A new tabletop rpg based on the comic series Thorgal is in the works...

wildfire2099

link





-M

Hiring Pinkertons to investigate retailers or distributors who break street date on products has been standard industry practice for a long time. Strictly speaking, breaking street date is a violation of the contract between WotC and distributors and retailers and can be grounds for a distributor or retailer to no longer be able to order/sell products form the company. WotC, and other game distributors take it quite seriously (comic shops face the same issue with on sale dates for comics as they receive them a few days before the on sale date and if they sell them early can be shut off by companies, but I don't recall Pinkertons ever being involved in comics, however CCGs are a much more lucrative business than comics.

In this case, a youtuber was doing box opening videos for a set of Magic that was 3 weeks before street date. On a public video platform that listed his name and street address in the contact info for his channel. So Pinkertons were hired to seize the contraband product (since it was illegal to sell until street date, it is contraband), and find out where he acquired the product. What actually happened at the place is he said/she said stuff, but none of the steps that occurred up to them arriving were out of line with industry practice.

The issue was this set was a sequel to a previous set with the same name, just a numeral and subtitle differentiating them, and someone at the distributor sent them out by mistake when filling an order for the other set, because it was just a warehouse guy, not a gamer, who would know the difference. When they arrived at the retailer though, what they actually were was recognized, and he sold them out the back door because they couldn't be sol through the system yet, and the youtuber bought one not really understanding the whole street date issue.

In the statement I saw from WotC, they basically absolved the youtuber form blame and apologized for the way it went down, and chalked up the warehouse level error as an honest mistake, but it's the retailer who will face the consequences of the whole thing, despite they're protestations of ignorance that they were doing something wrong viz-a-viz selling the set when they did. The youtuber still had the cards seized, but he was offered other merch of similar value to compensate him.

Again, what actually happened during the whole search/seizure/investigation by the Pinkertons at the youtubers I cannot speak for, there's a lot of he said/she said to it, and a lot of folks bearing animosity for WotC over other recent controversies both concerning Magic and the OGL for D&D that were more than happy to pile on and exaggerate things or just make them up to pursue their own agendas. Not that I think Wotc was free of blame in the incident, and I agree Pinkertons are often the guys in the story, but the the people piling on WotC should also not be considered the good guys or trusted at all either, as they have shown again and again that truth is a foreign concept to them in the pursuit of their petty agendas, and the only thing you can trust about them is that they will be opportunistic, greedy and ready to pile on and kick anyone they don't like when they are down. I feel bad for the actual youtuber, maybe (if he was as blameless as he claims, but again some aspects of his story a suspect too). Everyone else in the mess has a track record of being frequent bad actors.

But whatever the truth is, yeah WotC could have handled it better, and year it's a bad look at a time when they can ill afford a bad look.

-M

Interesting discussion of the pros & cons of published adventures vs. homebrew, dispelling one of the common myths that published adventures save DMs time.



Mike Shea is "Sly Flourish" the author for the Lazy DM series of books.

-M

I'm setting up a Vampire the Masquerade ... one-shot? short campaign? Long campaign?

We've had a session 0 to create the character (especially as my players are not familiar with the game. One of them, the most experienced RPGer, has played the Bloodlines RPG, so knows the setting and overall concepts, but this is 5th edition, so some details will be different).

I'm not that familiar with the setting myself, I've played numerous CRPGs based on Vampire (Night Road is a very good one, BTW.) and did a short campaign back on CBR in the early 2000s with some other members (ah, good times. I don't know if any of them are even on CBR anymore). So all the lore will be adapted as needed.
First big change: we're playing post-Gehenna (the big apocalyptic event that changed a lot of the structure of vampire society), but we're also setting it in 1995 (on request of one of my players. I just told them that it should be somewhere between the 1980s and 2020s). Also we're setting the game in Köln, Germany. I don't have an overarching plot yet, mostly I will try to get the characters run against each others and the various NPCs I've set up.

So my players will be:
- 1 Tremere (vampire mages) Electro-DJ. The most experienced player who has the most ideas of how to tie his character into the others and the setting and also the one who requested it to be set in the 90s.
- 1 Ventrue (vampire noble/rich guy) Neurologist. The least experienced player (regarding both vampire and within our group. The rest of us have done D&D, Icon, Call of Cthulhu and Paranoia), still has no idea how to fill in some of his characters bonds, allies etc. But we're working on it and I think by the end of session 1, we all will get a good feeling for the kind of player he is.
- 1 Ventrue (see above) surgeon. Not that familiar with the setting, but very enthusiastic.
- 1 Toreador (vampire hedonist/art-lover) Club-Owner. Also not that familiar with the setting, but willing to give it a shot.

The icons he uses, and the methodology both remind me very much of the material about making maps in the Moldvay Basic/Expert sets from the early 89s, he just doesn't use graph/hex paper when using them. He does have a video about making maps with hexes, I just haven't gotten to watching it yet.

-M

I worked for Pinkerton as a security guard in an office building in the 70s. It was not legendary.

I'm actually starting in a new campaign as a player for a change, tomorrow night. We will see how it goes.

-M