Jason's not here right now, since he's doing the GenCon thing, so I thought I'd post the links for the new book, since I'm anxious to talk about it.

Street Legends at BattleShop

Street Legends at DriveThru

Let the wailing and gnashing of teeth commence!!

It's alive...

ALIVE!

ALIVE!!! MUH-HA-HA-HA!!!

...

*Cough*

I'll tell you what I think when I get a chance to read it properly. Skimmed over, seemed decent.

I look forward to your review. Of course, I really want to know what (if anything) people think about the small part I wrote, but I'm interested in hearing about the whole thing.

The problem with books released at GenCon...many of the people who might be interested in commenting on it are at the con and not online....

I have gotten up to Parlor Tricks, and so far the only entry that I was meh about was Kellan Colt. Not bad, but I didn't really find her that interesting.

Hmmm, $25 is a tad steep for me these days. After a couple of prospects pan out later, I may grab the PDF.

It's a bit past 'tad steep' for an electronic copy. I love my PDF books but $25 for a down load is alot. Course so is $45 for a supplement. $50 bucks when you factor in either gas to get it or shipping for a single supplement book? Not even a core 'Start' book? That's getting out of casual hobby and edging up into 'very expensive hobby' sort of category. I love RPGs and really like Shadowrun, but 45 bucks for one supplement is gettin' nuts.

It could be worse.

It could be Warhammer Minis and you have multiple armies.

Alot of the industry has adjusted price points down on pdf products as they realize the value of spending money on a virtual product for the budget conscious. Catalyst seems to have decided to stay on the high end of the scale. I'm all for putting up 10 or 15 bucks for a great pdf product, and do so for my two other most favorite rpg's. For SR I wait for the hardcopy and it's a shame as SR is the only one I buy every single release for. Heres to waiting a month or two before I get to see SL, looking forward to spoilers and reviews.

Here's a spoiler: Bull is old and cranky and beats people (virtually) over the head for trying to call him a hacker.

Bull's been that way for years...oh, you probably meant "Bull" from Street Legends.

@Bull--I hope you had one for me at the Claddagh last night. First Indy I've missed in awhile.

I was not expecting Mihoshi Oni to be a Fomori Troll. Makes me want to see her back story.

The hardcopy's expensive because it's a fill-color book and full color costs a lot of bucks. I couldn't tell you why the PDF is so high; I don't set prices.

High-end electrons?

I was thinking maybe filesize, but Runner's Companion is showing in at 40 Megs or so, and Street Legends don't even hit 15 Megs.

Likely, it's to due to the DTF being so expensive, so the PDF has to match that equivalent price in order to encourage purchasing the DTF instead of, or people might only buy it on PDF.

That is one colorful cover, me likes

I'm a little shocked by what the Nadja Daviar article's writer did with Aina Dupree.

I thought the thing you guys did with cerberus/eliohann was an interesting idea.

(elbows 800lb gorilla out of the way)
So IE & GD stats living up everyone's hopes or fears? Probably the stats I most want to see.

[Disclaimer, I did the equivalent of skimming over a book at my FLGS. So consider this a superficial analysis of a small sample and not a detailed review. I also can't say anything about the short stories]

All in all, I get the impression that the preview conveyed a really good and comprehensive image of the book. Like Rigger X, the stats seem to be completely average across the board, with no special gear, capabilities or knowledge to qualify these guys as legends (or Jackpointers). Obviously, the dragons and Surehand are an exception to that, their stats basically are a more eloquent way of saying "I'm invulnerable and can do everything" -- did you expect anything else?
In the same vein, the descriptions of Bull and Villiers are quite representative. The fluff texts alternate wildly between the stereotypical charsheet background text plus minutes taken during a campaign (I swear I heard the dice rolling in my head when skimming over Elijah), and detailed "omnipresent narrator" information. While both formats have their merits, it would have been nice to agree on one

Overall, Street Legends makes a nice collection of NPCs who are more versatile and durable than the mooks presented in normal core books. If the short stories are entertaining and it drops in price a bit, I will definitely consider picking it up.
Yet at what it was promised to be, namely a fluff book, it just fails to deliver.


