Unfortunately, I live in Germany, play exclusively with Germans, and can't avoid the occasional time they want to run at home ... or what used to be their home ... and on top of that, in Berlin, arugably my least favourite part in my least favourite book. >_<

And sorry, wasn't sure 'bout the sarcasm, and talking about the Germany SB gets me all worked up. Besides, it's late.

As shallow as this is for me to say, not a lot will stop me from buying 4th edition shadowrun, regardless of how it goes... Except if they offed or seriously screwed over Ares. That would make me not ever use the new edition of the game. Ares is too entirely ingrained into my game for me to alter that, and just the fact that they would do that would make me absolutel detest the edition.

It even sounds silly to me, but that's absolutely the truth.

So you're complaining about ... what?

That Tom Dowd and Co. were on crack when they wrote most of the major locations...

It "wasn't" for a lot of people. Many don't see the humor in it, and maybe that's because they're not smoking the same crack or they wanted it to be a serious setting. It wasn't meant to be, originally. It was meant to be a parody of a dark future, a fun house mirror of our own world. And, whee! I am repeating myself.

SR never presented itself as a parody of anything.

Paranoia may have, but not SR.

SR said everything with a straight face.

Would you bet on that?

And if so, how much?

Parody isn't quite the right word, but the very nature of a dark future is to exaggerate. You can make it straight and turn into horror, or you can make it with a corner of its metaphorical mouth turned up, and make it a grim but humored adventure. Shadowrun had its horror-induced moments (Bug City, Renraku Shutdown), but is mostly the latter.

You're right, parody isn't really the right word. Perhaps "taken with a light heart" or as you suggest with a smirk...

I dunno, the core book of SR1 might have been a parody, but apart from a few moments of a bit tongue-in-cheek, the setting was dead almost serious ever after (or Tom Dowd's humour was too subtle for me). That's how I and most others know and play it. That's how we'd like to have it, and from SoE and RA-S and other recent books, I guess that's how the authors envision it, too. It might have started out as a parody of Cyberpunk, but it evolved into a serious setting of it's own right.

The Germany SB wasn't just not serious and laden with prejudices, it was also simply badly written.

The Germany sourcebook wasn't written by the FASA team. The european SR developers had more or less free reign, but most of their stuff was so whacked out and/or bad that it couldn't be reconciled with what the real Shadowrun line was. Which is why it never got to the U.S.

When I say that there was humor, btw, I do not mean that the books were not written more or less straight; if the pages were filled with winks and nudges from the authors, then it really would be parody. The setting takes itself fairly seriously, but we are not meant to. I look to film for an example: movies with that hard, dark edge, like The Maltese Falcon, Pulp Fiction, and even currently Sin City are dark, even depraved stories, but they are not really intended to be totally depressing. Rather, they are to be gleefully enjoyed for their bleakness and impossibly hard edges. If you take Shadowrun too seriously, it turns into Blade Runner, which had the look down pat, but had no sense of humor. That was a dry, dry movie.

"It" is the pronoun of "stuff" not "The Germany Sourcebook." Most of the stuff made by the Euro SR teams never made it to North American shores; Germany SB was the exception, and even that, I believe, took some re-writing as it was translated to try and make it fit.

I enjoy the SoE conception of Europe, and lacking Germany, I find it pretty cool and fun. I think a lot of people are missing the whole "reversion' kick in SR. We have new Jihads that "happen" to follow the old Jihad routes. Greece is very open... because it has been repeatedly invaded.

The only good thing to come out of California is me. And the only reason that works was that I was born on Camp Pendleton.

As for the purpose of the thread, I doubt any mega will die. Although Novatech may take a major beating, Villiers still owns the seat. Entirely owns it, so anything attached to that corp will be a AAA. And we need ten megas. I mean, the Big Nine?

Imo the German sourebooks suck alltogether. They have some nice ideas in it (i liek the flood which destroys big parts of northern Germany), but stupid shit like Berlin or all the small-scale kingdoms are shitty stuff. I have the impression that the german writers try to be "better, faster, more" than their american coutnerparts. North America got it's elven country? Ok, we have one too. North America scattered in many small countries? Ok, we can do so too.

Bah.

The jihad stuff is blah; impractical to play with, and far too close to reality for comfort. It's one of my least favorite additions to the game over the years.

I could figure on the Jihad. It makes sense in a rational manner.

However, simultaneously combining a world where nation-states are weak, as is religion, with dark and conspiratorial Catholic church (beyond it setting off alarms), made no sense.

Nor did the UK (WTF?! Lord Protector???), or...Anything, really. Europe in SR makes no sense, period.

Asia (what I've heard of it) makes some sense. I could almost see a reborn militarism and the like in Japan.

China splitting up agrees, frighteningly, with some scenarios of "The day after" a CCP collapse.

The not-very-strong SE Asian states collapsing, OK.

Oz is a bit screwy, but...Manastorms make that make sense, barely.

Africa makes sense, even (sort of). I could see a general collapse of state structures in Africa, without even blinking.

South America I know too little about to speak of.

North America...Bloody hell, that makes more sense than Europe, but only barely. It's not as insulting to my intelligence, either.

