According to the imprint SOX is from 2007, one of the last Fanpro books. The only other German-only book (the translated ones keep Jackpoint) I have is Berlin, which has two logins: Panoptikum for the corporate side, Arachnet for the anarchists. So you'll probably have to ask somebody in the loop if such a list exists and if it survived the change of publishers

I saw the full color glossy book at GenCon. It's very nice, a very well produced book. This combined with Spy Games book and the Runner's Toolkit... and the new set of convention only SR dice... and the nice full color SRM Season Four modules. Catalyst has be doing A LOT of really great work for Shadowrun over the past year since GenCon 2010.

As for Street Legends, it looks like a great source book for high level campaigns - allies and antagonists, possible competitors. It could also be used in a low level new campaign as a source of Mr. Johnson's or mentors/contacts.

Did I mention how good the Runner's Toolkit is already? It's good, very good. I might go so far as to say awesome.

Ok, cool.

And yeah, Berlin was BRILLIANT. Jan had a copy with him at Gen Con (Along with Blut & Spiele and a couple other german books), and I loved the idea of the dual-POV book. Having it be a "Flip" book is a fantastic idea.

(For those that haven't seen it, Berlin is apparently a split city, partly corp controlled, partly anarchist controlled. Half the Berlin book is written from the Corp POV, and faces one way. If you turn the book over, the other side if the Anarchist POV with a different cover and the pages face the opposite direction.)

I would really, truly love to see some of these books translated into ENglish, as I mentioned. Shame that's not likely anytime soon

Bull

I know Lars Blumenstein said he is on the CGL freelancer board. He is also fairly close to Hamelmann and other long-time German freelancers. Also, at least at one point you had a bunch more, but there seem to have been certain artistic differences there.

I think they dropped the Helix, though, for the sake of Panopticon/Arachnet. At least AAS is dedicated to these on the official in-game boards (or was when I read them). Can't say anything for certain, maybe they just alternate logins according to what makes sense for the books and adds flavor. The new German stuff is quite spicy, you gotta hand them that. Maybe you should try and publish the translated German-only weapons and cars (from, I dunno, 2006?).

Also, there seems to be a quite different Runner's Blackbook brewing there, or at least there should be; after all, they already added some of the PDF content to other books, like Fronteinsatz (the translated War), in an effort to make it look like worth buying (I still hope they ordered a minimal print run, for the sake of Pegasus).


Yup. The writeup also carefully retcons previous Berlin fluff, while reworking it into something not as horrible. Still not my favourite setting, but usable and with an interesting twist to the usual Feral City.

As for the book's overall quality, consider it was my personal hate pet before War, and the new book would rank among my top ten books ever. For some perspective (and I read into it in the FLGS expecting to rip it a new one, despite knowing AAS' fanwork, and liking much of it, because that deviated from the original fluff far more and I expected most of it to be shot down). Just for some perspective. Even the special edition is worth it's rather steep (€39,90 = $57,56) price. B/W print, bound hardcover, silver lining, flipover book (which indeed goes very well with the concept and from what I heared as Blumenstein's original idea for another Berlin book during FanPro days).

Blut&Spiele (which uses Panoptikum as a login page) has a slightly less impressive layout, slightly lower but still steep price (€34,95 = $50,35), and comparable overall quality, with great attention to detail in the sourcebook section, and Brawl-related adventures. Oh, and boy is Urban Brawl rigged. Curious what their upcoming Adventures book will be like.

If interested, I can put up a full, detailed review of the Rhein-Ruhr book when it's out, which seems to be soon-ish.


More's the pity. 2E/3E German books and Add-Ons were very 'ymmv' to just crap, though they significantly picked up after Germany II, but these are far better than the main line right now.

A "How Do I German?" pdf release might be in order too, with things covered like ethnic population makeup (it is not what you may think it is in the sprawls, especially Berlin). Well, depends on sales projections, I guess. Of course, there's always the possibility of a fanslation, if someone feels inclined to.

Maybe not, but he sure looks like an Elf? So, What Culture is he exactly? You know, because all elves look alike to me.

