I write it "ShadowRun" so there. :B
(at least when I'm not being a lazy arse, anyway)

"Shadowrun" would also have been acceptable.

Polyphonic speech is always fun to hear.

There were heaps of criticism for pretty much every chapter, except maybe for the one on vampires. But we were both there, anyway.

Well, it wasn't War!

Yeah, new art is as a rule good.

Glorious! Surely that means some feedback will be incorporated, right? Hahaha.

Yeah, sweet sweet errata that entirely depends on the enthusiasm of its writers, takes ages to arrive, addresses single digit percentages of the issues with the books, and sometimes adds new ones.

I remember a few RPG books with rules that did not contradict themselves at every turn. Like, you know, Shadowrun cores 1-4.

And become spellcheckers who can't even correct grammar, much less fluff or crunch, as it was reported here CGL proofreaders do? What a breathtaking prospect.

Not someone, something. Something which has even been disowned by its creators, there is little offense to be had in calling that stupid, terrible, an abomination which should never have been sent to the printers, whatever.

And exactly that undisputed badness is why we should try to get over bringing it up in every discussion. Why not 6WA or Corp Guide, just don't mention the war...

That is certainly true and the reason why both German and French authors advertise the respective localized version with "Come to us! Massive improvements! 100+ Errata discussion went into the book"

SYL

I've recently been looking over some 1st edition stuff. I think the books today are much better.

Well, the German SR4 first print 2005 from Fanpro (they went bankrupt after that) was not really a light in the darkness either. Thankfully Pegaus has a higher quality standad.

MfG

Learning that makes me sad too . So it's a legal reason, that all the good ideas posted on forums generally can't be used? What a waste of potential. Most posters would be proud if their ideas would become RAW in later released books.

Isn't there a way around that problem?

This was mentioned earlier in this discussion. I also heard from another example of an RPG system asking their fans what they want for the new edition and using their ideas for improvement. How come other RPGs can use ideas from fans without any legal trouble?

Thats quite easy and depends on the terms of use for the forum: these kind of producer forums have usually a note with "If you become part of the forum, we may incorporate any idea found on the forum without any payment, legal obgligations etc. You forfeit every right for your idea. Thanks!"

For a computer game it sounds like:


Or in short version: "everything you do on our servers belongs to us. If you cure cancer and end world hunger, we get credits for it".

Dumpshock is an independent forum and that may create some additional obstacles.

MfG

Ok. So if you wanted fan ideas you could actually use as a freelancer, the only option would be to create such a producer forum elsewhere. Then you could make a post on dumpshock about the project you are working on, asking the people to discuss their ideas in the new forum, if they want their suggestions to be heard.

Yeah, I can see how that is out of the range of what a freelancer is allowed to decide .
It's a shame though, with the ideas of many heads instead of just one, the final result could imho become much better.

Well, perhaps the official SR4 forums already have such a TOS.

You know. I suppose those of us who wouldn't mind having our ideas "stolen" could indicate as such in our signatures. "CGL is hereby authorized to utilize any ideas or content present in this poster's posts."

There's another game that I would kill to get their designers to think about some of the game design suggestions I've made. Not "they haven't integrated any of my ideas" but on a more fundamental level that they're making decisions almost 180 degrees counter to what would be considered "good for the game." The game is turning into a Skinner Box, basically. One where balance is so nebulous as to be meaningless (too hard under one set very predictable conditions, too easy under the other very predictable scenario, with the stated design goal that it will be balanced across that spectrum (hint: its not)).

Yeah, legalese is required and while *technically* I was pre-law, I ain't a lawyer and I certainly have no training in THIS field.

So, it'd have to be over on the official forums, and probably a single thread with a big blinky disclaimer that says "All ideas posted here belong to us. GIVE US YOUR BRAINMEATS, MWU-HAHAHAHAA!!!"

Which, you know, quite a few of us are willing to do, but I confess that getting paid for it's kinda nice.

Now if only the software running the official forums wasn't utter garbage...

Too true. I have no idea how it lags that badly under such limited load. I can only assume they skimp on their servers as much as they skimp on their web updates.

