The Shadowrun Situation

Parthenon · Post by **Parthenon** » Fri Mar 25, 2011 8:43 pm

I downloaded the preview from here.

Hmmm... I'm honestly trying to read that message from the text and I'm having problems. With that idea in mind I see it from Kay, but the problem is that she's reading a fuckton more from Intern than is actually there.

The fact that lots of runners have degrees is an interesting tidbit precisely because it doesn't matter and isn't noticeable. Otherwise it would be something that keeps coming up and Intern would just be confirming what people have noticed.

The section as a whole doesn't really doesn't give the message you want, only the Kay St. Irregular paragraph, and the fact that it is almost an aside dilutes the message.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Mar 25, 2011 9:26 pm

Critias wrote:Once again, I wasn't aware that a conversational character conversationally mixing a where/who list would be such a huge deal, but it's on my radar now and I'll keep an ear out for future criticism along those lines.

Really? You didn't think that writing hanging references was a big deal? Serious, non-rhetorical question here: why do you write? Because if you write because you want to convey something to the reader, you need for your sentences and paragraphs to be coherent. This is a non-negotiable part of writing. The words you write down have to be decoded by people you've never met who have no other cues than the words themselves.

So let's go back to that list, because it's such an amazingly egregious example of bad writing:

Critias wrote:I’ve broached the subject with people I’ve worked with everywhere from Seattle to New York, Los Angeles to Portland, two teams in Hong Kong, a set of guides in Australia, bounty hunters in Quebec, a dozen smugglers out of Denver, and Lakota Mafia hitmen on the Great Plains.

Certain things leap out at the reader familiar with a map. Like how the Great Plains are in fact between New York and Seattle, or how Seattle itself is just a little bit North of Portland. Just the regional framing doesn't make any fucking sense. You'd never say "Los Angeles to Portland" right after you already specified Seattle, because "Los Angeles to Seattle" already includes Portland. But then if you were trying to get an "I've been all over North America" vibe, you fail with your examples. Three of them are in the middle of the continent, but one of them (Quebec) is considerably North of the north/south breadth you mention. And one of them (Hong Kong) is not actually in North America at all.

But even without the map failure itself, the list itself is not English. See, when you have list elements that aren't valid complete sentences, the implication is that they are referring to enough of the list introduction to be a sentence. So the reason why your sentence doesn't break at "Los Angeles to Portland" is because the beginning of the sentence is "I’ve broached the subject with people I’ve worked with everywhere from". This leads to an implied sentence fragment of:

"[I’ve broached the subject with people I’ve worked with everywhere from] Los Angeles to Portland"

And that works, just as it worked for the previous list element "Seattle to New York". But look what happens when we extend it to the next list element:

"[I’ve broached the subject with people I’ve worked with everywhere from] two teams in Hong Kong"

That is dog vomit! What you wrote is in no way acceptable as English writing. And no, you do not get to hide behind "conversational tone" or "literary license" for writing dog vomit.

Now there are a lot of ways you could rework that. You could put in extra words into each list entry so that the only implied repeated phrase was "I've broached the subject with". But even then you'd have to explain the map fail because Denver is very demonstrably between Seattle and New York and between Los Angeles and Portland, but Hong Kong is very demonstrably not. So your four specific examples are neither examples from the "everywhere from" set nor are they additions to that set. It's all horse shit all the way down.

Critias wrote:Intern's supposed to be annoying and self-centered

OK, time for a secret: you aren't very good at writing. Characters you write are going to be annoying and self centered anyway, because you lack seasoning, depth, and talent. Going out of your way to write badly isn't edgy or witty, it just makes your bad writing worse. It takes enormous talent to write badly for comedic or explanatory effect, and it is not something that a poor writer like yourself should attempt.

A bad writer writing badly on purpose does not cancel out and become great prose, it just becomes really, really bad.

-Username17

Critias · Post by **Critias** » Fri Mar 25, 2011 9:38 pm

You're a really angry guy, Frank.

