I just got the new magic book and the Runners havens and one thing I noticed is that the variety of characters posting on jackpoint is very small. Most of the characters in sm appeared in rh and most of the posts in both books were done by about a score characters.
One of the things I liked about the old shadowland was the variety of posters giving a wide variety of perspective. Everyone from hard core sammies to luddite mages.
Anyone got an idea if this going to continue in other books or will we see more faces?

i imagine a lot of the old group kinda died off in the crash. also, i wouldn't be too surprised if we see a lot less variety... it mentions in there somewhere that only people with a certain level of reputation can vouch for newcomers... presumably the rep system can be used in other ways to.

perhaps they're just indicating that only people who have a certain degree of reliability are allowed to post to the files or something

or maybe fastjack is supposed to have been deleting a lot of useless "me too" and "i agree" posts...

that being said, even in the older books a lot of the posts come from relatively few people. just give it more time though, and i'm sure some new talent will get added in.

I think they wanted a smaller list of standard commentators, with less one shot comments by guys with names boringly/ridiculously apropos the subject they were doing a drive by on. There's a shadowtalk pdf somewhere with the list and description of the new "approved" people for sourcebook commentary. Few of them are mages, which is why you saw only (some of) them in SM.

I dunno. I always took the whole "name fits the subject" as indication that there are so many people on the matrix that there are people with those names, and that they surf for topics related to their interests to post to. It certainly never bothered me.

it's a well known fact that shadowrunners are notorious lurkers

One of the freelancers said that trying to keep each poster's interests straight and consistent was hard. The list of names used was enormous.

How many peoples' screen names actually reflect such obvious interests? The references are usually far more vague.

Is Jaid a reference to that person's real name, a nickname, a favorite character in a movie or game? Who knows? I don't. Shadowrunners will most likely be less revealing than even we are. They are wanted criminals. Giving out too much info can be dangerous.

Got it: "It's hard and we don't wanna." I can see how it would be difficult if nobody had thought in the beginning to keep a list and their linked "interests".

As long as they're honest.

The rest of that is just justification to make it sound reasonable. I could easily say "it doesn't matter if they keep it consistant, because who knows how many people have the same user name, or how often one account is changed/deleted/renamed" etc.

There we go. That's pretty much what I remember hearing before. Someone mentioned it sucked to keep track of and he even had some funky flowcharts or something. Soundss like a pain in the ass and I would rather they focus on other things rather than how exactly Jackpoint works. My characters won't ever encounter it. It doesn't have to make sense, I bought the books for the nifty source materials and new abilities, not Jackpoint.

@ Demonseed,

I hear you. I can see why you'd be frustrated.

Personally though, I don't think the "one-shot" type shadowtalkers are even worth tracking for consistency. If they're only jumping in every once in a while, and they aren't a major player or main character, then what's the point? You're not getting enough of them to "track" their personality, etc. (as a reader), so nearly anything you use them for is cool. The main guys (Fastjack, etc.) are prominent and post often enough to track and maintain, but since there are fewer of them it's not as big a job.

I don't know. I guess as a reader, I'd rather have the rabble posting all over the place, because it seems more realistic. But then, these are just theoretical ponderings at this point, because I don't play SR4 and am only likely to buy books that are super-fluff and null-rules.

I agree that it's not important to track one-shots, but we were discouraged from using one-shots. So as we tried to repeat-use existing shadowtalkers from past books, we had to check past books to make sure we were consistent (did this shadowtalker die along the way, did he mention he works out of a particular city, is he an elf, etc.).

The change was largely a top-down decision, though, as most of these major format decisions are. The freelancers are asked for feedback, but when something this big comes down, it's usually pretty much decided.

mind you, it seems even some of the regulars disappeared too... i mean, obviously the big D doesn't post anymore, for obvious reasons, but others just seem to have disappeared with no explanation (possibly the crash, i suppose). mind you, i haven't looked up system failure either... maybe it explains where some of them went.

for example, i don't think i've seen anything from the chromed accountant since the new edition. maybe he just hasn't had anything to say yet, i suppose, but still. same thing with pyramid watcher. (i may be getting the names a little off... maybe i should look in some of the older books to double check... but those should be pretty close to accurate...)

in any event, it would be kinda neat to see a list of what happened to all the folks who disappeared.

Not all of the old regulars frequent Jackpoint, but some may make reappearances in the future as books cover topics they are knowledgeable in.

I demand Rabid in the critter book! I was pleased to see him return from a long hiatus in SoA. Of course, he was less interesting than before, but I'll take what I can get.

Remember also that the readers don't generally even have flowcharts to dedicate to these characters, so keeping track of a 100+ person cast is not something that we can expect the average shadowrun player to do.

So while I really like some of the stories that played out - like the death of Matador and the takeover of the operation by Picador - a lot of others just didn't make any impression. What's the story behind Carpenter? I don't even know.

And that's the deal. There are only so many stories that can be told in any book, and since there are a finite number of books that will be written for SR4, there are only so many characters that SR4 can ever really do justice to. So the decision was to make a solid guess as to how many that was going to be and then focus all the stories on those guys.

