The Shadowrun Situation

[Jay Levine]

Wow, there's a lot here I want to reply to.

On the Salt Lake City mana ebb: To be honest, I have no idea. I don't even recall writing those two shadowtalk comments. It's entirely possible I didn't write them, because Davidson Cole did add some writing to that chapter. Not that I'm pinning it on him, because that was a long time ago and I just don't recall. But there wasn't anything seriously heavy behind the idea that I'd remember, that much I can tell you.

On Shadowrun's "Disaster Movie of the Year" metaplot: You know, I'm not sure exactly when a major world-spanning crisis became a standard tent-pole product release in Shadowrun's annual schedule, but somewhere along the line, it did. I clearly remember freelancer/developer meetings where we'd literally discuss "what will this year's major world-impacting campaign plot be?" It was just automatically assumed there would be one, we just needed to figure out what it would be.

It got exhausting. It's hard to come up with plots of that scale that are rooted in the game world successfully, are well-written, and can involve the players without the players feeling like accessories. With each one released, the metaplot got heavier, there was more baggage to carry into the next year's release schedule that you had to plan around. In the end, it helped burn me out on writing for Shadowrun (problems with management certainly contributed to that too, but it was a combination of things). I liked what we did with Ghost Cartels (more on that below) but it took a lot of serious effort to get there and I was having a hard time seeing how I could help do the same thing a year later with a sufficiently different idea.

I would love to see Shadowrun with more small, localized adventures like 1st and 2nd edition had. Problem is, we were told repeatedly that those adventures did not sell. I can't tell you how accurate that is, because I never had the numbers. But that's what we were told. The small, localized adventures wouldn't sell, but the big, world-spanning campaign books did sell. There was a great deal of brainstorming put into how to possibly merge the two worlds and creatively package small-scaled adventures so people would buy them. I had a few conversations with Peter Taylor and other freelancers at the time about it. Ghost Cartels was influenced by these conversations. But I don't think it's something that was ever solved.

On "a crisis is determined by emotional impact": I totally agree. I absolutely, positively agree. That's part of the reason why I enjoyed working on the Arcology/Deus storyline so much. Yes, it was a big event. But reading Renraku Arcology Shutdown really hit me more than nearly any other Shadowrun book, because here was this icon of Shadowrun Seattle--the Arcology--that had been perversely turned into a horror (little "h"). Regular Seattle residents were Christmas shopping when a crazed AI turned their world into an experimental prison camp. Chances are, the players know someone who was trapped inside there, either directly or indirectly. It's personal. As the players got more involved in the storyline, they could discover why someone did this to the people they know, the people they live with. They could never forgive Deus--or Renraku--but if the players were sufficiently impacted and connected to these events, they'd be motivated to learn the truth and be involved.

One major goal with Ghost Cartels was to try to create the same personal, emotional involvement. We wanted to make it likely that the runners knew someone whose life was being impacted--or even destroyed--by this new Tempo drug craze or the drug wars that came with it. We even reflected this in the writing through Haze's trouble with addiction and Fatima's murder; we wanted to emphasize the point that GMs should bring his plot home to the runners. We wanted the runners to be conflicted on their involvement with the spread of Tempo; they should probably feel pretty dirty by the end of Ghost Cartels. The idea was to give them an opportunity later to redeem themselves (or at least try). Ghost Cartels was planned to be the first in a few connected plot books. Unfortunately, I think that idea is pretty much dead at this point, but I thought it was a great goal.

On "monster parties" with free spirits and AIs: Gah, I hate that stuff in Shadowrun. I was very much against the idea of allowing free spirit and AI player characters, but I was totally out-voted. Some freelancers loved it. Many playertesters were thrilled. And it seems like a lot of players like it too. So I definitely lost that fight, as much as I will continue to grumble about it. *grins*

[TheFlatline]

Renraku Arcology was probably my favorite Shadowrun plotline for many of the reasons you listed, plus one more.

The "default" setting of Shadowrun is Seattle. Most games I've ever played of SR at least start in Seattle. The arc is one of those things that, regardless of where you are in the city, you look out a window, or look at the skyline, you *will* see it. Even if by some chance you're scum who lives out in the barrens, chances are you can look at the skyline of Seattle, see the arc, and think for a minute "there are thousands of people trapped in there..."

As for bringing an immediacy to SR adventures, the Arc really was brought inside an "average" character's monkeysphere in immense ways.

