Eric Chiang's Transparency as IC Storyline Coordinator

Eric,
I repeat my questions, because you refuse to answer the ones based on facts and not opinion.

Fact #1
You were a member of the Inner Circle and you were dismissed because of, at least, a perceived conflict of interest. I am not sure exactly how much evidence the Inner Circle may have had to back up that perception, but from your own admission that perception was there.

I am not the people who declared your conflicts of interest to be there, therefore I am not the person to give the benchmark for you to clear your conflict of interest.

If I was to use the kind of standard found in public offices then you would need to:
- Detail your activities with PCK before, during and after you were on the IC
- Detail your activities as a member of the IC.
- Provide evidence detailing how your interests with PCK do not overlap with, compete with or represent a conflict of interests with the VEKN whom you worked for.


Your regular evasion of this and hiding behind phrases such as "This forms part of my legal strategy" confirms that you have no interest in placing your own interests after the interests of the VEKN. And at this point, since the VEKN is the only player organisation and the current controller of development of new VTES cards, acting against the interests of the VEKN can be easily identified as being against the players and against the development of new VTES cards.

Fact #2
You regularly ask for standards you refuse to meet.

You demand great transparency in Pascals actions, you do not do this yourself.
You demand answers from me, yet provide no answer to the greatest problem with your conduct; an unresolved conflict of interest.
Your claims for transparency ring hollow.

Fact #3
You claimed to have been taken by surprise when the Inner Circle declared they were working on a new set. As an Inner Circle member were you not privy to the meetings? Were you not in discussions with the remainder of the Inner Circle about these actions? Does this represent one of the following:

1) An effective motion of no-confidence in your abilities as an Inner Circle Member by excluding you from these discussions.
2) Negligence on your part regarding the activities of the Inner Circle.
3) Further evidence of your conflict of interest where the activities of the Inner Circle were less important than your own and hence you were caught by surprise regarding the Inner Circles actions.



Regarding your claims of me cherry-picking facts to suit my needs. This is a claim made against you by people other than me. If this tactic is abhorrent to you, then why do you do it to others to the point where Hugh, whose opinion as an accomplished player is invalid, becomes the core of your first claim against me? Also, you conveniently quote Hugh as defence while attacking him within single posts. Why do you feel the need to take comments from a source and then attack that source in the same post? You have done this with Hugh, Ben and Mike on a number of occasions.


Who Made Lilith's Blessing
I made my claim with a clear premise. If the premise is false, the remainder is false. The claim was clearly stated at the beginning and I assumed that any average person could easily read your reply and thereby construe that my problems with Lilith's Blessing in particular were not your fault but instead the fault of Ben Swainbank et al. Your desire to prove this point does seem desperate.

On the same score, since Lilith's Blessing is presumably a card you were involved designing...

The presumption was incorrect. There is public fact to the contrary and I don't lay my objections to the design of Lilith's Blessing with you. Since this is the bulk of your content in your most recent post, this should end your complaints against me on this matter.


Transparency in VTES
I didn't say that wanting transparency in decisions is new.

I said YOUR claims to want EXTENSIVE transparency in decisions is new, persistent, belligerent and bullying. Especially in the context of your refusal to directly answer the questions directed to you about your conduct.

VEKN Secrecy
I can't tell you why the VEKN needs to be secretive, I was never an Inner Circle Member. You were, maybe you can provide reasons why the VEKN might be secretive. You were, in the past, privy to far larger amounts of information about the operation of the Inner Circle and no doubt privy to the sorts of reasons the VEKN may have for keeping information private.

I can give you reasons why a company or non-profit organisation may refuse to give information. Most of them are related to disclosure agreements, commercial-in-confidence information and other contract clauses. I make no claim about what else should be hidden except those things which by contract are agreed to be hidden.

VEKN is the only player organisation for VTES
If you think you could do a better job of:
- designing cards
- maintaining a tournament scene
- designing and maintaining a website
- cultivating the player base of VTES
- promoting and advertising the game to new players

then why are you arguing here instead of creating your own player's association and compete with the VEKN? If you are so good at these things, then go prove it. You are free to create your own player association with its own rules and it's own transparent decision making processes.

