After the Almanac, Where will we get covered next? Options

[Megu]

Well, we've seen at this point which countries are covered in depth in the Sixth World Almanac. There's still a lot of globe out there. Yes, this is partly my butthurt over SE Asia getting shortchanged, but I'm hoping War will cover that. What I'm really wondering, though, is if Cities of Intrigue or Awakened Haunts are still coming down the pipeline at some point. Are those dead dead?

I still got my lil lists of what I hope the city lists would be like....

AH

Big writeups: New Orleans, Jerusalem
Little ones: Kinshasa-Brazzaville, Metropole, Phnom Penh, Shenyang, Sydney

CI

Big: Las Vegas, London
Little: Belfast, Bucharest, Cairo, Saigon

Is this a pipe dream or is there any chance yet of getting any of this?

[Abstruse]

Cities of Intrigue? Austin damn well better be in there along with Denver...

[Martin_DeVries_I...]

Well I'm not in-the-know but it sure seems like Awakened Haunts is dead-dead. Of all the upcoming projects that have been mentioned here, it hasn't shown, and seeing as how it was announced some time back I'd imagine we'd have seen something by now.

[Ancient History]

The Runner Havens/Corporate Enclaves/Feral Cities style books did not, unfortunately, sell as well as could be hoped. I lobbied for a full-book treatment called Denver 2073, but last I heard CGL was pursuing a bizarre mashup of location/rules for a type of campaign possibly suitable to that location, of which the first example will be War!, featuring Bogota.

[Megu]

The Runner Havens/Corporate Enclaves/Feral Cities style books did not, unfortunately, sell as well as could be hoped. I lobbied for a full-book treatment called Denver 2073, but last I heard CGL was pursuing a bizarre mashup of location/rules for a type of campaign possibly suitable to that location, of which the first example will be War!, featuring Bogota.

;_; but those have been my favorite 4e books. At least I have my answer though. Thanks man.

[Prime Mover]

The main write up's were nice but the short entries left alot to be desired. I'l like to see an update to the London/England story lines. Or any of the European snippets we've been teased with.
Right now I just want to see a successful conclusion to DoTA+and it's follow up book.

[Doc Chase]

Perhaps it's time to revive the old '21st century 'plexes by 20th century locals' project. I've had a few ideas for St. Louis as a medical research/smuggling hub due to its bordertown status and multiple research hospitals...

[Abschalten]

The Runner Havens/Corporate Enclaves/Feral Cities style books did not, unfortunately, sell as well as could be hoped.

That's a damn shame. All of those were pretty good. Some of the content was hit or miss, but the hits were pretty awesome.

The main write up's were nice but the short entries left alot to be desired.

The short entries have their place, too. I'm doing a pretty cool game in Caracas right now. You have to work a little harder to fill in some of the blanks, but it does give you alot of freedom as a GM if you are into world building.

[Karoline]

I'd imagine the less than hoped for sales was because there are people more interested in crunch, and those more interested in RP/story. The latter will get both crunch and setting books, while the former will only get crunch books, so you'll always see lower sales for a book like Feral Cities than one like Augmentation. It's a shame though, since there are only so many crunchy books that can reasonably be put out before things get a bit ridiculous, and in honesty it seems like that point has already been reached. The main book, the magic book, the gear book, the matrix book, the 'ware book, the 'extra options' book, and the critters book. I can't really think of any areas that need more expanding. I mean I'm sure there could be small additions to each of the books, but I don't know that any of them would be enough to be a book unto itself.

Perhaps smaller/cheaper crunchy books might be an option for the future. Along the lines of Digital Grimorium. It would require alot less effort to put together than a full book, and lots of people would likely buy it just because it only costs a few dollars. I don't know what kinds of sales DG actually has of course, so it might not work out so well. But it would be a great ground for stuff that wanted to get put in, but just never quite got around to being put in the game. Maybe something like the wing suit being discussed over in the History Channel thread, throw in some other stealth/spy gear, and you could have a little 'spy toys' PDF only book. Just some late night thoughts (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Abschalten]

Perhaps smaller/cheaper crunchy books might be an option for the future. Along the lines of Digital Grimorium. It would require alot less effort to put together than a full book, and lots of people would likely buy it just because it only costs a few dollars.

I want to say yes to this, but I was really disappointed by Digital Grimoire. The spells were lackluster, the tradition writeups were blah, and don't get me started on the overpriced, nearly useless-as-written adept powers. You could've gotten better content for that e-book outsourcing ideas to Dumpshock regulars, and it would've been balanced and useful content on top of that.