Cop 1: "Was he Caucasian, Hispanic, Asian, African, Indian, AmerIndian?"

Witness: "I don't know, all them damned keeblers look alike to me."

*Cop 1 looks at his elven partner*: "So he looked like him?"

Witness: "Nah, he wasn't a cop. I can spot those a mile away. He was a crook."

Totally. Freaking. Awesome.

Well done Canray.

Let me field this one.

Textual portion of chapter: Discussion of his elven immortality was omitted by design; IEs are NOT common knowledge, even to the Jackpoint crowd.

Stat block: Looks like I failed to include his Immunity to Age, Poisons, and Pathogens in his Qualities. Human error on my part. I apologize if it caused any confusion.

As for his power level, I had a few goals when statting the character:

* Make him a highly competent politician and magician. (Crizh has already pointed out how I somewhat underdid the latter, but I think the guy is still fairly beastly by any reasonable standard.)
* Create stats that would make him very powerful overall while still leaving room for at least one other metahuman magician (Harlequin) to be significantly better than him.

Everyone's opinions of what "Power Level" is vary. In my opinion, Lugh is extremely powerful as written. Your mileage may certainly vary.

In any case, I did not intend to actually change what flavor of dandelion eater he is. : )

It sounds fine, to me. I've never gotten the whole immortality = superhuman thing. So they've lived thousands of years. Will they really remember any significant amount of it? Yeah, their long lives should mean they have a wide variety of skills, and they should be pretty high in initiate grade, and they should have significant resources to call upon.

I don't think it makes them underpowered if they are vulnerable to the most elite of shadowrunners, who are pretty elite to begin with. I think you did it exactly right if you made his stats internally consistent with what he is supposed to be good at. I would rather have stats that make sense, than stats that seem designed solely to make the character impervious to the most powerful of PCs.

Seems like this book was a bit rushed, because the errors like Neurosis admitted should all have been caught during proofing. I assume this absolutly had to be out for GenCon?


Well, given how Karma works, it make perfect sense. Think about how much Karma your character earns in an ingame year, and multiply this by, say, 8000.

Well, they didn't just live, they survived thousands of years full of Horrors and other things which don't care about your immunity to age, pathogens, and poisons. So any IE still around in the 2070s is either really lucky or has to be a mean motherfucker

Of course it does. They're a whole different league of power compared to "the most elite runners", especially those in the book (Rigger X, I'm looking at you). Well, except maybe Brane Deigh, who is about Thorne's age. Oh, and they'd need metamagics that are unique, like "summon Wild Hunt", and be blood mages (all IE practiced heavy blood magic at one point, because early in the 4th world that was the way to go for everyone; again, exempting Brane Deigh, possibly).

Don't forget the minor parts of history that the Fifth World was going through as well.

I rather highly doubt Harlequin was kicking back in South America while WWII was going on.

Not all IE's were alive in the 4th Age though.

For most of Lugh Surehands stats I had no issue. What I was curious about and the author has already responded to is the lack of qualities and his initiate rating.

If you take into account the IE's inability to initiate during the down cycle (no magic) his magic/initiate stat is not really underpowered. Most of his and other IE's magic/initiate stats would have been from the last magic cycle. To my way of thinking the higher you get, the longer it takes to hit the next grade.

Also as for the IE's knowing each other (at least the really old ones) they all were members of the elvish court that ended up becoming Thorn Elves (Earth Dawn reference) through the afore mentioned heavy use of blood magic. This is mentioned in one of the novels (the name escapes me at the moment) were their former queen approuches them to warn them of the return of the Horrors.

Another usless fact; the Immortal Elves (according to Earth Dawn) are yet another failed attempt by the Great Dragons to create a loyal servator race. In this case by breeding with metahumanity. For some reason, the elvish half breeds are the only ones to have survived to the sixth world. It may have something to do with the fact that they staged a revolt, stole the lands of their father dragon and founded the elvish court which later became Thornwood.

I say they were the only half breeds to survive but the German source books do mention Immortal Dwarves so it is possible IE's are not the only ones with the immortal gene. In any case it explains the rather heated antagonism between IE's and GD's.