Oh, and the usual random list of "hm, that doesn't look right"
- Puck doesn't have any cyber, not even a datajack
- The guy writing about Puck (Icarus IIRC) casually mentions that both Deus and Pax are still around. The assembled matrix elite of the Sixth Worlds responds with "will it rain, do you think?"
- Villiers and Lanier have several points of Essence in Deltaware, that's anything but "minimally augmented"

I understand from a developer point of view statting needs to middle ground to fulfill the cheering crowds at both ends of the "stadium". But some min-maxing in "Prime Runners" would/should be expected. Example: No excuse a high end runner wouldn't have the highest rated device targeted at his area of expertise. Or mods that make said runners job easier.

Well. no one's bitched about de Vries yet (though the day is yet young), so maybe my streak continues. I was sure it was going to come crashing to the ground with this book....

If it helps I promise to comment once I get a hardcopy. *smirk*

Can't say anything about the implementation, but the idea is hilarious. And de Vries at least makes sense in a book supposedly about "legends". He is an unusual concept, has archived quite some notoriety, and has a trick up his sleeve which is normally considered impossible (Essence Focus).

And speaking of the Infected, one other thing that rubbed me the wrong way: There is a big and shocking revelation about Hannibelle, which totally changes the way people will view her both IC and OOC...

It is a big, shocking thing about Hannibelle. Everyone assumed that she was seeking alternatives, not doing... That.

As pointed in the Shadowtalk, when KANE is defending your moralistic position, it's time to go home and rethink your life. Oh, she's a hacker, she's already home. Half that job is already done.

The beautiful thing about writing Martin up was that I had free reign to do just about any damn thing I wanted. It was a lot of fun to write that; I just wish I'd had another, oh, thousand words or so. And better art.

Which part of the implementation do you have trouble with (if any)? I'm genuinely curious about people's reaction to the piece.

Can anyone comment on the editing? Is this book plagued with the typos and errors we've seen in recent releases?

For the writing? It's ok. I wouldn't say it's plagued with bad editing, but I have noticed a fair number of typos in the multiple write-ups I've read so far. They're not incredibly obvious typos that make you think "where the hell were the proofreaders for this thing," like that big error in the 6WA that got a lot of people upset, though. Just little things.

I have noticed several mechanical errors in the stats, though. Ones I've found so far after going through with a fine-toothed comb:

Several of the Awakened guys with power foci have their magic listed as augmented by said foci. That's wrong, since 4e power foci don't boost Magic directly, but that's kind of a technicality. Not all of the people with power foci have this error. Martin DeVries doesn't, for example.

Haze is listed with an augmented Edge of 7. As in "6 (7)." There is nothing I recall that augments Edge like that. If it's supposed to be from his rating 1 lucky rabbit's foot power focus, it needs to be spelled out in the stat notes.

Minor nitpick: Ma'Fan's "Exceptional Attribute (Edge)" is supposed to be called Lucky.

Mika's Magic attribute should be 6, because of his augmentations. The stats seem to not take into account the reduced Essence on his magic.

Serrin Shamander's personal watchers have their mental stats listed at F, but it isn't specified whether he can summon those spirits at a Force higher than 1.

Sticks' Initiative and IP are not listed.

Thorn: see above with Mika.

There is no bloody way that Winterhawk's edge should be as high as listed. Not even Lofwyr and Hestaby have Edge that high.

Not sure whether Hannibelle is technically allowed to still be dual natured with her current Essence.

Kia's Agility augmented cap doesn't go quite that high. Unless I'm doing my math wrong.

It'd be nice if Hestaby's and Lofwyr's stats included notes, since I'm sure the discrepancy between their Initiative and their actual Int + Rea is from quickened spells but there isn't anything actually specified and elaborated on as such.



Keep in mind that I don't think the book is really too bad. I actually rather like it, to tell you the truth. And a lot of the art looks sweet, IMHO.

On a separate note,

I like the split happening with the great dragons over Hestaby's speech, by the way. Interesting turn of events, methinks.

Here be spoilers.

No, really.

Turn back now and don't click on the spoiler below.

*Headdesk* Not the lusty brown nipples again!

The word "brown" appears several times in the book. I don't believe either of the other ones does.

She is a ghoul, and she is working for Tamanous (yes, I grossly misspelled that name before). That she also relies on Tamanous for food is not a surprise, it's just counting two and two together. It's not shocking, either, because compared to working for body snatchers, buying from them is rather harmless.