I mean, really. I'd acknowledged that you didn't like the list thing, but instead of being in any way capable of moving on, you're just going to go back to it and repeat your disgust? Okay. I get it. You don't like the list thing. Does the world really need another 675 word essay about how you don't like the list thing, and then another startling update that you don't like my writing?

It's okay. You made that part clear already, alright? We all heard you. You're clever and critical and you don't like the list bit. We've all got it.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Fri Mar 25, 2011 9:43 pm

RiotGearEpsilon wrote:Is this preview available for free anywhere? I'm not sure what we're talking about.

Yeah, look up the book itself on drive-thru RPG and there's a preview there.

Critias · Post by **Critias** » Fri Mar 25, 2011 9:43 pm

Parthenon wrote:I downloaded the preview from here.

Hmmm... I'm honestly trying to read that message from the text and I'm having problems. With that idea in mind I see it from Kay, but the problem is that she's reading a fuckton more from Intern than is actually there.

The fact that lots of runners have degrees is an interesting tidbit precisely because it doesn't matter and isn't noticeable. Otherwise it would be something that keeps coming up and Intern would just be confirming what people have noticed.

The section as a whole doesn't really doesn't give the message you want, only the Kay St. Irregular paragraph, and the fact that it is almost an aside dilutes the message.

Just a quick aside -- don't think I'm not listening to the rest of what you're saying, by mentioning this -- but Kay St. Irregular's a dude.

duo31 · Post by **duo31** » Fri Mar 25, 2011 10:34 pm

Critias wrote:You're a really angry guy, Frank.

Frank is a vitriolic asshole. However, he is usually correct and almost always entertaining.

Also, the sky is blue.

Except when it is black, pink, orange, red, or purple.

-duo

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Fri Mar 25, 2011 10:40 pm

Dude averages less than a post a month for 3 years...and that's one of his posts. Pay attention!

RiotGearEpsilon · Post by **RiotGearEpsilon** » Sat Mar 26, 2011 1:10 am

The preview doesn't include enough detail for me to make much of a judgement, but yeah, too much yammering on about Intern, not enough data about the world.

Frank's point about sentence fragments is... honestly, it's hard for me to really care. He's technically correct, but the intent of the sentence is completely understandable. My only complain is that it, again, yammers on too long establishing Intern's bona-fides, when in fact I don't care about this Intern guy at all.

Fucks · Post by **Fucks** » Sat Mar 26, 2011 8:32 am

RiotGearEpsilon wrote: Frank's point about sentence fragments is... honestly, it's hard for me to really care. He's technically correct, but the intent of the sentence is completely understandable.

This.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Sat Mar 26, 2011 9:57 am

Ancient western tradition: winning by technicalities.

duo31 · Post by **duo31** » Sat Mar 26, 2011 6:42 pm

Frank's living in Prague has probably made him very sensitive to sentence structure and especially pronoun use.

My friend, who works with Czechs, has commented on more than one occasion of their annoyance with the vagueness of English pronouns.

-duo

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Sun Mar 27, 2011 6:16 am

Stahlseele wrote:Ancient western tradition: winning by technicalities.

Oh bullshit. If you're going to be a professional writer, your writing needs to be professional. Period.

Part of the problem is that there apparently isn't an actual real editing process that goes through and rejects copy and sends it back for retooling. I get the feeling everything came together at the last possible moment, and thus there was no time (and no inclination) to edit and proofread submissions beyond glaring spelling ang grammar issues.

Don't forget they're asking 30 bucks retail for this. Considering that most major hardcover novels come in at under 30 bucks, you're pricing yourself as a very exclusive product. Attitude isn't quality enough to ask 30 bucks for it.

Wesley Street · Post by **Wesley Street** » Sun Mar 27, 2011 3:41 pm

TheFlatline wrote:Part of the problem is that there apparently isn't an actual real editing process that goes through and rejects copy and sends it back for retooling. I get the feeling everything came together at the last possible moment, and thus there was no time (and no inclination) to edit and proofread submissions beyond glaring spelling ang grammar issues.

This is true. But it also isn't new. This was a problem even before the Great Exodus. There wasn't a shortage of good writers but there was a shortage of good editors who had authority to make changes.

