This is as good a place as any to say how impressed I've been with the shadowtalk in recent books. It's struck a balance between too much and too little pretty much perfectly. We get a little bit of soap opera, plenty of useful GM-fodder but rarely if ever draws away from the text they're interrupting.I was more than happy to buy 10Jackpointers and read more about them.

Mr. Bonds is my new favourite, though I will always remember the Chromed Accountant fondly.

I think Mr. B's pretty intriguing as well. Like Baka Dabora, who I wrote, I find the "quietly professional" Jackpointers to be among the more interesting characters. If a 10 Jackpointers 2.0 is ever considered, I'd like to take a stab at he and Elijah.

I find it interesting, myself, that they profiled Man of Many Names....He has been kicking around a while...but
is definitely not what I expected...I was expecting more Neo-Tribal look..

Well, the briefing on the looks of Manynames was ... scarce, to say the least. While doing the artwork I quickly discovered that an amerind with white hair looks old, no matter how young you define his looks (short of giving him the looks of a toddler). In the end, I did him sort of "blending into the crowd" WITHOUT showing a crowd (and rather pointing in an UP direction to "the greater forces that be"). I'm actually pretty pleased how he turned out, given the fact that he was the biggest "celeb" of the 10.

Good thing they didn't ask me to do a pic of FastJack or Dodger, I think I would have been killed by dedicated fans of those no matter what look I'd given them...

I suspect 10 jackpointers is a result of Sunshine's two week + disappearance and probable reprogramming by Horizon, maker of GREAT products in the new data age! Go Horizon!

When did this happen? (I need to buy more sourcebooks)

It's mentioned in Shadowtalk; don't have access tp my books right now. Netcat asks Sunshine if he's still looking into Horizon, and it's revealed he's been missing for two weeks and still is. Then in the latest books he returns?

It's possible that the forthcoming Corp Guide will have some more info about Sunshine's sojourn into Horizon . . .

Jason H.

I bloody knew it.

After glossing over:

10 Gangs and 10 Jackpointers are nice – of course, 10 Gangs is much more useful.

Both Fields of Fire and the Street Samurai Catalog are scanned, then OCRed and bookmarked.
Sadly, the scan quality is not up to snuff, even compared to the other scans of FoF and SSC: Contrast is bad, artifacts from the page behind shine through and black level changes randomly to gray – some pages are not straight, others have a gray-blueish border. Of course, they aren't that expensive.

I have always been fascinated with M-o-m-n, and I thank you greatly for providing a picture. Especially since he has Tyrael on it. Teehee.

What up with the Seattle Sourcebook PDF for 0$ at BattleShop?

That joke was 2 days early. Now you made me spend 10 minutes trying to find the free Seattle Sourcebook

Lars

Stop trying to find it and find it.

Well, apparently you can buy the Seattle Sourcebook (PDF) for $0.00, but at least I didn't get a download link

Lars

You like the IE, the Inland Empire, but a lot of people don't? Or are we talking about something else? For those who haven't heard of it before, the Inland Empire is freaking huge -- it covers both San Bernardino County and Riverside County in Southern California. The Inland Empire would be #27 on the list of US states by population and #41 on the list of states by land area. Let me go into a bit of detail on those two counties.

San Bernardino County is the largest county in the continental United States by area. It's ~20k square miles (there are a few counties in Alaska that are larger) and #42 on the list of states by land area. San Bernardino County is larger in size than each of the following: Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maryland. If we dropped San Bernardino County into the list of US states/territories by population, it'd be #37 on the list (~2 million people)

Riverside County is much smaller in size (about 7k square miles, #46 by population). Not quite as big as New Jersey, Riverside County is only bigger than Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, and Hawaii, but it has a few more people in it (~2 million people) than San Bernardino County, so it'd also be #37 on the list of US states by population.

Just for comparison, Los Angeles County is much smaller (~4.7k square miles), but has a much higher population (~9.8 million people) -- just beating out Georgia for #9 on the list of most populous US states. Orange County, which is where Disneyland is and which also holds the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (who are trying to trade on nonCalifornian's ignorance of where exactly LA is), is only about 100 square miles with about 3 million people living there.

IE's, in this context, refers to Immortal Elves.

For the record, I loved 10 Jackpointers. I don't mind the lack of stats, since I'm not using SR's native rule system anyway, but I wouldn't have minded even if I was.

While Shadowrun was guilty of "Unbeatable Statless NPC" in the past (Harlequin, I'm looking at you), it's gotten much better about it recently. While none of the jackpointers in the PDF have stats, it's obvious that they're meant to interact with PC runners more or less on an equal footing. Even Fianchetto, who is obviously better than you , is not a god, and would make a fine high-power antagonist or Mr. Johnson in a high-stakes run. People like Turbo Bunny and Lyran are even more approachable, and Baka Dabora was refreshingly mundane for a frog-man accountant.

