Currently we had a discussion about haters (especially about SR5) on Dumpshock and how it will cause the death of our beloved forum. Here is the statement of Deathstrobe that made me feel to comment:



@DeathStrobe: Hate is quite a strong word and I think you see it from a wrong perspective. I assume I can speak for all of us at DS, that it is quite the opposite. We love the game. We love it so much, that we are sometimes over-protective. The game was part of our youth as well as it a part of our life now. We saw it growing up, we supported its first steps and we spent a lot of money, so that it could become what it is now. We donated for the kickstarter-project, so that “Shadowrun Returns” could be realized, we kept the game and the corresponding discussions alive and supported fellow gamers with our experience - at times as the “official SR-forum” was not even existing.

The community is small, we are nerds, but we are proud of it and I think that what we have, the community, is more than a “customer-seller” relationship. Shadowrun is not only a product, for us it is a big part of our life (because it sucks up a lot of our free-time). The problem is, that if you are involved so tight into something, it becomes a personal matter. And because we care, it hurts if we see that something might go wrong. Like parents, that only try to protect their children and therefore sometimes become overprotective (and also too critical), we simply cannot stand beside, silently watching what is happening. We have the urge to do at least “something”, which is commenting. We feel that we have the right to tell the devs what we think, and unfortunately we don´t have a personality structure, that makes us bow or back back down, just because “officials” are around.

We are the ones, that keep them on the ground because we feel equal. We are the ones who tell the officials what they messed up with and what needs to be done. We are the hard but honest truth. We are Dumpshock. If they cannot stand the critic, they really shouldn´t take place in the official discussions, they shouldn´t host the forums, they shouldn´t be available at all. IMHO this is the price you have to pay, if you go public in a small but enthusiastic community. Yes we are hard discussion partners, but we have never been unfair. And if we have been so, we apologized for it. For us, such discussions are not “nerds vs. developers” for us it is “fans vs. fans that can really make a change”. We are on their side and the only thing we demand, is that our opinion is heard, that our opinion is taken serious.

I personally appreciate every Line-dev that has the balls to come here and if they feel offended, they might have the same fals impression you got. This was surely not intented.

Sorry for the long post. Here is a 9-gag-potato(e). *imagine potatoe-picture*

Positive post.

Though that would be the way I perceive DS:

"Hi, we are SR-lovers, but we are the grognards old guard.

SR-writer, if you wanna see every gamesystem failure, story developpement failure, editing failure, come on Dumpshock. That is what makes us believe that DS is a legitimate place for Shadowrun-lovers/writers.

You'll get the review of your work filled with hatred. We'll tell you that your the most idiotic guy in the world (you wrote War, didn't ya?), that you don't know geography at all (couldn't you google earth Bogota?), that you're an amateur (can't proofread?), that you're book is unplayable (even for reason like costs differe from 1 page to another), you kill SR slowly (SR5 books just can't be sold, with the shit it is), you're unable to keep the storyline (that retconning!), you don't know future (go back to cyberpunk or transhumanism, depending on who posts), you've got no clue on computers (matrix!), you could have kept the exceptionnal system we once had (SR2/3/4 depending on who you talk too), your story arcs are just the same since 20 years (rahhh bodysnatchers...), so actually, that you got no clue at all.

We'll be a bit nicer with the past (like for exemple, story flaws from the beginning -NAN for exemple-) but that's nostalgia.

We don't understand that you don't hear what we've got to say, because we're right (-sk8bcn's note: and that's probably true-), but we can't behave differently than negative old grognards and we don't understand why this has more weight in the balance rather than the quality of our ideas.

So now, come back and adapt!

Ähm....yeah. This is ALSO a way you can see it.

The change from 3rd edition to 4thwas not less butal on the forums. I continued to play 3rd edition but saw no reason to hangout in the hostile environment which Dumpshock was. There weren't much in the way of other SR communities to go to back then.

now we have the Shadowrun.com and Shadowrun Tabletop communities to compete. Even though I am among the oldest of grognards, I am tempted to join them more and here less.

