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I worked for Palladium as a staff writer for two years. It's weirder than you could ever imagine.
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May 4, 2013 18:51
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Well, one thing I can talk about is the general office atmosphere. I worked from home mostly since the office is about thirty miles away from my house (I'm in NE Detroit), but once a week I'd go in for various things and it was always weird. The office is dead quiet, all the doors are closed, most of the lights are kept off (to save electricity)... it's like a tomb in there. Also, Kevin has no personal boundaries, wants everyone to be BFFs, and will tell you the most intimate details of his personal life at a moment's notice. The man has no filter. It's a pretty strange, inappropriate, and toxic environment.
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May 4, 2013 20:06
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Eh, I'll talk about stuff in general, but I'm not real into airing dirty laundry like Bill Coffin. Somewhere I had an A/T thread about working for Palladium and as a game writer/designer in general, but I can't find it. Uh, what do you want to know?
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May 4, 2013 21:36
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BlackIronHeart posted:How much liquor and tobacco will it cost us to get Wayne in this thread? All of it. Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah, I didn't have any luck finding it either. Alien Rope Burn posted:Any idea what the editing process is like? Palladium Books seems to have a number of editors noted on most books, but that doesn't seem to do much for the rough quality of some material. I'm curious as to what sort of things get redlined. Yeah, the "editing" is a joke. If Kevin writes it, Alex and Julius (both of whom are incredible sperglords and total yes-men) "edit" it, all the while telling Kevin that it's awesome and the best thing they've ever read. If someone else writes it, then Kevin re-writes it, gives it to Alex and Julius who then "edit" the manuscript, all the while telling Kevin that it's awesome and the best thing they've ever read and only he could have fixed the obviously deeply flawed original manuscript. This is, as you can imagine, a total joke. I one time went through a manuscript after Alex and caught a ton of super basic spelling and grammar mistakes, not to mention a couple of structural problems with the manuscript. This is after it'd gone through two sets of eyes and about a month on various desks. I brought this up to Himself and his answer was, Well, you have to remember, he's not a professional editor... He's been an Editor for twenty goddamned years! For money! That's the loving definition of a professional! Anyway, there's also zero editorial guidance. There's no styleguide (just read any of our books and do it that way!), Everything seemed, to me at least, to be a guessing game as to what Kevin wanted, and the sum total of his editorial direction usually amounts to little more than, That's a great idea! Just write it!. Kevin doesn't believe that writers can edit/re-write their own work, nor can they follow directions. He told me that to my face. I didn't get a single re-write or piece of editorial direction until after I got laid off and started working for Fantasy Flight in '09. (sorry if this is a little ranty/rambling, I spent all day in the sun doing yard work)
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May 5, 2013 02:23
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Alien Rope Burn posted:How did you get hired, if you don't mind me asking? Palladium Books seems pretty insular, though The Rifter seems to have given them a gateway for new authors to get a toe in the door. I don't mind at all. The Rifter is exactly how I got hired. Back in '99, my wife and I were living in St. Louis. While I was there, I took classes in English and photography at SLCC Forest Park. I had a creative writing class where the final was simply to write a short story and submit it somewhere for publication. I wrote a super short story based on a Perez illustration from Rifts: Lone Star, sent it in, and forgot about it. To my surprise, it got published in Rifter 8, the Halloween issue that year. Over the following years I submitted things to the Rifter here and there, some that got in, some that ended up in the huge black hole of Wayne's desk. Fast forward to 2007. I'd been working as an advertising photographer here in Detroit, the bottom had fallen completely out of the industry, and I was competing for journeyman 150.00 portrait jobs against dudes who invented lighting and shooting techniques that I learned in my apprenticeship. My personal photo business was on the skids, and I was looking for something else to do. I'd been volunteering for Palladium for a couple years at that point, helping out at conventions and doing poo poo around the office since it was pretty close to me. I was also hanging around the office trying to get some Beyond the Supernatural sourcebooks off the ground, when over lunch one day I was bitching about my lack of shooting work and Kevin was bitching about not having any help with writing (I would eventually discover that this was a theme with him. Constantly