KickStarter Rebecca Heineman's Dragons of the Rip (formerly Dragon Wars 2)

[Darkzone]

Okay, Darkzone, there is a difference between a business man and a crook and Herve is shady as hell, he collected law suits like a mad man through the years for things like not paying his employees for months, for trying to sell publish rights for Bioware games without asking Bioware, for not paying taxes and the list goes on and on. His investment company gone bankrupt, he managed to sell most of the Interplay very valuable IPs without getting enough money to make a single game in years without mentioning that huge fiasco with Bethesda where he was so dumb with the contract he signed that allowed Bethesda to rip him off royaly with that Fallout Online fiasco.

You are right that he is a crook. But not paying employees, this happens to very very often. I had also to sue someone for my money.
Rights problems? Every fucking big company breaks certain patents and rights, and Apple is the master in this case, for an example.
Not paying taxes? Fuck show me just one great company that does this. When has Microsoft, NFL, Google, Amazon or Apple paid their taxes? The greater you are, the less taxes you pay. They employ brigades of lawyers just to find a way not to pay taxes.
Interplay was before him on the bridge to bankruptcy, that is the reason why he could buy Interplay in the first place. Fargo wanted to safe Interplay by monetizing Interplay, but nobody besides Herve wanted to buy them, because everybody knew that Interplay is in trouble.
The IP from Interplay that hurt us the most is Fallout, and i agree that he could have sold this to Obsidian, but business is business and Bethesda paid more.
If he would have been a business locust that has ruined a wealthy good financed company, i would understand the hatred. Then i would be the first one to call for a lynch mob. But in all things, he is also a loser, beside others. He and Fargo have made bad contracts and bad decisions.
But Fargo looks better and Herve looks like a bad slimy crook. Fargo has lost something, that he has build up from nothing. Herve has lost something, that he bought from Fargo. I understand that there is a lot of distrust towards Herve, fuck i also distrust this french slimy crook.
Disclaimer:
I do not distrust the french people despite their habit of eating snails and frogs. I simply distrust crooks.

I hate Fargo used car salesman talks but Herve makes him look like a choir boy. Look to Fargo, his company only made crap so far but, at least, it made some games and Fargo was on a much worse position than Herve when he left Interplay.
Sorry, but you calling people children for not trusting a man with such track record seems to me very foolish. If you want to give him money, fine, but remember that Rebecca kickstarter must be very clear about Herve involvement, if he is only licencing the name (Fuck, if I dealt with Herve I would demand a contract and would analyse each single line on it.) or if he has any control. If he has any control on the project, don't cry when he later invent any bullshit when he gets your money for nothing.

You are correct about Fargo and his current development. I think also that Fargo is an real OK guy, in certain aspects, and an asshole in other things. Ms Burger should look very carefully on the contract, that she makes with Herve, because crooks stay crooks.
She can license the Dragon Wars IP, but could also make her own new IP, but since she decided to make Dragon Wars 2 (an nearly worthless IP) she has to deal with him. And it makes me also very uncomfortable. I do not call people childern not for their distrust (which is healthy attitude), but for their Herve hysteria. Don't forget that Herve founded Titus Interactive to make computer games, and till 2002 they made games.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

I do not call people childern not for their distrust (which is healthy attitude), but for their Herve hysteria.

Duck and Cover even had a Herve smiley (below) but the great man has, comparatively, been sadly neglected on the Codex.

 

[janjetina]

Fallout: Piece of Shit was more than enough for a sentient person to make an informed decision whether to invest his money in a project run by Herve. All the rest is just an icing on the shitcake.

 

[muds_animal_friend]

 

[Mustawd]

Mr. burns Simpsons .gif or gtfo

 

[LESS T_T]

Work is in progress~: https://twitter.com/JennellAllyn/status/565299711230631938

Logo design complete. Moving on to final rendering of images and type @OldeSkuul

And she released the planned plot outline for cancelled Bard's Tale 4 (NOT the boob missile one): https://www.facebook.com/jennell.jaquays/posts/766690993422895

Spoiler

The attached script is my last plot outline for Bards Tale IV, based on art assets that were already completed or near completion for the game.

25 years ago, Electronic Arts was working on a sequel to Bard.s Tale III. As the owners of the license, they were able to call it ... well ... Bards's Tale IV. The version of the game that Interplay was making ended up having to be called Dragon Wars. Dragon Wars did something important to games that Bard's Tale IV did not: It was completed and shipped.

I was one of the last designers who worked on the game. The original story apparently came from Steve Englehart (primarily know for his work in comics), with later development by David Arneson (aka the Father of Roleplaying), and Elizabeth Langosy, a writer whose previous background involved working in games in the Zork series.

I was contracting to EA at the time on another RPG title and was pulled over to work on Bards Tale IV during one of my visits to work in house. I became the last designer on the game, in the role of script doctor and continuity editor to try and bring all the other contributor's work together, streamline it and write a final concluding scenario setting.

