In another thread, the question was brought up about whether a new printing of a sourcebook would have errata in it, which opened up the general question of whether there would be any forthcoming errata, and how other companies handled errata. I thought it might be a good time to weigh in on this issue, especially vis-a-vis Shadowrun.

Errors in any work are inevitable. Whether typographic (read: somebody slipped on the keyboard and nobody caught it), mathematical (read: somebody screwed up the calculations or formula and nobody caught it), or logical (read: somebody wrote something that didn't make any damn sense, or contradicted something written somewhere else, and either nobody read it or nobody caught it) errors creep into every product. Errata is supposed to fix those errors, to examine the situation and add corrects or rewrite entirely depending on the significance of the error and its effects on gameplay. This is really what differentiates it from FAQ: a good FAQ should explain, elucidate, provide examples for, and sometimes elaborate on a rule, but it shouldn't create new rules or "fix" old ones. That's what errata is for.

So assuming that you are never going to have a product completely errata-free, when it comes time to judge how well a book, product, or game is, the errata is a good measuring-stick -- at least from a crunch angle. Writers and developers measure how successful a product is and how badly it needs errata in part by the complaints and errors found in it by the fanbase. Major errors - ones that immediately and significantly effect gameplay, such as character generatio that just doesn't work or add up correctly, or combat that isn't capable of resolution in a six-hour session at the dinner table - are terrible blunders that need to be errata'd right away. The more successful you are at writing good rules, the more trivial the complaints are - if one racial option is exclaimed as game-breaking because it has the equivalent of low-light vision when fluff in previous editions gave it thermographic vision, that's a good sign that the rules are at least in reasonably good shape, even if the proofers should work a little harder on their fact checking.

Of course, the actual process of errata is slow and painful, and falls on the shoulders of the line developer - one more unpaid task. If the line developer is lucky, some collection of fans and freelancers will begin compiling lists and collections of possible glosses and corrections. This is pretty tedious, detail-oriented work, which I'd like to stress is mostly unpaid, and time that could be elsewhile spent actually writing and editing things, or whipping the artists to put clothes on their metahumans (as most artists in my experience appear to believe that the bulk of the inhabitants of the Sixth World dress themselves in a collection of belted straps and pouches of various shapes and sizes, possibly with the addition of goggles). After the list is divvied up and triple-checked, you can publish an errata document online. Actually working the changes into a printed document are another headache entirely, particularly if the changes are extensive enough to change the flow of the text (case in point: adding three words to a sentence on the third page of a 120 page book could cause a carriage return, and suddenly your first chapter ends with one paragraph hanging forlornly in a field of white space, and your page count has inextricably gone up by 1 - which is a no-no in print publishing.)

Then of course, if you haven't carefully thought out your errata, you might need to errata your errata'd version. That way lies madness, you have to cut it off somewhere, or else give it up and write a new/revised edition.

Indeed, the trouble with errata is such a pain and a waste of valuable resources (re: unpaid developer time - they could be out shilling product or summat!), that considerable emphasis is placed on getting the rules and stats right the first time. Which isn't easy. Even with spreadsheets to keep the numbers correct, there are plenty of people who just don't have a solid feel for how to create NPCs or PC profiles. You wouldn't believe how far you can get in the writing process before some dirty proofreader asks why such-and-such character has no language skills, or has the Firearms Group Skill but is only armed with a blackjack.

Playtesters, by the way, don't always help. Some are good, and some are very, very bad. They are very bad because they don't actually play the rules they're supposed to be testing, they just read them. The reports they write are sometimes vaguely incomprehensible and other times outright insulting. The more honest and brusque freelancers aren't much better, though they generally have a better knowledge and appreciation of the rules-as-they-are. Then again, that's what you get for basically free feedback (I say "basically" because playtesters get comp copies, I think - freelancers do it for love of the game, from the cockles of the little black organs pumping liquid caffeine through their corroded veins).

In times when cashflow is down (heh, when is it not in gaming?) and schedules are accelerated (like, moreso than normal) some developers forget about errata, or at least don't afford it the time or importance of other, possibly paying projects. Errata is, after all, basically a gift to the fanbase (at least, when there aren't any major holes in the rules that must be fixed). There is no warranty when you purchase a book that errata shall be compiled and posted, no formal contract that says all mistakes will be fixed and corrected and a new edition of the book pumped out for repurchase and general consumption - though it's nice when that happens.

