Unpublished Drafts - Free for All, Chapters that might have been Options

[Aristotle]

Downloaded. I'll haul my laptop into work tomorrow and check them out. I'm so sad that its come to this. It'll be interesting to compare your work to the books and see how similar it is and, if not, which of the two better represent the game I want to be playing.

I'm working on a homebrew game. Let me hurry up and hit the powerball so I can hire AH and my other favorite freelancers to flesh it out. I'd do it too. God I'm a geek. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[phlapjack77]

Thanks - this is great reading!

My proof-reading contribution: in CAS, it probably should be "Lew-eez-ee-an-ah" (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Just sayin'...

[Mäx]

The following draft was originally submitted for Attitude:

What exactly was/is this book.

[Matsci]

What exactly was/is this book.

new ShadowBeat.

[crizh]

The Pilot 1 agents are bare minimums, a starting point. They're not much good for real hacking, but fine for other things.

Would it not be better to bump them to Rating 2 or 3 and reduce their number? Eight Rating 3 Agents would be quite useful whereas Rating 1's are a bit like Watchers, quite pretty but mechanically useless.

The Gunsel Karcist concept is basically a technomancer gunslinger - the root words (Adam Jury gave me the hairy eyeball on these at one point) are gunsel as in "hired gun" or "shootist" and karcist which is a world for a ritual practitioner in some obscure magical works, and also sometimes used by early UNIX programmers. It's pretty much the weirdest concept out there.

I was more interested in how you saw the mechanics of the various parts of the Karcist actually operating in play. I was never able to quite parse what you intended for a player to do with all that stuff, I could vaguely apprehend the edges of it but never grasped the meat, so to speak.

[Mäx]

new ShadowBeat.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/love.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/love.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/love.gif)

[[jackal]]

The only real concern I have is if there will be any legal ramifications to releasing this information? Either to Ancient direction or towards Dumpshock indirectly. While the only thing I actually have a stake in is the IRC server, I'd still hate to see others go down in flames due to a potentially messy situation.

[Lansdren]

Very nice work there Mr D

I too am having that torn between to emotions moment here, Glad to see the work as it is good but Sad to see how its all played out.


The whimsical part of me wishes that feuds could be ended and bridges rebuilt. But that could be me being selfish and wanting the best possible material for my games

[Furluge]

Aww, and here I was expecting that in 2070 the Norfolk, VA entry would have been replaced by the Hampton Roads Metro.

[DV8]

You are the man, AH.

[Fuchs]

The Caribbean part (first I looked over in detail) looks nice, I'll adapt a number of things from that for my on-going Miami and Caribbean campaigns.

[Stahlseele]

@.@
That's a load of reading to be done . .
Ah well, 4 free days, 3 of which will be spent at Nordcon, the biggest RPG convention in Northern germany.
I'll meet up with some of the german shadowrun guys. Maybe even soe officials too . .

[IKerensky]

Please receive a free huge can of THANKS YOU VERY MUCH for releasing thoses amazing draft.

I love reading anything from ancient-history it is the reason why I play SR, because of the cross-over with ED.

Keep on the good work and please inform me if you release anything on the paying market I will gladly pay for some of your writings (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Rotbart van Dain...]

Thanks a lot for this material, AH.

Sad to see it published in this way, though.

The only real concern I have is if there will be any legal ramifications to releasing this information?

Ah, so you have concerns…

Well… take a look at the SoLA thread.

[FriendoftheDork]

Thanks AH, just read most of the Corporate Shuffle, and even though some of it is known or hinted at before, I couldn't stop reading. Explains some of the power structures of the 6th world that no other supplement has managed in quite the same way. In short, the world makes sense.

[Kumo]

Great work!
Thanks a lot, AH.

[i101]

Great work AH. Lets see how CGL will do now.

[Ancient History]

Would it not be better to bump them to Rating 2 or 3 and reduce their number? Eight Rating 3 Agents would be quite useful whereas Rating 1's are a bit like Watchers, quite pretty but mechanically useless.

I wouldn't say useless, but yes, there is something to be said for going for quality over quantity. As I said, these profiles are building blocks, they're not designed to be optimized.

I was more interested in how you saw the mechanics of the various parts of the Karcist actually operating in play. I was never able to quite parse what you intended for a player to do with all that stuff, I could vaguely apprehend the edges of it but never grasped the meat, so to speak.

Somewhere between Judge Dredd's Lawgiver, the Pistol Packin' Polaris Packrat's talking pistols, and Robocop. The Savalette Guardians are drones with a punch - stick a Machine sprite in each and the Gunsel Karcist can do all sorts of wild tricks. Throw a gun into a room and have it fire while spinning, surrendering a firearm and having it not shoot, leaving a gun propped at the doorway to guard it, say "incendiary rounds" and have the gun switch ammo, that sort of thing. It was something of an effort to make a technomancer with a significantly different but valid focus from the traditional one.

In hindsight, it would have been better to go with the Smartlink Complex Form (p. 136, Unwired) rather than an actual smartlink. I can probably guess my reasons for not doing it, but it feels like an oversight in hindsight.

[Synner]

The only real concern I have is if there will be any legal ramifications to releasing this information? Either to Ancient direction or towards Dumpshock indirectly. While the only thing I actually have a stake in is the IRC server, I'd still hate to see others go down in flames due to a potentially messy situation.

This is not the first nor the last time that freelancers or former freelancers have released unpublished material on to the web. Steve Kenson has had a site up with his material for over 10 years and I can name a dozen others myself included. Catalyst and Topps have a published policy on the publishing fan material on the web (here). As long as Ancient includes the relevant disclaimers and given the decades of precedent the only reason for CGL to take action would be out of spite.

[darthmord]

AH,

All I can say is wow! Hell, my eyes even misted up while reading the intro to 'The Untethered Life'.

[Ancient History]

I helped kill CC back in System Failure...some people might disagree with me, but I thought it was a good time to bring him back.

[Daddy's Litt...]

I will ask the two questions that I thought of at once and no one else has brought up:
1) With these being withdrawn from the publisher will it delay the books they were supposed to go into? I was hoping to get snow fox one of the named books for her birthday but it was delayed. I wondered if this is the reason.

2)Why? After being one of the best known voices in the SR world, did you suddenly severe all ties? Yes I know this is potentially personal but I do not think it hurts to ask.

[Ancient History]

I will ask the two questions that I thought of at once and no one else has brought up:
1) With these being withdrawn from the publisher will it delay the books they were supposed to go into? I was hoping to get snow fox one of the named books for her birthday but it was delayed. I wondered if this is the reason.

It did delay these books, some other freelancers have been brought in to re-write the drafts that I withdrew.

2)Why? After being one of the best known voices in the SR world, did you suddenly severe all ties? Yes I know this is potentially personal but I do not think it hurts to ask.

This is dealt with in more detail here, but basically I was banned from the freelancer forums for speaking my mind in a private conversation (i.e. I said Jason Hardy was a liar), and I decided I no longer wanted to be associated with the company.

[fistandantilus4....]

Jason I think you need to pick your panties out your arse,...

Glad you think so, I personally think it is childish at best...

I think that you need to look at yourself first. Do you really think this statement contributes anything useful ?

[knasser]

AH,

I should have looked at this long before now. I've had so little time to visit DS recently. This looks great. I don't seem to be able to download them. The site you're using says "direct downloads are forbidden". Is there any other way I can get these? I'd like to save them to my computer in case they vanish, or print them out.

If you like, I can put them on my site so they remain findable when this thread starts to sink.

K.