As far as AI PCs, it feels kind of like I'm cheated out of the contract. We saw 2 real AIs through SR3, and suddenly in the beginning of SR4 we have dozens of smaller AI's, and potentially thousands of PC-level AIs. It feels like I paid my 7.50 to see Jaws, and they showed the stupid shark in the first 8 minutes of the film in all his glory. Then they gave me the remote control to control Jaws for the next 90 minutes. Is it cool? Yeah I guess sort of. It felt like the writers blew their wad way, way too soon. If the anti-technomancer vibe had made it into the core book, and the AI shit had been kept on a tight leash, a sign of things to come instead of the new status quo, then Emergence would have been pretty awesome. I enjoyed the read to be sure, and ran a pretty successful pre-SR4 game using Emergence as a springboard (in my setting, Emergence takes place 2 years or so before the core book takes place). I almost needed to back off of the AIs though, as the technomancer plot itself was significant enough that the AIs felt either tacked on or just too cluttered in the narrative. As a potential "puppetmaster" for TMs, it was a great final spin to the story, but otherwise it felt like to much.

[Username17]

My problem with Free Spirit and AI character options is 100% that the game mechanics don't work and 0% that the characters are in any way "over the top". Those are things that exist in the game and exist in the source material. If someone wants to be Puppet Master from Ghost In The Shell, that's fine with me.

The problem is entirely that choosing those character options dooms you to an unplaytested realm of rules written by Aaron that no one bothered to even run through simple comparisons or subject to calculator analysis.

-Username17

[knasser]

There really isn't anything wrong with cops running around on unicorns. While the SR unicorn specifically is allergic to cities and that wouldn't work, it is entirely reasonable for someone to have a griffin mount or something similar.

It is entirely unreasonable to have cops riding around on Unicorns. Unicorns need feeding which takes time they're unavailable, you can't armour them up the way you can a car, they can be spooked or stubborn the way all animals do, they have a "manufacturing time" measured in years with all the resource forecasting problems that entails. They can't keep up with a car in a chase, smoke gets in their eyes, there are laws and legislations about how you can treat them, restraunteers steal them when you leave them unattended, an officer requires special training above and beyond the cursory "advanced driving" that is all you'd have to do for driving a patrol car or motorbike, small girls try to put glitter in your unicorn's mane and call it 'Sprinkles' and hug it. And then your department gets a lawsuit from the girl's parents when the Unicorn puts a horn through her left lung.

The problem with cops on Unicorns (or indeed Griffons which offer no surveillance benefit in an age of cheap aerial drones and probably cost the same to acquire, breed and maintain as you'd pay for a whole Yellowjacket helicopter whilst the griffon doesn't even come with a weapon mount, but is a predatory animal which is likely to take someone head off if they resist arrest which isn't going to help with questioning that individual later or if they turn out not to be a wanted killer but just some executive's son who was struggling 'cause they had a packet of novacoke in their pocket)... the problem is not that it can't be done. The problem is (a) it is stupid and messes up the realistic feel of Shadowrun when it's sometimes hard enough to explain how a game involving magic and cyberware can be realistic as it is. And (b) once people decide that cops on unicorns is an established idea, gamer-types start saying: "but it's not balanced against people on motorbikes, let's give the Unicorn some special Unicorn speed so it can run at 100kpph" or some other biologically unfeasible equalizer). And thus begins the broad and easy path to D&D.

I worked on Emergence, so I think of anyone here I can say the major mistake when writing the book was timing. It came out after the main book, where nary an unkind word is given about TMs, so the sudden technomancer hate in E caused brain backlash. We were writing the book in the dark with little idea of what the new rules were going to be.

