Rifts® Board Game Kickscammer

A true Fan Friend Fag would never complain...

That is what sockpuppets are for my good user.

Carmen Bellaire, the CEO/Owner/Cocksleeve of Rogue Heroes gets a licence to make a Rifts boardgame. He wrote the rules for the Robotech Tactics game and is a regular freelancer for Palladium. About 3 months ago he goes to the purest salt deposit this side of the Veeky Forums questfags, the Robotech Tactics kickstarter comments section, and enrages the local salt elementals by threatening to make sure Wave 2 of the Robotech doesn't happen if they shit up his kickscammer. After about 2 hours of mild trolling by Veeky Forums standards he tries to become an hero. Kevin Siembieda then proceeds to blame the Robotech Backers for Carmen's failure to an hero. This just is adds 4d6x10 MDC worth of plasma to the fire. Monday the Rifts Kickscammer launchers to massive trolling. About 80 of the first 500 backers are $1 pledges there to troll Rogue Heroes about Robotech. A few bans have been handed out and so the parade of sockpuppets has begun. Now to get your questions answered you have to have pledged more than $1.

Shit is pretty funny.

>NMI
What did he meme by this?

Jeff "NMI" Ruiz is one of the mods over at the Hugbox of the Megaverse. He is a connoisseur of Kevins cock. He slobs that nob no matter whose ass its been in.

Well that's confusing. Why threaten people not to screw his kickstarter? Why would he think people would do that?

After the bomb/tmnt for sure man.
Heros has century station if you wanna go space

Is it this dude who went into the earlier Palladium kickstarter with the "support me and I'll grease the wheels so this KS finally delivers" argument, got shat upon, and allegedly tried to off himself? Wasn't the ground salted at this point?

Like I said the Robotech Guys are pretty salty about getting ripped off. There was some rumbling about trolling the Rifts one but Carmen sent it into full Trollerdrive with his comments.

A little detective work by the RRT guys makes Rogue Heroes look really questionable. Carmen lives in Canada but for some reason Rogue Heroes lists its address about 10 minutes away from Palladium's headquarters. All the extra rewards for the Rifts Kickstarter are Palladium products. Lastly significant amount of Palladium personnel including a couple of Palladium full timers are on staff for the game.

Thus the whole Rogue Heroes is a shell corporation for Palladium.

He's the CEO of Rogue Heroes. He hasn't dared show his face in the kickstarter comments.

Because the RRT kickstarter turned into a complete farce with the game DoA, further support for the game sidelined since Palladium has no idea how to manage a competitive game, and the other half of the undelivered products are still just vaporware. Plus there were all kinds of other incidents, like product getting sold at convention before it was delivered to backers. The hundreds of people screwed over by RRT are still mad as fuck with impotent rage since they can't actually force Palladium to deliver their models.

It's a well known fact that Carmen was a big part of RRT despite not actually being an employee of Palladium's so people would probably come after him regardless. Still he originally worded it as "help me fund my game and I'll revive your dead kickstarter, oppose me and I'll bury it." which REALLY pissed people off.

>I cannot think of anyone better or more qualified than Carmen to bring Rifts® to life as a miniatures board game.
Hmm, I dunno, I'd rather choose someone who has >1% of surviving a casual reading of the backer comments.
Tempted to throw $1 and ask "Didn't we kill you last time?"

Thinking about it now, the Savage Worlds folks must nervous about all these rumblings.

Thanks familiae. How does TMNT ATB compare to the standalone ATB?

Ah, well shit maybe I'll kick in a buck...

What an idiot.

>anyone supporting another Palladium kickstarter ever again
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Holy shit you have to be terminally stupid to give them cash ever again.

>terminally stupid

Sounds about right for Palladium's fan-friends.

But it's totally not Palladium this time! We swear! Just don't pay attention to the Palladium staffers hanging around our office that just so happens to be within walking distance of Palladium.

...

Kevpill me on this Fan Friend thing. I've barely scratched the surface of the games and know nothing of this meta stuff.

