Nomonations for the 2011 Golden Geek Awards are running.

I've done my fair share at http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/694044/

Please nominate the products that you feel deserves it, or not... *cough-War-cough*

In all of the time I've spent on BGG I have 1.8 Geek Gold and I'm not spending $15 to vote.

As much as I'd love to toss around links and encourage people to vote and try to pimp a certain Shadowrun product or two...I'm not gonna do so, if it's the sort of thing that's gonna cost folks three times the cash that Shadowrun product cost 'em. Yikes.

I'll happely give you the 20 GG needed. What's your username on BGG?

It's not that difficult to earn 20 GG on BGG/RPGG/VGG, or even have them donated.

I wouldn't want to pay to vote either, but since I upload information in any case I earn more GG than I can possible spend, so anybody that gives me their BGG username, will be given enough GG to be able to vote.

Never mind, I found you, and you now have 20.8 GG. Spend them wisely!

Be honest, guys. Shadowrun 4 qualifies for none of those.

Good boy.
(By which I mean, finding me on BGG)

Now that I can vote, I have one slight issue.

ShadowRun isn't listed.

Sweet, thanks.

So true.
The only SR product I can even find is Target: Bogota! War!.
And there's no way it's "best supplement."

Don't feel too bad Critias. It may not ALL be useful, but I have found a use for most of it.

Among the Shadowrun products that can be nominated are:

10 Gangs
10 Jackpointers
99 Bottles
A Fistfull of Credsticks
Anaarchy: Subsidized
Attitude
Berlin
Corporate Guide
Dawn of the Artifacts: Darkest Hour
Dawn of the Artifacts: New Dawn
Gun Heaven
MilSpecTech
Parazoology
Runner's Black Book
Runner's Toolkit
Sixth World Almanac
Spy Games
SRM03-06: Jackknifed!
SRM03-07: Knight at the Opera
SRM03-08: Firestorm
SRM03-09: Something Completely Different
SRM03-10: Spin Control
SRM03-11: Food Poisoning
SRM03-12: Elevator Ride to Hell
SRM04-00: Back in Business
SRM04-01: Hiding in the Dark
SRM04-02: Extraction
SRM04-03: Rally Cry
SRM04-04: Smuggler’s Blues
Spy Games
Street Legends
War!
The Way of the Adept
This Old Drone

They could be nominated in the Best Artwork & Presentation category and/or the Best Supplement category.

I'm not saying the should be nominated, only that they could be nominated.

As always only vote for something you truley thinks deserve your vote.

I have....never seen any of those. Except War!

And you've missed nothing.
It's just cheap stuff catalyst coughs up to make some quick bucks.

Sorry you feel that way, Info.

Well, which of these four awards does the current product line deserve in your opinion?
- Best RPG of the year is obviously out, since the core system already is a few years old.
- Best Artwork and presentation? As much as I respect the work some SR artists (even more considering their payment), games with a semi-permanent pool of artists under professional art direction and backed by a sufficient budget simply do better.
- Best Supplement is not "comes closest to the quality we were used to for this particular product line"
- Podcast is another obvious no.

That leaves Berlin. Which IMO deserves a price, but has no chance of winning an English-language one and also shouldn't. A price should convey something meaningful to the audience, not just "we assure you this product is great, if you want to see yourself, learn Kiswahili".

That's because in the grim darkness of the near future, there is only...

War!

Y'know what? Just never mind. Bash it all if you want to bash it all, but indulge me for my two whole words of casual snark in defense of my work, and the work of my friends, okay? It's not worth arguing over, Sengir, I'm not going to go point-by-point over the things I think are cool about the twenty-plus products potentially up for nomination this year. An argument isn't going to solve anything or change anyone's minds, nor should it; if folks want to vote for them, they can vote for them. If not, not. But the casual dismissals of the work we put in, it gets a little tiresome after a while, okay?

Critias, of the list Larsine posted, the only supplements I would consider giving a vote are "Way of the Adept" and "Parazoology" (although "Parazoology" had some really weird art) but even though, "Way of the Adept" is way too short to compare with "full" supplements since it was an exclusive e-book anyway.
My point is, comparing "Emerald Empire" for L5R to any of the dead-tree format supplements Catalyst released this year shows what I mean, "Emerald Empire" is gorgeous and to the point, something I can't say for the last Shadowrun books (but I'll be honest that I didn't read Spy Games yet, my last book was Attitude).

You know, I was thinking of a way to phrase my feelings on the matter politely and accurately(for once) but Brazilian shinobi stole the words out of my mouth.

I look over the list and I think start to think of a short list of a book's merits and demerits, so I have an idea of what I would actually vote for.
It goes something like 'rapegang, minisplat book, adventure, adventure, adventure, bad formatting with inconsistent rules and no errata, not in my langauge so i can't even enjoy it because there's no official support, splatoook, adventure, adventure, minicrunch book that also has inconsistent rules and no support, minibook with not a lot useful for casual play, critters and bad art, minibook compilation, whatever that thing that isnt packs, gimped splatbook with cut content, splatbook with some crunch and bat formatting, adventure, adventure, adventure x 10 more, hey look we did spy games already why is it listed twice, minibook of epic stats you shouldn't need, The Ten Foot Pole book, awesome-but-short AND no official support, and The Last Good Book where people understood Formatting and established rules even if the material is kinda gimpy.'


