Bill Gates defined Microsoft, Steve Jobs defines Apple, Mark Zuckerberg defines Facebook ...

True. And your average person assumes that they run the company, and that they have absolute control. Which isn't the case, but it's the perception.

Shadowrun's always been our perceptions magnified, right or wrong. And even going back to first edition, all the corps have always had boards of directors and what not. They're just not important, so they get glossed over.

Bull

Exactly. I actuaylly always thought Knight and Villiers were pretty plausible as a corporate leader, especially since it had been empathised how they did have their fights with other board members and major shareholders (Aurelius, Dunkelzahn, Vogel, each other, the Nakatomis and Yamanas ...). But the way Ares is considered Knight's corp and Nova/NeoNET the Villiers firm never struck me as unplausible because many comanies IRL are embodied by their founders and/or CEOs IRL, too. Always have been and always will be.

I tend to disagree here, as squabbles and downright hostility between the board members of a megacorp (Examples: Fuchi Renraku, Ares) were an essential part of that corp's atmosphere and overall setting. Fuchi's Villiers, Yamana's and Nakatomi's played an essential part in the Corp War, and the hostility between Knight and Aurelius and Corss is cemented in shadowrun history.

I also disagree with the portrayal of the corporation's board as explained in the final Megacorp Shuffle chapter - saying that a CEO brings in a bunch of college friends and brown nosing bootlickers tio run the corp "his way" contradicts pretty much all of the chapters that follow - every megacorp is subject to at least some sort of rivalry and infighting between its board members.

Nope is was the Dragonheart trilogy by Jak Koke.

The Scerets of Power by Bob Charette was the first three novels published and had a whole different storyline, http://wiki.dumpshock.com/index.php/Secrets_of_Power_Trilogy

Lars

The lawsuits and criminal charges have begun. Corporations are slow, large governments (particularly ones that were deliberately designed to be slow) are slower. Thus shadowrunners.

Hey, I'm not claiming this stuff is precious flakes of gold. I am saying it was a sloppy direct lift. You can even read it in the text, because for all that these are new never-before-mentioned-anywhere divisions - the text of the MCT chapter doesn't mention them once.

Same here. In older editions, you had all the shadowtalk posts dated, so you knew which ones were important as they were dated on 12/24/xx year. I miss having those in game clues to organize the data.

-M&P

What does a psionic mean? I never heard that term used in Shadowrun before, but I am pretty new. Does that mean she is a mage with detect thoughts?

If I'm not mistaken it is a tradition of mages that think that they are not magicians, only that they have psionic powers.

Could be she follows the magical tradition of the same name. Kinda like a mages calling themselves witches, sorcerors...etc. Or, it could mean shes a nutter that thinks she can bend spoons without any powers.

A school of mages who really believe they're the X-Men who do not look funny but have the mental powers. They were introduced in MitS and have rarely ever been poked since, but were squeezed into the traditions in either SR4A or Street Magic.

IIRC, Awakenings in 2nd ed first touched on Psionics (and a lot of the other oddball tradition concepts, like the "God Shaman" and shamans who thought they were superheroes). Of course, Awakenings and MiTS were both written by Steve Kenson, so no surprise they cover the same ground.

Awakenings introduced a lot of things which ended up more or less as canon, things like Adept paths or what structures a tradition and such. I do miss that passage about the one guy explaining and rationalizing away magic as psionics and that magicians were really psionics who "needed" magic as a rationalization and crutch in order to do psionics.

Still, mentioning that she's a psionic...what was the point of that? To emphasize her own viewpoints and maybe add in a personality trait of being possibly self-righteous and need to rationalize even deeper than others?

Don

Awakening read like someone took the Adept's Way book from Earthdawn and ripped entire sections of it for Shadowrun.

I like that we're seeing more information on the Corporations.
Btw, my read on Megacorps is that they were a throw back to the early days of Capitalism, combined with the Japanese Super Corporation thing.

Getty Oil
Standard Oil.
British Petroleum
Mitsubishi

Carnegie's steel,coal,rail, oil monstrosity.
Company towns, with company stores.

