My two favorite Shadowrun books are Cybertechnology and Tir na nOg (how the hell do you pronounce that, anyway?!). Cybertechnology mostly because of Hatchetman's story, although the general shadowtalk is also fun; and Tir na nOg because it gives me a real sense of place rather than, "Look at all these plot hooks we're giving you!".

Is it just the fiction that makes the older books so much better? What are your thoughts, Dumpshock?

The older books were not as pretty - whatever SR5's other faults, they have great graphical design and full-color artwork. But the older books were written before the great exodus of talent, so they were written by people with a lot more respect and understanding of the game world and how the rules worked. The editing was much, much better at the production level - there was more coherency and consistency.

I think the other thing is that the older books had more of a wall between fluff and crunch. The fluff was ad copy and info-dumps set in the game world, with shadowtalk commenting on it. SR5, by contrast, can have important rules stuck in the shadowtalk, or "clever" asides in the middle of the rules. It is the latter which gives SR5 much of its infamous douchebro tone.

I think the internet's helped editing become more lax in the last few decades. Before FAQ's and Errata became so prevalent to spread information of corrections, one had to be damned sure everything was good in the book before it went to print as there was no going back afterwards.

Sadly I've not read much of the older books. To me some parts seem to be a bit more of a mess than recent books, but one of the things I do like about the older was that there felt to be a greater distinction between reality and the fictional setting of Shadowrun. Today that line is quite blurred.

The fundamental difference is that most of the "good old books" from the first decade of so were written by only one or two persons, about one topic and with an overall lower number of pages.

Cybertechnology for instance was written by Tom Dowd, with some contributions by Carl Sargent, and is 105 pages long. And they wrote about whatever ideas they had related to cybertechnology. Tir na nOg was written by Carl Sargent and Mark Gascoigne - trying to cover all of Ireland, its 21st century history, Dublin, Belfast, plus new rules, it reached 176 pages. Dowd, Sargent and Gascoigne, Nigel Findley, Steve Kenson, were writing entire books.

This is wholly different from how books have been written in the last two decades. The line developer decide to put out a book on a specific topic he has in mind and search a dozen or more of freelancers to each write a chapter. The freelancers that want to be in have to find ideas that fit into that mold (except for possibly the one or two among them who actually pitched the idea for the whole book to the line developer in the first place).

Actually, the Neo-Anarchist Guide to North America already was written that way back in 1990 (though few people mention it as their favorite "good old book"). Threats can be considered as another milestone, but that style of writing became prevalent with SR3, starting with FASA's Shadows of North America and Year of the Comet.

When there was one or two writers for 100-200 pages, they were putting as much ideas as they could to reach the wordcount. Now that it's 8, 10 or 12 writers for 200-300, it's about streamlining their ideas to fit into the wordcount.

Plus, as we've seen repeatedly with SR5, there's little communication between the multiple authors working on a sourcebook these days. Hence they may have completely different ideas how something works, and with the line developer clearly not giving a shit, books make it to print without anyone reading them and doing a high-level pass to get the mechanics and fluff in order.

I think having the people present who thought up the game is always a plus.
By now, there is a lot of chinese whispers when it comes to fluff. It's not so much that the fluff is getting it wrong altogether, but instead, the tone is wong... somehow sterile.

I attribute this to wikis, or to something similar. You can get all the info you want through a wiki, but the whole original emotional level of the information is lost, and its style with it.
Although I do not know for sure, I would bet money on new authors either using wikis, or internal fact sheets for their research, instead of reading the original books.
This way, all the information that you get between lines, and whatever does not fit into a fact sheet, is lost.


Another problem is the, by now, extensive lore, and the need to include as much as possible.
It leads to large chunks of texts reading like alibi paragraphs that HAVE to be there,
as opposed to something the author really wants to present to the reader,
because the author simply does not have enough space to present something original.


Last but not least:
There is very little mindfuckery when it comes to new stuff, it all seems fairly standard and boring, when compared to the paradigm shifts of Bioware and Cyber-Nercromancy in the Cybertechnology book.
Or when compared to insect spirits, or AIs, or other game-changers.

Woops, double post!

Because the group I was playing with were way more fun than whatever I do for fun these days.

Also, they took out most of the math, and I really like math.

Least sarcastic answer, I do enjoy reading the early books, but I don't enjoy playing with them. They feel like entirely splat books with cool ideas written because they're cool, even if they don't always make sense or are painfully unbalanced. I play SR3 because the math works nicely, and my adept, mage, and street sam can all BASICALLY compete equally. (From what I've seen, SR5 is even more balanced, so easier to play without one smart player dominating the game.)

I'll back you on that one. I like 4e for the crunch, but 3e and earlier for the fluff.