If SR4 is doing so well, then why the lack of material? Must not be money.... Time? Material?

Adam or Synner mentioned last year something about a Almanac/History type book - all flavor text complied form the history of SR complied into one book - no gaming material, just back ground - is that still in the works?

...I hear this. In my RL occupation I often have to juggle many different tasks and clients at the same time. The tough thing for me is, by the nature of the business I am in, everything needs to be completed on a very tight deadline. If something slides, we need to have a very good reason why it happened.

I deal with digital print workflow, proofing, and billing for a medium size company. Pretty straightforward stuff compared to developing, producing, and marketing a product which requires a more creative angle such as a game system.

I do not envy the people at FanPro for one moment.

I have been working in the game industry long enough to have learned -- among other things, many of which require handing me a red bull and vodka to hear -- that no matter what, no matter who suggests it, no matter how easy it may look and sound, there is no such thing as an "easy" project, and a really rocking Shadowrun almanac sounds far from easy.

Or play SR4.

rrrgh. i really don't want to get into this.

scaling is not always a good thing. two experienced boxers can go for a long, long time against each other, while two inexperienced boxers will only go for a few rounds before one of them gets a lucky shot or gets too tired to hold up their defense. chess games between amateurs tend to be over quickly; between masters, they can take much longer. scaling everything such that contests between newbies and contests between veterans always take the same amount of time would be silly. fights between dragons should be an all-day, epic event.

at the same time, there are some cases where contests between high-end equals will be over very quickly, such as a pistol duel; amateurs might take a little longer simply because both of them miss several times, but it's still going to be over fairly quickly. so some things should scale.

oh noes! some things scale and some things don't. what to do? how about using a dice mechanic that scales okay for things that should scale (say, roll skill vs TN 4+mods) and a mechanic that doesn't scale for things that don't (say, skill/attribute vs skill/attribute)?

The default first oder thing is to make a ruleset that scales. If one wants the complexity one can add non scaling mechanics (in both directions), as they occur in real life, as you said. But this is second order. (For example a ruleset that uses D10, and is a mix of SR3 TN modifiers and SR4 dice pool modifiers. I developed something like this as a mathematical test once, works quite well)

And in SR3 it definitely was not intended and is thus a design flaw.

What advantage does it give?

~J

scaling is not inherently necessary, because--as i've just shown with examples--scaling is not always desired. the biggest problem i have with SR4 is that the modifiers scale in such a way that very difficult tasks are very easy to accomplish. personally, i believe triangular scaling presents a more realistic basis, because to me, modifiers should synergize to make things even more difficult than the sum of their base difficulties.

Things scaling the way you're talking about. What benefit does it offer?

~J

The benefit that an opposed test is guaranteed to yield a useful (other word for independent the rating) result no matter what the rating.

In SR3 this is not the case for high ratings (neither of the opponents achieving a hit for a number of tests is not useful, also that the number of hits is not going up with the rating).

SR3 mechanis are not robust for higher ratings. SR4 mechanics are robust for any ratings. (This is not neccessarily true for modifiers, only for the mechanic itself)

SR4 doesn't allow higher ratings. It has caps on everything. That sounds fairly much like an impediment to scaling.

Allow me to repeat your flawed analysis of SR3 scaling so you may actually understand.

SR3 success is based on X (number of dice), Y (TN on a die), and Z (size of a die).
Opposed tests yield useful results, but can only reliably result in some degree of success when Y is not much more than Z. You are willing to scale X and Y and insist that Z is a flaw, with no clear reason other than a very complex way of saying "Serbitar likes it this way."

I have no issue with your preference for a system that scales arbitrarily when you dump out certain parts of the rules, but you claim that it is somehow inherently superior to one that results in meaningful outcomes for every test that involves PCs who are not some sort of house-ruled vampiric dragons with A++ in attributes and skills and resources.

Ahh, please tell me where exactly is the part in SR3 that changes D6 to another size (z) depending on the target number (Y), which I am dumping? I can not find this in my SR3 rulebook.

And I say again, the scaling in SR3 is already wrong by 400% comparing the ratings 3 and 6. Read my posts above for the calculation.

There isn't. You have been talking about arbitrarily adjusting the baseline. The baseline is dependant on standard attributes, standard TNs and a standard die. You have been willing to arbitrarily change two of them, but declare that the third not being changed is a flaw.

As for 3 vs. 6:
So, the second lowest possible real TN is much easier than getting the 1die/2dice cutoff. What a shock.

Yes, exactly, thats true. Because its not scaling. Mathematical fact. Very objective.

A system with varyable X, Y AND Z would be scaling (if the numbers were chosen correctly).

The book is done. It has been out in stores for some month I think.

I don't really see "we're not planning on doing it right now" as "much opposition".

Translation is a tough business that's extremely hours-intensive. Unless you want it to suck, anyway. And a large project like a SR Almanac would mean having to have multiple translators working on it, which means needing a project lead that's also able to translate so that there's a consistent feel and the translations are consistent.

It's certainly not as easy as "just translate it". Not trying to argue or anything, because I'd love to see it too. Just putting it out there.

I'd suggest babblefish, but it would probably result in things getting thrown at me, huh?

I'm surprised there aren't enough qualified fans who'd be willing to do it on the cheap. I mean, neither English nor German are especially uncommon or difficult languages, especially in our circles.

*throws something at nezumi for bringing up babblefish*

I agree on the languages, and the fans. I just don't see it as Fanpro telling us "NO, AIN'T GONNA".

edit: Especially when people are clamoring for the core SR4 books. Gotta do what you can do, you know?

Somehow I missed this... but after reading the link Serbitar provided, that's not what I thought it would be.

Do I dare to translate?

Take a peek behind the scenery of shadowrun - both in fiction and reality! Besides short stories of known Shadowrun authors you'll find worth knowing and bizarre trivia, interviews with the creators of the Shadowrun-world, a who-is-who of the most important authors, a complete timeline, a list of all Shadowrun publications with summary, pictures out of different publications und much more, everything the readers and players ever wanted to know. Everyone in the 6th world knows: information equals power!.
Not a dry encyclopedia, but a worth reading fact book that's interesting from the first to the last page.

So, basically you can get most of this stuff in the internet. I don't think it's worth a translation.

Now, a book about the whole shadowrun history, that I would buy .

Right, but you're incorrectly assuming that only the relative rating should matter. That's what SR3 has fixed-TN opposed tests for, incidentally—for those rare occasions where relative rating matters more than absolute rating.

~J

opposed tests are trivially easy to remove, leaving you with--in my opinion--a much better die mechanic. that fact that opposed tests are screwy (and they definitely can be; stealth, for instance, sucks in SR3) is not a reason to get a new die mechanic, it's a reason to get rid of opposed tests.

At least there are rules for it in SR3 and 4.

Stealth is an Open Test, not an Opposed Test.

~J

tisoz, do you really think that they should compete with themselves for a share of the cyberpunk market? Even if you let freelancers do all the development you've still got to spend time editing and revising and making sure that the two sides of the game synch up in terms of technology and history. There's no way (or at least none I can think of) that would allow for development on both sides without chewing into FanPro resources.

How much old blood is there?