In short: SR's writers coulda used a serious clue about politics, international relations, etc.

Even if one blows the theory to hell, some of the changes make no sense, even accounting for the Awakening and stuff.

The UK... kind of made sense, although it was a little obscure. We'd been suffering under a fairly hardnosed Conservative government for a while, and the predicted backlash that unexpectedly took the Greens to power was not unreasonable. At the same time, the structure of British government would lend itself to the rise of a bastard like the Lord Protector (a title inherited from Cromwell, by the way, it's not an original one).

I actually kinda dig the London sourcebook as it was somewhat good at evoking a sinister feel (Knights of Snowdonia to the contrary). Personally I figured it was going for a feel similar to that BBC House of Cards miniseries. Francis Urquhart would be the perfect concept for the Lord Protector.

Assassination was never big in my games. Working for islamic terrorists, even less so. It's just not something that ever jived with SR style.

Your style maybe. Certainly not mine.

Luckily, this game can be played more than one style. And that's the strength of the current source books - they offer a little bit of everything.

If the strength of the current sourcebooks was that they offered something to everyone, I wouldn't have any complaints.

We've been over this and we're all better agreeing to disagree and moving on.

The best response we can offer is that the newest sourcebooks try to offer something to everyone. Whether you agree with the results or not is besides the point. It's one of the things Rob drills into us and at least as far as the developer is concerned that's what's being done (otherwise he'd edit relevant changes into the material). Even a book as naturally high-powered as Dragons of the Sixth World has literally dozens of hooks to be used by players who play street level campaigns and are never going to come into contact with the greats mentioned therein.

Every writer is well-aware that we're never going to satisfy everyone. Its actually counterproductive to even try, so as writers we'll settle for satisfying the majority of players - and make no mistake both in terms of sales and fan reviews the current crop of books have proven popular with the majority of players. IMHO, and this in no way reflects FanPro's or Rob Boyle's opinion, if the new approach means drawing new fans at the expense losing a few old timers who are too attached to a percieved "golden age" when Shadowrun material supposedly matched their vision of the game, then so be it (strange how stuff like the Jihad was introduced and entirely developed in First Edition by the developers at the time and only recently revisited in SoE). I've personally met 3 groups of players (upwards of 13 players) who have either gotten back into SR, or have started playing it for the first time since (and largely because) SoE came out - and I live in the ass end of Europe where RPGers are few and far between.

Obviously, if Shadowrun is doing much better financially, then I'm wrong. My impression, however, is that sales are increasing in Europe, but not in the United States. I gather this from personal interaction, as nobody I know wants to play SR anymore, and from the fact that I'm hard-pressed to find current Shadowrun books on shelves anymore. And if the game is to be a European Shadowrun instead of a North American one, I think that's a shame... but c'est la vie.

Really? We have more SR players than ever around here (well at least since 92-93 when I started playing.) I find books everywhere; comic shop, FLGS, hobby shops, even frelling Borders (in both the stores near me for crying out loud!). Whats more, they dissappear. I can't be sure, but I think that means they're getting sold.

[edit]One thing I do to get people interested is to tell them that SR was invented by the same guy who created HeroClix, MageNight and BattleTech (the PC game is popular). All popular games. People who like them tend to give SR a try, in my experience.

I strongly suggest you take a better look round. Even a cursory glance over DSF's main forums will show there's been a major influx of new blood over the past couple of years - and it isn't European. Distribution is better now than at anytime since FASA's heyday and there's a reason the SR4 annoucement got the visibility it did at GAMA (check out some of the RPG sites covering it).

As for financial situations you're barking up the wrong tree there. The fact that some of the recent books (like SOTA63 and SOE in fact) have almost sold out their initial print runs (which as has been mentioned elsewhere are typically larger than industry standard outside the big boys like WoTC and WW) in under 2 years in the current market is telling.

SR is a decent seller if not spectacular. I really don't see it coming that close to nWoD or Exalted numbers and certainly nowhere near WotC/Hasbro numbers. I think if it can roughly compete with Unisystem or Tristat it will be doing pretty good.

My impression is that SR/BattleTech are a distant third with WotC in first and WoD second. If that's acurate then SR/BT are really leaders because you can't really compare them to giant's like Hasbro or other multi-game systems.

Justmy impression. I could be wrong since I lack any hard data.

Actually, last I checked (which admittedly is few years ago now) WotC was the massive #1, with SJ Games and WW competing in the #2 and #3 slots. I have no idea how far behind the #2 and #3 spots SR is, though my general impression is it does pretty well competing for the remaining market share.

I second what Grinder says, SR is among the strongest games in Germany, closer to WoD and The-Game-That-Must-Not-Be-Named than from what I gather it is in America. Maybe the Germany books actually helped in that.

Actually the numbers are and this is TT RPG no CCGs or Wargames

WotC - 43%
WW - 22%
SJG - 5%
AEG - 4%
Fanpro - 3.5%
Palladium - 3.5%

Most of the rest linger down in the 1-2% of sales.

Who' AEG?

Alderac Entertainment Group