[Karoline]

I want to say yes to this, but I was really disappointed by Digital Grimoire. The spells were lackluster, the tradition writeups were blah, and don't get me started on the overpriced, nearly useless-as-written adept powers. You could've gotten better content for that e-book outsourcing ideas to Dumpshock regulars, and it would've been balanced and useful content on top of that.

Maybe they should ask DS for ideas. Heck, plenty are provided without being asked. The wing suit developed in the History Channel thread as I already mentioned thanks to me mentioning the possibility of using it to skydive right into a target zone without the use of a parachute. People went through and worked on the physics some, and I think that it might be possible with a sufficiently advanced suit, hydraulic jacks on your legs, skill, nerve, and fancy flight acrobatics.

And I know that there was a thread here a few days ago that went over all kinds of paracritters like electric rats and other stuff that I don't remember.

I also know I've seen various threads with people suggesting new drone designs, new ware, and all kinds of other stuff. DS could be a total gold mine for info for little books like I was talking about. Permission would be needed of course, but I don't think most people would mind having their ideas used.

[Ancient History]

Digital Grimoire was written pro-bono and is, hilariously, one of the best ebook sellers from what I've been told.

The long and the short is that early in SR4, there were some very definite design choices made - one of these was to avoid a sort of rules-compendium-bloat, where each frickin' sourcebook had a collection of unique rules and you might need two dozen sourcebooks to stat out a character. You might laugh at that, but back in SR2 and SR3 it got really, really bad as far as different character options, equipment, and rules in a variety of sourcebooks, some pretty damn obscure. In SR4 the idea was there to be a Matrix book, a Magic book, a Cyber book, a Gear book, etc. No having to remember that Cornish Bards were mentioned in The Grimoire, druid rules were in London Sourcebook, Germany Sourcebook and Tir na nOg, and centering foci were in Awakenings.

In addition, there was the decision that the crunch books would have...more fluff. This is a concept that took a surprising amount of time to percolate down through the ranks, I'll tell you what. So you had lots of place books without unique rules and a lot of rulebooks with good chunks of fluff. Maybe if the release schedule hadn't been compromised, it would have worked out - I think SR is something like 3 years behind now - but I dunno. What was tried didn't work to the satisfaction of the powers that be at CGL, so they're trying something new (to the dissatisfaction of people like me - not trying something new, but the specific of what they're trying to do...c'est le vit.)

[Megu]

My biggest issue with Digital Grimoire and all that is basically that I don't like buying PDFs.

For one, I want to see what I'm getting before I get it. If I go to the store, I can page through a book and say, "Hmm, this looks useful" or "What the fuck is this shit?" and make a decision. I can't do that with a PDF, unless I want to go dick around to pirate it and then buy it, which doesn't seem like it's terribly good for anyone's business model and it's something I really couldn't be bothered to do anyways. Seeing a friend's copy of that Hong Kong adventure dealie that was PDF only kind of confirmed this bias for me, as we didn't think it was a high enough quality work, in hindsight, to be worth buying. There were a lot of adventures from the Denver arc we got for free that we liked a lot better.

And that's the other thing, is I'm just deeply uncomfortable paying for a PDF. Part of that's me being a curmudgeon, but I think preferring the raw visceral reality of a book to internets data is legit. And also, the more I stare at a screen the more I feel like I'm going blind. Part of the reason I quit WoW, shit was starting to just hurt too damn much. I don't want to have to stare at a screen to be in a tabletop game. It sort of defeats the purpose.


Back to the original topic, I was hoping Karoline's logic would kick in soon, as I also can't see where there's major gaps in the crunch. Since I can't see any obvious direction to expand the crunch, I was hoping we'd get some more focus on fluff, which is actually what I tend to favor.

I also agree with Abschalten about the short writeups. A lot of them have been really good, and I'm indeed a worldbuilder at heart. The short writeups give you a baseline theme and an idea of factions and neighborhoods without the canon-paralysis that sets in in a more in-depth look (especially in a canon-choked place like Seattle). I think out of all the cities in the three books, the ones I'd most like to run are Nairobi, Hamburg and Geneva, and none of those are the big writeups.

[Abstruse]

Maybe they could go back to the "State of the Art" style books...I remember with 3e was winding down, the plan was to do one of those for every game year, updating the setting with new rules and canon-world info. 2064 was pretty lackluster IMO, but I'd still fork out the money every year if nothing else for the media section that closed out both books.

