Errata, and the Grim Consequences Thereof, Warning: No Actual Errata In This Thread Options

[Falconer]

Who would have thought asking a simple question would have set off such a firestorm.

The only reason I asked was because I have the 2nd printing of Augmentation which includes a lot of corrections/errata in it and I knew the german edition had a bunch of other changes already in it.



As far as the rest goes.. yes, I'm familiar w/ the troubles that coming up with errata's causes. IMO: the simple stuff like typo's isn't where the problem lies. It's the ones where the mechanic isn't adequately playtested or is just bad. A good example of that is karmagen (not to rag on AH).

Overall, generally, the SR writers are pretty good about engaging the community and defending their work though.

[Adam]

typo's

Irony alert. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Ancient History]

Whats so bad about born rich?
I think its quite nice quality.

Born Rich is not an innate aspect of a person that influences them as the game goes on, it's just an excuse for players to build more powerful characters during chargen. Really, qualities should be limited to covering tangible and intangible aspects of characters that /cannot/ otherwise be conveyed by skills, attributes, gear, etc. Magician, for example, is innate. You can lose it, in some cases (Latent Awakening) you can gain it, but it's not something that you use once and then forget about. Here's a good test for any quality: if an NPC could legitimately benefit or suffer from it. Can you imagine what happens when your nameless squatter NPC has the Born Rich quality? What does that mean to him? Dicksquat!

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Born Rich is not an innate aspect of a person that influences them as the game goes on, it's just an excuse for players to build more powerful characters during chargen. Really, qualities should be limited to covering tangible and intangible aspects of characters that /cannot/ otherwise be conveyed by skills, attributes, gear, etc. Magician, for example, is innate. You can lose it, in some cases (Latent Awakening) you can gain it, but it's not something that you use once and then forget about. Here's a good test for any quality: if an NPC could legitimately benefit or suffer from it. Can you imagine what happens when your nameless squatter NPC has the Born Rich quality? What does that mean to him? Dicksquat!

I may be going out on a limb here AH, but I hazard a guess that the namelless Squatter NPC who was Born Rich probably has a very interesting story that has brought him to this point in his life... sounds like an interesting individual... has a lot of potential I think...

Keep the Faith

[Udoshi]

The sad thing is that there already is an unreleased errata for Augmentation, dating back to 2008. Which is included in the german printing.

It removes essence hole differentiation, adds a +1 Rating bonus for medical nanites when there is a nano biomonitor and adds rating 1-9 for anit-biometric nanocybernetics, among other things.

What. Does anyone actually -have- this? If so, I'd rather like to see it - even if it isn't official.

[kzt]

Now, I think that if you take into account everything, Shadowrun is more friendly on errata issues then others rpg's (or at least for the people who lurks in Dumpshock) since most of the writers and developers are also lurkers of dumpshock and may talk about their own reasoning and all.

HERO has astonishing errata and FAQs. You can submit rules questions in the forum to the developer and he'll answer them the next day, and if it requires an FAQ or errata note he'll make it then (though he mostly tells you what rule you didn't read).

http://www.herogames.com/rulesFAQ.htm?rule...amp;dateString=

[Doc Chaos]

I may be going out on a limb here AH, but I hazard a guess that the namelless Squatter NPC who was Born Rich probably has a very interesting story that has brought him to this point in his life... sounds like an interesting individual... has a lot of potential I think...

Keep the Faith

Sure he would. But why would you waste 10BP on something that you do not use in character creation, doesn't give you ANY kind of bonus in play - just for the sake of background? I don't think so.

What. Does anyone actually -have- this? If so, I'd rather like to see it - even if it isn't official.

No, but if you speak german, buy the german edition of the book and you can work it out.

[Blade]

Born Rich isn't the only quality that's only good for making your PC even more powerful. Some of them are even negative qualities...

[Saint Sithney]

Back to the off-topic discussion of Born Rich, I don't understand how you think coming from a rich family can't impact a runner's career? It's not really conceivable that they could still have access to the money and gear afforded to them by a schmantzy upbringing without carrying the baggage of historical prep school backgrounds or concerned people looking for them should they be going it SINless in Seattle. Seems like there are a lot of hooks built into that perk which aren't exactly spelled out.

[Heath Robinson]

Back to the off-topic discussion of Born Rich, I don't understand how you think coming from a rich family can't impact a runner's career? It's not really conceivable that they could still have access to the money and gear afforded to them by a schmantzy upbringing without carrying the baggage of historical prep school backgrounds or concerned people looking for them should they be going it SINless in Seattle. Seems like there are a lot of hooks built into that perk which aren't exactly spelled out.

Why do you need that Quality to have those hooks? Why can it not be that a GM and a player get together and just decide this?

[Omenowl]

Most of the items I am looking for in runners companion are reasonable consistent costs. Fomori is damn cheap while the cyclops is quite expensive compared to the baseline troll. Then you have the nataki, which costs about 10 points under surge, but 25 for metavariant. These need to be rebalanced to make sense.

We also have the infected quality which basically means if you get scratched by a ghoul it is all over. At that rate ghouls should have an incredibly high bounty with shoot on sight else it is night of the living dead.

As for negative/positive quality: How much does fame cost 15 points or 20? To me these are quick fixes as they don't require massive play balancing just tell the reader what the actual cost is. This should be part of a quick errata where it is a quick fix rather than playtesting.

[Sengir]

But we do, they are just not collected in one seperate forum (which would be a good idea):

Running Wild: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...c=28110&hl=
Street Magic 2nd printing: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...c=27330&hl=
SR4A: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...c=25706&hl=
Arsenal 2nd printing: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...c=24105&hl=
GM Screen: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...c=16763&hl=
Augmentation: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...c=18445&hl=

And there more if you care to search for them.

