I'm glad for the official clarification at the main page about the dragon rules being a joke. While I'm sure some people liked the idea of Dragon PCs, I thought they would've taken the game in an inappropriate direction. Sure, they were hypothetical optional rules, but even so, that would've taken the focus back towards the realm of Immortal Elves and epic-level games.

Even so, it was a good prank.

so, who is up for turning them into full fan rules?

Hrmm, well im always one to wait to see before getting excited, but I do have to say im quite disappointed. Id much rather the options exist and go unused than not exist and be wanted.

And I say they would have taken the focus way from the IE and GDs - anything you can play is not special anymore, as often as it gets killed.

The Cake is a Lie

Bah! That wasn't a prank, it was a troll! Catalyst should just post a big ol "YHBT, lol" on the front page

I also think it was a stupid joke, because the rules were generally so balanced that it really wasn't funny. If dragons had been 'omg teh uber lolz,' everyone would laugh and move on. But they actually seemed to make pretty balanced characters, which definitely killed the joke. And the typos, as they admit, didn't add to the joke, because people expect them, especially in pre-published materials. They're proud of that?

All in all, it was a joke where only the devs were laughing. Everyone else was either happy or enraged. Though many people insisted was a joke, I don't recall hardly anyone actually treating it as humorous.

As an April Fool's joke, the runner companion preview earn's Larme's mark of FAIL.

Don't quit your dayjobs guys.

Pranks or April Fool's stunts end the day of April 1 st.

This was at best LAME, at worst......

WMS

Holy crap, Larme, it wasn't that bad. The idea should have been taken with a grain of salt in the first place, as so many items (timing [such as releasing RC info before Unwired, when Unwired is next), being so close to April 1 [probably late due to having to finalize it], to name a couple) pointed that the item may not be real. People jumped the gun and assumed way too much. This isn't the first time this is happened for an April Fool's joke. Hell, the most serious overreaction I can think of was when User Friendly posted a comic stating that Microsoft and AOL had worked to shut them down due to libel, and hackers subsequently shut down Microsoft's website in retaliation. Take a breather and let it slide, it's really not that bad.

Larme hit the nail on the head.

wait, people need to be given reasons to do nasty things to microsoft and AOL? dang, and here i've just been arbitrarily hating them because i feel like it all this time =P

(honestly, when was the last time you really heard anyone say something good about microsoft? they don't *have* a reputation to besmirch)

This joke wasn't in the least bit funny, Mr. Taylor. You carefully crafted a very realistic preview (complete with SR's usual typos); you did not release it on April Fool's Day; then you let an acrimonious multithread controversy go on for two weeks for your private amusement.

Yes, the preview seemed early, but the schedule has been modified before. Yes, obsidimen and dragon PCs were unexpected, but that doesn't put them outside all possibility - especially when the entire fan community was waiting to see what direction the new line developer was going to take. That the new line developer has made his public debut with a fraternity stunt does not inspire confidence.

To be honest, it really was the Obsidimen that gave it away. I get the feeling they wont appear until much further into the Mana cycle, and it will be a plot book. They will not just instantly appear, as that would be a great plot book.

And I am totally with Fuchs, if they make it playable they make it mundane (and for those who want it, they are still there, and are kind of balanced)

That actually happened? See, now that's comedy!

What bothers me, really, is that the rules themselves were so unbelievably bad that they had to be a joke, but the expectations of the player base are so low that the badness is actually expected. That should be a bit of a sobering message to the devs, as they pat themselves on the back for pranking everyone with rules that most of us wouldn't be overly surprised to actually see in the books themselves.

You want to see a joke done well, look at the April 1st Errata released on the WotC site. This... wasn't.

manaspikes...

usually,the only ones laughing at a prank are the perpetrators. Thats the nature of playing a joke on someone.
I think everyone needs to take a chill pill and lighten up. Let the new guy have a chance before you totally shred him a new one.