aggrieved, professional martyr, etc etc...), and he offered to hire me part time as a writer. I got my own office, and I started work on the new Robotech RPG which was, I'm sure you'll be surprised to learn, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay behind and needed finished yesterday, as it were. So I wrote half of the Shadow Chronicles core rulebook and did some other things, including giving myself a job as "freelance liaison" which I never really got to do fully since Kevin's a crazy micro-manager. In June of 2008 I worked my last studio job and went full time at Palladium, where I became the de-facto "line editor/Creative Director" for the new Robotech RPG. (I gave those titles to myself, mind you. I busted my rear end on Robotech, brought the sexy back, and dealt directly with Harmony Gold). I had my ups and downs, had a little meltdown while working on the Southern Cross sourcebook, and became more and more convinced that I was in a dead end position. Like I said earlier, it was a pretty toxic working environment, there was no real guidance, and, whether or not it was fair or true, I was terrified that one day I'd show up and the whole place would be locked up and out of business. I got laid-off in September of '09, with my first daughter on the way. The story of me getting laid of and then mentioning it on Facebook was a huge drama bomb, as you might imagine, and I threw myself into drinking a lot of bourbon and working on my motorcycles while I collected unemployment and looked for jobs. I started the serious job searching in October, and got picked up by FFG for the first Rogue Trader sourcebook based on the strength of my Robotech work. The rest is history. Lately I've been digging myself out of a hole I made when I totally overcommitted last year, ended up with something like 250,000 words to write in three months, and then missed some deadlines. Combined with a new baby, work, my band, and other poo poo I don't get a lot of sleep these days.
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May 5, 2013 18:50
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Yikes. Hopefully it'll all start coming together sooner or later. Hopefully sooner rather than later. Oh yeah. I'm slowly correcting things now. It was one of those things where I was dead all summer, no work from March until around August, then after Gen-Con all these offers started pouring in and with a toddler and a baby on the way I went into full freakout TAKE ALL THE WORK mode, got all the work, then freaked out again when I saw how much work it was. Due to all that I actually got busted down a pay grade by one of my editors. I totally had it coming though, and I thank heavens that he didn't straight up fire me. I didn't choose the freelance life, the freelance life chose me... As for R:tSC's layout, I couldn't tell you. My job started and stopped at  . Layout was all Kevin on that one. Speaking of that book, the manga size version was the very last book PB did that was laid out by hand without use of computers. The first book PB digitally laid out was the special edition hardback of Shadow Chronicles.Midjack posted:Whatever else you can say, thank you for your work on the Robotech re-release. You are very welcome. I'm still, after all these years, sinfully proud of my work on Robotech. There I was, writing primary continuity for an IP that had a huge impact on my stupid, small-town central Ohio childhood. My first published books with my name on them, my first projects where I carried a lot of the responsibility and guided a lot of the creative decisions (along with HG, who honestly, were pretty good to work with). There were some decisions, specifically on Southern Cross, that I didn't agree with but that's the bidness. Man, I had so many plans for that game line. I have to admit, I'm still a little bitter, and you'll notice that since I got laid off in September of 2009 pretty much fuckall other than the abysmal New Generation sourcebook has come out. PS: I found my old thread - http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3420026&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1 (needs archives) CroatianAlzheimers fucked around with this message at 21:43 on May 5, 2013 |
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May 5, 2013 21:23
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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:Also posted an embarrassingly lot on the company message boards around ten years ago. What was your handle? Mine was Gideon (I think we had this conversation already). Alien Rope Burn posted:That would explain a lot, expecially if he laid some of it out already and then your writing had to get stuffed in and... well. Well. Overall I liked working with HG. They made some changes I couldn't stand (For example, changing the name of the EWAR Valkyrie from the VE-1E Loki (my idea) to the VEFR-1 "Funny Chinese" (original Macross name) because a bunch of loving racist Japanese guys called it that thirty years ago  ) but overall I had a pretty long creative leash and got to really put my stamp on the game and the IP. To the point where I got hate mail from nerds claiming all kinds of poo poo like I raped their childhood for doing poo poo like making Max Sterling's glasses non-perscription. Nerd tears are delicious, and they keep me hale and virile.
