I was happy, but a bit puzzled when I saw 6 copies each of SR3 and the CBT Master Rules at my local Barnes and Noble last week. It's great that they're carrying it, but ... it seemed excessive to have quite so many copies of the core rules and none of the expansions for either. I hope their buyer actually learns the product lines rather than just giving up when everything doesn't sell fast enough.

I have no idea what you just said.......



We'll we being seeing it in August? Or is September more realistic? Or is that too, just wishful thinking? *crosses fingers*

It's not Negotiation, you must roll Etiquette for that... And why not buy 1 or 2 additionnal dice and re-roll failure with Karma Pool???

I thought they were probably tops, though admittedly, I do not know the gaming industry that well. I sometimes wonder if the preponderance of female contributors is why I have issues with some of the material. I'm not trying to be sexist, just but I seem to read fiction from male authors more than female, and when I do read female authors, there are things they present that I have a hard time accepting.

Or pain in the butt and back-end changes in the same post.

Interesting...care to elaborate? I'm honestly curious about your thoughts and observations on this.

(BTW, taking a look at the list of freelancers who are relatively active in producing recent books, I count four female contributors: Pistons, Anaka, Lady Jestyr, and me. (I hope I'm not forgetting anybody, and will be embarrassed if I do.) There are quite a few more male contributors than that, so I wouldn't exactly call us a "preponderance."

Sorry it took so long to respond. I was trying to pin down issues, and hopefully give you some productive feedback. I doubt if I can do so.

I remember getting books back in first and second edition, and for the most part enjoying reading them. One notable exception (not to single out the aothors, but to pinpoint an example) was the London Sourcebook. I still do not think I have read it all the way through, but know I have tried at least a half a dozen times to do so. Most of the books I recall liking had male authors listed, many times on the cover.

I buy about every Shadowrun book published, but any more it seems like work to slog through them. They seem to have lost their fun, the excitement, the revelations. I have even started taking notes when reading them because the tone is at times monotonous and the big points get blended in with the filler.

Now may be a good time to apologize because I have not kept up with reading all the new releases. I have them, have skimmed them hoping something ignites some passion to read it, and have tried hitting parts I have heard were interesting. Those parts seem few and far between.

When trying to come up with some productive feedback, I kept thinking of the chick flick versus action movie analogy. I want Shadowrun to be an action movie, but when I read the books, it makes me feel like I'm sitting through a chick flick. Now some chick flicks are all right, and so are some of the recent SR releases, but they still give me that chick flick feel, not the action, adventure/comedy, blow drek up kind of feeling.

I don't know if it is just the differences in the sexes or what. I realized I read few female authors compared to male authors, and the female authors have a different tone than the guys. Anne Rice was one that came to mind. After reading her first three vampire books, I don't think I could finish another. There was the team that wrote a Dragonlance trilogy of books. It seemed they were more concerned with how the characters felt about things and the relationships than a male author would have focused upon. The male author would have probably emphasized the logistics or actions needed to accomplish a task rather than how they felt about the task. Like after an attack, the guy author would have probably been talking about steps to take to prevent it happening again and dealing with the physical results of the attack. The female authors seemed to focus on how the characters felt about it. SR's Worlds Without End by Caroline Spector is my least favorite SR novel. A large part is its tone, a theme, and a few technical things that leapt out and reminded me it was a female author. (The one I recall was about shifting in overdrive and the car responding like it was hyperdrive or something.)

I can't recall the female author who has a series of detective/suspense novels about a female coroner, but though I enjoy the novels, she focuses on things male authors tend not to. Similarly, Winterhawk11, I have read much of your fan fiction. I enjoy it somewhat, but I really enjoy Shapcano's. Some SR fan fiction is comparable to taking medicine - you choke down a dose because it is about the game and universe you love. Your fan fiction is like a daily meal - I could live off of it and some meals are better than others with some being memorable and rarely worried about getting food poisoning. Shapcano's is like eating out at your favorite restaurant to me. (Wouldn't I have egg on my face if it turned out Shap was a woman?!) My point is look at the differences between your styles. I didn't know you were female for a while, but reading your fiction there was something a little off for my taste. When I learned you were female, I kind of attributed it to that.

