I also want Bull to have phenomenal cosmic powers, but unfortunately he’s stuck with just the itty bitty living space. So far he’s done an admirable job at keeping the peace.

Again, you overestimate Bull's authority. He's a freelancer, not an employee.

People IN THE COMPANY have been unable to get Catalyst management to release errata for English Shadowrun products. We have had literally thousands of folks having poking Catalyst for YEARS now asking for that errata. Only four books have had errata released, and I'm pretty sure those documents were produced under the previous license holder, Fanpro. Not by Catalyst.

The German releases got errata, true. But that wasn't Catalyst doing the work was it? It was Pegasus and other German licensees.

Flat out, Catalyst has shown little to no movement on releasing errata for the majority of the Shadowrun books they produced. This is not a new thing. We are talking multiple years later, still no errata. They even have an Errata board on their official forums, and if you ask when there is going to be errata for a product, or if they are going to release one at all, 99% of the time they give no official answer at all. The other 1% of the time they give a non-committal, "it's being worked on, we can't tell you when it'll be done" response.

I will tell you, Jason Hardy actually getting on their boards and saying "We screwed up the Arsenal errata for the last printing, sorry" was an absolute shock. A Catalyst employee actually commenting on errata. Astonishing. But it was still weeks after people had been reporting the problem. And he still gave no indication of any fix, just some excuses about not having a centralized document repository.

Hell, they actually managed to REMOVE the errata from the third printing of Street Magic, reverting the text back to the first printing with all the errors. The second edition had actually gotten fixed. This was months ago. No fix has been implemented or even announced. Despite multiple inquiries, Catalyst has yet to even acknowledge that there IS a problem. The stores still have the problem third printing on their shelves.

Catalyst does not do errata. They keep claiming they are working on it but so far their actions have not matched their words.

Understand. All of us Missions players would LOVE to see actual new errata. If you can get them to actually create and release errata for the English editions of Shadowrun, by all means, do so. I'm certain everyone would appreciate it.

But as far as I'm concerned, well, I'm not going to hold my breath waiting.

We cannot count on Catalyst releasing errata. Period. If it happens eventually, great! But we cannot plan around that possibility. We have to move forward assuming for the moment there will never be errata, and plan the campaign accordingly.

Bull is doing the best he can to make the campaign run properly in the convention-based format, with the caveat that he cannot alter the rules beyond that.




-k

Erratas happened until the change of line leadership (Unwired was not a Fanpro book, and it got a errata), as well as the economic debacle. Since then erratas have been a no-show, and sadly recent reprints have reverted to first print with minor typo corrections. Not sure if it is a problem internally at CGL, or if someone "scortched" the previous erratas on their way out the virtual door...

As requested, here's the first errata.

- Hobgoblin post - Jul 22 2011, 03:19 PM - p1 s3: "scortched" should have been "scorched"


And this one is now free for download right here on the web!

Mesh

Actually, CGL does compile errata. And they provide them to licensees like Pegasus for inclusion in their translations (I'm a proofreader for the German releases). Additional errors found during translation are then passed back to CGL.
So, CGL is in possession of errata for all their books - but they aren't released, for whatever strange reason!

All a freelancer can do is freelance, buddy. I'm not sure where you've got it, but somewhere along the line you've picked up a really strange notion of what working in the gaming industry is actually like. Freelancers can have great conversations with the line developer, and we can offer up ideas in group chats, and we can try to reinforce those ideas with canon material as we make arguments/brainstorm/share thoughts...but, ultimately, we're just freelancers.

We get paid to write what they pay us to write, to put it simply, and we're only "official" when we're getting paid. Everything we do that's canon goes through a hell of a proofing/editing/layout/mauling process, when a bunch of other people poke and prod at it, make changes, fix our typos, change stuff around to make it all fit together better, etc, etc, etc. We're not the final word on our own work (we send it in, then we see the final product months later, around the same time everyone else does) -- what on earth makes you think we're the final word on what our boss does?

+ Fucking 1. Ask yourself: Do you make decisions for your boss at your job?

