Basic dice systems are not protected intellectual property. Anyone could write and sell a game based on d6 and variable TNs. Even reuse the initiative system as long as you rewrite all the instructions. However the game world background needs to change more than a "bit".

Oh, and though i'm no lawyer, i doubt you could advertise it as based off of SR3 rules.

If people in the service industry, retail, or fast food acted the way that some of the people involved with FanPro are acting that particular company would have all sorts of complaints and the employee would likely be fired. At the place where I work we just put our new hires through 4 hours of customer service training to make sure that they knew how we wanted our customers to be treated and how we expected them to treat each other. If I caught one of my employees treating a customer like crap he/she would be gone.

So far I'd have to say FanPro needs some lessons in customer service and PR.

It sounds to me like FanPro (at least the U.S. version) is a convenient fiction--a label by which to name the assorted freelancers producing SR materials, and a mechanism by which to pay them. It's not surprising that they don't have a customer service department if FanPro barely exists at all.

I think it's a mistake to interpret what playtesters or freelancers say as FanPro's customer service. They're just people, and people can be nice or grumpy, and FanPro doesn't have much say over that, given how it's structured. About as much as could happen is Rob saying, "Y'know, I wish you wouldn't do that on DS. And by the way, I need the revised draft of Chapter 3, how's it coming?"

To have a customer service, you need a customer. And to have a customer, you need a good/service. SR4 is not yet in the store, how can you complain about a product nobody knows anything about, and that doesn't exist ?!?
And I can understand that they don't want to disclose to much information before the release. Let them work, and we will judge the result. But in no way a customer has the right to criticize the strategy of a company, or in this case, he has to buy shares !

okay, you're playing the "you don't know anything about SR4, you can't comment on it" card. hm, looks like i've got a "the FAQs explain more than enough abour SR4 to make a fairly well-informed decision about the game" card in my hand. FAQs trump people who don't pay attention to them, i win this round. care to play again?

and, wait, "let them work"? i don't see anybody here stopping them.

Repeat #8,492,491: There will be preview material released, just as we've been releasing previews for recent books like Loose Alliances; the SR4 previews will be more intensive, though.

Excuse me, that was not exactly my point. My point was (but as english is not my first language, I have some difficulties to find the accurate word) that you can't blame a customer service when this one doesn't exist, and cannot exist...
Then I won't discuss anymore the "we-don-t-know-enough-blablablabla" as nobody will change his mind. I guess we will have to wait for the release, and see who will have to apologize...

Both. The schedule and presentation of the previews [which probably won't be limited to just "here's a few pages out of the book" -- there will be original content about things that relate to/use SR4.] has yet to be firmed up, but I hope to do that at Origins next week.

i've never intended to imply that the FAQs are inaccurate in any way. they are accurate, and provide a clear--if low-resolution--picture of the game.

"low-resolution" works better than "incomplete", though i guess that's just semantics. calling them incomplete makes it sound like they're hiding something.

it's just semantics.

the last six posts. the point is, the FAQs are accurate, and provide a solid idea of what the game is like. yes, there are lots of details that aren't provided--that's because they're FAQs, and not in-depth dissertations. whether you call them "incomplete" or "low-rez" or "delicous honey-baked ham" really doesn't matter.

Its the blind men trying to describe an elephant. One of them has the trunk and says the elephant is a long, snake-like crature. Another one has the legs and says its like a tree. The last blind guy has the tail and thinks everyone is wrong, it must be as small as a mouse.

Everyone is wrong because no one has the complete picture. All the blind men have the same accurate information, but none of them have the context to put it all together.

One person looks at the FAQs and says that the game must be a great deal like WoD because the dice systems are the same. Another one thinks that it must not be very strategic because they took out the combat pool. Another person is adamant that it will be unbalanced because they changed the way attributes are used.

So far I think the only information we've got worth a diddly poop is what the various playtesters have said. And even that boils down to wether or not you agree with the play style of the various playtesters.

that sentence wasn't written in reference to the FAQ. the FAQ, as i've said, doesn't fill in all the details. that includes (or, well, partially disincludes) their philosophy, and it certainly includes (same, with emphasis) my interpretation of their philosophy.

Customer service is not just selling a product and then handling after sales problems or complaints. Customer service is marketing a product, generating the hype, hopefully bolstering sales in the process, and handling customer reactions and complaints BEFORE releasing a product. FanPro (or whoever is in charge of SR these days I can't keep it straight) is engaged in customer service. It's called SHADOWRUN. Maybe people have heard of it? It is BRAND MANAGEMENT and is just as big a part of customer service as anything else. Eventhough SR4 isn't released yet they are providing customer service for us by managing the brand. Without customer service they would just keep churning out books without any marketing, brand management, PR, or anything like that. They would only be concerned with producing products.

From my viewpoint they are more concerned with pushing out product than providing customer service as I just explained it.

I work for a baseball team in the summers. Everything we do is engineered towards providing the best possible service to our customers. Ironically, the actual game itself almost becomes secondary to us. People are coming there to be entertained and we are so good at that that our team can lose 10-1 and we still have people telling us how much fun they had as they are leaving the stadium. That is customer service and it is more than just getting people in their seats and serving them beer and hotdogs. It is making people aware of our game days, making it easy for them to get to our games and purchase tickets, food, beer, souvenirs, etc, making them feel welcome and valued as customers and entertaining them with more than just the game.

