Waahhhh! Where's my errata?! Waahhhh!

Consider it an attack if you want, I don't give a crap, but if you do, it's quid pro quo.

We Germans GOT the Errata.
It's there, CGL just ain't using it.

Because I'm not attacking people and assigning infantile motives to them. You're simply making ad hominems All4Big. That's why. You're doing nothing more than babyish name calling.

I can point out a long history of your posts where you always state to ignore the rules.

If you have a point to make, make it... otherwise you're simply being a troll and acting to inflame and inhibit any kind of civil discourse.

No, I look at what's actually fun, unlike certain people who rules lawyer their way into whatever is the most restrictive on the players to screw them over.

As to the rest, it really does sound a lot like whining, and things don't get bad until YOU poke your nose into something.

No. I just report you, instead of feeding you.
Remember: YOUR fun is different from other people's fun. Which has been proven by the general comments your ideas get. Good night.

oh the irony . .

Question is, why do ya'll even bother? Obviously you hate the company and the game or you wouldn't whine and complain so much about every little thing.

Question is, why do you even bother? Obviously you love the company and the game and nothing else matters or you would not react like that about every little complaint.

The company, I could give a crap less one way or another, it's just another business, but yeah, I love the game and think things are plenty good as-is (with one exception as I mentioned and that's that the Matrix could use simplification).

Don't get me wrong. It frustrates the bejesus out of me. That doesn't, to my way of thinking, make your characterization any less unfair. I might have come on a little strong with my initial statement, though, and if I did so, I apologize.



There's significantly more than you seem to think that goes on here. But you're entited to your opinion. Even if I believe it to be wrong.


You'd have to ask Matt; that one I've got no answer for.

Edition comparison and discussion are always flammable topics. Please be considerate and contribute to the discussion.

Yes, it is an opinion. Unfortunately it is one that many people share and nothing is done to rectify it. No communication. No doing better in the next book. You see how that looks, I guess.
I am not saying the man is a monster or even a bad person, but to someone who only sees the obvious and not all the significant things going on, it is - IMO - a valid thing to say "The product quality is lacking and it seems to be the fault of the editor."
I have seen the German products coming late, and at the time was frequently talking to Frank Werschke. There was criticism of course, even after he communicated, but it was easier to swallow on that basis alone. There is no communication to be seen, and results are also not forthcoming.

Indeed... My viewpoint exactly.

I know a lot of people have mentioned issues with the editing of the books.

A lot of us, judging from some of the other posts on DS, seem to be professional, working adults. Have any of the professional, working adults made an application to our dear publisher to offer their editing skills? In light of the response to my comment about open betas, I have to admit that there are few ways more productive to improving a gaming community than having the opportunity for a community member to be able to directly improve on the game they love.

(I still think the open beta that WotC is running is being done very poorly, and will hurt everyone who plays that game, in the end.)

If no one has made the offer, I would like to ask - shamelessly - if there's room on the team for even an assistant copy editor, and to which address should I submit a resume.

Uhm, do you remember why we have such a low opinion of CGL in general and certain people there in special?

My two kopecks on 5e: on the one hand, I like that the issues they're planning to address are the ones I've encountered; on the other hand, judging by the quality of products (and especially mechanics in them) that CGL has been putting up lately, I don't believe they will be able to address them in any kind of satisfying manner.

If the new edition will be as mechanically competent as the releases lately, and if it won't be compatible with 4AE (and all signs point that both those statements will be true), well, I'll just have less trouble with ordering books from Germany and whatnot.

No, I was not present when those grievances were initially made. Until recently, I had not had an SR game since the early days of Third. I'm sorry. I understand that some of it centers around the publication of errata and how other materials have been released, as well as the quality of editing in the materials that were released.

I'm only offering to help the brand in the small way that I would be able. If I've missed the overall point, I apologize.

I will pick up the core book at least. I am guessing we got a while before its released. Gen Con at the earliest.

i am afraid you have missed the main point widely actually . . but if you were not around, then that's to be expected.
go here:
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=30231
read it and you will understand why people are . . carefull . . when it comes to trusting them . .

Literally? CGL squeezed the Shadowrun books to express milk from them and then sold that milk for money?

Ugh, I should just let it go...

The more I think about this. The more I have to think and put a vote of 'no confidence' in jmhardy as the line developer during all this. SR4a was exceptionally well done, and maybe that's shaded my opinions of things.