So, to bring this back to Shadowrun: rules-wise, SR is a very solid game. Aside from the Matrix, which needs more errata than a bag of cut snakes, things generally work. Even Unwired pretty much works, and it makes the Matrix even more complicated and hellish. The one real exception is Runner's Companion - I blame myself in a large part, not only because of the mistakes I made, but because of the chapters I didn't proofread and comment on when I had the chance. Though to be fair, lots of other people didn't say much of them at the time either. Eventually, the German folk contacted me about potential errata on their edition, which I knocked out and sent in - very assiduous folks, our freelancers across the Pond - and I felt a modicum better, even if I do think RC is the worst book put out by Catalyst yet.

Key word: yet. I mentioned before that in cash-crunch periods, errata is a low-priority issue. I don't say this to be mean to Jason, but given my own experience and my understanding of the situation, I'm fairly confident in saying that new errata is not going to be at the top of anyone's list for a while.

Which is unfortunate, it would be nice to take pride in the books that are released, and I do understand the massive amounts of work required to fix things like this. If I were to release a book, I would be very upset in 're-releasing' a book that is still exactly the same, after I've had a chance to fix any problems found since it had gone 'live' even if there is great expense in said product.

I still understand exactly where you are coming from, I.. I just.. I dunno

I am acutely familiar with the amount of work that goes into writing an Errata document, having done several myself (even though I still have yet to finish placing it all in text) taking easily upwards of 20 hours of work.

That said, even the minor errata can be very important to a game.



Jason Hardy, if you happen to read this, feel free to contact me about working on errata documents if desired. I understand it is (probably) to late to do so for the Runner's Companion reprint, but I would be fine assembling items to be altered & providing detailed documents on the change & reasons behind it of other Shadowrun products. I may even try contacting you about it eventually, if you don't do so first.

Examples of my work can be found here. I do not think any are currently complete, although Shadowrun 4 and Runner's Companion are close, and some may be out of date versions at this point (I will update them later). Also, the errata & page numbers of Shadowrun 4 do not apply to the Anniversary printing.

The problem with my work is that, while I am extremely good at number crunching, rules mechanics, etc, I have had little chance to actually test much of my personal alterations. I do not believe there are any unbalancing aspects that where not already present in the game, but it is still possible. I also sometimes have a different view on what should be changed, how, and why (example being my removal of a significant number of qualities in Runner's Companion, not because of mechanical issues, but because I felt they shouldn't be qualities, as defined by the game).




I definitely agree about Runner's Companion having the most problems with it, and unfortunately the majority of these are unlikely to be fixed in the (possibly) upcoming errata, but it is still my favorite of the books released thus far.

What's wrong with Runner's Companion?

Significant flaws in Karma Generation
Notable flaws in Priority Based Generation (supposedly - never used it myself)
Significant problems in the Build Point cost of numerous species options
Significant problems with the Synthetic Intelligence & Free Spirit rules
Notable problems with a number of Qualities (Positive and Negative - mostly personal opinion on this one)
Minor problems in a number of other misc. things

I think SR4A illustrated the pitfalls of errata that attempt to shoehorn in rules revisions. Although karmagen actually needs that, to bring it into line with SR4A. Things like metatypes and qualities should be left alone - the only things that should be fixed should be poor wording, which has led to different interpretations of such things as how free spirits purchase Attributes, and how the arcane arrester works.

The sad thing is that there already is an unreleased errata for Augmentation, dating back to 2008. Which is included in the german printing.

It removes essence hole differentiation, adds a +1 Rating bonus for medical nanites when there is a nano biomonitor and adds rating 1-9 for anit-biometric nanocybernetics, among other things.

My personal list is along the lines of:
* Bringing KarmaGen in line with SR4A
* Screwed up HMHVV disease stats
* Could have done a better job on the HMHVV/Dracomorphosis qualities, in terms of Karma.
* Free spirits and AIs could have been a touch more balanced
* Horrible fugging artwork
* Several of the "qualities" (Born Rich, I'm looking at you) should never have made it into the book.

Now, I think that if you take into account everything, Shadowrun is more friendly on errata issues then others rpg's (or at least for the people who lurks in Dumpshock) since most of the writers and developers are also lurkers of dumpshock and may talk about their own reasoning and all.

Take Star Wars SAGA one week after release the community does a list of all questions and clarifications asked for a book and we don't receive errata at all. And I'm not even talking about NPC's stats, 3/4 of them have errors and we never receive errata for them.