And I HATE the short write-ups. If I wanted to play in "my" Shadowrun world, I wouldn't have spent hundreds upon hundreds of dollars over the past (god I feel old) two decades buying up pretty much every book I can get my hands on. I'm a bit busy building worlds for my half-finished novels littering my hard drive to try to come up with detailed info on random places all over the country and the world. Damnit, I want to play in the world of Dowd, Findley, Hume, Kenson, Boyle, Sargent...the world I fell in love with as a kid and grew up reading as it developed. That's why the group of players I have for my current game are all Shadowrun newbies...so I can run them through the whole thing...from Harlequin, Mercurial, and Dreamchipper all the way up to System Failure and into Dusk of the Artifacts if I can keep them interested long enough.

Hell, I fancy myself a writer and I don't even really want to bother creating my own stories, just run the published ones. I definitely can NOT say that about any other gaming system out there. Sure, I'm changing stuff around and switching some NPCs to other ones to create a theme (Harlequin recommends the runners to Dunkelzahn, thus getting them involved in the Super Tuesday adventures, the same Johnson showing up repeatedly rather than the generic ones in the adventures (unless necessitated by the plot), making the same insect shaman behind Missing Blood, Queen Euphoria, and Double Exposure, etc.)

The reason why I prefer published adventures and long write-ups on locales stems from waaaay back when the Denver boxed set was released. There were two books, one a player's guide and one a GM's booklet that gave three options for each and every NPC, location, story, etc. The idea was that Denver would be left alone after that to allow GMs to create their own world without future canon storelines interfering...I guess Ghostwalker had different plans for that, didn't he? Or maybe I should throw stones at Renraku Archology Shutdown first for bringing the Denver Data Haven and some of those NPCs into canon again.

Anyway, my drunken rambling point is that I don't want to run a game and halfway through when a new book comes out, have to decide if I keep my own world going, kill future plotlines to stay canon, or try to retcon my store into the new canon story. I don't like that, so I want as much friggin' detail as possible in everything that comes out.

And, as a reader-not-gamer angle...they BUTCHERED the Tir Tairngire storyline in 4th Ed. I've ranted about that repeatedly and hopefully Sixth World Almanac will make things better, but I sincerely doubt it.

[Abstruse]

...I'm just deeply uncomfortable paying for a PDF...

I can't stand paying for digital-only content. What if I have a hard drive crash or if I want to read it on my iPhone/Kindle/iPad/laptop/bedroom computer/whatever? Am I going to have to buy it all over again? Give me a dead tree format any day of the week...much easier to lay in bed and read...and it's strangely comforting to me to wake up with a book sitting face-down on my chest after I dozed off on the couch. Maybe I'm getting old too, but I pay for paper and want digital free (or included with my purchase of dead tree at the very least rather than getting double dipped).

[Karoline]

I can't stand paying for digital-only content. What if I have a hard drive crash or if I want to read it on my iPhone/Kindle/iPad/laptop/bedroom computer/whatever? Am I going to have to buy it all over again? Give me a dead tree format any day of the week...much easier to lay in bed and read...and it's strangely comforting to me to wake up with a book sitting face-down on my chest after I dozed off on the couch. Maybe I'm getting old too, but I pay for paper and want digital free (or included with my purchase of dead tree at the very least rather than getting double dipped).

If your computer crashes you can download another copy from the place you bought it.
If you want to read it on your 'insert other device here' then you transfer it there. You can make infinite copies of your PDF for free (I have at least 3 copies of each of mine, all on separate hard drives so that I don't have to bother redownloading them if one should crash.)
And also, there was an invention a few decades back called a printer. I don't know exactly how long DG is, but you could always print it out, and it wouldn't cost much. I know I could get the entire SR4 rulebook printed for about $6. Wouldn't be color, but oh well, most pages are text anyway. I could understand not wanting to do this with something like the core book because then you need to get it bound somehow, but with a shorter book like DG I don't think it is such a big problem.

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

And also, there was an invention a few decades back called a printer.

