New 30 critters PDF appears to be in proofing. Cactus Cat? Will we see the missing entries from Running Wild?

Facebook: "Just got a Parazoology proof--that means we'll press to get it in all of your virtual hands soon! Thirty new critters for your enjoyment."

Well, let's hope for the best.

Meh, the truly good parts of RW are those which are not simply lists of creatures...although if you need some animal opposition besides guard dogs and devil rats, those lists are good for at least a dozen different runs without evr using a creature twice.

So if I understand this correctly to be just a list of 30 paracritters, it's missing the good parts of RW and is carrying coals to Newcastle. Wake me up if they release something like "30 Goon Squads", a comprehensive list of those would be a nice addition.

Heh, I once had a couple of barghests almost strangle an overconfident sammy - first paralyze him, and then grapple for a bunch of net hits.
So, using paranormals can be fun, just to add a little surprise to the run.

Pah, if those have the statblock like those in the Core, frankly, in most cases you're better of statting them up yourself. Unless, of course, you use the pregenned gimps for PCs, too.

Abram's Lobster will be included!!! *squeals like a girl*

Note to self order 50 gallon drum of butter and order an extra gross of bibs.

I wish they'd add Gills to poor parafishes first.

Errata? That's just being unreasonable in your expectations.

D&D manual a long time ago had a "scary" encounter with some giant crawfish. Being from the South, instead of being scared the players just licked their lips and tried to figure out how to fireball the water to boiling...

Looks like my Marty Sue... Er, favorite NPC is going fishing again.

They work well enough if you need a couple of nameless henchmen or other folks with a small role. For bigger and more important folks, NPCs from adventures or adventure ideas still are a good a starting point, or can be transplanted directly if the players do something you didn't think of and you need NPCs quickly.

Problem is, when taking something from any book you still have to draw at least condition monitors, stat blocks and important equipment. If I could just print out a couple of record sheets instead, like they have in the CBT books, I'd definitely buy it.

You want some extra critters with that?
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=32249

Everyone makes the joke about eating the para lobsters (( even the guy in the book they first appeared in)) What stuck with me more, was that someone had taught them to jump and they aimed for the nuts with those giant claws and started cutting a guy apart from the crotch upwards... .

THAT ruins the joke every time and the male players at your table will cross thier legs.

If they're still laughing... Make the thing DO it. You snip a few of their..... lobster baits, and they'll respect your para-critters.

Edit: As a side note, Paranormal Animals of NA is what really got me into Shadowrun.

I had a few books before that but didn't get INTO it till i read Paranormal Animals of NA and the Shadow talk along with the animals there. Still one of the best books they've ever put out.

It's funny until it happens to you

For those of you cheering the lobster, the PDF is up for sale today and the 'preview" At Drivethrough shows the page for the lobster.

The art for the pdf... is...... Lacking. And no shadow talk (( which was 95% of the fun on the old books)) but it looks all in all nice.

That's a silly idea on several levels.
First, once you go for the crotch, the games tend to stray, eh, let's just say in wrong direction, and it gets weird very fast.
Second, with the armor and called shot rules, the lobsters are not that likely to hit, much less deal serious injury.

Wait, let me get this straight...

No Shadowtalk...

In a Shadowrun item?

OK, I'm now officially slotted off. *Looks at preview myself* OK, seriously, whafrag?

Ok I've not bought it (yet. probably will. I'm a sucker) but looking at the preview, it shows 7 pages of critters, and none of them have Shadowtalk on them. The artwork is.... Juvinile. Like.. from my 10 year old 'Draw me a lobster" ok "Draw me a ghost horse'

It might have shadow talk or something after the individual entries but that seems counter intuitive.

Yuck...and regardless of the content, why on earth the resolution from the 56k age?

PS: And the 1337 protip to CGL, "technical" images like the jackpoint login are a great opportunity to use vector graphics

This makes me want to go into my corner, rock back and forth, and gibber madly.

Pah, can't you see the signature on the images? "Kat Hardy, age 11".

Actually, it seems she wrote the text, too.
No Accident.

Ok. I looked again. The art isn't really 10 year old level. Some of it is ok. But I think making it full color is where it got kinda messed up. I've seen worse. Palladium has a few artists that do far worse. Kent Brules? *Shudders*

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn. Astaroth, Beelzebub, Asmodeus, Baphomet, Lucifer, Loki, Satan, Lilith, Hela! Blood to you all! And the sun will rise in the north! No, the northwest! For forty-four days and sixty-seven nights! And we'll never notice!"