I was told last fall the errata for the English version of Augmentation was pretty much done but there was still some debate over one or more changes and we should see it around Dec/09. Obviously this didn't happen.

Curse you, Rob Liefield!

When using errata in some way that inconveniences or shuts down a player, is it appropriate to yell, "Errata-tatat on that ass, beeyotch!"?

But yeah, I'm mostly happy with the Runner's Companion.

The priority system is a holdover from previous editions. The rules seem solid and more flexible than other iterations of the priority method. (I'll likely just stick with standard character generation for my games, personally.) The only potential problem I can see with characters made via priorities is they don't always match up point-for-point with those made with standard point-buy and don't offer as much flexibility. I don't see these as indications that priorities are broken, though; they're simply limitations of that particular char-gen system. Priorities are presented as an alternative for those that like it (like my SR3 GM), and I don't expect it to be equivalent in all regards to point-buy. Are there other issues with priorities I'm not seeing? (I haven't looked at the Karma char-gen to say whether it's good or not, as the idea doesn't appeal to me.)

The point costs for metavariants may be a little punitive, but I feel this may be deliberate. The writers may not have wanted to overshadow the standard array, and drive home the point that variants are interesting but evolutionarily "narrow" and often not as effective all-around. If you make the rare metas too attractive, after all, everyone will want to play them and suddenly they're not so rare anymore. While the oni's point cost (25) may be a 10-point ripoff (it costs 5 more than a standard ork with no extra benefits, you may be able to smooth this over with a GM and just make your oni a thematic swap, using standard ork rules while describing your character creatively. I think the majority of metavariants can be treated as fluff, in fact, needing no special rules at all.

I haven't read the AI character rules in-depth yet, but I think the concept is just effin' awesome. I'll be disappointed if the rules for them suck.

Having been in that hot seat, I have to agree with AH's assessment and disagree with the previous poster who made a crack about taking pride in the work that one releases. We used to joke, and it was an unfortunate truth, that within minutes of a book arriving from the printer somebody would find a mistake of one kind or another. And it happened all the time not because of a lack of pride or diligence, but because the publishing realities meant that you could only allocate a finite amount of time and resources to any particular project. Even when manuscripts and boards were sent out to multiple freelancers and interested parties something always - always - crept through. When I left overseeing Shadowrun there were still small mistakes being found in the whatever current version it was of the 2nd Edition core rulebook... and that thing had had a few hundred thousand eyes on it over the course of several years.

AH is also right about the differences in errata related to text errors versus balance issues. I'd regularly issue errata updates on text errors - that was easy. Balance issues, not so much. When we playtested SR1 we had maybe 40 or 50 playtesters. When it released, within a few months, we had 150,000. That's a three orders of magnitude difference from testing to release. Needless to say, some things that did not come up in the internal/external playtesting were noticed by the SR player base. When I did SRII the manuscript probably went out to a hundred or so, in total. Since we were building on SRI rules things were more stable and there were fewer significant issues that were picked up on when SRII hit the streets. (Remember, this was also 1990 so while there were some BBSs, not everyone had access, nor to email, let alone any of those other fancy-pants groupware or collaboration systems.)

The big thing that I always had to deal with with playtest feedback was bias, pure and simple. AH noted about receiving feedback from testers who only read, but did not actually play the rules. There are also issues with testers who would read the rules and then play by the rules they thought they remembered, rather than what was actually written down. (I remember seeing one lengthy playtest rant about the SRI game system - it was brutal - and then one of us realized that the tester(s) had missed the part about re-rolling die results of 6... ) Many testers are also wanna-be designers (said fondly) and very often I'd get feedback based on how they thought the game system should work, not based on how it actually worked, and often they'd make changes based on what they preferred prior to testing the rules as written. There are also issues with existing groups testing game systems selectively (based on what they liked or didn't like historically) without consideration for how these systems interact. ("Drain is stupid... we ignore crap like that." followed shortly by "Man, mages are *way* too powerful in this game... Who thought this was a good idea??!")

Anyway, it can take an amazing amount of time and energy to sift through and decipher all of the playtest 'reports' and turn the feedback into a rules revision that has to be again tested and evaluated. It is not a simple, nor it is a short, process, and unless you have something that is absolutely breaking the game it tends to get prioritized lower than producing future product.