Palladium is kept alive solely by a die-hard fanbase.

What is with Veeky Forums and shitty conmen such as CGL?

The Palladium Fanbase is pretty much insane. At one point the company was about to go under due to a guy stealing a bunch of shit and Kevin begged his fanbase to donate to him to keep the doors open. The fan-friends came through and literally gave him money for nothing, but since they were neckbeards they had no chicks for free available. Kevin calls that episode, "The Crisis of Treachery." The Fan-Friends will rabidly attack anyone who dares speak out against their lord and master with a vehemence that makes the most hardened 3aboo or 4rrie look rational and sane. The only thing that keeps them from conquering the gaming world is their numbers, most aren't dumb enough to fall for Kevin's stupid shit for long.

CGL aren't con-men. They don't promise things and then not deliver. They're just old-fashioned outright ludicrously-incompetent theives, stealing other universe's artwork (like Macross's) or stealing money from the company for personal reasons. But they don't outright lie and take their customer's money in exchange for an outright fictional product (or no product at all) like Kevin does.

I'm not saying which is better or worse. Only that, strictly speaking, CGL aren't con-men.

And actually FASA did not steal any artwork. The company they bought it from didn't have the rights to it. They purchased in good faith and got fucked.

There was another Palladium Kickstarter before this one? What was it, and what happened?

It was Macross's artwork first, and CGL took it and used it for their mecha illegally. Don't try to defend criminals.

Robotech RPG Tactics. They delivered about half of the product two years late, threw their partners under the bus, and then had the gall to say, "kickstarter backers got it for about 50% of MSRP so by our count you've got your money's worth already." Since that didn't placate the pissed-off backers, they've been "reducing the parts count" for more than two years now hoping that if they just keep saying "we're still working on it" they can get away with not actually delivering the rest of it.

Robotech Tactics RPG. Was promised to not have any Uncle Kevin involvement and run by Ninja Division. Also was in the exact right scale for Battletech,hint hint wink wink.
On completion, Kevin stiffed Ninja Division part of the payment because their contract did not include them doing all the work,just some of it. Marketing nit being included, I think it was. So everything past Wave 1 was not made, which is about 66% of the stuff. What was made was DOA and pretty badly made, like a bad 90's Gundam kit. It's been years and there is no news. And there likely never will be.
On a related note, if I ever meet Kevin S, I will either hit him with a car or punch him in the face. Maybe both.

Robotech RPG Tactics. It was a minis game for Macross. They hired Ninja Division/Soda Pop Miniatures to run the kickstarter so it looked like Palladium was just a middleman between Ninja Division and Harmony Gold. Then the campaign was over and ND was gone. They got out the base game in a reasonable time, a little over a year. Then the waiting began. And the backers are still waiting for the rest of their rewards. We're on two years since our last update that shows any progress being made.

A persistent rumor is that PB pissed away a third of the money fucking up shipping by shipping from China to the East Coast of the US, then from the East Coast to the West Coast, and then by rail to Palladium's Michigan headquarters. And that's why they've shown no progress because they have no money to make said progress.

>A persistent rumor is that PB pissed away a third of the money fucking up shipping by shipping from China to the East Coast of the US, then from the East Coast to the West Coast, and then by rail to Palladium's Michigan headquarters. And that's why they've shown no progress because they have no money to make said progress.
There's also the rumor they pissed away the cash running off thousands of retail copies thinking it would be a runaway success, and are now stuck with literal mountains of dead stock of a dead game.

Of course it was retard. FASA, the original creators of Battletech, bought the designs (along with a bunch of others from other series like Crusher Joe and Dougram) from Twentieth Century Imports who claimed to have the rights to them. We now know that is not true. In fact when it went to court over the Macross images FASA was not found to be at fault unless it kept using the art. As a precaution against future lawsuits it jettisoned everything that wasn't made in house, including the IICs that they commissioned from Victor Musical Industries.