To me, a Best RPG Vote has elements of everything. Clarity of rules, setting info that grabs me, useful crunch, cover art that makes me think 'cool', art within the book that does the same, a 'cool' factor of things that make me interested in going out of my way to use that stuff in a game, examples of rules/play in sidebars. Official support - faqs, second printings, errata, Q&A, web enhancements, timely preorders - things that make me know the company pushes out good product and has excellent customer service.
(wizards of the coast and fantasy flight games immediately come to mind as people who deliver solid product. Hell, mongoose publishing, dreamscarred press have their stuff more together than CGL. Pegasus Spiele GmbH is kicking your ass in that department, and they don't even care about their english speaking players. Blut und Spiele? Berlin? Arsenal 2070? Body+tech? Why don't we have any of that shit? that's what I mean by maintaining your products, or that bit about web supplements. They are doing it right, and CGL should be following their example.)


Its hard to look at that list, and find a product that stands up to the quality of the Runner's Companion or Arsenal.
You know what I'm saying?
How many books on Larsine's list would any of you other posters feel comfortable saying 'this is a solid product, cover to cover, worthy of recognition, and you should buy it if you don't have it already?' Because that is not a rhetorical question. If people feel that there is genuinely good product on there worth checking out, I want to hear about it! Because I'm not too familiar with the adventures, for example.
Besides, ("we think Our adventure book and our 20 page book about guns are better than this other companies 200 page setting splatbook" is kind of arrogant, don't you think?)

My top two on that list are This Old Drone and Way of the Adept. (Critias you should feel hella proud of yourself for delivering a gold-standard DTrpg product by yourself, and having the balls to come on here and tell players how your product should work when your company won't let you do so officially.)


Its -2011-. Friggen about time for a State of the art 2073 or a Rigger 4th book, wouldn't you say? Instead, we have what, exactly?

Edit: For typoes

And I appreciate that you at least took the time to look at that list and think about it some (and, like always, I'm thrilled to hear how much folks like Way of the Adept). My point is just that there's a world of difference between what you just posted -- or even posting nothing at all -- and "LOL nothing but War! this year" and "it's all just cheap crap."

Alright, let me try again.

First Art Direction in general.
Shadowrun is a long-running and popular game, but doesn't look like it.
The art direction is and always was terrible. There were some big names, like Mark Zug, for example and a handful of very great artworks.
But the majority looks awful and/or had been recycled from older editions. The 20th anniversary version of the core doesn't look as awful as it's predecessor did, but it's still pretty bad. The more recently published material looks worse, very cheap and semi-professional.

For comparison: Dark Heresy looks just as great today as it did when it came out.

My problem with the content of the recent material is that it's shallow and very forgettable.
The fluff of the books seems shoved in without actually enriching the setting. Same for the crunch.
Gun Heaven for example had many new guns that were very generic and boring. The stats were very similar.

I read into many of the books, yet I can't recall anything worth mentioning.
But this not surprising, seeing how often it changed staff and publisher.

It's like a series of novels that, after the death of it's original creator, had been continued by another author.

I'm not bashing anything or asking for a point-for-point rebuttal. All I was requesting was that you tell us which book you honestly believe to stand out from the competition in one of the four (well, actually two) areas in question.

So please spare me lamenting about how people bully you and the histrionic "discussing the matters at hand is far below my standards, I daresay" routine. Just tell me which product you hold superior to the competition in terms of artwork, or consider the best supplement overall. That way, you'd also stop leaving an impression of posting knee-jerk dismissal of criticism because you believe the Party to be right, and then backtracking when it comes to the argumentative meat...

If that's what you took away from my post, it only reinforces my "not worth arguing about" idea. It's not that it's below my standards, it's just that -- believe it or not, this being the internet -- I just don't feel like arguing.

Well the point is moot, as none of the SR products made the cut in any case.

I said, "All I can find is War!" which is not "Lol: nothing but War! this year."

Simply due to not having ever heard of the rest of the supplements.

I'm sorry if I came off as unduly harsh, that being the case, but when it sounds like everything else is being ignored in order to focus on War!, it gets my hackles up. If that wasn't your intent, I -- again -- apologize.

That said, I'm not sure how you can never hear of any of the rest of them, considering with what regularity posts about them get made around here, how often threads get stickied, etc, etc. Even ignoring the Catalyst web site, multiple Facebook feeds, official forums, Origins and Gencon release conversations, etc, etc, and focusing only on this very forum, it's hard for me to fathom someone thinking productivity just stopped when War! came out.

Admittedly I have heard of Way of the Adept, Attitude (only in the context of "I can do better"), Sixth World Almanac (if vaguely), and Spy Games (again, vaguely).



Don't watch the CGL site
Don't have FaceBook
Don't use the official forums
Don't go to Origins or Gencon

Oh, and I don't compulsively read every single post on this entire site.

