Catalyst's garbage, Are there any SR books worth reading since "War!"? Options

[KarmaInferno]

Not anymore!

Lucas was very careful to retain creative direction rights, to some degree, when he sold the property. If he calls Disney up and says "I think this should happen," they have to at least pay him lip service.

He's said he only intends to involve himself in a minor advisory role, but who knows how much he'll restrain himself.

Now back to your scheduled rant on the books.


-k

[binarywraith]

Apparently garbage sells.

Just a moment of snark:

An anticipated new edition sold out its very limited printing at a major gaming convention, when there is no actual release date for open sales?

Shocking.

[Fatum]

I will admit, this is one awkward passage in a book that I have barely gotten in to. But it is merely the example that broke my patience's back, and a damn shitty start, considering that it's on page 15 of a 150ish page book. Bottom line, what I've read so far is pretty badly written. I've got a lot of fucking RPG supplements, both mainstream and indie, and it's pretty rare that I stop and say to myself "Boy this is poorly written." In fact, it's so rare that it's only happened with products put out by Catalyst. Since I paid 30 goddamn dollars for this book, I'm going to do my best to plow through the rest of it. I plowed through all of War!, getting angrier all the time, and this is, I will admit, much better than War! so far. Maybe this is an isolated bad bit in a competent book. It might even be good enough that if some other company had put it out, one that I wasn't still mad at over War!, I would have overlooked the low quality. But it's fucking not, and I'm pissed that I gave more money to Catalyst, only to find out that two years later they have gotten their shit together enough to hire some half-way decent writers, or gotten a half-way decent editor. And quite frankly, I'm willing to bet its the latter over the former. My guess is this shit wasn't edited by someone who had the first clue what they were doing, and I'm pretty sure that's been the case for a couple of years now.

"Much better than War! but in desperate need of good editing" seems to be the general state of CGL splats right now.
However, that is not to say there is nothing worth reading among them. For instance, the pdf releases like SOTA2073 and This Old Drone bring some fun new toys to the table, The Way of the * books have decent crunch of adepts and samurai, Safehouses is mad fun to read, etc (can't say anything on Elven Blood because I'm not keeping track of politics in that part of the continent). I wouldn't say all of those are worth blindly buying, but at least they're worth borrowing from a friend or player to flip through and decide whether you want them.

Apparently garbage sells.

Not to rain on your parade, but the core book of the new edition is always going to sell well initially. This is indicative of nothing, until you have a chance to compare the sales with the core books of the previous editions in the first half year or so.

[CanRay]

So, back to my stuff is garbage.

Thanks.

[binarywraith]

So, back to my stuff is garbage.

Thanks.

If that's the way you want to read it, far be it from me to stop you. You do good work, from what I've read of it. The overall quality control on the books your stuff's been published in, on the other hand, has been seriously hit or miss for several releases.

Not laying this on the freelancers by a long shot, you guys aren't responsible for overall editorial and final proofing, but sadly it reflects on everyone involved when the final product's got a lot of obvious errors.

[kzt]

Not to rain on your parade, but the core book of the new edition is always going to sell well initially. This is indicative of nothing, until you have a chance to compare the sales with the core books of the previous editions in the first half year or so.

D&D 4E sold pretty well, at the start. It's also generally conceded that D&D4 is a total disaster.

[Fatum]

D&D 4E sold pretty well, at the start. It's also generally conceded that D&D4 is a total disaster.

Yeah, exactly as I said.
Not a disaster, but not a success by a wide margin, yes.

[apple]

I would not go so far to call SR5 a disaster. There is one particular area of the rules which are ... problematic, and which can (fortunately) be houseruled pretty easily. In DnD4 the foundation of the entire power system was quite problematic

[Fatum]

I would not go so far to call SR5 a disaster. There is one particular area of the rules which are ... problematic, and which can (fortunately) be houseruled pretty easily. In DnD4 the foundation of the entire power system was quite problematic

So you've read SR5 core then?

