So I was browsing the 6th World Wiki the other day, and looking at Wordman's Shadowrun Reference Standard and I started thinking how ridiculously handy it would be to have a comprehensive concordance for the SR canon. It would be a monumental task, but what a great resource, especially if it were hosted online (plus it would cut down on the "What can you tell me about New Jersey?" or "Tell me about ice cream in SR" posts here on DS... )

Has anyone ever thought about making one, or actually tried?

(Note to Admins: This might fit better in the community projects sub-forum, but I'm not necessarily proposing an organized attempt (yet). Feel free to move it as you see fit.)

To my knowledge, the closest thing to a Shadowrun Concordance is Ancient History's work. Some years ago, whilst doing a google search, I stumbled across a very detailed Shadowrun timeline, much more detailed then what you find in the rulebooks.

Could you please post that link (if it's still alive)?

The Ancient Files

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowrun_timeline ???

The timeline explorer was great, but it's not here anymore...

As for the concordance, it can easily be done with the PDF and some scripting. But it will be a bit harder for the books that haven't been converted to PDF.

I believe the SR Timeline is preserved on the Internet Archive. Having said that, it's definitely something that frequently pops up on mod discussions as something that we want to restore, in some fashion.

Yes Ancient's work is impressive and the time lines are useful, but I was envisioning something where you could look up "Doc Wagon" or "Damien Knight" and see every SR reference with book and page number. It would be great for researching campaigns.

There is still the interactive timeline on the Shadowrun Duels homepage at http://www.wizkidsgames.com/shadowrun/shad...e.asp?cid=37602

Lars

I did an Excel sheet for corporations (and only them), first as a reference for freelancer while working on SoE. I made a landmark with System Failure, work is still under way to catch up with fourth edition books.

Corporate Index 2065

Nath: WOW!!

That is impressive. How long did it take you to compile that? Thanks for posting that. It will definitely be useful.

@Nath

Very Nice and Very Useful thanks for posting the link to it.

WMS

Thanks for reminding me of the wayback machine. The timeline works here: http://web.archive.org/web/20070311132504/....dumpshock.com/

It's also good to hear that bringing it back is being discussed.

I went to the Wayback Machine the other day to find that exact same page. While the front end works, it doesn't seem to have any actual timeline information that I could access, which is why I didn't post the link at the time.

Almost a decade ago, I toyed with the idea of something like a web site where a group could build a really detailed index. I called it ISIS. It never really got off the ground. The progress page is now sort of unintentionally hilarious, at least to me. I'm actually sort of stunned the web pages are still in my directory structure. I guess my wife is right that I never throw anything away.

Every once in a while, I'd get the impulse to try to get ISIS started again, but much of the drive to do so went away when PDF versions of books came on the scene. It was just easier to use Acrobat's batch searching to find stuff. Another reason was that I realized that, if you built the web code for one game, it would be just as easy to build it for all games.

As such, I've been tinkering with Cake PHP to build a more generic on-line indexing groupware type thing. This is more of a programming exercise at this point, to teach myself Cake. If it ever turns into anything real, I'll publish the URL here and people with interest could create a Shadowrun index.

I'd really like to change the Ancient Files into a wiki (with myself as sole editor) at some point, but it probably isn't going to happen soon.

aw, pity that ._.
would probably be THE wiki for runners then *g*

Wordman: very interesting. Did you ever promote ISIS among the SR community back then? Wonder why it didn't catch on. You should keep us posted on your cake project.

AH: I would certainly support such a project. Of coarse the beauty of a concordance style site is that it would require little editing. If the word occurs in a given body of text it is included and if not then not. No need for commentary really, unless you want to do summaries for those unfortunate souls that don't own all the old books.

EDIT: I guess the Sixth World Wiki has the potential to be turned into a functional index but you'd have to get a massive movement behind the idea to get it done. I don't think any one individual could really do it well.

GREAT GOOGLY MOOGLY (he exclaimed in the greatest of capitals!)

That is tremendous!! I am grabbing that. Hopefully you can get it posted somewhere more permanent and easier to find, like the sixth world wiki?

eh, i wouldn't put it past aunty ancient *g*

I'd really like to see the Sixth World Wiki get turned into aforementioned index. How do we do that though? Just start dumping source books into entries?

aside from the obvious problem of copyright, yes, more or less i'd think . .

Copy right violations would be bad.

More so I was thinking people could start creating pages for different things and instead of summarizing just typing the book and page number references using Wordman's Shadowrun Reference Standard. Like every time you come across "Parashield" you go edit the page and add the reference. If there isn't a Parashield page you create one and add the reference. Basically a data dump. Then someone in the future could go back through and summarize. That would be a massive undertaking, though.

[edit] Of coarse we would need Wordman to update the SRS.... [/hint]