For the record, I think that it is super lame that mind control is being banned. It's not even overpowered like say, stunbolt. I don't want to narrow the options of casters to the point where all they can do is hand out damage boxes. But I cannot magically make that be the case at CGL. I mean, I don't think this opinion of mine to leave mind control alone is a popular opinion with either the naysayers (who apparently want it banned from the game entirely or rebalanced) or with CGL (who want it banned from missions) but there it is.

I could talk to Bull (in fact consider this me doing so) or Jason about this. But most likely, they have reasons for making their decisions, and there is very little I can say that is going to sway them. Especially considering my newbie status. Bull has been running all of Missions for years whereas I have never run a mission. As much as my gut instinct is to disagree--a LOT--I do kind of have to defer to his expertise here, as frustrating as it is for me because mind control is cool and there shouldn't be this massive disconnect between RAW and official campaign. Still I am just not the guy in charge of this stuff.

Short answer: It's not that they're overpowered. It's that they frequently make the game less fun for the other players. At the end of the day, THIS is my number one priority.

(And I've only been doing Missions for a year and a half now (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) )

Bull

Pfft, a 'a year and a half' is years.

At least on every resume I've ever submitted. : )

Edit:

Missions can't be designed in such a way that some but not all of the objectives can be accomplished by Mind Control? I mean, I might argue that they already are. By RAW, Control Thoughts is a pretty limited spell, Control Actions even more so, if you pay attention to all of the drawbacks. There's the drain, the sustaining penalty, the actions used to give commands. It might help you with legwork as much or more than a face would, but with higher risks and graver consequences, and it's not going to win any firefights single handedly or get information off of a secure server.

Also, I mean Control Emotions definitely shouldn't be banned; according to RAW it doesn't even DO anything but impose a flat -2 penalty if the victim does not act "in accordance with the emotion they are feeling". Beyond that, the effectiveness of Control Emotions is almost completely up to the GM, who can interpret it in a way such as to make the game the most fun for all the players involved.

Even an arbitrary house rule limitation like "the drain for Mind Control spells is doubled" would be better than outright banning it.

Like, if it's kosher I'd like to discuss the specific instances where Mind Control has made the game less fun for players. Where's the data here, if you don't mind?

I know I'm not lucky enough to be on the 'player' side of things anymore, but speaking personally I can say that the removal of mind-effecting spells would make the game much less fun for me; particularly if I was playing a mage with mind effecting spells. : )

Stunbolt is overpowerd, and has been so in every edition. That aside, CGL cared enough to ask for a ban? When SRM started up we barely got a response. I'm seriously curious if it was CGL that asked for the ban, b/c that was not the opinion of the gamers that pointed me back to this forum.

Ok no offense, but those words you use, missions doesn't have those and that's where mind control is a problem. By canon/fluff magical crimes are seriously investigated ones involving mind control doubly so. That's just not something we have time to model in your average convention block and if we do it means we have to pull time away from the bulk of the players to deal with that one guy who finds mind control as the awesome replacement for social skills and combat powers. With no consequences and the proper leg work you can use mind control to hack a server, just control someone who does have access.

I have personally seen the face at a table have nothing to do pretty much because the mind control mage hit everyone with the spell as soon as he met them. Very similar the street sams, start of combat the mage throws down a mind control spell centered on himself (something he can't do with say, stunball) and by his second phase had ended combat. So please don't tell me it's not happening when i've seen with my own eyes, and I played a psionic through part of the new york campaign. I was very very cognizant of how show stealing that stuff could be, but I tried to take care not to steal others thunder.

Is there a way to design a mission that couldn't be gotten through with mind control/magic? Potentially, but then you wind up in a situation where everywhere you go has a background count of 6 (making starting mages and adepts mundanes) or where some other skill set like hacking is mandatory which Bull is absolutely loathe to do.

What I actually meant is that if you fail to charm someone, they won't immediately try to kill you. If you try to Mind Control someone who either resists or has magical protection or magical overwatch or a mage acting as a spotter, it's basically even worse than pulling a gun, and they will try to wreck your shit. It's a risky maneuver.

Anyway, we're really talking about the spell Control Thoughts specifically, right? Not some broad, ill defined category of "mind effecting spells" which could be everything from Combat Sense to Bugs. Because Control Actions, Influence, and Control Emotions really are not overpowered, especially Control Emotions.

