Catalyst Announcement

$9.99 for 8 maps and a booklet

Somebody plase tell me why I need this?

It's a great asset for a newer GM or group that is just starting in SR. There are hooks for runs, information about the types of people you'd normally find there and maps of buildings that are labeled, and player versions without the legend. It makes game prep a lot easier for folks who don't have the time to draw maps or familiarity with the world to have a solid vision of places.

The lack of maps is something people have been complaining about for a while, and i guess this patches that in some sense...

Btw, love the old school art elements in the cover (SR2 troll and street shaman, iirc).

Maps are always nice to have, at least on my table we use them a lot.

I agree on the price tag, though...twice the price of the other short ebooks, even four times if counting the (bogus) "down from" price?

I imagine the color/artwork is largely to blame for that. It's not at all uncommon for the artwork to cost quite a bit more than the writing, in even a text-based product like your average sourcebook. For something as thick with artwork as this? Yeah. Whatever the writer got was bupkiss, compared to the art guys.

I think I'll order the DTF version of this.

Iirc the complete cover is a 1:1 copy of a SR2 cover.

Just one small request - would it be possible to get the images used in your previews bigger?

Also, I own the original Sprawl Sites. Besides updated stats, what would buying this book get me? What books - fluff and crunch - were used for it? And what's the fluff / crunch ratio?

I have the old Sprawl Sites and use it all the time.

Ravensmuse--Old hats will likely enjoy it for the maps. The booklet is on par with the old Sprawl Sites descriptions as I recall (it's been awhile since I flipped through the original).

The maps in the PDF blow up nicely to about 150% before rasterization issues. That means printing them out to an 11x14 or 11x17 sheet should be fine. Not quite enough resolution to print to a 1":1m scale but honestly the few times I need to do that, it's generally easier to sketch out on a mat. They look like they'd work well for a digital table top setup.

When I check out the previews, it shows the maps as 1/4 page images set inside the text. Please tell me that these maps, which look very well done, have actual full page images (color would be nice too, but that might just be getting greedy) devoted to them that aren't part of the preview. I would gladly plop down the full 20 bucks if they do. I have used Critical Locations from D20 Modern for nearly every game I've played in a modern or near future setting, and having a book of high quality maps for Shadowrun is a godsend. Hell, it would be enough to make me buy a dead tree version as well as the PDF!

Neko--

The PDF has full page color versions of all of the maps, both labeled and unlabeled. I'm not sure if the print version will be laminated or not, but should be good. They are on par with the Runner's Toolkit maps.

YAY! Going to convince the wife to let my buy a print/PDF combo tonight!

Not the SR2 i have here, as it was basically the same as SR1 with Dodger and crew.

Wasn't speaking of the core rulebook.

It was a weirdly formatted sentence, Grinder. I had trouble parsing out what you were saying as well at first

Are you telling me that after the cartographic disaster that was the Almanac, CGL still has not realized the difference between photograph, artwork, and map? Pity

Did they really take the cover of "Sprawl Maps" and use it for a new map pack? That's not confusing at all.

Sengir--

The maps are similar to Runner's Toolkit or the DotA adventures. They are not photographs with an overlay.

Phew, although I'd still prefer 30 "technical" maps to 8 fancy-looking ones...

No, I'm saying that people that make artwork -- of any stripe -- are often paid more than customers realize. If it ain't text, it's expensive in this industry, period. The reason it can be such a short little product, and still cost as much as it does, has to do with the pay differences between writers and artists (in my opinion only, taking a guess to explain the price discrepancy).

It's a valid point. It's also why the 20-page Safehouses is $4.95 for the PDF while the 16-"page" Sprawl Sites: North America is $9.99 for the PDF. Safehouses only has a few pieces of art in it, while Sprawl Sites is almost all "art" (Or "map" or "technical drawing" or however you want to put it. It's more than a monkey hitting a keyboard like how Safehouses was written, so thus costs more.).

Of course, Safehouses is PDF-Only while Sprawl Sites: North America will be coming out in DTF. My FLGS will be happy about that.

My apologies. Lack of sleep and all that....

Read error on my side, sorry about that.

May well have been a issue on both sides (freakin caffeine addiction)

A technical drawing is like a sequence of typed characters: well-defined symbols arranged according to clear rules to convey some information. The information itself has creative value, but putting it to paper is just handiwork.

And we are not talking about breathtaking architectural achievements or a standard-conformant drawing of some highly complex machine here, just simple floor plans for generic locations. If that pays as much (well, much in relation to text) as actual artwork something's going wrong...

The cover was used on a novel and probably somewhere else, here for example the German version of "Preying for Keeps":

http://www.shadowhelix.de/images/f/ff/SR_Roman_024.jpg

image page in the Shadowhelix

No, gonna have to disagree with you here Sengir. Speaking as an architect, it's not just "handiwork." There's actual thought that goes into any type of technical drawing we do, no matter how "simple" it may look. Maps like this aren't just quick CAD drawings anyway, there is actual art and production value that goes into a good RPG map. (I haven't had a chance to get the book yet, tomorrow hopefully, so I can't comment on the quality of these maps beyond what's in the previews.) Yes, anyone can sit down in front of a piece of software that includes tiles for flooring, furnishings, all of the landscaping, and whatever else they want to throw in, and bang out a map, but chances are they are not going to be any where near the quality of a map designed by a good cartographer.

