We are still accepting submissions for Runner's Companion (though those will be closed soon). After that come:

• Crime Time aka the Underworld sb (working title),
  
• Corp Guide (working title),
  
• Awakened Haunts,
  
• Running Wild,
  
• super-duper-secret campaign book
  
• Cities of Intrigue,
  
• Strange Places (extreme locations such as space stations, Mars bases, Antarctic arcologies, undersea cities).

Submissions are effectively open for all those books, even though most are nowhere near development stage. If you send in a proposal it will be noted and we will be in touch when the "official" submission process kicks off.

Nope, Feral Cities will focus on cities that have really gone to the dogs. Places like GeMiTo, Sarajevo, or Bug City. According to an entry in Corporate Enclaves, the Tir is actually looking pretty good - then again it might be Horizon spin.

...maybe Cities of Intrigue then? Nice to see that Sarajevo is at least being included. Hope htere's also some backgound on the general scene in the Balkans as well. I know SOTA '64 had mention about the peace talks between Serbia and Croatia in '63.

Oooh Strange Places, now that does interest me...

Established freelancers have little edge because they get access to a general (and at that point pretty fluid) outline of what we want the book to look like when we make a call for submissions. Typically, we also send this outline out to any newcomers who sent in potential submissions and may want to revise their initial proposal now that more info is available - consider it a place holder of sorts. Otherwise you pretty much have to trust your instincts as to what you think would be good in a particular book and make the best pitch you can. Heck, my first project (Shadows of Europe) wasn't even on the planning and was added on the strength of the EuroSBer's collective pitch.

That said it isn't too hard to guess what we will want to include in some of these upcoming books (and tracking down Rob's GenCon seminar will also give some clues):

• Crime Time is intended to update and expand the Underworld sb to the 2070 setting, as well as offering a more global perspective.
  
• Runner's Companion will feature the best parts of the Shadowrun Companions and add even more character options as well as offering some Sprawl Survival Guide-type material geared at players.
  
• Corp Guide will do much the same thing for the megacorps, though Rob has already publically announced that we also want to include chapters on AAs and rising stars.
  
• Running Wild will be the critters book for SR4, and will (at least partially) play off the unpublished SR3 product of the same name. It definitely won't be a monster manual or Paranormal Animal Guide though.
  
• Awakened Haunts, Cities of Intrigue, Strange Places will be the next in our line of themed sprawl books following Runner Havens, Corporate Enclaves and Feral Cities. We have a general idea of what cities we'd like to highlight but we're always open to stuff out of the left-field.

Aside from that you might want to check this thread for some pointers from myself and other freelancers on what makes a good submission.

Note I didn't say if any of the cities I mentioned were being included. However, were Sarajevo to be included it would be unlikely to be more than a secondary location and hence limited in length.

Thought it might.

I second this request.

you rule ^^

I do have a rough draft of a Balkans chapter stored somewhere on my backups, just like I have one on Greece.

The book you are thinking of is Shadows of Latin America. Writing was completed on it, but because it was an SR3 book whose release date would have fallen after the release of SR4, it was pulled from the schedule and remains unreleased.

There's always been a desire and intent to release the content, but it's also always been linked to Holostreets, which has not yet materialized.

Uh... I can take a crack at it. I used to be involved.

Catalyst does not pay their bills on time. They will eventually pay you, just not on time. If that's a problem for you, don't bother.

If, on the other hand, you want to write for Shadowrun because you love the setting and want to be able to wink at some of your friends and say "Yeah, I wrote that part" then go ahead. Catalyst designs books by committy, which is in the long run good. But at times it can be extremely frustrating. It's a painfully slow process because honestly not everyone you are working with will do their job.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the rules of writing for Catalyst include not contradicting the basic book. That's overall a good thing. The last thing you want is to go into D&D land where there are literally dozens of versions of certain rules floating around. But this also means that when you run into a rule that is actually crap (Cyberlimbs comes to mind), getting anything done about it is an incredibly draining and difficult task.

And the playtesters are fucking retarded. I'm not even kidding. When writing for Street Magic I seriously got a playtest report that was just a diatribe in broken English about how they thought "Worker Spirit" sounded "too communist" (they were eventually renamed "Task Spirits" - as if I gave two shits which name got used).

And your editor will do everything at the last moment and he will fuck you. Guardian Spirits weren't supposed to have Magical Guard, for example. Allies were supposed to have a non-linear cost to make Force 7+ Allies prohibitive. The Essence Hole rules were supposed to make any god damn bit of sense. This isn't malicious, your editor is just jumping from project to project in a rush and likely won't get around to making some changes until right at the last minute as things are being stuck into galley proofs.

And not every one of the free lancers can run a potato clock with the wattage of their radio brains, let me tell you. Bloodzilla was explained, at length, during the design process. The fact that it was a shit idea that had no business being in Shadowrun was exhaustively demonstrated with numbers and little graphs, and it made the final cut anyway because someone wanted it to "feel different" - and I only use that example because it's the most blatantly obvious. Frankly there are many pieces of boneheadery that makes my hackles rise to this day.

But enough about the bad. You get to put your material into Shadowrun canon. Sometimes you can convince another writer that their idea is bad and yours would be better. Sometimes someone drops out and you get asked to write the Cybermancy section at the last minute and you get bragging rights forever.