I happen to think as an adventure designer myself that there are more ways to specifically challenge Mind Control than a Background Count. I think a Background Count would be an extremely clumsy way of trying to countermand it.

Also for the sake of consistency if you remove mind control from what the players can do, it wouldn't be fair to let NPCs continue using it, which would probably limit the number of options you have for plot and for canon NPCs who can appear.

That sounds partially like a case of someone not knowing the rules. If you center a mob mind (or mob control) spell on yourself and hit yourself and your friends, you have to either give orders to individuals (one at a time) or to all targets at once (including you and your friends). So you can spend a complex action to cast the spell, then (presumably) draw fire from every enemy that got hit, then either spend a simple action to give everyone an order (so if you order, say "surrender" or "drop your weapons," you and your allies also surrender/drop your weapons), or spend two simple actions to give two orders (so you could make two individual enemies surrender). I mean don't get me wrong, it's useful, but it's hardly a "don't bother with knowing any other way to fight" option.

I can see the issue with overusing Control Thoughts as a replacement for social skills. In any more contiguous game that would quickly get you a ton of enemies, but missions doesn't really have rules for making enemies, only for not making friends. I assume people pulled similar "don't bother with talking, just mind probe snipe everyone we meet" tactics as well.

What? No, stunbolt isn't banned!

I was saying that banning things like Control Emotions in the face of leaving Stunbolt unchanged was kind of silly. Sorry if you misunderstood.

Or maybe it is me who is confused. I just don't know anymore.

Also isn't the drain for a Force Decent Mob Mind spell very sizeable? Also it would only effect enemies within a radius of ~4-6 meters which is not the range every combat happens at.

Can you write counters to Mind Control into a mission? Sure.

But players facing mind control counters in EVERY SINGLE MISSION is where it gets silly. Frankly, it'd break immersion something fierce for me.





-k

Not necessarily true: Control thoughts doesn't say you have to issue all commands to all targets just that if you issue a command as a group it must be the same command for all targets and while we''re being technical I will also point out that unlike control actions control thoughts has no prohibition about uncommanded targets being able to act normally so control thoughts is just the better option as by the rules even before you've issued the command you've gotten the affected enemies to freeze and stop shooting you.


I do agree with the point that the actual phohibition should be clarified as: Mental Manipulation spells as they are their own discrete subcategory.

I don't exactly disagree that if players are expected to abide by things we as module writers should do it mostly, but the problem is if we use it as a plot genus on occasion mind control is still rare and scary, the players i've seen abusing it are using it as their first option.

But it doesn't need to counter it all the time in every mission it just needs to counter the uses that would make the mission less fun for other players.

I mean, are people really saying 'I am always very upset when anyone casts any mind effecting spells'? I just don't see the issue, I guess. Whose schtick is Control Thoughts stepping on? What are some reports of this causing problems in a game? How about some data? : )



Control Actions and Control Emotion and Influence are all way, way less powerful and "mission-breaking" than Control Thoughts.

I gave you examples above of issues seen at con games, I'm sorry if your toy is getting taken away but there is a problem.

That's fair enough, I guess. It is totally true that if you run Mob Mind as nobody being able to act until orders are given, and allow subgroup orders, then it is better at fighting than combat spells which is rather bad.

I would suggest that the FAQ update, when it happens, should probably say something politic like "because using these spells would normally make you lots of enemies, but SRM doesn't really have a mechanic for carrying grudges like that, these spells are banned." I would also consider limiting it to, say, Control Thoughts/Mob Mind/Control Actions/Mob Control/Alter Memory/Mind Probe and maybe Influence, and letting people stuff like the emotion spells that aren't that bad, but honestly the other mental manipulation spells are various flavors of sucking anyways.

While we're here: I'm curious what the problems with Possession were that you saw most often. Was it simply balance concerns with Channeling and self-possession? Were people actually abusing stuff like taking cyberware and then using Channeling and self-possession to overwrite their Magic score?

My analysis of Possession was that you can't really be more effective than a Materialization mage without abusing the magic-overwriting trick, although it might be a bit more insulting because you can pretty easily make a Possession mage who's better than any not-highly-optimized street samurai at doing the samurai's job. But I'm curious to hear specifically what the problems you had were, since I know you're one of the more vocal possession-haters here. My group largely steered clear of possession because we knew a lot of GMs dislike it, except for one Qabbalist who almost never possesses himself.

