From: [REDACTED] at [pentagon.io.com] (Steve Jackson) Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc,io.games.sjg.gurps Subject: SJ Flames White Wolf For Bad-Faith Behavior Date: 2 Aug 1994 23:17:37 -0500 Summary: we're mad as hell and we're not going to take it any more. (If you dislike long semi-flames that reveal unfair dealings in the game business, mutual contempt between hobby personalities, and so on, this posting will not interest you. I'm posting this only to rec.games.frp, and to the Illuminati Online conference io.games.sjg.gurps. I have no objection to its being reposted elsewhere, if this is being discussed elsewhere.) Where's GURPS MAGE? What's going on between SJ Games and White Wolf? There have been a lot of questions. There have been denials from a WW employee and a non-employee "friend," who couldn't give any details but assured everyone that nothing was wrong. I've held off commenting on the net. But Steve Wieck, the president of White Wolf, has deliberately ignored every fax and message I've sent him, now, for more than a month. I caught him on the phone today -- he called someone else at my office, and I just picked it up and said "Hi, Steve . . . " After talking to him, I don't think the relationship between the companies can GET any worse, so there's no reason not to tell my customers what's happening. Steve says that he "didn't think it was worth his while" to return any of my faxes or calls. This, despite the fact that the reason he called my office today was to personally demand a $15 late fee on the $1,000 check we just sent them for VAMPIRE COMPANION. Fifteen dollars. Important use of his time. Right. When I asked him, specifically, why it wasn't worth his while to return any of my messages, he told me that he had spent enough hours talking with me already, and that he was satisfied with that, and with a fax they sent me on June 3. I replied (not exact quote) "Steve, my fax asks a couple of specific questions, and asks you to confirm in writing some things you told me over the phone. Since you have told me so many times that we have "misunderstood" your verbal approvals, it's not very cooperative of you to refuse a written confirmation when we ask for one." His reply (exact quote, I stopped to write it down) was that he was "content to sit back" without replying to any of my questions, and that we had "lost it" when I called him a liar . . . "Lost it," eh? Verrrrrry professional, Mr. Wieck. This is the way a REAL company president acts, don't you think? Flashback; let's fill in some background. Apparently SJ Games won the "I Slept With WHO??" award, at this year's Silver Hatchet Ceremony at Origins, for making a deal with White Wolf in the first place. I can't argue . . . There have been many, many problems with White Wolf since we started doing GURPS versions of their books, and one of the worst boils down to: White Wolf changes the ground rules on us, over and over, and always in ways that hamstring our adaptations. Some examples: When we first signed the deal, they told us that we could do "place" sourcebooks - Chris McCubbin did some good preliminary work on "Texas By Night." Then they changed their minds. When we turned in the VAMPIRE COMPANION text, they refused to approve the adventure. The reason they gave was that it was set in a city and "they might want to use that city someday." So we published the book without the adventure. When we first signed the deal, we agreed, verbally, that -- since we could only do one follow-on sourcebook for each of the five main World of Darkness titles -- we would do "sampler" sourcebooks that took interesting sections from different White Wolf releases. This would give us a good book that didn't duplicate any of theirs, and would whet the appetites of the GURPS fans, increasing White Wolf sales. But later, Steve Wieck said "You can't do that. We want you to pick just one of our supplements for each title, and adapt it." From these and other problems, we saw that it would be prudent of us to get White Wolf's approval on each books' OUTLINE, so no time or work was wasted. They approved the outlines for both MAGE and WEREWOLF COMPANION. We had a problem with the MAGE cover. Initially we wanted to use the same cover design they did: big gold letters, and a tarot card on a dark cloth background. It's a great design. We contracted John Zeleznik to paint a new card, so it wouldn't look too much like theirs. But WW said they would not approve any card John painted. They insisted that we use their card artist, or not do a card at all. The reason? "To keep consistency within the line." We pointed out that GURPS MAGE was not part of their line, and some distinction was a good idea. But no, Steve Wieck said that we had to use their artist or not do a card. Then, researching Tarot design, we came to THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF TAROT, by Stuart R. Kaplan (Volume I, 6th printing, 1988). After examining its dramatic and original cover design, we decided that perhaps gold letters and tarot cards on a rich cloth background were not what we