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May 5, 2013 22:56
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah, it makes me think of some of the interviews I've read from folks that have worked on recent Transformers projects where they get all sorts of threats and hate mail. Honestly, it's very weird because Robotech is a similar property in that it's so far removed from the original creators that everything being produced is being done by professional fans of the original work. You'd think there'd be less of a bucket o' crabs attitude. Nerds get intensely emotionally invested in not just their favorite IP, but their own personal interpretation of said IP. Anything that goes against what they believe the story is about is anathema, and anyone espousing these heretical ideas isn't just insulting the IP, they're insulting them personally. One of my close friends and colleagues, in fact the guy who hired me at FFG based on my Robotech work, is a huge Robotech fan and he told me that he was really, really disappointed that I changed the story with Sterling's glasses because, I wore glasses as a kid, and Max was the most awesomest pilot in the UN SPACY and he wore glasses, and I felt like I could relate to him. Now I don't feel it anymore. I'm no less guilty of this kind of bullshit, difference is I get paid for my opinion about giant robot stories. I approached Macross as a carrier drama, Top Gun in space with lasers. I also honestly hewed closer to the original Macross source material in many aspects. I wanted to make the Zentraedi compelling, and the reasons behind Project Valkyrie and Project Excalibur make sense in a military/defense way. I tried to inject a bit of hard science and real life military into it as well (I watched the PBS documentary "Carrier" as part of my Macross research, dog-eared two different copies of "The Bluejacket's Manual", and had two US Navy carrier vets and an honest to god rocket surgeon as my tech advisors because I'm a pedantic, detail-oriented mouthbreather). I've been accused of stripping the fun/soul out of the IP by doing that, and don't even get me started on the poo poo I've caught for ditching protoculture and having the Valkyries and Destroids burn Stabilized Liquid Metallic Hydrogen. For Southern Cross, part of my desperately wanting to bring the sexy back to that IP was making it into an army, Band of Brothers kind of drama. I mostly succeeded, but got stymied by some editorial decisions above my pay grade. Alien Rope Burn posted:Shadow Chronicles had a different approach to character creation than most Palladium games, where players got to potentially adjust their opening stat rolls and had a little more of a directed approach. Do you know anything of how that came about? No idea, honestly. That stuff was already like that when I started. I think a lot of it came out of Ultimate Rifts, and some of it was Kevin's idea of "simplifying" things.
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May 6, 2013 02:15
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AlienRopeBurn posted:The Rifter (1998): Not a game per se, but a house magazine that continues to be published semi-regularly to this day, as well as being a "clearing house" for new writers and artists, and really has helped the company in that it's provided a means to vet and hire new freelance talent. One of the very few single-system magazines still being published in 2013. If you don't mind, I'd like to take issue with this. The Rifter is the only thing that Palladium has successfully and regularly produced on time and as promised. It comes out quarterly. I don't believe it's ever missed a publication date, thanks to Wayne Smith's tireless work on it. Honestly, if Wayne disappeared tomorrow Palladium Books would be out of business by Wednesday.
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May 6, 2013 04:35
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I've got three d-bees in that book. That whole thing was one of the rare collaborative efforts between freelancers. Kevin discouraged us from collaborating.
