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[Homme-qui-rigole]

Surprise, surprise...

Fanpro continue the tradition: errata

The first is out and it's available on SRRPG.COM

[Wounded Ronin]

Already? Damn.

[hahnsoo]

They missed a few. Like the damage for bone lacing (although they did fix the damage for bone density), which is correct in the Melee Combat section, but incorrect in the Gear table.

[wagnern]

maybe fan pro needs to hire an detail oriented indivisual (read anial retentive) to go over their books before they print them. I don't know, what should we call them? I got it EDITORS.

I know Fan Pro is a small operation, but come on, I bet a half dozen of the playtesters could have spotted these errors if given a weekend with the book.

Ok, I got it out of my system.

[Ancient History]

Quitcher belly-achin'.

[wagnern]

Sorry

[RunnerPaul]

Hey, be glad that you even get errata. Back in the First Edition days and even a little into second edition, FASA would just issue a corrected re-print, and not even bother to issue an errata. In my old gaming group, we had three copies of Shadowtech that all had entirely different entries about the Tactical Computer. We'd always have to keep track of who had the most recent copy of each book.

Another fun trick in the old days was to make a correction by issuing a new, nearly identical piece of gear in a supplement and then pointing out in the shadowtalk "These stats are correct, unlike another rival publication's." That's how Securetech Clothing came about; the stats for armored clothing in the original Big Blue Book were less than ideal, so when they published the Street Sam Catalog, the Securetech Clothing was supposed to be the correction. However, that info got lost somewhere along the way to second edition, and they were treated as separate items.

Even when they didn't use shadowtalk to flag something as a correction, it was clear there were other items in the SSC which were pseudo-errata. Reactive triggers were a cheap "correction" to the design mistakes they'd made in rate-of-fire for semi-autos. The Firepower Ammo re-bore upgrade was intended as a fix to underpowered heavy pistols and like the reactive trigger, was cheap enough that unless you were playing a character with the absolute minimum in starting resources, there was no excuse not to get it for any heavy pistol you owned.

IPE Grenades were meant as a similar "reality check" for the underpowered grenades in the core book, but like the Securetech Clothing, because it was a pseudo-errata item that was added to a supplement, it grew to have life as a standalone item.

And don't even get me started on the whole "Cyberguns no longer cost any essence -- Merry Christmas" debacle caused by the Sourcebook Updates chapter of SR2.

Unfortunately, any sourcebook-sized document produced using the writing and editing resources of a second-tier RPG publisher is going to have some errors in it. Adding more man-hours to the development cycle to try to hunt down those errors would mean raising the pricepoint of the book. Since competitive pricing is one of the major factors in making sure the books leave the store shelves, in the end, the return on investment on chasing the holy grail of the Error-Free RPG Book isn't enough to justify the attempt.

At least, in FanPRO, you have a publisher willing to embrace the new technology such as PDF, so that when the convention copies end up in the hands of a lucky few "final proof-readers" the publisher can instantly act on the feedback they get, putting out a corrected electronic version, and issuing errata, before the book even hits the retailer shelves.

[wagnern]

Right.

And I do expect a few clarifications needed for a book, but not blantent errors like colume headers that are above the wrong colume.

I just feal frustrated because I like the 4th edition, and I wish they would have gone the one step to finish it right.

P.S. are they updating the PDF for the Eratta?

[Ranneko]

Fixing the errata in the PDF is what delayed it, and as in the post, it actually says, all the errata mentioned had been fixed in the PDF already.

[blakkie]

[Gildashard]

Wonder when a second printing with these errors fixed will show up?

[Nerbert]

When the first one sells out.

[Aku]

Or atleast relatively close to happening from the distrubuters, so that there isn't a time lapse between having nothaving and having again a copy of the book. Out of cuiriosity, do we have any idea how many books the first run consisted of? or from previous versions what their normal amount generally is? I'm not really sure if that would be public info or not

[Critias]

[blakkie]

[RunnerPaul]

So has anyone done the math on number of errors per page, and compared it to the average for other sourcebooks by other RPG publishers recently, and made a comparison? Is SR4 really that much worse than the rest of the stuff out there?