I can just imagine how that experiment was discussed:

"You got to be kidding? With the lesser races? BESTIALITY?" "It would give them..." "I'll say it again for the slow of thoughtmind, BEST-I-AL-I-TY!" "Well, um..." "You didn't." "Sorta kinda, yeah." "That is beyond disgusting. I mean, they don't even have SCALES!"

And Hwaldos rears it's little head again O.o

As I said, except Brane Deigh. Lugh was active during the down cycle, it's fairly certain he was active before, because they effectively stop being elves in mana-drained times. And Frosty, I must add.


No, he was in America at that time, dodging the draft and high on Absinthe with fellow junkie Aina.


The idea of more immortals than just elves and dragons has always been interesting for me. The execution in Hvaldos, though ... WAY too DSA.


Actually, no, even discounting the German additions to canon (there's more crazy you probably have not heared of, like the Austrian Immortals below Vienna and the Negamages that somehow were created by someone to kill immortal elves, for instance, or the plummed serpent/western dragon crossbreed). The Elven Court is those whose story we followed, and certainly the biggest concentration of them. There were others, though, in Sereatha (Erhan, Harley) and Shosara (though this has never been made official, it is likely the German elf state elves are from there somehow). And then there's Urdli from Australia, and the Heavenherds, who also have immortal elves and used to be Thera's elite (who might or might not be connected).

And Smurfs. Don't forget the Smurfs.

Of course, there's a Saxonian metavariant of dwarfs who have blue skin. Querxes are a Saxonian/Anhaltine legend, though, so they didn't just make that shit up. I think they are not supposed to be blue, though.

I'm not going to throw my fellow writers/proofreaders under the bus here; suffice to say the lesson learned was that I need to rely more on my own internal editing and less on the proofing process to catch mistakes and/or omissions.

If it helps at all I do help on posting some unofficial errata for a few of my chapters on the official forums once I get it all compiled. (I know other writers have done the same in the past, at least Critias has.)



That what was I was thinking; I was also trying to sort of emphasize that developing his magical abilities had not been Lugh Surehand's primary/sole focus throughout most of his lifetime.



Really? That's exactly where I picture him. Under a sunshade sipping pina coladas.

If they want a subterranean kingdom in the RRP book, I hope Pegasus will rather revisit the old Grubenwehr story...that idea always struck a chord with me

Writer Errata is allways welcome, as the writer is the only one who knows what the intent was . .

As for the subterranean kingdom: very much yes please! ^^

Lugh isn't one of the old Wym Wood/ Bloodwood dudes?

Oakforest is, Lugh, I do not know. IIRC he is a City of the Spires guy, like Erhan and Harlequin.


Yeah, though IEs should have unique metatechniques (astral gateway, invoke Wild Hunt, pattern magic have been described in fluff, and basically, everything in the medium and upper (4+) circles in ED is fair game), and definitly all know sacrificial and self-damaging blood magic as a baseline. Just a nitpick, as I would handle one. And Immunity (age, toxins, pathogens), though it should be noted that while toxins have little effect on them, drugs have normal effects. I'd refer to Aina but she was killed in a half-sentence last I heared.

I've mistaken you into "Lugh is not a 4th World Immortal Elf", my bad.

With the hints we have been getting about the new magics coming in "Atrifacts Unbound" I would say we will see new metamagics that the IE's have been keeping for themselves. Thats just a guess though. I can understand why the writers did not add any new metamagics here as a book dedicated to new magics is on its way and you don't want to step on anyones toes.

Not including his immortality in the textual part of his chapter is completely fine and understandable. The small issue that I have regarding his whole immortality shtick is that it isn't even included in the gamemaster notes for him, so that if you didn't know anything about immortal elves as a player and you read Lugh Surehand's stats, you still would have no idea that he's been around since the last age of magic. I don't know whether the reason for that is human error, licensing issues, personal preference of the writer or line developer, or whatever, but something at least along the lines of "this guy has been around since before the fall of the Roman Empire" would be good to have for gamemasters not wholly acquainted with SR metaplot, even as unofficial errata.

