The Gaming Den

So the shovelware cycle continues at Catalyst. I am going to need a lot of mead to review any of it, because the "File Dump" structure is apparently going to be not only standard in upcoming works but sold as a feature.

In the near future Jason plans to release Artifacts Unbound, Jet Set, Conspiracy Theories, Corporate Adventures, and "more". These books will be compiled out of a series of ~5000 word essays by different authors who may or may not be talking to each other - each of which is about some vague topic and presents "possible adventure and plot ideas" that a GM might want to fit into their campaign. In short: someone convinced Jason that the White Wolf Time of Judgement books were a great idea.

So buckle up and wait for things to get extremely stupid. Each book is going to present alternate and wholly incompatible progressions of the metaplot that are not discussed amongst the writing staff or checked against the history that Shadowrun has. So internal contradictions are basically impossible to avoid with the way Jason is acting as developer, so he has given up even trying to not have them. From now on: internal contradictions are a feature because he's putting the power to resolve them in the hands of the game master (because he is too fucking lazy to notice or fix them himself).

Furthermore, Jason has totally thrown in the towel as regards to keeping Shadowrun history straight. From this point forwards, the Shadows of XXX books are off the required reading list for authors of upcoming books. But don't worry, Jason has also thrown in the towel as regards to keeping Shadowrun rules straight - the secondary core books are off the required reading list too. So for example, the people who write Artifacts Unbound are not expected to have read or be able to reference Street Magic, let alone Ancient History's artifact guide.

It's not just that the books are going to be a file dump of incoherent postulates, it's that in addition to being rughly 120,000 words of wild speculation no more interesting or official than a forum discussion about where the plot might go, they will also be written by people whose knowledge of Shadowrun begins and ends at the SR4A Core Book and the atrocious Sixth World Almanac.

Yeah: and the big reveal for Artifacts Unbound: the artifacts are Dragon Balls. If you put them together you get powerful one-off magic effects, but then the artifacts fly away and hide themselves again. I'm not making that up.

By the way, I would send letters of complaint by mail to:

• Topps Incorporated
  One Whitehall Street
  New York, NY 10004
  USA

-Username17

The required reading list thing is pretty amazing.

Wow. Just ... wow.

But don't worry, Jason has also thrown in the towel as regards to keeping Shadowrun rules straight

Explains why Aaron Pavao felt he did substantial research for his overall pretty sucky rules bit in War!, though.

hermit wrote:A Querx is a dwarf metavariant for people like Medizinmann. .

No !
For People like Me(or better said for Me)
they're just plain ...Mulch
If there are any Questions concerning Pegasus I might help out a little bit
(but my English is not....perfect )

Hough!
Medicineman

Found the Artifacts Unbound Project Spec.

So, for a book about magical artifacts, Street Magic is not referenced...

Ancient History wrote:Found the Artifacts Unbound Project Spec.

i know, it is a bit cynical, but i still like how this plays out with information leaks about this stuff . . it is so wonderfully clichee shadowrunny ^^

Fuchs wrote:So, for a book about magical artifacts, Street Magic is not referenced...

sadly, not really surprising <.<

hermit wrote: Explains why Aaron Pavao felt he did substantial research for his overall pretty sucky rules bit in War!, though.

Wait, what? Did Aaron come out and say which parts of the book he wrote? How come people only seem to stand up to take credit for the parts of the book that were shit?

I don't know that anyone has said they were the brains behind the essay about staling socks, even though that is by far the best part of the book.

-Username17

It's in the War! discussion thread on dumpshock, starting here. Aaron wrote the rules. and he thinks they're bona fide. He also PM'd me he thinks the same about the German names, which makes me wonder if he chose insultingly stupid names on purpose.

He mostly is defending the Slow spell, though.

hermit wrote:It's in the War! discussion thread on dumpshock, starting here. Aaron wrote the rules. and he thinks they're bona fide. He also PM'd me he thinks the same about the German names, which makes me wonder if he chose insultingly stupid names on purpose.

He mostly is defending the Slow spell, though.

OK, that is the Aaron I know. He said his Unwired work was perfect too. I genuinely think he is a victim of dunning-kruger. Seriously, he keeps writing rules, those rules keep being shit, and he keeps acting like his detractors are nutballs and jerks for not being able to see how awesome he is.

Yeah, you can take someone out when they are using a Slow spell. You could use a laser or an orbital mass driver. That doesn't make it anything like OK. It's still several orders of magnitude more effective than anything in the game. Shadowrun magic is very powerful. When you write a new spell that is ridiculous for a Shadowrun spell, you're a bad writer.

-Username17

Doesn't look like the other CGL employees and freelancers have any integrity left either.

