So with the supposed release of Emergence and Arsenal in germany speculated to be about a month away I thought I would take a chance and throw this question out there and see if the powers that be have an answer. How far off from now are we?

Its now at the point that I am trying to find some interpretive answer behind any little bit of information that is released as to why it is the way it is. From writers having issuses to maybe they are waiting for the SR4 book to be back in stock before launching other supplements. Its like trying to find meaning in a tone poem.

Now this could be disregarded as some geek speak rant but I think it has gone beyond that point. Its like Fanpro just has a total disregard to the how they treat their fan base and the people who are going to give them money for their work.

You guys have cleaned things up alot in SR4 and I am happy with most of the changes so can those who have decided to go with the change get better treatment as to the why and when of things.

Sorry, but that's bullshit. You know how rare it is for the actual writers of a product to regularly post on a forum board?

I'm sorry if my tone is a little harsh, but this post sounds a whole lot like countless others I've seen on other boards about how the producers of a product/service are mistreating their fans. And in this instance, they don't freakining deserve it.

Any "total disregard" for their fanbase is entirely in your mind.

I can't go along with total disregard for the fanbase (also called customers). I think the writers are very approachable, helpful and attentive. it's a very common occurence for writers to answer questions and offer comments here. And the highest regard for the fanbase can be seen in producing the products that they do. Everything SR4 has been high quality so far.

I am, admittedly howling in frustration waiting for Arsenal and as the subject of dedication has been raised, I'd be interested to know whether the writers work on this full time, part time and or tryi to fit in writing rulebooks on their weekends? But a disregard is never something I've felt. Overwork possibly. But never a lack of enthusiasm and love for the game.

Just the impression I get.

Its just what my frustration has lead me to interpret. Like other fanpro projects have taken much bigger priority over SR. I can see why Battletech would be important and lucrative but spread the love around a bit. Its been 2 years almost and we only have 3 books which has had everything running incredible bare bones not to mention any other SR project online.

And I dont mean this as disrepect to the writers and the staff its just the plan and the PR can be handled better.

Hmmm... I have to admit I didn't realise that things were so thin on the ground at Fanpro. Given the quality (at least in my opinion, I understand there are dissenters) of the releases to date I figured the company would be bigger.

While I personally have quite limited time for extra curricular activities, so to speak, I wonder to what extent the publishers are interested in submissions by the community?

Although I don't consider myself a talented writer, I ask partly as I have what I feel are a couple of quite well balanced runs, and if the developers are interested I would be willing to submit them for consideration. Of course, if they are already inundated with submissions, as I had always assumed, there would be little point adding to their workload, as it would only delay the precious, precious books we all crave!

As far as encouraging more people to play SR, I did endeavour to enlist my FLGS, by telling them I'd buy a copy of any new SR4 books they got in. To my chagrin they seem to have ignored me. Still, I do try.

Don't get us wrong. Your contribution is appreciated. Really, it is. Those of us who enjoy this game ensure continued publications by telling others about SR, playing the game, and buying fanpro's products.

But when you accuse fanpro of ignoring it's supporters, especially using phrases like, "blatant disregard," well, it's just not factually accurate. And you're gonna get emotional responses when you make accusations like that from people who feel that fanpro is different from a lot of the bigger companies out there, especially considering how many of the writers post in this forum.

And considering how many of the writers for Shadowrun are freelancers, who do this in their offtime, complaining about how the books aren't being published fast enough and then turning around and saying that you're not willing to do what they do to rectify the problem is counter-intuitive, to say the least.

It's that time of month again...

Okay, let's try to clarify a few things. FanPro operates with 2 full time employees. They happen to be the line developers for the Battletech Classic and Shadowrun lines. However, it's worth bearing in mind that the lead developer of SR, Rob Boyle, also handles all the day-to-day business of running the company, dealing with printers, dealing with Wizkids, dealing with distributers, dealing with bills, coordinating new projects, acting as art director, etc, etc, etc.

As regards Shadowrun, 2 part-time assistant developers have been brought in during the past year or so, to lift some of the workload off Rob, and act as lead developers on tandem projects thereby assisting workflow. As one of those developers I can tell you it's been a bumpy ride since the very first projects facing us have been the core books (taking on Street Magic as my first development gig was a dream-come-true and a nightmare).

These assistant developers have day jobs (in my case, more than one) and work on Shadowrun in their free time (ie. whenever they can). Every freelance author in recent Shadowrun releases is pretty much in the same situation, nobody is a full time professional RPG writer. The RPG market simply doesn't allow very many people to make a living this way. As a result a lot of our work as developers goes into coordinating and keeping 5+ different freelance authors (and in recent years writers often on different continents, living and working in different time zones) on the same page and the material consistent through-out the development process - let's just say that isn't always easy. Did I mention that editing is also on a freelance basis as is layout and art work? Starting to look complicated? Well, it is. FanPro is a small company and none of this is done "in-house".