An excerpt of Unwired that , IMNSHO definitely doesnt show them as the good guys.

"Pulsar and Horizon’s major media blitz accomplished what they’d hoped: AIs are
predominately seen as benign or even friendly (according to polls)."

I just hear on my mind : "How to best serve man"...

Horizon is actually controlled by AI?

It means you can offset the cost of the chosen Awakened Quality with the Delusional Quality.

No, they are not... Thoses are not the AIs you are looking for.

What do you think you are, some kind of jedi?

Zaibatsu, not keiretsu. The definition of a keiretsu involves mutual shareholding, with in most case a bank in a central position. All the SR megacorporations we know of have a clearly defined parent company, with the Zurich-Orbital Gemeinshaft Bank and the Pacific Rim Bank providing the financial services.

Funny enough, one of the early proposals for Horizon was as a keiretsu built around an Islamic bank.

CORPORATE LIFE
Not much to say. Interesting. Elements on India and Arabic corporate cultur would probably be more useful if there actually was more than one Indian or one Arabic corporations in SR, and that those got more than passing mentions.

ARES MACROTECHNOLOGY

- The takeover of Cross assets by Ares Macrotechnology in System Failure had me whinning. As I use to say, you can't buy what ain't to sell, and the people heading Cross Applied Technologies had a bunch of reasons to sell to anyone else on Earth, whatever the price is, rather than to Damien Knight.
Leonard and Nicholas Aurelius sacrifying Cross to make money may be the beginning of an explanation. I also came to considerthat if the Seraphim were compromised, maybe Jean-Marie Cross simply hadn't the intel to know the company he was selling to were owned by Ares.
According to Corporate Download, some Seraphim did not trust Leonard Aurelius, and the ex-Ares people that followed him were still using runners instead of the Seraphim black ops team. But his son Nicholas worked closely with the Seraphim while he was heading Cross Advanced Electronics in Seattle. The head of the Seraphim in Seattle was Jezebel Surrateau, who took control of Dunkelzahn operative network there (see Blood in the Boardroom). And Dunkelzahn top agent in New Orleans, Toshi Akimura, was a former Seraphim operative in Seattle. Akimura had resentment toward the Seraphim, but if he went over that, you got an interesting link between Nicholas Aurelius and the Draco Foundation, that may also explain how the Seraphim were "compromised" in the first place.

- In Corporate Download, Ares had five big subsidiaries - KE, Ares Arms, Ares Space, Ares Global Entertainment and General Motors, who were "at the top", with regional divisions only coming "in addition" to those. What is decribed as Ares previous organization in Corporate Guide suggests Ares Global Entertainment was a lot less powerful, answering to Ares Europe (while having most of its assets in North America). I can imagine AGE have been downgraded at some point, though this is not very consistent with it growing thanks to the Cross takeover, and Troy Carpenter remaining in charge.
It's fun to have Troy Carpenter still around, and getting some mentions, as I'm the one who gave him AGE vice-presidency. On the other hand, I didn't think of him as the military type described in the Megacorporate Shuffle, as he was the only one of Ares Arms three top executives mentionned in Corporate Download not to be a general. I also hope he won't stay around too long, because SR would need some change sometimes. Roger Soaring-Owl have been heading KE ever since Seattle Sourcebook. That's 23
years. At least, he retired. I know leonization makes an excuse for keeping high-level NPC around forever. But there nonetheless must be something wrong with Karen King, who have heading Ares Seattle division for just as long, 23 years, without ever getting a promotion out of town.


Shadows of Europe explained Cross European assets were "stolen" from Ares Global Entertainment with the help of William Briggs, who left AGE vice-presidency to follow Aurelius. Had I the wordcount to expand, I would have explained that those "assets" were not companies, but rather technologies, contracts and people, mainly involved in the gaming industry. IMO, the gaming industry is overlooked in SR. Desert Wars Broadcasting would be small money, when compared to the sales of Modern Warfare: Desert Wars. Plus, Ares owns "NBS", RL NBC has an alliance with Vivendi-Universal, and Vivendi Games is a world leader in the gaming industry. Considering Vivendi as the basis for Ares Global Entertainment makes a good explanation as to why the American mega has it media HQ in Paris.

