Well, we've seen at this point which countries are covered in depth in the Sixth World Almanac. There's still a lot of globe out there. Yes, this is partly my butthurt over SE Asia getting shortchanged, but I'm hoping War will cover that. What I'm really wondering, though, is if Cities of Intrigue or Awakened Haunts are still coming down the pipeline at some point. Are those dead dead?

I still got my lil lists of what I hope the city lists would be like....

AH

Big writeups: New Orleans, Jerusalem
Little ones: Kinshasa-Brazzaville, Metropole, Phnom Penh, Shenyang, Sydney

CI

Big: Las Vegas, London
Little: Belfast, Bucharest, Cairo, Saigon

Is this a pipe dream or is there any chance yet of getting any of this?

Cities of Intrigue? Austin damn well better be in there along with Denver...

Well I'm not in-the-know but it sure seems like Awakened Haunts is dead-dead. Of all the upcoming projects that have been mentioned here, it hasn't shown, and seeing as how it was announced some time back I'd imagine we'd have seen something by now.

The Runner Havens/Corporate Enclaves/Feral Cities style books did not, unfortunately, sell as well as could be hoped. I lobbied for a full-book treatment called Denver 2073, but last I heard CGL was pursuing a bizarre mashup of location/rules for a type of campaign possibly suitable to that location, of which the first example will be War!, featuring Bogota.

;_; but those have been my favorite 4e books. At least I have my answer though. Thanks man.

The main write up's were nice but the short entries left alot to be desired. I'l like to see an update to the London/England story lines. Or any of the European snippets we've been teased with.
Right now I just want to see a successful conclusion to DoTA+and it's follow up book.

Perhaps it's time to revive the old '21st century 'plexes by 20th century locals' project. I've had a few ideas for St. Louis as a medical research/smuggling hub due to its bordertown status and multiple research hospitals...

That's a damn shame. All of those were pretty good. Some of the content was hit or miss, but the hits were pretty awesome.


The short entries have their place, too. I'm doing a pretty cool game in Caracas right now. You have to work a little harder to fill in some of the blanks, but it does give you alot of freedom as a GM if you are into world building.

I'd imagine the less than hoped for sales was because there are people more interested in crunch, and those more interested in RP/story. The latter will get both crunch and setting books, while the former will only get crunch books, so you'll always see lower sales for a book like Feral Cities than one like Augmentation. It's a shame though, since there are only so many crunchy books that can reasonably be put out before things get a bit ridiculous, and in honesty it seems like that point has already been reached. The main book, the magic book, the gear book, the matrix book, the 'ware book, the 'extra options' book, and the critters book. I can't really think of any areas that need more expanding. I mean I'm sure there could be small additions to each of the books, but I don't know that any of them would be enough to be a book unto itself.

Perhaps smaller/cheaper crunchy books might be an option for the future. Along the lines of Digital Grimorium. It would require alot less effort to put together than a full book, and lots of people would likely buy it just because it only costs a few dollars. I don't know what kinds of sales DG actually has of course, so it might not work out so well. But it would be a great ground for stuff that wanted to get put in, but just never quite got around to being put in the game. Maybe something like the wing suit being discussed over in the History Channel thread, throw in some other stealth/spy gear, and you could have a little 'spy toys' PDF only book. Just some late night thoughts

I want to say yes to this, but I was really disappointed by Digital Grimoire. The spells were lackluster, the tradition writeups were blah, and don't get me started on the overpriced, nearly useless-as-written adept powers. You could've gotten better content for that e-book outsourcing ideas to Dumpshock regulars, and it would've been balanced and useful content on top of that.

Maybe they should ask DS for ideas. Heck, plenty are provided without being asked. The wing suit developed in the History Channel thread as I already mentioned thanks to me mentioning the possibility of using it to skydive right into a target zone without the use of a parachute. People went through and worked on the physics some, and I think that it might be possible with a sufficiently advanced suit, hydraulic jacks on your legs, skill, nerve, and fancy flight acrobatics.

And I know that there was a thread here a few days ago that went over all kinds of paracritters like electric rats and other stuff that I don't remember.

I also know I've seen various threads with people suggesting new drone designs, new ware, and all kinds of other stuff. DS could be a total gold mine for info for little books like I was talking about. Permission would be needed of course, but I don't think most people would mind having their ideas used.