BT4 had changed the core direction and play of the Bards Tale series from a game about a party of unique characters created by the player to a scripted story line involving only pre-created characters (the sort of thing that's great for novel tie-ins).

While I worked on the project, it changed producers and lost it's tech lead.

My attempts to salvage and tighten ended up being pointless. The game's data engine was buggy. The graphics were already dated-looking and over complicated (three separate 2D graphic presentations, a first person point of view for for exploring, a side view or shadow box format for resolving encounters, and an isomorphic view for exploring the city. Each view required that characters be redrawn and re-animated (using EA's D-Paint software). And the project was over budget.

While I was working on script revisions, the producers made the decision to put it down. EA's Bard's Tale IV was put to rest.

The policy decision that EA made about contractors had a profound impact on the rest of my career. They would no longer work with independent contractors who didn't bring a full production team to make games. I didn't have those resources. EA had been my primary source of income for over a year. I chose to turn away from computer game design and focus on illustration and never worked for EA again (though five years later, I would be back working in the computer game industry at id Software).‪#‎ThrowBackThursday‬ ‪#‎TBT‬

This is unrelated, but recently she has drawn a logo for an RPG convention:

Spoiler

I WANT to excite about this game...but why U Herve.

 

[naossano]

No, just no.
no support for mister Caen.

 

[a Goat]

Ahaha no, Herve doesn't deserve a penny.
This is a product of butthurt, coupled with shitty businessman wanting cheap cash-in on "classic" RPG's getting more attention recently.
Dragon Wars has no brand-recognition so if she wanted to make RPG she'd make it without well-known name, but hey it's Fargo's franchise(so here goes butthurt) and Herve likes easy buck, or likes things he suspects to be easy buck.

LOL! Nah, you guys are pretty shitty actually

You claim you are fans of RPGs, but you piss on the creative people that actually make them. I dunno, it is kind of like the 4chan of RPGs or something haha.

Game development isn't celebrity business. In other news - sun is hot, water is wet, Cleve still works on ranting about stupid shit Grimoire.

 

[Nael]

 

[Menckenstein]

Herve Caen is a good man. Trust in Herve.

 

[FUDU]

The question is..... good for what?


Kindling to start a holy fire of cleansing and redemption?

 

[LESS T_T]

I was contracting to EA at the time on another RPG title and was pulled over to work on Bards Tale IV during one of my visits to work in house.

This might be the "another RPG", from a 2014 post: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=576483695776960&set=a.150277605064240.33808.100002460043864

Throwback Thursday: Once again, not a pic of me, but of things that I did. My first project for EA's Story Group around 1990 was development on an urban horror-themed CPRPG with a working title of "Necroscope." The late Christopher Erhardt was the producer who brought me into the project. This is a sketch idea for a game map. The game would primarily be played in an isomorphic view, not too dissimilar from Wasteland (or perhaps Diablo). The game was shelved so I could throw my skills behind Bards Tale IV, which needed help (and it too became vaporware).

Jane Avriette Nothing to do with the Brian Lumley/TOR book of the same name?

Jennell Jaquays I don't think so. But I've not read the books to know if there's a link other than a similar name.

Jennell Jaquays Read the synopsis of the story ... no connection.

And more on cancelled Bard's Tale IV, from 2013 posts: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?...=a.428670480558283.1073741825.100002460043864

Spoiler

In the early 90s, I worked as a contractor to thee Electronic Arts (EA) story game group. At that time, it was headed by the late Chris Erhardt. One of the titles that I worked on was ... Bard's Tale IV. The game ultimately ended up vapor-ware. But while sorting my art files recently, I came across two color printouts of game characters that survived. The characters in the first row with the PCs in the player's party (it was a single player game), beginning on the left with the Bardling (your main PC). Each character in that row played a part in the story that I helped craft. The rest were NPCs and monsters.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?...=a.428670480558283.1073741825.100002460043864

Spoiler

More creatures and characters from EA's Bards Tale IV, a game that never was.

 

[felipepepe]

High quality scans of EA's BTIV, but in Nazi-speak:

Spoiler

 

[Bubbles]

Wenn Du sagst, daß The Bard's Tale 4 das größte Projekt ist, an dem Ihr derzeit arbeitet, wie teuer muß denn das Spiel nachher im Laden sein, um die Kosten wieder reinzuholen.

Um die Kosten zu decken, müßten wir wohl über 200 Mark dafür verlangen, wenn sich das Spiel einigermaßen gut verkauft.

Ah yes.

The Bard's Tale 4 wird zwar den Namen The Bard's Tale tragen, aber das war's dann auch schon. Außer dem Namen hat unser Spiel nichts mehr mit den alten Programmen gemein.

These guys were way too honest. Probably knew they were going to get canceled already.