I don't get this whole can't use ideas that have been posted in public because of legal reasons. I was under the impression that the idea itself cannot be copyrighted, just a specific implementation of it. As an example, shadowrun uses the whole magic returns to the Earth and links it to a cycle based on the Mayan calendar. Anyone else can do the same thing, they just need to change the specific details. So if this can be done, why can't someone use an idea posted on a forum?

As far as I understand, the issue was originally brought up in the early days of the Internet, when there were no forums, only mailing lists and websites, and people thought it would be a good idea if content from the most popular websites was to be officially released into books. Clearly, the website owner word that he would be honored provided no guarantee he wouldn't sue later for copyright infringement, nor would it guarantee that said owner hadn't actually copied it from another website. But that whole discussion was about using those website content full-text. It's different if for an original text featuring previous ideas.

Ideas are not copyrighted, thought there is a really fine line. Using similar characters names and description for instance, or the strings of events of a story can be ruled a copyright infringement. However, in the situation we are discussing, they may be based on concepts for which the license holder has copyrights.

Say I wrote a story about Aztechnology pyramid-shaped offices in Seattle being blown up by a tactical nuke, and the plot shows up in an adventure. Aztechnology and the shape of their office were originally in books that belong to the intellectual property of Topps, Inc. So there only is one isolated element, the tactical nuke, that was original to my work. Since tactical nukes are a real thing, I actually own squat about the idea. If in my story the tactical nuke is smuggled in an ice cream truck, and that shows up in the adventure too, that's two points of similarity and the beginning of an argument. While the RPG industry has little precedents for such case, there have been some with fan fictions (I've read about a ruling, concluding you have no copyright at all over a work that make fair use (non-licensed) of copyrighted elements who belong to someone else - in which case a story about Aztechnology pyramid being blown up has no copyright, while one about an unnamed corporation headquartered in Central America would...).

Anyway, the legal advice the company got likely is: don't take the chance, don't do it.

That's like how the guys who were responsible for Lone Wolf McQuade sued the guys who were responsible for Walker: Texas Ranger.

http://www.leagle.com/decision/19971548961...0v.%20CBS%20INC.

that was some fun reading.

On the value of Dumpshock:
Dumpshock is an invaluable test lab. If I want to see a variety of reactions to any given concept, with critically sharp responses; Dumpshock is where I will go. I usually post my ruleset alternatives here simply because if I still like the concepts after they have been chewed threw the rounds at Dumpshock, then I consider them well tempered. Many times folks point out simple and obvious mistakes that I have made (this happened just a few days ago in fact), and I appreciate that.
Granted; I'm just a hobby goer, so I don't have a team to bounce anything off of.
However, Dumpshock has always had a special talent at rulebook thrashing.
I don't think the best rulebook ever written would survive without a scratch here, but I also don't think anything should.
It's somewhat like crash tests; the question isn't whether it will come out without a scratch, but whether the disastrous mess of the crash test produced results that were acceptable.

I would probably never have gotten my personal method for Initiative finally ironed out just the way I like it without the onslaught of round after round, and thread after thread, of arguing back and forth over various matters related to the subject.

Debating, especially when it's seemingly pedantic and frustrating, is often a great fuel for producing creative solutions and motivations to find solutions to on-going puzzles.


On the legality of interacting with forums, etc...:
This is another reason I preferred giving up on giving a crap about any of this kind of stuff.
Whether it's writing, drawing, music, game designs, or whatever...

Perhaps this is because I had a very bad run-in with IP law at a very early age when I was a bright eyed novice convinced I was going to create and draw my own comic book, and ended up years later walking away not able to touch my own IP because I was naive and didn't (at the time) understand the effective leverage between copyright and creative control - I, unfortunately, only retained the latter; thinking the publisher was doing me a favor in taking over the copyright part (as I said; very young and very naive).

That took about a decade for me to get over, and it pretty much ruined my passion for doing commercial artwork.
In fact, it practically ruined my passion and trust in doing anything commercial for a very long time.

I don't have anything to offer in regards to the writers, or the forum about how to solve legal issues, or whether it matters or not.
What I can say is, anything I write is fully available for anyone to use for any purpose ever without checking with me.

I have the same position on all of my creative works - my music is made with the same availability.