Digital Grimoire was written pro-bono and is, hilariously, one of the best ebook sellers from what I've been told.

The long and the short is that early in SR4, there were some very definite design choices made - one of these was to avoid a sort of rules-compendium-bloat, where each frickin' sourcebook had a collection of unique rules and you might need two dozen sourcebooks to stat out a character. You might laugh at that, but back in SR2 and SR3 it got really, really bad as far as different character options, equipment, and rules in a variety of sourcebooks, some pretty damn obscure. In SR4 the idea was there to be a Matrix book, a Magic book, a Cyber book, a Gear book, etc. No having to remember that Cornish Bards were mentioned in The Grimoire, druid rules were in London Sourcebook, Germany Sourcebook and Tir na nOg, and centering foci were in Awakenings.

In addition, there was the decision that the crunch books would have...more fluff. This is a concept that took a surprising amount of time to percolate down through the ranks, I'll tell you what. So you had lots of place books without unique rules and a lot of rulebooks with good chunks of fluff. Maybe if the release schedule hadn't been compromised, it would have worked out - I think SR is something like 3 years behind now - but I dunno. What was tried didn't work to the satisfaction of the powers that be at CGL, so they're trying something new (to the dissatisfaction of people like me - not trying something new, but the specific of what they're trying to do...c'est le vit.)

My biggest issue with Digital Grimoire and all that is basically that I don't like buying PDFs.

For one, I want to see what I'm getting before I get it. If I go to the store, I can page through a book and say, "Hmm, this looks useful" or "What the fuck is this shit?" and make a decision. I can't do that with a PDF, unless I want to go dick around to pirate it and then buy it, which doesn't seem like it's terribly good for anyone's business model and it's something I really couldn't be bothered to do anyways. Seeing a friend's copy of that Hong Kong adventure dealie that was PDF only kind of confirmed this bias for me, as we didn't think it was a high enough quality work, in hindsight, to be worth buying. There were a lot of adventures from the Denver arc we got for free that we liked a lot better.

And that's the other thing, is I'm just deeply uncomfortable paying for a PDF. Part of that's me being a curmudgeon, but I think preferring the raw visceral reality of a book to internets data is legit. And also, the more I stare at a screen the more I feel like I'm going blind. Part of the reason I quit WoW, shit was starting to just hurt too damn much. I don't want to have to stare at a screen to be in a tabletop game. It sort of defeats the purpose.


Back to the original topic, I was hoping Karoline's logic would kick in soon, as I also can't see where there's major gaps in the crunch. Since I can't see any obvious direction to expand the crunch, I was hoping we'd get some more focus on fluff, which is actually what I tend to favor.

I also agree with Abschalten about the short writeups. A lot of them have been really good, and I'm indeed a worldbuilder at heart. The short writeups give you a baseline theme and an idea of factions and neighborhoods without the canon-paralysis that sets in in a more in-depth look (especially in a canon-choked place like Seattle). I think out of all the cities in the three books, the ones I'd most like to run are Nairobi, Hamburg and Geneva, and none of those are the big writeups.

Maybe they could go back to the "State of the Art" style books...I remember with 3e was winding down, the plan was to do one of those for every game year, updating the setting with new rules and canon-world info. 2064 was pretty lackluster IMO, but I'd still fork out the money every year if nothing else for the media section that closed out both books.

And I HATE the short write-ups. If I wanted to play in "my" Shadowrun world, I wouldn't have spent hundreds upon hundreds of dollars over the past (god I feel old) two decades buying up pretty much every book I can get my hands on. I'm a bit busy building worlds for my half-finished novels littering my hard drive to try to come up with detailed info on random places all over the country and the world. Damnit, I want to play in the world of Dowd, Findley, Hume, Kenson, Boyle, Sargent...the world I fell in love with as a kid and grew up reading as it developed. That's why the group of players I have for my current game are all Shadowrun newbies...so I can run them through the whole thing...from Harlequin, Mercurial, and Dreamchipper all the way up to System Failure and into Dusk of the Artifacts if I can keep them interested long enough.