Hehe, good one...that's what I thought, then I opened the preview again to see if I could make out the actual artist's signature....

Although for an 11 year old, it would be some great art.

PS: Did some googling and found this lady

Well, judging by preview, it's bad enough in some pictures for me never to buy the thing, minding also the quality of material and the lack of shadowtalk.

That's the actual signature. Well, except for the "age" bit

Is that Hardy's wife? Edit: I bet it is; otherwise, that art would never have made it. The real bad pieces (Sea Wolf, this means you!) aren't even in the preview.

Pity, just when things started to pick up again. Also, why is the ToC at the end and why is the content not alphabedically soted if the ToC is? Does that make the slightest sense?

The writing itself isn't so bad, it's fun to read actually, and written well, even though it could use soem polish here and there. Shadowtalk is missed though, but probably was cut due to space constraints (this is CGL cutting the costs on a product that's already produced at wages that would insult Bangladeshi sweatshop workers). Some stuff seems a tad superfluous - what, 2 more Gryphon species? Now there are six - Gryphon (sicne SR1 base bool) Asian Gryphon (since SR1 base book), Opinicus (since Paranormal Animals of Europe), Hippogriff (since Predator&Prey) and now criospinx and hieracospinx? That's ... making the Gryphon the topmost varied awakened species on the planet, surpassing Dragons and metahumans (both with five main variants). Intentional? Other stuff is a fun addition, like the evil sea elephant, the sidebar with awakened insects (I'm a sucker for such flavor), the Echeneis (which I am so gonna convert to an awakened Plecustymus catfish for Amazonia) or the gold falcon (finally something worth poaching that will not require a tank to kill!). And the Mongolian Death Worm, a classic long missing from SR paranimals (and Tremors sense! SR needs more shout outs to B-Movies classics). Why not add a Jenny Haniver though? Ah, but at least someone googled Parazoology while writing this.

What Mr Large really needs is someone to help him with the rules bit - issues, mainly missing powers crucial to the animals described in the text (accident for the Alicanto, Influence for the Gyre, Accident for the Moon Dolphin, ect ...). This has shown in all PDFs of late, and it's not good. Given CGL has an all-but-officially-official no errata ever to rip customers off policy, there needs to be more attention to getting it right the first time, at least.


FWIW, they did here.

One thing I've been wondering, this would be a question to Raben-AAS:

The Zoo's description sounds substantially different in the Berlin book. Did Adam Large coordinate this with Pegasus?

Final impression: Another of Hardy's Hackjobs, laying waste to a product that could have been good.

THat's why I stopped laughing when reading the actual sig. And the two vertical lines could mean "11"...because the Mrs Hardy I googled up seems to be more skilled than that.

Also, I propose "Hardy's Hackjobs" as the official term for this kind of release, can somebody get the ANSI on the phone?

PS: Is it just me, or did I read the warning on the login page before?
Latest News
Someone tried to hack the network
yesterday, make sure that you are
using the latest protocols. – FastJack

And the date is 2072...

It's rather common for artists to write the year the pic was drawn in the signature.

Still no Protean...;(
I couldn't put my finger on it at first then it hit me. Art reminds me of some 50's text or storybook images. At least theres art though.
Still reading.

The art gets progressively worse, though teh shadow crab looks okay again.

The illustrations are all over the place in terms of quality. Some of it's good and some of it's rushed. And it's very obvious which is which. I doubt it was created one piece after the other in the order in which it was presented in the PDF.

Eh, should have thought of that

Copypasted from other thread: That's putting it mildly. The lobster and the crab and a couple of others are acceptable, but the colors look like crayons, way too bright; shading is absent, backgrounds are odd (the desert-living cactus cat next to ... a river ...?) and anatomy issues run amok. Also, the art looks like medleys of photos, treated with art filters in photoshop in high res and then painted over with default brushes and a tablet. Shading? Perspective? Anatomy? Composition? And the artist never can decide between a minimal background and a full one, leading to weirdly-built cows and twolls who look a lot like copypaste jobs from other art floating in the grey nothingness of a game editor.

This PDF was released way later than it should have (which explains the year).

No need for two threads - please continue the discussion about Parazoology in this thread.