My position has become:
The work itself is not the valuable aspect; I am.
If someone likes my work, then they can pay me to work if they want to hire me for something, and in so doing they will be paying me for working.
I don't want to be paid for the work itself (the object, IP, etc...), however.

So, again, I don't have anything to offer you folks wrapped up in various commercial tethers.
All I can say is that I found the creative process far more enjoyable once I stopped concerning over legal issues and just stopped trying to "own" things; instead focusing on just creating and letting it get out there however it can go.

Cheers,
Stumps

This is why when I was in grad school and I was writing papers, they'd get reviewed by the two toughest English Comp instructors in the school. One was a master at content shaping/formatting and the other knew APA format inside and out. If I made it through with just a mere ten corrections, I considered it a VERY good day.

I still have people ask me how I could tolerate seeing my papers all marked up in green ink. My Response: "Critiques are the only way to get better. I don't want 'rah rah, you did great' responses. I want the paper to bleed if it needs to bleed."

No Way Jose .
If You ,Darthmord (or anybody else), does good Work, I'm going to mention it
(sometimes People just need positive feedback, even if they pretend they don't)

With a commendatory Dance
Medicineman

I've had to write on very different subjects than the one at stake, but with editing and correcting with very high standard.

I've had to correct hundred of pages of my work covered in red or green or blue ink, with margin full of comments on how I should have presented this or that differently. The post-it or the mail or the oral comment I got when doing it was in the vicinity of "it's really good, here are a few corrections, keep on like this!".

Just to say that it's entirely not incompatible to receive both a positive feedback and a paper covered in green ink. Actually, even without a positive feedback, the guy which corrects your work spending his time to make comments on it is actually quite a positive thing. If I have to review something that I find not interesting or in which I don't find anything positive, I'll just reject it or send a few comments on how the guy should restart from scratch.

Just to say

@DeathStrobe:

No offense but this is so much BS. I own more games then I can count and no game, NO GAME COMPANY, has as much editing issues as CGL. They are, by far and away, the worse at editing and proof reading that If I didnt know any better and covered up the name on the game and manufacturer, that it almost come across as an indie game in the editing, proofreading, and incorporating errata.

No, they get no slack on this. They need to do better. Period. This issue has been done to death, but your handwaving it away as "unable to single handly solve all the issues of the hobby" is just BS. We dont want them to solve the issues of the hobby, we want CGL to get their act together and produce something that reads like its professionally done. Because frankly its alot of basic mistakes, whether in process or lack there of.

Their Battletech line has their house in order and process in order. They need to follow suit on the Shadowrun side.

I think your wrong there. It is big deal in so much that folks who bought those books aren't buying them because you contradict what was once part of the game. because that thing you insulted just now ends up driving off or driving away customers.

Don't believe me? Recall the dungeons and dragons 4e rollout where game designers did piss on what came before in there roll out. And look what that got them. a fan base thay ended up divided and an edition that got cut short.

Haha!

Indeed; SR's editing and organization is notorious - and that's absolutely not a Dumpshock fashion or zeitgeist perspective.
Back when I first started SR, our GM had already played SR in the past and warned immediately of this issue.
In fact, the books (SR2 at the time) were littered with stickies and cross references.
This was back on dial-up and only slightly after the manual IP address entering days (you know; the "yellow pages of the internet" days), so definitely before Dumpshock.

My personal joke is that SR reads as if dictated by Jeff Goldblum trying to give a work-tour of a Nuclear Power Plant after a hang-over.
I used to call 3-ring-bindering SR core books (where you just slice up the book and rearrange it and cut parts out and paste them yourself where they all flow together more easily) "Jeffersoning", referring to the the Jefferson Bible - because by the time you get done doing that, you have sliced about as much out as Jefferson sliced out of the Bible in making his version of it.

Nostalgia has me enjoying all of this, but indeed - SR taught me how to organize material by being a great example of what doesn't work.
In fact, I use many of those lessons several times a year in documentation for training information at our company, so - in a way - thank you SR!

Also - a general philosophy in regards to information dispersion:
If a bunch of people continue over time to be confused by the presentation of the information, then there is a problem in the presentation of the information and not a problem with the receivers of the information.

I deal with this every day (working in a tech support department).
If we have a known issue, place it on the message prompt for folks calling in, and folks still are ringing through in spite of the message prompt, then regardless how straight-forward we may think that message is - it has to be changed to something different until we get something that folks can easily understand and follow.