wanted for our book, after all. We did an entirely different cover. (We did not discuss the reason for our change with White Wolf - we thought it would only lead to further upset. But it sheds an interesting light on their attitude about the "originality" of our MAGE manuscript.) So we thought we had all the MAGE problems ironed out. But when the final, laid-out MAGE pages went in, WW rejected it. Initially, the line editor, Phil Brucato, complimented the book. But then he sent us a letter, saying the book was rejected because - and I quote from Phil's 6-3-94 letter - "I cannot approve a book that reprints so much of our own copyrighted material." This led to some long, stressed phone conversations. We pointed out that at the beginning of the very first project, GURPS VAMPIRE, they had surprised us by requiring that we write new chapter-intro vignettes. "Mark Rein-Hagen doesn't want his stories re-used." So Jeff Koke wrote all new vignettes, and they're very good. But Jeff and Mark had gone over the whole VAMPIRE book to decide which non-rules sections could be copied, and which would have to be rewritten from scratch. Wasn't it unfair, we asked, to change the rules after MAGE was finished, when we'd done just what Mark Rein-Hagen had personally supervised on VAMPIRE? Well, no. They didn't think it was relevant. Steve Wieck didn't want to admit that any instructions we had had from Mark Rein-Hagen affected the current question at all. Jeff Koke and I pointed out that ALL our previous books had made extensive use of material from their White Wolf originals . . . that was the point of the license. "Not this much," was the reply. True. They'd been vetoing originality right and left, and approving duplicated material. MAGE contained more duplication than the earlier books, and with less internal editing by our writer; the MAGE disks they sent us were much more cleanly written than the sources they supplied for earlier books. We pointed out that the contract REQUIRES White Wolf to supply us with the complete text of their books on computer disk, and they had done this for every book, including MAGE. "That's just for your reference," we were told. (And sure enough, the contract doesn't actually say we can USE any part of that computer text as it is, does it? It just says they have to supply it.) We reminded them of incidents in which they had demanded that we follow their wording exactly. Apparently that was then, though, and this was now. We pointed out that Bob Schroeck had discussed with Phil Brucato, the line editor, EXACTLY which parts of his outline would be rewritten and which parts would use the MAGE text. "Oh, that was a misunderstanding." We pointed out that Steve Brown was hard at work compiling WEREWOLF COMPANION, and that he was following the exact same procedure. In fact, we'd chosen him, with White Wolf's approval, BECAUSE he had written so much of the original WEREWOLF material. "Oh. Well, that's under a different editor. And that's a misunderstanding, too. He'll have to rewrite it all, too." We asked if, since they wanted our book to be different from their MAGE, we could develop some minor new material . . . some new Rotes, some new Paradox Spirits. Phil Brucato liked that idea at first, when he and I were talking. But later, with Steve Wieck on the line, Phil "explained" that it would "not be in the best interest of Steve Jackson Games" to include any new creations at all. "Not in the best interests of Steve Jackson Games?" There's a triumph of doublespeak. I confess that I used the word "weasel" a number of times during that very last conversation, but at least it was always as a verb, and not as a noun. We even offered, since they were so concerned about "their words," to change the cover credits of GURPS MAGE to mirror those of the original MAGE. I had Bob Schroeck's permission to make this offer. In fact, he welcomed it; he didn't think he should be credited as "author," but just as "GURPS adaptation by." But Steve Wieck rejected this compromise too. And in the end, we had no good choices. We could violate the license and publish without approval, or we could take them to court and ask a judge to provide adult supervision. Or we could drop the whole project. Or we could rewrite the manuscripts. So we started rewriting. GURPS MAGE didn't make Origins. We didn't have an Origins release at all. I asked Steve Wieck if he cared about this. "No," he said. "We don't have an Origins release, either," he said. No, I really don't know what is happening here. But since that last MAGE call, more than a month ago, in which Steve Wieck also said that all further discussion had to go directly through him, I've faxed him three times asking for clarification IN WRITING of some of the things he required, and WRITTEN confirmation of some things that he said -- on the phone -- would and would not be acceptable. (No, I wasn't recording that call, either.) The fax went out first on June 30. Then on July 6. I got sick and missed a lot of work -- so the next one didn't go out until July 21. No answer. Since then, I've been phoning . . . over and over. But I didn't get an answer until I surprised him by picking up the phone when he called someone else . . . and then the answer I got was that he wouldn't answer. The next time a GURPS MAGE manuscript goes to White Wolf, it will be even better than the last one . . . the one that Phil Brucato said, on first reading, was "better than their version." There will be no quality issue. There will also be no issue of "using their words." If Steve Wieck never answers my questions, I'll just go by what he told me on the phone, on that call I wasn't recording, and we'll see if he's set me up for yet another "misunderstanding" and another delay of the book. Current employees of White Wolf toe the party line without explaining, or keep silent. The calls and mail that I get from WW refugees, concerned about this issue, indicate that they think White Wolf will approve another manuscript for us when hell freezes over. Steve Wieck, a month ago, angrily denied that he'd ever given orders to reject any manuscript before it came in, and told me that OF COURSE I couldn't believe anything I was told by anyone White Wolf had fired. "I don't lie!" he said loudly. "I don't tell lies!" He also asked, repeatedly, if I was recording the call... It would be nice to believe that White Wolf wants these books to come out, and wants them to be good. But Steve Wieck told me, months ago, that he wished this license had never been granted. (No, I wasn't recording him, but I believe him.) There sure weren't any congratulations from Atlanta when GURPS VAMPIRE won the Origins Award this year. The instructions that we now have from WHITE WOLF **seem** to boil down to: Base each of your books exactly on one of ours. Don't put in anything new. Except for the vignettes, which have to be new. But make all the descriptive sections the same. But don't use any of "their words." In other words, make everything completely the same, but make it all different. But it's hard to know what the instructions really are, since the president of the company insists we talk only to him, then won't answer our questions or put his own statements in writing, and justifies it by saying he's offended that I "called him a liar." (Now you're asking: Did I really call Steve Wieck a liar? Well, I sure put his nose out of joint. We were on the phone. He made a couple of very self-serving remarks, with the stilted, repeated phrasing and the tone of voice that I last heard from the Secret Service guys as they lied about raiding us. I pointed out that what he said didn't mesh with facts I possessed. He stormed "I don't like being called a liar." I was amazed. All I could say was "Don't lie, then." In my experience, the louder someone tells you they're honest, the more you have to watch them. Honest people just don't lie, and everyone notices. Their reputations take care of themselves. On the other hand, sometimes a cool black shirt covers a really thin skin.) ****** ASIDE: Personal to Steve Wieck, President and apparently God-King at White Wolf Game Studios . . . Steve, here's a personal challenge, which I expect you will ignore. You told me today that White Wolf would give us no cooperation on this contract, and make every possible demand on us, because you, President Steve, got your feelings hurt. You gave me some really lame doubletalk, I challenged you, and this is how you're getting even. No, that's not a quote - I wasn't recording you - so don't weasel me on the words you used. That's what you meant, and you made sure there was no misunderstanding. You let me know this was payback, and I believe you were telling the truth, right then. Will you admit it in public? In fact, Steve, if you can explain your behavior of the last two months without either lying like a rug, or admitting that you've been petty, jealous, childish and unprofessional, I will be damned impressed. ******* We'll see. Maybe White Wolf will approve the rewritten manuscript, in which case everyone will see a very good, clear, playable, well-organized, well-illustrated GURPS MAGE. Maybe they'll wait the full 20 days, and reject it with another surprising demand for changes. Either way, you'll hear -- from us -- exactly what happens. I don't expect this posting to make Steve Wieck like me any better. I expect he'll get red in the face and gobble. But then, I don't think that the Archangel Michael could make Steve Wieck like me any better. I can live with that. The point is that we won't bear this in silence. We won't mislead people by saying that everything's all right, and we won't let White Wolf get away with it either. Our distributors, and our retailers, and our players, will know exactly how White Wolf treats us in exchange for the thousands of dollars of our money - OF YOUR MONEY - that have already gone into their coffers on this licensing deal. (And we're about to write them yet another big check.) GURPS MAGE is a damn good book, whether it's ever published or not. I hope you get to see it someday. If not, at least you'll get a play-by-play description of the professional way White Wolf is working with us.