>Also was in the exact right scale for Battletech,hint hint wink wink.
There's something weirdly gratifying that legitimately the only reason Robotech Tactics got the funding it did was from Battletech fans wanting Unseens. No one cares about Robotech, and Harmony Gold needs to disappear.

It's why I backed it, and the Unseens were pretty solid, aside from the stupidly high part count and the Marauder and Valkyrie being too large.

>, the Savage Worlds folks must nervous about all these rumblings.
They've already got a shit-load of money from Savage Rifts, so they've seen how much that IP is worth. If I were Pinnacle, I'd be checking my bank balance, looking at Palladium's net worth, and talking to Accounting about making a purchase or two.

Ordered my copy and all the extras so far, can't wait for it.
Hope its ultra fun. Super disappointed with savage rifts books hoping this will be better. Kinda sad to see pinnacle names in the people that worked on it. But hopefully their cancerous take on a venerated setting wasnt headed.

Only ever backed one project (Modiphius Infinity RPG), and it was enough to not make me want to bother with any kickstarter project again ("Hey because past projects charged shipping and handling after reaching our goal, we can too!" and taking over two years to make any progress).

But I feel bad for people who backed any that have done far far worse. Plus all I tend to see are the horror stories for KS in large numbers relative to any real successes. How does KS even stay around any more?

Because people are going to be far more vocal about the projects that sucked than the ones they're happy with?

Didn't answer the question. Even if KS was doing really well, bad enough stories can drown websites into oblivion.

Even looking through KS and its history it's more mehs and failures than successes.

Honestly, I was alright with the Infinity RPG kickstarter. It took a while, yeah but they stayed in contact and listened to tester feedback.

>Also holy shit the Glitterboy figure is expensive
if it weren't attached to a kickstarter and kev I'd consider it, even at that price

There's nothing really quite as cool as the glitterboy, and they've never really made a good miniature of one.

>bad enough stories can drown websites into oblivion.
>Even looking through KS and its history it's more mehs and failures than successes.

I'd say its because people don't direct their animosity at Kickstarter, rather they direct it to the project leaders. Keiji Inafune isn't likely to be able to touch the platform again after Mighty Blunder 9, and we've seen how much heat Palladium is drawing after their clusterfuck with RTT, while other people are able to keep using the platform.

I've backed heaps of projects, and while most have been late, it doesn't bother me so long as the project team are open and communicative.

>expecting kickstarter projects to deliver on time
>ever
Ouch. It's always delayed at least by a year, unless project was already in final stages and company just uses ks as marketplace.

In this case as well, there's the insane scope creep that seems to be part and parcel of Modiphius' projects. The numbers of sourcebooks they added as stretch goals to Conan, Infinity and Mutant Chronicles were frankly insane.

>it doesn't bother me so long as the project team are open and communicative.
I fell the same way, then again I have only ever backed one that didn't deliver what they said they would but it was $5 and they did keep everyone advised of exactly what was going wrong, where, and why at every problem so I didn't feel too bad about it

>And that's why they've shown no progress because they have no money to make said progress.
Obviously they should start another kickstarter to finish the product :D

>Mighty Blunder 9
What happened with that?

The truth is, Uncle Kev went on an EPIC trip to Thailand and spent all the money on traps.

I hear he was Monte Cook's traveling companion when Monte went to the dick bar-b-que in Japan.

Huh. I always thought he liked his dick raw....

I've backed exactly two projects so far - Obduction, and Mighty Number 9.

I'm actually very happy with Obduction, and 1 out of 2 isn't bad.

50% is a failing grade, user.

Proofs?

I'm doing better. I've backed five with good intentions, I have a $1 troll pledge over at Rifts that I intend to pull by the end of the campaign. One is 100% complete and it turned out great, the Mauhaus Cat Cafe in St Louis is pretty cool. Two are partially complete: 7th Sea 2e has been pretty open about everything and my last physical product is due to ship in June, the pdfs have been coming out steadily and I am very satisfied; the other is Robotech which is an absolute disaster. And two that haven't completed, both Giga-Robo and Thunderstone opened their pledge managers last week and are moving along well.