TomD

I'm surprised you guys don't have something similar to the Fan Input threads on the BT forums for errata: http://www.classicbattletech.com/forums/index.php?board=28.0

when the fans stick to actual errata (note: not stuff they think should be changed), it's quite handy and convenient for all involved.

No excuses for sloppy work, Dowd! Just because you oversaw Shadowrun's first two editions and have been knee-deep in the game creation process and know what you're talking about doesn't mean you're right! Not having ubiquitous Internet is no excuse for not pouring over emails/blogs/message boards! A misspelling of "ork" or a number transposition is inexcusable! And the stuff about people changing the rules and then wondering why they didn't work... well... um, the customer (GM/player) is always right! So that's still your fault! *shakes fist at you*

Which leads me to some questions about something that I've always suspected, but never had any official confirmation of. Were items such as Firepower Ammo and Reactive Triggers included in the SR1 Street Samurai Catalog as a form of "backdoor errata"? Items so incredibly useful for the negligable cost differential that they became "must-take" items for players, saving you from having to issue a game balance errata to the core rulebook itself? If so, was Securetech Clothing intended to be a similar "backdoor errata"? The shadowtalk entry that has Fastjack saying "these stats are correct, unlike a rival publication" certainly suggests so (I don't see how "Shadow Gear 2050" could be anything other than the equipment chapter of the core rulebook), but unlike the heavy pistol mods and the IPE Grenades, Securetech Clothing's stats didn't get rolled up into the main rules in Second Edition, SR1's regular stats for armored clothing were just carried forward.



Back in the day, you considered yourself lucky if you even got numbers, transposed or otherwise. There were so many references to "see page XX." that made it to print, another game company, White Wolf, actually printed a Page XX in their Clanbook: Malkavian "due to popular demand."

Good lord... are you referring to the 2nd Ed Malk CB or the Revised version? The first one was a horrid abortion; it made for an entertaining read, but was a terrible game resource, as it locked in the view of Malkavians as silly, teddy bear-toting, pajama-wearing Looney Toons comic relief characters that bad players perpetuate to this very day. Revised made Malks what they were supposed to be: vampires, undead predators saddled with madness... not wacky like Ace Ventura but crazy like Hannibal Lecter or Elizabeth Bathory, appropriate to the Gothic Punk horror theme of Vampire. (Ace Ventura and other oddballs can be fun and they have their place, but that place is not Vampire.)

Which I suppose is a rant for another forum.

The first Malk spatbook that they printed, whichever one that was. (Did they print any Clanbooks before they printed the second edition hardcover? I thought they did, but my memory's hazy on the subject.)

But we do, they are just not collected in one seperate forum (which would be a good idea):

Running Wild: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...c=28110&hl=
Street Magic 2nd printing: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...c=27330&hl=
SR4A: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...c=25706&hl=
Arsenal 2nd printing: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...c=24105&hl=
GM Screen: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...c=16763&hl=
Augmentation: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...c=18445&hl=

And there more if you care to search for them.

Lars

No, the 2nd Ed clanbooks were the very first ones (they came out with 2E). The Revised CBs (which came out with the Revised edition, of course) in every single case are better than their predecessors -- which isn't to say all of them are that good, just better. The most dramatic CB improvements from 2E to Rev are the Malk, Assamite, Setite and Toreador books (IMHO). The Assamites went from being probably my least favorite clan to one of my absolute faves, based on the CB alone.

About Playtesters: What about comments about complexity and speed of use? Sometimes my group and I encounter rules that look fine but prove to be unplayable at our "speed of plot". Often I wonder if rules are classified

* Everyday play [Social interaction, combat]
* Great for folks still in school [ Complicated Character generation ]
* Userful for those who like to detail their character outside of game... [Lifetsyle rules, vehicle design]

As I get older, only Everyday Play rules are useful for me and I admit that. And the more important the Everyday rules work without patching or tweaks, even those suggested in the book.




Hey BTF,
I am a denizen of both boards. Time for me to beat the dead horse but this is a fan site. The Classic Battletech forums are official. And boy howdy are they slick, and you can tell because people post pictures and attachments there [ See my BattleTech Cupcakes..]. As good as that all is, this is run out of somebody's pocket and by volunteers who don't have an official relationship(WRT the board) with Catalyst. Its a different type of board and it serves a fan purpose. Thankfully, many of the fans are (unlike myself) organized people who dedicate time to the game system. But even Larsine's linked threads have fan discussion.

