I don't propose now or ever playing SR4, but I am highly interested in continuing the torch burning for SR3. I was wondering if anyone has converted the SR4 new implant book, 'Augmentation', to SR3 rules, or if there is any proposal officially to do so.

And before you ask, yes, I have purchased Augmentation electronically. No I am not counselling, procuring, aiding or enabling the commission of a copyright offence.

Well for the majority of the book I'd point you to Man and Machine, Third Edition's cyberware sourcebook, and then use those stats to convert AUG's new toys if I wanted to go that route personally.

Yep, it looks like most of the book is not new at all. For those who care, there are some new ideas (like symbiotic organisms cultured to grow inside a subject to provide certain bonuses), and a few interesting new bits of bioware and cyberware (spider silk glands, for whoever it was on Dumpshock that suggested it), a little bit more expanded nanoware and genetech. One new cool idea is the much-discussed rigged animals (ie the fly is really a bug etc) which seems to be pretty well done. Otherwise not a very good book, nowhere near as ground breaking as Man and Machine was. Does not bode well for SR4, not that I was a fan in any event.

I thought I was very careful in revealing my bias, but apparently not careful enough. Perhaps I ought spell it out more clearly for the cheaper seats. I don't like SR4, even less since reading this book. Read with that in mind.

I bought the book because I hoped, at least, to use it to keep my SR3 gaming evolving, and I hoped that Augmentation would be of use. to that end It isn't. I intended reverse-engineering it for use in SR3, thus the original post. You seem to suggest my intention to take any new material from Augmentation and adapt it to SR3, and then my disappointment at there being very little new material, as hypocritical. I don't see how.

I intended communicating that the new book contained disappointingly little new material, and what little there was did not strike me as quality work. I feel that a core rulebook such as this one would need to be high-quality work containing substantial new material to keep SR4 running along, or at least viable, and in my view this book falls far short of the mark. If that intention was not clear, I appologise.

I disagree with your assessment of the new cyberlimb rules, but we can agree to disagree. I found the new book disappointingly lacking in substance, in new material (as I have said), in writing quality and in game mechanics.

Yes I bought it quickly. One of the few things that I was interested in, SR4-wise, was the Augmentation book because it might have kindled in me more interest in playing SR4. Unfortunately it doesn't. I am sure other people may like it.

The thing is, it is new material to SR4. Just like M&M was new material to SR3.

In my opionion you should keep in mind that Augmentation is aimed to all those that started with SR4 Core rules into the game -
having an advanced rules set "Augmentation" which based on Men & Machine from SR3 - would have started to create problems for all those SR4 players who are new to the game.
Under these aspects it's a good sourcebook in my humble opinion. Of course it's not all new - Move by Wire and Co have been there for a while, but still it introduces a few new things (maybe not that interesting to you) - but does a good job with converting several things into the new ruleset.

Augmentation introduces:

• no less than 75 entirely new augmentations (double those introduced in Man & Machine when compared to earlier books such as Cybertechnology and Shadowtech),
• it introduces three entirely new fields of augmentation (ie. symbionts, biodrones and jarheads),
• it makes nanotech and genetech useful and cost effective enhancements for the first time,
• it finally introduces modular cyberlimbs and cybersuites to Shadowrun,
• it also manages to update 95% of the material previously spread out over 4 different SR3 books (ie. M&M, SOTA63, SOTA64, and Target: Wastelands) for all those anxious SR4 players.
• and on top of that, more than a third of the content is setting fluff contextualizing the technologies (which M&M completely lacked).

I'm thinking your bias is showing, but I'm curious, what would you have qualified as innovative in terms of new material and substantial in terms of content?

(On a side note most of the new stuff is fully compatible with SR3 tech levels and upgrades and very little is contingent on 2070 tech developments).

Oi, I wouldn't have bothered to reply if I knew it was going to result in an anti-Fourth Edition rant. Personally I think all in all AUG is on par with Street Magic, which means it's a damned good book.

I may not agree with everything in it (Reintroducing Bio-Index is a mistake in my opinion along with stating cyberdicks.), but it's well written and is needed for Fourth Edition.

Synner: I want to buy the book already. Please stop to increase my drooling. Any news on the german license yet?

"Don't tell me you'll be wearing sunglasses on a night operation."

"My vision is augmented."

@Adam: Guesstimate on when there will be news? (Webspace of your choice ) Amazon tells me 16th of September/Book by FanPro, and the later info has me reluctant to place an order.

I was talking about the english printed version from Amazon, supposedly coming from FanPro. I´d rather not import the book myself.

Amazon

@Frank: I can handle the truth. Let me guess: After things were clear concerning catalyst games they took the smart move and reorganised things to make them work better/at all. Between reorganising and getting new stuff out finding new license partners had no priority at all (Apart from the fact that negotiations flow better if you know what you want do do).

To ask a better question: How will the distribution of english books be handled in germany? My assumption so far was that only WWW-stores like amazon are able to deliver in the near and not-so-near future.

FanPro LLC will never be releasing an English version of Augmentation, so any stores trying to sell it will not be fulfilling those orders. Some stores may end up fulfilling those orders with the Catalyst Game Labs release, but I do not suspect that Amazon is one of those. To them, the Catalyst release of Augmentation is a completely different book, because it has a different ISBN.

Catalyst is still working on getting distribution partners in Europe, and I'm sure we'll be available in game stores there within a few months.

In that case I´ll hope they notice anything that has its own ISBN... allthough they apparently didn´t notice Emergence.

Thanks for the info, keep on the good work.

Two words:

Penile Implant

(Think about it... This may be the implant that stops world war.)

...let's not go there again.

There's already a dedicated thread on the SR4 forum.