The simplest test is what I call the Greenhorn-Time test (I use this with training material for employees).
That means you:
1: Take your material as it will be presented
2: Grab someone who does not normally interact with that material
3: Give them a specific problem to look for a solution for
4: Time how long it takes them to find that solution
5: Keep track of whether they found the correct solution in full (but don't tell them; just note it down)

If your end result is something like 10 minutes at 50-60% accuracy (for a book), then I'd say you need to remap the text for better clarity.

And yes, it is entirely possible to get this right. In writing technical documents and indexing them, I can guarantee that it is entirely possible to get folks to find a solution to a problem in manual texts within under 2 minutes with at least 90% accuracy without any familiarity with the material.
Heck; our Field Manuals in the Army were easier to thumb through than SR, and those manuals were far larger and for entire switch trucks with a massive amount of electronic gear to turn on and operate correctly...and if the government can do it...I have faith that SR could easily do so...but you need to actually "bug test" your book as a reference book.

Cheers,
Stumps

honestly this. You've articulated what I have put my finger on. It's what's been lost with the huge plot arcs With large npcs masterminding everything. Less about crminals vs corps, What drew me in decades ago

I think it is about scale. The character can retire to some quiet place in comfort, if he is so motivated.

But the thing about epic scale runs with world shaking plot arcs is that the runners can be part of that. But it isn't going to be likely that they are going to be remembered for the epic battle of household names.

If they survive, they may boast of it. Some people will say they don't believe it, because there's no proof (which can be precisely the point). Or they can low key it and few people really know what happened and the people in charge can spin whatever story they want to explain what happened.

It took me this long to notice it, but...

What the heck is a "dumphock"?




-k

They have just about always had huge mega-arcs going on, though. Nostalgia aside, I think that is one area that has actually improved a bit - they have mega-events, but focus more on getting the characters involved in the factions and double-dealing, rather than gushing over their overpowered author-Sue great dragons and immortal elves. Mostly.

I will point towards Privateer press and their popular IKRPG game. It's... uh. Well, it's comparable to SR in terms of contradictory rules, rules that might be rules or might be flavor text, and just terrible layout. It's actually got a very similar feel to it.

Granted, not excusing bad editing and layout, just saying it's not uncommon.

Agrees. I don't like that at all.


But I don't think it's the vast majority. I didn't like Heroes because of the inconsistency ofthe characters (1 season a baddy, one season a good guy...).

Why wouldn't any reference manual for game play, which will be used during game play, be crafted with expedience and clarity as the principle governing direction?

Or perhaps better phrased; why would anyone with the awareness of the use of the text, who is also involved in the creation of that text, want for less than this?

I've long wondered, aside from cost factors, why the texts aren't written in two forms: A) Standard text B) In-Game text?

(A) is employed to deliver the setting, mood, background, and at-length discussions of rules in a casually drifting format.
(B) is employed as a field-manual style of text which is efficiently designed to very cleanly list the rules and cross reference the rules, and is formatted for the easiest means of notation, memorization, and/or referencing.

For (B), think of a standard Bible with Book, Chapter, and Verse format and central columns which indicate cross references to other Books, Chapters, and Verses which a nearby listed verse in the current page relates to.
You could even use various colors of text to indicate various levels of information priority (just as the Bible uses red to indicate the priority importance of its divine characters speaking; i.e. more important information).

Take this image, and replace it with SR related words and subject material.
http://biblebuyingguide.com/wp-content/upl...ble-ESV-008.jpg

...would be nice.

Hey man, not everyone is Steve Jackson. That's a company who I have the greatest trust that their products will generally make sense and be fairly easy to read and understand, and fairly solid.

Hey Wothanoz,

Why wouldn't it be possible for SR to follow suit?


Also...I wonder if anyone has taken it upon themselves to rewrite any of the books before...

Cheers,
Stumps

Same thing as a PooPawn?

Funny, I almost jumped on you to explain how any old player should know what dumpshock is I guess you beatt me.