Please name me one nerd-interest, were there is no edition wars....

Besides, even if there is hate (and i know, i am one of them), you do not have to participate. If you have proper questions, you get the most competent aswers on DS. If you ask for opinons, and whine afterwards that no one shared your side of view, you should not go to the Internet.

Edit:...and if you gome to DS as a Line Developer // official and want the people celebrate you for what you are, you are indeed in the wrong place. ^^

This is sure! I've seldom saw so much knowledge about a game.

That's DS very strong point.

But I also see why newcommers wouldn't come here. They go were the news are the hottest and that's were the devs go. And devs don't go here 'cause they get bullied.


The only freelancer I see here are those whom DS has a very positive opinion about (Critias, Bull, Wakanashi are those I think about).


I guess Ancient History departure dosn't help too.

I don't think I've ever participated in an acrimonious rules related argument here. Reading them from the sidelines they usually make me laugh. If people were like me they'd just think they were funny.

The bottom line is that some of the guys on DS have thought about the rules for years, including very specific details about statistical outcomes, and know them better than someone who might have been contracted within relatively recent history to work on the game.

So naturally they flip when the official guy hasn't thought of everything they have.

I think these things go together. Here you have people who really know the rules, but because they know and care, they're going to flip if something official falls short for them in some way.

If I were a dev I'd come here anonymously to get the best advice on rules and statistics first before writing anything. I guess it's like going to see Yoda or something.

I started out really, really, really, really excited about SR5.

I came around Dumpshock more than I had in six months. I browsed the Shadowrun official website, which I'd never bothered to do before. I read the sneak-peek story snippets, and I riddled my way through the puzzles that gave access to new excerpts. I got the preview PDFs and was like, "Some problems here and there, but they're previews - the problems will get fixed, and aside from those, this looks really promising!" and I was still really excited. I lost sleep thinking about the new edition, speculating, geeking out.

Then the actual release date came around. I borrowed money to be able to buy the PDF without having to wait for my next paycheck to come in. I got a hold of the file and I tore into the book, and was still excited. "There are a lot of errors and omissions, but those will get fixed! This is a good first step! I can't wait to play! My SR group can't wait to play!"

Then as I dug deeper and deeper, I kept finding more problems. "Wait... that CAN'T be the end of the rules for this subject! They leave so much unexplained! Did I miss a section elsewhere in the book that explains this?" Entire game systems simply didn't make sense or simply were incomplete to the point of barely being functional for the most basic of uses, and certainly not functional for anything remotely complicated. New changes and additions didn't make sense, broke suspension of disbelief, and seemed forced and unnecessary. Rules contradicted each other. "Ehh, they'll fix these! Give them some time to recover from the launch! They'll correct things in a few months."

Fixes never came. Corrections never came. And the more time I spent waiting for them, the more time I had to work around them to play the game, the more frustrated I felt. I started out with great expectations, but ended up feeling like I had wasted my money. The complaints I had of the system went unheard, uncommented on, unfixed - even now, much, much later.

None of that feeling of disappointment comes from Dumpshock.

I and many others on Dumpshock started out quite fervently optimistic. It is the flaws of the game system that turned me and those like me to bitter disappointment. It is the failure of CGL to respect their customers, by putting out badly made material with glaring, obvious flaws and then refusing to fix those flaws years down the line. They made a few token comments well after the fact, saying they were going to work on improving the quality of their materials and how they get produced, but it was far too little, far too late.

~Umi

People complain about Dumpshock being full of stubborn, grumpy folks. Well, in a sense it is. But that's missing the point and the nature of the community.

We're not the newbie boards here to attract fresh customers for CGL - that's not our job, and if it were, we'd expect to be paid for it. No, we're a community of dedicated, knowledgeable, fiercely involved regulars. We come here to hash out the nitty gritty, and we don't sugar coat things. If something is a turd, we call it a turd, without stopping to polish it first. We're not shills, we're not a PR team, we're not marketers. We're the people who play the damn game so much we know it better than many of the Freelancers do. We're going to assess the system critically, from the standpoint of hardcore players who take the time to deeply analyze and pore through the rules and continously push the envelope. Because that's just who we are. That's just what we do.