[Critias]

What a great thread.

[Patrick Goodman]

What a great thread.

Heart-warming and cheerful, isn't it? And marked from the very outset with such a calm and even tone.

[KarmaInferno]

So you've read SR5 core then?

I have.



-k

[binarywraith]

I have.


-k

Mind sharing what set of rules you're boggling at then, please?

Since the rest of us proles aren't going to get our hands on the rules until some future, undisclosed date. (Or next week after someone gets home and scans their Origins copy.) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/spin.gif)

[Sunshine]

Heart-warming and cheerful, isn't it? And marked from the very outset with such a calm and even tone.

Dumpshock Where you can have a semi-civilised discussion about everything on Shadowrun... ...and sometimes not.

I have.


-k

Braggart.

envy,
Sunshine

[Critias]

If that's the way you want to read it, far be it from me to stop you...Not laying this on the freelancers by a long shot...

Not for nothin', dude, and I'm sure Ray appreciates your attempt to (personally) clarify and explain? But just read the OP, or half the other posts, here. When folks say "Everything since War! is garbage," and talk about how CGL hasn't got halfway-talented writers who can string together a complete sentence, etc, etc, how the fuck do you think Ray's gonna take it? It's not like he's making some wild, huge, logical leaps and bounds to come to his conclusion, y'know?

...and yet here we are, on our free time, trying to be sociable.

[KarmaInferno]

I like most of the rules.

I dislike Limits and Wireless Everything.

It is still very clearly easy to get silly large dice pools at Chargen, with the Limits to use them, given the characters I've seen at Origins so far. So it seems Limits have largely failed in curbing powergaming, and mostly seems to hurt those that DON'T powergame. The powergamers are simply identifying everything that gives a Limit boost so they aren't really affected, while those who aren't into hyperoptimization get slapped by the system regularly.

Wireless Everything I have an issue with because it is clearly a metagame change to make Hackers more useful, but in the majority of cases they give no real in-universe justification for a given wireless bonus. Some stuff I can see justifiably benefitting from Matrix access, but they stuck bonuses on nearly all gear, some which makes me just facepalm.



-k

[binarywraith]

I understand completely why he'd take it badly, it's a rough thing to hear about a product you worked on and I'm sure have pride in!

Unfortunately, that doesn't make it entirely false, either. While it's a bit overblown around here, the stuff that's been put out lately has issues, that's a demonstrable fact. I, for one, am hoping SR5 got more polish, but given that people involved in making it have already mentioned that it's going to need errata out of the gate, I'm not holding out that much hope.

[Patrick Goodman]

There's never been a game that hasn't needed some errata right out of the gate. SR4 and SR4A, both products that I had a small degree to do with (I was a playtester for SR4), both had some whoppers. SR5 does, too; they'll get fixed (we're working on that now). Some of them are my fault, and I'm sorry they got through.

But the phrasing you used made it sound like there had never been a game released without a lot of typos, and that's just not the case.

[CanRay]

Also, you're painting with a very, very broad brush.

[binarywraith]

There's never been a game that hasn't needed some errata right out of the gate. SR4 and SR4A, both products that I had a small degree to do with (I was a playtester for SR4), both had some whoppers. SR5 does, too; they'll get fixed (we're working on that now). Some of them are my fault, and I'm sorry they got through.

But the phrasing you used made it sound like there had never been a game released without a lot of typos, and that's just not the case.

If you're going off of what I'm saying, that's a heck of a logical leap to make. I haven't said word one about other systems, just noted that CGL's products in the last while (since WAR! given that was the scope of the thread) have had significant production errors. Also a bit of content that a lot of the playerbase around here has objected strenuously to.

[kzt]

There's never been a game that hasn't needed some errata right out of the gate. SR4 and SR4A, both products that I had a small degree to do with (I was a playtester for SR4), both had some whoppers. SR5 does, too; they'll get fixed (we're working on that now). Some of them are my fault, and I'm sorry they got through.