That being said, also keep in mind that many of the upcoming releases are core rule books. Anyone in the industry will tell you, these involve twice the work, twice the playtesting and triple the trouble to get into shape. These are the fundamental books that are intended to serve you for the whole of 4th edition. It's doubly important we get them right. I hope Street Magic shows what we're going for, and I'm confident you'll all find Arsenal (and upcoming books) are up to the same standard.

The good news is... things get better with practice. You learn from your mistakes and experience helps iron out future problems. It's a matter of hitting our stride and we're trying damn hard to do it.

As things stand, we've got Emergence in final layout, Arsenal in final editing, primary writing on Augmentation just completed, and Corp Enclaves development is coming along nicely.

While I don't want to gush excessively, I've been very impressed by the material released to date, and avidly await all the new releases.

re: submitting work, I was actually thinking of SR Missions. I've been following the runs as they come out, although I've not had an opportunity to run most of them. I actually liked the Denver setting so much I ran my own SR4 game there, until my players had to leave town and I ran out of free time.

Still, if I do come up with any settings (say, in my own UK) I'll throw something up here on Dumpshock and see if any of my peers bite. As far as rules go though, I'm not sure I can compete with the quantity being suggested already.

Like Synner implied threads like this come up about monthly. Perhaps next month I'll remember this one and just link it as soon as someone starts the topic.

...Synner, as always, excellent points.

I have worked for a small company before with an often impatient customer base (in the early days of Multimedia development). Most of the time it was "seat of the pants" flying since our company was on the forefront of the industry. Every new project made huge demands on our individual creativity since in effect we were setting many of the industry standards as we went. The only thing that differed from FanPro was that we all collected a regular paycheck.

I have also done commission work as well as a stint at consulting in an industry which was changing at an almost logarithmic pace back then. Because of these experiences, I feel I have a relatively decent understanding of what the folks at FanPro are going through.

Yes, I am waiting expectantly for Arsenal, but I also want it to be good. If it takes a bit more time fine. I have the Street Magic PDF and can say that I am quite pleased with it, even though I rarely if ever play a mage or Shaman as a PC.

I also have considered contributing and have a copy of both FanPro's submission guidelines and the aforementioned Some Pointers post. From what I understand, it is a very tough assignment, for you need to make sure your submission fits seamlessly in with the rules and setting.

@ornot. From the "grass is always greener" viewpoint, I have mostly been running my campaigns in Europe (particularly the UK) even though I live in the US (Portland TT...er Oregon). In particular, I have made extensive use of the old London Sourcebook (really nice fluff), along with Shadows of Europe (my copy of which has seen better days with all the use it gets) and Shadows of Asia (Red Star Rising chapter)

Now I am really getting curios about Emergence. I wait for Arsenal, but we all know what will be in there - Equipment and stuff;).

Sounds simple enough, but if they thought that they could make enough more money by hiring more people that the additional income would cover their wage and give a reasonable amount of net profit, you can be sure they'd do it in a heartbeat. But It's rarely that simple and easy. Making RPGs does not seem to be an easy business to make money in. You've got to watch your costs (such as employee wage) closely, or you'll just run your company into the ground.

FanPro is not Wizards of the Coast. They're not even White Wolf. They're little fish. The consequence of that is less frequent releases. (Which is fine to me. 75% of White Wolf's releases are wholly uninteresting to me, in spite of being a big fan.) Regardless, if we see that the problem is that FanPro is little, it's not really an easy solution at all to say "Then they need to be bigger". It's not that easy. Manpower is expensive.

Yeah, RPGs are not a big money-making operation. Especially small publishers. As a freelancer, I don't know the details of FanPro's income and expenses, but I see enough to know they don't have large amounts of reserve income sitting around.

On the earlier question of how the freelancers operate, I can give you my personal spin. I work full-time not as a writer, but as an audio-video technician for a government-affilated, non-profit agency. On the side, I freelance write for Shadowrun, as well as occasionally magazines and newspapers. I'll tell you up front that writing for other outlets pays better than writing for Shadowrun does, but it's a labor of love. Usually I fit my writing into whatever free time I can spare. This weekend I'll be devoting a good chunk of time to Corp Enclaves, but I'm almost done with that and I'm looking forward to some other ideas I have going. Somewhere in between work and writing I harbor a World of Warcraft addiction and I'm saving up to go back to school to get my Masters in Architecture.

Freelancers come in all shapes and sizes. Some are extremely devoted to the game. We want to see more books come out and we want them out soon. But sometimes we just can't manage any additional writing time than what we already squeeze out of our daily lives and sometimes we just know we need to go back and rewrite something because we're not happy with how the product is turning out. Sometimes you get freelancers who are really excited to be involved but learn the hard way that they can't balance writing with their daily lives. It's tough and sometimes it means the rest of us are left pitching in more to finish up pieces we never signed on to do. It's a big balancing act and I think we do a decent job with the limited resources at our disposal.

On top of all that, many of us post here, which is very unique in this industry. RPG.net gets industry posters too, but there really isn't another RPG site on the Internet that gets as much involvement from the writers as this one does. I think it's really great and the writer/community exchange is definitely one of the reasons why I keep writing for Shadowrun.