If somebody was known to be an addict and working for a drug cartel, would you consider is surprising if he also got his supply through that cartel? Would acquiring the drugs to feed his own addiction make him look worse than the known fact that he helps shipping drugs into the country?

@Patrick: Like I said, can't really say anything about de Vries' stats since I only skimmed over the book.

@Sengir: Fair enough. I'd really love to see what someone who saw Prime Runners back in the day has to say about the conversion from SR2 to SR4. That was kind of a pain in the ass, but it turned out to be kind of fun, too.

Says you. I'll peruse tomorrow,looking forward to it after chatting with Bull.

And yes, it'll be a full one. I figure I'd raise the standard of my reviewing.

To add to the list of errors; Nadja Daviar has multiple improved ability powers at level 4, witch is 1 point too high.

I know, I know. Recently tried to convert Karl-Heinz (whom, along with the elven assassin I still consider the most iconic character from Prime Runners) to be used during a run. In the end, I simply wrote down a couple of notes on how to describe the utter failure of potential attempts to pull a fast one on him...

I did something similar when I used Karl, just some notes, I do a have full conversion of that elf assassin floating around in one of my folders.

Of course the nature Karl-Heinz' (first item on my list: don't EVER call him "Kalle") makes it pretty easy to use the dramaturgy instead of dice rolls, since his arcane knowledge is beyond the players' gasp anyway.

Right. You pop off to Norway for a few days an stuff happens. Review will hapen when I get it and read it through. However, in review terms, I wrapped up Spy Games and will post the thing once I get settled back in.

Edit: I've written DriveThru, and am awaiting their reply, but if the garbled, unreadable ... thing ... they sold me is what CGL gave them then that's an all-new low. Hoping it is some bandwidth/storage/whatever problem, though.

Hermit--
The copy I have is clean and readable. Probably a data transmission error.

Yes, it was. Got a working copy now.

We are waiting, honey.

Gotta brush it up first. And find my old reviews again, because this also goes on DriveThru.

Stream of Consciousness review of Street Legends, part one:

Overall impression: Seems like Prime Runners in being an NPC collection with in parts okay, in parts bizarre stats. It looks slick and nicely put tgether. One thing you cannot fault CGL for is the look of their products, it has been fairly steadily improving. The content's a bit of a mixed bag, some things I dislike (like killing Aina DuPree in a half-sentence), some things I hate (the MariSoo rule, the Daviars shit Jason cooked up), but suprisingly many good things too, or things I am suprised with. But on to the stream. In no nparticular order, as I didn't read this book end to end.

Oh my god he actually did it. Jason Hardy pulled through the one plot that is even more stupid than his potted plant war and made the Daviars canon, a bunch of faces who look like Nadia Daviar and somehow are totally better than you. Congratulations, Jason, you really reinforce your reputation here. Not in a good way.

Introduction is present, so CGL learned that lesson. There also seems structure now, which also is an improvement over previous works compiled by Hardy. It sounds like vaguely coherent rambling, but them's the breaks.

The Legendary rule is so inane it goes really well with Slow and Recharge and much of the other bullshit from Bogotá!, so let's better consider it entirely optional, never mention it again and make it's appliance to any PC a reason to cast said player from the group.

"The man known as “Agent” is a force of chaos and fear in the jungle near Bogotá right now." Right next to it's seaport, I suppose. CGL seems intent to stick with being full of shit when it comes to South America. And as a bonus there is the bizarre NPC from Bogotá! again. Agent, the new Ryan McSue. Is that Hardy's own PC or why is he put in there? Nonetheless, meh. Whoever wrote Agent obviously believes in tell, don't show. "it is this work that makes him a rapidly growing legend." Shabby writing, that (if you were putting it better, that sentence would be unnecessary). Also, whoever wrote this confuses spirits and shamans. Dear author, you have read the base book, right?

So Serrin now is Night Haunter, as his Warrior Path? That's a bit ... extreme. Not sure if I like that. I did, however, feel the end of Nosferatu was way too happy (especially compared with the evil twist at the end of Streets of Blood). Of course, tying him to Netcat is ... gah. Reeks of Wheldon, who apparently is out on a quest to ruin every SR character I ever thought cool (have you read her piece in Spells and Chrome? Don't, if you like Findley's work even a bit. Just don't). On the fence there, though, for while I seriously dislike the way Netcat is portrayed, the changes to Serrin (poor guy, the universe really hats him) are interesting.

