Hazard Pay now out! Arctic wastelands, space, deserts, deep sea, and more!, And toxics. Lovely, lovely toxics. Options

[JM Hardy]

It's high time we released a new sourcebook! Hazard Pay is out now (Battleshop, DriveThruRPG), and here's what it's got:

THE ENDS OF THE EARTH—AND BEYOND

Dark alleys, abandoned buildings, wet streets stabbed with neon light—shadowrunners know all these places. They also know that they aren’t the only places work gets done. A good shadowrunner should be open to anything, to runs that might take them anywhere. From the cold of Antarctica to the heat of the Sahara, from the life-filled dark of the deep oceans to the empty void of outer space, there is work to be had for runners brave and resourceful enough to take it. Of course, there are also dozens of new ways to die, so you should probably see if Mr. Johnson will chip in a little extra pay.

Hazard Pay takes shadowrunners into different extreme environments across the Sixth World, providing the descriptions, plot hooks, gear, and other information gamemasters and players need to use these environments in their game. From mysterious monuments under the sea to battered jalopies that just might make it into orbit without disintegrating, Hazard Pay presents myriad challenges for runners who are prepared for trouble and ready for anything.

Hazard Pay is for use with Shadowrun, Twentieth Anniversary Edition.

[CanRay]

So when are Freelancers going to get Hazard Pay for having to deal with the fans on these forums? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[_Pax._]

Just bought the PDF of it, about to open it now. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Pepsi Jedi]

It's high time we released a new sourcebook! Hazard Pay is out now (Battleshop, DriveThruRPG), and here's what it's got:

THE ENDS OF THE EARTH—AND BEYOND

Dark alleys, abandoned buildings, wet streets stabbed with neon light—shadowrunners know all these places. They also know that they aren’t the only places work gets done. A good shadowrunner should be open to anything, to runs that might take them anywhere. From the cold of Antarctica to the heat of the Sahara, from the life-filled dark of the deep oceans to the empty void of outer space, there is work to be had for runners brave and resourceful enough to take it. Of course, there are also dozens of new ways to die, so you should probably see if Mr. Johnson will chip in a little extra pay.

Hazard Pay takes shadowrunners into different extreme environments across the Sixth World, providing the descriptions, plot hooks, gear, and other information gamemasters and players need to use these environments in their game. From mysterious monuments under the sea to battered jalopies that just might make it into orbit without disintegrating, Hazard Pay presents myriad challenges for runners who are prepared for trouble and ready for anything.

Hazard Pay is for use with Shadowrun, Twentieth Anniversary Edition.

Can you tell us why this one costs $7 more than Jet Set for 2 pages less, and $7 more for just a few pages more than Corporate intrigue?

That's a 30% jump in price, for a digital product, in just 3 months.

I want the book.. but $18 to $25? For literally 2 pages less than the last book put out in Feb?

[Bull]

The PDF price is a percentage of the print price, and the print price is determined by a number of factors, but is largely determined by the cost of the book (writing, development time, and art).

I wasn't involved in either, but at a glance I think there is more art, which effects the production cost substantially. The word count may be different as well, depending on how it was laid out and the chapters break down. Again, at a quick glance, this appears to be much denser than Jet Set, since there's a lot of rules and history, as opposed to a collection of story hooks and plot seeds. It's also possible that Hazard Pay took a lot longer in development, playtesting, and proofing. All of those would mean the book cost more to produce, necessatating a higher price.

I haven't taken the time to actually analyze these, so i could be off base. And pricing and the like is above my pay grade, and not something I know much about. But Jet Set is a $25 print book, while Hazard Pay is a $35, for whatever reason. That's why the price is different on the PDF.

[Pepsi Jedi]

The PDF price is a percentage of the print price, and the print price is determined by a number of factors, but is largely determined by the cost of the book (writing, development time, and art).

I wasn't involved in either, but at a glance I think there is more art, which effects the production cost substantially. The word count may be different as well, depending on how it was laid out and the chapters break down. Again, at a quick glance, this appears to be much denser than Jet Set, since there's a lot of rules and history, as opposed to a collection of story hooks and plot seeds. It's also possible that Hazard Pay took a lot longer in development, playtesting, and proofing. All of those would mean the book cost more to produce, necessatating a higher price.