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May 7, 2013 17:25
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Plague of Hats posted:Uh. Was there some reasoning given or anything? That's a fascinatingly bad thing to do to your own products. I'm intensely curious. Because someone might either actually steal or be accused of stealing some else's idea and there would be lawsuits. Seriously. I was part of a non-sanctioned freelancer incubator way back at the beginning of the 2000s called the Think-Tank. It was me, Jason Richards, Todd Yoho, Carl Gleba, and a bunch of other guys you've probably heard of. We did peer review, helped eachother out, had sounding board forums, it was really cool and a lot of the books that came out in the mid-to-late 00s came directly from that project. Kevin shut us down because he didn't want us collaborating for the above reasons.
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May 7, 2013 17:42
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occamsnailfile posted:Though the Robotech book probably has better writing and fewer druids. Please, lord, fewer druids. Much better writing and no Druids. I promise. As for rule conversions, since I got let go I've converted all of my old convention games over to Savage Worlds. So, if you're coming to Gen-Con, you can play some Savage Robotech with me  .
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May 7, 2013 20:45
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Would you mind putting a link to my blog in my listing? Amalgamated Fiction - Detroit
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May 8, 2013 18:09
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By the way, ClockworkJoe suggested I mention this in here. Two of my colleagues and I are running some freelancing/game design seminars at GenCon this year. The other two dudes are John Dunn and Ross Watson, both FFG alumni and all around pros. Here's the details: Professionalism in gaming: SEM1341269 Start Date 2013/08/15 11:00 AM End Date 2013/08/15 12:00 PM Location Crowne Plaza Room Name Pennsylvania Stn A Working with a Licensed Product SEM1341270 Start Date 2013/08/16 09:00 AM End Date 2013/08/16 10:00 AM Location Crowne Plaza Room Name Grand Central Ballroom D How to RPG Freelance! SEM1341271 Start Date 2013/08/16 02:00 PM End Date 2013/08/16 03:00 PM Location Crowne Plaza Room Name Pennsylvania Stn B
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May 9, 2013 04:56
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Oh, poo poo. I totally forgot about the GenCon thread.
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May 10, 2013 15:44
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I'll check down in the hold to see if I have a copy of that. If so, I'll get you a scan.
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May 15, 2013 15:05
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You guys realize that Kevin's grasp of technology, not just modern technology but any technology, is pretty much informed by comics, movies, and the Discovery Channel, right? When I was there the man didn't know how to attach files to emails. Wayne had to do it for him. I had to drag him out of his office one day to the parking lot to where I'd parked my 30 year old motorcycle so I could show him my battery to prove that no, Kevin, motorcycles don't have 6-volt charging systems and haven't since the 60s. He grudgingly admitted that yes, maybe some modern bikes may have 12-volt systems. This to a guy who restores old bikes as a hobby. He's like functionally illiterate when it comes to technology. Alex isn't much better, since I think he believes that we have a lot of technology around from those, "Secret Weapons of WWII" books he likes so much.
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May 16, 2013 20:13
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It's even simpler than "had a picture lying around". It's, "These are the tanks that were in the Sergeant Rock comics I read as a kid. I bet they still use them!" Other things Kevin had never heard of/couldn't understand: Carbines, logistics, motorcycles other than dirtbikes, harleys, or sport bikes, power/weight ratio, and many, many other things I can't remember off the top of my head. Those dudes are stuck in the late 70s, early 80s which, honestly, is more a "SE Michigan" problem and less a "Palladium Books" problem.
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May 16, 2013 20:45
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ToyotaThong posted:Ah, this thread has been a fun read. Its brought back so many fond memories. As I type this, I smile and look at the shelves of Palladium books. Every book published till just a few years ago, even a copy of Rifts: Manhunter.  Seriously, son. Tell your stories and I'll share more about working there, along with my story of planting a neural cutout and a cortex bomb in a fellow player's cyborg character with the GM's blessing.
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May 20, 2013 16:56
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JohnnyCanuck posted:[*]Gideon, another dude That's me. I was Gideon on the forums right up until I went full time as a staff writer there. Then I quit posting because interacting with Palladium fans in a professional capacity is loving exhausting.