And that's why you have Jimmy No giving people a walking tour of Hong Kong for Shadowrunners and Mercenaries in Runner Havens and working as a mercenary himself in New Guinea in Street Magic. You can get a fair grasp of what he's up to by following him through those books.

Now, it's entirely possible that they guessed too small as to how many characters they ould cover. But that's OK, because the format allows them to easily introduce new characters by announcing that a new character has joined Jackpoint.

Maybe old characters can make a reappearance, mabe new characters can tell us what happened to the old ones.

-Frank

I hope I'm not killing anyone's impressions when I say that even the freelancers often don't know what is up with these old shadowtalkers. Really, when it came to SR3 shadowtalkers, there was never really a plan, things just sort of happened. So if someone disappeared, we probably don't even know why until we feel a need to come up with something.

If there is one single thing I miss from the old system, it was being able to put people from Dumpshock, Shadowland, and other sites in as cameo appearances. I thought that was a nice touch and a tip of the hat to the fan community.

i'd personally like to see a mix of both. the small core of shadowtalkers is a nice idea; it gives the freelancers known common ground to spin stories out of. but those core shadowtalkers should, i think, make up about 50% of the comments. it's a big, connected world, and the idea that less than 100 people are 'in' on the heart of the shadows is kinda silly. the other 50% should be made up of freelancer's one-shots.

100% agreed with mfb. Well said.

One thing that can be done is to write articles for the in-character sections at the beginning of each chapter. A book like Street Magic has articles that are being commented upon, and those articles can be written by one-shot characters.

But yes, I miss the ability to throw in one-shot people. That was a nice way to give people props.

-Frank

one of the things I really liked about the sr rule books was the hinted at back stories. I thought this played out really well with characters like orange queen and dragonslayer. I can't imagine that most everyone from the pevious editions died in the crash 2 (I've read system failure and it didn't seem to indicate that 95% of the peoploe died; and even if they had they'd be replaced by others.)
Yes having to have to track backstories on lots of different characters would be a pain in the ass, but remember one of Captain Chaos'es constant warning people may be posting stuff that they know is entirely untrue. So if someone says they're an elf, you take it with a grain of salt.
I find that most top down decisions are stupid. I guess I'd fit in better at Horizon than SK. I think that limiting the characters limits the stories that can be told; even if those stories are only a paragraph long, they still make a rich tapestry from which to draw ideas for campaigns. I know that at least a few runs that I gm'ed were spin offs from some comment someone made as a shadowtalker.

Let's all just admit that pretty much all shadowtalk post-Dowd/Finley sucked. There was no real perosnality or distinctive writing style attached to even most of the regulars.

paging through Runner Havens, it does seem like there are a number of one-shot commenters. at least, there are names (Ishikawa is the one that springs to mind, for obvious reasons) that i don't recall being on The List.

Close; the crazy is a few inches behind your eye.

The SR3 regulars are boring shades on the same infodumping pattern. There were a few one time exceptions, like The Gingerbread Man in Cyberpirates. But he was a one book wonder. Older regulars like Bung, Argent, Hangfire, Hatchetman, etc. all had different levels of humor, background, and professionalism that made them distinct. I'd like to add the Smiling Bandit to that list, but he was really another one book wonder.

There are three reasons for this degradation. The big one is more people using them, which seriously hampers the ability to draw consistent character without brutal and heavy handed editing. The second reason is that such editing wouldn't be practical - it's not really easy to read a couple of dozen past sourcebooks solely to get the right feel of past characters and then repeat that in future installments. And the third problem is that even the regulars are used too sparingly. There is far less back and forth discussion/argument between a given set of characters, both on a single page and throughout a book. Now we get drive by opinions that sum up an opinion and just leave it there like a flaming bag on your doorstep.

It had it's ups and downs, but to be fair; so did the SR2 shadowtalk. I kinda liked some of the commentary in Sprawl Survival Guide, for example. Cyberpirates was another shining example, which you allready brought up. On the other hand I can't remember much of the commentary in most recent books. I agree that the quality of shadowtalk in general went downwards during the SR3 times, were books were becoming more complex and political but at the same time a lot less commical to read. But I think the themes of the books are much to blame too. When they had a more lighthearted, lifestyle-based theme to work with they seem to have had an easier time to make the shadowtalk animated.

One thing to keep in mind about Jackpoint:
It features a rating system.
Combined with a small, 'pro' group of members reduces the amount of desinformation in ST greatly.

DS features a rating system, too. That doesn't mean there's a small crowd doing all the posting.

there are many boards that feature rating systems. they don't reduce the amount of BS that takes place, that i've seen. quite the contrary, a lot of times.

Why would reducing the amount of "disinformation" in the fluff be a good thing? Half of what made it cool was that the GM could decide what was and wasn't true in his/her game. Granted, you can still do that, but if the shadowtalk is now limited to "canon gospel"...