Hell, I fancy myself a writer and I don't even really want to bother creating my own stories, just run the published ones. I definitely can NOT say that about any other gaming system out there. Sure, I'm changing stuff around and switching some NPCs to other ones to create a theme (Harlequin recommends the runners to Dunkelzahn, thus getting them involved in the Super Tuesday adventures, the same Johnson showing up repeatedly rather than the generic ones in the adventures (unless necessitated by the plot), making the same insect shaman behind Missing Blood, Queen Euphoria, and Double Exposure, etc.)

The reason why I prefer published adventures and long write-ups on locales stems from waaaay back when the Denver boxed set was released. There were two books, one a player's guide and one a GM's booklet that gave three options for each and every NPC, location, story, etc. The idea was that Denver would be left alone after that to allow GMs to create their own world without future canon storelines interfering...I guess Ghostwalker had different plans for that, didn't he? Or maybe I should throw stones at Renraku Archology Shutdown first for bringing the Denver Data Haven and some of those NPCs into canon again.

Anyway, my drunken rambling point is that I don't want to run a game and halfway through when a new book comes out, have to decide if I keep my own world going, kill future plotlines to stay canon, or try to retcon my store into the new canon story. I don't like that, so I want as much friggin' detail as possible in everything that comes out.

And, as a reader-not-gamer angle...they BUTCHERED the Tir Tairngire storyline in 4th Ed. I've ranted about that repeatedly and hopefully Sixth World Almanac will make things better, but I sincerely doubt it.

I can't stand paying for digital-only content. What if I have a hard drive crash or if I want to read it on my iPhone/Kindle/iPad/laptop/bedroom computer/whatever? Am I going to have to buy it all over again? Give me a dead tree format any day of the week...much easier to lay in bed and read...and it's strangely comforting to me to wake up with a book sitting face-down on my chest after I dozed off on the couch. Maybe I'm getting old too, but I pay for paper and want digital free (or included with my purchase of dead tree at the very least rather than getting double dipped).

If your computer crashes you can download another copy from the place you bought it.
If you want to read it on your 'insert other device here' then you transfer it there. You can make infinite copies of your PDF for free (I have at least 3 copies of each of mine, all on separate hard drives so that I don't have to bother redownloading them if one should crash.)
And also, there was an invention a few decades back called a printer. I don't know exactly how long DG is, but you could always print it out, and it wouldn't cost much. I know I could get the entire SR4 rulebook printed for about $6. Wouldn't be color, but oh well, most pages are text anyway. I could understand not wanting to do this with something like the core book because then you need to get it bound somehow, but with a shorter book like DG I don't think it is such a big problem.

You can print PDF's?!?!?!?!??!
How does this invention works?

In all seriousness, I like e-books. Specially when they are short and concise. I liked the design behind 10 Shadowrunners (the one of being short and concise), but it really is the kind of fluff you hardly ever use. Except, perhaps, to show new players example of Shadowrunners and what motivated/led them to take this kind of life. Just my 2

10 Jackpointers was pretty cool book, i especially liked the format and tone of the write-ups and will probably do a similar ones of my own characters and maybe even contacts.

I have no problem with the concept of e-books, though I prefer an actual physical book for anything beyond a short "add-on" product. But I agree with the problem of not being able to browse through an e-book before you buy it. That's one reason why I like Eclipse Phase's Creative Commons license, I can legally browse through the PDF before buying it or the physical book. Also, that licensing encourages the "remix" culture in RPGs, where a digital PDF file has an advantage that physical books can't match; the ability to manipulate pages and layout sections for re-purposed use. The idea of Sunward's Hack Pack is wonderful for that reason.

I printed "Runner's Companion" that I bought in only a Digital Copy.

Of course, I have a Laser Printer, and am insane.

a laser printer that can do both sides have become quite affordable these days.

as for mixing fluff and crunch, thats how brutal games is doing the corporation game. Each book holds a writeup on some topic (one of the major factions, or some such) and crunch that fits within their theme (tho that is not all exclusive to them). So far i would say its working, tho sometimes finding what is being mentioned on the forum can be a hassle

Yeah, another problem with the old way SR mixed crunch and fluff into every book was the writers themselves would have a tough time tracking down mechanics. So you could easily end up with mechanics that were not consistent or contradicted, because Writer A didn't have a copy of some obscure setting book that included a page of new mechanics in it.