If you value deep analysis, this is the place for you. If you're more interested in cheerleading for CGL and glossing over the flaws and imperfections of the system, you're in the wrong place.

~Umi

Why Dumphock is not a good place for Developers? That's an easy one.
Because dumpshock regulars are not the target audience. There's a whole lot of complaining, but not nearly enough buying books going on here. You say the dumpshocked are knowledgeable, and that could be true - but who the hell cares? That doesn't sell books, nor improve them in the eyes of the target audience. So yeah, the new fluff contradicts some obscure book from the previous edition that is long out of print, big fragging deal, no one who matters will notice. Professionalism is about being paid for your work, not about maintaining any standards or anything.


Draft beer sampling.

I beg to differ... Seen many a preference war over draft beers.

A-ha! Not edition wars, though!

Really? Can you cite the dictionary that defines professionalism like that? A common definition of professionalism is something like this: "the skill, good judgment, and polite behavior that is expected from a person who is trained to do a job well".

The word you want is mercenary. Mercenary: "one that serves merely for wages".

If you want to argue that the current CGL crowd are mercenaries, solely interested in the paycheck, then I don't think you'll get a lot of arguments here, but is that really the best defense you can come up with?

In my experience, RPG freelancers (including the CGL crowd) don't get paid enough for their work to cover the sandwiches they eat while working. "Well paid" in the industry generally comes out to $5/hr. Not sure how applicable 'mercenary' is there.

People write for Shadowrun because they enjoy writing and they enjoy Shadowrun. That's all. What does Dumpshock offer? A tremendous braintrust of knowledge and experience across all different fields, a LOT of math background, and a lot of honest, critical eyes for reviewing. What's the cost? Basically a beaker of acid poured directly into the brain. Forever. I can't speak for other writers, but when *I* write, I like the criticism. It's how you get better. And after I put something out there, while I try not to, I still loiter around the major news sources to see what the feedback is. And BEFORE I write, I spend a few days collecting fan information, to see what problems have already been detected. At the same time, I try not to post (unless a direct question has been asked) because that will influence the results. I also tend to read the opinions of people who share my view of the game. I don't read up on my work at fantasy boards or 4chan, because I don't want to incorporate their vision.

I only do this for a certain amount of time. After a period, I'm on the next project. And worse, at dumpshock particularly, there's sort of a 'we never forget!' vibe to it. So if I wrote something bad, I'd probably hear about it once or twice a month for the rest of my dumpshock experience, which makes me less inclined to hang around. There's certainly no reason for me to become especially involved in the community (since I can read everyone's responses without signing in).

This is just for me personally though. If someone felt the hurt of Dumpshock outweighed the benefit, I'd tell them not to visit. You're not going to be a good writer if you're too upset to write, or if you're afraid of upsetting a single fan. You're always going to be upsetting someone; that's the nature of doing anything for mass consumption. At some point you need to say 'screw it'.

Why are there as few freelancers as there are here? I don't know. I've been hanging out with some other games (sorry Shadowrun) and I'm a little surprised how infrequently those freelancers are involved with their forums as well. Or maybe it is a conscious decision that we are no longer the target audience. I don't know.

What do you think we get paid, man?

Because, seriously, this is the wrongest thing -- and honestly the most insulting -- that I've ever seen posted here.

I seem to remember a big kerfuffle some years back about freelancers not being paid

Beg to differ... Same Brew with different process, timings, mellowing, etc... Sounds like an "Edition" to me.
Look at the "Edition" Wars for Coke and Pepsi... Sheesh. *shakes Head*

I would be happy getting paid "Sandwich Money", but sadly, my writing is probably not even up to that standard (I tend to incorporate from way too many sources when I write). But to be honest, I write to write, and I like to think my campaign documents are not too shabby, even if I pull from everything.... The money is likely secondary, unless you do it for a living. And to my knowledge, most Shadowrun Freelancers do not write for a living. That is a hard row to how.

