You're arguing over implementation details, not the "invention" portion of it.

You're calling the entirety of Shadowrun, First Edition something that "only nutcases would buy" merely because the armor rules were wacked.

No i don't.
I'd buy the 1st Ed rules before i use the 4th Ed rules which i only bought to know what the heck is talked about on dumpshock <.<

*headdesk*

Totally missed the point.

not if i get that reaction, i didn't ^^
i know you meant i should not call one product stupid because of some parts of the product being stupid . .

Oh good. Logic still does work on the internet, sometimes.

It does? Where?

And what does Logic get paid, anyway? I'd like to see the salary comparison.

@=)

Back on topic, I was just perusing the maps on the Dumpshock wiki (and have not yet looked at the 6WA map). How current are the wiki maps?

Old, relatively speaking. They're Wordman's from five or six years ago now. There was one point in the project where they were going to be ripped for 6WA, but some of the freelancers made a big stink about it.

Really enjoying this pdf! It's a great book, filled with great info about each year and lots of countries, and really awesome maps!

There are ofc a few countries that are missing that I would have like to see in the book, like a focus on the scandinavian union and the scandinavian countries outside the union, but I completely understand that theres not enough room for all of them.

really disappointed!

Only 200pages and there was take about "if we had more countries in the book, it will be too big"??!

There is way to much History Section and to little actual World Description. Even countries like Spain are not included.

The History Section would be enough an 50pages, and then 250pages world description, that would be better.

And I don't want to start about the map: There are so much mistakes on the map! Not even the most obvious things like the coastline of the north sea.

cya
Tycho

OK, had some time to skim over the history section yesterday evening and one thing really stuck out:
The canon so far was that by executive order of president whatshisname, which was later ratified by congress*, the United States had publically decided to kill each and every Amerind on their territory - which is something even Hitler didn't dare to say in public.
Now we have the speech quoted in the 6WA, and there the president just talks about treating the Amerinds as enemy combatants and repatriating them. Even if that was just a propaganda smokescreen for the extermination campaign, it would already be a retconn (although to the better if you ask me). But what's even worse is that it goes completely unchallenged by the shadowtalk, which should provide an in-universe counterpoint to in-universe spin doctoring.

And to complete the continuity screwup, the history box just talks about a publically announced genocide, like all canon sources so far did..


*: AFAIK that's not how executive orders work, but oh well...

If I recall my politics correctly, Executive Orders do not need to be signed off by Congress. However, Executive Orders cannot compel military action. Even police actions have to be approved by Congress.

EDIT: Amending my Congress comment, the President can order military into action for EMERGENCY PURPOSES but to get it to be a sustained and sustainable action, he needs Congressional approval.

So this is a double-whammy "oops" sort of thing. But I believe it came from an earlier edition and is only being revisited in 6WA. Hmm, there's got to be a good conspiracy theory in there somewhere. @=)

looking at the map makes me go wtf about this topic.

1. when did norway give up svalbard to the aleuts?

2. i thought denmark was part of the scand union, so why is there a border around it? or was the border supposed to have red dots?

Looking at the map and the borders it looks like neither Denmark nor Norway are members of the scandinavian union in 2072.

actually, norway still is, as the line along the border is dotted (tho dotted red on orange do mess with visibility). That marks a internal border (funny enough, the only other place outside of the union its used is between salish-shidhe and tsimishian).

but the border wrapped around denmark is solid orange for some reason.

Minor nitpick, but 5 pages in, there is this paragraph in the opening story (second page of the story).


I'm surprised this didn't get caught by the proofreaders.

-M&P

Not trying to nitpick. As I rather love the book. But the editing was kinda horrid.

There's alot of just simple spacing mistakes. Where words will be together Likethis and they weren't caught. And the thing with the side bars being copied in two places. (( thus depriving us of two of the side bars)) was glaring.

Hopefully they'll read this and do a once over before going to dead tree print

would not surprise me if the parts that have flaws are the parts that had to be replaced because of freelancer issues.

Freelancer issues don't pertain to simple typing mistakes and two of the yearly side bars out of about 80 years worth are not freelancer mistakes. It's a blocking mistake. Someone put the same information in two year wrap ups instead of the ones that were supposed to go there. While I think the Freelancer thing sucks, this is not that. To imply it is, is wrong.