So far I have one awesome (Mauhaus), one good (7th Sea), two satisfactory so far (Thunderstone and Giga-Robo), and one ass (Robotech). I have no doubt that Thunderstone will be close to on time and it is looking like Giga-Robo will be ready by the end of the year. If they both pan out, I'll be at 80%.

I know the general details, so anyone can and should jump in to correct me, but here goes:

It started with hiring a staff member's girlfriend to be project manager which immediately started a "soggy knee vs nepotism" debate which was only exascerbated when she posted a genderbend of beck and stated that she had very little if any experience with the megaman franchise.

Then things kept tumbling from there. The project took forever with Inafune trying to push an animated tv series as a stretch goal while starting a SECOND kickstarter for a mm legends spinoff before MM9 had delivered anything.

An indeterminate amount of time later, the game releases with an audible lack of fanfare and it turns out to be soulless and pretty shit. Cherry on the cake is Inafune's tweet in response to all of this was "At least it got made."

Kickstarterror requires a US business address as the sponsor for tax and legal reasons. It's very common for international developers to ask a US business for sponsorship so they can run their campaign. It's also legal and above the board.

Girlfriend was Community manager, not project manager. My bad.

Your naivete is refreshing. Palladium lives and breathes on sketchy behavior. If it looks like shit, smells like shit, and came out of Kevvy's ass, it is probably shit.

It's important to build at least 18 additional months into the stated timeframe of any kickstarter. Best not to back it if that's a dealbreaker.

It also had the worst trailer imaginable that gave us such gems as pepperoni pizza explosions, and the phrase "like an anime fan on prom night".

Bump

>some literal who named Keiji Inafune does some odd jobs on later Mega Man games
>he ends up being the only "vintage" team member of the Mega Man franchise
>Capcom pushes him as the "creator of Mega Man" even though he didn't join the team until the 4th game or so
>Inafune as producer runs several franchises (DMC, Lost Planet, etc.) into the ground because he's a hardcore westaboo
>Finally pushes too many execs' buttons so Capcom fires Inafune and cans his pet project (Mega Man Legends 3)
>Mega Man franchise is effectively dead, fans are SEETHING
>Inafune creates his own studio
>around this time someone asked Kamiya of Platinum studios what he thought of Inafune
>"He's a businessman, not a creator."
>Inafune announces a kickstarter for Mighty No. 9, a Mega Man clone
>the hordes of Mega Man fans line up to throw money at it because FUCK CAPCOM
>Inafune promises all sorts of things, including: the ability to absorb any/all enemies for form-changing power-ups, a multiplat launch, a comic, a movie, an anime, and a sequel
>funding successful
>game comes out two years late
>features gutted because "tight budget"
>absorption now only works against bosses and is just a palette swap
>Wii version is unplayable due to stutters
>explosions look like pizza
>Inafune: "It's better than nothing."

All mine turned out alright, but that was because I back small stuff from companies with a track record of competency.

The anime fan thing was funny even if the game was a disaster. Then again, I hate weeaboo faggots.

Remember where you are, gaijin!

Hit him with the driver side of the car so you can punch him from the seat.

I backed planetary annihilation

;_;

What went wrong there? I am not familiar with that one.

>RRT shitstorm

Storytime?

I'm always up for hearing shit talked about Palladium.

Basically the following happened.

Robotech RPG Tactics kickstarter starts up. Palladium people are nowhere to be seen. All questions and hype generation is done by Ninja Division. This leads many to believe that Palladium is just there as a middleman and Ninja Division is running the show. It does really well to the tune of 1.4 million dollars. Assloads of stretch goals are met and the line is tripled in size. It is obvious from the end of the campaign that their initial delivery date of six months after campaign is impossible, but everyone is forgiving due to the massive size of things. Ninja Division vanishes like their namesake and Palladium takes the reins. It comes out that ND was just there to run the campaign, but everyone is hopeful.