I'm not sure that it's all canon gospel even so. Street Magic has a reference to the Vatch - who are aliens from The Witches of Karres by James Schmitz. I doubt that they are explicitly part of the background.

i think the important aspect there is the limited membership, not the rating system. the limited membership is, itself, a rating system--if you're thought of highly enough to get a membership, any demerits you get are more likely to be the result of interpersonal conflicts than bad information/behavior on your part.

I actually thought the shadow talk was better in much of sr3 than sr4 with the possible exception of the tir na nog book. Compare fof with dotsw or either of the sotas. Cyberpirates whil an excellent example was half 3+4. As far as having the posters have a consistent style, I don't think people always talk the same; it varies with topic and setting.
in runners havens there are certainly more on offs but less of the back and forth that created a back story to the book. And in SM there was virtually no back story. Now that's always been true with the core source books, but if you're going to add it in, jump in wiht both feet dammit.
I personally thought there were plenty of shadowtalkers who weremore than just cardboard cutouts. Picador, orange queen (any of the dragons really,) newyen nick, etc. how about the back story about Roxbourrough, in sota etc. You just don't get the flavour in the latest two books.

i think you mean SR2 and SR3, fool. at least, Cyberpirates was 2/3, not 3/4.

yeah you're right.
BTW anyone got a clue how ds's rating system works?
Clearly JP's system involves peer reveiw. AM I being judged by some secret cabal on ds and how do I join that secret cabal?

DS's system is based purely on postcount.

Sigh
I liked the secret cabal idea more than plain old post count

I think I'm going to start posting a whole bunch of mundane trivial crap just to get my count up.

So... why hasn't any crazed internet fan gone through all the books and come up with a public Shadowtalk database. I mean, if Idun Asmund gets her own Wikipedia page, I think that every single Shadowtalker deserves public and detailed web mention.

I think that they should use our names as a sign of respect to the people who buy their products and pay their bills.

The set-up of Jack Point is different from the pre-crash Shadowland. It's by 'invitation-only'. That doesn't mean though that the member list will remain static, established members might drop out, get expelled, die or retire. As shown in Runner Havens, members might invite 'guests' to share some intel none of the Jack Point regulars knows about. On occasion, a guest might even receive full fledged member status after a while.

I agree with DE, flipping through the SR3 shadowtalker list and comparing the 'voice' of the regular and semi-regular Shadowland posters was a pain. Shadowtalk was great to view a topic from another (unconfirmed) angle but personally, not picking the right shadowtalker or picking the wrong 'tone' could ruin the whole post. One shots are fun, but at some point you would have to ask yourself just how 'oh-so-secret' SR3 Shadowland really was (and how some of the more annoying posters figured out how to log on in the first place).

By no means is the SR4 shadowtalker list easier for the freelancers to deal with. There are only some 60 shadowtalkers right now, but in every book the odd specialty topic™ comes up and needs to be addressed and/or discussed. In some cases, none of the Jack Pointers specialties come even close. Plus, we can't simply invite a guest for everything the regular members can't cover without stretching their areas of expertise too much. In some cases, it means rephrasing entire paragraphs or more, approaching the topic from a different angle, still delivering the important bits, but from a different source. Yep, that's our job, but it's still a pain in the ass.

Bringing back the old feel of 'hey, cool, Neon Samurai's back' or 'awww, poor Hatchetman' is easier when you have a steady cast to pick from. And keeping the list around 60 - 80 characters defintely helps a lot, both for the authors as well as for the audience. I think we did some nice stuff in Emergence (pre-editing, at least) that will show you where we're going with some of the chars....

Oh, and mentioning the occasional fellow Dumpshocker might still be possible, after all, there's the intro fiction Vignette in each chapter....

I liked the SR2 model when they had big rants at the end to sum up the big picture and keep you thinking about the larger, medium, or small meta-plots.

If your going to keep it consistant with characters Then have them be apart of intertwining plots so they actually face off aginst each other. I think thats one thing 2nd and 3rd did was the sacrifice consistancy for story. So when they introduced rivalries, and hatred for other characters it was not just because of their political views but because who they worked for and what they did. Hell Dunkie, his watchers, and special guests argued, threated and talked shit about each other all throughout the Atzlan post. It's that kind of flavor I want to keep.

So If the freelancers can do it more power to them. One thing that could keep it interesting is if someone posts the freelancers argue it out and then add in their comments so as a GROUP they all realize whats being said and make sure their message remains clear so that if a one shot gets in its peer edited so that the people who follow the story (all of us) can make the same conncetions as the insiders who write the material. THe point should be to share as much information as they know with us so I can get caught up to speed and try new and differant things with the information I got.

I guess in short what I'm trying to say is update me while telling a story and do what you need to do (one-shoot, shout-out, consistant characters, and local specialists) to get the job done.

many of the most consistent voices that I'm thinking are missing are the likes of chromed accountant and nuyen nick, orange queen, dragonslayer (semi-regular,) picador/ matador, etc. Voices that were there consistently through multiple editions of the game.
As far as shadowland being not so secret, iirc they were written up as if you were good enough ot hack in you were good enough to be there (or you could be a contact) which made it a dangerous place to be talking about work too detailed.
All I'm saying is bring back my favorites dammit.