Puck: Yeah, Mengele had a bad childhood and was misled by Hitler and that explains what he did. And he cannot forget what he did (unlike, apparently, everyone with AIPS) and now we're suposed to sympathise with him. Gah. He's the Shinji Ikari of Shadowrun by now, a supposedly sympathetic character that just does not work.

Given I like the whole neo-Hindu (in-world, pre-Hindu) Paths of the Wheel stuff (and all it's implications), Thorn is an interesting idea. I guess I like him better than I thought I would. Whose PC is he?

Finally, someone slamms Slamm-O's stupid face in. He's about as tiresome to read as Netcat, /dev/ or Plan 9.

I like Bull as a character (also, he is the one decker in there who actually thinks security is not for losers). He's also been around long enough (when was his first post in published fiction, Cybertech? Bug City?) to actually be considered a legend, unlike some of the Jackpointers in there. I liked his art in the Missions books a lot better though, but YMMV. Must've been one hell of a campaign where he was played.

(Reminds me. Damnit, Bull. Will there ever be CMP missions? I'm very much looking forard to them. Am I the only one who is or is Missions still the red-headed stepchild of the line, despite apparently selling okay?)

DeVries had me laugh and grin a lot. Given my dislike of the cuddle-cuddle Twilight take on the Infected in recent publications, that isn't really suprising, but still. Is there an unpublished novel from the eyes of a vampire stalker too, recounting the action of Shadows at Noon from the villain's perspective? Also, the first time /dev/ is used in a way that adds something (humor, in this case) without feeling tacked on, like /dev/ being JackPoint's expert on camouflage, makeup and gadgets (as opposed to gadget-happy cat burglars like Mika or facedancers like Hard Exit). Overall, DeVries was fun to read. Maybe there'll be vampire slayer gangs now. Time to put some pressure on the oWoD refugees.

Hannibelle is another of these oh-so-disenfranchised characters that don't work for me. In SR, life is cheap, so why should a creature like a ghoul's life be precious? Anyway, all the cozy-tozy Twilight-wank asside, this does try to make 'belle more ambiguous. However, wasn't she supposed to be an ork ghoul?

Akuchi and Cayman aren't very remarkable really, neither stats-wise nor in thier background, but that's the nature of the beast I guess. They can be used as local NPC in Africa, if you want to, though, and their art rocks.

Haze's bit comes off as strange in a document that looks to make mass mrerers and organ traders seem sympathetic. So he mindfucks people. That's probably not very nice, but come on,it's what everyone with an instruction manual and a PAB, or psychotropic programs, personafixes and the like, can do. Yeah, it's an asshole thing to do, but come on, in a community where there are one of the worst mass murderers of the 20th century, a pirate who can one-up Asdrubael Vect in terms of wanton cruelty, several hitmen, and a ghoul who happily sells peoples' organs with the people still being alive, fucking someone up so they kill themselves is something that terrifying? It's okay to murder millions because you're a supernerd and some fucked-up entity whose madness is obvious tells you it's allright, it's okay to sell children to bunraku parlours by the hundreds, it's perfectly fine to blow up uildings, but woe be you if you edit someone's mind? A bit strange coming from that crowd. He's a magical conman specialising in mindfuck. Most on Jackpoint are worse, some even far, far worse, than him. Other than to illustrate Pistons losing it, the article seems a bit pointless in pushing Haze as a villain.

Kellan Colt seems a bit pointless in this collection. She'd be allright in a bunch of profiles on up-and-comers, but Street Legends? Come on. The stats are missing both The Tubeand her unique "cure addiction (Tempo)" spell, btw.

The other Jackpointers - Ma'Fan, Marcos, and the other runners - are not very remarkable, but usable if you want to. Nothing special there but for the observation that editing of the text seems rather sloppy again, showing in garbled sentences and missing words.

Winterhawk has Edge 10?! Seriously?!

The short stories are nice enough, though the Daviars network ... ARGH. Still, this book is less crap than I expected it to be. I'll give it 7 out of 10.

