Digital Grimoire Now Available! Options

[Adam]

Digital Grimoire is our first PDF-only project for Shadowrun. It has some material that was originally cut from Street Magic, some new stuff, and some updated material from previous editions. It's the smallest PDF we've ever sold: 18 pages for just under 4 bucks. You can buy it tonight, read it all, and be using the material in your game this weekend! This isn't a magician's tome ... more like a notebook that he left unguarded and you practically pilfered for the low low price of $3.95.

Comments and reviews are super-appreciated on this experimental release, once you've bought and read it.

Nobody Knows All Magic

Digital Grimoire is the Master's Class of Magic—expanding on Street Magic, it details additional traditions, magical groups & threats, spirits, enchanting expansions, and a handful of new spells and adept powers.

Traditions: Egyptian, Rastafarian, Psionic
Magical Groups: Shrine of the Southern Winds, The Oxford Grand Lodge, Código 515
Magical Threats: Toxic Paths, Shadow Spirits, Insect Spirits

Digital Grimoire is 18 pages (including cover): a bite-sized expansion to Shadowrun, Fourth Edition and Street Magic.

* Digital Grimoire on BattleCorps.com - $3.95
* Digital Grimoire on DriveThruRPG.com - $3.95

[Ancient History]

[ Spoiler ]

Buy it for the blood fetish, savor it for the napalm wall.

[knasser]

Wow! Am I the first person to buy it?

Anyway, I didn't realise it was going to be so cheap or so ickle-wickle. But I like it for what it is - a cheap little packet of odds and ends. First thing I read when I opened it was a somewhat unlikely line from a Muslim character, but then an Egyptian tradition - cool, Infusion foci - great, unique enchantments, v. interesting and is that the first ever violation of the principle of mundanes not using magic (a foretaste in anyway of this Dawn of the Artifacts thing we're hearing about?), Attuned Watcher spirits - okay, weird but handy, clarifications on spirit's personal preference - excellent, blood fetishes - OUCH (in game terms as well as rp terms)! Elemental resistance - will be using that.

Okay - that's a summary of my impressions. I like it. You should definitely consider this Doggy Bag format a success. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) Going to have to think about those Unique Enchantments and crunch some numbers...

[knasser]

I'll just add that I'm surprised by the Rastafarian tradition. I never realised there was enough in real world Rastafarianism for the basis of a magical paradigm. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) Also seems to be written from an in-character perspective in that some articles of faith are taken as fact. Is Aunty Ancient a rastafarian in rl? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Also, "Destroy [Free Spirit]" Heh! Were you worried that mages weren't enough of a karma sink that you have them spending it on killing one-off enemies, now? Or is the idea that a Free Spirit keeps reforming on their metaplane and coming back for vengeance? "Oh, it's Asadaman, The Hunter of the Night again. Quick, cast your "Destroy Asadaman, The Hunter of the Night" spell. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Synner]

The Traditions and Magical Groups would have been me and I wrote most of them (both in DG and SM) as if their paradigm was indeed fact. The Rastafarian faith has several million followers both in North Am/Carib and Africa, far more than say Zoroastrianism or even Sufi traditions in our day and age.

[wusselpompf]

i like it (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)


...except for the cover. the recycled bottled demon (IIRC) cover and the nasty type of the title... not the best I can imagine (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Blue eyes]

Excellent pdf! Lots of interesting stuff in it!

[Dr Funfrock]

Bought!

Mmmm.... magical threats.

Me go read now. Bak son.

[DWC]

Well worth 4 bucks and half an hour of my life. I hope the trend of releasing these continues. Any chance of seeing something similar for Arsenal or Augmentation?

[Prime Mover]

Something to tide me over till my Ghost Cartels ships. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Wesley Street]

Awesome! Well done and good work. I look forward to seeing more of these ebooks down the road.

[bofh]

Thank you. Very nice little addition. I second the suggestion for Arsenal and Augmentation please (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) I like the additional information on Insect Spirits.

Carl

[Arashi]

Bought it last night, like it, good stuff in general.