It's more than just dropping a texture here and a piece of clip art there; they will often use a combination of programs (Photoshop, CAD, and admittedly pre-done art assets [which they hopefully paid an artist for!]) to get the maps to look good and be readable and usable. Good cartographers will actually consider how a space will be utilized by the players and by the GM, and put a bit of thought into the placement of objects. There's also a balance of making a building made out of 5' (2m if you prefer) squares and not making it look cartoonish. I can promise you that if you were to go measure the rooms in your house, you'd find very few rooms that are exactly 10' by 15' and that none of your hallways are 10' wide (2 squares), yet you'll find that on a lot maps people have made for themselves. Good cartographers are going to use the walls and other assorted details of the building itself to actually make it look believable while still working within the constraints set down by the system's rules.

The time investment for a good map can be quite similar to the time it takes to draw a picture, so that's not really something to base the pay on. It's a different skill set too, one I'm pretty sure isn't exactly common. In fact, I'm willing to wager that finding a good cartographer is significantly harder for Catalyst than finding somebody who wants to put a pretty picture in their RPG books.

I know what I'm saying sounds rather dickish; trust me, I'm not attacking you. Honestly, it just sounds like you're not someone who's ever had to either sell or buy artwork (of any kind) for a living, so I don't think you realize exactly what goes into what we do.

Edit: I should point out that is why I was concerned about the quality of the book before I decided to buy it. The Barrens Block map in the previews would literally take me all of five minutes to make from scratch and if all of the maps in the book were that terrible (sources say no), I would NEVER pay money for it. I'm honestly REALLY anal about maps since I have the skills to do some amazing maps by virtue of what I do for a living and both me and players demand a certain level of craftsmanship out of the resources I use. I will gladly pay for quality, especially when it means I don't have to work and my game still looks good.

Isn't cartography the production of geographical maps as opposed to technical drawings of floor plans that probably belong to architecture or construction engineering?

No, maps of any sort (Dictionary.com). Besides, what I'm talking about is the fact they're not just a "simple floor plan" (as Sengir said), but actual maps that can be considered artistic renderings that require some amount of skill to produce, which is why I chose the word "cartographer."

SR is not a miniature system where base sizes and accordingly the dimensions of props matter...and if the artist had paid attention to such details nevertheless, I'd expect the maps to have a scale

How does this compare to the maps and such offered in the Toolkit?

It was used on Sprawl Maps too.
http://www.amazon.com/Sprawl-Maps-Shadowru...n/dp/1555602169

Can somebody with the actual book comfirm the page count?

DriveThrough says 32 pages, but I've also seen 16 pages mentioned. Which is correct?

Speaking as someone who's worked with several artists on Maps, there's a hell of a lot that goes into making a decent map, and it's actually a skill most artists do NOT have. Squinky puts a lot of time and effort into the SR Missions Maps, and experiments with different styles and textures so that not every map feels exactly the same.

Anyway, to answer Larsine, it's 32 pages. 16 pages are a black and white booklet with small, B&W versions of the maps, descriptions of the maps, and plot hooks for using the maps. The remaining 16 pages are Full Color maps similar in style and quality to those from Runners Toolkit. There are two evrsions of each map, just like the Toolkit Maps. One side is marked with location names and features, the other has no text.

Bull

Squinky is a damned JOY to work with when you're doing maps! You give him a horrible Paint image and he turns it into a piece of beauty!!!

I think the only way to make "Cheap" maps would be to have the line drawings like in the original Sprawl Sites, only even less detailed. Production prices have increased since those days, even if the item is PDF. (Again, printing costs are not the biggest thing to worry about!).

I pity my loss of suburban house layouts that was laying around my home for a few decades when I moved...

94, no wonder i did not know of its existence.

As for the repeated price debate; unless each book come with a enumerated list of costs, people will just compare the sticker price with what they get and consider it being worth their expense or not. And that becomes even more relevant when they get something they can't hold in their hand and contemplate the mass of. We humans are simple creatures in that sense, and we worry about loss much more than we worry about gains.

There are miniatures for Shadowrun. Typically, the people who like to use them, like to use them with correctly scaled maps and/or models. Also, when doing demonstrations for Shadowrun, it is nice to have the slickest looking visual aids you can procure. I usually use the old Sprawl Maps and the old miniatures just to draw people over to ask what the game is.

I will say that lack of scale on the maps is odd. That's something I make sure to always include in our Missions Maps, as I feel it's very important. Though on most of the new maps, you can approximate scale pretty easily thanks to map features like cars or desk chairs.

Bull

I was just talking about RPG cartography in general, actually. I do second your expectations about the maps having a printed scale though.

After finally picking this up I find myself missing the look of the old DMZ and Sprawl Site maps.

Sprawl Sites is available in PDF.

Which actually makes it better as you're not ruining the spine to get a copy of the map you want photocopied. Just print it out.