[Aku]

well, so far, it seems like we have less than 300-some errors, so we have less than one error per page....

[Aristotle]

[Sabosect]

I used to play DnD. 3.5 had all of the same errors as 3.0 and actually managed to find new ones to have. So, yeah, it failed to hold up to even the average person's standards.

Worse, is that, unlike FanPro, they took forever to get errata out and it took them multiple tries to fully errata 3.5. Ironically, most of the errata was reported to them before the game was even on the shelves.

[Shadow]

Theres a huge (3 page) list of errors on this page. Its not a lot to ask that a corrected version be printed.

[RunnerPaul]

Shadow, if you go to the www.shadowrunrpg.com website, you'll find that a lot of the errors that are identified in the list in the sticky thread have already been officially acknowledged by FanPro as errata. The corrections have already been incorporated into the PDF version of the book that's available for sale.

The next time they make a print run (which they won't do until the first print run sells out) those corrections, plus any others that FanPro adds to the errata list between now and then will be incorporated into the hard copy. In the sixteen years that Shadowrun has been around, there hasn't been one title that didn't have errors in its first printing (that I'm aware of, anyway).

I'm just curious, what would you have FanPro do to make you satisfied? Have them tell their distributers that when the shipments of first printing copies arrive from the binders, not to send them forward to the retail outlets, but instead destroy them? Then have FanPro order a second, corrected print run to replace the first, meaning that they get stuck with double printing costs to fill the retailer's orders, not to mention that those orders get filled weeks late?

If you want error free, right now, get the PDF copy. The bulk of the errors have already been corrected, and when FanPro puts out future corrections the online retailers are good about letting you download the newer versions at no additional cost. Error free hard copy? Wait until a future print run.

[Aristotle]

[Sabosect]

As a former DnD player, I must admit that Aristotle has a good point. FanPro lets you know of the errors and does multiple versions with the corrected information. WotC almost never does a correction print run, and then it's core books only if they do.

They used to do more print runs, but even then the print runs were rare and only in response to massive, glaring problems.

[Modesitt]

[Shadow]

[Sabosect]

[JongWK]

[Blacken]

[RunnerPaul]

[Blacken]

I realize that, Paul. I was being facetious. Hence the "gimme" remark. I just tend not to use emoticons.

[blakkie]

[Shadow]

[RunnerPaul]

Three pages of not just errors, board formatting signatures, errors that weren't actually errors, other people posting "that's not an error, that's intentional" in response to those. Take a look at the actual errata list that FanPro has posted. Admittedly, It didn't capture anything reported after Sep 1st, but those three pages of webboard thread condense down to a two-column one-page pdf.

For what it's worth, I'd reccomend pulling up the errata list for SR3's core rulebook, and comparing it to SR4's. Admittedly, SR3's errors were identifed over years of people reading the book, and people have been looking for SR4 errors for only a few weeks, but a comparison of the two is still useful for putting things into perspective. Another useful comparison would be to look at another company's product, such as WotC's Errata List for the D&D 3.5 Player's Handbook.

I think you'll find that the number of errors is not out of line with other RPG product out there.

[Nimbex]

[hahnsoo]

[imperialus]

heck I remember the errata list for the Monsterous Manual III... There was a serious gameplay affecting statistical error in almost half of the entries not the odd table being poorly formatted or someone making an obvious but easally overlooked error like hitting an extra digit in a weapons availability or damage code. I'm talking base attack bonus's being 4 or 5 points off, special abilities not factored in or factored in twice, CR's being off by several points ect ect.

[SirBedevere]

If you want to see errors check out Fire, Fusion & Steel for Mark Miller's Traveller. The errors in that amounted to about 20 pages or so. The worst was using a double headed arrow for 'x' meaning multiply by. In a book full of equations that was bad.

From the size of the errata on the Official Shadowrun Website, SR4 isn't too bad, particularly considering it all had to be done by GenCon.