from companies that do this, keeping track of UCC forms would be a job position all on its own.

 

[Aldarc]

It is. I have a somewhat related conversation going on in discord because we noticed that several folks are using the same image of Stock art on DTRPG. Stock art is great for small publishers with small budgets (and even mid-sized publishers), but boy, it sure does make it hard to stand out.

View attachment 411108
View attachment 411109
View attachment 411110
View attachment 411112

It's kind of a running joke on that conversation now, because a few years ago when I did B&B, I had toyed with using it for the OGL version. Glad I didn't in hindsight. I have a rule to not ever use stock art for a cover.


View attachment 411114

Oh, man! And I was planning on using that image for my upcoming TTRPG: Thief Holding Torch. Looks like I'll have to find something else.