http://www.shadowruntabletop.com/2019/01/s...s-geeUiROsWiAMI

So CGL posted their exciting news about what they're doing for SR30, ready to be overwhelmed?

It's a T-shirt.

Oh, and a pop-culture PDF and Chicago book for Anarchy.

I'm pretty sure this game is done, from a professional development angle.

Depressingly, you may be right.

A T-shirt with a logo that looks like it's for a really sleazy strip club

So it's not only me.
I mean, this has got to be the laziest anniversary ever. "Let's announce two products and slap a hastily cobbled together logo on a piece of apparel, without any thought of how it looks. Neon is cyberpunk, right? Make a neon XXX!"

It's the equivalent of an actual 30 year old celebrating his birthday alone, getting wasted in and thrown out of that strip club.

It's not a real 30th birthday anyways because it cannot be 10 years since SR4A came out. I know this because I was already an adult back then, so it can't be that long ago.

And that T-Shirt picture really looks like the logo of a strip club... Poor, poor Shadowrun

I just noticed they're actually using that t-shirt art on the main website.

Someone actually thinks that is a good design.

Does that really surprise you?

Read the following in an announcer's voice (from Honest Trailers):

Brought to you by the "Creative" Geniuses that brought you Fifth Edition Shadowrun, this t-shirt will show everyone your love for Shadowrun... or highlight how pathetic Catalyst Games has become with trying to milk a beloved franchise for every penny it can!

It's a pink "XXX" made to look like a neon sign. Apart from some uncontacted peoples, I don't believe you will find a single person who prelapsarian enough to not associate that with some kind of sex work.

Well.... It originally published in 1989 I believe... so yes, 30 years.
And yes, times flies faster the older you get

So, they do talk about a year-long celebration, yes? I realize how fashionable it is to dump on CGL around here, but people do realize that we're only three weeks into 2019 right? There is definitely a possibility of more stuff to come.

You're right of course. From here on out it can only get better
It will be like ... dare I say it ... A year of Shadowrun.

We wouldn't be dumping on them if they didn't just come up with the DUMBEST idea for a shirt.

Aw, you got there before me. Nice work.

Their last 'year long celebration' got two of the five products announced actually produced that year, and a couple have since been memory holed. Sprawl Gangers and Hostile Takeover were vaporware at best. Shadowrun Online turned out to be a wacky top-down 3rd person turn based MMO that released two years late in an Alpha state and stopped development before finishing the first campaign because the developers ran out of money. Bonus there, the whole nanoplague in SR5 was meant to be the big tie-in for SR:O, and was quietly written out once it was clear that the game was a corpse.

SR Returns was the only real unvarnished success to come out of that whole thing, and it was developed with precisely zero input from CGL.

That's only the perception of time.

Bye
Thanee

Wasn't Shadowrun: Crossfire also part of that? That game has been pretty well-received.

Bye
Thanee

It also didn't release until 2 years later in 2015.


Also, I figured out what that shirt reminds me of. Times Square circa late 70's early 80's, when it was still all peep shows and porn theaters. That's the kind of place it would fit in.

For what it is worth, this week they did put out the pdf releases of Chicago Chaos and No Future (and believe it or not, the titles are not meant to be observations on the editing and marketing of ShadowRun)

Sure, but if the big splashy announcement already is such a fuckup, that does not bode too well for anything that will follow....


Anyway, I did a quick skip through the gear section just now, the first thing I noticed was a table of prices for various hat types. You definitely can't accuse CGL of breaking the SR tradition of overly detailed gear listings

There is also an entry for a liter of milk (3 ), which tells us that future CS/Pepper Spray can be rinsed off with milk. Don't try this IRL, the white stuff actually is antacid solution (also called LAW, liquid antacid + water).

Considering that various activist sites do indeed suggest washing out pepper spray with milk right now I'm not surprised to hear that this turns up in an SR sourcebook as well. Activists (and anarchists) do not necessarily get everything right either. So in this case "bad research" and "bad editing" just reflects the reality of present day life.



There are no immediate dangers when trying to use milk for flushing out capsaicin. It's not better or worse than any other of the typically used treatments. The only real concern could be that non ultra-pasteurized milk isn't that sterile so trying to use it on pepper sprayed eyes might cause unwanted infections ... but then again tap water isn't totally sterile either.

Good point...it would be be cool if the corrected version had a poster with biotech (or protest) experience drop in and give correct solution (tehehe).

PS: BTW, weaponized monofilament yo-yos are a cool idea

Speaking of this, I checked back in on SR:Chronicles and they've decided to kill it for good.

SRO/Chronicles/Boston Lockdown sadly turned out to be slightly overambitious...

Much like the minis game they announced without actually having production in progress, ne?

Well, with Cliffhanger my purely subjective feeling was that they really put their hearts into it, but were hopelessly out of their depth...with CGL it's more that they [the company, that is, not the freelancers] just don't care a lot.

Oh man...this is terribly depressing.

After burning out from running SR for 3 1/2 strait years I finally decide to come back to the game...pick up 5e and it looks like the game is going to die...