I haven't taken the time to actually analyze these, so i could be off base. And pricing and the like is above my pay grade, and not something I know much about. But Jet Set is a $25 print book, while Hazard Pay is a $35, for whatever reason. That's why the price is different on the PDF.

Yeah I noticed the jump in price for the print book too, but .... It's still a 168 page book that jumped a THIRD in price from one three months ago. "There's lots of pictures" Doesn't quite do it for me. If it was a third longer or something maybe, but it clocks in 2 pages less than the last one. What you're basicly saying is 'The quality of the material is better'.... but.... dude. Are we now going to see book prices jumping by 30% because they like what's in it more?

That's pretty arbitrary. "Same page count as the last book, but we think this stuff is more useful... and we put more pretty pics in (( which means less word count)) So we're going to charge you almost half again MORE for the same size book" ???

Doesn't seem right. $25 for a pdf is STEEP. Especially for 168 pages. $35 for 168 pages in hard copy is getting steep too. This isn't a core book. It's not even a 'thick' book. Nor do I think inflation hit so hard that the book jumped 30% since February, 3 months ago. If it's cost.. "Hey guys... printing is going up, ect ect ect, we've got to raise prices 5... maybe 10% to keep giving you quality product." Eh.. ok. But a 30% price jump with no explanation is hard to swallow.

I usually buy the PDF and then buy the Print later when it comes out, but $18 was steep for a PDF and no physical copy... jumping it to $25 and the book to $35, that's edging way out of 'hobby'. I can't speak for everyone but $18 for the pdf was already stretching me a bit... and the only way I can afford the print is off Amazon at discount. So I'd end up with about $40 going to Catalyst. This might just price me out of Shadowrun. Instead of getting PDF+Print every time it'll switch to "Print, sometimes if I really need it" Picking it up off of Amazon, at $25 or so.

I know I didn't get a 30% raise over the past few months. Anyone else here get a 30% jump in pay?

[snowRaven]

Alright - got this and had a quick look through.

I, too, reacted on the price, expecting something a bit closer to 200 pages.

In total, there's about 12 pages of fiction, from single-page to one stretching over 6 pages - haven't had time to read them yet, so I can't say much about the quality.

The book is divided into 5 'enviroment' chapters:

Protectors and Despoilers - Deals with magical threats and eco-protective groups of various kind. Several protective groups are statted out as magic groups, which is nice. There are 20 NPC threats here, fully statted out, with stats, skills and other abilities toward the high end. Each write-up includes a list of bounties offered by various organizations, and requirements to be met for those bounties. Apart from that, there's no game info in this section.

Deep Sea - Deals with on and under water stuff, but doesn't have any game information.

Arctic Wasteland - Deals with colds, snow and ice everywhere. This section is packed to the bursting with critters, paracritters, spells, weapons, gear, vehicles, and tons of plot hooks (A quick count gave 63 plot hooks in 34 categories).

Space - Deal with, you guessed it - Space! No game info here.

Deserts - Deals with desert enviroments. A couple of spells and a piece of gear ids the extent of the game info.

Rounding it all up is a section on game info, adding new rules for extreme enviroments, space travel, and listing all the spells, weapons, gear, and vehicles found in the other chapters.

EDIT: CLARIFICATION: There IS game information on deep sea, desert, and space enviroments - but only in the Game Information chapter. Unlike Arctic though, there isn't much in the way of gear, plot hooks, or special rules.

Now, I haven't had time to read through the fluff, but each chapter has general sections on the enviroment in question, a section on what the megas are doing, and some additional things.

The arctic section is the only one with written out plot hooks, and the only one with new gear. It is also the only one with new critters, and has a lot of new spells where the desert chapter has two.

If the sections on Deep Sea, Space and Desert would've had plot hooks and some more game info, I would've said that the book was well worth the money. As it stands, it looks like the chapters were written for different books, and the Game Info chapter repeats a lot of the info on gear found in the Arctic chapter (for instance, in the arctic chapter there's a side bar explaining what stats to use for the weapons, and in Game Info there are full listings of all those weapons, complete with stats - the same also goes for spells and vehicles).

There's a lot of art, of mostly high quality. Some pieces don't seem to 'fit' parfectly, but that could be because I haven't had time to read everything thoroughly.

All in all, I think it's a good book, but the higher price tag, the fact that about 3 pages worth of info is doubled, and the fact that only one out of 5 chapters had plot hooks brings down the overall impression a bit.

