Catalyst's garbage, Are there any SR books worth reading since "War!"? Options Track this topic Email this topic Print this topic Download this topic Subscribe to this forum Display Modes Outline Switch to: Standard Switch to: Linear+

[Caduceus]

The exclamation mark really should have been the first clue.

Until earlier today, I hadn't bought a Shadowrun book since I bought War! two years ago and was appalled by the fact that it was literally the lowest quality printed book I had every spent money on. I was so angry at Catalyst I wrote off Shadowrun for two years-ish. However, I've been in love with the Shadowrun universe since I bought Paranormal Animals of North America with my allowance when I was 8 years old. I was stoked about the upcoming release of Shadowrun Returns, and figured if Jordan Weisman was working with Catalyst in the manner that Shadowrun.com indicates, the quality of Catalysts products must have gone back up to the level it was before they decided they didn't want to pay writers for a while. So earlier today I paid a visit to my local game store and, because I've always loved the dragons in Shadowrun, I bought The Clutch of Dragons.

Fuck was I wrong about the quality!

RPG books are never, you know, the best written documents in the world. But they're usually decent. The sort of person who is good enough at roleplaying to manage to get hired to write a supplement, and/or is the sort of person to launch their own system, is usually a pretty readable writer just because the same thinking patterns that make a good roleplayer also make for a competent writer. But Catalyst, apparently, is really prizing paying their writers a pittance over finding anyone capable of stringing a goddamn sentence together.

"While these two corporations continue to tussle, four other corporations in which Hestaby has invested have already collapsed due to the pressure Saeder-Krupp put on them. These companies include BioLogic Technologies, BCMU, Johns Hopkins Institute of Health, Inc., and Olgitechnolies." Really? The four corps really include that list of four corps? Well I'll be damned! Do they include any others? Because claiming that a group "includes" some specific examples implicitly means that there are other fucking items in that group that haven't been mentioned. "Are" is a great fucking verb if you want to talk about all the individual items in a group. Where the fuck did you learn to write and/or edit, person who let that fucking sentence into this book?

I will admit, this is one awkward passage in a book that I have barely gotten in to. But it is merely the example that broke my patience's back, and a damn shitty start, considering that it's on page 15 of a 150ish page book. Bottom line, what I've read so far is pretty badly written. I've got a lot of fucking RPG supplements, both mainstream and indie, and it's pretty rare that I stop and say to myself "Boy this is poorly written." In fact, it's so rare that it's only happened with products put out by Catalyst. Since I paid 30 goddamn dollars for this book, I'm going to do my best to plow through the rest of it. I plowed through all of War!, getting angrier all the time, and this is, I will admit, much better than War! so far. Maybe this is an isolated bad bit in a competent book. It might even be good enough that if some other company had put it out, one that I wasn't still mad at over War!, I would have overlooked the low quality. But it's fucking not, and I'm pissed that I gave more money to Catalyst, only to find out that two years later they have gotten their shit together enough to hire some half-way decent writers, or gotten a half-way decent editor. And quite frankly, I'm willing to bet its the latter over the former. My guess is this shit wasn't edited by someone who had the first clue what they were doing, and I'm pretty sure that's been the case for a couple of years now.

This is a pretty incoherent rant, for which I apologize. I'm tired and kind of drunk. But I have a lot of experience reading both amateur writing and RPG supplements, and Catalyst really wins a prize. I am bummed that they still have the license for Shadowrun, because it is my favorite RPG setting. So I guess I'm asking if there are any other books that were put out between War! and now that are worth reading. I'd like to get caught up on the meta-plot for 5th Edition, but after reading 15 pages of The Clutch of Dragons I don't have high hopes for 5th Edition.