About a year later they announce splitting the delivery into two waves to get at least some product onto market. Everyone is still pretty cool about things, despite concerns about seams and the like until right before Gen Con that year. Kevin unilaterally decides that he's going to sell the first shipping container of product at Gen Con if he gets it on time. The goodwill instantly evaporates and to try and save face Kevin holds a hilariously rigged vote (anyone who doesn't vote counts as a "yes" vote) which further annoys a significant portion of the backerbase. Even without the absentee votes he manages to win permission to sell. The shipping container doesn't make it in time and so Kevvy burned goodwill for nothing.

Shit starts shipping and people are not too happy with the parts count and finickiness of the models. Shipping is unacceptably slow for EU and AU backers, who quickly discover they could get boxes of the game via Amazon faster than Kevvy's merry band of retards could ship it to them.

By February of the next year they have everyone's Wave shipped (most have it) and promise new sculpts and updates in the next few weeks. We're still waiting for those updates, that was two years ago.

Last March Carmen Bellaire, one of the guys that wrote the rules for RRT, announces he has worked out a deal to make a Rifts boardgame and has started a new company, Rogue Heroes, to make it. Some Robotech backers rumble about trolling his kickstarter, they did same thing with Savage Rifts and barely made their presence known there. Carmen hears this, freaks out and rants at the RRT backers threatening to burn RRT if they dare troll his kickstarter. This was the absolute worst thing to do and it set off a 4 hour flamewar with Carmen getting roasted like a pig at a luau. Carmen then attempts to an hero in shame. Kevin makes a big update telling the world that Carmen is an hero and blames the Robotech backers for it. Again the backers erupt and become living salt elementals forcing Kevvy to apologize.

This Monday the Rifts boardgame kickstarter opened and it has become a total trollercoaster with multiple bans handed about by kickstarter. The bans prove ineffectual as some of the banned make sockpuppets to continue the fight. At this point the comments section of the Rifts kickstarter is unusable due to constant trolling. Carmen didn't count on the RRT crowd already considering wave 2 to be a lost cause and their willingness to take him down with them.

>threatening to make sure Wave 2 of the Robotech doesn't happen if they shit up his kickscammer.
He said he would not participate in trying to save RRT.

>"support me and I'll grease the wheels so this KS finally delivers"
He just asked for people not to shit up Rifts KS.

From his actual post on RRT comments:
>" So where does that leave us, Rogue Heroes and the RRT backers I mean? Well, YOU as the other RRT backers have two choices. Either you can do everything in your power to try and kill the Rifts: Board Game OR you can allow me the chance to complete my Kickstarter in peace.

>If you take option one, I will take all steps to prevent it, but calmly and by the rules. But I probably won’t ask for you to be banned unless you get too out of hand. But I believe you would be fighting an uphill battle anyway since all of Palladium loyal Rifts fans and many of the new Savage Rifts players REALLY want me to succeed. After all, Rifts hasn’t ever had really good miniatures, it had the old metal ones, but not the awesome figures we will be producing. And if you chose this route I will write you off, when Kevin asked me to help, as happened in the past on Wave 1, I will simply step away and let it burn. I am under no obligations to help with the RRT but I DO have the contacts and knowledge to help fix it.

>Or you can take option two. I don’t ask anything from you, I don’t ask you to help or support me, or give me money or do anything at all. All I ask is please be decent individuals and give me room to succeed or fail on my own. And let those Rifts fans support me as they please. If you do this, basically do nothing, I will be all in for you. Even if my KS crashes and burns I will put my efforts into getting this shit straightened out!"

But yeah, I agree he should not have tried to manage PR when being on brink of becoming and Hero.

Palladium and RRT are great examples of what badly handled KS and Community management can lead into.

*becoming an hero.

It's similar to the pre-order culture amongst video gamers, never been a fan of that.

I'm not loyal to a car company or a shower gel company, why should I be loyal to a gaming publisher and throw money at them before getting an idea of the product outside their own marketing? Baffling.