- I remember, and those were Daviar's words, not Haeffner (Corporate Download, page 37).

- CG has Major David Gavilan joigning Acquisition Technologies after leaving Echo Mirage, thus contradicting the version of the 2029 Crash given in the Dragonheart Trilogy.

- The plot revolving around Arthur Vogel have been streamlined to dragons' play. I thought the Pueblo connection was as much interesting, because of what I take as one of the most overlooked plot of the Third Edition : Man & Machine explained Ares Space needed to acquire nanotechnology expertise to remain competitive in the space race, and that such a strategic issue made an Ares-MCT alliance an option, the other being an Ares-Pueblo alliance. That gave a nice web of intrigues, with the Pueblo supporting Vogel, and the whole Californian situation (with Ares in Silicon Valley, MCT in San Francisco, the Pueblo in LA, while Lockheed all but disappeared and Horizon increasing its presence in space).

- Page 54 says Michele Borden is a "former Cross Applied Technologies legal counselor". The bio on page 56 makes no mention of this, only saying Borden "followed Arthur Vogel from Sierra Inc. to Ares in 2066." Borden may sure have worked for Cross before Sierra, but this looks a lot like a mistake.

- Page 57 lists EuroForce as a competitor to Ares Arms, along with S-K and Esprit. Except that according to Shadows of Europe, EuroForce is a corps, not a corp.

My question is, why is Danny Ocean on the cover?

So here's a question.

What are the chances that this one ever actually sees physical print? And if not, should I go ahead and grab the PDF just in case that gets yanked down too?

According to Jason, it's been sent to the printers, so (assuming the license gets renewed or they are allowed to continue to sell anything that's been printed but can't produce new material) it'll probably be ready GenCon-ish.

As for it being sent to print, at late as mid-day today Jason Hardy changed one of the sidebars to fix an editing/layout oversight.

Although I noticed that the updated PDF still has a mistake on the Table of Contents. (errata link)

Would have been a lot better than this hyper facebook google retro 2000s naive tech geek corp we ended up with that routinely 'revolutionizes' the SR world with stuff that has already been mentioned in books written in the early 90s.


To their credit, there are several Arabian AA (Global Sandstorm, Ifreet ...) and they clearly state Shiawase and Hor!i!win!zon work according to inidan corporate principles for some reason (though why Shiawase would stop being japanese/asian in corp culture, being the corp that is almost as close to the Tenno as Aztech is to Aztlan, I cannot say).

Having said that, I am verymuch in favor of some book/pdf detailing the lesser corps, the AA, in SR. Grouped by region, maybe (Europe, Middle East, Latin America, North America, Asia, Central Asia, Australasia), and at least three to five each.

Ideas:
Europe: AG Chemie, Meridional, Lusiada, Sol, Spinrad, Genom, Regulus
North America: Seretech, Prometeus, Transorbital, Telestrian, Ford
Latin America: no idea, but there HAVE to be local AA, too
PPG: Eastern Tiger, FedBoeing, MIB, Pacific Cybernetics, Kwonsham
Other Asian: Russian corps, Tan Tien, HKB, Chrysler-Nissan, Sony, Baihu corp.
Middle East, other: Ifreet, Tanamyre, KITT, Vedacorp


But Horizon snatched Truman Tech, downsizing them again.

I'm just repeating what he posted on here yesterday. "Sent to the printers" doesn't have to mean it's rolling off the presses right now, but probably the layout was sent to them for final approval and a proof copy. Unless it's different in the gaming industry or with their printer, it'll probably go to the presses in a month and change (barring major problems) and ready to ship a few weeks after that. Of course, my knowledge of the production side of the print medium is at least a decade out of date and is based on small print run magazines/comics and paperback novels, so grain of salt and all that.

I thought Ford got soaked up by Ares in the late 2030s or 2040s...maybe that was GM? I remember one got soaked and one's still hanging in barely. Also, isn't Transorbital part of NeoNET? I need to re-read the corp stuff I've got in my stack.

