Latest book is up!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/342775...w4-gVrK06u_CmkY

Ten organizations for your campaign, showcasing what they're up to and how you can combat, or work with, each one.

I don't know if I'll go for this one. I am immediately turned off by them calling it a "Runner Resource" book when it's a threats/fluff book for GMs. From what I've heard, it doesn't have any options for runners, but I could have heard wrong. I like some of the authors listed in the credits, but I don't know if I'll go for a 160 page PDF of a fluff book for $20. Streetpedia was fine because the majority of it was text, but I don't know if that's the case for this one.

Does anyone know if there are any plans by CGL to make a "Run Faster" type book for 6e? Firing Squad addressed a few of the combat issues folks had, but there are still issues with the game mechanics. I've played 6e since the errata and Firing Squad came out, and although the rules are better than they were before, my overall opinion of 6e has gone down after playing it a few times.

Is it as much of a dumpster fire as people are saying that it is? I mean the mechanics sounded REALLY janky to me. I mean even worse than 5th edition wireless bonuses.

Probably the most meta title ever

It's never as bad as people say it is, but it was terrible at release and there are still problems with the mechanics. The 6e LC has a lot of good GMs who make reasonable calls about rules (Common sense > RAW/RAI). I wouldn't recommend buying it until you try it, but if you already have an edition you enjoy it's better to stick with that. I find edge mechanics interesting, but I understand they could be too abstract or "gamey" for folks.

Make no mistake, though- there is still a cacophony of errors in the CRB that I don't think are going to be addressed. From what it seems on the official forums, a lot of the vocal (current) errata team members don't seem to think problems are problems unless they have run into them, and have a bit of an expert blind spot IMO. Obviously the loudest ones don't represent all the errata team, but I doubt we'll be seeing another drop.

I don't think a "run faster" equivalent is coming in 2021. They still have Street Wyrd and Rigger 6 on the schedule, so there's nothing about a book that may fix issues.

In my mind, a good GM is more important than a good rules system every day of the week. If you already have the first, then stick with what you're doing.

I mean, a good GM *plus* good rules is better than just a good GM.

also, in defence of the errata team...

1) pretty sure they're not paid anything for their efforts.
2) pretty sure they've submitted far more stuff than has been corrected.
3) I'd say only one of them is particularly vocal at all that I can think of, and it seems odd to characterize the entire group on the basis of the actions of one.

to all appearances, much of the problem seems to come from the management that are dragging their feet on further errata. the errata team that we can actually speak with have no actual power to make changes, only to point out when something is wrong, and no amount of doing that will change the books if the full-time employees of the company don't get off their ass to act on it, and whoever that is doesn't seem to spend any time talking to fans as far as I can tell (though in fairness, if I worked for CGL I wouldn't want to be on the front lines taking all the crap that the company has earned being thrown their way either)

that said, I don't disagree with the conclusion that I wouldn't expect more errata to fix anything. I don't think they're doing another pass to correct errors any time soon, and I would be absolutely shocked if CGL *ever* did anything to change *any* of the stuff that is clunky, immersion-breaking, or nonsensical. if anything, I expect them to double down on those things.

if you don't like 6e in its current state, I would advise against buying it. the advice to find a way to try it out first makes a lot of sense.

Good to see you're still around, Wakshaani.




Very true




Also this. Although I'd say part of good GMing is knowing the weaknesses of the system, and how to avoid them/use them as strengths.

Yeah, you're right, and all three of those are valid. I thought I was clear that I don't think the most "vocal" of them are a good representation, but it's not like you see any of the others presenting alternate views. You're absolutely right that if the results of unpaid labor are insufficient, it's wrong to blame the unpaid labor.

As AB already said, it almost never is. It is certainly playable.

However, I will say this much: My wife is playing a game of SR6 right now, and she's not a rules person at all. And she's fed up with how clunky everything is.
I wouldn't touch it with an 11 foot pole. I'd much rather not play than play 5E or 6E. SR1 had more elegant rules than 6.

Indeed - 'A fish rots from the head down'.
*May apply to current events in general.

