Section 1: Andrew’s Bids for Position
The first concern with this book is Andrew’s numerous attempts to place himself at the center of the development team and establish some manner of sole authority over the book and its development.
During the layout of the book, Andrew established himself in the credits as “Project Lead” despite nobody on the team agreeing to this positioning. I, meanwhile, was relegated to the position of “Writer” despite my role in assembling and coordinating the book’s writing team. After prolonged discussion, Andrew eventually changed my title to “Assistant Coordinator” despite my repeated specification that the duties I fulfilled for this project met the standard for the Project Manager role.
Only when Manual of the Planes (5e) was released did I discover that Andrew had put himself as the Project Manager and sole copyright holder of the book. When I confronted him about this, the only change he made was promoting me and Loki from Writers to Assistant Coordinators (a term I am not familiar with). At this point, I did not see it as worthwhile to fight Andrew on the copyright claim, as I was seeking to move on to new projects. I confirmed with Brian Lewis (former attorney for Wizards of the Coast) that Andrew's sole copyright claim is unfounded, and while he did eventually modify the credits page to place all authors as joint copyright holders this was only done after a month of cajoling and the threat of legal action. Even then, his statement made no consideration for legal ownership of materials which authors had published prior to the book that was republished within.
The whole reason why we had to go through Andrew on any of these matters was because he had set up the DMsGuild page for Manual of the Planes 5e with himself as the only editor. Similarly, all of the master files for the book were kept exclusively on his computer with no means for anyone else on the team to review them. Andrew leveraged this lack of access to try and go over the heads of the other writing staff at multiple points, with one example being the inclusion of the “Defying Government is Sinful and Unnatural” quote alongside the Mount Celestia writeup (seen on page 230).
During the writing of the 4th draft, Andrew would create numerous chats outside of Loki’s original server where the project would be discussed. I eventually discovered that the purpose for these side chats was to facilitate Andrew’s ejection of certain team members when such removal suited him. This will be explored later on.
Section 2: Andrew’s Treatment of Team Members and their Writing
Something that I made sure of when reaching out to contributors on this book was that our team had a solid body of Planescape knowledge. Ken Marable, Loki Williams, and Afroakuma were ideal team members for this project because they have each made prominent contributions to Planescape’s community over the last several decades and each possess a strong understanding of what makes the setting compelling. Andrew, by comparison, had minimal knowledge of Planescape’s history and community at the outset of this project, and consistently appeared to have minimal interest in legacy content. This did not stop him from repeatedly trying to modify the writing of other creators against their will.
Andrew had a tendency to attempt unilateral "overrides" (his own words) of lore elements and setting material which the writers were passionate about, using the arbitrary excuses of "5e-adjacency" to remove or rewrite lore against the wishes of the authors. Objection to any of Andrew’s overrides required I rally multiple contributing authors behind me in order to stop Andrew from repeatedly deleting or modifying the material in question.
Andrew did not apply this same standard to himself, writing up extended new sections which contradicted or invalidated established lore without any input from the other writers. Any criticisms were promptly ignored, with a common tactic being the disregarding of comments only for him to ask "why didn't you say something sooner?" after writing out the section in detail. Early on, I developed a habit of keeping everything I entered on the compilation documents in a separate backup document so that it could be retrieved in case of unexpected deletion.
Some examples of Andrew’s override attempts when writing the book were as follows
-Andrew seemed to have a strong dislike for any lore that committed to Planescape’s heavier thematic elements, changing or removing descriptions that worked to establish the grit that defined the original setting.
-In the Material Plane, I added a section detailing a theory about the transformation of the Crystal Sphere-based cosmology into the current Astral Sea cosmology. Andrew tried to have that section deleted by saying it would be too confusing for new players, because it was in conflict with the 5E Spelljammer setting.
-I wasn’t permitted to include explanations of the Shadowfell connecting different versions of the same Material Plane world. This subject is well-established in multiple classic novels and adventures (most notably the Gord the Rogue novels and “Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk”). I was able to tangentially mention this subject in “Origins of the Shadowfell”.
-Andrew repeatedly demanded that unique artifacts from Planescape’s history be reduced to very rare magic items so that we could fill out that section faster (the most obvious example here is the Staff of the Lower Planes, which he insisted should also have “Staff of the Middle/Upper Planes” equivalents). He justified this by claiming that “5E design standards” demanded that such items be available to players. This matter was still in dispute at the time of my removal.
-In the Outlands, Andrew tried to erase any explanation or inclusion of the Nine Rings and their effects on magic.