AH, I say this with the caveat that I've long appreciated the quality of your work on Shadowrun. But there were many major mistakes in Emergence. Emergence has long been a sticking point for me in my otherwise usually high praise of 4th Ed. Shadowrun supplements. You probably remember my review or comments on Dumpshock. That it came out long after the actual 4th Edition book which contained almost no warning that Technomancers were a secret, blasphemous terror to the world was a serious problem, but imo, the entire product was massively misconceived. For a start, I don't know what the writers expected anyone to actually do with it. The adventure frameworks were far too sparse to actually be useful other than the barest seed ideas. And they most came down to: "person X is a technomancer, so go protect them / rescue them / kiss their feet" or whatever. And those were the better ones. The literal race across town to beat "Humanis" from getting their hands on a "super-weapon" that did less damage than an easily obtainable quantity of explosives which they planned to detonate in a heavily metahuman area of town made less sense than setting my nuts on fire. Something like 80% of the book was Shadowtalk - which I use precisely how? Show it to the players? Well then their characters want to get involved in the conversations at which point I'm left role-playing twenty-odd NPCs I didn't create and don't actually have bios for. Read it to them and tell them "this is conversation that's happening on a forum that your characters aren't aware of. Also, it has no impact on your characters". Read it to myself as a story for my own entertainment? Hardly - it doesn't work as fiction and it has no role in running a game. It is without purpose. The actual idea of Emergence? Doesn't work at all! Witch hunts and Red Scares? I Just can't justify that. And did the writers not consider what game they're writing for? Your stereotypical party is a group of hardened criminals who shoot people in the face for money. And suddenly one of them is a menace that not only the cops but gangers and members of the public all want to turn in? Even if the rest of the party don't believe the scare stories (and if the whole world does, it's plausible that PCs living in that society will as well), they have little incentive to visiting runner bars with Peadophile McCommunist in tow. And the poor TM PC himself? What does he do? Hey, Mr. Johnson, hire me - I'm a, uh, hacker. Datajack? Why no, I don't have one. Cyberware? Uh, no. Technomancer? Why that's crazy talk and no you may not examine my persona, thankyouverymuch." Yeah, you might be able to pull off the Hacker routine if the Johnson is sloppy, but you've basically got a PC that can't use their whole schtick as an advertising point. And is it reasonable to have this die down overnight as Emergence seems to expect? No - this sort of suspicion will linger for years so you've basically slapped a PC with a big problem for the rest of the campaign. And that's assuming that the group has a TM in it. If they don't, then they have no intrinsic involvement in the plot arc. It's just: "Not another run about Technomancers!". Or you can give one an NPC TM partner and then it's: "Not another run involving your character's girlfriend" or "Your character's girlfriend keeps endangering us 'cause she's a freaky mutant. I'm going to shoot her / turn her in". (Remember, the 'shooting people in the face for money' party). And I really, really pity any player that decided to create a Hacker character because they thought they were a cool archetype, because they certainly aren't any more.
Hacker: "There's nothing I don't know about writing software. I'm a wiz with cracking my way into systems."
5 year old girl: "I become mystically one with software and the Matrix in a way you can never understand."
Hacker: "Well, uh, mechanically, my character is a good generalist, even if your character is vastly superior at her chosen area"
5 year old girl: "Name three runners that have competed in the 100m in the Olympics. Name one decathlete".
Hacker: *cries*

Sorry - I've just done a hatchet job on Emergence. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with it. Can I repeat how excellent everything else I've seen you and Peter Taylor do has been? I'm really sorry.

I would love to see Shadowrun with more small, localized adventures like 1st and 2nd edition had. Problem is, we were told repeatedly that those adventures did not sell. I can't tell you how accurate that is, because I never had the numbers. But that's what we were told.

Maybe it's the wrong quantity at the wrong price point. If I could pick up an adventure for a few quid and there were enough adventures that I could just keep doing that, then I probably would. And before anyone thinks a few quid for an adventure is absurdly low, realise that you can get a dozen adventures out of Ghost Cartels and so that works out less than a few quid for an adventure. Sure, they'd need fleshing out more than what you found in Ghost Cartels and you'd need more maps. But you also wouldn't need all the campain arc fluff and Shadowtalk and the maps could be much less flashy. Basically, if I'm running a Shadowrun game that's at least a few games a month hopefully and so I'm doing that many adventures, perhaps. For me to suddenly say: "this month, I'm going to pay £10 and get someone else's adventure" is a big old break. It's like going out to a restaurant for a fancy meal. However, if you can put a chip shop next to my house and get me in the habit of saying: "yeah, take-out again", then you might just shift a lot of chips. Just my thoughts. PDF would probably help a lot, but the piracy would probably kill that idea.

[knasser]

On the Salt Lake City mana ebb: To be honest, I have no idea. I don't even recall writing those two shadowtalk comments. It's entirely possible I didn't write them, because Davidson Cole did add some writing to that chapter. Not that I'm pinning it on him, because that was a long time ago and I just don't recall. But there wasn't anything seriously heavy behind the idea that I'd remember, that much I can tell you.

