I agree with the first two, but Bleach? You have a new character every gaming session? Or where is Bleach relevant to Shadowrun?

To me, Shadowrun can be a combination of any of these: Ghost in the Shell, Ronin, the Dresden Files, Black Lagoon, Wild Cards, and Cowboy Bebob. With added original flavour in the form of it's rather unique metaplot, and pinches of Hellsing, Chtulhu, and Buffy added. It's fairly pick and choose.

Yeah, sorry, I was thinking of another B titled thing and substituted Bleach, since I guess (subconsciously?) I'm waiting for the next chapter to drop.

The artwork is good. An improvement for sure.

I don't love the 'noir'. I'm not up in arms about it, but it's just not how I've ever perceived the game.

That magazine cover is as bad as any of the junk we put up with in SR3

Really? Whilst some of the art on the covers might not have been great (Cannon Companion with your strange little legs I'm looking at you) I honestly can't think of any off the top of my head that were as porn-tastic as this one. Which ones did you think were worse?

It reminds me of the SR3 Runner's Companion with the chick with the magic bow and arrow.

The bow chick at least vaguely looked like she meant to shoot her purple glowy arrow of generic magical SFX. Not to say it was a particularily brilliant cover, because it wasn't, though.

Eh. Other than Threats 2, Shadows of North America, and State of the Art: 2063, I've never been all that keen on the game's cover art. Most of it is pretty awful. I'd much prefer it if they'd quit wasting money on graphical covers and just stick to something simple and basic, and leave the budget for the interior artwork instead. (And even then, I'd LOVE to see more Shadowbeat-style ads and flavor art rather than more 'look, I'm a cool shadowrunner posing for the camera' crap.)

I'd also like some mango cream blend ice cream for desert, and a lightly done Kobe beef rib-eye with some 2001 Chianti, please! And cookies?

No, seriously, I agree, though decent covers are nice, too. But back to the flavour ads and art ... myeah ... that's a nice thought ...

But what about hardcover prints? for all books? I mean, the German publisher can afford it, so why can't the internationals ...?

I actually agree with you here. There are very few covers I'd say I was impressed with. I did like the ones you mentioned, as well as Shadows of Europe and Brainscan (I have no idea what the hell is going on in the Brainscan cover, but it was neat).

Probably sales vs. cost of printing and cost of shipping.

But Germany cannot be a bigger market than the US? *puzzled*

It's not. But the german books are probably printed within the EU. The US books? Printed in Asia, shipped by boat.

Hum. Not knowing the details (or really, even the big picture) and just conjecturing - why not print them in Mexico? Isn't Mexico in NAFTA?

There probably aren't any good printers down in Mexico.

Plus Germany is pretty condensed, being about the size of Montana with a well established infrastructure. The US is thirty times that big spread over an even bigger area with a lot of rural areas, especially in the west/midwest. And without any factual data at all, I'd guess that SR fan density in Germany is greater than that of the US.

Actually there are several good printers in the US that have the same or better quality and have a cost on par with Sirivatana (the Thai printer used by a large portion of the gaming industry, including CGL) after calculating the freight charges in. I've done publishing work with several of them outside of the gaming industry.

As for Mexican printers, I know of three that have been used by professional associates. In general the risk management for color printing is more complex than b/w printing. That said, their B/W work is on par with the printers which the gaming industry uses.

Agreed. A simple black cover with just "Shadowrun" and the book title stamped in silver print would be awesome!

I remember back during 1st edition the big argument on the usenet rpg.cyber board. The moderator felt Shadowrun didn't belong there because "it wasn't cyberpunk" and a lot of Shadowrun players kept pushing for Shadowrun to be an allowable subject there because there really wasn't any other board that it really fit, and people had a tendency to make a b-line to that board to talk Shadowrun. He eventually gave in and Shadowrun kind of took over there, as I recall.

Book covers are like short descriptions. They're generally there to get people to pick the book up and look inside. A black stamped cover isn't really going to do that. It'll get existing people interested, who already have some idea of what Shadowrun is, but not new people. The original 1st edition Shadowrun cover did a great job of summing up what the original game was about, both in setting and the specific place in that setting the PCs would occupy. The anniversary cover gives a decent idea of the setting, but leaves the roles of the players more open than the original.

My immediate reaction to the cover is that it strikes me as some sort of gear book cover. It'd be a great choice as the cover to some sort of follow up to Arsenal. The woman isn't the only cheesecake on the cover; look at the sheer number of guns and various types of equipment around her. It screams 'catalog cover', but none of that really says 'almanac' to me.

I thought the green-glowy aztecy-chinese cover thing might be the almanac cover http://www.gametrademagazine.com/public/ne...36_262115_1.jpg

That, to me, says 'Almanac of the Sixth World'.

Funny, all I saw of the Eclipse Phase book was the black cover and logo (the graphic was obscured behind other books), and it caused me to pick it up before I knew what it was.

As I think back on it, I don't remember ever picking an RPG book up because of the awesome-cool-super-duper-neato picture on the front. Hell, the 3rd Edition of D&D managed to do all right without it, too. Go figure.

Honestly, the sexiness of the SR4a cover was what really made me want to pick it up. And then I got the insides...

I like bright shiny covers, myself. I'm actually a fan of a lot of the 4e DnD covers (horrors!) and the CTech cover is eye catching too. Iron Kingdoms' books have great covers. Adventure! / Aberrant had great covers. Midnight for 3.5...some of the Exalted covers...

Hm.

I care less about the covers, and more about interior artwork and lay out sexiness. The Total Warfare core books for BT (and SR4A) get a lot of credit for me in that regard. I'd be totally fine with blank covers, so long as the inside presentation is good. Ctech almost delivered so well on this as well, but that whole silly inkblot thing they have going on ruins the clean flow (along with a whole bunch of poorly organized tables).

When I want porn, I go pick up porn. When I want an RPG, a porntastic cover is apt to make me think it might be like F.A.T.A.L. If I had never played Shadowrun before, there's no way I'd believe that book was part of a "serious" RPG.

It might not be the best cover for the core book, but it will fit that upcoming "Attitude" book.

You had to go for that bad pun…