Actually it was supposed to be a joke, but anyway. I printed a digital copy of armageddon I bought. I used the Laser Printer of my college department using the credtis I had spared for 3 years (we may print an amount of 50 pages per semester free of charge, that stack with pages not used during a semester), so I got a bool of almost 300 pages for 10 dollars and the cost of puting a cover.

My printer barely works and the quality is crap. I don't even like printing character sheets on the damn thing. While I'm saving up for a nice color laser printer (under $200 now...friggin' toner costs more than the printer), my point still stands.

What if there's DRM on the file that prevents me from transferring it? What if the company that sold it goes out of business? I have a dead tree book, I don't have to worry 10 or 15 years later whether the company that made it is out of business so I can read it...I just have to brush the dust off of it. I had a friend that got seriously burned by the Divx debacle (the alternate DVD format that allowed "rental" of DVDs, not the video codec favored by video pirates). Oh, and let's not forget DRM servers for digital content which is why PC video game sales are so low. They spend so much time making sure that the game can't be pirated that it can only be used reliably IF you pirate it.

That's the reasons I always think about when I think about my reluctance to buy digital media, but frankly it's probably just a knee-jerk reaction to spending money and not having something to show for it. Sure, I have the digital copy, but I've spent money I had to spend real time and doing real work earning on something that is virtual only. I spend money, I want something I can hold in my hand. Plus, the value just doesn't seem to be there. I'll gladly pay an online subscription (I did for D&D when I was running a game last year and I do currently for Fark), but actually buying something I don't physically own bugs me.

DRM isn't (to my knowledge) any kind of an issue with your PDF copy, and they certainly going to be able to do anything about you making copies of it (That would be, quite literally, impossible). If you're seriously worried about them going out of business, then put backups on a disk or separate hard drive.

If you're careful about it, you're no more likely to lose your PDF copy of some particular book than you are to lose your hard copy. In fact, given that one of my copies is on my laptop, I'm actually less likely to lose it, because I'd grab my laptop in the event of a fire/flood/other disaster, but I wouldn't grab my 500lb book collection.

Besides, you buy plenty of things you don't physically own. Electricity, gas, online subscriptions, heck, even video games and movies are just digital information (exactly like a PDF) already put on a disk for you, and so aren't really any different from buying something digital and putting it on a disk.

But I own the DVD or X-Box 360 disc. I don't have to connect to XBox Live just to play HALO or to the Warner servers so I can watch Lord of the Rings. When my internet goes out, the first thing I do is pull out books and start reading, throw on a DVD and start watching movies/TV, or play video games. If the DRM involved prevents me from doing that, I'm not spending money on it. Period. Sure, they don't have DRM anymore, but they did when they first came out.

I'd happily pay for a subscription to something like the D&D Insider where I get something of value that's updated regularly. I felt like I was paying for the character generator/GM tools updates and getting the digital PDFs for free. Also, I got professional-quality and regularly/timely goods for my subscription. I would pay in a heartbeat to get something like that for Shadowrun. Or if the digital downloads came with extra features (deleted sections that couldn't be included due to page count, automatic updates/errata, developer's notes, more detailed/frequent rules examples, etc.), I'd be much more inclined to buy them.

Hell, if the prices were lower, I'd consider it. But paying the same price as the cover price of the paper copy (or more than what I'd pay on Amazon for a physical copy) or $10+ additional as a bundle? Never going to happen. I can't keep a digital copy dog-eared and open on the table during a session and I can't bring a digital copy into bed to read as I go to sleep. And the back-catalog they're offering for download? Full cover price for something I can get on eBay or Amazon Marketplace for a couple of bucks.

electricity is a service/utility, one that have a clear finite source/capacity. Gas, are you talking about natural gas, as in a gas stove, or gas as in gasoline? in the former case its pretty much the same as electricity, in the latter you actually own the mount you filled the container with once you payed. Hell, use an electrical outlet to fill a battery (not sure what the requirements are to tap a gas main, i suspect given the fire hazard its strictly regulated) and you basically own the charge thats on said battery (tho i suspect you would have a hard time selling it, unless your in some remote part of africa or something).

with movies and such things get a bit more complicated, as in some ways what your paying for with a dvd is the service of the packaging and cost of the media, plus whatever the distributor payed the creator(s) if the movie in the first place. Your rarely doing business directly with the creator. Problem is that technically the movie itself is not finite, and as such cant really be dealt with in the same way as the electricity or other finite resources.