Salt has long been used as a barrier to keep out evil spirits. It gets thrown over your left shoulder in the UK. In Japan, they circle it around Sumo rings.Etcetera, etcetera. And in Salt Lake City, you have an entire lake of salt - of course it's a mana ebb, keeping out all that spiritual energy.

[Wesley Street]

I would love to see Shadowrun with more small, localized adventures like 1st and 2nd edition had. Problem is, we were told repeatedly that those adventures did not sell. I can't tell you how accurate that is, because I never had the numbers. But that's what we were told.

Maybe it's the wrong quantity at the wrong price point.

This.

Like Jay I heard the same "we don't do this because they don't sell" line. But I never saw any numbers to prove or disprove the idea. It may very well be that the days of the 32-page adventure book are gone... though the four-part Dawn of the Artifacts clearly contradicts that. But whatever.

Most gamers may not be willing to shell out $10 for a 32-pager. Would they be willing to shell out $30+ for a 200-pager consisting of four-to-five self-contained, unrelated adventures? Consumer habits, math and psychology tells us that they probably would.

The books don't have to be pretty. Maps in 1st ed. were ugly, brutal affairs and were often recycled from other products but they got the job done. Keep illustrations to a minimum; limit them to pieces of technology, critters or NPCs. Using Sean Macdonald to create a full-color map with full depth of field is a waste of money for SR. It's not a miniatures based game and it doesn't require terrain pieces. I like the maps but they're overkill. The writing needs to carry the product, not the pull-outs.

Use newsprint or low-weight non-glossy to cut down on printing costs if need be.

I'm curious as to how the Earthdawn Shards adventures by RedBrick are selling as they take this approach. They might be doing okay as they've put out a volume 2.

[Ancient History]

Knasser: Don't you owe me a PACKS review? Somebody does.

Yes, Emergence was a small disaster. I completely agree. [/edit] I did have fun with Aftermath though. [/edit][/edit] It wasn't as bad as Runner's Companion.

[knasser]

Like Jay I heard the same "we don't do this because they don't sell" line. But I never saw any numbers to prove or disprove the idea. It may very well be that the days of the 32-page adventure book are gone... though the four-part Dawn of the Artifacts clearly contradicts that. But whatever.

Most gamers may not be willing to shell out $10 for a 32-pager. Would they be willing to shell out $30+ for a 200-pager consisting of four-to-five self-contained, unrelated adventures? Consumer habits, math and psychology tells us that they probably would.

200 pages can hold more than five adventures. If you're actually talking pages and not sides (just to clarify this because of the maths), then a 200 pager could hold at least 10 nicely rounded out adventures. I'd actually suggest 1 larger adventure and around a dozen smaller ones.

Though I wasn't suggesting putting together a fat-pack, rather than a big pile of cheap, individual adventures. Still, whatever works.

The books don't have to be pretty. Maps in 1st ed. were ugly, brutal affairs and were often recycled from other products but they got the job done. Keep illustrations to a minimum; limit them to pieces of technology, critters or NPCs. Using Sean Macdonald to create a full-color map with full depth of field is a waste of money for SR. It's not a miniatures based game and it doesn't require terrain pieces. I like the maps but they're overkill. The writing needs to carry the product, not the pull-outs.

Cheap books can look cheap and can bring down the overall feel of a product line. But that said, I do agree with you. Graphics-lite is cheaper and can still look professional. On the maps - yes, the work in Ghost Cartels was big overkill and not necessarily even appropriate. These are the sorts of maps I create for my game:

http://knasser.me.uk/knasser_media/cont ... tation.pdf

http://knasser.me.uk/knasser_media/cont ... _house.pdf

http://knasser.me.uk/knasser_media/cont ... ampico.pdf

The last one in particular is an example of something I bashed out quickly but exactly met our needs in the game. I'm not holding these up as samples of professional work, I'm showing them as illustrations of what someone fiddling around for a couple of hours can bash out which are functionally adequate. A professional could do a better job more quickly, no doubt.

[knasser]

Knasser: Don't you owe me a PACKS review? Somebody does.

Yes, Emergence was a small disaster. I completely agree.

More than offset by your many successes, AH. I do owe you a PACKS review. I'll see what I can do about that. I haven't done anything Shadowrun since my game collapsed and I found out that everybody's hard work was being turned into a mansion in Shohomish. Shame as I had a couple of good Shadowrun adventures part-written. If the licence passes on to someone else, perhaps I'll write them up and release them to celebrate.