FrankTrollman wrote:OK, that is the Aaron I know. He said his Unwired work was perfect too. I genuinely think he is a victim of dunning-kruger. Seriously, he keeps writing rules, those rules keep being shit, and he keeps acting like his detractors are nutballs and jerks for not being able to see how awesome he is.

Yeah, you can take someone out when they are using a Slow spell. You could use a laser or an orbital mass driver. That doesn't make it anything like OK. It's still several orders of magnitude more effective than anything in the game. Shadowrun magic is very powerful. When you write a new spell that is ridiculous for a Shadowrun spell, you're a bad writer.

-Username17

Speaking specifically about the Slow spell, everyone has ideas that seem great at first but end up having ramifications that make them problematic in actual play. I know Aaron at acquaintance level, living in the same city and moving in overlapping social circles, and I know for a fact that he has lived and breathed Shadowrun for many years and loves the game. That doesn't make him immune from bad ideas or relieve him from all responsibility when they get printed. I totally agree that Aaron himself should have been able to foresee the problems with this spell but the fact of that version of the Slow spell making it into the final version of War! is not his fault alone. Somewhere along the line the playtesters should have raised some red flags and the responsible parties should have taken a closer look at it. Did everyone in the process fail to see the problems? Even if they did, was Aaron even one of the "responsible parties" at that point in the process? From his statements on DS, it doesn't seem like it. I've always looked at the pipeline of playtesters, proofreaders, editors and developers as a means of making sure that any given idea percolates through enough brains to point up the fixable problems. It seems to me that it is the broken processes at CGL that are most to blame for "bad ideas" making it into print.

FrankTrollman wrote:
By the way, I would send letters of complaint by mail to:

• Topps Incorporated
  One Whitehall Street
  New York, NY 10004
  USA

The person who was mentioned in the thread on Dumpshock is

Tina Trenkler
VP, Entertainment Finance & Operations at The Topps Company

Semerkhet wrote: Somewhere along the line the playtesters should have raised some red flags and the responsible parties should have taken a closer look at it. Did everyone in the process fail to see the problems?

To make up a quote from the developer: "What is this playtesting thing you refer to?"

Semerkhet wrote:Speaking specifically about the Slow spell, everyone has ideas that seem great at first but end up having ramifications that make them problematic in actual play. I know Aaron at acquaintance level, living in the same city and moving in overlapping social circles, and I know for a fact that he has lived and breathed Shadowrun for many years and loves the game. That doesn't make him immune from bad ideas or relieve him from all responsibility when they get printed. I totally agree that Aaron himself should have been able to foresee the problems with this spell but the fact of that version of the Slow spell making it into the final version of War! is not his fault alone. Somewhere along the line the playtesters should have raised some red flags and the responsible parties should have taken a closer look at it. Did everyone in the process fail to see the problems? Even if they did, was Aaron even one of the "responsible parties" at that point in the process? From his statements on DS, it doesn't seem like it. I've always looked at the pipeline of playtesters, proofreaders, editors and developers as a means of making sure that any given idea percolates through enough brains to point up the fixable problems. It seems to me that it is the broken processes at CGL that are most to blame for "bad ideas" making it into print.

My problem with Aaron isn't that he has bad ideas. As you say, everyone has bad ideas. My problems are:

• He refuses to acknowledge that his idea was shitty, even after people have dragged it out into multiple pages of discussion pointing out all the ways it sucks ass.
• He is such a condescending asshole about people pointing out that his shitty ideas are in fact shitty. And that's coming from me.
• He does not appear to learn from his mistakes. After making a convoluted dump on the readers with Unwired, he was mysteriously given the opportunity to rewrite his ideas for SR4A, and made all the same mistakes.

For fuck's sake, do you remember His Fucking Matrix Walkthrough?

Yeah, everyone makes mistakes. And it is actually the Developer's job to make sure that mistakes by the authors don't make it into the final product. But that doesn't absolve Aaron from being a douchebag about his errors and shitting all over discussions about how to fix them. It really doesn't.

-Username17

Who's worse: the douchebag, or those who defend him?

FrankTrollman wrote: My problem with Aaron isn't that he has bad ideas. As you say, everyone has bad ideas. My problems are:

• He refuses to acknowledge that his idea was shitty, even after people have dragged it out into multiple pages of discussion pointing out all the ways it sucks ass.
• He is such a condescending asshole about people pointing out that his shitty ideas are in fact shitty. And that's coming from me.
• He does not appear to learn from his mistakes. After making a convoluted dump on the readers with Unwired, he was mysteriously given the opportunity to rewrite his ideas for SR4A, and made all the same mistakes.

For fuck's sake, do you remember His Fucking Matrix Walkthrough?

Yeah, everyone makes mistakes. And it is actually the Developer's job to make sure that mistakes by the authors don't make it into the final product. But that doesn't absolve Aaron from being a douchebag about his errors and shitting all over discussions about how to fix them. It really doesn't.