Thing is, the internet is for information, what a star trek replicator is for physical objects. in the same way as the mechanical loom made fabrics silly cheap (and sparked the luddites into existence), the computer and internet is making information silly cheap. once the original "pattern" have been created, it can be duplicated a unlimited number of times. It would not surprise me if the entire library of alexandria could today be stored on the memory capacity of the cheapest mobile phone. Information have gone from a sellers market to a buyers market. We are saturated in "information", and more is added each second. Is there anyone today that have the capacity to read, view and listen to all the recorded information existing right now? This is not food, where what one eats, another can not eat. And thats been the fundamental problem the lawyers and such have grappled with since the first printing press, cassette or video recorder came to be. And the digital world have basically taken the problem and cubed it.

You're not going to suddenly convince me that paying $18 for a PDF of a book I can buy in dead tree format for $24 without even shopping around is somehow a good thing. I'm never going to buy it.

If you want to download PDFs of all your books, I'm not going to stop you. But that doesn't mean that I'm EVER going to pay that much money for it.

Abstruse, you are comparing stock retail pdf prices to prices obtained from Amazon or discount retailers. Of course it looks like a bad idea.

That's all kind of moot since there is no DRM on the PDF, so there is in fact no difference between a DVD with a movie on it, and a CD with your PDF on it. You physically own a disk in both cases, and you own the information that is stored on said disk.

Umm, they are lower? PDFs are cheaper than hard copies of books unless you're talking about buying them used or some such.

It's cool if you don't want to save money by having something more useful, I'm not going to stop you. I'm just saying that every one of your reasons is based on nonsense. You fear DRM that doesn't exist, you complain about paying the same price when it is cheaper, somehow paying for a subscription in which you come out of it at the end of the time with nothing is more appealing than buying a PDF in which the PDF is yours forever.

@hobgoblin I don't really understand most of what you're trying to say. Yes, I know that you get gas/electricity for paying those bills, but my point was that you don't ever 'hold it in your hands' which was Abstruse's complaint, that he was paying for something 'that he couldn't hold in his hands'.

Your point about information being overwhelming is... well, pointless. I don't see how it enters into the conversation at all. Are you saying that all information should be free? That PDFs should be free? That movies and blueprints and everything should be free because they are information and there is alot of information?

I similarly don't understand your point about DVDs. I know that you pay extra for the packaging and everything, but what you want out of it is the movie itself, which is just information on a disk, just like a PDF on a disk is just information on a disk. Once again, my point was that both are equally valid examples of 'something that you can hold in your hands'.

For one thing, the DVD has EXTRAS. You know, I get more. Commentary tracks, deleted scenes, gag reels, interviews, documentaries, etc. You buy a download of a film, you don't get that. That's also why I don't buy bare-bones DVDs unless they're on the clearance rack for a couple of bucks.

And, like I said, my impression of PDF downloads comes from WHEN THERE WAS DRM on them. It left me with a bad impression of the whole thing.

I don't consider a 35% discount off retail for a digital document over a paper version to be a big enough discount to make me want to buy it. You remove almost all of the overhead then charge what is effectively what the distributor is paying for the paper copy. It means the company gets exactly the same money without spending a penny beyond the overhead of server hosting (which they already pay for by maintaining a site). It's like satellite TV companies raising prices after they've already put the satellites in orbit. You want to charge $5 extra over the cover price of the book for a bundle? Sure, that works. Charge $10 or so as a stand-alone download? I'd consider it. But I don't consider paying wholesale prices and not actually getting the product as a "good deal".

And how exactly is a PDF document more convenient? I can't take it with me, I can't read it on the bus or at work, I can't read it in bed, I can't write in the margins, I can't dog-ear the pages or put in little tabs/sticky notes, I can't read it if the power goes out, and I can't loan it to a friend to borrow without committing a felony. The only way I can take it anywhere is to read it on another damn computer or something like a Kindle which is yet another $200 gadget I have no need for.

You can have it on a Laptop (Or Eee PC as I do) and use the "Search" function to find rules/equipment in a flash. That's very convenient.