I guess it's just hard to get excited about shadowrun anymore. Like, I haven't been playing for awhile, I only started about a year (ish?) before 6e came out. But the lore was always interesting, even before I started playing regularly. The 6e release has been beat to death with a dead horse, but the errata and Firing Squad did improve it. But now a book listed as a "runners resource," one that I was hoping would address some of 6e's mechanical issues, is actually a lore book. It's true that the book description and info put out about the book to people who asked indicated this as well, but I was hoping for something related to runner resources. I like lore books, but I was disappointed that something so critical is on the backburner. It really feels like CGL isn't paying attention to the audience at all, or that they've just written off the bulk of the online playerbase.

I can't take people seriously when they say to "boycott" CGL if they turn around and shop at walmart and amazon, but honestly I don't see much reason to buy this book if it's just a continuation of the lukewarm plots that have been picked apart throughout 6e's release. I'm sure some of the writing's good, some of it's okay, and there will probably be one or two memeable errors, but at this point it feels like reading a 8-book series and the author's thrown in yet another contrived cliffhanger. What's the point?

Apologies for the double post, but what you said got me thinking. I don't think this is some facetious "even the junk we put together when RPGs were new was better!", I think you can look at 1e and 6e from a design perspective and prove that what you said's right.

There's a lot of things you can look at from a design perspective to do a heuristic evaluation of a work or product. Discoverability, Simplicity, Affordances, Mapping, Perceptibility, Consistency, Flexibility, Equity, Ease, Comfort, Structure, Constraints, Tolerance, Feedback, Documentation, etc. For the sake of our own simplicity, I'll look at the seven that Don Norman uses in his book "The Design of Everyday Things." If you don't like it, you can look at how some other folks break it down.

Discoverability
Discoverability means that tasks should be "visible" to the user so that they can discover them in-use, rather than hunt them down in documentation or be taught how to use them. Now, almost every TTRPG out there violates this principle- that's why they're design "principles" and not design "rules." However, we can look at this in terms of how the documentation/rulebook is laid out.

There are a few quick 'n dirty metrics you can use for TTRPGs, though of course there are always exceptions:

1) how long does it take the book to tell you what the core mechanic is
1e- p.20
6e- p.35

2) level of detail/accuracy on the table of contents and index
1e- Contents includes all headers, no index
6e- Contents includes all headers, has index

3) how long does it take the book to tell you what an RPG is and how to play it (A lack of this can be forgiven in niche or indie RPGs, but they then must accept a smaller userbase)
1e- I don't think it does. It mentions roleplaying, but doesn't explain it.
6e- p.34

4) what is the size of the rulebook (Yes, I understand this is a crunchy system. However, that affects the user experience. On the other hand, I would not use this as a metric to compare FATE Accelerated to GURPS.)
1e- 208 pages, about 800-900 words/page. WordCounter.net says 126,345 words when I paste my PDF into it, likely an overestimate.
6e- 303 pages, about 800-900 words/page. WordCounter.net says 206,097 words when I paste my PDF into it, likely an overestimate.

It's hard to boil any product down to quantitative heuristics, but it's the closest thing to objectivity we can have. There are always other subjective things (IE, a book can tell you what the core mechanic is on page 1 but the description is confusing and requires a in-person tutorial).


Affordances
An affordance is something where the design itself shows how it should be used. Although Norman separates these from signifiers (Like an emergency exit sign), these work in practically the same way. A 'push-bar' door signifies that you should push it. A poorly-designed door would have a pull-handle, but only open when pushed. Users will almost certainly run into issues here, even if someone puts a 'push' signifier on it.