Well at least I should be able to pick up the sourcebooks for cheap when they cancel the game...

Why would you say that? No one has announced that CGL WON'T do any more to commemorate Shadowrun, AFAIK, and CGL keeps publishing stuff for SR5 at a decent pace.

And as long as both fans keep playing, they'll keep SR5 alive.

Oh by no means am I shelving my campaign...I am totally wanting to run the game again...It's just now I have to question what I really want to buy vs what I should probably get...in addition it seems as though everytime I revamp my interest in a game it goes the way of the dodo...which means that the community suffers and support for the game dwindles...

Noone has announced CGL isn't going to give me a pony either, but I'm pretty positive that the odds of that happening are shall we say exceedingly slim.

Shadowrun has a stable playerbase and is seemingly still selling well. If the publisher not caring about quality meant something was going to die, most popular entertainment would have died out long ago

*dusts off his jacket and jeans, steps back in after a four-or-so year break*
Now what I want to know is... do I buy all the 5e books next week, since I've a new person who wants to get into Shadowrun, or do I wait a few months for a 30th Anniversary or 6th Edition? Because I really want to know before I drop $400 on SR5.

I would wait. CGL MIGHT give us a version that isn't pants-on-the-head retarded.

5th edition is mostly 4th edition with some added rules (limits, mostly) and nerfs. If a new person wants to get into SR, you might start with SR4. It's easier to teach (as long as you ignore Unwired), and if you're considering waiting to see if a possible new edition is better or not, you might as well go cheap and easy.

Just use your 3rd edition stuff

Can confirm, my SR3 stuff still works.

Might be an idea - but don't have any 3e books. Or 4e books. Only Anarchy.

To the topic title: they just announced some stuff https://store.catalystgamelabs.com/ Don't worry, you don't need any of it (although some of it looks nice), but at least we got the second announcement in the 'year long celebration.'

@Tashiro: do you have any of the 5th edition books? Or when you say 'just Anarchy' it is literally the only SR universe rules you have?

Sold them near the beginning of the run - the initial magic book felt incomplete. So, trying to decide, do I pick up the line again, or wait? And yeah, Anarchy's the only rulebook I have.

I dunno. Have there even been rumors of a new edition?
I would not wait if there are not serious rumors at least.

You really cannot complain about having the choice between at least three complete editions though.

But why would you buy the entirety of ANY edition for playing?
I can understand if you are collecting, but if you are playing, you can buy one at a time.

And for playing you really can choose between 3, 4 or 5.
Start with the core book, and then buy whatever you need.

Third and Fourth Edition pdfs are on DriveThruRPG, and fifth Edition books are available used and new anywhere.

In the end, you gotta think about what advantages and disadvantages a new edition has on average.
1. The books are easy to get.
2. The quality is usually bad in the first printing.
3. The subsystem books only become available as the years progress.
4. They might change something you like, or the entire system/lore.
5. The rules fluctuate unpredictably in quality, and in clarity.

I'd say: Pick the ruleset and settingflavor you prefer, and stick with any of the old editions!

yup. the stuff with their 30 year logo still looks like it's the logo for a porn shop (and doesn't make me think of shadowrun at all), the dice look unusually squared off and don't have any particular features that make me think they'd be handy for playing shadowrun in particular (and also don't make me think of shadowrun), and the limited edition book covers look absolutely horrid to me (seriously, the email they sent me to advertise it looks like one of them has a lime green pleather cover where the only image is some weird vertical writing), but i can't say it isn't new.

Those dice are also $30 for 6, and an additional $30 if you want the aluminum case.





There is complete radio silence on this at the moment from CGL, and they can't even be bothered to actually advertise stuff they -have- released, so I'm not holding out any hopes. They thought they were clever and did a Reddit AMA with someone claiming to be the new 6e lead for April Fools, which got enough negative reactions that Hardy popped in to reassure people it was bulldrek. Totally on brand for CGL's talented way of burning audience goodwill.

Not as far as I'm aware.



But why would you still play 2nd?



Yeah, Core, cyberware, and magic. Maybe guns and gadgets or rigger.



I'm guessing they were testing interest in a new edition. It could have backfired hilariously if enough people were excited about replacing both 5th edition and Hardy.

They were.

So the guy doing the 'ama' started listing off what commonly hated systems he was cribbing for parts.

On Drivethrurpg you can get a stack of 3rd edition PDFs (Core, Man and Machine, Magic in the Shadows, Cannon Companion, Critters and Rigger 3) for about the same as Core + Magic / Cyber supplement PDF

Maybe it's Fancy Derek's joint?


The green one is Court of Shadows. Green to differentiate it from the other books, with some runes (or rune-ish scribbles). IMO the artwork on Chrome Flesh and Data Trails is quite nice. Nothing that would make me want to go out and buy them, but nice nevertheless.

well i suppose "visible from orbit" is one way to distinguish it, i suppose.

the art isn't terrible on the other ones. but i can't say i've ever been sitting around feeling like what i really need is for my shadowrun books to have an embossed image on a red pleather cover.