Actually, I'm with Shadow on the fact that the details in the upcoming books may become irrelevant in a short amount of time. I hope that Fanpro will manage this transition well, because there is a potential danger of reducing it's own sales figures before the book's even published.

I'm not going into Shadow's argument about events superceding source material in a few months. The effect of that greatly depends on how focused the source material is on "current affairs". To be fair, it could go either way.

What I -am- concerned about is that game rules and material (however little there may be) would become irrelevant. Settings books have game material too! Even something as simple as stats for relevant cops/contacts/corp-produced products have game stats, and these, for most part, become irrelevant in August.

I'm aware that RPG publishers operate on very slim profit margins. My concern is that the announcement for SR4 can and -will- push down sales figures on these products. Far from wanting to teach the publishers how to suck eggs, it seemed logical to me that because of this reason alone, the announcement of SR4 sounded a little dubious. I'm more than a little convinced now that it isn't a hoax - from the various bits of evidence contradicting my already-shaky arguments.

However, -if- the announcement of SR4 is not a hoax, then I do believe that Fanpro needs to manage this potential issue about their upcoming line of products. It's not a matter of what's actually in the books. It's a matter of what the consumer -believes- is in the books. Perhaps I could get some views on this?

Having read them, I believe that the contents of Loose Alliances and the Shadows of books will speak for themselves.

The former is going to be almost as essential as Corp Download and Sprawl Survival Guide for certain aspects of the Sixth World (regardless of whether it's 206x or 2070, in fact, I predict many games set before the current game time will be using it too). The latter fill in certain areas of the World and also continue to develop related metaplots (obvious ones include the PPG, Russia/Poland, Yakut, Japanese Emperor, Phillipines, Aztechnology, Yucatan and Amazonia...). While some may be recapped in future SR4 products, most won't.

While SR4's announcement will undoubtedly impact out-the-door sales of these books, I'm pretty sure Rob's counting on the fact that those reluctant to buy now will be picking them up later to get the whole picture...

Then there's also the issue of whether or not everybody who buys SR4 jumps to the new ruleset and date immediately or will make the transition slowly in-game.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, several of the freelancers have proposed that any untouched setting rules included in these books (and the most recent ones) be updated via free web supplements on srrpg.com.

Well, that sets my mind at ease a little, as well as taking out the best argument I had in my original post.

Yay/Drat!

There's an easy counter to Shadow's post: Seattle. How about the Tir books? Cyberpirates? Just because they're old doesn't make them useless. Unless it gets flattened by a nuke, both Seattle books will still be just as useful in 4th edition, along with all the other location books.

I have to say that, as rule heavy as Shadowrun can be, Shadowun is one of the better games as far as 'fluff' heavy books are concerned. I have definately used the original Seattle book just as much, if not more sometimes, as the updated Seattle book. And it doesn't stop there... I ebayed most of first and second edition and have found all of the setting/fluff books useful in 3rd to one extent or another. Not so much with the rule heavy books, but you expect those to be the first things to be updated when a new edition is released anyway.

I'm betting the 'Shadows of...' books will be quite useful well into 4th edition. They might get updated somewhere down the road, like Seattle did with the release of New Seattle, but I don't see them being updated or made obsolete (if that's even possible) in the first few years of 4th edition.

All IMHO, of course.

Dear gods, I still refer to my Neo-Anarchists's Guide to Real Life, which is a rules-heavy book from SR1! While some of it has been superceded, there's still a lot of useful information there.

When I'm at home (the books are too fragile and valuable otherwise), I still use NAN1 and NAN2.

One of the books I use most is the old Seattle sourcebook.