I do appreciate your efforts (good or bad), though, Critias, because they make me think.

See I would not see Coke vs Pepsi as an 'edition'' war.... that is like comparing SR and CP2020, similar but not editions.


Now classic Coke vs New Coke would be an edition war, but then someone would have had to like New Coke which went away anyway.

Which is what I was talking about, Sendaz... I said Coke AND Pepsi, not Coke vs. Pepsi.

Original Coke, New Coke, Interim Coke... Blah Blah Blah...
Pepsi does the same thing. Just decide already. *sheesh*

I have seen beers do the same thing. Total Edition Wars.

That's great! Because I have literally sworn off ever buying another product from CGL ever again. They suckered me with SR5, they won't sucker me in the future. They have lost a customer for life.

If they want to actively alienate the hardcore players because they write that section of the community off as expendible, so be it. But that sort of obvious bad faith tends to promote a bad reputation which works against you in the long run. Although I suppose if they cared about their reputation, that whole embezzling thing wouldn't have happened...

~Umi

If I had a nickle for every person that ever told me that about Games workshop, well, you know...
And they're still in buisness.

I have not given them a dime in something like 20 years, so they did not stay open on my dime.

Part of the reason they persist is that they make most of their money on non-SR products. By all accounts, their Battletech stuff is actually decent quality, which is really all you need with as passionate a fanbase as that universe has.

~Umi

5th ed is the only SR edition that is incomplete in my library. I have bought every single book published, up to the 5th ed main book.
I play, and I buy books. I play with a group of people who play and buy books.
CGL can act like the old guard doesn't buy, but that's due to bad product, not lack of desire to give some one our money for large books.
I'm just buying them from Evil Hat now.

I always come check Dumpshock when one of my books is released, to come see what the worse flaws with my product are. I use the main forums and reddit to see what 99% of fans think, then I check Dumpshock so I know what the worse failings are so I'm not surprised by them later and also so I learn not to do those mistakes again. So, there.

I'm not the guy who said you only do it for the money. That was the guy defending the state of the current game, arguing that quality of the freelancer's and line editor's work didn't matter as long as their pay check cleared. At least that was what he seemed to be saying by defining "professionalism" as being paid.

I feel bad for the freelancers.

They get fleeced from the get go. Then their work gets chopped up and used for whatever, without any real feedback or understanding on the part of the editors. Then players are like, "Wow, this supplemental book written by X is pretty bad", because CGL printed the first draft and just ignored the freelancer's revisions, or slap-dashedly "edited" a working set of rules or a solid story into a total mess, or in some other way screwed up otherwise decent work.

So we're left with the writers and artists being asked to produce work without solid direction or support, on a deadline, for crap pay, which gets edited into oblivion, which will never have any of its inevitable errors fixed even when those fixes are handed to the people in charge on a silver platter, and for which the writers and artists take most of the blame for the resulting mess because editors aren't anywhere near as visible.

Everyone loses, because the people at the top are incompetant. And when profits drop as a result they simply pay the freelancers even less than before and cut even more corners in production. The people who make the mistakes don't pay any consequences - they just shovel them onto whoever is beneath them.

~Umi

Yeah, they really need editors who can look at the big picture, so you don't have things getting double-nerfed, or have glaring omissions and contradictions. They also need a keener eye to spot glaringly stupid bullshit that keeps popping up - part of it may be people writing without a clear understanding of how the game and the game world work, but an editor's job is to catch these things.

Example - in Street Grimoire, page 41, where they completely mess up why spirits are paired with spell categories; it is because spirits can only give bonuses to spells in that category. It does NOT mean that having an earth elemental as a healing spirit means you can only have it do things related to healing!! Trying to tie spirit services to spell categories doesn't work - they are two completely different things. And it probably happened because the writer had no real understanding of that rule, and an editor didn't catch it.

I'm comfortable with the idea that a game system has passed me on. Its like D&D, I was collecting stuff from it for like 30 years of my life. Partially as my real life responsibilities took hold my time to invest in games became less, and my connection with them faded. Same goes with SR, heck, I've still got my 1st edition stuff. DNA/DOA is like 5 feet away from me atop one of my drawers. Again I kept up through around middle-4e.

