Drivethru

And here I was just coming over to make an announcement. Thanks for saving me a post. Anyway, it's also on the Battleshop. Enjoy!

Jason H.

Thanks for the update.

You're welcome.

I thought this was already covered in AU and Conspiracy Theories?

This has the full text and the Aztlan response.

Jason H.

Do you guys get to control what gets used as the Sample file on Drivethru? Because as engrossing as the Hestaby speech is - and I rather enjoyed it - the reader only gets to see a small portion of what the whole book must actually be like. [And doesn't do much to build suspense about anything Hestaby might have said, since it includes that section in its entirety.] Perhaps a representative page from a variety of sections might be more illuminating for the prospective purchaser?

Does the Battleshop not have a sample at all? I can't speak for anyone else, but I wouldn't be likely to - okay, am not going to - spend eight dollars on something I can't see. While my perspective on the matter might not be the majority, neither is it non-zero; it would seem a [well-chosen] sample might produce at least an extra sale or two.

Nice to see a return to the SOTA books. I always felt the downloadable PDF was a natural fit for them. DLC, as it were.

You mean other than, "THAT PUTA DRAGON!"

For those interested, here's a run down on what's in the book:

1) Hestaby's Speech to the UN, Atzlan's official response, and Jackpoint discussing it.

2) Ares Arms Catalog December 2073 Supplement

• Vodianoi Assault Hovercraft
• Nizhinyi BMV-2 Vectored Thrust Armored Personnel Carrier
• Ruhrmetall Falkner Heavy Air Defense Vehicle
• Ruhrmetall KM 4 Keiller A5 Assault Tank
• Ares PLD Light Machine Gun

3) Character Corner featuring Col. Samantha Roth

4) Aetherpedia -- Thailand

5) 2073 Street Legal (Vehicle Write-Ups)

• Nassan Coda (Food Truck)
• Dodge Ram Industrial (Construction/Service Vehicle with varients for Garbage truck, Ladder & Bucket Ultity Service, Sewage Pumper, or Water Tanker)
• Evo DSV-Mariana (Mini-Sub)
• Galactic Knight (Orbital/Suborbital Plane)
• Krupp-Icarus (High Altitude Plane)
• Nissan EZ Eco (Forklift)
• Espirit Le Four (Tugboat)
• Krupp-Thyssen Airdox (Mining Vehicle)
• Mercury Oort (Station Wagon!)
• Leyland-Rovert Transport (Taxi)

6) 2073 Awakened Flora -- Chicago Flora

• Caldwell Lily
• Chicago grey
• Ghoul Caps
• Glammergold
• Helhounds Tongue
• Magnus Kudzu
• Prairie Smite

A nice mix of stuff. I've been really excited by the "Street Legal" stuff since I saw an early draft of the material about a year ago. I've been wanting to see stuff like dump trucks and the like for a while, so these "every day" vehicles are a nice touch.

Bull

OK, I'm sold.

Too bad one of my old players isn't around where I live now. He has an absolute hatred of chuckwagons and food trucks... I'd be able to torture him with that so much!

Unfortunately, we don't control the previews on DriveThru--they automatically generate them. On the Battleshop, we need some updated software to provide a full-featured experience, and I'm told we're looking into that. Your points make sense as to why we'd want to have that sort of thing.

Jason H.

OK... I pity any GM that lets me play a Ghetto game... That Station Wagon is going to be turned into one hell of a Battlewagon!

Of course, the first thing I'd need is A GAME I CAN PLAY IN!

...

Good job with this product! I feel I got my money's worth.

Is this a smaller part of an incoming game book? I was expecting to see cyberware, metamagic, programs, and the like. I remember the old SOTA books from 3rd edition, and was expecting something closer to that. Not complaining too much, I've wanted to see awakened plants for quite some time, and the vehicles were interesting, but for the most part I was wondering 'are my players actually going to encounter / use a heavy drill?'

As the original writer of the part on Southeast Asia in SoA, and actually living in Thailand for 9 years, I'm very curious about that Thailand entry. Is it a recap of SoA, or was it updated ? Interesting bits to share?

