Saturday 21 January 2012

Shipman continues to pirate T&T material {T&T}

James Shipman is infamous within the Tunnels & Trolls community for a history of ultra-dodgy dealings, from flogging a facsimile copy of 1st edition as genuine to flat out stealing artwork for a vast number of talented and hard-working artists, including some of my friends. 

Unfortunately the little cretin continues his baffling digital kleptomania by putting new solos and adventures on his site for free, even though many of them aren't available freely from the publishers. His latest additions have been the brand new Dwarf World and Formication by Ken St. Andre and Sid Orpin respectively.

Please, please, PLEASE! If you come across Shipman's site and you see the list of pirated adventures - don't get them, or if you do make sure you try and find the real version and actually purchase it. Not only will you be helping out the small press RPG community that T&T relies on, you will also be receiving a much better quality copy of the adventure since Shipman just copies the text into a Word document and puts it online.

In similar news, I have a hunch that Shipman is behind the recent one-star reviews of T&T material on RPGNow. A certain reviewer called Chip Suel has been posting negative scores for adventures and Trollszine offering, in my eyes, one-sided criticism. The thing that makes me think it's Shipman is because of the references to Hobbit Hole being still available and saying the artwork in Trollszine has been taken from Hobbit Hole. The reviewer says:
"Overall TrollsZine #1 was just okay, even if most of the artwork from this issue has been used before in The Hobbit Hole. Shouldn’t that be credited to it? I’ve since heard that TrollsZine has stalled at issue #3, but that seems very ironic seeing how TrollsZine said The Hobbit Hole was dead, yet it still lives. Wanting something to die doesn't make it true. Keep up the good quality, but leave out the nasty Trollhalla politics."
He also references Dungeoneer's Digest, which is another Shipman publication, so either this is an overly-critical T&T fan that's blind to Shipman's bullshit, or it's the slimy hobbit himself.

10 comments:

  1. Shipman is such a turd! Talking about his antics is a doubled edged sword. In one respect, it is necessary to confront people like this, and call them out for their shady actions. On the other hand, it also draws attention to his website, and the illegal downloads. The unfortunate thing is that no one in this community has the resources to actually go after Shipman, so he will just continue along doing what he does best, which is illegally profiting from the talents and passion of others.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "Wanting something to die doesn't make it true".

    Making comments like this in the context of irony. How ironic.

    - Cartomancer.

    ReplyDelete
  3. What a jerk. I wouldn't be surprised if it IS ShiTman himself, it is about his speed. Funny thing is, he writes negative reviews without actually saying anything except 'I don't like it'.

    If anyone wants more info regarding ShiTman's antics, stroll on over to TROLL HAMMER: http://trollhammerpress.blogspot.com/search/label/Boycott%20Outlaw%20Press

    ReplyDelete
  4. I am relatively new to all this stuff, but it amazes me how this guy can sleep at night. I know, with a pillow and a blanket...

    ReplyDelete
  5. jerrytel: the guy is a sociopath with a desperate desire to be noticed. he doesn't really care what people say about him, as long as they talk about him. He makes outrageous statements in order to get a response. I believe he needs psychiatric treatment, but unfortunately there is no way we can force him to get it. If he were a physical danger to others, we could. But he is only an emotional annoyance to (many) others. This is, of course, only my opinion. I am not a psychiatrist.

    ReplyDelete
  6. This guy has been around for a long time. I found that I still have some of the Broadsword magazines he *ahem* published in either the late 80's early 90's. With comics and even ad pages photocopied from other magazines.

    ReplyDelete
  7. So why hasn't anyone written actual reviews to counteract this? Blog posts about it are good in a way, but simply reviewing the stuff on DriveThruRPG would be better it seems. I plan to do this as soon as I get a free second today(posting on phone right now) to buy the solos and read through them some...though we all know 1 star is probably unwarranted.

    This is Barbelllo from Trollhalla, only anonymous bc linking an account from the phone is a pain.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I don't get it. Why doesn't Ken or Sid do something about it?

    As I recall, this is not the first time he has done this.

    -anem kram from Trollhalla

    ReplyDelete
  9. And he even sells the stuff on amazon although there are rather scalding comments, especially about the so called 6th edition of T&T. I can't understand why amazon doesn't pull the plug on him.

    - HittenRunner

    ReplyDelete