These are just standard editing mistakes. Thing is there's alot of them. Their editors need to be more careful. For a 15 second down load that cost $25 there's alot of mistakes. If it goes to dead tree format and is $45, these would be inexcusable. I mean I spell for drek and I'm catching stuff. And the doubled year wrap ups.... that's just.. ---bad---.

I know most think it's so easy to proof. It isn't. Could it be better? Yes, but I haven't found a single RPG book yet the was 'perfect'.

The more fingers in the pie so to speak on the writing the harder it is to keep 'perfect'.

Noone's saying it has to be perfect. I'm far far far from perfect. But I'm not charging $25 for a 15 second download or $45 for a 200 page book either. For that price, the mistakes should be minimal, few, and far between.

They are not.

To be honest I'd like the PDF updated with the right year breakdowns in place. I don't like the fact I've paid for a flawed product. I'd also like the maps to work on my platform.

The spelling mistakes and stuff, bespeak a lower level of professionalism, that is NOT reflected in the cost. For $25(digital) or $45 (Dead tree) the thing OUGHT To be better put together.

The length of time an electronic book takes to download is 100% irrelevant to how good it should be and how much it should cost.

So what is your error per page limit?

Errors are industry-wide, it is a common complaint amongst gamers.
Proofreaders: 10
Writers: 16
Editors: 2

Proofreaders who are also writers: 5
Editors who are also writers: 2
May be more but these are the acknowledged credits.

You see a common theme amongst RPGs like this, when people are doing double+ duties, they miss items. And/or when their proofreaders are 'in the know' they overlook items. A proofreader could proof their part but it then has to go to layout and/or something has to be changed and that change causes runonwords <--like that.

Is he pulling a Cain or a Fuchs there, I wonder?

And what is the error rate in other media? How many errors in published novels, newspapers, etc? When I was working on proposals for Government contractor we had to hit NO errors.

-M&P

Depends on who you ask and how much of a stickler they are.

Gamers want something that cannot be done. There is just too many hands that books like this have to go through to keep it at a low error rate. Let's look at 2 people who both wrote and proofed the book, John Schmidt and Michael Wich. Did they proof their own work or did they proof a certain section, that may or may not have included their own contributions. Did Matt and Adam check each others layouts?

We have no idea how they went about producing the book. All we know is 3 people were involved in development,(2 of who were the editors and also writers), 16 writers, 10 proofreaders( 5 of whom wrote as well) and 2 layout persons. 26 odd people(who are credited). That is quite a few trying to keep everything all nice and error-free.

Well, in this case: when I left Catalyst, I sent all my files to Matt and he finished the book. I did the original layout for the Timeline section, but I assume it went through changes + further proofing after I left, as what I turned over wasn't finished. I haven't seen the final book.

One of my DM's (David Paul) for the games that cause cancer is a editor for a publisher (currently Rite Publishing) and from listening to him. There is no way I would want that job, it sounds entirely too thankless to me.

But on the other hand he's detail oriented, and there's been VERY few mistakes that I've caught in anything he's edited.

Damnit, I wanted something on Thule. Now I'll have to.. I don't know, replicate Morrowind on Kamchatka island?

Actually, that sounds like a lot of fun. Unless someone knows something about Thule? I can't seem to hunt it ddown. Or anything on the TPA.

i don't think anyone has said they expected a 200 page book to have no errors at all. but that doesn't mean we couldn't reasonably expect the number of errors to be few. when i take something in to school to be graded, it is expected that i don't make a lot of errors, and that's when *I* am paying *them*.

in this case, these people are getting paid to write (albeit not much) and then other people are being paid (well... compensated, more likely) to go through and check it for errors. expecting them to do some proofreading, and actually do at least very basic quality control (like the mentioned duplication of sidebars, which should have been noticed) before selling the product is not unreasonable.

I want to publicly say "No problem and sorry for snapping." As I said in the first post I was feeling crabby, and frankly I should have done the old "give it a day before you post" things - sorry about that.

And yeah - I love my iPad but I'll concede that refusing to support the necessary components is annoying - CURSE YOU APPLE! Still, odds are they aren't going to change for anyone so it WOULD be cool to get a 6WA that works on my iPad!