Mike

Generally speaking, the eBook line is comprised of shorter products. They're designed to be cheap and "bite-sized" to allow players to purchase just the material they're interested in. The format also lets us play around and do things that wouldn't be possible in print, like do the book in full color (Which SOTA 2073 is) and go back to the "Catalog" format for gear, something people have long requested but that simply wasn't possible with a regular print product.

Stuff taht would be in the original SOTA books can now be their own eBook. The Adept eBook that Critias wrote, for example, would have been something incorporated into the older SOTA 206X books. Plus, some of the print books have a different design to them, so material is getting included into them that likewise might have gone into a SOTA product, such as the gear in Spy Games or the stuff in Attitude. It's a slightly different approach to things, but it allows us to do more with the game world.

Plus, there also has to be freelancer interest and a proposal for the material. I don't know if anyone proposed new cyber or metamagics or whatever for SOTA 73.

As for the drill... Well, you never know. Much like the military vehicles, I think it's one of those things that you don't necessarily need stats for, really. But on the off chance that it does come up, then you're covered. And sometimes it will spark ideas. Honestly, I never even thought of including something like that mining drill in a game. Now? Now I'm envisioning an adventure with a scene at a corporate mining facility where the players may want to hijack one of those for some reason.

And I love the Station Wagon so much. The Oort is one of the coolest vehicles to get statted up in a long time. I think they may become the unofficial car of the Skraacha whenever they have to operate outside the Ork Underground (I'm just seeing this as a battle wagon for a pack of ork street gangers and it makes me smile. in the background, Low Rider by War is playing. )

Mike: I'm honestly not sure. I only gave the section a cursory glance. It's short, only a couple pages, and looks to be similar to the Almanac write-ups from 6th World Almanac. It mentions stuff post-Crash 2.0, so I imagine it's an update on the SoA material.

Bull

I'm probably the ideal SR customer - whatever comes out, I buy it.

However, DriveThruRPG appears to be down now. I'll try again tomorrow. Good night.

SOLD!

I wonder if we will see a "SOTA decade" physical book once enough of these pdfs have been made. Just observe the Runners Black Book...

Still no half-way house between the Manservant and the Uber anthroform drones then? Shame, been waiting for one of those for ages...won't stop me buying this as soon as Drivethru is back up though

Was thinking something similar. But with there being no drones in the book, no big loss. One would have thought that Horizon would have started shipping one by now, for the growing AI population if nothing else.

A good answer. Hmm, now it makes me wonder, if I was to do a proposal or write-up for Shadowrun, how would I go about submitting it for inclusion? Hmm. Something for me to think about, I guess, once I'm done my current RPG project and get it published. :\

I am still of the opinion that the Evo Orderly from Arsenal was originally SUPPOSED to be a humanoid drone, given the fluff that it is supposed to allow "a single doctor can be on-call for hundreds of patients simultaneously". There is zero mention in the description of having a patient seat/bed like the Transys steed, and why would you really need to put multiple wheelchair drones in a game product?

Then the artist misinterpreted what he was supposed to be drawing, so the easiest "fix" overall was to delete the "humanoid" from the drone type as seen in the errata.

I for one would like that bit of errata to be rescinded. I did it in my home game, but I'd love to be able to see it happen in Missions so I can replace my gimpy Manservant.*



-k
* - or maybe not, my Missions rigger almost has enough cash to buy an Otomo.

Only thing I'm missing from the book really is more game stats for the plants:

- BDNB Solution. It says it's expensive but readily available in Quebec, but lists no price (just availability). It doesn't list any power, duration of effect, or the like.

- No prices for any of the plants, even ones listed as having been harvested 'over the years', or with low availabilities indicating it's easy to get ahold of them.

- None of the plants that have 'Spell Casting' as a skill lists a rating to use for the skill test, nor the Force the spells would be cast at.

- Only one of the poisonous plants is listed with a Power, Speed, etc.

Maybe it's just the pre-tea morning, but what the hell is an Oort anyhow? OTHER than a Mercury-Brand Station Wagon.