At least they're all still ugly and don't sparkle.

Will read this more in depth shortly, but I do need to address one or two little things.


I addressed this earlier, but it really wasn't meant to come across like that. There were some external factors that led to that.


To be fair to Jason, he didn't come up with the Nadjas. That was James Meiers.

EDIT: Okay, it's slow right now, so here's one more bit from me.


It was fun to write; I'm enormously pleased that you enjoyed reading it.

To be honest, I hadn't really taken the whole Twilight thing into account when I started this, though I suppose it was in the back of my mind. I was just looking for just about anything canonical about him so that I wouldn't fuck things up too badly, and the biggest piece I had available was him trying to hawk Shadows at Noon in Threats. There were little bits of shadowtalk here and there in past volumes talking about him wanting you to buy his new book, so I ran with that.

I'm not too happy with the "cuddly Infected" either, and I'm working to reverse that take. Now I've got Martin hiding in plain sight, so when the fall comes, it should be really ugly. At least that's the plan.


Not by Martin. It would have to be a fanfic of some sort. And knowing what an asshole he is, de Vries would probably sue.


She's not even approximately my favorite character. I'd originally wanted her to look really stupid, but that just seemed kind of gratuitous to me. In the end, I decided to make her...gasp!...a teenaged schoolgirl. I mean, who saw that coming, right?


And so it begins.... I wish I could have done more to fan the flames against Infected rights, but the little bit I got in there will have to do for the moment.

Again, I'm glad you liked him.

And I will endeavor to keep it that way.

If HMHVV-Infected start sparkling, Horizon and Aztechnology's combined PR wonderteam won't be able to stop the culling that will occur.

On the other hand, Ares, MCT, and S-K drone sales would go through the roof!

I rolled in from Gen Con at 4:30 AM. It's not quite 11 now, and I'm about top pass the frag back out. But real quick:

Winterhawk had a formatting error that I swear was not there when we review the PDF proofs. ANyway, you'll note he's missing a Magic rating. He's supposed to be Magic 10, Edge 6, IIRC.

And Hermit: CMPs got reprioritized at Gen Con this year, actually. There's been a LOT of discussion about Missions and how we're handling them. The good news is they're back on track and have been bumped up in prioirty a little. The bad news is, they may delayed a little longer than anticipated. The good news is that they're being delayed because our art director has decided that he actually wants to see about putting new art in the PDF release instead of doing a more simple "All recycled art" like we had been planning. There will be emails going out later this week, once we all recover more, to discuss the CMPs and exactly what we're doing with them.

(THough for the moment, Layout may still be a little bit of a bottleneck, though seeing about getting additional Layout help has been discussed and will hopefully happen sometime).

Also, before anyone calls me on it... Bull does have Exceptional Attribute (Hacking) but does not have a maxed out Hacking skill. I did that deliberately, because to me 4E Hacking is different than Decking, code wise. So while a lot fo what Bull knew still applies, he's had to relearn some stuff. And he's not quite maxed out expert that someone like Fastjack is. Plus he spends more time playing FIxer and dealing with politics in Seattle than he does actually Hacking anymore, so he doesn't get the time to practice like he should.

And while I like the Missions art a lot, I have to say that Mr. Cordoba did a fantastic job with his art piece. There's a couple really nice details that really made it for me, most notably the collar on the long coat. He kind of has that larger, ridged looking collar that you used to see a LOT in 1st edition artwork from guys like Laubenstein, which I imagine gives it an out of date, old fashioned look, the equivalent of really large 1970's collars, or really skinny 80's style ties. It was a neat touch.

Bull

I think I still have my skinny leather tie.

There is nothing about spirits having an inclination to torture people that doesn't fit with the setting, if that's what you're referring to.

Also, Patrick/Bull/et. al, was there any particular reason why IE/GD-specific metamagics/spells were not included for Surehand, Hestaby, and Lofwyr? Were there copyright issues preventing the borrowing of magic ideas from Earthdawn, for example?

I'm really not sure, Sephiroth, though I'd imagine there would be some licensing issues along the way. I remember the question being brought up in discussions, but I'm not sure what the final reasoning turned out to be. I was facing some personal crises at the time, so I wasn't paying as much attention then as I might have.