There are also individuals who think they are good editors and end up screwing projects. I don't care if people piss all over my ideas but I'll be damned if anyone accuses me of being a poor wordsmith. I submitted finished and polished drafts on a SR project. Due to extra space, the editor added a few extra paragraphs of text... which I didn't know about until the damn thing was released to the public and I found my passages filled with sentence fragments, run-on sentences, etc. I saw red.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Sun Mar 27, 2011 8:36 pm

Editors aren't supposed to add their own work. That'd be incredibly insulting to me too.

If you have good writers however, both technical and topical, the need for good editing is reduced somewhat.

adamjury · Post by **adamjury** » Mon Mar 28, 2011 6:00 am

The Shadowrun dev process has always included a "development edit" ... during which, text is added (or removed, or rearranged, or ruined, or revitalized...) by the developer to tweak the text to their satisfaction.

There are few RPG publishing situations I've seen where that doesn't happen.

Is it good if the original author would get to see the text again before publication? Absolutely. Even better if the desired changes are properly communicated from dev to author between first and second draft stage. Time doesn't always allow for that -- but that's the ideal.

raben-aas · Post by **raben-aas** » Mon Mar 28, 2011 11:45 am

Critias wrote:Intern's supposed to be annoying and self-centered

I don't think anyone was suggesting that the character was annoying by accident.

I think the point was that few people like to pay money to hear a self-centered prick (the character, not you) talk about himself instead of talking about the very stuff they bought the book for.

I haven't read Attitude yet and can't comment on the writing or content as such, but as a GENERAL comment I'd like to say that yes, there have always been SR books out there (even before CGL) where the ingame author was wanking, and also books that were more about those ingame characters than about the topic they supposedly were intended to be about. And I positively hate that (and not only in SR – I'm getting increasingly annoyed in VtR, too – if I want to read a novel, I'm quite capable of buying one).

I am absolutely not interested in who is impregnating whom, or who has nipples of whatever color, or to follow an argument between two shadowtalkers that goes on and on and on, or to pay attention to an in-depth self-analysis of a character that will become more important some books down the line.

If you (a general you, whoever you may be) want to make me happy as a gamemaster and player, give me stuff I can use, make it quick and crunchy, present your metaplot in newsfeed articles or conspiracy talks that I can use ingame, and scratch EVERYTHING that is just applying to some NPC characters my runners will never meet, and the authors who like to talk about them.

To emphasize: that rant was not about Attitude or Critias, it's a general concern I have with RPG products, and a trend in RPG publishing that is leading in the wrong direction.

Carry on.

AAS

Otakusensei · Post by **Otakusensei** » Mon Mar 28, 2011 1:45 pm

I've always liked the bits of fiction where shits going down. You know, on the run. I don't necessarily need to know who the players are (but it helps if I like them), I want a little bit of action to start off my rules. If I meet a character I want to think "Wow, I wanna be like that!". You've talked about the length you have to work with. Please, introduce me to someone I'm going to like, because neither of us have time to deal with someone tedious. And at the end of the day I'm the one paying money to be annoyed by your brainchild.

On that note, rules tend to be a bit dry. That's not bad, and presenting them in a voice only makes them seem soft and unprofessionally presented. The setup where things are discussed in character in one section then explained in omniscient detail in the next has served Shadowrun well. There is no compelling reason to abandon that setup. In fact, doing so only serves to make the books seem less professionally written and does a disservice to the writers and developers. Consider that experiment failed.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Mon Mar 28, 2011 7:52 pm

raben-aas wrote:
Critias wrote:Intern's supposed to be annoying and self-centered
I don't think anyone was suggesting that the character was annoying by accident.

I think the point was that few people like to pay money to hear a self-centered prick (the character, not you) talk about himself instead of talking about the very stuff they bought the book for.

To quote Yhatzee from Zero Punctuation:

"Deliberately annoying is still annoying"

The idea of making a main narrative voice someone that the players don't like and is irritating to even read is not good writing.

