Standard issue for CGL books, then. Details the line producer or editors should have caught, but probably missed because the team lost most of the people who were really conversant with the lore.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

After you've read it, I would like to hear your comments and feedback to my S-K chapter.

Some thoughts upon finishing the book:

- It would have benefited from a few gear write ups. Not because fluff books can't stand on their own, but because some of the write ups mention specific gear. In fact, the Ares section is built around the failure of the Ares Excalibur, and I don't think we've seen its stats yet. That's kinda like saying that the Ares Predator is the main shadowrunning sidearm, then hiding it in a supplement no one bought.

- A more unified format would have been handy. For example, Ares and Aztechnology have write ups for Running for/against Ares/Aztechnology, but most of the others didn't, even though that would be helpful.

- The book ends abruptly. One minute, you're reading up on Wuxing, then you turn the page and it's over. It wasn't in the middle of a paragraph, but there was no "conclusion" to the Wuxing section, or for the book overall. Sloppy.

- I'd have liked a quick "Everybody else" section. You know, quick, ten paragraph write ups of AAs of import. Universal Omnitech, Lone Star, DocWagon, etc. Some of them are mentioned, but in another corp's chapter and always in the context of how they relate to a specific AAA.

Otherwise though, a solid book.

I believe the stats for the Excalibur were in the 4th edtion book War. If I recall there was some dissatisfaction with the rules/stats for battle rifles.

I meant in 5e. Especially since most of the fallout seemed to happen in 2075 onwards.

There was a double-A section, but the book was running too long as it is, so that part was clipped off and will be used in a Future Product ™. Unfortunately, that means that the wrap-up feel is kind of missing, resulting in that sudden fin! that you mentioned.

A book featuring the top double A rated corps might be useful with one of them about to rise to triple A status while one of the big ten about to lose it's triple a status.

That would, indeed, be an excellent idea. I can say no more than that.

They should include this event in a set of Missions Adventures with the one covering the fall from AAA to AA being called 'Kissing Your A Goodbye'

The fall of a AAA is (was?) tied to the Shadowrun Chronicles game, as is Lockdown. I'm not entirely certain what's happening in regards to Chronicles these days, but I think that's one reason those plots are moving so slow.

wouldn't it make sense to still write a conclusion for each section? i mean, if you change the project, then change it properly... still means sloppy editing and production values. obviously can't blame the writers if the rug is yanked out from under their feet at the last moment, but if you're writing a chapter on wuxing, shouldn't you write a conclusion to that chapter as well?

So I take it the SR line is still missing an editor?

I remember Marzhin over on the other site mentioned the ending on the current SR chronicle chapter 1 had rumblings, but no end result effects on the corps yet.

Think that was supposed to be followed up in later sections to be released down the road, but I do not recall hearing anything to date adding to this.

Running Review (cont'd)

Ares
It started out so well. I felt really postive about this book. But then came this chapter. And it stalled me for more than a week in its awfulness.

I don't know precisely, but I suppose this is the same writer who wrote the Ares blurb in stormfront. Same style, same shit. His insistence on doubling down on his nonsense would be fascinating, were it not also incredibly stupid and self-righteous.

Rather than clear up the ridiculousness of the Ares Excalibur situation with a bit of rationalization, the author doubles down on the stupid by insisting both that Ares really would run a worldwide ad campaign for a product that is illegal to own in the first place (who are these ads supposed to advertise to?) and that this niche-within-a-tiny-niche-product failing epically would really cause a loss of consumer confidence that would make people smash their Apple iCom, set their GMC on fire, never fly American again and make their bosses cut ties with Hard Corps immediately because having no security apparently is better than having a security provider who also produced a broken niche-within-a-niche product. Ludicrous.

But it gets worse.

Here's the paragraph that stopped me cold for the past eight days: Bold text mine, italics the author's.

No matter, I couldn't read past it. It's really difficult to find (polite and coherent) words in face of this monument to White American entitlement. Any further discussion of this awful bundle of clauses and exploration of the many ways of its wrongness would grossly violate board netiquette.

I'm done with this chapter. There's no possible way the rest of the chapter could redeem pure shit of such amazing density. I'll see if the rest of the book can, but it's an uphill battle from here.