Lars

Problem is, those list appear on dumpshock and then nothing. All CGL would have to do is basically compile a list of known issues ("HMHVV II and III: vector should be injection and not contact. Karma System: Attributes should cost 5 Karma. Table X on page Y should include entry Z. ...") and put that online, no need to worry about actually hacking the changes into the text and layout at that time.

[Mäx]

Born Rich isn't the only quality that's only good for making your PC even more powerful. Some of them are even negative qualities...

I would definedly argue that Born Rich is only good for makinf your PC even more powerful.
For exaple on my Sasha(combat face) i could easily get rid of both Born Rich and In Dept 4 and not lose any power, yes i did start with 320K (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) and i still mamaget to run out of money (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
She doesnt really need 15 guns and half that many melee weapons, nor does she need many of her fluffy wares or the collection of 70 grenades or 45 rating 6 mapsofts.
Sometimes you just keep running into stuff that you would like yyour character to have even if they dont make her any more powerful and Bron Rich is a superp quality for those situations.

[Dumori]

The rest for born rich comes as trust fund not born rich

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Why do you need that Quality to have those hooks? Why can it not be that a GM and a player get together and just decide this?

Nobody has said that you cannot do this... in fact, it is probably more common for this to occuer than to actually purchase the quality and add in the additional 10BP for the money... Honestly, I have a better need for the BP myself than to use it for more money...

Anyways... some people just want to have it for the money benefits, others like it for the fluff... whether the quality is actually taken is pretty irrelevent to me in the long run... Of course, your mileage will vary...

Keep the Faith

[Banaticus]

Take Star Wars SAGA one week after release the community does a list of all questions and clarifications asked for a book and we don't receive errata at all. And I'm not even talking about NPC's stats, 3/4 of them have errors and we never receive errata for them.

Given that WotC has announced that they will not be renewing the Star Wars Saga line license and given that all errata had to also go through LucasArt's permissions process... I think WotC realized that the sale of books wasn't as big as they'd hoped, decided then that the license wouldnt be renewed, and decided to see how many books they could sell before the license ran out.

[Banaticus]

Can you imagine what happens when your nameless squatter NPC has the Born Rich quality? What does that mean to him? Dicksquat!

Why the hell does your nameless NPC squatter have any qualities at all?

However, for someone who's actually going through the whole character creation process (such as a PC or a named NPC who's going to be important), the Born Rich quality serves a purpose. It's like Extraordinary Attribute -- it increases the max you can spend on something, but otherwise does jack diddely on its own.

[kzt]

Given that WotC has announced that they will not be renewing the Star Wars Saga line license and given that all errata had to also go through LucasArt's permissions process... I think WotC realized that the sale of books wasn't as big as they'd hoped, decided then that the license wouldnt be renewed, and decided to see how many books they could sell before the license ran out.

Lucas is a huge pain to work with. But done right it is worth it. It's a license to print money, if you do it right.

[Muspellsheimr]

Born Rich, like quite a few others in Runner's Companion, are not actually part of the character, and thus should not be qualities. At all.

Born Rich is borderline in this aspect, as it can potentially be argued otherwise, but still most defiantly falls outside the definition of a Quality (in addition to being retarded for other reasons).

Black Market Pipeline, on the other hand, is not even remotely close to arguable, and another prime example of the bullshit that crept into Runner's Companion.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Born Rich, like quite a few others in Runner's Companion, are not actually part of the character, and thus should not be qualities. At all.

Born Rich is borderline in this aspect, as it can potentially be argued otherwise, but still most defiantly falls outside the definition of a Quality (in addition to being retarded for other reasons).

Black Market Pipeline, on the other hand, is not even remotely close to arguable, and another prime example of the bullshit that crept into Runner's Companion.

You could argue that they provide something that you could not mechanically get otherwise... which is a good definition of a Quality to me...

Just Sayin'

keep the Faith

[Heath Robinson]

Nobody has said that you cannot do this... in fact, it is probably more common for this to occuer than to actually purchase the quality and add in the additional 10BP for the money... Honestly, I have a better need for the BP myself than to use it for more money...

Sithney was justifying the existence of the quality in terms of things which do not need the quality to occur, and are not the inevitable result of the quality. A does not lead to B, and B does not require A. Why justify A in terms of B when this is the case?

If you want B, you can just have B.

[Muspellsheimr]

Qualities are special advantages and disadvantages that may help or
hinder your character. They aren’t special gear or magical powers, but
rather innate or intangible characteristics that often come to the forefront
during the stressful situations shadowrunners find themselves in.
Qualities can either be positive or negative.

No, Born Rich is not a quality.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

No, Born Rich is not a quality.

Maybe, But I would say that Born Rich is an Intangible "Thing" that some people are just born with... You cannot Choose to be Born Rich or have a Trust Fund... just like you cannot choose to be born an Ork...

Just Sayin'

Keep the Faith

[Banaticus]

Qualities are special advantages and disadvantages that may help or
hinder your character. They aren’t special gear...

Good thing the Born Rich quality doesn't actually give you gear then. Again, it's basically the same as Extraordinary Attribute. By themselves each quality does jack, nothing. They merely raise the cap on something and let you spend more BP in that area. I've never spent anywhere close to 250,000 nuyen on a starting character, but then again I don't usually pick up Extraordinary Attribute ever either (except as a thought exercise).

[Ancient History]

Exceptional Attribute is relevant in that a character after chargen can continue to benefit from it - Born Rich does nada after chargen. It's not an intangible aspect of the character, it's an additional cost to spend more BP on gear.