BTW, I doubt there's any AAs in South America. Aztechnology's got everything between the Colorado River and the Equator through Aztlan, and Amazonia dominates everything south of there for the most part and they're more magic and nature than they are corporate types. Maybe some of the novacoke production cartels could be big enough to be considered AAs, but I doubt it.

And isn't Sony just A-rated? They don't have extraterritoriality that I'm aware of (the dividing line between A and AA).

You are correct, sorry. The Zaibatsu are mostly just extra-strength keiretsu, but I did mean Zaibatsu.

Ford is more or less hanging. GM got swallowed by Ares in the late 50s/60s. Fuchi Orbital is part of NeoNET (and Transys Neuronet); Transporbital is it's own corp as per Manhattan Book.


No. Check here for details. Haven't had time to read it entirely, so hence my vague post.


As per SoA, they are one of Japan's AA.

No. I didn't even do the original design of them; Jason Vargas did, and how to make them was well-documented in both terms of past files and a template with full instructions. No idea why the book didn't have one -- I left in the middle of its production.

Has there been a change in policy regarding announcing a street date? In the past, it's always been a very hard, "when the books are in and we know when, we will announce the street date." However, judging by your comments something is a bit off.

Either:

The books are in, or almost in, the US and a street date is coming soon by the old standards. However, given your comments in the other thread about AH's material being pulled prior to printing this doesn't seem likely.

or

CGL Policy has changed and you'll give a street date you can't really control.

or

Your definition of soon and my definition of "near future" are VERY different. It's been made clear that shipping to street date is easily an 8-12 week process. I don't know how long the printing process itself takes, but add that on to a base 2-3 months for just the shipping.

Seriously, what you are doing is telling people to give you their money for a product that is not even printed, and will not be available for at least 2 months (likely much more). Yet, while you do it you offer a street date in the "near future"; something that CGL policy means the books are a couple of weeks out tops. That is the type of insunuation and double-talk that pissed me off with the LE. If anyone thinks that it's a good idea to pre-order this book because it will be here soon, I suggest you go look at that thread from the day they announced the book was shipping and figure out how long it was before a street date was actually announced.

Honestly, there has been no announcement regarding the license for SR to IMR/CGL. So, either they've secured it and haven't said anything, or they haven't and are asking for your money for a book that they might never have a right to print/sell/deliver.

Jason, I know you are trying to be the upbeat guy and keep things positive. Offering things you have no intention, or ability, to produce (a street date in the "near future"), is not the way to do that in my opinion.

You missed one alternative--the books are being printed in the US, thus we don't have to worry about a long shipping time.

Jason H.

That is fair. Are you saying that the books are in fact being printed domestically? Or just suggesting it as an option I over looked?

That's what I'm saying. They are being printed domestically. As Adam pointed out somewhere, for B/W printing, foreign and domestic are comparable prices. The foreign savings are more for color products.

Jason H.

There's the Genesis Consortium. It's been referenced in some sourcebooks (starting in SotA64, IIRC), but the original source was SoLA's corporate overview chapter. Let me see what we can do about that draft...

So when should we expect them Jason? I love my Ipad and PDFs but I 'Collect' RPGs and one Ipad on a shelf isn't quite as impressive as the real deal. At $18, it's not a cheep PDF.

When I have a street date, I'll let you know. Management gets mad at me if I offer estimates before then.

Jason H.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but your layout duties were performed on a freelance basis, were they not?

From a legal perspective I was a contractor, but I was a full-time staff member.

Eh.. went ahead and grabbed it. Just in case something happens and sales hault. I'd hate to miss out on this thing by a few days or weeks.

That is fair enough then. Sorry I didn't think of that option.

My thought was that there was no way they'd have given a "Soon™" date if there was a chance it would have had customs/shipping issues, thus it had to be a domestic/NAFTA printer.

For SR4 psionics are mentioned on page 45 of Street Magic, and the full rules are on page 4-5 of Digital Grimoire.

Lars

Does this mean the pdf is in colour but the hardcopy will be in black and white?

'Did we REALLY need another corp sourcebook?

good question

Corp Download is a bit dated by now, so yeah, definitly.