Drop Jason a line, generally speaking. info@shadowrun4.com is usually the best email for this, I think. I'll poke Jason later and see if I can get him to reply.

Bull

Oort puts me in mind of "The Oort Cloud", the possible home of comets and asteroids.

My guess is that it would be a reference to Jan Oort and the Mercury Comet.

Yup, that e-mail is the place to start!

Jason H.

Derp.

A bit odd to have something which will probably be very important for future plots only in a PDF supplement. Hopefully books building on that won't assume everybody read it...


Huh? That was already an alternate model in W!...


So, who gets the chance to have his personal Mary printed this time?


I'm not quite sure what to do with a tugboat or suborbital (or why the latter is freely available), but in general more everyday vehicles are good.


Now that is something I totally don't know what to expect from...are those somewhat similar to the awakened drugs in Arsenal, exotic telesma, or soemthing else entirely?

OK, that's some serious plot, useful vehicles and maybe the flora stuff...not overly excited, but then again it's only 6 €...

Hell, I came up with a dozen reasons to have a tugboat as soon as I read it!

Okay, I'll post some notes as I read.
1) War Over Trees Metaplot. Nothing to write home about.
2) Ares Arms.
Vodianoi. Nice to see a vehicle get renewed stats, though I don't really understand why would one mega buy licenses from another...
Nizhniy BMV-2. Plus for using the abbreviation from the old books (though it is a little weird in Russian, admittedly). Minus for shortening Nizhniy Tagil, the city where Russian tank plants are located, to Nizhniy (which means Lower, btw). Very strange cost, ugly pic.
The Falkner. Nice pic, but it's not shooting down anything with the loadout suggested. Oh well, SR missiles.
Keiler A5. A tank worth 100k-something, with Speed 120. Makes War! stuff like YNT Pushka Okne (which, supposing the name is in Russian, translates to "Cannon [in a] window") look ridiculously overpriced.
Ares PLD. Nice pic, but the reflex sight looks a bit off minding the stats. Plus, 200-bullet clip?!
3) Character corner. Boring.
4) Thailand. Standard 6WA stuff.
5) Street Legal.
Nissan Coda. Pimped ride on a food truck in standard?!
Dodge Ram Industrial. Yay for industrial vehicles! A bit more info on how far you can reach with a standard ladder and such wouldn't hurt, but still very nice.
EVO DSV Marianna. Nice minisub, nice picture.
Galactic Knight. Small suborbital - I'm with Clockwork on this one, dunno why would anyone need it. Looks disfigured, too. Strange speed when compared to Il-159, too.
Krupp-Icarus. It's a plane that flies 40 to 160 km into space with a wing and some props.
Nissan EZ ECO. A lifter, cool. Dunno how you'd fit one in a van along with runners as suggested by shadowtalk, though.
Espirit le Four. A tugboat with hydrofoils, what more can I say.
Krupp-Thyssen Airdox. A heavy mining device (16 m in diameter! 3 cm a minute movement!) Why would that thing be statted as a vehicle eludes me.
Mercury Oort. Stylish classic wagon sedan.
Leyland-Rover Transport. A taxi with a driver. In the 70ies. Referred to as "small" in shadowtalk, when it's designed to accommodate trolls.
6) Chicago Flora.
Caldwell Lily - boring.
Chicago Grey - you can now officially have a bad trip on cut drugs in SR.
Ghoul Caps - "ghoul caps can be used as an animal protein substitute" for ghouls.
Glammergold - Innate Spell (cure disease).
Hellhound’s Tongue - makes the dogs shut up.

All in all, not a bad book, and I particularly liked the industrial vehicles getting some stats at last, but bearing the usual birthmarks of the CGL products of late.

"OK, we'll get your military vehicle service, and you'll get a minor special project to be named later, and two bioware scientists without having to do a hostile extraction."
Actually, I can see this. They're all garish and designed, no straight colours. The only unmodified Chuckwagon I've ever seen was a Streamliner that was named "The Silver Bullet", so it didn't need to be pimped out. So, yes, standard to your liking, straight from the factory!
Two 'Runners, one Forklift. For some simple jobs, that's all you need.
Or you can put the rest of the 'Runners in here. No reason not to have to vehicles, or three. Or everyone on a bike in some cases.
"Accommodate" means they can fit inside. Not that they'd be comfortable.

