Shadows of Latin America/Shadows of Asia, Third edition will be complete afterall Options

[LivebythE-SCORE-]

I just received my e-mail from Rob Boyle confirming that Shadows of Latin American and Shadows of Asia are still on schedule. I don't have a date as to when they are supposed to come out.

I think it's a good news because those two books were pormised since Shadows of Europe came out. Since i think SR as never been so complete on world detaisl before SR3 then we can all rejoice that the only regions that will lack details are Arabia/Africa.

[Synner]

This had already been confirmed and FanPro's Catalog (including upcoming releases) is available here.

Before wrapping up SR3, FanPro will be releasing Loose Alliances (the sourcebook formerly known as Sixthworld.org) which details many of the most important non-corporate and non-underworld players (and now that I think of it some of those too) in the Sixth World. Then comes Shadows of Asia and Shadows of Latin America in quick sucession, adding to the overall global picture and also building/wrapping/developing existing plotlines. Finally you have System Failure which will wrap SR3 with a major event.

FYI - The Middle East, and Arabia specifically will be in SoA.

[Luca]

yes but not Africa or North Africa (which is an important part of the Islamic world)...another complaint is tha lack of that fascinating region which are the Balkans (Serbia, Greece, etc...)......well, after all one cannot have anything...it is anyway good to have SOA and SOLA.....

[Luca]

there is another point I do not understand.
In SoE the Balkans and all East Europe was cut due to problems of space......how can be possible that you want to put lands so distant like Syria and Korea all in the same, big, book?
I liked SoE, there are flaws like in any book (I have some complain for Southern Italy), but, in general, it is an inspiring, glorious book. I should say much better than SoNA to my view. SoE did not have time to give you all the detail but, at least, they give you some detail.
The Authors of SoE were obliged to cut off Eastern Europe to give us decent detail of the rest of Europe....how can you pretend to have detailed pictures of a continent (Asia) which is three times Europe?
I understand that so many readers are not interested in things like "what makes Tajikistan different from Kazakistan" (as far as I can see, most people in the West thinks they are just the same because the word end similarly..). But in any case, how can you give us the same level of detail of SoE for such a big area?
I'm angry for the cutting of the Balkans (they must appear somewhere! Please, Synner, post somewhere the draft you were talking about!) but I can understand it was necessary.....so what do you want to cut from Shadows of Asia?
Asia is a complicated land, with complicated history and cultures (the most ancient urban civilizations, as far we can say), much more complicated than North America so you cannot simply resolve it with a sourcebooks all dedicated to modern corporations. What the awakening brought to Mesopotamia or India must be wonderfull and the if the awakened past will be mixed with the complicated future, anything will be just fantastic.
Please, do a good book, not just a small summery of what are the funny names of all those funny countries.

[mfb]

[CanvasBack]

[mfb]

i'd like some info on Desert Wars that makes it brutal again. maybe you could just say that the Desert Wars competition is a pale mockery of the real desert wars, which occured (and are now over) elsewhere in the desert. back in the day, being a DW vet made you badass. now, it makes you a punk trid wannabe whose only qualification is that you didn't get shot in one battle.

[Zen Shooter01]

Yeah, I was thinking tht Asia is going to be sketchy, sketchy. Everything from Moscow to Tokyo, from the Arctic Circle to the Arabian Peninsula? In one book?

[Synner]

Don't hold me to it but I think SoA will be even larger than SoE. I too thought it would end up being sketchy simply because of the scale of the enterprise, but I believe we pulled it off.

There will be places which are given only the briefest treatment, but all the major hotspots will get at least as much space as the Euro and American ones did.

[Luca]

Big scale book like Asia? More pages than SoE?
I hope anything will be fine but....What is this? Maybe a kind of haste or rush to publish as much as possible before August when, as anybody knows, the 2060s' will be finished?
I really hope SoA will be a good book.

[mfb]

so... 300 pages?

[Kanada Ten]

[Synner]

[mfb]

[Grinder]

Maybe they're focusing on some regions like india, china, japan and some arabic states and treat the rest the way they did with greece and the baltic states in SoE, only shortly mentioning what's up there. And i mean very short. ;)

[Luca]

[Bull]

One thing to remember about this whole deal...

SoE was originally a net project that managed to get the attention of the Blue Fairy. Many of the authors for the project were doing it for love of their home country, and not simply as a writing project. They had extensive knowledge about the area they were writing about, and there was a ton of info that got hacked out due to space.

Greece and the Balkans, OTH, were areas that were pretty sparse to begin with, I believe, because there wasn't any natives working on it. What work was done on it was doen more for completion sake, and chances are it showed. Thus, when the time came to trim the manuscript a bit and focus the writing, they got the axe because there wasn't much meat there to begin with.

With SoA, we don't have many, if any, natives working on it. Shadowrun simply doesn't have the fanbase there. Thus, there's less knowledge to work from, and it's more of a "job" for the writers than a labor of love. This isn't a slight to anyone involved, just saying... It's one thing to have 300 pages written about Lithuania before the project ever even gets green lit, another one completely to get an assignment for Outer Mongolia for 3000 words.

Plus, a lot of Asia's gonna get lumped together. There will likely be more detailed books down the road, maybe in the Target style, that will focus on specific areas, such as the Middle East, Russia, or whatever.

<shrug>

Bull

[hermit]

Hopefully, because 192 pages aren't nearly enough to even give in-a-nutshell type information n Asia's various countries and cultures. But what would most interest me would be a Target: China and Target: Southeast Asia. Tagret: Japan would also be a great idea, of course, because I always found Shadowrun lacked something when the main villain nation never got more than passing coverage.

And for Japan, there're even fans out there who wrote up a net book; so much for the labour of love thing.

[Synner]

[Critias]

If I told you guys I was from the Tir, would I get to help out with the next sourcebook touching on stuff going on there?

[Demosthenes]

[DrJest]

[Critias]

Well, I'm not from Ireland, but I'm a fan of both Tirs, a history major, and I've been on vacation to Ireland a few times. For what that's worth, I remember being fairly imperssed with the geography and whatnot from the old na nOg book; the parts of Ireland I'd actually hiked around sounded about like a magically active, idealized, version of what I remembered. The parts I hadn't been to, I cross-checked with my various and sundry travel guides, and that (at least) matched up.

Which, I mean, is better than some sourcebooks have been.

[Synner]

I would note that the authors of the TNO chapter (Pistons, Steve and Rob) were constrained by a lot of pre-existing canon, in much the same way as we were with the UK. Given those restrictions and expectations, I think TNO turned out particularly well.

[Demosthenes]

I don't remember the TNO sourcebook very well - I borrowed it off a friend a looong time ago. I didn't like it much then.

I'll have to look at it again and get my hands on SoE before I can really pass judgement honestly.
I'll keep an open mind, promise!
(And as I said, I kept my mouth shut at the "speak now or forever hold your peace" part of SoE development...)