I absolutely agree. After working on a document for a while, you just don't see the mistakes anymore. I guess the material is read by a great many people while in development, but still... The final version - once all the rules have been determined - should be proofread by as many people as possible, and by SR fans, if I may add. Because it's one thing noticing the typos, but if there's a skill somewhere which should be another, for example, only people trying to understand how to play the game are likely to pick that up.

I'd use a PDF to get the system out there to a much larger number of playtesters too before they go and print a few thousand copies of the book. (No idea how many they print.) I mean: in the end, we are the customers; we are the ones playing the game; and if half of us are gonna houserule stuff, then maybe it would be possible to make some further changes to the rules as well before the big investment of printing all those hard copies is made. It would avoid getting stuck with a system that many consider broken on this or that aspect. In the end, they could still go with the "eff u, this is how it's gonna be" attitude, but I think it would allow them to get a much better idea of what we think works fine or not and how we'd fix it and, in the end, it would probably give all of us an even better game.

It's not like they'd lose sales. We'd still buy the PDF, and most of us would probably buy a hard copy as well once all the bugs and typos have been fixed.

Here's a quote from an essay I'm working on at the moment. I thought it applied well to what I was trying to say:

« It may well be that the business model of the Internet-based economy will be epitomized by Cisco Systems. Or, rather, by the ‘global netwroked business model’ that Cisco Systems proposes as the expression of its own business organization and strategy. In the company’s own formulation, this business model is based on three core assumptions : « the relationships a company maintains with its key constituencies can be as much of a competitive differentiator as its core products or services; the manner in which a company shares information and systems is a critical element in the strength of its relationships; being connected is no longer adequate : business relationships and the communications that support them must exist in a ‘networked’ fabric. The global networked business model opens the corporate information structure to all key constituencies, leveraging the network for competitive advantage. » […] Cisco applied to itself the networking logic it was selling to its customers. It organized in/around the Net all relationships with its customers, its suppliers, its partners and its employees, and, through excellent engineering, design, and software, it automated much of the interaction. »

Manuel Castells, The Information Age : Economy, Society and Culture –The Rise of the Network Society (Volume 1) (Basil Blackwell, 1996), p. 180. Quoting Cisco Systems (1999 : 1-2).

I always thought it was panty-waste-whine-all-weekend-pussies?

Panty waste. Waste of panties. Waste of weekend? Nah, just sitting and soaking up the last rays of summer and occationally posting.

Only Adam?

I hope the german version will be better translated & edited than the last sourcebooks.

You are looking at the Beta of the book right here. If Triggerz is so hot to start converting characters he should be starting to do that right now. It isn't going to get a whole lot better for the core of PCs when the BBB PDF comes out. The Fanpro conversion suggestions are still an indeterminante amount of time behind that.

Kagetenshi could even start on the PC generator with what we have. I'd be working on a spreadsheet version myself right now if i didn't expect there to be better ones than that out shortly.

I've actually started prototyping already. The design needs to be done with the full and final rules, but we'll have some code fragments to work with by the time the holes are filled in.

~J

I thought Captain Chaos is dead in SR 4E?

Well, yes, but it seems unsporting to lay all the blame at his feet (even when the reasonable conclusion appears to be that that's where it belongs). Hence, I refer to the mysterious entity "FanPro".

~J

Spoiler space! Spoiler space! Use the [ spoiler] tag! That's what it's there for!

Understood, and completely fair. Just saw the random mention of FanPro's "ten or twenty" employees somewhere upthread and felt it worth while to mention it again.

I do believe the correct line is panty-waisted-whine-all-weekend-pussies. Although personally, I feel pantiy-waisted goes better with 'idjit' than 'whine-all-weekend', but that's just me.

I prefer to see it as a business continually acting unprofessionally.