If you do not want to do these things, or think that the task of setting up a rival association is too large, or that the effort would be futile... then why attack the people here who are attempting to do the things listed above?

My statement isn't contradictory. If you are going to be a rival to the VEKN have the integrity to actually be a rival.

Change of mind and angering the playerbase
I can assume that at some point you were for enhancing the playerbase (otherwise you would not have been an author for Clan Newsletters, a Prince or an Inner Circle member). Those actions would apparently speak for themselves in that regard in the past.

It would seem from your actions, such as releasing the PCK set, that you had changed your mind about the VEKN and working to enhance the playerbase. These actions were commented upon extensively during the period where you were part of a group threatening litigation and when you were involved in actively advertising a non-sanctioned card-set.

Why 10-year old events don't have to be relevant now
10 years ago you were no doubt still writing Clan Newsletters and working to help the playerbase. I would also assume that the vast majority of players would agree that at that point in time, you were helping the players and the VEKN.

Now, if a survey of opinion was taken regarding your actions recently I personally (and this is my own opinion) doubt that there would be a vast majority of players agreeing that you are working to help the players the VEKN.

Your thoughts and actions have changed over the last 10 years. No doubt the thoughts and actions of others have also changed.

Transparency of your predecessors
Back in 2004, when I began playing, I did little more than play periodically in the tournaments organised by my local Prince. My local Prince was not particularly interested in Storyline Tournaments and as a new player, I was not particularly interested in the wider details of Storyline Events.

This was true for a long time. Then events and things changed.

I started organising my local playgroup, becoming a Prince myself, and in the last three years have stepped up my involvement with the 'systems' of the VEKN. So consequently, the only times where I have really needed to have high involvement with a Storyline Coordinator is when you were the Coordinator. Also during your time as the Storyline Coordinator (from your own admissions) you conducted one tournament at the EC, found it to be too difficult to attempt anything in 2011 and provided negligible feedback if any on my own attempts to run a local BYO Storyline.

So since I was not heavily involved as an organiser, merely a new player, and not particularly aware of the VEKN before becoming a Prince, how am I supposed to make informed evaluations on the conduct of your predecessors?

Regarding the actions of Mike Nudd. He has said little, and potentially done little. The few discussions I have had with him were best summarised as "I am busy working on [Danse Macabre] and currently have no plans for Storyline Events." Seems simple to me. I might like Mike to do more, but he has provided a direct, transparent reason to me personally about why there may be nothing happening on the Storyline Events front. To Mike Nudd, or others who may know more, I would gladly be corrected if this summary is inaccurate and should be factually corrected.

Hopefully when he, Mike Nudd, does commence work on Storyline Events, he will be easy to deal with, prolific, considered, show great attention to detail, actively seek extensive feedback on card designs before they are released to the players and take the opinions of key groups (such as the Design Team, Rules Team and Playtesters) on board when making decisions.

Squidalot wrote:

Outrage over the legal threats sure, over your set no

I would like to point out a several things:

1) Throughout the spring of 2012, each of Carl, Eric and Jeff attempted to have confidential discussions with various people associated with the VEKN Inner Circle.
2) Topics included attempting to heal the rift on the Design Team before things got bad (and after too).
3) Unfortunately, things did not work out, so we made a set (GotF) out of cards we created.
4) Privately, we offered the GotF set to the V:EKN for use. We did not get a clear response from them.
5) Afterward, we released the GotF set publicly for V:TES fans.
6) At a certain point, it became necessary to send, in confidence, a strongly worded letter to Johannes and the V:EKN Inner Circle.
7) Johannes decided to make that letter public including provocative rhetoric in his post. Thus, outrage. And not constructive discussion.

Jeff wrote:

Squidalot wrote:

Outrage over the legal threats sure, over your set no

I would like to point out a several things:

1) Throughout the spring of 2012, each of Carl, Eric and Jeff attempted to have confidential discussions with various people associated with the VEKN Inner Circle.
2) Topics included attempting to heal the rift on the Design Team before things got bad (and after too).
3) Unfortunately, things did not work out, so we made a set (GotF) out of cards we created.
4) Privately, we offered the GotF set to the V:EKN for use. We did not get a clear response from them.
5) Afterward, we released the GotF set publicly for V:TES fans.
6) At a certain point, it became necessary to send, in confidence, a strongly worded letter to Johannes and the V:EKN Inner Circle.
7) Johannes decided to make that letter public including provocative
rhetoric in his post. Thus, outrage. And not constructive discussion.

