The book is named "Arsenal," and it's in the woiks.

Hah! Having a great pile of PDF's so far, I would quite probably go for a Street Magic / Aresenal / Augmented / Unwired bundle. Nice idea. It would definitely have to come with some fancy packaging or free nerps or something, though.

I am confused, those books aren't sourcebooks.

I'd agree I would love unwired to be next, but the Fanpro roadmap suggests different.

For even more fun let's try to guess the featured locations before someone leaks them.

Corp Enclaves: I'm betting Manhattan, Tokyo, maybe London or Berlin

Feral Cities: Chicago, Rio/Metropol, after that hard to say.

Awakened Haunts: Angkor, New Orleans, Stonehenge (may not all be cities after all)

SR dicebag! my favorite!
Yikes, real shame to see Unwired so far away. that looks like ~18 months or more if I had to take a stab in the dark. I thought SR4 was going to bring tech manipulation characters as much attention as gunbunnies and mages.

That assumes that they even know what cities are planned for Corp Enclaves, let alone the others.

Which is a mighty big assumption to be sure

There is an adventure/plotline book coming up a lot sooner revolving around Technomancers, for whatever that is worth to you. Apparently On The Run also gave some examples of how to handle the Matrix. But I haven't read that yet, to avoid spoiling incase I play it before I run it, so I don't know how extensive that is. But yeah, it looks like Matrix centric PCs are still largely relagated to the back of the bus.

I'm sure there's a german city for every one of those books

i fear that both augmentation and arsenal will mostly contain the content of cannon companion and man&machine updated to the new mechanic, with the stuff from the sota books added in.

unwired on the other hand will thread new ground and expand on this new matrix we love to debate the specifics of...

Like Street Magic both of those books will include entirely new material as well.

Agreed!

I'd rather see Unwired a bit sooner.

And we are so proud of it...

Welcome to the group of "we want all books at the same time!" Yup, that would be nice.

Like Synner said, they will have some new info as well, I'm sure.

I'm purely speculating here, but I think that your comment also brings us to <B>why</b> the books last on the slate. One of the reasons, anyways.

1) Since as you say, a good chunk of Augmentation and Arsenal are basically updates anbd conversions to existing stuff, they're a bit easier and faster to do. Unwired being totally new material almost exclusively will take a bit longer to write and develop. Putting it last gives the writers and dev's tie to do that.

2) Despite the "easier to use" decking system, it's still possible and probable that Unwired will sell fewer copies than Augmentation and Arsenal. Judging by past editions and the equivelant books, I know our group always seemed to have at least two Magic core books, three Gun and Cyber books, but only ever one rigging and decking book (usually mine). Despite the fact nearly every group I ever ran or played with had a decker and a rigger in it.

So it makes a bit of sense to me to put out your "cash cows" first and build up some cash reseres and sales to balance out the lesser selling books.

Like I said, I'm guessing here. Due to lack of free time and, for the moment, lack of active group, I've been a bit out of the playtesting and freelancing loop. So don't quote me

And as for what I want? Yeah, I'd kill to have Unwired, since when our group does start playing again (soon, I hope), I'm actually gonna get to play instead of GM, and Bull's son Billy is picking up the Hacker reigns and running with 'em.

I'd also really like that Critter Book, and I'm hoping that Awakened Haunts incorporates some of the stuff that has been sitting around half forms since "The Boo Scary Shadowrun Book of the Night" book was in development

Oh, and I'd LOVE to see some real modules done again, though I know sales figures on those make them an unlikely prospect.

Bull

We know what cities are planned for Corp Enclaves, and have some idea of which ones will be included in the books further down the road. Those haven't been firmed up as much yet, though, because they can change based on the type and content of proposals we get. Since we haven't got (nor solicited) proposals for any of the location books past Corp Enclaves yet, we'll have to wait and see.

Man, "The Boo Scary Shadowrun Book of the Night" was one of the products I was looking forward to proposing material for, way back when.

Personally, one book I'd like to see is something that brings up-to-date most of the material from Corporate Shadowfiles. I don't mean the Corporate Downloads corp profiles, I mean all the other information that was in CS. How corporations work and are structured, marketing, price fixing, corp scrip, global finance, stock manipulations, etc. All the dirty tricks of business.

Paranoia XP won the Best Title award long ago: its equipment book is called STUFF.

Hrmm... Yeah, could be useful.

personally, I found the rules fairly straightforward myself, once I read through them a couple times and made notes. My one complaint with the Hacking section is that the way the information is presented is... unclear, at times. It doesn't flow well, and there's not nearly enough examples.

As i mentioned somewhere, I'm gonna be playing a Hacker coming up in a new game. Maybe I can try and field some general questions and work up something in the near future. Wouldn't be official, but... <shrug>

Course Technomancers and the Rigging stuff I haven't read all that closely, so that could be a pain

Bull

That's my take on it too. They underlying rules seem fairly sound, but the description of them could be better.

Rigging is even worse than Hacking in some spots. Specifically the vehicle list table that came over and regarding Control Rig. Plus the use of physical Attributes for Skill Tests like Gunnery while in VR, which is how the rules are written, I find bizzare. It comes off as somewhat rushed, which might be exactly what happened given the push to hit the Indy Gen Con date.