But really recent products have had a lot of what I'm going to term 'quality control' issues. It has nothing to do with silly little things like clickable index or table of contents... More in the way that many of the recent products have had severe problems with playtesting (most especially a clear lack of!)... even a lot of the PACKS stuff designed for simplicity broke the rules in many ways and people didn't catch and fix them. Fortunately most of the recent books have been very fluff and story heavy so this is mitigated a bit. The kinds of books which work no matter what edition you're playing... (just as the ancient Seattle or Denver books are still quite useful despite their age). The more I think about it... the more I see it as an outright refusal to address that there are problems in the first place at all; a willful blindness if you like.

"This is the edition that they finally fix cyberlimbs!" - me 20 years ago

That is actually the one point i like about SR4.
Cyber-Limbs were less bad than in SR3.
Frank wrote part or most of these rules if i remember correctly.

I'll be honest here, I'll probably aquire a PDF and read these rules before I drop $50 or so on a copy of the core book. RPG source books are up to AAA video game territory in costs, and after how badly I got burned on the terrible worldbuilding and rule decisions in 4th ed, I'm not in any great hurry to throw money down that hole again.

I still have the cards from the letters I mailed to CGL and Topps regarding that issue sitting on my desk.
(The "this was properly delivered" return receipt card, I mean)

Which is what?
Exactly. Tidy Bookkeeping!
Out of spite, maybe, but regardless. .

I was hoping to hear something out of Catalyst about our concerns over quality, but we never did.

Lately though I've been using the cards to relocate stink bugs outside.

learn ze german and enjoy our superior gaming kontent! ò,Ó *bad german accent*

See, THAT German I can understand.
Is it sad that I actually heard it in that bad german accent?

Probably a bit yes ^^

Doesn't it get tiresome to ask someone for the kartoffelgestattenautomatischwaffen?

Bless You !!!

Potato allow automatic weapons?

I was thinking Potato do you mind? automatic weapon
While our languages might be equally fond of silly long words, My German is about as good as my Quenyan...

Still far better than my French.

Rawr LOUD NOISES!!

At the tail end of 3rd edition, one of the playtesters leaked to me the SR4 documents. I played cool and asked Brian Cross about a new edition at GenCon SoCal, and was told unequivocally that there were no new editions in the works. When 4E was announced, I bitched and moaned and called people names.

Then, I apologized to Brian and explained what happened. We came to terms and worked together.

There's a new edition coming. Yell, scream, and call me names. Hopefully, when the sourcebooks are released, you'll be like me and make amends with folks. Otherwise, you can be like the folks who found a game they like and never bothered updating. There is still a group of AD&D players that meet up at GenCon, if they can do it, so can you.

Yes. After War! came out, I threw down an open challenge and became a proofreader. While I can say that they have been responsive to every suggestion made, I can also say that not every single page has crossed my computer. I don't think I can go into specifics without violating the NDA, so I won't. But I can say that from the looks of things, the proofreading has improved considerably.

Editing, however, is different than proofreading. There's a certain degree of crossover, but there are sharper limits on what proofreaders can do. If I encounter a truly terrible sentence, there's only so much I can do: I cannot, for example, completely rewrite it. That's the province of an editor.

(To the writers out there: they don't tell us who wrote what when we proofread it, but if you see the proofreaders comments, I'm the sarcastic one. Nothing personal, it's my job to nitpick and tear apart everything.)

The magically increased photosensitivity of Ghouls (from the shadowruntabletop.com stories) sounds like they did not talk you down enough

GOOD! Nitpick and poke and prod and so forth. I'll be the first to salute editors. I know my strengths and weaknesses and, woo buddy, an editor with clean-up skills is beyond vital. If there's ever spare money around, I know one of FASA's editors from way back who I'd love to see on-staff, for instance. She's a friend with a BRUTAL red pen. She's a word-slashing fiend and I love her for it.

I didn't throw my name into the hat to help, I have other things to do. Things that either pay better or are more enjoyable.

I can, however, vote with my wallet.

I noticed the distinct lack of an accent aigu on the e in Montreal 2074 would that fall in your department?

A sarcastic proofreader, you don't say. And here I thought your kind all lovely and peachy. (That was sarcasm by the way.)


Anyway, what I really meant to say: depending on your point of view, we will have between one and four playable editions regardless of how number five turns out. So we will be fine.

As I have never been to Quebec, I would not have made a good author for Montreal 2074. Add to that my lack of French, and being an Ontarian, there'd be effigies of me burned in Quebec if I wrote a Quebec Book of any sort.

*holds up an effigy and grabs the lighter and lighter fluid* How about burning one down here in Texas?