I'm wondering if that is one of my issues with the published SR material? Maybe it is the lack of a unified voice and overall personality, due to the books being written by several different authors. I know some of the best stuff I have written had a distinct voice and personality to it. I heard a LA had sections with personality and people responded to it.

I know this is a bit disjointed, but I have tried to give my impressions and they are hardly concrete. Add to it, I'm talking in generalities and not about specific works. Maybe we can come up with a specific case and discuss?

I hate when people use false/stupid shit to justify things. Fine, if tisoz thinks he dislikes all female authors, more power to him. He will lose out on a great deal of very, very good literature. But to take a false assumption and use it to justify your claim, to me, that makes it even worse.

It's like falsifying data in a study, or lab experiment. And, being a former physics student, I know what a problem that can be.

Derek

It's hard to judge by names. R.A. MacAvoy, for examples, is female (following a trend of female authors using their initials so as not to lower sales) while Terry Pratchett is not. I'd hesitate to judge the sex of the author based solely on their works.

It sounds like you understand what I was getting at. Maybe the ones who write under an obviously female name do so because their works a definite female ring to them?

So theoretically it could be in stores right now and I could just go pick it up.

Huzzah.

So there is a non-gencon printing out there?

I don't think so. Just called around to my local book stores and they all said they've got no idea when it comes out. Had it been released but not arrived yet they would atleast know to expect it in an upcoming shipment.

I think he's referring to the Gencon release, which I was specifically not asking about.

Theoretically, yes. In practice? I don't know where the copies are shipping from, but my guess is that no place outside of a hundred miles or so from there will see them before August is out.

Keep in mind that this is entirely speculation—speculation based on some information, but speculation nonetheless.

Edit: Walknuki: perhaps you're using some alternative definition of "release" that I'm not familiar with? It has been released, yes, there's no two ways about that.

~J

Alternate definition? Books printed out and shiped to stores and the publisher giving permission to sell said books is a release.

Handing a few out at a convention is not.

It doesn't matter if the books are all printed out and sitting collecting dust or if they're sitting in the back of stores but it isn't for sale yet the book isn't released.

Also, thanks for the blind speculation passed off as accurate information.

And incase you're gonna bust my balls on symantics I'm asking about a "General Release" not a "Limited Release" which is what happened at Gencon.

Well, I thought it was actually a bit cursory, truthfully (and an even MORE compressed version of it is in SR4), but I think something is better than nothing. I don't think a sample of writing written for a short secondary RPG sourcebook really gives a glimpse into a writing style... you have to cram as much information as possible, and I didn't see much in there that was outright fluff.

As far as female authors are concerned, I think I know of a popular one... writes those books about some geek with glasses named... Henry Pooter? Harley Porter? Something like that. *grin*

Ah, I see, you're just making up bullshit. *Thumbs up* Way to go.

Release party has already happened. Maybe they were already too drunk to call it a "prerelease" party? Or maybe they just don't speak Walknuki.

~J

I'm making up bullshit while you're admitting to saying shit on speculation? Oh yeah, you're the smart one.

Yeah having a release party doesn't mean the game's been released. Playing some music and dancing around doesn't magically print out and ship books. I'm sure White Wolf had a Mage release party aswell; but, that doesn't release until the 29th.

So you make shit up that's blatantly wrong and instead of admitting to such you try to defend your incorrect statements by attacking me.

Grow up.

Once again read slowly; it has been 'released'.

Now if you are interested in when you can buy it at the local FLGS, then ask it that way. Because that isn't 'release'. That involves shipping and distribution and all manner of stuff. This isn't like the Harry Potter book where they pre-ship 10 million books to stores before release. There simply isn't margin enough to carry that sort of time overhead.

Of course you already have as much of an answer to that as you are likely to get until Monday when the Fanpro people have decompressed from Gencon.

So no one knows what a release is nor when it will be released. Got it.

I asked at the booth, and they said they didn't really know because of the whole Gen Con situation... remember, they have to sit in a booth for 10 - 12 hours each day, with very little contact with the "real world", and then run games for 5-7 hours. For 4 days out of the year, it's a different universe here, to be sure. I wouldn't expect them to be frosty until at least 1 day after Gen Con has ended (and it's still going on right now... it should be over within the next couple of hours).