-Username17

Okay, you got me. The Matrix rules are...just not good. I have an over-developed tendency to give people the benefit of the doubt.

Fuchs wrote:Who's worse: the douchebag, or those who defend him?

Not helpful.

It is not my intent to be an unthinking apologist for Mr. Pavao and I acknowledge Frank's contention that Mr. Pavao has been unhelpful in responding to critics. He totally dodged the issue on the ramifications of the Slow spell and his response regarding Barrier spell seems disingenuous given the long years he's been running Shadowrun. He has to know that Barrier is pretty lousy at stopping bullets, especially in comparison to the Slow spell, as written.

What's not helpful is that the guys left at CGL do not admit that they produced a pile of manure. Some more "me bad, we'll do better now", and less "Frank is BAD! AH is bad! You're not getting the whole picture" apologist posts would restore some shred of confidence in their skills, if not their morals.

Fuchs wrote:What's not helpful is that the guys left at CGL do not admit that they produced a pile of manure. Some more "me bad, we'll do better now", and less "Frank is BAD! AH is bad! You're not getting the whole picture" apologist posts would restore some shred of confidence in their skills, if not their morals.

Agreed. And I apologize for getting defensive if your post was not directed at me. Hard to tell between no context and post order.

I just tossed a fairly mild rebuke at Bull on the official forums for his "we can't work like this" attitude regarding leaks and (gasp!) internet outrage regarding the development process.

The demonizing of Frank and AH is being used by some as a way to avoiding responding to their criticisms. That Frank and AH are often abrasive only gives those individuals the excuse to point and say, "See, we can't have a productive conversation with these people."

Beware of posting here, Semerkhet. Posting here is like visiting a WH40K Chaos temple. It instantly converts you to a cultist.

Oh noes, you're now a Cult of Frank follower.

hermit wrote:Beware of posting here, Semerkhet. Posting here is like visiting a WH40K Chaos temple. It instantly converts you to a cultist.

Oh noes, you're now a Cult of Frank follower.

I can't wait to get my cultist hood so that I can be accused of coming here to giggle and smirk after posting on DS or the official forums.

btw, if certain people are really that worried about what Frank has to say, banning him from DS was about the dumbest thing they could have done. They've made an (admittedly small niche) internet folk hero out of him for standing up to the Man (whoever that is).

Ancient History wrote:Found the Artifacts Unbound Project Spec.

[adam savage]

There's your problem!

[/adam savage]

Only 14 days for a proofreader (singular) to proof the entire document and then send it to the printers?

I did some 'playtesting' on Running Wild and a couple of the Artifacts series that amounted to little more than proof-skimming, particularly with Running Wild which was very close to deadline when I got it and 14 days isn't enough time to proof a document of that size.

Seriously, it needs to be proofed, sent to the editor, edited, sent back to layout and then a couple of cycles of 'rinse, repeat' until you've caught all the glaring spelling, grammatical and meaning errors. Just ask AH about PACKS....

I note with interest the lack of playtesting scheduled for Artifacts Unbound. We can expect a whole bunch of crap like the Slow spell then.

Something I distinctly felt, discussing Unwired with Aaron, was a desire to take uncomfortable conversations out of the public domain. Jason does the same thing. If you're making them look stupid they'll try to engage you in PM's rather than continue talking to you on a forum where the whole world is watching.

Semerkhet wrote:

hermit wrote:Beware of posting here, Semerkhet. Posting here is like visiting a WH40K Chaos temple. It instantly converts you to a cultist.

Oh noes, you're now a Cult of Frank follower.

I can't wait to get my cultist hood so that I can be accused of coming here to giggle and smirk after posting on DS or the official forums.

btw, if certain people are really that worried about what Frank has to say, banning him from DS was about the dumbest thing they could have done. They've made an (admittedly small niche) internet folk hero out of him for standing up to the Man (whoever that is).

He was banned from Dumpshock.
I got banned from the official board because i had more than one name registered and 2 of those were similar to FrankTollman

Stahlseele wrote:

Semerkhet wrote:

hermit wrote:Beware of posting here, Semerkhet. Posting here is like visiting a WH40K Chaos temple. It instantly converts you to a cultist.

Oh noes, you're now a Cult of Frank follower.

I can't wait to get my cultist hood so that I can be accused of coming here to giggle and smirk after posting on DS or the official forums.

btw, if certain people are really that worried about what Frank has to say, banning him from DS was about the dumbest thing they could have done. They've made an (admittedly small niche) internet folk hero out of him for standing up to the Man (whoever that is).

He was banned from Dumpshock.
I got banned from the official board because i had more than one name registered and 2 of those were similar to FrankTollman

I thought that was what I said. (about Frank anyway)