The entire chapter, from the intro text on to where the preview ends needs to put down the Lincoln Park, stop cutting itself, and put some clothes on that fit. Emo and irritating is not the tone you want to start a book off entitled Attitude. Ultimately the project lead is at fault for putting pieces that are not about attitude shadowrunners require/use/emulate in their jobs in the front of a book called Attitude.

Semerkhet · Post by **Semerkhet** » Mon Mar 28, 2011 10:12 pm

I recently signed on to do some proofreading for CGL and, as it happens, The Untethered Life was the first chapter I got to dig into. I'm going to assume that since the book is out now I'm no longer bound strictly by the NDA.

Here are a few thoughts and factoids:

-The changes suggested for this chapter alone ran to 18 pages and a total of 121 changes were suggested.
-Six proofreaders signed off on this chapter. Amazingly, one person signed off with "no changes to make" Really, that floored me.
-A little over two weeks were given to proof-read this chapter.
-Ignoring for the moment simple punctuation errors, a quick count of just my own contributions shows that I suggested eighteen changes based on "awkward wording" or "awkward sentence structure." In a few cases I rewrote entire passages because what we were given was so bad.
-I have not purchased the pdf; I have only looked at the preview. A qualitative assessment shows that a little over half of the suggested changes from all proofreaders made it into the section of the final document found in the preview. All of my more drastic suggested changes came after the end of the free preview, so I don't know which of those changes made it in, if any.
-In a couple places I editorialized to object to the entire tone and characterization of a passage.

Overall I didn't much care for the chapter. It did seem out of place in a book I understood to be about mainstream culture in the 6th world. Even within its own off-topic subject it didn't seem to add anything to the conversation. Shallow is the right word.

Here are a couple of examples of my suggested changes, the first from The Untethered Life and the second from the Music chapter. Anyone want to tell me if either of these got changed?

Page 5, Why Run the Shadows?, paragraph 7, sentence 5
Replace: Then I got dragged into the violence that surrounds any sort of disaster like that, and what choices did I have for what to do with myself?

With: Stripped of all resources, I, and millions like me, fought for survival in the violence and chaos that followed the crash. The difference was, I had magic. School was over, the final exam was survival and the degree conferred was my life.

Explanation: Okay, maybe I went a bit overboard here but I really don’t like the sentence as-is. The character is writing about a major turning point in his life and yet the sentence has no ‘zing,’ no passion. He could be talking about a transit strike for all the emotional content of that sentence. Even if you don’t like the exact wording of my proffered replacement, please consider it as an example of the sort of intensity I think should be used to describe a personal experience of a horrific event like Crash 2.0.

Page 3, History, The Lows, paragraph 3, sentence 4-6
Replace: Musicians and the public alike were outraged, though for different reasons. The public complained about the price of music where there was no difference between a chip with artificially churned out tunes and a recorded performance from a live band. Musicians complained about the artificial competition.

With: Musicians and fans were both outraged, though for different reasons. The fans complained that there was no price difference between an album with artificially churned out tunes and a recorded performance from a live band whereas musicians complained about unfair artificial competition.

Explanation: Reworded for clarity and flow. Warning: Unsolicited Editorial Opinion incoming. I removed “chip” because it seems absurd to suppose that people in 2051 are buying music in physical format. Physical album sales in the real world have been dropping by 20% per year for the last few years. Project that trend forward forty years and only a tiny niche of collectors are going to want discrete physical containers for their music. The only reason I can think of to leave in the “chip” reference is if there is a desire to be backwards compatible with sourcebooks from previous editions.

Critias · Post by **Critias** » Tue Mar 29, 2011 4:05 am

Semerkhet wrote:[snip]

-The changes suggested for this chapter alone ran to 18 pages and a total of 121 changes were suggested.

[snip]

Not that I ever saw. I sent in a rough draft, made changes based on Jason's feedback, sent it back in, and got one more draft back with revision suggestions (which didn't include the suggestion you just quoted, for the record, and has a total of three suggestions with the word "awkward" in them anywhere). I snipped, trimmed, and changed as suggested each time.