Jeff,
So you are admitting that in 2012, while Eric was the Storyline Coordinator, that he was taking time of the Inner Circle to push your separate card set instead of developing a Storyline Event that could have been played by everyone instead of just in the EC?

Are you providing us with the evidence of Eric's Conflict of Interest?

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

@DeathInABottle:
I don't mind Pascal publishing some reasoning behind his decisions. However, there are extensive threads with arguments for and against the errata, banning and leaving-alone of Lilith's Blessing. Feel free to read through them. Pascal may not have felt the need to provide a specific answer to this because of the abundance of public opinions about the card. I'm sure that thread contains numerous examples of Pascal's opinions on the card. You could no doubt consider them as reasons why Lilith's Blessing ended up banned.

I've read them, and they range over very wide territory. Undoubtedly Pascal's reasons are buried in there somewhere, but there's a substantial difference between a governing body explaining its decisions and gesturing to the existence of public debate. It's akin to a government adopting a policy on climate change and justifying it by saying that scientists have done science: that's true, but it's not exactly helpful. As I've said before, in the case of bans, I think that it would make sense for the rules team to offer a brief statement explaining the reasons that a card was banned so that future rules teams have succinct, official material to which they can make reference, and so that casual players who don't have the time to leaf through dozens of pages on this forum can easily understand why the state of the game has changed.

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

Jeff,
So you are admitting that in 2012, while Eric was the Storyline Coordinator, that he was taking time of the Inner Circle to push your separate card set instead of developing a Storyline Event that could have been played by everyone instead of just in the EC?

Are you providing us with the evidence of Eric's Conflict of Interest?

I don't know much about the institutional history or the division of responsibilities here, but I think I can still point out a logical fallacy: it's not the case that a person can only perform one task at a time. I don't see how attempting to have confidential discussions precludes developing a storyline event.

Massively off topic but...

Jeff wrote:

Squidalot wrote:

Outrage over the legal threats sure, over your set no

I would like to point out a several things:

1) Throughout the spring of 2012, each of Carl, Eric and Jeff attempted to have confidential discussions with various people associated with the VEKN Inner Circle.
2) Topics included attempting to heal the rift on the Design Team before things got bad (and after too).
3) Unfortunately, things did not work out, so we made a set (GotF) out of cards we created.
4) Privately, we offered the GotF set to the V:EKN for use. We did not get a clear response from them.
5) Afterward, we released the GotF set publicly for V:TES fans.
6) At a certain point, it became necessary to send, in confidence, a strongly worded letter to Johannes and the V:EKN Inner Circle.
7) Johannes decided to make that letter public including provocative rhetoric in his post. Thus, outrage. And not constructive discussion.

You stated that that the IC were outraged over your set - I said they weren't they, were outraged by your legal threats.
Anyone should be able make a set of cards if they so wish - however legal threats for alleged misuse of copyright in a community like this extremely uncool.

1. You'd already left the DT at this stage Jeff in rather a one way trip manner unfortunately so I missed your attempts to heal the 'rift'
2-3.
4. You said, and I paraphrase as I have no idea if I received an email to this effect or read it on this forum , "You must use all, and all of these cards in their current format as written" given that for a variety of reasons at least some of the cards would not work as written, none could therefore be used, but thank you for the kind offer.

6. I'm not sure why if you send a letter to my MP why I wouldn't expect him to share it?
I appreciate that may not be the case in the real political world but if i've paid for someone to hold public office i'd expect the information to come back through FOI in the majority of cases

Also i'm not sure where in your letter you made it clear it was confidential perhaps in this bit, but I don't see where:
"FOR THE ATTENTION OF THE OFFICER IN CHARGE OF HANDLING COPYRIGHT
COMPLAINTS, OTHERWISE THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, PRESIDENT OR
CHAIRMAN"
or was it a different letter Jeff?

anyway totally off topic - I think this is about cool stuff Eric did over two 2010/11+