Sure. And can you remind me when was the errata for Bogota! was released compared to the the product ship date?

[Udoshi]

Not for nothin', dude, and I'm sure Ray appreciates your attempt to (personally) clarify and explain? But just read the OP, or half the other posts, here. When folks say "Everything since War! is garbage," and talk about how CGL hasn't got halfway-talented writers who can string together a complete sentence, etc, etc, how the fuck do you think Ray's gonna take it? It's not like he's making some wild, huge, logical leaps and bounds to come to his conclusion, y'know?

...and yet here we are, on our free time, trying to be sociable.

For what its worth, Critias, Patrick Goodman, and Canray are three of my favorite content producers for SR right now. Safehouses, Way of the Adept, and patrick goodman's willingness to stand up and correct things in detail(infected heights and weights sticking out in my mind) when nobody else dares to approach the shores of errata goes a long way towards making me think the product line is in good hands.

Then again, there's more people than just you three working on any given book. I'd LIKE to see Critias write a full expansion rulebook, since way of the adept showed he knows the ins and outs of the Pre-War System enough to expand upon the theme set by the Old Writers From it in a generally-useful-to-every-game way. But I know its probably not going to happen, because, well, three solid writers can't save an entire product from management decisions, coworkers, printing errors, or other-things-i-don't-know-enough-about-to-list by themselves.

Then again, I've been deliberately avoiding SR5. Once the core book and the first few splatbooks and corrections are out, I plan on getting an impression all at once and seeing how good it is. I'm hoping it will be a clean slate.

You have my sympathies for the 'The Everything Since War' problem.The fact is, all the writers and creative minds(jennifer harding, bobby derie, adam jury, synner, and more) for making "The Good Books of SR4" all left, and left YOU guys in charge of picking up the pieces.
Half the reason 'The War Problem' is even a thing is because those people set the standards for releases so high, then took away the talent that made it possible. I realize its a hell of a bar for future products to measure up to.
The other half is the feeling of getting cheated out of possibilities - High Magic Sourcebook, Shadows of Latin America, the un-rewritten Sixth World Almananc, Full Size Rulebooks - due to the coleman scandal.

The impression I get was that you three were kind of put in charge of keeping the boat that was handed to you afloat, and I can't blame you for that.
The other impression I got was that Jason Hardy has a giant hate boner for the Old Guard of shadowrun writers as well as the things they made, and wanted to distance the new products from the old stuff as much as possible. (A root cause for not wanting to deal with errata, bogota not being its own setting splatbook like runner havens, the direction of plot with stormfront, etc.)

Am I close at all? I'm just kind of talking out of my ass here.

[apple]

You do not really expect that your beloved writers will say something openly against JH?

SYL

[Udoshi]

*shrug*

They've all been open in the past, occasionally given insight into what happens behind scenes in at cgl, and go the extra mile to field questions about their rules. Even hardy himself has come on the board in the past. Hell, I even have some PM's from him in my inbox regarding various things and rules, particularly errata.

I don't know what to expect, which is why I am asking.

[winterhawk11]

The other impression I got was that Jason Hardy has a giant hate boner for the Old Guard of shadowrun writers as well as the things they made, and wanted to distance the new products from the old stuff as much as possible. (A root cause for not wanting to deal with errata, bogota not being its own setting splatbook like runner havens, the direction of plot with stormfront, etc.)

Am I close at all? I'm just kind of talking out of my ass here.

That's a new one on me. I don't know if I count as one of the "Old Guard" (SR freelancer since 2001, with a break from '07 to last year) but I have never gotten that impression at all. In fact, when I decided last year to pull my head up out of WoW and get back to SR, I sent a note to Jason asking if I could start freelancing again and he welcomed me enthusiastically back into the fold. So if there's any such attitude as you mentioned in the air, I've seen no sign of it.