I actually find a lack of stats to be a boon here, as it allows me to make up my own, and tailor them to my group. If you think Man of Many Names must have Magic 14, give it to him. If you think Turbo Bunny must be about on par with your party's rigger, stat her so that she is. You're the GM, you can do that. It's not any more effort than statting up any other NPC, and here you have ready-made backstories and personalities to work from.

The problem with stats isn't really that "if it has stats I can kill it". It's that for every dude on the Internet who complains about a lack of stats when they're absent, there's three who would complain that the NPC is either a total pushover or full of math errors .

Really? DotA:Dusk is all I say.

Nah, Frosty is far from invincible. That's why she's hiring the runners. The "reveal" that she's a mage is not handled very well, but other than the one or two unusual tricks she pulls at some points, I got the feeling she's supposed to be about on par with the group's mages (who should be pretty badass - DotA is not for beginners).

8th grade initate is… more than just pretty badass.

Not by itself. Other than a high initiate grade (which doesn't necessarily imply high Magic anymore) and the ability to do some plot-specific magic, Frosty doesn't seem to have much going for her that the runners wouldn't also have access to.

Harlequin was different, because he was specifically described at being better than any PC at everything, to the extent that he'd just laugh if they tried to attack him for some reason.

How about we get back on topic, though? This is a thread about 10 Jackpointers, not DotA.

Seriously, what's the Consensus?

My guess is it's some sort of newfangled managerial term for their board of directors, kinda like middle managers are called "synergists" at Horizon. It's probably made of up a large number of people who vote on things, and the results of those votes are considered managerial decrees.

Personally I get so sick of listening to, or reading, people complain about the IE's and Elminsters of any setting. Honestly, things vastly more powerful than you exist in the world....deal.

It is good for players to be occasionally reminded that there are things far greater than them in the universe. Yes, handled poorly, they can ruin a game. So can anything else. The problem is not the "all-powerful" NPC it is the GM running it.

Me, I liked the Harlequin series and the backstory that weaved through so many books. It made the setting come alive for me. I ran the Harlequin adventure a couple different times and always had pleased responses overall from my players.

Graywulfe

It implies Magic 8 as minimum requirement by RAW.

That's what the Canon Sue scene is all about.

Please open up a thread (or join one of the various exisitng ones) if you want to continue the discussion about Frosty's power level or NPCs stats.

My apologies.

Back on topic, Why weren't Slammo! and Netcat profiled?

In all seriousness, I liked what I saw and I hope there are further write ups of the Jackpointers headed our way. I also would have liked stat blocks, as it gives a little insight into the developer's/writer's view of the power level of the character, I can ignore it, change it, what have you, but at least it gives me a starting point to work from.


Graywulfe

I thought 10 Jackpointers was a terrible idea from the beginning, mostly because the people most excited in writing up the characters were some of the new freelancers who knew the least about them - and which was blatantly obvious when the first drafts came in, and then again with several of the second drafts. I literally begged to be able to edit a couple to approach the point of sanity...

...well, that's being ungenerous to the authors. They worked hard. Broadly speaking, the second drafts were good and legitimate takes on the characters. The major problem was that the authors had overall not written the profiles from the correct perspective. When you write up these fictional dossiers, you have to not only ask what is already known/written about the characters but what is not known and how the people compiling the dossiers would know any of that. So in addition to wrong facts, the unedited drafts generally contained too much information and with absolutely no idea as to how that information had been contained. Because let's be honest, for the majority of these JackPointers, if a corp can find out their birth name that easily, they'd have been imprisoned or dead a long time ago.

Baka Dabora is, I think, unarguably the best of the lot. It wasn't a direction I would have gone with the character, but it is a completely valid direction to take the character and it makes sense. It works with everything written about the character that came before and is internally consistent with itself, and provides a degree of character depth that makes him a more interesting character to write and to read about.

Lyran on the other hand...Jesus wept. The first draft had her as a half-Japanese PCC princess or something. Bizarre.

Perhaps, Ancient, you should post your first drafts and early work to Dumpshock, so your errors can be made public as well.

Very tasteless slap.

My early mistakes are visible for anybody with a Search function, Ice.

As for insult, none was really intended (well okay, maybe a little as far as the more extensive rewrites went). I disliked the idea of 10 Jackpointers, and I disliked the first effort of execution, and the reason why I thought it was flawed. That's my bitter little opinion, and I don't reckon anyone could read it as anything else. You're more than welcome to go back and point out the plenty of mistakes I've made and stuff I've read that you personally didn't care for.

With all due respect, Bobby, you were never the target market for this product. There's no way you could have possibly liked it, including if you had written it yourself.

True. I am a picky little shit.