What happened between green ronin and osseum

[Glyfair]

But.. The guy skipped town, to a degree that a PI can't actually find him. Now, I don't think PIs have magical powers or anything, but, in this day and age, that's pretty hard to do. And it also means that the guy must have cut contact with his family/friends/whatever. I really can't imagine doing that for the amount of money I figure he must have made off with. Of course, it's hard for me to imagine stealing that kind of money in the first place, but -that- I can somewhat fathom.

I'll note that a google search turned up an entry on the Osseum CEO that lists a long history in various positions in the gaming industry. When that much of your background is in the industry that you basically screwed over, it's hard to just get a new job and start a new life.

Still, it can be done for quite a while. Dave Trampier attests to this fact.

 

[Bardsandsages]

Anyone have a mug shot of the guy? If I see him in Hawaii, I could send him to you ... in small yet identifiable pieces.

Actually, a name and last known address would be invaluable. I happen to know some folks very adept at finding information. And at the very least, perhaps just everyone with a Myspace account posting a bulletin with the information would flush him out. Think about how many people use that damn site!

 

[grodog]

While I empathize completey with Green Ronin and the other victims of Osseum, to put some of this into a little bit of a longer-term perspective, Event Horizon Productions (we produced Hong Kong Action Theatre, Heaven & Earth, Swords of the Middle Kingdom, and Age of Empire in the late 1990s) had several domestic and international distributors fold on us from 1996 to 1999. We never recovered any monies owed or shipped stock from them, and lost well over $15,000.

At one time EHP had about 30 distributors world-wide, but as you can see via the Internet Archive, the list of EHP's viable distributors was cut in half by the time we sold the company: http://web.archive.org/web/19981203142256/http://www.rpg.net/ehp/dist.html Of the 15 distributors listed there, I believe that about only half are still in business today.

My point is that Osseum's collapse isn't a new trend in the gaming industry, it's just the latest meltdown among many that occur at the publisher, fullfillment, and distributor tiers of the market, on a semi-regular basis.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

Still, it can be done for quite a while. Dave Trampier attests to this fact.

... as a cab driver.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

When that much of your background is in the industry that you basically screwed over, it's hard to just get a new job and start a new life.

Yeah, you'd probably need a big wad of cash to hold you over. . .

 

[Pramas]

I don't think anyone actually knows why the guy cut/run though.

Was Osseum itself in a major implosion and he bailed or was it doing fine and he decided to just take the money and run?

The short version of the story is that Osseum's business model began to fail and they refused to admit it. As the RPG market began to decline in 2003, they lost several of their clients (who either stopped publishing or started doing their own sales and shipping). At the same time sales for the remaining clients began to erode as the whole d20 bubble started to burst. At a certain point Osseum began using money from its clients' sales to keep itself going and, in classic fashion, blaming it on the distributors. So no, it's not that they took a pile of money and ran off with it to some island. They just used it to keep a failing company afloat six more months and that made things much, much worse for all concerned. It was particularly galling for us because the period for which we never got any money back for sales corresponded with the release of a series of big hardbacks (the Advanced Bestiary and the Advanced Player's Manual), an even bigger licensed hardback (Black Company), and a boxed set with three books and a poster map (Egyptian Adventures: Hamunaptra). If the owner of Osseum had just come clean when things started to go wrong, it would have put us in a difficult situation but not an untenable one. Instead he refused to see the writing on the wall and tried to keep on like it was 2002, lying to his clients for months on end and ultimately screwing them over in spectactular fashion. Oh, and then ditching his apartment mid-month, skipping out of Seattle for parts unknown, and falling off the radar completely, leaving his former clients to pick up the pieces of his mess.

 

[Nebulous]

Instead he refused to see the writing on the wall and tried to keep on like it was 2002, lying to his clients for months on end and ultimately screwing them over in spectactular fashion. Oh, and then ditching his apartment mid-month, skipping out of Seattle for parts unknown, and falling off the radar completely, leaving his former clients to pick up the pieces of his mess.

It will come back around to him, one way or another. If it hasn't already.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Crazy I tell you.

It seems that there would've been a lot more he coudl've done at the start to prevent other people from going down with him but perhaps he was under the impression that he could "turn it around.... no one will ever find out."

Weird how he managed to drop out of sight though. If he didn't siphon huge funding for his moves, he'd have to take another job somewhere and what do you tell them of your job history? It would seem an easy enough think to find out.

 

[Storm Raven]

Weird how he managed to drop out of sight though. If he didn't siphon huge funding for his moves, he'd have to take another job somewhere and what do you tell them of your job history? It would seem an easy enough think to find out.

I'm thinking that background checks for people applying to work in fast food restaurants are not that extensive.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

I'm thinking that background checks for people applying to work in fast food restaurants are not that extensive.

Or mail room at a publishing house.