Originally Not Another Dime (For Ken Whitman) was designed to be an unbiased factual repository for Ken Whitman's dealings in the Role-Playing Games (RPG) Industry. After years of researching, reading, and writing about our main man...... we're settling to just be factual. Kenny's shenanigans have extended far past the RPG Industry, it's hard to NOT be biased, and he's even tried changing his name to Whit Whitman to avoid his past dealings and associations.
Years ago, Ken "Whit" Whitman's "work" was curtailed to the professional side of the industry, mostly Print on Demand stuff. Then he got into film and that was his entry to crowd-funding. Once he got in with Kenzer & Company...well that is really what leads us in to this blog.
Now to be fair, KenzerCo, by all appearances, has been 110% on the up & up and arguably they are the single largest victim of Ken "Whit" Whitman's Kickstarter scams. One regular question we've heard in the wild has effectively been, "How did Ken Whitman, a known problem in the RPG Industry, manage to work with KenzerCo on a Knights of the Dinner Table Kickstarter?"
One of our contributors had spoken with Jolly Blackburn and David Kenzer about this at length and it can be summed up as: "Ken said he's changed and it looked like he was successful with his current film project." Now that isn't something we can just post and expect you to take our word for it, so we went combing through a bazillion (ok, more like 1500) Kickstarter comments, all of our comments here, and a metric ton of comments over at Tenkar's Tavern. It only took an hour or so, but we did find something to support this:
The important part, "The fact Ken pulled together Brothers Barbarian season 1 and 2 largely on his own (writing the scriipt, assembling the talent, finding the camera, crews etc) was damn impressive. True he ultimately never delivered BB2 but I was there when it was being shot in KY and to my eye it looked like a professionally run operation. They knocked that a thing out over a four day period and the logistics of doing that was made an impression. That coupled with Ken's apologies and talk of being on new meds for his ADHD and having turned over a new leaf... Hell, I believe in second chances. So when he came to us with a KODTLAS proof of concept teaser in his hand (all paid for, cast and shot by him from what I understood) it seemed ike a no brainer. Especially when he presented a short list of names of people who were going to be working with him. AND including a 'money guy' who was to monitor all the money."
We mention all this history because last week Ken "Whit" Whitman has decided to pop up again in the the greater RPG industry, trying to talk direct to players.
As usual, Ken "Whit" Whitman rambles on, but the important point is that he's popped up and has declared that he's pretty much going to be open & available to that community:
"I would love to have a love to have a zoom interview with you where you can ask any questions you like." Hmm, funny that he's already edited his comment!
waaaiittt... TSR sued GDW. "The reason they lost was, Gary was working on it while employed for TSR. Lorraine had a copy and could prove it".. erm.. wait.. what?.. lets work on this a little bit.. Gary left TSR (lets not go into the reasons) in 1985. He was right then approached and founded New Infinities Productions inc. This lasted until 1989 when they just ran out of money and went bankrupt. Then, with the help of Mike McCulley, he started to work on The Carpenter Project, which became Dangerous Dimensions, which became Dangerous Journeys. This was 1990. When it was released in 1992, TSR Sued. This lead to alot of backers pulling out and moeny problems.. The Law Suit was over it being a ripp-off (they claimed) of D&D/AD&D).. not that he had started to work on it while still employed by TSR. The case wasn't won or lose as both sides lost alot of money and Gygax offered a settlement where TSR brought the rights to DJ (and Mythus) from him. This happened but both projects were killed right away. This was about 1994/1995 where TSR was now heavily in debt.
ReplyDeleteSo.. "The reason they lost", no-one lost. Both sides were hurting. It didn't fully get to trial as, i believe, it was STILL in the pre-trial discovery phrase. No-one lost. While TSR was in a bad shape, and so was GDW. Neither company could really afford to go to trial.
"Gary was working on it while employed for TSR". really? while not impossible, that was never part of the issue.. and TSR was very eger to settle.. and didn't bring up the breach of contract (if it was in his contract to be exclusive, which is likely).
"TSR grossed 40 mil in 94".. maybe.. that's not great though.. In the final couple of years, they where making 40 mill, but had lot of unsold stock, games weren't selling, new ideas kept failing.. They only published one or two novels a year anyway, till 1996.. I would have hoped they where making WAY more then 40 mill in 1994 with how bad off things were going.. the last 2 years was hell for them and it had been building for some time. So.. this is a bit of a pointless statement and.. I don't know about the USA filing system to double check the number.. and like i said, I would hope more.
huh.. Unmortal is meake to be post production now.. and i really don't get this 'shoot your demo reel and star in a movie for just $1000".. that's an .. well, of course.. it's the old Fraud thing from years back.. nothing much new there then..
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