Some questions about the new Adept powers:

1. Elemental Resistance. If someone has an Armor Jacket with 6 points of Impact Armor, and adds 6 points of Fire Resistance to it - they have in essence 9 points of armor against fire (half impact plus the armor mod). Is this how this power is intended to work? Because right now the wording is vague. The text says <<Elemental Resistance enhances the effects of Mystic Armor by granting the full rating of the Mystic Armor Power to the character’s armor value against one elemental attack type>>, which could be interpreted as just giving the full rating of Mystic Armor and that's it. i.e. someone invests 3.5 magic points in rating 6 Mystic Armor and Fire Resistance. To resist fire, do they have just 6 armor, or do they have the 9? Because for such a huge investment of points, I would say it's underpowered at only 6.

2. Power Swimming. 1 full point? Hmm. For something that has little combat or major game effect, it seems expensive. Sustenance = 0.25 point cost, and allows the Adept to reduce eating, drinking and sleeping by 2/3! (BTW, where is the lifestyle cost reduction for that or Iron Gut - cyber/bio seems to give bonuses for that...) A cyberguy can get modular cyberfeet and waterjets for TRIPLE speed for a song. My adept got alpha modular synthetic lower cyberlegs at chargen because with a little money you can get Raptor, Skimmer Disc, and Waterjet swappable add-ons to suit whatever mission - and get a TON of great movement options. I did that because for less than 1 essence (1 magic point), it was a great bargain. I see a lot of potential in movement powers like this, especially for adepts because it's great flavor. Almost like the Water Sprite positive quality from RC, Power Swimming could be balanced at 0.5 for instance - or add on the fact that it lowers penalties in water ops, so that the Adept is a true water operator. Running based version? 1 point for sure, you're going to use it a lot more often so it justifies the cost.

YMMV, I know. I think I'll search later and see if there is a thread that talks about the balance (or lack therof) of Adept power costs.

[Muspellsheimr]

I was under the impression this was going to be a free release...

$4 isn't bad though, so I'll be picking it up when I get the chance. Any chance someone can give me a spell example or two until then - preferably Health?

[pbangarth]

It's a cool piece, and I personally found the possession info especially useful, though in some places surprising.

I do think the $3.95 cost for 18 pages is a little steep. That's $.22 per page. At that rate, the 192 pages of Street Magic would be over $42.00, and the BBB at 352 pages would be over $74.00. I can see this kind of product drawing a handsome income for the producers, providing nice little infusions of cash in between major publications.

Would I buy another addendum to one of the other books? Cool new stuff the other players can have? Yeah, maybe. Probably. The publishers know us, don't they?

Peter

[Dr Funfrock]

I was under the impression this was going to be a free release...

$4 isn't bad though, so I'll be picking it up when I get the chance. Any chance someone can give me a spell example or two until then - preferably Health?

You can make your opponents do the exorcist vomit. Good enough for ya?


As for my own thoughts: For $4 I'm happy with what I got (although I agree with pbangarth that the economics seem a bit steep, I'm also aware that even in digital publishing there are certain economies of scale that apply). Everything is useful. I agree with the point on Power Swimming. It needs to be cheaper, for balance purposes, and I feel that it should reduce penalties to underwater actions in general, for flavour purposes. I like the idea that cyber can give you good water speed cheap, but magic doesn't just make you fast, it makes you graceful.

Aside from that, I would like to have seen more on Unique Enchantments. What's here is good, but it still doesn't give any real sense of what sort of things Unique Enchantments might be capable of. I'd really love to see a simple set of rough guidelines, similar to the Limits of Sorcery sidebar on pg 159 of Street Magic. Something like that would go a long way towards helping GMs to use Unique Enchantments in their games without fear of opening a Dune sized can of worms. I mean just the fact that the weapon in the example can be used by mundanes blew my mind. Nothing previously had really suggested to me, in a concrete way, that this kind of thing was neccesarily possible.
For that matter, is there some rule that says Magical Compounds can only give critter powers? What about adept powers? What about metagenetic effects such as glamour?
I'd love to see an expanded clarification of this stuff.

[Prime Mover]

Alleviate Nausea, Nauseate (Negative) and Decontamination.