As a note, it doesn't look like we'll get an FAQ update out before Gen Con. So while yes, certain things are going, going gone... They're not gone yet. Sorry for those that were hoping for it.

There's just not time to get everything done, and our layout guy has 4000 projects ahead of this.

Also, my last note on the subject: I do not do anything in a vacuum. I also do not do anything on a whim or on the request of one or two people posting to an internet message board.

Anything I do change gets discussed and approved by Jason Hardy, first and foremost. Secondly, most changes are done after getting feedback from players and gamemasters alike. I've heard from a number of people (and faced it first-hand myself once a couple years ago) how frustrating and game-breaking it can be for a Mission when you have players abusing Possession Traditions and Mental Manipulation spells. It's not all players using these, but it's enough that I've heard about it from multiple sources (And not just at the conventions, and not just on message boards. Keep in mind that all mail that goes to missions (at) shadowrun4.com goes to me as well, and I actually get a LOT of game feedback that way).

Players are NOT having fun in Missions because of player abuse of these. I don't hear this complaint about any other character type. As such, they needed to be looked at and handled. THe simplest and quickest way to do so is to simply disallow them. As I stated above, any changes in the rules are both beyond my pay grade, and a lot more complicated and involved than the downtime changes and additions we've made, since they directly effect gameplay.

ANyway, to summarize: People aren't having fun. And that is my job to fix. The end.

Bull

I'm not going to flog a dead horse on the other aspects but I will say if you are GM'ing (a non-Missions game presumably) and need to stop Mind Control there is also an option to dispel it using Counterspelling and Astral Perception. Its not visible to a non-Astrally perceiving mage that the effect left until they act and by then they at least got one pass in.

@Errata:
It works mostly this way: Pegasus compiles a document with changes or errors they think are mistakes in the books, send them to Jason who signs of on them (or doesn't). Therefore Jason should have all the Errata of all the German books somewhere in is email inbox, because Pegasus does not change anything that has not been approved by CGL.
The real question is, why nobody cares to release these files, because for War! I put together a doc with page reference etc. so the only "work" left would be to put it in layout and release it, what is like a few hours work.
It is really sad to hear the nobody at CGL gives a shit about errata, but I think that says a lot about their attitude towards the game...


I think everybody should have fun in a Mission Run, but I think the fix by banning these things is bad. I also think that magic in general is a bit overpowered with some things that spike like stunbolt, influence, spirits. I would not hurt to fix this ruleswise by making spell resistence easier or something like that.
Things that work against mind controll stuff:
- Drones can't be mind controlled
- the victim is allowed to resist every force combat turns, so these spells doesn't really last that long.
- multible NSCs so that one can spott if an other is targeted by mind spells

cya
Tycho

Whatever problems with magic that can be presented have solutions in the game as it stands. Unfortunately, some of those solutions are not able to be implemented in the format of Missions scenarios, as has been pointed out here more than once already.

I have a Voudun Houngan, Uncle Zola, follower of Damballa, who ran a Mission or two a few years back, and the team seemed cool with the extra capabilities we had as a whole. I like the PC, and if I had had more time, I would have played him more. I'm not sure what capabilities of Possession are more difficult for the Missions format than magic in general.

Nevertheless, the Missions staff are charged with making games we all enjoy. If they have to make a few cuts and changes to fit the Missions format, let the poor buggers do their job. I don't need Uncle Zola to have fun. I can play Fast Eddie, or Bongo Slade, or Sept de Neuf, or Arjuna, or Oro the Unstoppable, or ...

I've always seem more issues with mind probe. It can rapidly cut though mystery drek and really shorten any "who can we trust?" style adventures. NPCs may not like being mind probe, but they generally either don't get a choice (being knocked out) or they can turn the 500lb gorilla that are the PCs in a mission adventure against them (either by saying no or preventing the PCs from being on their team out of spite).

Sure there are ways to get around this but they either aren't done (why do Mr. Johnsons meet the shadowrunners in person? It's hilariously one of the stupidest things to do) or cut out some common plot stuff (someone comes to you claiming they are innocent, are they?) without jumping though hoops (everyone takes laes before bed).