Because the industry has been using more and more sneaky tactics to get people to buy in to preorder culture. It started off with "pre-order to get bonus goodies". I don't think anyone had a problem with it when preordering just got you a poster or soundtrack, but it eventually went to "pre-order and get something cosmetic in-game". Now you're missing out on content if you don't preorder, even if it's just a little thing. This was followed up with the more insidious "pre-order and get an exclusive character or actual content." Of course Nintendo has ushered in the ultimate evolution of this with " pre-order or don't get it at all." At that point people will order just to be sure they don't miss out if it turns out to be good.

Well, pre-orders were a necessary thing when things like steam didn't exist, and there actually was a limit in the form of physical CDs on how many you could sell. If you didn't mark yourself a copy before the release date, you might not get the game at all when you went to the store to buy it.

These days it's different, yet they want to continue the pre-order culture, because it's pure money for something that they don't have to do any work for. No need to burn CDs, or have warehouses or anything else of the sort. Just lock some stuff behind a timelock and watch the money roll in.

Kickstarter is fine, you just have to be prepared to do due diligence.

If you kickstart, you are an investor. Don't expect to be the nonvoting shareholder who never attends meetings and get surprised when the stock has tanked. Instead, investigate, read, compare, follow up a claim or two at random to see if they're not lying. It takes one hour to do basic checks if it's a reliable known entity. It takes 2-3 to check a first-timer.

Also, only back first-timers if you are sure of them personally and you are willing to take a risk.

I've backed 40 projects. 36 have then succeeded, 10 delivered on time (2 were reprints so that only just counts), 15 delivered within their own 'late' margin, 16 were within 3 months of that, 2 were under a year late because China, 1 is over a year late because China, 1 due to wildly underestimating time and may run out before finishing, and 1 collapsed because it was in Crimea.

This has taken a shitload of work, but I'm willing to put it in. 10 of these projects were things that would succeed or had succeeded regardless but I wanted it and wasn't going to wait (or couldn't wait) for retail, and 30 were cool ideas that couldn't have ever gotten up without it.

Very few Kickstarters are scams. The real problem is that start-up business is hard. Like, really fucking hard. I got out of that whole scene because I hate it. It lets people who can't get commercial loans get money, but a LOT of those people didn't get money for a good reason. I'd say over 50% of kickstarters fail to fully deliver in my hobby fields, about 20% collapse, 20% deliver with minor fails, and 10% really pull it off. About 80% of the fails are because of a lack of business skill or experience. About 20% are people who ran from business to kickstarter because they were shitheads. But only maybe 1% are actual scams. A scam requires intent.

Not him, but from talking with my brother the company pulled the same shenanigans they did with their other games and completely stopped support a year after the game released regardless of bugs or balance, and followed the modern rts scene by fucking over everything fun in the game in pursuit of nonexistent esports.

He should have realized you're not going to get product in time for gencon unless you airmail it in, at which point you're selling at a loss for hype generation.

Kicktaaq has Rifts at -150 bucks for the day so far. It looks like the trolls are winning.

They also rereleased the game with a few new features for full price a year later as an expansion, though I think owners of the original got a 33% off.

RRT is a scam

Anybody who backs this game will be back here bitching for the next 4 years because they still haven't received shit. Meanwhile, Uncle Kev gets another trip to Thailand.

>let's give money that'll show them lel
Idiots.

You can pull your pledges before the end of the campaign

Either your bait fu is strong or you don't know a thing about what you are talking about.

>being retarded, but not too retarded to fill in the captcha

You should maybe lurk a lil' bit more.

I was a fan back before Nightbane got the Axe and have a whole bunch of Palladium books from that era. Ramon Perez is/was a fantastic artist.

Glad I got out, because it looks like a fucking shitshow non-stop these days.

>Funding Canceled
>Funding for this project was canceled by the project creator 6 minutes ago.
How surprising.

>We'll be here for your game when you put it back up, Carmen!
How deliciously ominous.

Wow, it's real. Did they give a reason? Is there an actual reason?

They were at -$150 for pledges for the day a little bit ago according to kicktraq. The trolling took its toll.