Well, that's absolutely untrue. I was laughing my ass off the entire time. I thought it was quite funny, and the little details (lateness and spelling/grammatical errors) added immensely to the joke. YMMV.

I despise pranks like that.

Hell, I thought it was funny. I reckoned y'all would get it when you read the bits cribbed from Dragons of the Sixth World.

The obsidimen was a nice touch, though. Kudos Syn!

I'm going to have to agree with the people upset about this.

There's a reason April Fools Day jokes are on April 1st. Poking fun of yourself is fine, but then don't sit around snickering for 2 weeks about it.

AS for the other "clues" lets face it, if we judge the validity of SR and BT products by the amount of errors in them, then most of the products since SR4 and Total Warfare (and before) have been April Fool's Day jokes.

As for releasing previews this early, dunno about the SR side, but the BT side has released previews well in advanced of the release of the product.

nott everyone have memorized the full content of all sr books ever released, ah. thats your job

i suspect that the big issue is how long the joke got to live before killed. most april fools jokes are either revealed on the spot or at the end of the day.

but then i hate the day in general...

Which makes the fact that they posted on April 2nd even worse, neh?

...yeah I remember the last supposed "joke" back in March '05...

...then we found out it was real.

Haha, we think that because the game designers put out badly written work mechanically and grammatically, we may believe that the Runner's Companion-preview might have been real... Oh man, I know that as a game developer, I wouldn't be proud of that.
There is nothing more sad than a half-assed joke that almost everybody believes to be real because your last products have been perceived as quite half-assed.

I think it's funny, and we all fell for it. You have to have a sense of humor about yourself, you/we fell for (and consequently ran with, torn down, built up and argued over) a well crafted joke!

I don't know a gaming company out there that isn't jumped on by forum jackals for every typo and misspelled word in a book ("YOu wrote 'Armansipal' it's 'Armanzipal' lolz!"). Similarly there isn't a gaming group out there that isn't hounded by fans to put some "leetzor" bit into their game, or magically produce a preview...from thin air....on command. They just reacted to the symptoms of the industry, and we fell for it.

Bravo Mr. Talor and team, bravo.

I doff my rubber chicken to you.

awww, booo! Booo!

and here i thought they were doing something new and interesting.

...they had me for a few days, but I was skeptical.... then had myself a good laugh at it! Bravo gents! I think revealing earlier might have lessened the vehemence (geeze guys......it's still a game.....), but it sure was funny to me....

I laughed
I went back and forth on it, whether it was a joke or not. i was pretty sure it was considering the fact that the devs were keeping extremely tight-lipped about it. I figure, hey who cares. The stuff is there. Use it if you want, if not, don't.

and hey, atleast it wasn't another site that just linked to Rick Astley!

NO! LARME NOT LISTEN TO REASON! FAIL!




That true. But some of us would prefer jokes where we can all share a laugh, rather than pranks where we get laughed at. I see the humor value in internet trolls put out by people who don't sell anything designed to exploit the general retardedness of internet peeps, a la Dattebayo. But these are loyal fans who actually buy stuff being pranked. I'm the first one to say "hey, have a sense of humor" to people taking the intarweb seriously. It's just that when the joke is an utter failure at trying to be funny, no amount of sense of humor will help. I can see how they were poking fun at themselves, etc., I'm not trying to get all up in arms here. I just think it was an utterly worthless attempt at humor, and they would have been better off having not wasted their time writing it.

I think a rickroll disguised as a runner companion preview would have been a lot funnier

All I know is the whole thing lacked the charm of Blizzard's two headed ogre preview.

Or their latest "Bard" class preview.

hmm
has Blizzard done anything of merit in awhile?
not really


well okay if you count conning people into paying monthly to play what is essentially an offline game
then okay, good prank

It was ok for a joke it was carried out too long is about the only thing I can was really bad about it.

The D20 joke was much better.

Wow. Alot of people with their Serious dial at 11.

I for one, thought it was fun; doubly so, in fact. I laughed at the prank and thought it was nifty that they provided sort of half-way balanced rules at the same time. The jabs at themselves made it all the better. So I say good one, guys.