If I get time toward the end of the week, I'll see if I can write up a review of the PACKS material.

K.

[Username17]

It is entirely unreasonable to have cops riding around on Unicorns. Unicorns need feeding which takes time they're unavailable, you can't armour them up the way you can a car, they can be spooked or stubborn the way all animals do, they have a "manufacturing time" measured in years with all the resource forecasting problems that entails. They can't keep up with a car in a chase, smoke gets in their eyes, there are laws and legislations about how you can treat them, restraunteers steal them when you leave them unattended, an officer requires special training above and beyond the cursory "advanced driving" that is all you'd have to do for driving a patrol car or motorbike, small girls try to put glitter in your unicorn's mane and call it 'Sprinkles' and hug it. And then your department gets a lawsuit from the girl's parents when the Unicorn puts a horn through her left lung.

You are just being retarded now.



While all of that shit you just said is true about horses, there are nevertheless real reasons for police in major cities to ride them and they fucking do. Roughly horse sized things that were even smarter and had some degree of magic powers would be even better.

If you think it is unrealistic for police to ride horses, you don't get out that much.

-Username17

[knasser]

You are just being retarded now.

You know, I'm going to disagree with you there, Frank.

Mounted police are an anachronism even today. They have some limited utility for crowd control when you know in advance that you're going to need some and can show up with them. But primarily the purpose of mounted police today is to keep mounted police in business.

Now mounted police are already a small and highly specialist group. Your contention is that Unicorns would replace or supplement the horses used by these police. You think so? Let's consider:

Advantages: Magical counterspelling.

Disadvantages: Built in lethal-weapon with not-inconsiderable ability to use it, cannot be cloned, has valuable components worth people's time to steal (there is a trade in Unicorn horns). Virgin jokes twenty times a day.

Now magical assault is a tremendous rarity in the life of a Lone Star officer. You'll be shot at a hundred times for every time someone slings a spell at you.

Most commercial animals are clones in SR2072 (source: Running Wild) which offers a host of advantages in terms of cost and care.You can't do that with Unicorns. Built in lethal-weapon: This is a disadvantage. The cop already has a gun and she wants to be the one that decides whether someone merits lethal force, not some spooked mount driving its horn through a Mothers of Metahumans protestor. As I pointed out, mounted police are used for riot control against unarmed civillians. You certainly don't want them up against people with guns.

So those are the reasons I can immediately think of why you wouldn't use Unicorns over horses. I also think that by SR2072, you're not going to see many regular mounted police either. They're a legacy even today. SR2072 has far more effective ways of controlling crowds - gas, sonic weapons, foam all come to mind. These are new. New enough that their impact on other methods of crowd-control hasn't been fully shown yet. We saw the sonic weapons deployed on American soil in Pittsburgh some months back. I just don't see a good case for Lone Star Cops Mounted on Unicorns.

We also have to consider the risk of Realism Collapse. We can't package a Frank Trollman free with every copy of SR5 to explain to the gaming group at length why something isn't as silly as it sounds. I mean the cost of the shipping alone would hit the bottom line pretty hard. And then there's the possible risks of people not looking after all those Frank Trollmans. I've heard if you feed them after Midnight, for example, they get cranky.

K.

[Stahlseele]

i still hope the license goes to pegasus games in germany for a change . .
Furthermore, Hamburg, Germany, will be getting a new Horse Squad this month. First use will be in a Football/Soccer-Game between HSV(Hamburger Sportverein, first of the two big Soccer-Clubs in Hamburg) and St.Pauli(second of the two big soccer clubs in Hamburg). They expect some several hundred hooligans, if i remember this right. They'll be missing one, as i will be at work *snickers*.
Also. Dear god, one Frank Trollman for every Book?
It'd be both awesome and awfull at once ^^

[Wesley Street]

Cheap books can look cheap and can bring down the overall feel of a product line.

There's cheap and then there's CHEAP. Not every product needs to look like a graphic designer made sweet, sweet love to it. SR Missions used a basic template and the layout artist dropped the text in. I think something similar could be whipped up as a time-saver for a series of adventure books.