This is harder to boil down than 'discoverability.' One of the things that needed to be errata'ed in 6e was what the starting value of essence was. Now, if you're a long-term player, you may not have even thought about this. But I did see one new player note that they had assumed it was 5. This is because 6e has a lot of equations in magic and healing where the threshold is 5 - Essence. A negative threshold wouldn't make sense, and without any other indicators to show that essence should be larger than 5, 5 is the logical option. This may seem arbitrary- does it really affect a user's experience if they have one less point of essence? Well, it does if they're a samurai. Let's say you want your samurai to attack as often as possible. You get Wired Reflexes 4. Now, you only have .99 essence to play around with. Compare to someone with 6 essence, who still has 1.99 essence to play around with. Now, they can get a limb replacement, whereas essence 5 guy might be stuck with just the forearm or hand, limiting their capacity. Now, I don't know if you should dump all of your essence into Wired Reflexes right out the gate, but you can come up with any number of scenarios where an extra point of essence can impact the attack power of your samurai, and thus how effective that samurai is against opponents.

It's true that this was errata'd. However, this is one of the things where it's easy to fall into expert bias, so the best evidence one way or the other on 1e vs 6e is anecdotal. This isn't a thing where you can say "it worked for me, therefore there is no problem." I don't have enough information on a new player's approach to 1e, so I would have to ask you for that feedback.


Mapping
Mapping basically means that the interface clearly shows the relationship between cause and effect. Most of this is going to be looking at how clear a rule is on the consequence of a roll.

I honestly haven't run into many issues with reading either 1e or 6e rules, but there are a plethora of 6e rules that are confusing or contradictory. IE, multi-attack: there was a long conversation on the official forums about the relation between multi-attack, number of weapons held, and firing modes. IE, I see that there's nothing that prevents a player from using a single weapon to attack twice, therefore the player can do it. Another user sees that there's nothing that allows a user to use a single weapon to attack twice, therefore the player cannot do it. Regardless of who is "right" or what the author intent is, the fact of the matter is that it's an unclear rule defined twice in slightly different ways.


Perceptibility
This isn't to be confused with discoverability. Perceptibility is how the user can see what the system looks like right now, whereas discoverability is how the user sees what they can do.

To be honest, TTRPGs pass the buck on this over to the GM. Hex grids, theater-of-the-mind, minis, roll20, etc. are all in the purview of 'the table' rather than the game. The one thing you can critique would be design of the character sheets (Though, even those you could go through all 7 principles to evaluate). I'm not sure which one I like better. The 6e one has more distracting info on it than the 1e one, but uses colors and symbols to help guide the reader. The 6e's form-fillable character sheet is broken, but 1e's was created before form-fillable PDFs were a thing. This might be subjective- I prefer 1e's because it doesn't have a lot of patterns and stylizations all over it, but I could understand people preferring 6e's because it's less monotone.


Consistency
This is about consistency both within and without the rules. It's easy to pick 6e as the loser for this one because of the number of conflicting or vague rules, and because the writing style varies so much, but 1e also has a steep hill to climb. One of the benefits of Shadowrun is that it's not D&D. However, if we are to judge Shadowrun 1e in "it's time," it doesn't have years of player knowledge to understand everything that's going on. It does a good job of explaining the lore, but it doesn't really explain what a TTRPG is. I noted earlier in Discoverability that I give indie/niche games a "pass" on explaining what a TTRPG is (Nobody who's looking on itch.io for a $5 indie RPG is choosing that as their first TTRPG), and perhaps Shadowrun 1e gets this pass as well because it wasn't a "large" RPG when being published. But at the end of the day, it still affects the user experience.

The dice system for Shadowrun is rather unique. If there was some other niche game in the 1980s using this system, then I'm wrong. However, again we stress these are design "principles" and not design "rules." You don't always have to design things to be like everything else, but when you challenge the status quo, you need to understand it affects the user experience. So, if 1e lacks consistency with other TTRPGs of its day, then it must make up for it in its descriptions of how its unusual rules work.


Constraints
Constraints prevent the user from even attempting things that won't work or will cause the system to fail. I would wholeheartedly say TTRPGs pass the buck on this one to the GM... It's practically in their job description. (But yeah, you could totally arm-wrestle lofwyr)


Feedback
This is how the system tells the user whether they are succeeding or failing. Again, TTRPGs pass this on to the GM and player. The most you could say is that both 1e and 6e explain what condition monitors do, and why you don't want them to fill up.


I hope this wasn't too lengthy! I also hope I'm not reviving the dead horse of '6e bad.' Although it's true that nostalgia can tint your vision, I don't think you're off the mark with that comment.