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Aug 28, 2013 04:22
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JohnnyCanuck posted:Then hey man! Good to hear from you again! Nice to see you still repping the Great White North.
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Aug 29, 2013 19:54
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The Battletech thing was a completely separate issue, and only tangentially involved Palladium. FASA got in huge trouble for stealing a bunch of Macross designs and calling them their own. Then they did a bunch of stupid poo poo like trying to copyright giant robots and the visual representation of the M-16 in comics and games. Needless to say they failed at all of this.
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Aug 30, 2013 18:51
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Oooooooooooooooooooooooooh, okay. Huh, I'd never heard that. It's very likely RPG.net bullshit.
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Aug 30, 2013 21:30
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JohnnyCanuck posted:Though we still have no idea what caused the Great Falling Out™ between him and Siembieda. Use your imagination.
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Aug 30, 2013 21:34
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Bieeardo posted:Random, unexplained mutation caused by dimensional rift. That's as good an explanation as any, honestly.
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Aug 30, 2013 22:44
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Man, I've been out of the Palladium loop since Kevin laid me off in '09, but I'm glad to see some things never change. I'd heard that Robotech Tactics was a shitshow, but the depths of that poo poo are just stunning. Also, speaking of tremendous shitshows, I know the people involved in Savage Rifts. Hooo boy, that's gonna be a fun one to watch.
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Sep 7, 2015 00:06
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Slimnoid posted:Do tell! Basically it's two successful writers who are used to dealing with people who operate in good faith working with someone constitutionally incapable of working in good faith. I've been staying far away from it, but I don't really expect it to see the light of day, and the guys working on it will surely see the underside of a bus at some point in the project. unseenlibrarian posted:I know folks are already super-mad that Dog Boys aren't in the core for Savage Rifts but instead tucked into a Coalition sourcebook or something. Lawl, that's dumb as hell. Bieeardo posted:Apparently the latest Tactics update is a litany of blame-shifting and guilt-tripping... aimed at all of the backers who are getting tired of Kevin and his antics this time, instead of people who could plausibly have had any effect on the proceedings. Of course it is. Kevin is the champion blamethrower. Nothing is ever his fault. He is the martyr, the constantly aggrieved, and the nicest guy. How can you tell? He'll tell you all about it! Also, dude has no personal and professional boundaries. It got to the point where I'd kick him out of my office because he'd come in and want to tell me about his girl troubles. The man is pushing sixty. You're my boss, I don't want to hear about your "girl troubles", especially when you're the goddamned problem.
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Sep 7, 2015 02:02
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Halloween Jack posted:Reading between the lines, it seems that Kevin drives away his staff writers the same way he drives away freelancers, it just takes longer. That is, he gives them a project, doesn't give feedback during the development process, then chews them out when the book isn't exactly the way he would have done it. It's all true. I was there for two years, and I was officially/unofficially in charge of the Robotech RPG (meaning that it wasn't in an official capacity, Kevin doesn't delegate, but he didn't care about Robotech and I did, so I took it over on my own). There is no editorial feedback, there are no rewrites, there is no guidance. There's no styleguide. Kevin believes that writers can't re-write their own material with editorial guidance. I've been doing this for sixteen goddamned years, and I've worked with a lot of writers. You know what? Writers can rewrite their own work with editorial guidance. That's what being a writer is about. Also, someone mentioned upthread (in a conversation about poser covers) that he draws from the fanbase as opposed to industry professionals for his artists. True story. You know why? Because industry professionals expect to get paid. You know what Kevin says when a freelancer finally demands that he be paid after two years of excuses or the next step is getting the law involved? "That's not fair. He has a real job. He's not writing for a living, he doesn't need that money." Let me get a few more beers in me and I can tell you some real good stories.
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Sep 7, 2015 04:16
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