Thats the best news I've heard all day. Then again, it is the only news, but I won't hold that against it.

Hmm, this is good. It will hopefully increase "punk with a gun" danger factor, which is good. Guns are bad news for your health, m'kay?

I'm not convinced this is good at all. Combined with the fact that armor doesn't actually seem to save you from taking damage anymore (just converts it from lethal to stun, or whatever) it all starts to feel very abstract and arbitrary - neither realistic nor cinematic, just... arbitrary. We'll see when the rules come out, I guess.

If they have no armor, maybe - but there are plenty of recorded cases of people not even realizing they've been hit for longer than most SR combats last.

When body armor is factored in, hits that fail to penetrate basically do nothing that can be measured on a scale of 11 or 12 wound boxes.

Don't they still have SR3 books to release yet? I'm guessing that "all in 12 months" is more likely going to be 2-3 years. Ish.

Um the back is caused by SR4. If SR4 wasn't coming out then they would have had more resources for the other books. Seeing as all the other books have about equal footing as any other book, besides SR4, no other books will be shafted out the resources they need.

Bob, if you wish to be a ninja you must first out think the Tick.

9) Damage modifiers are now as follows:
Every 3 boxes of damage (mental and physical) give -1 dice on all checks except damage resistance.

Late August and early September is going to have a lot of games that made GenCon debuts hitting store shelves, certainly.

The "12 months" thing is new to me, btw -- last I heard, it was 18 months.

Hehehe!

Yeah, 'cause people get knocked unconscious by non-penetrating hits on body armor all the time...

Like this guy, for example... http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292...2925-976420.php Oh, wait, he was up on his feet in a couple of seconds and able to chase after the guy who shot him...

I realize that my words may be hard to grasp Cynic, so I'm going to use simle sentences. The newsletter said that all the core SR4 books will be out in 12 months. Adam further clarified this by stating that it will be 18 months.

Still with me? Now, I mentioned earlier that Fanpro still had a few SR3 books to be put out. Since Fanpro manages only 2-3 books per year at best, this release schedule seems overly optimistic. The best estimate is to take whatever Fanpro says as a release date and multiply by 2. So, 18X2=36 months, or 3 years. Being as this is consistent with the SR3 core books, I take this as the most likely schedule.

Um, yes. Yes they do. That is a news story because it is exceptional...

That's simply not true, for a few reasons.

#1: FanPro is not limited to Shadowrun; this year alone there have been 8 new titles and 3 reprints/revised titles published for Classic BattleTech [a couple of those are in transit now and will be available by the end of the month]. What's the difference there? Classic BattleTech developer Randall Bills doesn't have to deal with as much business stuff as Rob does, and he also has an assistant developer, which Rob doesn't have.

#2: We've NEVER put out only two titles a year for Shadowrun -- even 2004 saw three titles published, and yes, it was was exceptionally lean due to a lot of development time being spent on large titles like Shadows of Europe [240 pages] and Shadows of Asia [232 pages] and Shadowrun Fourth Edition [352 pages, 360 in the deluxe edition]

#3: "At best", we've released six books for Shadowrun in a single year, not counting reprints and revisions.

Is the new release schedule optimistic? Yeah -- it's going to be hard work, and a lot of it. Onward and upward; we're ready for the challenge.

Judging from the descriptions I've heard from people who have taken bullets to adequate body armor, no, I don't agree with that.

~J

Because FanPro is not LRG or RBG?

Doesn't change the reality of how much injury bullets stopped by body armor inflict.

Seeing as how RBG hasn't released a print product yet, don't you think this is just a little bit premature?

Same issue for a simple fist hit.
The point is : the person firing or hitting will have a much wider absorption of the kinetic energy because of the adapted position, and the area of absorption is smaller for the person taking the hit.
Even with a good protection a bullet will mark you with a huge bruise.
In certains conditions I reckon you could be quite correct : a joe without any skill fires his gun, break his wrist, and a big guy taking the bullet on his very good protection (he is prepared), just take a bruise or nothing (depending of the caliber)

I wouldn't say that. Transforming a lot of kinetic energy concentrated in a very small area to a huge "bruise" should be considered as a real efficient protection (as the default is having a big hole in the body).
By the way [EDIT replace body armor by: ] Dermal Armor is worn under the skin I think, then it is a good way to have aggravated bruises as the skin is squashed between the hit and the armor. Doesn't it make sense ?

- huh man, I've been shoot, I suffer from aggravated bruises !
- Medikit, Medikit !!!

And then again - you might both want to consider the off-chance that the German Newsletter is actually referring to the German release schedule and that they intend to release the German versions of the rule books within a 12 month period of the German release of SR4... or that someone got the original translation wrong and it was meant to be within 12 months from the first core rules supplement to the last...

Shadowrun 4.01D is scheduled for release at the SPIEL fair in October.