If I had it to do all over again, I would.

-Frank

Yeah, if you mean this, that's a White Wolf book.

...Is there any chance I could see this info? If so, PM me and I can send my regular email address.

Already reading up on everything relating to Shadowrun and space.

and again, you rule for that one ^^

Just from my mind, here are some cities/sprawls I'd consider for each:

Awakened Haunts

• Portland, Tir Tairngire
• Boston, UCAS
• Prague, Czech Republic
• Jerusalem, Israel
• Sydney, Australia
• Belfast, Tir na nOg
• Lhasa, Tibet
• Leshan, Sichaun
• Athens, Greece
• Yakutsk, Yakut
• Phnon Penh, Cambodia
• Urga, Mongolia
• Urumqi, Xianjing

Cities of Intrigue

• Kittimat, Tsimshian Protectorate
• San Francisco, CFS
• Boise, Tri-Border City
• Denver, FRFZ
• Washington, DC UCAS
• Austin, CAS
• Geneva, Switzerland
• London, Great Britain
• Brussel, EC
• Warsaw, Poland
• Moscow, Russia
• Baghdad, Iraq
• Dushanbe, Tajikistan
• Hainan
• Beirut, Lebanon
• Bogota
• St. Louis, UCAS
• Manila, Philippines
• Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina
• Kiev, Ukraine
• Odessa, Ukraine
• Mogadishu, Ethiomalian TerritorieS
• Urumqi, Ughuristan
• Chengdu, Sichuan
• Tashkent, Turkestan

Strange Places

• Los Alamos, PCC
• Santiago de Compostela, Spain
• Tehran, Iran
• Outback, Australia
• Haparanda Anomaly Zone, Finland
• Jutland, Denmark
• Apollo Station
• Death Valley, PCC
• Nicosia, Cyprus
• STOLZ, Israel
• R'lyeh

Most of these should be pretty obvious as to why they are included. I especially like the idea of making Mogadishu a viable, intriguing (pun intended) city.

I'll personally hunt you down and do nasty things to you if Metropole is not included in Awakened Haunts (or any one of the other Location books). And I'm not talking about the little 'Constantinople'-type mention either, but a big-ass write up worthy of the grand sprawl that it has become.

Yes, R'lyeh.

Metropole? It sure is. Why?

It's only one of the biggest Sprawls (if not the biggest) in the Sixth World. And we have fuck all information on it!

Did I mention that I have a whip or two?

If I thought it would get in, I'd pitch it. But it's really not a sprawl-type place and being that it is in Tibet, it's not the easiest city to get to either, so I don't really think it belongs in the signature settings.

Well, there is Renraku's promise to wire Tibet so that AI can get its pilgrimage in (yay Emergence).

If you want to PM me the basic ideas for london you have I might attempt something, I've mostly been building the rest of the UK but that could be included in a London write up. That being said I think I'm better at grand ideas than writing... If you fancy PMing me any stuff you have anyway I'd keep it secret and love you forever

Yes!

Many of them are written in the voice of a guest Jackpoint poster who could be considered a local. But usually these are runners who spend considerable amounts of time elsewhere and have a clear idea of the differences between this city and others. For example, Rigger X was the voice I used for the Nerve Centers of Neo-Tokyo chapter, and he had been exiled from Neo-Tokyo for years before being able to re-enter thanks to shifts in power among the Yakuza.

I hope you mean "the first time."

The last time was SoE and I (not-quite an ex-pat) co-wrote the United Kingdom chapter with Alistair Fraiser (a native) - and it seemed to go over quite well. Though we preserved much of what Mr Sargent and Mr Gascoigne produced in the original London sb we did twist it here and there to ground things better in the setting and timeline so as to make them more palatable to today's public.

Personally, I don't think it has so much to do with the writer being a native or not (though I prefer a local to get the atmosphere right), as much as having a sensibility regarding how a particular place or setting element fits into the global picture of the overall setting. In earlier SR books, a sign of the times I believe, there was a tendency to focus on what made a particular location/country cool and unique compared to everywhere else, and ramp that up so it became the dominant feature of the setting - and this sometimes came at the cost of "setting continuity" and translated into material that didn't quite fit with the bigger picture and seemed somehow slightly "off".

It's why I think the "Shadows of" books rocked for the most part, we made an effort to not only showcase local ideosyncracies and cultural tropes but to integrate each country into the bigger jigsaw picture. It's also why I like the current location books.

Yeah, but that wasn't a specific write-up on London, which is technically what we are discussing. I considered adding a disclaimer, but didn't think it was necessary.

Was the London Sourcebook written by a Brit? I'd be surprised to find out if it was. I only ask because some people seem to have some very odd ideas about the British class system, ideas that seem to derive from Edwardian costume drama and 1940's BW movies.

Not that I'm particularly waiting for more write ups about Britain. My own campaign, set in England, is so far beyond what's been published previously it's unlikely to be compatible with anything new. The Pendragon, for example, crappiest NPC SR ever produced, he's been well sidelined.

Edit - So we're talking about SoE not LS, that was better.

Not at all! I was indeed refering to the London Sourcebook, written by Mr Sargent and Mr Gascoigne, one or both of whom I believe are British.