[Dr Funfrock]

Oh, one more thought: Memory Displacement is the single most awesome adept power ever, and my next character will be a social adept, just so I can build them around that power concept.

Hmm...

Kinesics
Memory Displacement
Cool Resolve
Eidetic Sense Memory
Facial Sculpt
Linguistics
Melanin Control

Perfect social infiltrator. Become someone else, and then forget who you really are until you're deep inside their cover. Your real memories return, once you've passed all of their lie detector tests and other screening, and you carry out the mission. OK, so maybe that one's a bit more of an NPC, but it's still awesome.
I swear the Dawkins Group must have a few people like this.

[pbangarth]

Yeah, by the looks of it, even Mind Probe would have trouble getting at the displaced memories.

Peter

[Prime Mover]

Hahaha surprised to this in possession section "dikoted monosword".

[Vairdic]

I do think the $3.95 cost for 18 pages is a little steep. That's $.22 per page. At that rate, the 192 pages of Street Magic would be over $42.00, and the BBB at 352 pages would be over $74.00. I can see this kind of product drawing a handsome income for the producers, providing nice little infusions of cash in between major publications.

Just remember that this will never see print publication in this form, and that the print products actually subsidize the PDF, not the other way around. We still sell 10 times the number of a book than we do of a PDF, but we pay almost exactly the same for content (which is by far the most expensive part of the book). We definitely tried to keep the price as low as possible though, and be able to pay our awesome writers who come up with ways to make your opponent do the exorcist vomit (too cool, I didn't know that was in there!).

[TeaTime]

Is the Digital Grimoire (and upcoming PDF projects) Missions legal?

'Cause I'd like to blow some minds.
Literally.

[Adam]

I do think the $3.95 cost for 18 pages is a little steep. That's $.22 per page. At that rate, the 192 pages of Street Magic would be over $42.00, and the BBB at 352 pages would be over $74.00.

You can break a book or PDF down to the "price per page", but you're using a metric to price the books that isn't the same as what a publisher uses. While the page count -- and thus the cost to *fill* that page count -- factors into things, it's obviously not some sort of linear process, as we sell SR4 for less than half of $74.00 ... the "price per page" of SR4 is incredibly cheap, *and* it's the book that is going to get used the most in any game. Since -- within the game line -- SR4 is not a "boutique" book, it gets a lower price. Digital Grimoire, however -- at this point, it's the most niche of niche SR projects -- has to command a higher per-page price, or else it simply wouldn't be worth doing.

I can see this kind of product drawing a handsome income for the producers, providing nice little infusions of cash in between major publications.

I think you're probably overestimating the quantity of PDFs that we sell, although it will be interesting to see how this one does, since it won't be available in print.

[pbangarth]

I see your point about the economy of scale. I didn't factor that into my thoughts.

Peter

[Arashi]

<<Oh, one more thought: Memory Displacement is the single most awesome adept power ever, and my next character will be a social adept, just so I can build them around that power concept.>>

Another example of mismatched power costs.

Human Adept wants to raise Strength or Agility from 6 to 7? 2 Full Power Points.
(or 0.2 essence from bioware, less detectable, and not subject to mana fluctuations)

Become an undetectable double agent, immune to discovery even by mind probe? 0.25 Power Point

I love the Memory Displacement power, and think the authors did a good job with it. It is creative, and consistent with Canon concepts Runner's Companion (Deep Cover, etc) and Unwired (PAB units). I think it's cost at 0.25 is fine because it will need other things along with it to complete the infiltrator 'package' so to speak.

But seriously - power swimming for a full 1 power point? To get a few extra meters of swimming?
Synthetic Cyberfeet are 0.5 essence 12k + 3k for the triple speed waterjet add-on (plus ability to add on skimmer discs to jet over land and water with ease at double speed). 3 BP cost, 0.5 essence and perfectly legit.

How about Eidetic Sense Memory? 0.5 Magic Power Point gets you both Photographic Memory (10 BP Positive Quality for only sight/sound, then add the rest of your senses) AND Speed Reading (5 BP Positive Quality).

All I'm looking for is cross-system balancing, making something insanely more expensive and less functional only looks like useless fluff rather than a well thought-out addition to the game.