No, I was completely serious. This was my honest opinion, albeit more grounded in feelings than actual analysis, about that train wreck.
That is not to say that 6E doesn't have good approaches and ideas, and I assume at least some of the source material is interesting (but out of lack of interest in general, I cannot say first hand). It's simply that the system dumbs down things that don't react well to dumbing down and overcomplicates simple things that should be easier. All the while it has issues that stem from previous editions (not mentioning starting Essence is one result of that, but there are others).

As for the rest of your post, I found it interesting and enlightening that you took the time to actually analyze this, and I'd like to comment on a bit of it:

• First of all, I think it's important to stress that I said the rules are better, leaving out all other aspects. What I mean by that is that 6E certainly does a better job to introduce players to the game (although I'm not sure anymore if the world is explained in the core book) if you have never played an RPG before, even if the core mechanics are only explained a further 15 pages in.
• 6E is also aesthetically better. That is a gorgeous book, just like 5E was. At the same time, I don't think that the design of a character sheet (apart from its accessibility) should play much of a role in how good it is. Can it show you the important information at a single glance? If yes, good. If there are fancy designs in the way, less good.
• The lack of explanation of what an RPG is is, IMO, a function of the time. SR was a newcomer, and a niche product in a niche entertainment genre. You couldn't get it recommended via the internet, or see it in a supermarket. Virtually everyone who would pick it up would be perfectly aware of what a roleplaying game is, and thus, I think it's acceptable not to explain this piece of redundant information.
• Finally, don't get me wrong. SR1 has issues, and plenty of them. It's obscure to understand and certainly pretty clunky. I'm not wallowing in nostalgia here (and I started with 2E, to be clear).

Thank you for these additions! I always have trouble reading tone on the web.

And I think you do bring up a lot of good points as well- rarely will you come across something that's "all good" or "all bad." Most people are willing to compromise on some things if it means other things do better. IE, at the end of the day you could have the ugliest character sheet in the world but if the rules are good, then great! I think looking at the official character sheet is good in order to see what the "new user" perspective is, but like you said it's not as important.

And even those who are not aware can easily find a Youtube tutorial nowadays

I was talking about 1989

Just to check … has anyone picked it up yet? Given it a read? Got an opinion on things inside the covers?

I'm only recently getting back into the setting, but I am loving getting back into the setting. With that said, for me the point at which I evaluate how "good" a product is is how much it tells me about the setting. New insights and new approaches.

For me, the setting of Shadowrun remains truly evocative regardless of the mechanics. Of course, there's only so much that you can support "dead weight" when justifying shelling out the cash for a purchase.

Yeah, "A great game world held back by the rules" has long been Shadowrun's curse. When a book is 98% fluff, it runs along the strengths as long as it's done well. Finding out what people do, and don't, like is essential for moving along. Shadowrun is an absolute joy to work on, but it's also a business, and if we're not making things that people like, well, we go under.

I, for one, like to get feedback to know where people want to see the directions go and how to get there in the best shape. Collapsing Now gives us a good place for that. Do people like the section about blank and want more of that or did they hate it? What about this other group? Have people been clamoring for X and not getting any or do they want more Y?

Obviously certain aspects of the story are already in stone, but other parts aren't and we can always plug n play. If there was, say, a huge demand for more Yakuza stuff, we could do that. If everyone instead wanted more Monad stuff, we could do that instead. If enough people were dying to get a book made about the Bob channel, featuring content by, for, and about Bobs, well, we could find somewhere to add that more than likely, but no one's really been dying for it. (Since I invented the Bob channel, obviously *I* would enjoy writing it, but.)

Regardless, glad to have you back! I've been playing since '89. Always happy to hold the door open.

Great to see you here Wakshaani as it is always great to see on TRO in RPG.net.


Be warned. I'm very much a paper tiger here. I love the setting but, if you've read some of my recent threads, you'll see that I'm more than willing to diverge from the mechanics.

With that said, I fully understand what you're saying with the business model. Well, by "fully" I mean that I understand it but have the business sense of a lemming.