Is it good value for money? For me, I'd say 'only just about'. I know I will have some use for the enviroments, and I love gear, critters and spells, but I was expecting a bit more crunch - or rather, that the crunch was more evenly distributed.

[ravensmuse]

I said it elsewhere and I'll say it here - more art, plus more "story seeds and information", plus more playtest time equals book is more expensive? Riiight.

I felt screwed when I bought Conspiracy Theories (elsewhere) and found a book full of terrible editing and barely there play mechanics. This just seems over-the-top.

I continue to stick to my rule to not buy Catalyst material.

[CanRay]

I continue to stick to my rule to not buy Catalyst material.

So you're buying the German and Japanese books then? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[almost normal]

So you're buying the German and Japanese books then? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

It's one of those where both Battletech and Shadowrun were better with Randal being in charge of just Battletech. A large chunk of missing money and a new addition to someone's house didn't help either.

[hobgoblin]

Do the arctic and desert gear take into account the stuff already found in Arsenal, or are we getting the kind of apparent overlap that we got between War and Attitude (edit: or perhaps it was spy games. I seem to get it and Attitude mixed for some reason)?

[Patrick Goodman]

More art can easily mean more expensive. I'm not altogether sure of the exact numbers, but I'm under the impression that Peter Tikos got more for ARN than I did, for instance. This is not a complaint, by the way, simply a point of comparison. Pictures cost more than words in this business.

I've not seen Hazard Pay yet, so I don't know how much more art there might be, but yes, more art will increase the cost of a book. People ask for more art; this is one of the side effects. Not trying to justify the cost of the book since I haven't looked at it yet; just confirming that more art does equal a higher cost.

[Speed Wraith]

Space - Deal with, you guessed it - Space! No game info here.

That's frustrating. I want to know the mechanics of dealing with a dual-natured critter when taken to a satelite (or even just on a sub-orbital) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[hobgoblin]

That's frustrating. I want to know the mechanics of dealing with a dual-natured critter when taken to a satelite (or even just on a sub-orbital) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Mana void, Street Magic p119.

[Speed Wraith]

Mana void, Street Magic p119.

Oh sure, remind me to check a book I hadn't looked at in...geeze, I don't even know anymore...when was the last time I played a magician? 2nd Edition? Bleh, okay then I probably haven't read it since the book was released (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Halinn]

I wish more companies would remember that the customers don't care about the cost to produce the material, only the price it costs to buy it.

[Patrick Goodman]

I wish more companies would remember that the customers don't care about the cost to produce the material, only the price it costs to buy it.

I wish more customers would remember that the former has a direct effect on the latter.

[Pepsi Jedi]

More art can easily mean more expensive. I'm not altogether sure of the exact numbers, but I'm under the impression that Peter Tikos got more for ARN than I did, for instance. This is not a complaint, by the way, simply a point of comparison. Pictures cost more than words in this business.

I've not seen Hazard Pay yet, so I don't know how much more art there might be, but yes, more art will increase the cost of a book. People ask for more art; this is one of the side effects. Not trying to justify the cost of the book since I haven't looked at it yet; just confirming that more art does equal a higher cost.

Thing is, "More art" shouldn't mean more cost to US. It's the same number of pages. "More art" means "Less words". We get the same page count we should have the same price. It's not like they have ground shaking, earth shattering, mind blowing, super amazing astounding art. It's RPG art. Some is cool. Some's very cool, but it's black and white RPG art. It ranges, some of it sucks. Sorry guys. I know someone drew it but not all the art in the books is good, some of it sucks. Now we're being told "Oh..... more hand drawn black and white pics. THIRTY PERCENT PRICE JUMP. That's an internal cost, not one that jacks a book 30% for every single one published. Come on. That's just silly. thousands of books at 30% more cost for a few more panels of art? How many hundreds of thousands of dollars are they paying out? Art pages have a flat rate. There's only 168 pages to the book, they can't put in but SO MUCH art, and a 30% jump for every single book is outrageous.

That's BS. How much MORE art can there be? And if it's that much MORE ART, the content must be severly lacking. If it was more art with higher corresponding page count you'd at least be getting 'more for your money' and while a 30% jump is high it might be understandable. This, we get less pages, more art and less content for almost half again more cost.