I'm not sure a one regular adventure/a bunch of smaller adventures format would be truly ideal. Not every adventure is going to be usable for a group. So it would be good if a broad spectrum of adventures were included and all were treated with equal importance. That doesn't prevent the inclusion of adventure seeds or some Dragon-magazine style articles with statted NPCs, organizations, etc.

i still hope the license goes to pegasus games in germany for a change . .

Call me an Anglophile but after the whole "nexi" thing I'd really prefer the license be held by a company that doesn't treat English as a second language.

[adamjury]

200 pages can hold more than five adventures. If you're actually talking pages and not sides (just to clarify this because of the maths),

Are you seriously suggesting that Wesley meant 200 pieces of paper and thus 400 pages?

Shadowrun books have page numbers. They start on the second page with 2, and end on the last page. The number on the last page is the number of pages in the book.

Though I wasn't suggesting putting together a fat-pack, rather than a big pile of cheap, individual adventures. Still, whatever works.

The d20 boom and bust put the final nail in the coffin of small adventures, as they often don't have a spine, are flimsy and get damaged in store easily, and they don't offer much in the way of profit margin.

The only reliable way to move small adventures is bundled with something else (with a GM screen, part of a boxed set, etc.) or bundling them together.

[knasser]

200 pages can hold more than five adventures. If you're actually talking pages and not sides (just to clarify this because of the maths),

Are you seriously suggesting that Wesley meant 200 pieces of paper and thus 400 pages?

I was. Language difficulty. I'm used to "pages" meaning actual sheets of paper. I've not worked in publishing in the USA and took a "200 page book" to mean 200 sheets. So the accepted terminology is that in Western publishing industry page is equivalent to side. I just didn't know that. that is all. Hence why I clarified the meaning.

Though I wasn't suggesting putting together a fat-pack, rather than a big pile of cheap, individual adventures. Still, whatever works.

The d20 boom and bust put the final nail in the coffin of small adventures, as they often don't have a spine, are flimsy and get damaged in store easily, and they don't offer much in the way of profit margin.

My personal preference is for PDFs. I prefer digital for anything I don't have to hand round the table for people to share, hence I only normally buy PDF unless I need the hardcopy for other people. Adventures would therefore be a PDF in my ideal world. I guess piracy would hit that hard, however?

[adamjury]

500 sales earns you the same amount of money whether zero people or 5000 people pirated it.

[Stahlseele]

Yeah, you only have 500 or 500 people LESS that buy it.

[adamjury]

You can't control or know how many people pirate your stuff.

You can make pretty good estimates of how many people will buy a PDF, and then look at the numbers and decide if it will make money or not, or how to adjust the numbers to make money (less art, recycling art, charging more, etc.) Then you make a decision based on sales and profit -- the important things.

I don't subscribe to the notion that pirates never buy stuff, either. 500 pirated copies isn't 500 lost sales. There may be a few lost sales in there; there's also going to be a few gained sales. And then there's going to be a whole ton of people that not only never buy anything, but they probably don't even read 10% of what they pirate. They don't concern me. But I see no good reason to treat most pirates badly: they could still become customers. I'm not going to turn them into customers by berating them or talking down to them or telling them or other people that it's all "their fault!" that something didn't sell well.

Some pirates _are_ dicks, absolutely. But some customers are dicks, too.

Make good stuff. Sell it at a fair price. Treat your customers well. Spend your time doing those three things, and not worrying about pirates.

[Stahlseele]

*nods*
i bought two copies of a computer game that i won't ever play just because they did not use any kind of copy protection on it . .

[knasser]

500 sales earns you the same amount of money whether zero people or 5000 people pirated it.

The point which I shouldn't have to make is that if of those 5000 people pirating 2% would have bought it, that's 100 sales piracy has cost you. I sense a quibble about my arbitrary 2% figure coming, so I'll point out that the 500 sales and 5,000 people is also arbitrary. It's sufficient to illustrate a principle.

You can't control or know how many people pirate your stuff.

I was making the case that piracy hurts sales. I base that on probably around a third of the people I know downloading stuff in place of buying it. That figure is probably lower than typical for the target markets for this material because my rather wide social circles encompass a number of people in places where cheap home bandwidth isn't common. Now this is for movies and music. I don't have many friends who are into role-playing games so I can't intuit that one, but I do know that of the people who I know who do play role-playing games, a number of them are downloading products in place of buying them. So yes, I stand by what I said which is that piracy hurts sales. For something with a narrow target market like adventures, I'd expect it to be very vulnerable to negative factors.