You can have your whole Shadowrun Library on said item while you're on an airplane/train and read while travelling.

Personally, I like the option for both. Because give me a dead tree book to read any day.

Especially when it's very hot and I don't want my heat generating computer on.

You know what, I'd like to see a (Former) Canadian city for once... Toronto, Winnipeg, Vancouver...

Best I got is that I know Lone Star runs the police in Sudbury. Which probably means that the crime rate increased...

I don't have a laptop. Or a kindle or an ipad. I have an iphone and that's good enough for me.

*Sings in the key of off* "C is for Cookie, and that's good enough for me!"

Then it doesn't make sense for you to buy PDFs. Buy books, and I hope you support your local hobby/game shop.

Those that do have the equipment, and enjoy the PDFs, well, that's their business, is it not?

Important note: BattleCorps only gives you like 3 days to download any file. God only knows why.

Yeah, never been entirely sure about that, since they also tend to limit you to 5 or 7 downloads. One or the other I could understand to prevent splashing the link for everyone to download it for free. But you can e-mail them and get a new link if you ever need to re-download anything.


I don't see why that is a big problem. Is there some reason that CGL should make less profit on selling you a book because it is a PDF instead of a dead tree? It is still the same book with the same effort put into it.

Wow, iPhone can't do PDFs? I'm surprised. I suppose alot of that stuff varies from person to person. I can do all those things you mentioned with my PDFs. Well, power outage is limited to about two hours for my laptop battery, and loaning to friends is questionable, but otherwise, I can write notes, earmark, take it with me, and very nicely, I can do a search of the entire PDF for particular terms in a couple seconds.

Why should I pay the same amount and get less for my money when it doesn't cost them a single DIME extra and they get to double-dip me? At least when I buy the Theatrical and Director's Cut of a DVD, I have two DVDs (one of which I can sell if I want). I can't do that with the PDF unless, again, I want to commit a felony. It's like the airlines charging extra fees for using the bathroom or carry-on luggage, except the latter at least makes a SLIGHT amount of sense because it does take more fuel.


iPhones can do PDFs, but it's a friggin' 4" screen trying to display something that's meant to be read on 8 1/2" paper. So it's almost unreadable unless it's specifically formatted for the iPhone and even then, it causes eye strain trying to read on the thing. It's one thing to read text messages or an IM and then going back to whatever else is around, it's different for trying to read a 64-300 page book.

And I don't have a laptop. The only portability I'd have with a PDF is burning it to a CD/DVD or use a thumb drive and bringing that to read on another computer - of questionable legality since a copy is stored on their computer in cache when it's opened.

I'm not saying that a PDF is a bad option for distribution. I'm just saying it's bad as a SOLE method of distribution especially when you're charging full price. Hell, I won't even buy the micro-distributions like 10 Jackpointers and Digital Grimoir because the content doesn't justify the price tag. Maybe $1 each, but $5 for MAYBE 10 pages?

This is my opinion on the matter. Other people obviously have other opinions. My opinion will not be changing anytime soon. I will pay for digital distribution IF I feel it is a good value for the money. I will gladly pay a slight premium ($5 over retail, for example) to get a digital copy of a book I've purchased in dead tree format. I would love a subscription system if the content was regular and of at least half-decent quality. That's my view on the matter, and it's a view I'm backing up with my consumer dollar. You and others who support digital formats are voting with your consumer dollars. And I'm sure CGL loves you for it since every digital sale is 100% profit since there's zero overhead.

You don't get any less and you aren't paying the same amount. You're paying several dollars less for the exact same information. There is no double dipping, and heck, if you really wanted, you could buy the PDF, and then print it all out for the same cost as buying the dead tree, and then you have both the PDF for each searching and the dead tree for when you want to be away from your computer.


Yeah, that's a really good point

No, it is not questionable legality, it is entirely legal.
Yeah, I haven't gotten DG for similar reasons, it seems like alot for only a few pages, but it is selling well (apparently) so it must be fairly decent. Then again... $4 for 18 pages, that's just over $0.22 a page, compared to $35 for dead tree augmentation at 200 pages, making it $0.175 a page. That's actually not so much worse when you look at it like that.

Hmm, just noticed that arsenal and augmentation are $12 for the e-books. That's a very nice price, and quite a considerable discount from the $35 they are for dead tree format.