You can print PDF's?!?!?!?!??! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif)
How does this invention works? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)

In all seriousness, I like e-books. Specially when they are short and concise. I liked the design behind 10 Shadowrunners (the one of being short and concise), but it really is the kind of fluff you hardly ever use. Except, perhaps, to show new players example of Shadowrunners and what motivated/led them to take this kind of life. Just my 2 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)

[Mäx]

In all seriousness, I like e-books. Specially when they are short and concise. I liked the design behind 10 Shadowrunners (the one of being short and concise), but it really is the kind of fluff you hardly ever use. Except, perhaps, to show new players example of Shadowrunners and what motivated/led them to take this kind of life. Just my 2 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)

10 Jackpointers was pretty cool book, i especially liked the format and tone of the write-ups and will probably do a similar ones of my own characters and maybe even contacts.

[Demonseed Elite]

I have no problem with the concept of e-books, though I prefer an actual physical book for anything beyond a short "add-on" product. But I agree with the problem of not being able to browse through an e-book before you buy it. That's one reason why I like Eclipse Phase's Creative Commons license, I can legally browse through the PDF before buying it or the physical book. Also, that licensing encourages the "remix" culture in RPGs, where a digital PDF file has an advantage that physical books can't match; the ability to manipulate pages and layout sections for re-purposed use. The idea of Sunward's Hack Pack is wonderful for that reason.

[CanRay]

You can print PDF's?!?!?!?!??! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif)

I printed "Runner's Companion" that I bought in only a Digital Copy.

Of course, I have a Laser Printer, and am insane.

[hobgoblin]

a laser printer that can do both sides have become quite affordable these days.

as for mixing fluff and crunch, thats how brutal games is doing the corporation game. Each book holds a writeup on some topic (one of the major factions, or some such) and crunch that fits within their theme (tho that is not all exclusive to them). So far i would say its working, tho sometimes finding what is being mentioned on the forum can be a hassle (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Demonseed Elite]

So far i would say its working, tho sometimes finding what is being mentioned on the forum can be a hassle (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Yeah, another problem with the old way SR mixed crunch and fluff into every book was the writers themselves would have a tough time tracking down mechanics. So you could easily end up with mechanics that were not consistent or contradicted, because Writer A didn't have a copy of some obscure setting book that included a page of new mechanics in it.

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

I printed "Runner's Companion" that I bought in only a Digital Copy.

Of course, I have a Laser Printer, and am insane.

Actually it was supposed to be a joke, but anyway. I printed a digital copy of armageddon I bought. I used the Laser Printer of my college department using the credtis I had spared for 3 years (we may print an amount of 50 pages per semester free of charge, that stack with pages not used during a semester), so I got a bool of almost 300 pages for 10 dollars and the cost of puting a cover.

[Abstruse]

My printer barely works and the quality is crap. I don't even like printing character sheets on the damn thing. While I'm saving up for a nice color laser printer (under $200 now...friggin' toner costs more than the printer), my point still stands.

What if there's DRM on the file that prevents me from transferring it? What if the company that sold it goes out of business? I have a dead tree book, I don't have to worry 10 or 15 years later whether the company that made it is out of business so I can read it...I just have to brush the dust off of it. I had a friend that got seriously burned by the Divx debacle (the alternate DVD format that allowed "rental" of DVDs, not the video codec favored by video pirates). Oh, and let's not forget DRM servers for digital content which is why PC video game sales are so low. They spend so much time making sure that the game can't be pirated that it can only be used reliably IF you pirate it.

That's the reasons I always think about when I think about my reluctance to buy digital media, but frankly it's probably just a knee-jerk reaction to spending money and not having something to show for it. Sure, I have the digital copy, but I've spent money I had to spend real time and doing real work earning on something that is virtual only. I spend money, I want something I can hold in my hand. Plus, the value just doesn't seem to be there. I'll gladly pay an online subscription (I did for D&D when I was running a game last year and I do currently for Fark), but actually buying something I don't physically own bugs me.

[Karoline]

DRM isn't (to my knowledge) any kind of an issue with your PDF copy, and they certainly going to be able to do anything about you making copies of it (That would be, quite literally, impossible). If you're seriously worried about them going out of business, then put backups on a disk or separate hard drive.

If you're careful about it, you're no more likely to lose your PDF copy of some particular book than you are to lose your hard copy. In fact, given that one of my copies is on my laptop, I'm actually less likely to lose it, because I'd grab my laptop in the event of a fire/flood/other disaster, but I wouldn't grab my 500lb book collection.

Besides, you buy plenty of things you don't physically own. Electricity, gas, online subscriptions, heck, even video games and movies are just digital information (exactly like a PDF) already put on a disk for you, and so aren't really any different from buying something digital and putting it on a disk.