Edit/Add-on: The into fiction. I assumed this always is by the same author, but in case it is not: I found it mediocre. It seemed quite detached from the chapter (or maybe I didn't reach the super orks in space part), but I couldn't really make out what was happening there, and anyway, it wasn't very Ares specific. Besides, why go stabby-stab someone in space? Just damage their module's heat radiation and seal them off for a couple of hours, and they're cooked. Space - it doesn't work like you think it works! But that's a gripe I have with nearly all scifi, so it can hardly be blamed on the author when Heinlein and the Honorverse guy also failed hard at it.

Try read S-K instead. I'm interested what you think of it.

Trying to do this sequentially. But I will get to SK eventually, promise.

DISCLAIMER: The Introfiction is not written by me and the English might not be perfect, but I hope sufficient for a German writing in English a German character who writes in English.

i think the intent of the author was to imply that the reason the guy was drunk was a more interesting story than the fact that the guy was drunk and did things that drunk people sometimes do, even though the consequences of that decision were major.

or, to extend the metaphor into the rest of the chapter, the author is saying the reason ares apparently went all-in on the excalibur is more important than the fact that ares went all-in on the excalibur, even though the consequences of that decision were major.

of course, whether the author actually delivered on that or not is not something i'm equipped to say. i don't have the book, haven't read the rest of the chapter apart from that little section you quoted, and your description of the chapter so far has me a bit doubtful to say the least.

but, as far as i can tell, that's what the author is saying. he's not implying that the drunk rich guy is in any way less accountable for the crash. he's simply stating that there is more to the story, and that the "more to the story" (in the author's opinion at least) is more interesting and important than the part everyone is focusing on.

which could arguably be true if, for example, this was a reflection of ares' ongoing relationship with insect spirits. (not that i've heard any evidence that it has anything to do with the invae, but if it does, well... bug spirits having taken full control of ares would indeed be a bigger story than ares falling to pieces over some stupid gun).

This is what I got from that point. "Rich guy has the sads. Rich guy gets drunk. Rich guy kills other person due to drunkenness. The really important story: Rich guy has the sads!" While he may be accountable or not, the important fact is a rich guy was sad (dead non-rich people are, of course, not really newsworthy). If you can't see how absurdly, incredibly wrong that is, well, I can't help you then and I shouldn't discuss this here anyway.

But one final note: the "rich guy has the sads" example doesn't work as an analogy for the relationship between Ares and bugs and the absurdity of the Excalibur situation (apparently, the author tries to blame the absurdity of the ad campaign on the bugs, but that doesn't explain the even more aburd reaction of the genral public worldwide - are the also all bug infiltrators?). Something Cold War or maybe John Birch-esque (depending on how far out there the author is) might work there. I don't really see how the rich guy has the sads example does. It just sits there in its awfulness with no real function for the Ares chapter.

This is a common mantra in journalism. And while I do love writing background stories that delve into the reasons behind events, I think it's probably not the right thing to do when you're writing a Shadowrun sourcebook.

Knowing the reasons for an event may be useful to anticipate what will happen next (that's why it's considered virtuous in journalism). But there's nothing to anticipate in SR because what will happen next does not have to be a logical follow-up. Authors who want to surprise their audience (a lot do) basically have two ways of doing it: unveiling a secret or bringing up an unexpected event. The former require to hide the reasons and motivations of a major player (and possibly even the involvement or the very existence of that player). The latter make the all of those information and any anticipation irrelevant. In both cases, there really are no anticipation to be made. What happens is whatever the line developer and the authors decide. It may be deeply rooted in background, just as it may just follow rules of cool or anything to get rid of a NPC or corporation that particular author dislike.
Thoroughly exploring reasons behind events could be useful for the gamemasters to imagine what could happen next, if the authors were to let plots hanging. Which there are not going to do when it comes to a AAA corporation, or a great dragon, or Seattle,... (heck, lately you can't even toy with some AA any longer without canon interference). Because SR is run by metaplots.

Then, any space devoted to reasons is mostly lost because the GM won't be be able to use for any other purposes. By design, shadowrunners should not be privy to the reasons behind the ongoing events. M. Johnson is not going to tell them why he pay them and they are not going to care (or even be able to learn) about why the opposition will be opposing. You may have players interested in learning about reasons and an adventure designed in a way that allow them to learn about it, and it can be great. An author spending wordcount on reasons without supporting hint with such designed adventure is taking a cheap shot and leaving all the burden to the GM. Which means most of them will never get any use of that background. And the authors or GM who would try to make that wordcount useful face a daunting task because it's extremely hard to write such adventure that do not suck with clumsy, ham-fisted, revelations that break action pace with a long GM monologue.

