The Shadowrun Situation

raben-aas · Post by **raben-aas** » Tue Dec 21, 2010 9:28 pm

Gee, wow. Thanks!

hermit · Post by **hermit** » Tue Dec 21, 2010 10:24 pm

It sure set high standards for RRP and the other books to come (German books; English books, I'll be surprised if they reach up to the quality of the GErmany SB) but it was a pleasant surprise.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Wed Dec 22, 2010 5:52 am

Praise on tgdbm?
Amazon shows only an limited edition?

raben-aas · Post by **raben-aas** » Wed Dec 22, 2010 9:17 am

The limited edition is hardcover and can be read starting from the front or back (it has two covers and you can turn the book around – read from the "front" it offers the corporate's or "decent citizen's" view of things in Berlin, while reading it from the "back" offers the "Alternative's" (Anarchist and Liberal-Minded) view of things.

The limited edition will be sold out soon. A "regular" edition (with just one cover and one direction of reading it) will be released early in the new year.

You can find the overview and some preview pages here: http://www.pegasus.de/1984.html

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Wed Dec 22, 2010 9:22 am

Wait . . the Hardcover with the 2 Covers i own is a limited edition? O.o

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Dec 22, 2010 9:30 am

Stahlseele wrote:Wait . . the Hardcover with the 2 Covers i own is a limited edition? O.o

The word "limited edition" doesn't mean much. In the fullness of time, every edition is limited. And print runs are usually specific numbers of copies, not open ended productions. A lot of print runs that Catalyst has been doing have been only 3000 books (or less). That makes pretty much every Shadowrun book a "limited edition" by any normal definition of the term.

That book is called out as a limited edition because the next print run won't be hard cover.

I actually don't know anything about it but what you see hear - I haven't been tracking Pegasus' productions. Every so often I check in on what the folks at Pegasus are doing and I find something crazy like Smurf Villages full of tiny immortal dwarves... then I back away as quietly as possible and forswear checking in again. I couldn't begin to tell you if the new Berlin book is good, bad, or indifferent. Some people seem to like it. :shrug:

-Username17

raben-aas · Post by **raben-aas** » Wed Dec 22, 2010 10:14 am

Re Limited edition: Berlin's limited edition is 1,000 books. If you look into your book, there should be a number stamped in the front or back.

Re Smurf villages: That was before Pegasus took over. There has been a very clear cut between "old Germany material" and "Pegasus stuff", and Pegasus is trying their best to de-weird the Germany setting they inherited. Next in line will be Rhein-Ruhr and an adventure booklet with several adventures tied to Urban Brawl (which will get its own chapter).

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Wed Dec 22, 2010 11:22 am

485/1000 handwritten numbers? O.o
i did not realize it to be a limited edition, seeing how all the SR4 books i got are hardcover . .
and someone PLEASE explain that smurf thing to me . .
I keep seeing mentions of this on several boards, but i don't know what they mean x.x

raben-aas · Post by **raben-aas** » Wed Dec 22, 2010 11:53 am

I think the regular edition of Berlin will be hardcover, too (cuz: no softcovers by Pregasus so far), it just won't hasve TWO covers and all that "turn your book around" thing.

Re Smurfs: The second Germany sourcebook (DidSII) mentiones the "Querx" to be a dwarf metavariant with blue skin who live in parts of Saxony.
http://www.shadowiki.de/Querx
or
http://pl.shadowrun.wikia.com/wiki/Querx
and
http://wiki.dumpshock.com/index.php/Talk:Querx

Again: DidSII was NOT done by Pegasus! And I think the Querx will never be mentioned again (one author tried to sneak them into the Berlin book, but they didn't make it – thank God*).

* YET, as DidSII is canonical, so technically speaking there ARE blue-skinned dwarves in Shadowrun!

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Wed Dec 22, 2010 2:57 pm

There's blue-skinned EVERYTHING . .

hermit · Post by **hermit** » Wed Dec 22, 2010 3:02 pm

A Querx is a dwarf metavariant for people like Medizinmann. Nuff said. Also, Querx are not immortal; the Immortal Throalian Refugee Dwarfs™ are a product of the same people who brought you the Theocracy in the most atheist nation in Europe and the Council of Golf Court.

The original saxonian legend is much less like a smurf and more like a redcap, if I remember my gradaunt's stories correctly. Wikipedia has a much more benign version, though, basically, the Querx according to wikipedia.de are benign beings, much more like brownies, and emigrated from Saxony to Bohemia with the advent of Christianity, and moved to Bohemia, because of superior (I kid you not) bread and beer.

Also, yes, all this happened before Pegasus. So far they have delivered with their books.

raben-aas · Post by **raben-aas** » Wed Dec 22, 2010 5:35 pm

Thx for mentioning that the Querx have a RL source. I never realized this. I know the Lutki, though. And wouldn't call them benign. I have a 60s book called "Sagen der Lausitz" which is full of Lutki stories. With few happy endings

hermit · Post by **hermit** » Wed Dec 22, 2010 6:23 pm

I guess my grandaunt mixed the two up. ^_^ Her Querx stories weren't really ... happy either. Maybe there should be some more on the German fae in upcoming Pegasus stuff. The snake king in the Spreewald marshes, the Lausitz guys .... just saying. Brandenburg could use some more coverage besides "it's where Berlin dumps it's shit and trash".

raben-aas · Post by **raben-aas** » Wed Dec 22, 2010 6:36 pm

Triglav roxx!
Sorry. Couldn't help myself.

Centurion13 · Post by **Centurion13** » Thu Dec 23, 2010 3:24 am

I guess Catalyst just announced some new Shadowrun product? Any opinions on this stuff?