The review we have shows that there's parts missing from the chapters. The critters and gear are missing from most of the chapters. Axed for "more art"?. And the information we DO get is duplicated, in a book where we've experienced a 30% jump in price while maintaining the same page count? THAT really makes one wonder. Why duplicate information in a book and keep the same page count? Did some of that extra critter/plot hooks/gear stuff get axed for the duplication of the other stuff? Why not put it in there and expand the book another 20-50 pages to justify the bump in cost?

*Shakes head* I've not bought it.... at $25, that's too much for a PDF that costs them nothing to produce. It might be an awesome book but I don't think it's going to be 30% more awesome than the book they put out 3 months ago. I'll probably get it if I can get a good price on Amazon, but Catalyst is definatly loosing money from me on this. Not making more.

[CanRay]

Costs nothing to produce? Freelancers aren't the first half of their name, "Free", And there's their regular writers as well. It costs for the authors and artists. And the editors. Layout. Legal. Etc.

That said, if the quality doesn't increase in comparison to cost, then, yes, no reason to buy it. That said, I'd suggest reserving judgement until full reviews from folks who have gone through it with a fine-toothed comb have spoken up.

However, there is game rules and gear included, just not in the chapters, as quoting our reviewer:

Rounding it all up is a section on game info, adding new rules for extreme enviroments, space travel, and listing all the spells, weapons, gear, and vehicles found in the other chapters.

So that intel is there.

I haven't read it either, nor was I one of the authors. So what the hell do I know?

[Halinn]

I wish more customers would remember that the former has a direct effect on the latter.

The counterpoint to that is that lowering the price increases purchases. When the cost to make a copy is almost nothing, the optimal price point for maximizing profit will usually be quite low.

[Nath]

I can't help but wondering, is the ancient art of how to make detailed table of contents definitively lost?

[Pepsi Jedi]

Costs nothing to produce? Freelancers aren't the first half of their name, "Free", And there's their regular writers as well. It costs for the authors and artists. And the editors. Layout. Legal. Etc.

That said, if the quality doesn't increase in comparison to cost, then, yes, no reason to buy it. That said, I'd suggest reserving judgement until full reviews from folks who have gone through it with a fine-toothed comb have spoken up.

However, there is game rules and gear included, just not in the chapters, as quoting our reviewer: So that intel is there.

I haven't read it either, nor was I one of the authors. So what the hell do I know?

Sorry, but yes. Costs nothing to produce. It's 2012. The book isn't laid out on big light boards for the printer. It's produced as a PDF and emailed to the printer to be printed.

PDF is sitting there.... it's going to be made weither they SELL a PDF or not, as it's how they get it to the printer. So if they have the PDF anyway, they might as well make some money selling it. And they do. That's cool. My Ipad has over 600 RPG PDF's MANY of them are Shadowrun. I love my PDF's... but they're still DL content that costs Catalyst nothing to sell. As they've produced the PDF ANYWAY.

Now before you go "Oh they have to pay to host and to download"

Nope. Drivethrough doesn't work that way. Drive through takes a percentage off the top of the sale. Not prior. If you sell a book for $10 on Drive through they might take $3, so you make $7. But it's not like they charged you $3... an you wait to make the other $7. It happens when there's a purchase. Now you might not make all $10.. but as it's 'free item' anyway... and costs you nothing to sell... that's $7 of pure profit. Granted it's not $10 of profit but you're out nothing to produce it.

Those costs you mention "Freelancers, artists, writers, editors" ect... those get paid for the BOOK. The physical Item in your hands. They get paid. They don't get paid AGAIN if there's a PDF made. They get paid for page count and for size of art. They do not get paid one cent more if the company sells 10 books or 10,000 books. Nor do they get paid more if they sell 10,000 physical books and 10,000 ebooks. They get paid flat rate for what they produce.

[hobgoblin]

Costs nothing to produce? Freelancers aren't the first half of their name, "Free", And there's their regular writers as well. It costs for the authors and artists. And the editors. Layout. Legal. Etc.

Blame the english language that insist on mixing the concepts of no price and freedom into a single word.

[almost normal]

Go with Echo Chernik or bring back Earl Geier. Hell, use both.

[Dr.Rockso]

One of my questions would be
"How much of a value add is this if you already own Target:Wastelands?"