 

[Darkzone]

Wenn Du sagst, daß The Bard's Tale 4 das größte Projekt ist, an dem Ihr derzeit arbeitet, wie teuer muß denn das Spiel nachher im Laden sein, um die Kosten wieder reinzuholen.
Um die Kosten zu drecken, müßten wir wohl über 200 Mark dafür verlangen, wenn sich das Spiel einigermaßen gut verkauft.

These guys were way too honest. Probably knew they were going to get canceled already.

That is clearly a must to cancel this project.

 

[LESS T_T]

Well, they might have been working on "Dragon Wars 2" longer than I think.

https://www.facebook.com/711455612309116/posts/711456942308983/

October 30, 2014
The team was created and the story was laid out...

(For reference, this post itself was added on Feb 2, 2015.)

Also Matt Barton linked this on Twitter and pointed to comment section: http://www.gamebanshee.com/news/115047-dragon-wars-2-announced-kickstarter-campaign-coming.html

Zin - 19 days ago
no idea if you are the real rebecca or not, in case you are you said you did the all 3 bard's tales, wikipedia says something else and maybe Brian Fargo and Michael Cranford have something to say about this too.

Rebecca Heineman - 19 days ago
Bard's Tale I and II for the Apple IIgs are my games as was many pieces of underlying tech on the Apple ][ version of I and II. Bard's Tale III and Dragon Wars engines were totally written and designed by me and were a huge leap forward. The sequel to Dragon Wars has been worked for a long time already and I'm excited to be able to finally announce its existence.

BuckGB - 18 days ago
Thanks for dropping by, Rebecca. I haven't used a hex editor for 20+ years at this point, but since this has certainly renewed my interest in playing through the original again, I may have a party of characters to import yet. If you want to spill any details on your plans for importing characters into the sequel and dealing with their significant power vs. new characters, though, feel free .

Rebecca Heineman - 18 days ago
The game's entire design revolves around your characters interaction with the world, of course if you're starting the game as super powered god like beings, combat would likely be a joke, but then, have you stopped to consider that the townsfolk might retreat from you in fear or worship you as gods? Be careful how you treat people, it will matter and change the story.

 

[Infinitron]

Well, they might have been working on "Dragon Wars 2" longer than I think.

We know they've been working on something, or thinking about working on something, for a long time: http://bardstale.brotherhood.de/talefiles/forum/viewtopic.php?p=5051

Rebecca: I would say so. However, please leak that "Olde Skuul" is planning a spiritual successor to Bard's Tale III and is preparing a kickstarter. I'd love to see if there is real excitement behind it

Not sure if it was always going to be a "Dragon Wars 2", though.

 

[LESS T_T]

Possibly Incline: apparently the name of their new title is Dragons of the Rip, not Dragon Wars 2. Possibly Herve is not involved with this one anymore.

https://twitter.com/JennellAllyn/status/574695789026476032

So. This morning, in front of an audience, We totally announced that @OldeSkuul is moving forward with our computer RPG, Dragons of the Rip.

Dragons of the Rip, a classic RPG by creators who brought you Dragon Wars, Bards Tale 3, and Judges Guild's Dark Tower.

@JennellAllyn we will be posting concept art and details on our website in a few days.

Also "Dragon Wars 2" Facebook page has disappeared.

DRAGONSOFTHERIP.COM was resistered in Feb 10.

 

[Infinitron]

RIP in peace, Dragon Wars 2.

I wonder why they had to do that.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

Possibly Herve related, wanting too much for the rights to the name?

Perhaps we'll see him now trying his own KS for Dragon Wars 2, as the cycle of butthurt continues.

 

[Darkzone]

RIP in peace, Dragon Wars 2.
I wonder why they had to do that.

Perhaps it was the backlash from the announcement. Perhaps it was like Zorba pointed out Herve related. Perhaps the Drags have come to senses and have seen that this is a worthless IP and that working together with a crook is bad for business.

 

[Jaesun]

Possibly Incline: apparently the name of their new title is Dragons of the Rip, not Dragon Wars 2. Possibly Herve is not involved with this one anymore.

https://twitter.com/JennellAllyn/status/574695789026476032

So. This morning, in front of an audience, We totally announced that @OldeSkuul is moving forward with our computer RPG, Dragons of the Rip.

Dragons of the Rip, a classic RPG by creators who brought you Dragon Wars, Bards Tale 3, and Judges Guild's Dark Tower.

@JennellAllyn we will be posting concept art and details on our website in a few days.

Also "Dragon Wars 2" Facebook page has disappeared.

DRAGONSOFTHERIP.COM was resistered in Feb 10.

Oh I am REALLY hoping she ditched Herve and is just going to do her own thing!

 

[Alchemist]

Yup that is good news if it's not associated with Herve anymore.

 

[octavius]

You talk about Herve like he was so some mustache twirling villain???

 

[Broseph]

You talk about Herve like he was so some mustache twirling villain???

Well, isn't he?