Thanks for (you guys) making the ToC available. I also see where you're coming from in terms of the feedback route. I'm personally trying to figure out from that whether I, as a non-mechanic twit, can get full value from it. Put another way, SNAFU.


Loving it. Just trying to fix the "issues" that I have while trying to stick with the core love.

And I was giving another reason why it's not required nowadays



Anyway, I finally had a chance to read more than the title and promptly stumbled upon this:

"Fundamentally the same", sure, but definitely proven to have "no genetic component"? Did metagenes just get written out of canon?

~insert Nelson laughter.wav~

So many clichée thoughts in my head on as to why a writer would commit this kind of stupidity ...

Further into the piece you see it looks like this 'research' only came about after they lost main funding and were being paid by private interests who looks like they were laying the groundwork for an anti-mage (and later anti-techno) movement.
They would go on to start extolling the idea that one isn't born a mage/techno, rather you gain powers by connecting with the Astral/Resonance and the entities residing there, basically implying its more like making a Pact for Power with all the darker connotations that would imply.

So Metagenes are probably still a thing, but someone is trying to spin their own concept to back their movement.

Unreliable narrator.

This is especially true when it gets to the "truth" about magic. Are the Hermetics right? Are the Shamans right? Are they both wrong and the Psionicists nailed it? The truth is … malleable.

Whether or not the narrator in question has to be considered as an unreliable one has no effect on the clichée thoughts that were envoked in my head on as to why the (actual) writer decided to use those words for the narrator or how I deem that particular choice of words a stupidity in context of said clichée thoughts.
To elaborate a bit further since you are linked to the writing staff: Over the years I have certainly come to develop some serious prejudice about the writing quality in SR and what - in my totally biased and non-clearvoyant view - inspires the involved writers to write certain texts in order to create something "new" and "interesting" but regularly fail to entertain me personally in doing what they do. This prejudice does lead directly into outright calling things a stupidity whenever the text I'm reading also evokes the feeling that those inspirations fit certain clichées that relate to present day society instead of the future society in an alternate reality.

In other words: The Nelson-laughter is my response to something that just doesn't "click" with me and no amount of telling me that it's a narrative device will change that.



The truth itself not so much ... but certainly the perception and interpretation of it.

The section is about the time where the institute still supposedly "had a mandate to stick to good science, and they were not about to sacrifice their name for money". Also, none of the shadowtalkers who previously and afterwards weight in to refute even the most obvious BS (magical users don't need "fixing", thanks Sherlock) have anything to say on this matter.

It is an in-character section and therefore can be dismissed as unreliable narration, but the section didn't feel like that was intended. So good to know that at least as far as Wakshaani is concerned, metagenes are still canon

I think you got some rose colored glasses going on for 1e on those two points. 1e where the index LITERALLY says see combat chapter and where the initiative passes are different numbers (instead of the standard -10 of 2e) and where you have different levels of staging on different weapons. You could also roll stealth to repair your car but maybe that is a feature. That is just to name a few without getting into more fun with Magic (auto successes anyone) and the Matrix (oh the start of the pizza while someone hacks). 2e was a major clean up on both those points even with its own warts 2e which was a major clean up was still flipping through three places for the rules on how to fight spirits. That doesnt mean 6e is good at either just that 1e was awful.

That's good to know and I appreciate the feedback, to be honest I've played more 2e than 1e (And more 6e than either of those) so it's highly likely that I'm mixing up things from those editions. Although design feedback from non-experts is useful (Especially considering difficulties in learning a game), there's a good chance of missing problems that an expert may know about.

I don't want to derail too much- if we're talking about the book in question (Collapsing Now), TBH I've only read the first chapter.



(yeah I think I am partly to blame for the prior thread derailment)

actually discussing the actual topic

Warning: I use "you" a lot when writing stuff like this- I know you didn't write this particular portion, but it's a lot easier to come up with comprehendable feedback if I'm writing like I'm trying to explain my thoughts. It's also not a jab at "you" if you happen to be the author, either, I'm critiquing the writing itself and not the writer. It's my own bad habit that I'll need to fix at some point.