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Thu Dec 23, 2010 3:37 am

This post? Jason's full of shit (again).

Well, start with the glaring absence: Runner's Toolkit. The writing for that was basically finished when I left, so they had to re-do PACKS...which writing should have been complete for months now. Why it isn't on the schedule is bizarre to me. Also no word on the SR Intro Boxed Set - maybe CGL doesn't (or can't) want to pay for boxed sets?

Most of the other products are no surprise...and I doubt they'll all see print in the first quarter of 2011. More likely we'll see .pdf releases followed by a street date six to eight weeks later.

Artifacts Unbound is apparently what they're scraping together to replace Harlequin's Gambit.

The Horizon Adventures were supposed to be "dropped into" the schedule to fill any gaps, and I thought all three of them had been written, only waiting on art and layout...they tie into the (awful, horrible, very bad, insensible) war storyline, so really should be released before Spy Games. Unless they've rewritten them from the drafts I've seen, these are gonna be pretty bad.

I'm guessing that the 10 X pdf products have replaced the adventures as productions to be used to fill out the roster and ensure a monthly release.

Otakusensei · Post by **Otakusensei** » Thu Dec 23, 2010 4:46 am

Ancient History wrote:This post? Jason's full of shit (again).

Well, start with the glaring absence: Runner's Toolkit. The writing for that was basically finished when I left, so they had to re-do PACKS...which writing should have been complete for months now. Why it isn't on the schedule is bizarre to me. Also no word on the SR Intro Boxed Set - maybe CGL doesn't (or can't) want to pay for boxed sets?

Most of the other products are no surprise...and I doubt they'll all see print in the first quarter of 2011. More likely we'll see .pdf releases followed by a street date six to eight weeks later.

Artifacts Unbound is apparently what they're scraping together to replace Harlequin's Gambit.

The Horizon Adventures were supposed to be "dropped into" the schedule to fill any gaps, and I thought all three of them had been written, only waiting on art and layout...they tie into the (awful, horrible, very bad, insensible) war storyline, so really should be released before Spy Games. Unless they've rewritten them from the drafts I've seen, these are gonna be pretty bad.

I'm guessing that the 10 X pdf products have replaced the adventures as productions to be used to fill out the roster and ensure a monthly release.

So, Artifacts Unbound...

Basically they killed the high magic book, then crashed the Artifacts plot into a book that turns the artifacts into Dragon Balls?

Also I see:

Shadowrun scheduled releases, first and second quarters 2011 wrote:Artifacts Unbound concludes the Dawn of the Artifacts campaign that makes gamemasters and players free to determine the events of the campaign. Filled with adventure seeds, basic setting information, and NPC statistics, Artifacts Unbound lets gamemasters select the elements that would work best in their campaign and design a thrilling story for their game.

And I read:

The sum on my knowledge and experience in dealing with CGL in the last year wrote:Yeah so basically, fuck it. We tried to come up with a plot. Basically, this game is really hard to understand but people till get pissed when you change stuff. Anyway, here's some NPCs and some setting write ups, do whatever you want. What? You wanna know what happens at the end? Um, fine. Frosty wins? Or not, whatever works for you. It's like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, only you get to write it too! You guys do that all time anyway, so what does it matter? Expect the PDF as soon as the drafts hit the inbox; I'm told we gotta pay for the last print run eventually.

That was a bit uncharitable, I'll be honest. But that's exactly how War! feels and I'll be very surprised if the rest of the releases from CGL don't ride the same spiral down.

Any word on the license? Are there any companies out there that still care?

hermit · Post by **hermit** » Thu Dec 23, 2010 9:51 am

Blade over at Dumpshock now wants to start a letters campaign against the drop of quality in SR products.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Thu Dec 23, 2010 1:38 pm

As if anyone who can stomach working for CGL would care about letters.

Centurion13 · Post by **Centurion13** » Thu Dec 23, 2010 2:05 pm

Fuchs wrote:As if anyone who can stomach working for CGL would care about letters.

Good point. I was looking over their latest BT products and was amazed at the apparent slapdash production values in some of their PDFs. There are several pieces of art I would never have passed (for various reasons), and their habit of forcing text into whatever space is available causes words to be hyphenated in ways that are a crime against nature...

Cent13

hermit · Post by **hermit** » Thu Dec 23, 2010 2:20 pm

Topps might. If enough people write firey angry letters about shit product, boycott and such, maybe they'll whip CGL in oline or not prolong the license (given there's any other takers).

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Dec 23, 2010 3:05 pm

Yeah, people should send letters to Topps, not to CGL. CGL uses the circular file to keep their own contracts and paystubs, so you can imagine what they'll do with unflattering letters.

Topps is in the business of making money. And if they get a bunch of angry letters over the quality level of CGL's stuff they may take action of some kind.

By the way: Hermit, you should send Megu over here. Because no one else over there seems to care much about Southeast Asia and I do.

-Username17

hermit · Post by **hermit** » Thu Dec 23, 2010 3:30 pm

I will. SE Asia needs to be done, it will probably be Issue 2 (or at the very least part of the Land War). I'll point him here.

Otakusensei · Post by **Otakusensei** » Thu Dec 23, 2010 5:07 pm

I dig a letter campaign. Any specific addresses we should be targeting? I imagine general delivery for a company like Topps may not get the letter much further than it would sending them to CGL.

hermit · Post by **hermit** » Thu Dec 23, 2010 5:11 pm

Someone needs to dig through the CGL hate threads. The woman overseeing operations of CGL is mentioned in name there, and we know where LLC lives; Bills should also be easy to find, and Hardy too. If necessary, soemone can call in at the Seattle Temple and ask for him or something ...