You can't have it both ways.

I'm going to be a little biased for a moment here and admit that Privateer Press is my favorite miniature manufacturer right now. They are honest about what they are doing and why. They do right by their customers and participate in their own forums a lot more than I would expect them to. I have to be honest here and say that I have not been able to find the kind of quality company behaviour that I find from Privateer Press elsewhere. Rackham writes sloppy rules and even worse FAQ/errata, Games workshop seems to simply create and delete rules, options, whole armies etc based on oracles, star charts, flipping of coins and phrenological deductions in so far as I can tell. My point today is not that these companies are not producing something that deserves your money. I still thoroughly enjoy 40k and AT-43 and I think that both of them are brilliant games.

What I'm talking about is the ridiculous notion that Privateer Press can be called dishonest, manipulative, greedy or the like. You can't have it both ways people, and this is why.

If a company decides to write rules by the seat of their pants and simply fix things along the way as they come up then you have a company like Rackham. R only seems to want to fix problems when people start clawing at their eyes in lamentation. Running around putting out fires is not an environement that is inviting to new players. The actual game writers have gone onto the AT-43 forums many times to re-write, clarify and then re-re-write rules because they didn't see how their decisions would impact the entire system of rules. They seem to be getting a handle on it, and they're making more solid consistent rulings, but it is still very DUI...I mean DIY-ish.

On the other hand, if a company continually changes the core system of their rules, creates and deletes whole army composition elements and re-creates itself every 4 years without any seeming pattern then you have a company like Games Workshop. Every 4-5 years GW comes out with a new rules theory that dictates all the decisions they make for that time. The only pattern that has ever been apparent is that the rules have made handling larger and larger armies easier. Other than that, GW seems content to never fix any of the problems whatever current rule theory they've made has created. It's the exact opposite of Rackham. Where Rackham is almost naked in showing you that they're still figuring out what they're doing while you sit at home with the rule book in your hands, GW tosses you a damn fine piece of work that needs a little fine tuning but refuses to actually do that fine tuning or build on what they've created. Instead they copy paste FAQ's that were written in 1997 for a rule book that's still being played today. After all, why bother with an FAQ when you can just write a brand new rulebook? 5th edition here I come!

So am I saying that these are the dishonest companies? that PP is the only one you can trust? No. I'm saying that these are companies that have bottom lines that are important to them. Privateer Press never said they weren't trying to make money. They just said that they would do it with style and quality. My point is only that Privateer Press is the only company that seems to be able to balance having a plan, with being able to build on the experience they get from implementing that plan. GW refuses to admit when it's wrong, but they make damn fine games. R is sloppy and inconsistent, but they're constantly improving and even though it'll cost us more in rulebooks then it should ever need to, we WILL eventually have a really good COMPLETE rule system from them. In the meantime I think we all need to applaud PPs ability to be solid and reliable without being inflexible and out of touch.

if you guys can get down with that then I'll even be willing to stop praying to Shiva each night that somehow PP will acquire both GW and R so as to save them from their own managements.

Either way, I know that the more successful that Privateer Press becomes, the more its competition will learn from their habits, and that can only be a good thing for the state of the Game.