I'm disappointed I'm not really representative of the target audience anymore, and as much as I'd like to feel there's some 'deserving' of reciprocity or something, I also realize that's unrealistic. And while I recognize names from when I first started posting here, I also accept that much like me, not all of us stick around. I only really decided to look back in on SR5 as my email was reminding me about Shadowrun Chronicles which I had kickstarter donated back when it opened up.

Eh, its the cycle of life. We're not going to be able to connect our perspective with newcomers, and they'll just get frustrated that we don't agree with them. Heh, I see it in grad school, the fresh from undergrad that think they know the world and can't understand us dinosaurs, and us dinosaurs with tacit and experiential knowledge going "You need to look at the big picture..." we're never going to connect until they get 'to be our age' and have to deal with the youngin generation themselves.

Well, SR 5 seems to be selling well enough. And core books are the cash cows of any system, no matter how well XTRO:Forklifts may be written

Honestly, I don´t think that this is, what Fatum meant (at least i hope). We have to differ between the phrasing and the intention of what was said. I understood it as "dumsphock doesn´t host as many users as the official forum. We are talking about a small group of players and the rules were made for everyone". Did i get that right?

Honestly, I think it's because the official forums are filled with yes-men, while Dumpshock is willing to provide honest (if overly blunt) critiques.

Yes, I think CGL treats the Shadowrun freelancers like crap. And the editorial staff seems content to let things lie. But the writers have to share some blame, too. We've seen that a great deal of the unproofed writing that CGL receives is loaded with errors-- typos, spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and so on. And while it's the proofreader's job to fix that, they're supposed to be a last check, not a first line of correction. The writer is supposed to correct their own work, and then the proofreaders are supposed to correct anything they miss-- because let's face it, it's rare to catch all your own mistakes.

That said... as a professional writer, I'd be downright embarrassed to turn in work with as many errors as we see in the published work. It'd make me look like an illiterate oaf. I've seen fewer mistakes per page when correcting high school essays! And to be fair, I'd hate to deal with that level of criticism of my own work. Heck, dealing with criticism as a writer is a whole art unto itself, so I would feel more welcome among a more forgiving audience.

But at the same time... if I want to improve my work, I take the time to listen to the harshest critics. "You do great work, man!" is not a helpful way to improve my art. "You suck, and here's why" has always been more helpful, at least when I'm willing to hear it.

As a note, the thread on the official forums requesting rules clarification just stopped being updated ~6 months ago without explanation. There's 30 pages of requests in there without answers.

Well that's not good. I'll try and poke a head in there next week and see if I can drop some answers.

I've been on hiatus since November, only getting back in the mix April 1st, and am currently working on A Future Product.

But when it comes to Dumpshock, I was here before Freelancing, I'm here while Freelancing, and I'll be here after Jason gets tired of me and cuts me loose. It's all good! And, yeah, I actually *like* swinging through here to see if I screwed something up and, if so, where/how. It's how I get better at writing, and, some day, I want to make a living at this. (And, believe me, we don't get paid enough to do this for a living. My pay is basicly slipped into my local game store and some Kickstarters. If anyone says we do this for MONEY, they're confused. We do it for love, with a lil' sidecash for hobbies.)

Some people take things more personal than others, some have a "Haters gonna hate" swagger, and most are somewhere in between.

Mind you, I used my RL nephew, who I adore, in a story in A Different Upcoming Product, and killed him off on the page. When he's older, I'll have to show it to him and be like, "Look! You're famous! Kinda. Sorta. Vaguely. And, er... dead. But hey! Name in book!" It was about the most literal "You have to be willing to kill your babies" moment for me yet.

When that product comes out, I'll be sneaking around, reading stuff for a week or so before I'll actually speak up, but... I'll be reading all the same. Yes, even those of you who HATE it. All I ask is that you don't just stomp around and yell, but that you point things out and explain *why* they don't work. Constructive criticism.