-Andrew couldn’t grasp the concept of bounded infinities and tried to remove any mention of planes being infinite (by virtue of “if they were infinite they would cover all the other planes”). This led to a substantial argument during the writing of the original book as to whether planes should be infinite or have clear boundaries. As he was in charge of writing the elemental planes, he still insisted on keeping specific measurements for the elemental planes. Similarly, he ardently resisted any reference to “paraelemental” or “quasielemental” on the premise that the Elemental Chaos covered everything outside the six major Inner Planes and that to mention these legacy terms would alienate the audience.
-Andrew pushed us to close open-ended questions and mysteries with suggested “canonical” answers, despite this conflicting with the feel of the setting. As an example, he pushed to make up a specific identity for the Prisoner of Belierin and resisted the idea of leaving its nature open-ended.
-Andrew demanded that every monster listed in the book be featured in Chapter 3 content, including demands about how they be utilized; e.g. he wanted achaierai to be presented as having a complex society because otherwise they weren't noteworthy enough to include as monsters in his view.
-Andrew disliked the idea that we would name major NPCs without connecting them to statblocks; for example, he wanted to treat every member of the Celestial Hebdomad as a standard tome archon so that this statblock would “see enough use” in the book. Similarly, unique eodath were pushed to use existing statblocks rather than being left undefined. His pressure in these areas led to content being resected or not offered for inclusion as there were concerns that he would insist on watering down unique concepts to fit his perspective of how such things should be done.
-Andrew felt that the Far Realm should be whimsical and silly, and disliked being contradicted by others on how this would clash tonally with its more Lovecraftian depiction. He insisted that settlements be written in the Far Realm for players to explore
During the later phases of this book's development and the 4th Draft, Andrew would continue this trend by demanding that deities from older editions have their realms moved to different planes in order to create an equality in wordcount between different planes, regardless of appropriateness. He determined that it was a “creative concession” that other writers would have to make for the sake of meeting, yet again, “5E design standards” and claimed that market research was behind this decision. Andrew attempted to impose a rule that each plane would have a specific wordcount allocation tied to its number of distinct layers, meaning that expanding the section for Limbo would require an equal amount of new material to be written for every other plane with a single layer and multiple times that amount of material would need to be added to multi-layer planes like Carceri and Mount Celestia. This sounds good in theory - who doesn’t like more content? - except it was meant to check the growth of any section beyond the confines of his planned wordcount, not to encourage us to add more across the board. There were multiple suggestions that deities or powers have their centers of power moved from the Outer Planes to the Positive and Negative Energy Plane for no other reason than to facilitate this need for balance, which he declared was reached in consultation with professional authors who had worked on first-party products
When Andrew wasn't keen on particular pieces of the book, they would sometimes be deleted from documents without explanation given. He did not appreciate being called out on these. He would also routinely challenge terms and concepts that he felt the audience would be unable to understand - for example, wanting to rename formians to “anttaurs” to avoid confusion with fomorians, when the two monsters never coexist. Having been pushed to accept the original term, he subsequently decided to introduce formians to the Feywild. This was under discussion at the time of my removal.
I have reason to believe that some of Andrew’s attempts at changes and orders were not made in good faith and were in fact attempts to demoralize team members or assert control. These imposed changes would prompt the implosion of the project later on.
Section 3: Andrew’s Retribution Efforts
In the period leading up to Manual of the Planes (5e)'s release, I reached out to several games journalists and influencers in order to raise awareness of the book. I did not name the book I was working on, but I did discuss interest with interviewing these parties down the line, and Andrew was encouraging at the time. I introduced him and Afroakuma to a number of media personalities and set up an AMA on Reddit.
The issues emerged when I announced my intention to interview with the podcast RPGBot and the youtuber Jorphdan, both of whom I had reached out to. In both cases, Andrew confronted me and actively forbade me from getting involved, trying to pull some sort of authority which I didn't fully recognize in order to make sure that I was not allowed to make verbal public statements about Manual of the Planes (5e). Every time I tried to arrange a time for the interview, Andrew would bend over backwards to explicitly ensure that I wasn't allowed to participate.
When I asked him about this behavior, Andrew’s justification was that my perspective as an old-edition veteran would make me innately biased, but even when I proposed interviewing alongside him or another designer Andrew would vehemently push back against my involvement. When the subject of the interview was raised in our team chat, Andrew openly stated that I was being pushed out of the interview as “punishment” for having arranged the interviews to promote the product we were all involved in creating and had a stake in sales of, over his explicit instruction that only he could secure interviews. Ultimately, Andrew would leverage my attempts at outreach as an excuse to remove me from the project.