NightmareX,

I think that the freelancers and the two Fanpro employees know that most posters here support them. It is a minority (a seemingly very vocal one) that aren't happy.

Wizkids could potentially pull the license and hand it to another company. However, that is pretty unlikely. Why?

a) Because in fact, the impact of manpower on the development cycle is only one factor, there are others. FanPro is a small publisher (like pretty much every RPG company outside WotC and WW) and that means there are limits on what it can put into print at any given time simply because of the state of the industry (and by that I mean publishers, distributors and retail) and cashflow considerations. There's also the limitations imposed by the freelance model (and there is no viable alternative to that in the current RPG market) and the availability and commitment of authors, artists and editors.

b) Because the current realities of the RPG market offer no guarantees that another company (regardless of manpower) would be able to do any better (particularly since FanPro has been doing pretty well by any standards).

c) Because Wizkids is quite happy with the way FanPro has been handling the SR property (and BTC for that matter). To a large extent because Shadowrun and BTC are selling strong while the market seems to be stagnated or tanking for everyone else, and because SR4 was one of the best selling products on the market for the last 2 years.

d) Because for all its apparent slowness, FanPro is still putting out more releases to its core product lines each year than most RPG publishers in its market range (which means pretty much everyone except WotC and WW).

e) Because part of the "problem" has to do with the nature of this game. Without in house writers (which is a breed on the verge of extinction in todays market anyway) it is simply not possible to maintain editorial control of the game line, the metaplot and the direction of the game. The alternative is using multiple freelancers and regardless of their dependability, there are limits to the time and commitment a limited pool of freelancers can devote to writing and developing books (doubly so when those books are core rule books and need to carry you through the whole of 4th edition). Yes, we probably could churn out rule books faster, but that comes at a cost in quality and consistency that we're not willing to compromise.

f) And finally, because FanPro has addressed the issue of manpower by bringing on 2 part time developers to aid the SR line developer and enhance workflow. Admittedly, it's been a steep learning curve for everyone involved due in no small part to the unique demands of the projects at hand (ie. the core rule books). Hitting our stride has taken longer than we would have liked, but we're getting there.

I think that quirky style dates back to the FASA days -- the first edition was simply called Shadowrun, so it got italicized [actually, bolded], and it just stayed that way.

It's annoying from a writing/layout perspective, because you can't just automatically ital every instance of the word -- but since the word is used as part of the setting, I think it makes sense. That, however, doesn't explain why it's done in Classic BattleTech...

I'd prefer to wait for really good books than wind up buying a bunch that I never use because they were badly written, badly conceived, or plain unnecessary; which I recall doing several times back when I used to play WoD. The most annoying thing was when they released some stuff for a line, but then quit writing for it because it wasn't doing as well as their other lines. This happened to both Wraith and Changeling which were my favourite WoD lines.

Synner's point #e) is also good. You need continuity, FanPro took over the Shadowrun franchise while SR3 was still in print. It makes most sense that those who were involved remained intact for the SR4 project. With the two part time developers and a couple more freelancers being brought on line (one who I know BTW), things will pick up, particularly as Synner implies in the case of setting books which do not require extensive playtesting and reivision as doe rules expansions.

Startups are not easy, and in a sense SR4 was a "startup" project since it was a major redeux of the ruleset and not just a slight revision as in the past. We have gone through what is it now, 3 sets of Errata to the BBB and one for Street Magic. I think they are doing an excellent job compared to some other companies, including WoTC which basically released its errata for their most popular system as a complete "x.5" revision (making you buy the core books again about six to eight months after after x.0 was originally released). Meanwhile, FanPro has been posting the Errata and FAQs for us to read and download for free which to me says they do care.

Let's not villify WotC on false terms -- D&D 3.0 came out in 2000, and 3.5 in 2003, and a ton of the material is available for free online as part of the System Reference Documents.

There was an *update* to the Fourth Edition errata in December, but it wasn't the first release of errata for the book.

Street Magic errata hasn't been released yet, but it -- along with some material that was cut from the book for space reasons -- is on the cards very soon.

"Cumbersome and absurb" describes a lot of formatting oddities in game books.

BattleTech Line Developer: "Unitalicize all the vehicle names in that chapter, Adam."
Adam: "Um, why?"
BattleTech Line Developer: "We don't italicize them."
Adam: "Okay, the names of 'Mechs are italicized, but the names of vehicles are not."
BattleTech Line Developer: "Correct."
Adam: "Why?!!?!"
BattleTech Line Developer: "Because."
Adam: *cries*

Ah, Adam. Have we told you we love you today?

Well, Union Jane did call me 'love' yesterday, but I think she was just living up to her name.

There's work, and there's Work ...

Amazon has concrete dates now...

Funnily enough, I told Amazon new dates for some books in, oh, November or December, and they finally showed up a few weeks ago. I suggest that trusting Synner or myself is just a *wee* bit more reliable than Amazon.

But it's Amazon, they're the experts at this stuff, they have the heads up on this sort of stuff so we should believe what's there on their website.