I don't subscribe to the notion that pirates never buy stuff, either. 500 pirated copies isn't 500 lost sales.

Who on earth said that pirates "never buy stuff" or that every download was a lost sale. Now that's hyperbole! But my own personal experience is that many people I know download in place of buying. I can count on my testicles the number of people I personally know that I'm aware of that have later bought an identical product to that which they have already downloaded and one of those is me when what I wanted wasn't available in my country at the time and I just didn't wait. I bought it later when it was available.

There may be a few lost sales in there; there's also going to be a few gained sales.

You were making the point quite emphatically elsewhere in your post that you can't know figures about piracy, so the only basis for saying which factor accounts for more is your personal experience of people. And like I say, mine is very negative on this score.

I'm not going to turn them into customers by berating them or talking down to them or telling them or other people that it's all "their fault!" that something didn't sell well.

I think condoning piracy and saying it's okay, fosters a mindset where people do it more casually. If people know that their freeloading is the reason why others have to pay more, or that people can't afford to work on a product, or that basically other people think less of them for it, then yes, I do think that may reduce piracy. I don't know of any technical measures that are successful in eliminating piracy, So that leaves people's conscience. Taking things without giving anything in return and expecting a small minority to pay for things on your behalf is wrong.

K.

[Neurosis]

The problem is entirely that choosing those character options dooms you to an unplaytested realm of rules written by Aaron that no one bothered to even run through simple comparisons or subject to calculator analysis.

The subject of math qua balance is incredibly fascinating to me and one I'd like to learn more about. Although I'd imagine it's a fairly large topic. My own sense of balance (as a designer and GM) is really, really heavily reliant on just eyeballing things. I believe I have a good SENSE of it but I certainly do not have procedure.

Knasser:

Salt has long been used as a barrier to keep out evil spirits. It gets thrown over your left shoulder in the UK. In Japan, they circle it around Sumo rings.Etcetera, etcetera. And in Salt Lake City, you have an entire lake of salt - of course it's a mana ebb, keeping out all that spiritual energy.

Makes sense. I was wondering about that "no magic in Utah" thing.

maps

Yoink to the power of yoink. Those maps/breakdowns are excellently detailed and the lone star station seems like an incredibly likely location to come up and will be invaluable for any future Shadowrun campaigns I run after my current one, which is winding down to its final adventure. Thanks for 'em.

While all of that shit you just said is true about horses, there are nevertheless real reasons for police in major cities to ride them and they fucking do. Roughly horse sized things that were even smarter and had some degree of magic powers would be even better.

Yes for certain special applications cops really do ride horses and when they do and you are on the wrong side of it, it is fucking TERRIFYING. Obviously Lone Star would not use Unicorns for pursuit but they might use them for crowd control...except in my campaign they wouldn't because Unicorns are just plain silly. For crowd control Lone Star would probably use something like cybered or warform horses.

I don't subscribe to the notion that pirates never buy stuff, either.

We they do buy stuff, even stuff they already have in PDF form. : ) Whether we're talking about the music industry or the RPG industry, pirates are not anti-customers. There is a lot of overlap between the two sides. There are more pirate/customers than either people who ONLY steal things and people who SCRUPULOUSLY pay for everything. The latter two groups almost do not exist when compared to the people who do a little of both depending on their financial status at the time. Of course, this is only my opinion, but I basically agree with Adam.

[knasser]

Yoink to the power of yoink. Those maps/breakdowns are excellently detailed and the lone star station seems like an incredibly likely location to come up and will be invaluable for any future Shadowrun campaigns I run after my current one, which is winding down to its final adventure. Thanks for 'em.

You've never seen my stuff? I need to get a publicist. Check out my site at http://knasser.me.uk. There's still quite a bit of Shadowrun material on there. If you play it, you might find it useful.

K.

[adamjury]

The point which I shouldn't have to make is that if of those 5000 people pirating 2% would have bought it, that's 100 sales piracy has cost you.

And if you didn't release that PDF at all, that's zero sales, total. So, if you think you can only sell 400 copies, your mission is to figure out if you can make money with those 400 sales, and if that money is enough money to chase.

So yes, I stand by what I said which is that piracy hurts sales. For something with a narrow target market like adventures, I'd expect it to be very vulnerable to negative factors.

So publishers should worry about the factors they can control: quality, availability, pricing, delivery format.

