When First Edition's rigger sourcebook, Riggers Black Book, was released, the Second Edition Core Rulebook came right after.

When Rigger2 was released, the next thing they did was put out Third Edition.

Rigger 3 made it out the door just before FASA closed up shop for good and handed the reins over to WizKids/FanPro. (Alright, this one isn't an edition change, but I think it can be argued that it had a similar level of impact on the game.)

This brings us to Rigger 3 Revised. Nothing happened after the release of R3R, and those who follow the Curse of the Rigger Book attribute this to the fact that R3R is nothing more than a corrected second printing that they just happened to add another word to the title on the cover.

And now, several releases down the line from R3R, they announce a new edition. There's no corresponding Rigger Book release to herald this impending great change. Now when nothing big happened directly after R3R's release, it was easy to say that the Curse may still be in place, since R3R wasn't really a "new" Rigger Book. But now, we have the other leg of the curse being knocked out too.

Is the fabled Curse of the Rigger Book finally no more?

You know, until you brought it up, I never even thought of it that way.

The curse also may have caused some serious problems with Rigger 3 itself. FASA didn't release errata for Rigger 2 because they were busy working on 3rd edition.

This came back to bite them when they released Rigger 3, as they left in some of the same typos in Rigger 3 that were in Rigger 2.

And they were rushing Rigger 3 out the door, because they weren't sure that they had a buyer for the rights to the system, and they wanted R3 published so that there would be an 3rd edition advanced rules set for each of the classic SR character types, just in case that was the last SR book that ever got printed.

All of which made Rigger 3 the worst edited book that FASA ever put out unfortunately. Its still one of my favorites though.

If rigging (or decking, for that matter) rules are so complex that they require a full book just to explain the basics, then maybe they are in need of streamlining. Hopefully, Shadowrun 4th Edition's streamlining effort has eliminated the vital need for a rigger book. I think that vehicle construction should be in its own seperate volume, just like any sort of complex "this is how to make the items that exist ex-nihilo in the main sourcebook" set of rules should be.

I'm curious ... will the 4th ed make all my 3rd edition rules books obsolete, again? will there be really drastic changes to the game mechanics? And will I, as a player, at least be given a complete conversion rules set (hopefully including conversion rules for all, or at least most, weapons and vehicles and other gimmicks)?

Maybe.
Hopefully.
No way.

I hope you're wrong.

If not, I guess I know what I'll not buy in August.

Meh. My SR2 rulebooks had a pretty good run, so I won't miss my SR3 books. And if it's really better--I'll be glad to be rid of them.

Losing my characters because the rules were streamlined would suck ass, though. I don't play to enjoy streamlined rules, after all, I play for the character development and all the RPing experience. No matter how crappy the system, I'd rather stay with it than make all-new characters in some all-new postapocalyptic setting (nono, no reference to what happened to Batteletch ...) just because some rules bureaucrat decided that streamlined rules would be nice ...

Numbers on a page do not a character make. No change in rules can really kill something you have made live in your mind and the mind of others.

Why would you lose the characters? If the changes are really that radical, it wouldn't surprise me if some sort of conversion guidelines are made so that you can easily port over all those 3rd edition characters for use in 4th.

As for stream lining the rules, I think what that really means is laying them down in a format where it doesn't require at least three books to properly create a character.

From what I could tell from the announcement, the characters and their stats/gear/etc. should not need much changing. I see more a homogenization of the rules between archetypes. Much like what was done with magic and combat rules from 2nd to 3rd Eds. Make every PCs game mechanic similar so that every archetype doesn't need to know a whole new game just to play.

Also, it sounds like there is going to be a lot more content in the main book based on all the 3rd Ed. source books being integrated.

I still have two second edition characters that I play that I converted to 3rd edition when it came out. It wasn't that bad. There will likely be a few archtypes (Deckers most likely) that may need some serious changing with thenew rules, but I bet you could still revise them.

I think it would be fun to play a decker that is around when the Matrix crashes, and play out how he has to rethink his life and career. There will likely be a scramble of very motivated ex-deckers working to come out on top of whatever replaces the Matrix. It could be fun.

Deckers will still have their place. Just because there was a crash doesn't mean that the technology isn't used anymore. Stand alone systems are probably still in existence and probably quite viable, the decker will have to travel to get into the networks now since it sounds like the matrix he is adapted to is no more. Any system that wasn't integrated into the Matrix is probably OK too.

Double post.

I would like to see the hacker and the decker acting as complimentary archetypes.