So I'd say "do not dwell on reasons" is the kind of writing guideline you can ignore only once you have fully understood why it was so important to abide by it before.

no, the fact that he is sad is not the interesting the part. *why* he was sad *could* be more interesting.

for example, suppose we set this story of a rich guy getting drunk and crashing a car, say, 4 months before the global financial crisis, and the *reason* he is drunk is that he is an executive at one of the banks and has put the information together to realize what is about to happen. now, i don't care that he's sad about the fact that his company's idiotic decisions are probably going to result in him losing his job (due to the bank going bankrupt), and his rich lifestyle is about to go down the toilet. but the reason for his drinking binge (ie, the fact that the whole word economy is about to get kicked square in the balls) is much bigger news than the rich guy getting drunk and crashing the car.

do i give a rat's ass that the rich guy is sad? no i do not. i really don't care that he was sad. i think it is very unfortunate also that his drunkeness caused the deaths of other people. but in terms of total impact, it is a hell of a lot more significant that he was drunk because the world economy was about to get royally screwed over than it was that his drunkeness caused him to crash a car, however tragic the outcome of him crashing the car. not because his drunkeness or sadness was important, but because the world economy crashing is important to pretty much everyone in the world. perhaps not more important than the car crash to everyone (certainly, i expect the families of those killed in the crash would be more upset about the car crashing than the global economy crashing). but broadly, more significant to far more people.

(in contrast, if the reason for his drunkeness is that he just found out his wife was cheating on him, i'd go right on back to not caring about the reason why he's drunk, and yes the fact that his drunkeness caused the deaths of other people is much more significant than the reason for his drunkeness in that case).

now, this begs the question: did the author actually deliver on the promise? i don't know. i don't have the book. i have no idea whatsoever if the author delivered on the promise that the story behind why ares is crashing and burning is much more relevant than the fact that ares is crashing and burning (which would cause a lot of ripple effects of substantial significance themselves). i could imagine a scenario where that is the case, though not a particularly plausible one... for example, if the bigger story was that competing invae hives had taken over a substantial portion of the world's population and essentially declared war on the hive(s) allied with ares by boycotting ares products (which would presumably include revealing that ares has been allied with invae hives as part of the story also), that would be a much bigger story than the fact that ares is crashing and burning. now, i sincerely hope that isn't the story, because it is a terrible story that just doesn't sound plausible at all. i just give it as an example of something where you would say "who cares that ares is losing money, have you heard about <insert more significant story here>" if you were an NPC in the shadowrun setting.

Or maybe, you know, just ignore it. Ares has enough problems with the bugs, why the need to continue the stupid "a triple-A had a bungled product release and nearly went broke because of it" storyline?

My response to the Ares write up was more or less “Eh, one of those bits of setting that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me – I’ll ignore most of this and come up with my own version.”

I kind of assume that the poor writer was saddled with “Ares made a bad assault rifle, and somehow this has resulted in the entire AAA conglomerate being in trouble.” And just couldn’t make a silk purse out of this particular sow’s ear.

I even imagine a number of emails going back and forth to effect of
“Do I have to use this Ares Alpha thing?”
“Yes.”
“Can I give details on how bugs are disrupting the company?”
“No, we are saving that for something later.”
“Can I at least kill off some executives, have CFD having an impact, major new internal power struggles … basically give anything else concrete on why they are screwing up so badly?”
“No, it has been declared that the only concrete issue is the Ares Alpha. You need to tie all of their problems on that.”
“But that just doesn’t make sense!”
“Do you want this contract or not?”
“I don’t know, could I do NeoNet instead?”
“No, it is this or nothing.”
“OK, fine, I’ll do the section and blame it all on the Alpha. Just don’t be surprised if the boards point out how illogical this is.”
“Don’t worry about the boards – we don’t. And remember, because of your NDA, you can't provide this background either.”

Actually its the bugs who keep bringing up the Excalibur subject so as to divert attention from themselves. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Joe in Sales: You know Johnson down in Accounting? Well he just sprouted some mandibles and wings!! You better look into that!

Security Guard Frank: Nevermind that, did you hear the latest snafu in the Excalibur project?

Joe: No, what?!?

Frank spins a web-like tale of drama and woe, utterly captivating Joe who forgets about Johnson in short order.