Also Neurosis, as the writer for Lugh (and maybe Hestaby/Lofwyr?), you can no doubt answer this better than Patrick was able to (no offense meant to Patrick): Why exactly was Lugh not given anything unique to him in terms of his magic? Whenever IE's have come up in SR canon (like the Harlequin adventures), it's been established that they can bend the rules of magic because their magic works differently. IIRC Lugh is experienced in elementalism, nethermancy, and something else. So why exactly wasn't anything included along those lines? I mean, the multiple alternate elemental spells kind of edge into that, but only barely. I can go with the reasoning that not all of the IE's magics from the 4th world is accessible to them yet with the current mana level, but it strikes me as odd to say that all of their ED magic techniques require a higher mana level. Even if they can't use their stronger magic techniques, they should still have knowledge of some techniques that can still work in 207X and are largely unknown to the Awakened world at large (since they're all new at it). Was this a SR-ED licensing issue or something?

COuple notes...

ED links are... Flexible. The links are there, but they only apply inasmuch as we want them to apply. This is doubly true since ED has gone to other copmanies over the past 10 years.

Nobody said that Immortal ELves follow the same rules as normal runners. Maybe they don't earn karma at the same rate as normal humans? Maybe they don't retain info as well? Hell, the old saying "I've forgotten more than you'll ever know" may apply as well... It's been how many years? I have trouble remembering all my teachers names from Grade School now, and it's only been 25 or so years. The Immortals probably spent a LOT of the down time just... idling. DOing nothing. A few meddled in human affairs here and there, but most likely just spent 100 or 200 years doing nothing. Nowhere has it ever been stated that they have perfect recall. And half of what they did know still doesn't work due to the lower mana levels. So I can easily imagine them forgetting a LOT of stuff.

And honestly, half the problem with statting out these NPCs is the hard caps. They're a giant pain to work with, because you don't want to just give everyone straight 6's across the board, even if they deserve it.

Bull

During Earthdawn era, he was earning Legend Points. And then, we don't known how many game systems and editions he went through Earthdawn last and Shadowrun first, and what the conversion rules were. Lots of karma may have been wasted that way.
Also, the more powerful you get, the less often are there world shattering events that would count as a challenge happening. Previous editions did not have that one point for surviving. Getting through WW2 would count as one adventure, maybe two ("First there was that time when we stopped Nazi occult force from summoning an Horror, and then we had to find Trinity Test location to clean the tainted astral there..."). Also, as I liked to point out when discussing Great Dragons and IE Karma Pool in previous editions, there was a precedent in the rules, as metahuman Karma Pool rose two time slower than humans.
I often thought skills decay are missing in most RPG.

Of course, that did not stop them from putting in other references to this book and stepping on toes.


Actually, in Harlequin's Back, it is explained as working differnetly because they believe it does. Which is why Harlequin is such a sucky teacher to Frosty, whose views on Magic are primarily sixth world, not fourth world. I recon Brane Deigh has similar problems, whough she might be one of the reborn elves with loads of past life memories and hence effectively be her own Book of Harrow, too.


Still, they should be, in magic, a match for the Great Dragons. Because they kicked their asses once already.


Even if you just do drugs day in, day out, like Aina and Harlequin were wont to for centuries, you still earn 'survival' Karma. and they went through at least one full-on war with the Horrors. That's worth megatons of Karma.


Of course it doesn't, but a knowledge skill "4th world magic theory" at 14 (and appropriate skill pushes from Adept powers, using Critas' rules) would have been nice.


They are, and it's really hard to make them work as rules anyway. I always assume a game world works like the Discworld.

Well you should see amount of mistakes/errors we do manage to find. Sometimes the proofing document is longer than the actual text being proofed.

And we are always pressed for time.

Every time I speak up on here or elsewhere on teh internets I am a little worried I will unknowingly say something that gets me in trouble, but let me try to respond to this.