(Tho, really, you're gonna have to let War -go-. It's been years, it was the transition book, and some of the memes about it don't actually exist. (And, no, I didn't work on that one, so it isn't personal) ... pick on the SR5 core book, pick on Run n Gun, but let War die already, okay? Love you!)

Just as soon as we get a book we can't find 0-day errata points on, or someone prints new material that retcons the dumbest of it.

Seriously, though, the way to get people to stop complaining about error-filled and badly written works is to publish something good. We'd all love to see it, and would be very happy for it.

As soon as all people responsible for the Auschwitz Adventure Park are gone we can talk about letting it go.

SYL

That. These. Words. Exist. Is very bothersome. Eeesh. There's a reason I don't buy many of the secondary books for SR. The stuff I really need rules for(Magic, Decking, Rigging, Gear, Guns, etc) I will cash out for. But... man, I'm not even sure I know the world anymore.

Honestly, I don't use anything past year of the comet(or even that supplement). I'm perpetually stuck in the 2060s, I guess. That's what I liked, and things just... got... weird after that.

I wouldn't mind another Hawaii adventure I do find it delicious that even in a crazy 6th world, Hawaii has its shit together better than we currently do. Even with explosions and dragons

It's one of a couple things that's gotten twisted around a bit and blown out of proportion. It's like a game of telephone or some Urban Legend, where every retelling magnifies and adds to it.

It's slightly less than half a page long. Two thirds of that (4 paragraphs) describes the area, which is a twisted, blighted place magically scarred by the nazi horrors that took place there in WWII filled with twisted, angry spirits. The last two paragraphs describes a magical, effectively cursed artifact that can be found there (This was I think supposed to be a loose tie-in to the Artifact/Magical stuff we were doing at the time), a rusty old scalpel used by a nazi surgeon to experiment on people with, and how someone might hire a team of runners to risk their lives against the spirits to recover it.

This has somehow gotten twisted in the telling into this full blown adventure where runners heroically slaughter the noble ghosts of the Jews for awesome Nazi Magic Loots!

Next up, ask them about how a single line of Shadowtalk in a vehicle PDF release discussing how refugees were using a minisub to escape war-torn Bogota via the Bogota river, and somehow it got blown into this who thing about how CGL magcially decided that Bogota borders the ocean. That's a fun rant too.

Now, to be fair, the War! article does refer to the spirits of ghosts, which is not a choice I'd have used (What "ghosts" are, exactly, in Shadowrun has been a subject of discussion going back to first edition, but ultimately it always translates into "Spirits imprinted by their surrounding and the emotions linked those surrounding", which begs the question of exactly what Spirits are, but that ends up effectively a theological debate that Shadowrun isn't answering anytime soon). It's also in general not a particularly good section. But... Again, it's been overblown and grows in the telling.

I find it amusing.

Trivializing a trivialization of mass murder. I have no words.

Maybe it's just a matter of being from Germany, where this is a touchy subject, but with "I find it amusing", you just lost a lot of respect I previously had for you.

I suspect that it may be a German thing, and I can understand that. And don't get me wrong, I don't find the original subject amusing at all.

But we're talking a fictionalized game, with ghosts/spirits/magic, where the player characters are, by and large, mass murdering terrorists.

Second, nothing in the write up ever even attempts to apologize, whitewash, or in any way say "Hey, what the Nazi's did was 'ok'." In fact, it says the exact opposite. It says taht what they did was so terrifying, so horrible that it scarred the vary landscape for the next 130 years to the point where magic and astral space itself is completely fragged up.

Even the scalpel, the magic McGuffin device taht's mentioned, it's essentially a cursed magical item. It's not like "Oh hey, trael here and get this awesome Holy Avenger +5". It's a magic weapon that imposes penalties on you for using it, because it induces horrific flashbacks to the terrible things done with it.

And at the end of the day, it's entirely keeping within the scope of the Shadowrun world to say "Hey, some unscrupulous bastard may try to hire someone to get in there and steal this for them." It's not presented as a trophy to be won, but as a job to do, a dirty one. Much like the lying, murdering, mass destruction, kidnapping,a nd all the othe rterrible things most Shadowrunners do on a daily basis.