Over the years, Apple _has_ made their PDF rendering libraries more robust on OS X. This isn't a case of them never changing things for the better.

I am not saying it is unreasonable.

I am just pointing out that no one here will agree to what is reasonable.

They should feel ashamed at producing a product with this type of quality. I can sympathize with them though.

My brand new Sixth World poster

Looks like it was rolled (not folded), where did you get it ?

Yep, no folds! D.I.Y. or die.

So, any word on whether the print version will be devoid of this slew of errors? Forgive me if this was answered but I'm sure I intend to buy it if has as many errors as it seems to.

if someone goes through, picks it apart, and hands them a huge pile of corrections, so far the usual thing that happens is that they'll update it from what i've seen.

there's a big difference between "man, this thing is full of errors" and a list of 500 specific errors with specific page references and suggested corrections for them. the first is just a complaint, the second tells them how to fix it.

(or, in other words, if you do a full proofreading for them, they have so far gone to the effort to fix it)

Well of course. You've gone ahead and done the editing job for them.

It's a project for this weekend, if I get off STO long enough to get around to it.

From what I've heard, several freelancers pointed out continuity errors which CGL had edited into their stuff long before the Corp Guid was released, and the final (pdf) version still has them...

Oh well, Pegasus have already announced to do some massive bugfixing for the German release, which is a real irony: German and English used to differ books no longer differ because our distributors wrote their own canon. These days Pegasus gets approval from CGL for every addition they make to a book, but CGL ignores the "unified" canon.

I believe that having more eyes on any given product is going to reduce the number of errors. Considering the page count of previously published material that this book touched on this was not a small project by any stretch of the imagination.

It would be fair to say that the freelancers did discuss the urgent need to get things right because of the amount of scrutiny that they knew this product would garner. No one was taking anything for granted with this product. Sadly, none of us walk on water so there ya go.

It's a partnership. Certainly more eyes on a project are going to catch more errors. However it's also up to whoever's at the top of the totem pole on a particular project to make sure the corrections are actually implemented.

And to make sure that the suggested corrections are actually correct and keep within the Shadowrun style guide. Back in my day I saw plenty of suggested corrections that were based on strict adherence to certain manuals of style but didn't make sense for the in-character voice that was being used. Shadowtalkers are allowed to use poor grammar, goddamnit.

I agree - but it's telling when certain shadowtalkers are using perfectly fine grammar in one section and piss-poor grammar in the next. When they vacillate, eyebrows rise.

Absolutely true. A better guide to how each shadowtalker should be voiced would have been a boon to authors, editors, developers, and proofers.

I would also like a pony.

6WA's example is Kane. I've seen Kane comments since 2nd Ed - and the first time I've seen his grammar fail was 6WA. Even Ghost Cartels had his voice, but he still knew where to end his sentances.

I think that's where my eyebrow rises. I get everyone's voice. They're all done very well, and kudos to the writers for it, as there are a lot of characters being written in and they're all getting good time. I'm not so sure that Jackpoint has a WYSIWYG spellcheck for commenters, though.

Finally read this. I don't mind the typos so much, but the incorrect yearly timelines did bug me a bit. It also bugged me that they couldn't think of a better flag for Amazonia than that crummy map of the Amazon river (I think I'd have kept the old flag with a few added stars and a snake instead of the "Ordem e Progresso" banner). The writeup of Amazonia also felt a bit rushed, which makes it obvious that they tried to fit what used to be a whole book chapter into a handful of pages, but other than that they even got the Portuguese names mostly right! I can totally conceive of a dragon named "Pedrinho da Metrópole", and it cracks me up . It did feel nice to read about M'boi and Metrópole, though, as those were my ideas way back at the beginning of the "Shadows of Latin America" project (though I can't claim any credit for their actual implementation).

Can't say much about the other country descriptions other than "I liked them". Hard to comb for details when I don't live there.

As for the continuity errors other have spotter, they don't bother me in the least. I always plan to change stuff to better fit my own games.

Is there going to be physical copies at GenCon (to buy that is)? Yes I know I'm wishing.

Cross your fingers really, really hard! I am!

Jason H.

Damn you with the teases!!!!

forgive me if this has been answered, but, where can I send some errata I noticed?