I think alot of people would like that, and it would likely be a good idea overall. CGL would likely convince alot of people who buy physical books to pay $5 extra for the PDF for ease of the search function and some of the other advantages, when they wouldn't get the PDF otherwise.

The illegal advantage to PDF format, of course, is that one guy in the group buys a book and suddenly everyone has it, albeit in PDF format.

I pretty regularly go to bed reading from my Kindle, just relating to that arguement. And getting a book printed for you at Kinko's is pretty inexpensive.

PDF or other digital formats work for some people, not for others. Certainly I don't need 4 copies of Arsenal floating around the table.

My roommate has a Kindle and he does the same thing. It's a brilliant piece of technology, but it's just not there yet. And typically, I'm the guy that buys all the books and everyone borrows mine for character creation and I haul them whereever the game's being played. Two or three other people have a BBB and that's it. Like I said, I can see the appeal, but not at the price point they've been released by FanPro/CGL.

My laptop is slightly larger than the core rulebook, has most 4th Ed books and some older ones on it and when travelling, working or during boring lectures I have it with me anyway. As far as portability is concerned, .pdfs are clearly superior.


But in general I think neither digital nor paper are better than the other, both have their advantages and disadvantages (many of which are more based on a subjective "feel" than something objectively measurable) and thus i prefer to have both. Which would indeed be easier if Coleman chose a more moderate house and the pdf prices were reduced accordingly

when i find a cheap ($200 or there about) reader that acts as a basic usb storage device or can take a SD card, and that have a screen size that can display a book formated PDF without forcing me to scroll in any direction, then i am interested. Before that, pdfs are great for forum discussions, but less so for really reading the "book" from "cover" to "cover".

and i would say the thread exemplifies what i tried to touch on earlier (tho the complexity of the topic results in me rambling incoherently as i try to drag in way to many threads). We do not see the work put into the background text, we only see the size of end file, and therefor the cost of the transfer (if one do not have unlimited bandwidth pr month) and storage. And as the act of transferring is a copy, rather then reducing some kind of physical stack with one like one see in a shop shelf, there is no real observation of loss. End result is that the perception of value, at least for one end of the transaction, hits rock bottom. And thats the thing, value is not a fixed quantity (tho the western world have mostly abandoned the art of haggling).

Or character creation, or finding something the GM needs in an instant, or settling a rules dispute, or...


Agreed. I hate reading longer documents on a computer screen, but that's just our subjective perception again.


Information always is intagible, not matter whether it's stored on paper, semiconductors, magnetic, optical, or any other carriers. But if the cost of the carrier medium and distribution thereof (well, nearly all of it) is taken out of the equation, you'd expect some hefty discount.
At least in Germany bookstores already get 30-40% off the list price (large chains will strong-arm even better prices) when ordering directly from the publisher. So let's say the publisher gets 2/3 of the list price, this includes not just the authors' pay and profit margin which always remain, but also the cost of printing and handling the books with interest (because all that is paid up front) and a certain "safety factor" (in case the book sells far less copies than printed).

This is pretty much how my group works as well. It's always "Pass the magic book. No, the magic book! This is Unwired!" And things like Kindles, well yeah, PDFs are great if you have that, but do we really want the hobby to set up those kind of financial barriers to entry? I mean, I think part of the appeal of tabletop RPGs is that you need a couple thirty dollar books between you and some dice and you're good to go for a few months. Adding a two hundred dollar electronic reader dealie kind of skews that.

Can we get back to dreaming of cities now?

The question was answered in What's Up With Shadowrun as "Bogotá, Denver and possible Tir Na Nog, along with the Ork Underground."

Ah, good. A guy in my group is talking about running us in Denver.

Seems he likes the idea of a city owned by a Dragon. Me, I'm not so sure... "Never deal with a Dragon" and all that...

Still, first chance I'll have to play a game since I was first introduced to Shadowrun in '92.

Denver is a fun city to run in - Ghostwalker is pretty "hands-off" most of the criminal dealings in the city; this isn't S-K where every time you turn around you have Lofwyr behind things. But if you do decide to deal with a dragon, you could do a lot worse than GW; with the possible exception of Hestaby, he's probably the Great that enjoys metahumanity the most.

Wouldn't that be "Claws off"?