I'm not talking every single post, dude, I'm talking about threads that get made and stickied every time a new product comes out. They're left up for weeks at a time before being destickied, then slowly drift down the ranks like normal, mortal, threads. There are a few of them up right now, in fact. The information has been put out there, at any rate, and I'm sorry if you've missed it enough that you were left with the impression that nothing at all was going on.

But thank you for at least acknowledging that you have, in fact, heard of material since War!, at any rate.

Stickies?

There are stickies in this forum?

Oh hey, what do you know. There's four of them.

And I've read none of them.

Remember what I said about not reading every post? "New products" aren't exactly something I'm chomping at the bit to have. My group's last acquisition was Runners Companion.

At any rate, I apologize (again) for my misunderstanding the nature of your comments.

You know, I'm incredibly tempted to rub it in, but I'll actually be constructive this time around. I appreciate that someone from the dev team had the balls to come over here and pimp their work: Pride in your craft is a good thing.



Get this shit ready for Golden Geek 2012. Who's Who on dumpshock says you're a proofreader, so... bring it to the team.
I want to buy a runner's companion plus.

And while you're at it, get in touch with the Pegasus guys. They're using your system and making it better. It shouldn't be too hard to get them to fix the errata issue and provide their additional/extra gear for you if you ask nicely. (goodman said in another thread that errata is a known issue, so theoreticaly its being worked on, but collaborating with the people who already implimented the fixes that were written before the coleman scandal by the original guys, and then ADDED new content should save a bunch of time, effort, money, and frustration on everyone's parts).

Please?

I'm not part of the dev team, I'm a freelance proofreader. I have no say in any kind of development of the books.

I get sent drafts of comming books. I read them through, try to find factual, spelling and other mistakes. Suggest how they could be correceted, and then the dev decides wether to apply my suggestions or not.



I have the same suggestion power as you, or anybody else.

If you think they should produce a specifik product, write a proposal, and send it off to the official address.


You are shooting at the wrong guy.

A couple quick things. The plan isn't for a single State of the Art 2073 book. State of the Art e-books are already working their way down the pipe (and Jason mentioned one was on the way, elsewhere, so I don't feel like I'm violating NDA by saying so). Rather than a single book that may or may not have SOTA stuff folks are interested in, we're tackling it piecemeal and hoping to get a series going.

And ditto what Larsine said. Suggestions get made (though BY us, not TO us), and all we can do is wait and see what direction the actual decision-makers choose to go in. We freelancers had a few good brainstorming sessions at GenCon, there's pretty much constant discussion going on in a mailing list/google group, but ultimately all we can do is share our thoughts, wait to see what's on the next project spec, and write what we're contracted to write. If Jason and the other actual decision makers hear stuff straight from the fans' mouths, you've got, theoretically, the same odds of influencing the decision-making process as any single freelancer or proofreader or something does.

And as far as Pegasus coordination goes, trust me, it's come up. The long and short of it (as I recall, GenCon's kind of one big long blur) is that they're another company, period, and it's not always cut and dried about what can and can't be taken from one and given to the other, what can and can't be translated and then sold, etc. Collaboration and communication between individual writers (like I did prior to writing just a little CMP, talking Urban Brawl with a couple of them) is all well and good, but actual document sharing, translating, and rereleasing is a whole different ballgame. I'm not privy to the corporate mumbo jumbo.

Which is probably why you are still active in this thread...
So looks like my initial gut feeling was right: You just posted a knee-jerk "but we deserve an award" without being able to back up this claim rationally. I just hope this won't become the rule.

You really can't tell the difference between "active in this thread" and "arguing" any more?


Whatever you want to tell yourself, man. This is me not wanting to argue, and this is you poking me with a stick for it over and over again. What do you want me to say, here?

"They hired me as a full time writer, and I'm picking up the advanced magic sourcebook where AH left it off. Much like 6wa, a lot of it needs to be rewritten, but I'm going to try to make it as nice as way of the adept was. Coming to stores near you sometime soon!"

But, you know, I'm probably dreaming.

Dreaming, and that would probably violate his NDA he'd have to sign. Dreams might come true, but NDAs shouldn't be messed with.

Heh. Thanks, but "full time writer" is outside my scope, at the moment. It's not just a matter of getting hired for it, it's a matter of being available for it. I freelance when I can, and write what I can, as my real-life priorities allow (not just the whims of the Powers That Be, executive decisions, or whatever else you want to call it). Sometimes semesters are kind and I know I've got the time to tackle a bunch of Shadowrun stuff, other times I'm just too busy and a couple project specs in a row float past without me even looking at them, much less submitting anything.

And, not for nothing, but I wouldn't take anything over where AH left off. Not because I don't like his stuff or anything like that, but because (both academically and professionally), plagiarism sucks. I've taken a look at some of his unfinished projects when it related to a Shadowrun gig I got, but I've always done so to avoid writing what he'd already written, not to pick it up and try to make it mine. That's not how writing is supposed to work.

You're living my dream, man. I'm writing some stuff for the DDH, and even then, Writing is hard. Between the papers for school and the Final Design Project, It's a wonder I find time to eat. I'd love to write official things, but that's just not in the cards right now.