Section 4: The Print-on-Demand Fallout
In April of 2024, I posted my Fourth Draft entry on Y'chak the Violet Flame on the shared compilation document only to find no trace of it next time I checked. I had to confront Andrew about this removal in order to get him to admit that he had gotten rid of the section without telling me (after a while, I got him to admit that he deleted the section because he didn’t think the plot hooks were obvious enough). I screenshotted his commentary and shared it to the Discord we were working in, saying that his overrides were unacceptable.
On May 1st, 2024, Andrew Welker sent me an email and discord message explaining that he was removing me from the project. Although I still had access to the Google Drive of files, I was removed from all Discord channels in which Manual of the Planes' development was being discussed. No justification was given and the other team members were not immediately informed, with the other members expressing surprise at my sudden ejection. Only after Afroakuma and I pulled our collective Fourth Draft writings from the shared documents did we get any response from Andrew. The previous day, Andrew and I had become heated over discussions regarding Y'chak's unexplained deletion and the implication that Andrew was going to delete several more of my written sections in the print release.
When Andrew did finally give me an explanation, he cited my attempts at arranging interviews as a violation of an arrangement made with a third party. This runs counter to what Andrew said at the time, where he not only stated that I could speak about the project publicly (provided this arrangement was honored) but actively encouraged me to make connections and promote the book at Gamehole Con 2023. Lawyers have reviewed the arrangement with the third party and confirmed that I made no violations.
Afroakuma withdrew from the Fourth Draft and was removed from project development channels several days later. In the wake of my ejections, there have been concerns that Andrew would attempt to use our inability to respond to alter or delete our contributions to the book. Numerous times over the last month, I have attempted to contact Andrew asking to negotiate, only to be met each time with deflections or stonewalling. During this period, other team members have since left the project, effectively leaving Andrew and Paolo as the only remaining members willing to contribute to the book under Andrew’s self-appointed leadership.
The issue of Andrew falsely citing himself as the sole copyright holder remained until a revision on June 6th. This change was only made once I pressed for legal action against Andrew, who refused to negotiate or explain anything unless I bring a lawyer into the conversation with him. For weeks, he consistently insisted on escalating this to legal arguments rather than try to negotiate or settle matters in good faith. This led into the next step.
Section 5: The Legal Affairs
On June 6th, acting on the guidance of several other veteran game designers and publishers, I enlisted a lawyer to clarify the ownership of Manual of the Planes 5e and engage in negotiations with Andrew on our behalf. Upon hearing confirmation from a lawyer that Andrew did not possess any singular ownership of the book that was not shared with the other creators under joint ownership, Andrew refused to answer emails for several days and only responded after being told that the lawyer endorsed the actions described in section 6. In his final response, Andrew made clear that he has no intention of ever engaging or cooperating with myself or Afroakuma and stands by his decision (and authority) to forcibly remove us from the project.
Section 6: Going Forward
Myself, Fro, and numerous other contributors on the book agree that the best course of action, given that the book as originally published is ready for a physical release, is to make the current draft available as print-on-demand and agree that no further content modifications are necessary. As Andrew controls the original product page, there is no way for any of us to accelerate the book’s release. Otherwise, it would have come out long ago.
Andrew also seems reluctant to release Manual of the Planes 5e in his current state in spite of what has happened. In brief, as there is no market incentive for him to refuse the print-on-demand solution (as feedback on the product page and elsewhere indicates there is a demand for the print edition of the original publication, regardless of expanded content), and no content incentive (Andrew having already indicated several times over both in public and privately that he would like to move on to other projects, as would we all), it is hard to understand his motivation to prolong this frustration without attributing it to plain old ego. Just like he felt the need to “punish” me for the high crime of arranging an interview to promote our work, I now believe he wants to “punish” me once more for refusing to walk away and let him claim squatters’ rights over this book.
Fortunately, I have spoken to my lawyer, representatives of Roll20, and our new layout artist Taron Pounds (also known as Indestructoboy) about a new solution which we have confirmed as within our means.
Using what assets we are able to obtain and reverse-engineer, we are now currently working on a Print Edition of Manual of the Planes 5e which will be released on its own product page in the coming months. Save for one egregious flavor quote which Andrew added with the objections of the team, this book will contain all of the text from the original PDF release.
Eventually, I hope to collaborate with other contributors including Afroakuma on a new Planescape book using the nearly 20k words of material that we wrote to be included in the 4th draft.
In the event that Andrew does release a new book in print, everyone here should know that neither myself nor Afroakuma have signed off on the material within. We do not approve of any changes made in our absence and do not wish to be associated with any materials within this revision.
I intend never to work without a contract again and intend never to work with Andrew Welker again. I encourage every one of you reading this to do the same.
If you have any further questions or wish me to provide screenshots, I will answer to the best of my ability.
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