And it's also just an adventure seed. Take that, flip it around. You get hired to get in there and destroy the horrible object before someone else can get it. Now it's a hooder adventure.

Nothing I said, and nothing in the original write up condones anything that happened at Auschwitz. And what is presented are not innocent, happy Jewish spirits... They're twisted, terrible spirits of vengeance created from the echoes of the fear and terror and evil committed at that place.

What I find amusing is simply the fact that a couple people were so hurt and so angry at CGL over the events that happened a few years ago that they have taken every opportunity to trash anything that gets worked on. And they take something minor and blow it out of proportion. And then it gets parroted, and added onto. It's a bad game of telephone. I'd almost be willing to bet that half the people who repeat this stuff actually believe that the book really does talk about Shadowrunners murdering Jewish ghosts for Magical Nazi Loot and that we really did write in about the docks of Bogota at the beaches of the whatever ocean, either because they've simply never read the section in question and are just repeating what they've heard, or they simply no longer remember what it says because they've said something else so often they believe that now instead.

I'll be honest. War is a terrible book. I didn't like it when it was in playtesting. I didn't like it when it was released. I think the Auschwitz section should have likely been left on the cutting room floor, because I generally believe on erring on the side of caution. But that doesn't change the fact that the section really isn't all that objectionable, and that it's been over-inflated by years of constant badmouthing. And if you knew the politics and beliefs of the author of that section, you would understand that never in a million years was there ever an ounce of disrespect intended.

Anyway, I'm out. I'd been avoiding this thread anyway because seriously, when a thread basically says "Hey, we hate you, asshole, and you shouldn't be posting here" right in the thread title, that's a pretty big flashing neon sign that says "this will be unpleasant and you have better things to do with your time." I misclicked, and then only read because Wothanoz post and he's someone i know from way back and know he's just recently come back to the boards. My mistake. And I knew I shouldn't have posted, because it was just asking to be jumped on. But I did and I did. I've said my piece now, and I have no intention of getting dragged into a flamey argument. It's been hashed out before, and people will believe what they believe.

Bull

*snip reply*

I hoped it was just a lapse or maybe oversensitivity on my part. I hould have listened to my conscience more. I have no polite words for you, or anybody currently working on this game any more.

Please don't try to rationalize further. I cringed in the first two lines. There's a reason why the parts in question are removed from the German Fronteinsatz, not the least of which that we have laws against this kind of speech.

You find it amusing that people get angry about a highly volatile subject, and that's your right. But it doesn't make it remotely understandable for people who are actually offended by that thing.

Personally, I've not even been in. I've not read the thread and just mis-clicked and landed on your posting. I also see no further need for discussion on that subject.

For whatever's its worth Bull, we do appreciate you chiming in on this despite knowing what it will bring on.

Well, that escalated quickly.

May I ask if Jason Hardy still think that the Ausschwitz Adventure Park was a good idea? Is he still amused by the thought that brave Runners venture deep into the Auschwitz Dungeon to hunt for necromantic artifacts, to sell them for some hefty gold reward? I mean ¥ reward? Because I still remember a discussion on the official SR4 forums where the question was raised if that really was the intention and the answer was a "Yeah, it sounds cool, right" from one of the (semi)officials.





But of course I am quite sure that I completely misunderstood everything. In that case I would be terrible sorry of course.



Ah, yes, how often did we hear that now from freelancers in the last 3 years?

SYL

Let's have a look at the original text, shall we?



What Bull describes is how things could have been done, but as written it's raiding the tomb of horrors under a magic dome for necromantic treasures. From terminology to spirit rules, the whole section does not mesh with SR. And since those stupid "real ghost" the players encounter happen to be in Auschwitz, there are indeed unfortunate connotations... Under the heading "Arbeit macht frei", that certainly helped...

Perhaps Bull didn´t read the final version as well. Amusing, isn´t it?

SYL