Lastly, that will make most people eat me alive, Shadowrun's rules aren't as solid as Total Warfare. Battletech has been revised over 25 years but Shadowrun has changed repeatedly. Shadowrun doesn't have Tech, or numbered, rule levels to stay stable. Just understanding the rules well doesn't come as easy with Shadowrun, it doesn't have the stability and history.

The comparison between the boards strikes me as Apples and TwoByFours.

BlueMax

Was "Escaped Clone" one of them, as well? I was contemplating starting my own thread in order to inquire about this, but this seems like a good time to ask. I actually had a character concept that revolved heavily around that quality, but in re-reading the biotech section of Augmentation in order to get some deeper insight as to how clones worked and were used in the gameworld, I found that there was no such thing as a clone capable of achieving sentience or self-awareness despite several attempts by the corps to instill such. No amount of virtual sensory bombardment/cognitive stimulation given to vat-grown clones produces a viably self-aware being. Was this a case of someone not paying attention during the writing of RC, or am I missing something else?

Whats so bad about born rich?
I think its quite nice quality.

I suggest you check out this thread and the explanations contained therein. Self-aware and completely capable clones are possible with SR tech, however, they cannot be speed-grown and they are essentially different people from the original DNA donor. Several other options/interpretations are left open by the description in Runners' Companion and several interesting possibilities are thrown about in the aforementioned thread.

As for the issue of relevant SR errata, I completed Augmentation errata (included in the German and French printings) in September 2008 and it's been in production limbo since (in all honesty Adam and I were too busy with SR4A, Vice, DotA, and a couple of other projects that we didn't prioritize it and it seems to have remained MIA since I left). I also handed over a first round of errata for Runners' Companion and Ghost Cartels as well as new rounds of errata for Unwired and Arsenal when I left in March 2009, those also seem to have fallen into development limbo. I'll see if I can dredge them up from my backups and post them just for reference's sake until Jason can take care of the official versions.

Oh, cool. Somehow I missed that thread when I did a search about this. I had some further questions and thoughts for discussion about character background for an escaped clone, so I think I'll try to resurrect that thread (or failing that, start a new one.)

Thanks!

Who would have thought asking a simple question would have set off such a firestorm.

The only reason I asked was because I have the 2nd printing of Augmentation which includes a lot of corrections/errata in it and I knew the german edition had a bunch of other changes already in it.



As far as the rest goes.. yes, I'm familiar w/ the troubles that coming up with errata's causes. IMO: the simple stuff like typo's isn't where the problem lies. It's the ones where the mechanic isn't adequately playtested or is just bad. A good example of that is karmagen (not to rag on AH).

Overall, generally, the SR writers are pretty good about engaging the community and defending their work though.

Irony alert.

Born Rich is not an innate aspect of a person that influences them as the game goes on, it's just an excuse for players to build more powerful characters during chargen. Really, qualities should be limited to covering tangible and intangible aspects of characters that /cannot/ otherwise be conveyed by skills, attributes, gear, etc. Magician, for example, is innate. You can lose it, in some cases (Latent Awakening) you can gain it, but it's not something that you use once and then forget about. Here's a good test for any quality: if an NPC could legitimately benefit or suffer from it. Can you imagine what happens when your nameless squatter NPC has the Born Rich quality? What does that mean to him? Dicksquat!

I may be going out on a limb here AH, but I hazard a guess that the namelless Squatter NPC who was Born Rich probably has a very interesting story that has brought him to this point in his life... sounds like an interesting individual... has a lot of potential I think...

Keep the Faith

What. Does anyone actually -have- this? If so, I'd rather like to see it - even if it isn't official.

HERO has astonishing errata and FAQs. You can submit rules questions in the forum to the developer and he'll answer them the next day, and if it requires an FAQ or errata note he'll make it then (though he mostly tells you what rule you didn't read).

http://www.herogames.com/rulesFAQ.htm?rule...amp;dateString=

Sure he would. But why would you waste 10BP on something that you do not use in character creation, doesn't give you ANY kind of bonus in play - just for the sake of background? I don't think so.



No, but if you speak german, buy the german edition of the book and you can work it out.

Born Rich isn't the only quality that's only good for making your PC even more powerful. Some of them are even negative qualities...

Back to the off-topic discussion of Born Rich, I don't understand how you think coming from a rich family can't impact a runner's career? It's not really conceivable that they could still have access to the money and gear afforded to them by a schmantzy upbringing without carrying the baggage of historical prep school backgrounds or concerned people looking for them should they be going it SINless in Seattle. Seems like there are a lot of hooks built into that perk which aren't exactly spelled out.