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
— “The Second Coming,” William Butler Yeats

I like this poem and got excited when a bit of it included. The poem is quoted a lot, I just wanted to mention this. I'm curious if the theme of this is at all followed by the stories in the book, or if it was included because someone else simply likes the poem. I always wonder about these beats. Perhaps they're the "best" morally, and that is why they do not take a stand (lack "conviction"), but if that's the case, are they really the best? Or are they just the best humanity has left to offer, and we're stuck without anyone of moral caliber? I've never pictured shadowrun as an apathetic dystopia, there always seem to be some characters rallying futiley against the Machine or Corporations. Applying this part of the poem is a cynical take. It fits the poem but I'd hesitate to match it to something complex or multifaceted. Too binary for my blood.

The walls had a layer of luxury to keep you from remembering how thin the barrier was between you and death. The pressure on these walls was more than double that of the pressure on regular buildings, and the consequences of giving in were far more grave. A regular building, when it develops a crack, lets in a draft. This building lets in the ocean. (Emphasis mine)

Two things: 1) I really like the rhythm of the sentence and phrase lengths, especially in the last bit. It's striking without copying a cliche. The underlined bit is a pet peeve: redundancy. It takes away from the otherwise excellent rhythm of the piece. Mark Twain once said "substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very;' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be." This is not exactly what is used ('far' is used instead), but "far more <adjective>" is almost to the point of cliche (It is a well-used phrase).

There are circumstances where Twain's advice should be ignored (Consider "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day"), but I don't think this is one of them.

Personally, I think "grave" or even "more grave" would be sufficient, but that may interfere with other effects the author intended for this paragraph. Perhaps a stronger synonym would help (catastrophic, disastrous, etc.) or even a different description evoking the same feeling (sepulchre-like, encased by watery death, etc.) However, I strongly stand by the advice of "if something isn't working for the reader, 90% of the time they're right. If they tell you how to fix it, 90% of the time they're wrong" so you should rightfully ignore my suggestions and come up with a different fix.

Rook should have been thinking of something more useful. More job-related. But he couldn’t stop thinking about the architecture.

Is this tongue-in-cheek? There are worse ways to start out a short story. If the first few paragraphs describing the area are relevant to the story (And not just scenery) then I don't think it's wasted space. The first few sentences are a promise to the reader.

The lighting was far brighter than normal, all the better to help frightened people find their way out.

This is a habit, refer to remarks on "Twain" above. There is no real difference between "the lighting was brighter than normal" and "the lighting was far brighter than normal." If it really is "far brighter," why not say that it's "glaring" or "blinding?" The second part implies that it helps people see. In that case, is the lighting usually murky? Casts odd shadows? "far" seems like an excessive word.

Rook couldn’t skulk, but he was a troll trotting on a tile floor.

This is confusing. "but" is typically used for contradictory statements, or at least ones that provide separate ideas. I think "as" or "because" make more logical sense here.

The spirit responded immediately. Waiting it sits.

Yes, spirits are alien intelligences, but that doesn't explain why it's applying OSV grammar to a SVO language while communicating via telepathy. This writing will immediately make the reader think of Star Wars, and I don't think it's particularly consistent with SR lore, either. At least with SW, there's the rationale that Yoda is fluent in the older dialect of the language, which supposedly follows that format. If the spirit had replied in an actual dialect of old English, then it might make sense if that's what the author was going for. If the purpose of the dialogue was to make the spirit seem alien or hard to comprehend, then there are many other ways to do it other than riffing on Star Wars.

Someday he’d summon a spirit who spoke normal American.

Is this even still a thing, decades after the US collapses in a setting where the canonical "common language" is a pidgin of many different languages? Eh, it's funny, I wouldn't worry too much. I also internally made the assumption that this was in Seattle somewhere, and if this is in the CAS then this greps.

He passed through the kitchen quickly, hurrying toward the office door at the far end. That was his destination.
I’m here.
(...)
Everything he had counted on was happening. The astral security sucked, plain and simple. Someone trying to use mundane means would have a lot more trouble getting in. Rook was cruising.
(...)
He wished he had time to gaze and appreciate it. He didn’t.