The d20 one had better art though ...

No obsidimen

Praise be that crap wasn't real!!

I knew it was fake when I read it, and it wasn't funny then.

Seriously, that was horrid comedic timing, folks. The biggest part of pulling a prank and telling a joke is to know when it is over.

Seriously, guys. Some of you need to relax. *hands out quarters* Go buy a sense of humor. It was an April Fool's joke. Calling it a "frat boy prank" and complaining about how the new line developer is somehow unfit for the job because you didn't think it was funny is just ridiculous.

Lighten up.

As a Joke it was OK. I agree the d20 one was a lot better. It is sad that one thing that made this look real was the shoddy quality. There is a lot of competition on the game market for my and right now Catalyst is not winning it. Hope it gets better.

One problem with this theory - it wasn't on April Fools day, nor did it end with April Fools day. The supposed joke was very poorly executed, and by many is even still not regarded as a joke because of how it was presented, when it was presented, and it's utter lack of humor.

While I remained skeptical about it the entire time (I spotted all the errors suggesting it was false), everything suggesting it was a joke could very easily be explained by the amount of time between the preview and the book's release, including layout & balance issues (unlike most, I find the dragons to be a bit overpowered, even with their hefty BP costs due to the possible 10 & minimum 6 starting magic). The typo's even lent it a bit of credibility, judging by previous releases.

Any April Fool's joke is done on April first, and ends on April first. This was not such a joke, but an utter lack of thought on the developer's part.

Oh, woe is me! A company that markets a game I enjoy has decided to give a little light-hearted fun to the community at absolutely no expense to me. What a fucking rip-off! Damn them!

This r serious players. This r serious thread.

Great prank! I never thought anyone would believe this preview to be the real thing.

Yup, now to point out some of the other pranks scattered throughout the SR books:

-Emotiontoys
-The Mimic vehicle mod, seeing as it has no cost, in either table
-the wireless Matrix

What gives me pause about this "joke" is how, frankly, I wouldn't have been too surprised to see the whole passage, as-is, appear in the actual Runner Companion book, Obsidimen and all (note that those were mentioned once IIRC in a previous SR3 book, just never given stats. T:AL maybe?). The fact that, even with the logic holes, typos, and rampant copying and other silliness, people didn't clue into the joke because nobody really expects any better is a bit shocking to me. Heck, I'm still wondering if this announcement is the joke, and that the "preview" actually will appear in Runner Companion....

April fool's are done on april 1st, not 2nd. Call it whatever you want, but it was not an april fool's joke.

Will it make you all feel better if we just call it "a joke," then?

Lighten the fuck up, people. Jeeze.

that one was so bad it was good...

I agree with Larme that I found it rather lame, though I agree with Critias that I don't consider the issue to be important. However, it's pretty clear that a lot of other people here took it more seriously and who am I to tell other people what they should or shouldn't care about? It spawned several quite long threads that people must have put a fair bit of their time into writing about.

It was pretty obvious to me that it was a joke not because of problems with the joke itself (though the unexpected preview of a long-away product did give it away), but because it went on and on with none of the developers denying that it was a joke. Given that it was obviously false, that leaves us with funny. I didn't really find it that, either. Convincing or funny - you require one of these for a joke or trick. Didn't really find it either, I'm afraid and the admission has been waaaaaay too long in coming.

The Zen of Fanpro continues: There are April 1st's, but no jokes. There are jokes, but not on April 1st's.

-K.

I don't think it was terribly funny or anything, but I don't think it's worth getting your panties all in a knot about. There are governments deceiving people about far more important issues with far more regularity every day, and we've all gotta pick The Great Dragon Hoax of '08 as the place we draw out line in the sand and start demanding honesty from folks?

Ya I saw the Obsidimen thing and I was like well shit they're keeping Surge so why not throw in the rock men aswell. But I did have an interest to see if they added winglings to the list cause I did play a sprite in a campaign for many a year.