I think this is the result of a confluence of a few different elements. One of those is that there is no "out of character description" section in Street Legends. There is an IC description and OOC stats. So, from my perspective, there was not a good place to "put" the information that you're talking about. Secondly, well...I like IEs at least as much as the next guy, but I don't think that the most important, fascinating, or relevant thing about them necessarily is their immortality in-and-of-itself. I believe this is especially true in Surehand's case. So I suppose another factor in my decision not to play up the IE angle is that it is just not one of the things that most interested me about the character.

In an unofficial errata or 20/20 hindsight sense, I definitely wish that I had just included 'Immunity to Age' in his Qualities, which would have I think been an adequate hint to most GMs not already in the know that something was special about this guy.



Let's see...first off, it was not a licensing issue that I know of. There are, unfortunately, comments I'd like to make in response to this that I cannot because of my NDA; they concern upcoming products that I am involved with.

Generally speaking, my intention was to make the character adequately powerful to defeat any given team of (reasonably built) Shadowrunners should the situation arise (although I think there are many good reasons it never would) without adding in unnecessarily 'wacky' powers (for lack of a better word) to make him even more of a special elven snowflake. At least in this kind of a sourcebook and at this point in the edition's life cycle, I would say that a general guideline is the less new rules something adds to the game, the better. And there are certain fairly hardline rules about what magic can and cannot do in SR, and bringing back the dead is one of them so Nethermancy is right out. Whereas I am fairly sure he has held onto the essence of his abilities from the Elementalist circle of ED.

Also: this may sound odd, but I did not mean the listed stats to necessarily be the be-all and end-all of everything that Surehand might potentially be capable of. Rather, I wanted it to represent the most personal power that the Sixth World might reasonably require of him. In this particular case, and I think this would be a good way of thinking about the Great Dragons too, just because I have not spelled out that the character can do something, doesn't mean he can't. Now obviously, most stat blocks should not be read that way, but I think for things like IEs and GDs it is sort of a good way to approach it.

Does that make any sense?



Goes without saying, probably, but I completely agree. "I've forgotten more than you'll ever know" has always been very essential to my concept of IEs, since I first learned about them many a year ago.



I think there's a lot here I agree with as well.

I did not write Hestaby or Lofwyr by the way.

As I thought, then.


Well, you shouldn't say "whew this character sucked anyway so duh" in a discussion about how upset people are that character got offed the way she was. Fanning and flames ...


He is a special snowflake just like a dragon is.

Maybe they spend all day griefing on MMOs.

Well, Caimbeul does, at least ^^

I bet they have a Guild made up of just IEs and Dragons.

wonder how often dunkie and harley griefed each other either knowingly or unknowingly . . eliohan or who that dragons with the datajack was would probably be all about that as well ^^

Considering how often they knowingly fought on ShadowLand.

*Pours a 40 on the curb for the Captain*

Yup. They also have a MetaLink group for themselves. It's technically set on private but it's not at all hard to hack (much like the Champagne Room).


What's much more interesting is that nobody at Shadowland ever called them out, or referred to them, or was annoyed by them and wrote so.

would YOU like to try and call out the Big D for example? o.O
Basically the same reaction as going to the official boards, praising frank trollman, calling hardy an imposter, the current writers hacks and the other guy a thief . .
only much much worse . .

Well, after a few posters went missing, or were found only in ashes and a single smoking boot...

Who wrote the Giles like character? I am so going to use him, lol.

Giles-like?

Didn't you do that? Several times? And you are still alive, right? Also, I thought Otakusense is writing more clearly there.

Besides, I'm not saying flame them but say "oh come ON, get a backroom for your private talk or write something substantial but stop cluttering our documents with pointless omniously vacuous comments like those. Really, there are other Forums in Shadoland, ask CC and he'll set one up for you, scan?"

*shrugs*
maybe they enjoyed it as much as we do? O.o

Quite possibly.

Also, all the links in your sig seem broken.

I think there is a chapter text in one of the matrix or something that has Harlequin and Ethan playing a MMO.

That's Dawn of the Artifacts: Dusk intro. They're playing on Dawn of Atlantis MMO.