I'll admit that the board game I helped create and Kickstart had some problems with the rulebook. We didn't realize how painful it was to look up a specific question until after it had shipped. And it mostly had to do with the rules starting with the basics, and progressing through the turn order in detail. So the stuff that happened first got detailed first. The failing was that there were specific questions which we didn't know would be asked and when the mind goes "ok, what section of the game is that under, oh this portion" and you'd look there and the answer wouldn't be there, because it had been addressed earlier.

Hell, I was running a demo of the game at a convention, had one table ask me a clarifying question (for which I was able to supply the answer), but I was looking it up in the rule book just to prove that it was actually in the rule book and I couldn't find it. The rule book was only a dozen pages long and there was no index, so we'd mostly made sure that every rule was in it and that it was laid out without running onto an extra page (and thus cost more to produce, because the minimum number of pages you can add to a center-fold-stapled booklet is four). We'd tried to organize it as best we could, but we had no experience doing it before.

There were also weird one-off coincidences where Card A and Card B would combine to have a unexpected detrimental effect that we hadn't seen come up prior ("So if you draw one card as a zombie, but this card says you draw one less, how many do I draw?" Uh...first FAQ question! You draw one! Because, um, ah, the zombie says "your card draw is set to 1" that trumps the other modifiers, whew). That one made it into the rulebook (and got a little sidebar), but there've been a few others since release.

TL;DR:
Sometimes there's only so much you can do, but a company like CGL ought to know the right way to do it, and they consistently show that they do with Battletech.

I suppose there's nothing stopping them. However, SJgames has a very successful flagship(and it's not gurps. It's Munchkin) line that brings in the cash for it. And extremely high standards for contribution.

So......one other thats fairly bad in the industry. OK. Hell I'll even throw in Games Workshop for free.

Still not anywhere near what deathstrobe claimed as a industry wide problem. Not on the scale that was claimed across the board.

In the background. Looking over my shelf alot of it prior to 4th was much much more localized plots and such. seattle, denver, and areas around NA. Not really like it is now world wide. Globe spanning plots and places.

But it could also be the grognard in me too.

Yes, and for CGL it IS Shadowrun actually . . Compared to Battletech it makes much more money, if i remember correctly.
Battletech used to be subsidized by Shadowrun because Battletech, for the longest time, still wasn't self sufficient in terms of money.
And they still treat the leech that is Battletech better than the cash cow Shadowrun for some fucked up reason i can't quite understand.

I've read a few codices of theirs; and they're nowhere as bad.
Oh, and errata and clarifications don't take a year to arrive.

Because that's a ton of work with zero chance of compensation. If you're going to that much effort, it's honestly a better idea to just roll something of your own you can sell on kickstarter or drivethrurpg and at least maybe recoup some of your time.

hmm...
http://archerfansite.com/wp-content/upload...6/DrKrieger.jpg

Oh yeah? Ever play a Fantasy Flight board game or card game? Or how about the Mage Knight board game? Or how about the biggest RPG in the industry, where is the errata for D&D5?

I don't know what games you play, but it seems like everytime I pick up a new game there is a few dozen or more problems with the rules depending on how complex they are. And to be fair, Shadowrun is pretty damn complex.

Name me one rule system that is as complex as SR and has no errors, typos, contradictory rules, etc, or at the least fewer.

Which should be motivation to have even better clarity.

The most disorganized book I can think of is the Bible and we've managed to figure out a way to organize it.
I have faith that Shadowrun could be organized a tad better than its track record.

I'm not stating that the various teams involved over time have miserably failed, or are some manner of degraded in respect for the issue, but it would definitely be nice if it were one of the higher levels of priority for such a complicated game.

I think the issue may be even further pressed with the expectation of expedience persistent inherently in Western culture now in the advent of impulsive information grabbing and wiki-culture.
It's a bit hard to run a boolean search or hit ctrl+f on a piece of paper (which is why I get, or make, a PDF copy of every one of my books and use that 90% of the time...it's far easier to find things in SR texts this way).

Yes thats for Sure not only the Rules but the Game world too !


1 Hero Systems
2 Palladium Rifts ( the Rules are Wrong and unbalanced and lead to Powergaming Extreme, but they're not contradictory)

No System is perfect ,that for sure, but lots of systems are either better more clarified ( But I don't know that many systems as well as Shadowrun to judge/compare them in profound)

HokaHey
Medicineman