Why do you need that Quality to have those hooks? Why can it not be that a GM and a player get together and just decide this?

Most of the items I am looking for in runners companion are reasonable consistent costs. Fomori is damn cheap while the cyclops is quite expensive compared to the baseline troll. Then you have the nataki, which costs about 10 points under surge, but 25 for metavariant. These need to be rebalanced to make sense.

We also have the infected quality which basically means if you get scratched by a ghoul it is all over. At that rate ghouls should have an incredibly high bounty with shoot on sight else it is night of the living dead.

As for negative/positive quality: How much does fame cost 15 points or 20? To me these are quick fixes as they don't require massive play balancing just tell the reader what the actual cost is. This should be part of a quick errata where it is a quick fix rather than playtesting.

Problem is, those list appear on dumpshock and then nothing. All CGL would have to do is basically compile a list of known issues ("HMHVV II and III: vector should be injection and not contact. Karma System: Attributes should cost 5 Karma. Table X on page Y should include entry Z. ...") and put that online, no need to worry about actually hacking the changes into the text and layout at that time.

I would definedly argue that Born Rich is only good for makinf your PC even more powerful.
For exaple on my Sasha(combat face) i could easily get rid of both Born Rich and In Dept 4 and not lose any power, yes i did start with 320K and i still mamaget to run out of money
She doesnt really need 15 guns and half that many melee weapons, nor does she need many of her fluffy wares or the collection of 70 grenades or 45 rating 6 mapsofts.
Sometimes you just keep running into stuff that you would like yyour character to have even if they dont make her any more powerful and Bron Rich is a superp quality for those situations.

The rest for born rich comes as trust fund not born rich

Nobody has said that you cannot do this... in fact, it is probably more common for this to occuer than to actually purchase the quality and add in the additional 10BP for the money... Honestly, I have a better need for the BP myself than to use it for more money...

Anyways... some people just want to have it for the money benefits, others like it for the fluff... whether the quality is actually taken is pretty irrelevent to me in the long run... Of course, your mileage will vary...

Keep the Faith

Given that WotC has announced that they will not be renewing the Star Wars Saga line license and given that all errata had to also go through LucasArt's permissions process... I think WotC realized that the sale of books wasn't as big as they'd hoped, decided then that the license wouldnt be renewed, and decided to see how many books they could sell before the license ran out.

Why the hell does your nameless NPC squatter have any qualities at all?

However, for someone who's actually going through the whole character creation process (such as a PC or a named NPC who's going to be important), the Born Rich quality serves a purpose. It's like Extraordinary Attribute -- it increases the max you can spend on something, but otherwise does jack diddely on its own.

Lucas is a huge pain to work with. But done right it is worth it. It's a license to print money, if you do it right.

Born Rich, like quite a few others in Runner's Companion, are not actually part of the character, and thus should not be qualities. At all.

Born Rich is borderline in this aspect, as it can potentially be argued otherwise, but still most defiantly falls outside the definition of a Quality (in addition to being retarded for other reasons).

Black Market Pipeline, on the other hand, is not even remotely close to arguable, and another prime example of the bullshit that crept into Runner's Companion.

You could argue that they provide something that you could not mechanically get otherwise... which is a good definition of a Quality to me...

Just Sayin'

keep the Faith

Sithney was justifying the existence of the quality in terms of things which do not need the quality to occur, and are not the inevitable result of the quality. A does not lead to B, and B does not require A. Why justify A in terms of B when this is the case?

If you want B, you can just have B.

No, Born Rich is not a quality.

Maybe, But I would say that Born Rich is an Intangible "Thing" that some people are just born with... You cannot Choose to be Born Rich or have a Trust Fund... just like you cannot choose to be born an Ork...

Just Sayin'

Keep the Faith

Good thing the Born Rich quality doesn't actually give you gear then. Again, it's basically the same as Extraordinary Attribute. By themselves each quality does jack, nothing. They merely raise the cap on something and let you spend more BP in that area. I've never spent anywhere close to 250,000 nuyen on a starting character, but then again I don't usually pick up Extraordinary Attribute ever either (except as a thought exercise).

Exceptional Attribute is relevant in that a character after chargen can continue to benefit from it - Born Rich does nada after chargen. It's not an intangible aspect of the character, it's an additional cost to spend more BP on gear.