Dwimmermount disappointment

Over on an RPGSite Thread there's a big discussion going about James M of Grognardia. He did a kickstarter for the megadungeon he's been running and blogging about. Apparently, he got over $40,000 for it. He worked with Autarch, at least for them to do promotions.

According to amacris: "In the interest of "clearing the air" of some of the guesswork:

Autarch is an LLC. Autarch LLC has a written, signed contract with James. The contract assigns all funds to James in exchange for his assumption of responsibility for development of the Product and delivery of the rewards. All IP related to the product are the exclusive property of James. Autarch is not the publisher of Dwimmermount and has no distribution rights. In exchange for our services, Autarch and James agreed to cooperate in good faith to promote each other's brand and business.

That's the contract boiled down. E.g. we have none of the funds, none of the IP, and no rights except to mutual publicity. I think it's objective truth that we've worked hard to promote Dwimmermount as per our contract."

This kind of sucks. I put money in for the map and set, and I was looking forward to it. Now it seems James has disappeared. Grognardia hasn't even been updated in 5 weeks. I hope it's not due to serious personal medical issues or something. If he is just giving up, or has run out of the money and can not do the print run, that really sucks.

I hope future publishers take the fact that many of the "upgrades" happened, and these same bonus items may have made the product unfeasible. If you really need to do a Kickstarter, make sure you have a realistic time and money plan before putting it out for the public.