Show, don't tell. Well, that advice is always with a grain of salt, but there are a lot of repeated and redundant statements that don't add much and just drag things on. Although we can expect a little bit of this to allow for new readers (Emphasizing what astral security means is a good call), but most readers can understand that if a character is going somewhere, that place is their destination. Or that if a character is acting hurriedly, that they are pressed for time.

The office was sparsely furnished so that the large, curved outer glass wall could dominate the room. It looked over the wreck of ancient galleon (a replica, in truth), but it looked fantastic, with blue, green, and orange barnacles crusting its entire length. Holes in the hull allowed fish to swim in and out, and plants on the sea floor drifted gently in the current. The whole thing was dramatically lit by drones constantly repositioning themselves relative to one another to make the whole scene stand out.

There are too many things going on in sentence #2. Split it up or trim the fat. This whole passage suffers form too many long sentences. Hemmingway App, which should be used with care, counts 3/4 "hard" or "very hard" sentences. It also counts a whopping 4 adverbs, and puts the readability at grade 15. Now, I don't think you should rely on Hemingway to make writing decisions (I don't think the reading level is actually that high). However, it is a quick way of seeing if you have too many long sentences in a row, which is bad for maintaining a good rhythm. The adverb in sentence #1 serves a purpose, so it's ifne, but the other three are suspect. The phrase "dramatically lit" in sentence #4 feels iffy to me. I understand it's because the moving drones are trying to make the scene stand out, but I'm getting the image of a disco ball in my head if the drones are "constantly repositioning themselves relative to one another." That bit is also excessive, I feel like it's implied that they are moving relative to each other if they are moving (As opposed to moving relative to the normal plane? Or relative to earth? I am unsure).

He cast the spell, opened a hole in the side of the safe, pulled out the goods he came for, and got ready to leave.

The pacing of this story confuses me. It takes a few pages to discuss walking down a hall and opening a door, but one sentence to do all of this? The amount of time spent on a topic will indicate to the reader how much they should pay attention to it. It's true that the author could be trying to signal how rushed or quick the character is, but that isn't shown earlier in the passage. (We are "told" about it, though)

Rook had the goodies he was being paid to lift. Time to go.

The repetition/redundancy is habit, now. I'm not a fan, but objectively speaking this could be a style/taste thing. It seems too deliberate not to be. This style continues on for a few paragraphs.

Had someone here finally discovered astral security?

This is funny

Whatever had hit the spirit hadn’t moved into the club.
Yet.

This feels cliche, but I don't recall from where. At this point, the repetition of short-to-moderate length sentence followed by tiny sentence/phrase is starting to grate.

Rook had thought she looked cool and mysterious on his way in. Now she looked wary, maybe even nervous.

Both the passive voice and the use of tell over show could have been avoided by showing the painting earlier on. It's also a little weird that the narrator uses phrases both like "she looked cool" and "constantly repositioning themselves relative to one another." It's hard to get a read on them.


Overall

Overall, I felt kind of 'meh' about the first chapter. There wasn't really anything to hook in this reader, and it had a slow buildup for a short story. To be honest, I think it was almost too slow of a buildup for if it had been a longer novel. It's not Stephen King levels of meandering, but it's enough that it hits on a pet peeve. There's a mix of good and bad writing in this story. It's hard to use small things like that as a metric of story quality- IE, hemingway and king get away with a lot of "bad" writing because their stories are otherwise compelling or their deviation from the "norm" contributes to the story. However, I don't think the story brings enough to the table to excuse the style weirdness.

If I read other chapters I will let y'all know my thoughts! Let me know if what I'm saying is completely wrong, too. My philosophy with feedback is that if someone tells you that something's not working, 99% of the time they're right. If they tell you how to fix it, 99% of the time the fix is wrong.

Interesting stuff, and, no, not my work there. Looking forward to more!

Let me know if there's anything you want me to read! TBH, I tend to read these books in an eclectic manner based on whatever chapter title sounds the most interesting