As for having a driver, don't forget the Technomancer Scare that's still being felt. Yeah, some'll be turned into Johnny-Cabs or some such, but most will be driven. I'm also willing to bet there's government incentives (like tax breaks) to companies to have metahuman workers instead of drones, and then make up the price paid in income taxes from the workers.

I'm also willing to bet that most cab drivers are Orks, as they'd be less likely to be held up, and have excellent night vision to reduce insurance premiums.

How the frag did I miss this...?

And described as 15-20cm tall. Not exactly your average sized mushroom that...

There's a lot going on, man. Anyhow, they're probably grown on the remains of mass graves or something...Now, if only they were Magic Mushrooms.

Right, except megas hate each others' guts more or less obviously.
Two 'Runners, one Forklift. For some simple jobs, that's all you need.

Wouldn't it be easier to fit an equal amount of high explosive fun? :3

Technomancer scare did not turn all self-driving GridGuide-dependent vehicles into pumpkins overnight. Drones (and, by extension, dogbrain-operated vehicles) are just cheaper to operate.

>SR govt actually caring about something

It's still pretty huge as far as ghoul rights fight goes.

They're better than just Magic, they're Magic Irradiated Mushrooms.

Wtf?

Well, I think that ghouls can *survive* off of animal protein, but barely. A sort of "Bread and water" or "Daily gruel" sort of thing. They wind up under-norished and weak, like your classic "Starving in Africa" types, but still manage to exist. Only human flesh allows them to actually *thrive*. Might be due to Essence, with flesh being a transfer option akin to blood being symbolic for Shadowrun vampires instead of required?

I don't know.

The idea of mushrooms fully replacing the Ghoul need for human flesh, however... I'm a tad leery.

Just because they CAN eat it doesn't mean they want to eat it.

That would have a major impact on the setting.

I'm not sure 'animal protein substitute' qualifies as 'metahuman flesh'.

Remember though, ghouls do not need ALL their food to come from metahumans. Only a few kilograms a week. The rest can be devil rat, naga, puppy dog, or whatever (as long as it's raw)...as well as ghoul caps.

The line is: "The legend is that ghouls can stave off hunger pains by consuming Ghoul Caps."

So, it's only a legend, not confirmed yet. Guess it's time for Hanabelle to do some experimenting.

if it's more than that, it'd be a real big deal.
Like Dunkelzahn's Will Prize big.

ah HAH! CanRay comes through. (Looks like I need to go ahead and grab this one. Forgot it was gonna be PDF-only.)

I knew something that big wouldn't just sneak through. So, went over it myself with a fine toothed comb.

Barely skimmed over the plants stuff before. If I can't eat it, smoke it, or sell it, I consider plants to be weeds. 'Course, I grew up in a mining town, where our cash crops were rocks and blueberries that grew in the rocks and acidic soil.

And I consider it worth the price, I'm happy with my purchase. Art for the vehicles might be a bit better, but I'm a car nut as well as a gun nut, so I have a high bar, that's all.

Exactly.
Apart from their Dietary Requirement ghouls need calories like anybody else, however they need real, raw meat and cannot get by on soy and other ersatz food. That is the reason why the Chicago ghouls are running huge pig farms. The description of Ghoul Caps (which have already been mentioned before, Feral Cities probably) only says "animal protein substitute", so everybody please hold back your horses -- it's soyburger for ghouls, nothing more

RE: Fatum's list, is seems like somebody in CGL should re-read Arsenal about what "similar models" means...

They did the same mistake in Attitude.

See Here

On a more serious note, most ammo delivery systems that carry 200 rounds are a drum or bin type, not a stick magazine.



It would have been nice it it were the type of forklift that can attach itself to the rear of a truck or van.



-k

Also, "staving off hunger pains" isn't the same as "can use as a food substitute".

After all, a starving human can stave off hunger pains by eating dirt, but that doesn't mean he's actually getting much nutritional benefit out of it.



-k