I can count on my testicles the number of people I personally know that I'm aware of that have later bought an identical product to that which they have already downloaded and one of those is me when what I wanted wasn't available in my country at the time and I just didn't wait.

Well, you're going to need a third testicle now.

I think condoning piracy and saying it's okay, fosters a mindset where people do it more casually

I'm not saying condone. I'm saying accept that it's a reality and work around it.

Of course, at this point, you can't pirate anything I currently publish because we CC-license it, and that's proving to be successful ... by treating the customer and potential customer well, they reward us. A quite shocking business strategy.

[Stahlseele]

Yes, yes you do.
Your stuff is awesome ^^

[Ganbare Gincun]

Mounted police are an anachronism even today. They have some limited utility for crowd control when you know in advance that you're going to need some and can show up with them. But primarily the purpose of mounted police today is to keep mounted police in business.

Mounted police are an essential part of any urban police force. They may primarily be known for the valuable role they they play in both crowd and riot control, but they also allow police officers to access areas where the use of police cars would either be impractical or impossible. They also fulfill the same function as traditional police foot patrols, serving as a visible police presence and crime deterrent on the streets of many cities. Saying that "the purpose of mounted police today is to keep mounted police in business" is, as Frank summed up so succinctly earlier, utterly retarded.

Disadvantages: Built in lethal-weapon with not-inconsiderable ability to use it, cannot be cloned, has valuable components worth people's time to steal (there is a trade in Unicorn horns). Virgin jokes twenty times a day.

Horses are already armed with lethal weapons - they can kill a man with a single well-placed kick. And while it's possible that someone might kill a unicorn to steal their horn, only a fool would risk killing a police animal or insulting a police officer.

Now magical assault is a tremendous rarity in the life of a Lone Star officer. You'll be shot at a hundred times for every time someone slings a spell at you.

That may be the case, but having police officers running around the city on magical beasts that can counter spells on a moment's notice will no doubt come in handy in those "1 in 100" situations, and may very well serve as a deterrent to magical troublemakers. They may even comprise a special unit charged with the express purpose of bringing down magical threats inside of the city.

Most commercial animals are clones in SR2072 (source: Running Wild) which offers a host of advantages in terms of cost and care. You can't do that with Unicorns.

If 30% of all horses end up turning into unicorns, you can bet your bottom dollar that someone's going to come up for a use for them. As Frank said, they are resources, and they are going to be used by someone. They're not just going to be turned into dog food and glue or used to run races - humanity will devise a variety of ways to exploit their magical traits and put them to good use.

The cop already has a gun and she wants to be the one that decides whether someone merits lethal force, not some spooked mount driving its horn through a Mothers of Metahumans protestor.

Police horses are trained well enough to serve as reliable mounts in riots. Why do you believe that a trained unicorn would perform any differently?

As I pointed out, mounted police are used for riot control against unarmed civillians. You certainly don't want them up against people with guns.

Mounted police are also used for riot control against armed civilians. And they also go up against regular criminals with guns. That's just part of the job. Sometimes unicorns are going to get killed in the line of duty, just like regular police horses and police dogs are in the real world.

SR2072 has far more effective ways of controlling crowds - gas, sonic weapons, foam all come to mind. These are new. New enough that their impact on other methods of crowd-control hasn't been fully shown yet. We saw the sonic weapons deployed on American soil in Pittsburgh some months back. I just don't see a good case for Lone Star Cops Mounted on Unicorns.

You're thinking of riot control, not crowd control. You don't want to be using tear gas or sonic weapons or foam just to contain and direct crowds at the football game or during Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Mounted police can use their horses to wade through thick crowds much easier then foot patrols and can also use their mounts as "mobile barricades" as needed.

So far, you haven't given me any real reason to believe that mounted police would be obsolete in 2072 aside from "bawwwww, horsies are old-fashioned".

We also have to consider the risk of Realism Collapse. We can't package a Frank Trollman free with every copy of SR5 to explain to the gaming group at length why something isn't as silly as it sounds.

You don't have to package Frank Trollman with every copy of SR5. You just have to write up a paragraph or two explaining why these things are so - you know, kind of like Frank did earlier in this thread. We're talking about a game world with undead dragon presidents and immortal elves and great ghost dances and shit; I don't think that "police officers riding unicorns" is anywhere near the most outrageous or unbelievable thing in the world of Shadowrun. You may not like unicorns, but they aren't the world-breaker that you make them out to be.