After that third draft got sent in, I didn't hear a peep about it until the posted files were being sent to layout. When changes were suggested to me, I made them. If folks never get suggestions to me, I can't act on 'em.

ETA: And just for the record? You might feel TUL was off-topic in the Attitude book, and you might even be right, but here's a copy pasta of the project spec I got:

THE UNTETHERED LIFE (3K)
A description of why shadowrunners do what they do, why you would want to remain independent of the various forces that exist in the world, and some of the difficulties involved in staying free and clear. This section will remind runners that no one is truly untethered—we are all tied to are need to eat, for example. No one’s going to hand anything to you, so if you want to survive, you better do what you need to take care of yourself, and that requires something more than sitting on the couch all day.

Almaz · Post by **Almaz** » Tue Mar 29, 2011 4:33 am

Critias wrote:
Semerkhet wrote:[snip]

-The changes suggested for this chapter alone ran to 18 pages and a total of 121 changes were suggested.

[snip]
Not that I ever saw. I sent in a rough draft, made changes based on Jason's feedback, sent it back in, and got one more draft back with revision suggestions (which didn't include the suggestion you just quoted, for the record, and has a total of three suggestions with the word "awkward" in them anywhere). I snipped, trimmed, and changed as suggested each time.

After that third draft got sent in, I didn't hear a peep about it until the posted files were being sent to layout. When changes were suggested to me, I made them. If folks never get suggestions to me, I can't act on 'em.

ETA: And just for the record? You might feel TUL was off-topic in the Attitude book, and you might even be right, but here's a copy pasta of the project spec I got:
THE UNTETHERED LIFE (3K)
A description of why shadowrunners do what they do, why you would want to remain independent of the various forces that exist in the world, and some of the difficulties involved in staying free and clear. This section will remind runners that no one is truly untethered—we are all tied to are need to eat, for example. No one’s going to hand anything to you, so if you want to survive, you better do what you need to take care of yourself, and that requires something more than sitting on the couch all day.

This mostly just suggests that whoever was managing you and Semerkhet was not doing their job. Or was "doing their job" in a way that didn't get proofs sent to the writers. Also, "our need to eat." Seriously, basic spelling people. Yes, I realize you didn't write that bit. At least I hope you didn't.

You have to realize that whatever you do on a team project, if your manager is shoddy, your final output is likely to turn out shoddy, because how the book hangs together is paramount, and the person who is supposed to be making sure it hangs together is not. Which means your work, as part of the book, will be shoddy too. If you don't want people lambasting your work as shoddy, don't work for shoddy managers. Books live and die as a whole, and if your work is merely okay or even good it will be dragged down by every crap piece in the book, and even if the rest isn't crap, it will be worsened simply because the people who are in charge of direction are not putting it together as well as it could be.

Yes, I decided I really liked the word "shoddy" today.

Semerkhet · Post by **Semerkhet** » Tue Mar 29, 2011 1:05 pm

I've belatedly realized that, since I am now involved in the process, it is unprofessional to speculate publicly on that process. I will continue to try to effect positive change from the inside, as much as a toe in the door can be said to be "inside."

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue Mar 29, 2011 3:16 pm

Toe in the door . .
Yeah, sounds painfull enough to be a fitting analogy O.o

Otakusensei · Post by **Otakusensei** » Tue Mar 29, 2011 5:23 pm

An artist I know who did some work for CGL refereed to Randall as "A joke who seemed like he was delivering pizzas yesterday and has no idea how to do the job he's been handed today". Randall hired Jason.

Good luck getting some order back in the place. It does seem like once you're in they will give as much work as you will take. Just make sure you're compensated for it.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Tue Mar 29, 2011 5:36 pm

Otakusensei wrote: It does seem like once you're in they will give as much work as you will take. Just make sure you're compensated for it.

And compensated now rather than taking any sort of promissory arrangement.

There's a thought. Double your prices. Charge half in advance. You still break even, and if they pay the other half, SCORE.

The Gaming Den

The Shadowrun Situation

a report from behind the lines

Re: a report from behind the lines

Re: a report from behind the lines

Re: a report from behind the lines