Now imagine if, before next season, we told everyone that we were getting rid of beer at all our games. Many people would stop coming and we would hear no end to the bitching and complaints about the lack of beer at our games. It is within our rights as a firm to do so and within the rights of the consumers to stop coming. The bitching and complaining doesn't serve any purpose to us other than to SIGNAL THAT OUR CUSTOMERS ARE UNHAPPY WITH THE CHANGES AND WILL STOP GIVING US THEIR BUSINESS. If there is a significant percentage of customers who stop patronizing us then we will start losing money and stop being a going concern. If we are absolutely adamant about not having beer and want to keep our customers we have to do something to convince them to stay otherwise they leave. Or we could just let them have beer.

The people behind SR, in my opinion have decided to stop selling beer and our not giving adequate reassurances that I will be rewarded by still being their customer without being able to buy beer. They have said nothing to convince those of us negatively affected by the change to feel loyal or comfortable with the changes. In fact, there are several playtesters (in my example consider them to be like the beer sellers) and at least one developer (consider them to be like upper management) who disregard our concerns and/or deride us for daring to be upset with their decisions. This is a very stupid way of conducting business and poor customer service. SR is not big enough to dictate terms to its customers--no RPG is (excepting perhaps D&D but I doubt that). Firms that can dictate terms to customers are firms like Microsoft, P&G, J&J, Siemens, and GE to name a few. RPG companies and minor league baseball teams can't. They have to listen to their customers and provide good customer service.

This lesson in business is brought to you by Fuchi Exec-o-mat ™!

Nicely stated. You make a persuasive argument.

What team do you work for? Is there a Dumpshock ticket discount?

Damn, blakkie. You were faster and put it much better than I have.

People loading up on beer? Happens all the time...

First off, you are only allowed to take two beers per person at a time. Servers are supposed to stop serving people who are drunk. Beer sales end in the bottom of the 8th inning. If someone is getting rowdy or causing problems, whether drunk or just an asshole, security gets involved very quickly and the fan is booted (with some compensation to make them feel better like free tickets or something) and told to behave next time. All the servers are required to take the government mandatory training program, serving it right, and if they are found to be in violation of it they are fired. In general when people see that people are being kicked out for being rowdy they tend to sit down and be quiet very quickly because they don't want to be kicked out. We've had bachelor parties sit right next to youth groups and have received no complaints in the past. The SR team is doing a very poor job of handling both groups of customers--the ones that don't want change because they like their beer and the growth group that doesn't like the beer and wants change. There are ways to appease both and they simply chose to take away beer instead of coming up with a creative solution IN MY OPINION.

If the situation presented happened then we would probably ban beer too. That doesn't mean that I'd expect people to be happy about it or to berate them about it. Which is what is happening a lot around here towards us anti-SR4 people. And I'm rapidly finding that the people who are berating us don't always see our point or focus on minor issues that are tangent to our main argument. My previous post, as I pointed out a few times, is that FanPro is really dropping the ball in terms of customer service and brand management as far as I'm concerned.

I have had no trouble attracting new players, new GMs, and generating all kinds of hype with the SR3 rules. We run very compelling, story-based games using the "clunky and cumbersome" (other people's words not mine) rules that had plenty of role-playing and realism without getting bogged down in rules. After about a session or two new players are completely familiar with the rules and ready to play a new character because they realize they can play something closer to what they want with the rules but weren't able to fully realize it the first time or because they've see the group's decker and rigger at work and know the rules.

Mind you I play at a university so my crowd is smarter than the mean. I'm not running games full of 14 year old D&Ders or 30 something LARPers who have aversions to anything more complicated than rock-paper-scissors.

PS I work for the Vancouver Canadians minor league ball team and no Dumpshock wide discounts unless Dumpshock contacts us--it'd have to be handled individually. Also note that we have been named the best place to see a minor league ball game for a few years now and have grown 25% over the past 5 years that I've worked there (in spite of my presence...lol) despite our rowdy drunks.

Hey hey,

Just caught this while catching up with the thread, and I'm on my way out the door for the weekend, so I won't see any replies until late Sunday:

Added in edit: thanks for the clarification, Adam. I'm still trying to figure out exactly what FanPro is.

Okay, back to arguing with blakkie:

It's almost always bad to have angry ex-customers, regardless of whether they were troublemakers or will no longer like your product anyway, or what. Upset customers generate bad PR.

The hypothetical scenario involving drunken beer-swillers, as presented, doesn't give many options; one set of customers is actively annoying another set of customers. That's always an awkward situation to deal with and Cheops described a decent compromise: kick out the customer who is actively causing the problem, and do something small to try to make them not feel so bad about it.

But with SR4, product sales aren't likely to be greatly hurt if people with somewhat different playing styles (who don't really enjoy each others' styles) buy the product. So the inherent conflict isn't at the player level. It might be at the level of conflicting interests, but even that hasn't been established. The way SR4 has been implemented has apparently caused a good deal of conflict of interests, but that could just as easily be a result of poor design as something that is inherent in improving the game for potential customers.

I have plenty of friends who work for or are part of typical small businesses. I'm trying to figure out in what way FanPro is like and unlike those other businesses.

For example, are there full-time people whose job is, in part, public relations (they may have many other responsibilities also)? What fraction of the published work from FanPro is from people on the payroll as opposed to work that's contracted out? Things like this make the difference between thinking of FanPro as a company producing a product under standard parameters, and thinking of FanPro as an editing house that serves to organize a bunch of individual efforts that take place outside of the company. I'm sure the reality is somewhere in between, but I'm not sure where in between.