Ah, foreign internal squabbles ever so entertaining. For me this is all part of the wonder of your topsy-turvy New Worlders' place. It's just as with England and France but somehow France is in the North and the Queen still reigns in Normandy and even beyond.

Funny enough, that confirms all sorts of biases.

But now I'm really digressing.

Nah, confirming biases toward us in Texas would be unloading on the effigy with a shotgun.

Insufficient data for that. I won't complain, until I have specific and concrete complaints.

D&D's 4E, for example - I don't like what happened to "build diversity"; one example, the skill Thievery (or whatever the name actually is). With that, there's no way to make "brilliant locksmith, but THIEF? pick someone's pockets? You're kidding, right?" ... nor an artful-dodger sort of kid thief, who couldn't pick the lock on a barbie dollhouse, but has already inventoried and "adjusted" the contents of every pocket within twenty feet.

I didn't complain simply that there WAS a new edition - I had a specific complaint related to a specific game mechanic, and it's impact on my play style. That, despite having sunk over $3000 into sourcebooks and supplements and so on for 3.5E.

...

Shadowrun 5 will get the same treatment from me - also despite having sunk something like $500 or a bit more into books, and HeroLab stuff, for 4+ edition. When I see the new stuff, and if I have a specific reason to dislike one, you'll hear about it. Otherwise? *shrug* Not a big deal.

That's a lot of D&D stuff.

Bye
Thanee

(Apologies if this formats weird; typing on a phone)

The biggest thing I want to know is what the design goal and challenges are. Throwing up a bullet list of Stuff that's Gonna Change!!! is nice, but all it gives is a nice, safe grey area for people to speculate with. And that's going to lead to problems within the community.

What I want to know is - what is the ultimate goal here? What vision ate the developers working towards? And then I can feel better and have a better opinion on an edition change-over.

Because regardless of edition, I'll still buy books - fluff books, plot books, that sort of thing - but I feel that despite some critical flaws, 4th edition works for me. Justike third works for other people.

Take the stuff said in the promo, for instance: "what price are you willing to pay?" That's a nice general statement, but is that theme going to be just a fluff thing, or will it be carried through mechanically? If its going to be carried through mechanically, how? Harsher essence costs? The return of Magic loss? Or will Johnson's just been screwing over runners even harder?

Deadlier combat? Thats a nice general statement there too, but how do you plan to do that? Carry over some of the harsher rules for damage and healing and augmenting from Augmentstion? That would fit the theme you're going for, I imagine...

I'm not crazy about more gear porn. I think that there's enough gear porn in there now, and the wrong kind of gear porn to start. What kind of game aRe you looking to emphasize?

Maybe it's my time spent in the story gaming communities now, but these kind of questions are important to me. If you're going to make a statement like "everything has a price," then you need to stand by it and deal with the consequences of it. Take 4th edition D&D for example; they're stated design goal was to make the dungeon crawling, kick in the door style fun for everyone, including newbies and oldies in that description. They also wanted to make the martial classes just as much fun to play as the magic classes, and to make the game run quick and smooth for both players and GM's. Did they accomplish this goal? That's your call. But they stood by it (until whiny grognards complained that wizards didn't kick ass any more, and they capitulated).

So I'm curious as to what it is CGL is shooting for with this release. If, as it sounds like in this release, the intended goal is to make things "more hardcore!!!" then I'd have to say that I was out. I'm not a fan of the testosterone driven, 90s dark age Warcraft 40k darker, edgier tone that it sounds like they're working towards. If that's Projection on my part, I apologize, but that style and the attendant testosterone posturing that goes with it is not my bag. I can be happy with 4th, or any of the interesting hacks that people have done within the Storygames community (Shadowhack, Shadowguard, World of Shadows), or even just play something else like Leverage or something.

In short, I want more than buzz before I can really say yay or may to another edition.

Yes, yes it is; I got most of it while playing, GMing, and co-GMing PVP "arena style" games on RPOL. And ... it's all about to go into storage, because I just don't use it anymore. But, if I were to play D&D again ... it'd be Pathfinder or 3.5, not 4 nor 5. Pre-4th does what I want and need it to.

I don't begrudge anyone their enjoyment of 4E - in fact, I cheer them on. It's just, I won't spend money on an edition I know I'll never play.

SR4-vs-SR5 will be the same deal .... I just don't know which edition I will be playing, yet.

You'd be surprised.

But yeah, from your perspective and with your stated tastes from previous conversations we've had, I can see how you'd come to that conclusion.