The Shadowrun Situation

[Fuchs]

Synner posted that Corp Guide and Vice were his projects, and delivered for layout and editing a year ago. So, that makes Jason's work output look a lot less impressive, if it ever was.

[Zinegata]

Hmmm. Glad I received that game as a gift then.

Let me put it this way. The game is supposed to be a murder-mystery. Except when you play the game you feel as though you're framing someone for the murder as opposed to finding out the real killer. I hear there's a variant that "fixes" this. But the base game makes me want to strangle the designer.

Oh. And tacked on to the murder-mystery is a totally unrelated conspiracy theory, which was probably an excuse to use jigsaw pieces. And journeys of self-discovery that unfold through a series of tiny cards that fit in the palm of your hand.

And the fiddliest movement mechanic in any game I've ever played.

Cancel my first comment. I want to strangle the designer even with the "fixed" variant.

[The Man Who Killed Death]

I love how his rebuttal for pushing out shitty books was that he needed to finish books (presumably because their window of opportunity to do so is closing in on them). So he's even admitted that he doesn't care about quality as much as quantity. And while I don't know much about Shadowrun, I believe I've heard that Catalyst hasn't been releasing product often enough anyway. Never mind good product.

[souran]

I think what we really need now is an FFG thread because that is the most interesting thing being discussed here.

I have not played twilight imperium. I have heard from people who play it alot that it has some balance issues. The argument I have heard from a couple of them amounts to "the mapboard for risk has balance issues as well and its still fun to play, similarly TI is as playable as any similar scale game."

Command and colors/BattleLore I own but have only played a few times. It seemed reasonable but I felt it was trying to hard to be a mini's game. Again, as a game I don't see where murtaks level of animosity comes from.

Andriod is a game that is marketed incorrectly. It basically sells itself as this cross between "Clue" and "Blade runner" which it isn't. The game actually works really well once you figure out that its more like a wierd ass version of life or something like that where its about figuring out how to score well.

Descent problem is that it takes to long to play a dungeon. The campaign game dungeons are acutally much more reasonable and when players are not grabbing silver/gold treasures immedaitly it seems to work better as well. I will admit that I like it less than warhammer quest and even problably advanced heroquest but those games are also no longer in print. Also, giving the overlord a way to win is an improvement over heroquest/warhammer quest. In general it helps keep the difficulty up because overlords are more active.

Considering that FFG is about the only company producing complex board games anymore I think they do a pretty good job all and all.

Now, I am not sure if they should be running RPGs because WFRP and Dark Heresy are not getting very good revies under their care but its hard to know how much is them and how much is their crappy sytem and GW obstructionism.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Anyone who says that Risk is fun is high.

The only mainstream game more boring than Risk are Monopoly and Mouse Trap.

[Username17]

Jason dresses up his productions with some fancy stuff, but basically his output has been very low and not high quality. He quotes his word count, but he's padding that with fiction. Specifically, as a Battletech author (having penned three Battletech novels, including one with Randall Bills in 2006), he was given a single - and not well regarded - Shadowrun book to write. It's a paperback novel, and not a good one. It is - of course - almost as many words as Augmentation. But it's basically fanfiction. Nothing that happens in that book is canon or had to be passed by other shadowrun people. Despite having been written after SR4, it takes place in 2063 and features the lives and times of some throwaway characters that we don't care about and never hear from again. His other major accomplishments are... more fanfiction. He wrote up some fiction inserts for some books. Whoop-de-doo. Someone has to do it of course, but it doesn't really matter who it is. As it happens, he wrote that bit in the SR4A book about the gem that has powers that don't make any sense and aren't replicable in the rules. And some people telling each other stories about the history of the world that are specifically outed as false iside the story. So it's a serious waste of space in the core book. That was 4 pages of completely wasted space that he slipped into the book.

As for his stint as developer, he has had the reigns for almost exactly a year. During that year he has successfully brought out... two books. Dawn of the Artifacts: Dusk (an adventure) and Vice (which was mostly written and developed by Peter Taylor. The next pieces he was supposed to bring out include Corp Guide and Sixth World Almanac. But those books have been in development hell for a long time. Peter Taylor actually sent Corp Guide to layout in April of 2009. It has had an actual fucking birthday in development hell! You want to know why Shadowrun hasn't won any awards in the last year? Because they haven't been releasing books!

Now a good part of that is that there hasn't been money to pay artists, editors, or printers, but also a big part of that is that Jason Hardy hasn't done his job. Like, at all.

Whatever his plans for moving forward were, they were either bad plans or he hasn't implemented them. Because there hasn't been a single book that Jason Hardy developed that has gone to print in the entire year he has been supposedly implementing his plans. It's technical writing. It has a 90 day development cycle. He has had four such cycles and has delivered zero products.

-Username17

[souran]

Anyone who says that Risk is fun is high.

The only mainstream game more boring than Risk are Monopoly and Mouse Trap.

Risk is acceptable once you put all the stuff from the lord of the rings or star wars or whatever variants in it.

A time limit, a better resource model, the ability to actually WIN a fight instead of just take proportional losses. Add all that crap and suddenly its playable.

[Username17]

Also, the Mormon conspiracy to destroy Shadowrun and steal all the money angle is looking better. And by better, I simply mean More Plausible.



Anyone know if Loren Coleman is also a Mormon? It would explain why these guys are so tight nit even while committing fraud and running the company into the ground.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

Is that the Jason Hardy? Shows up as an external user, and the post count stays at 1, so hard to track.

[Windjammer]

Huh? I thought Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader were pretty good as well. FFG in fact is now the #3 RPG company in terms of Q4 2009 sales according to ICV2 - with #2 being Pathfinder.

I'm sorry, but any attempt to correlate commercial success with success in design is doomed the moment it mentions Pathfinder. Which you did.

My search results aren't turning up any threads about people complaining about their editting in the forums either.

Try harder, or actually frequent the forums instead of googling them (or worse, using their internal search 'function') once in a while. Edit: am going to help you here a bit. Apart from the books I already mentioned (RT and CA), two books that drew serious ire from even the hardest of hardliners of fans (to the point of "please withdraw them from circulation") were the quest/scenario books for Tide of Iron and Descent. Happy reading.

I'm also tempted to say you're a bit nutty regarding the quality of FFG games.

Yep, because Runebound and Arkham Horror don't suffer from rolling a mediocre design into a 3-hour experience. Also, the fact that you quote "War of the Ring" as an instance of FFG design tells me that you simply didn't get my point. War of the Ring was designed and - what's even more crucial - playtested externally. That's part of why it was a success. My actual point concerned the drek that befalls us when FFG attempts design in-house. As they are prone to especially when they get a shiny IP on their hands they can rape with their splendid design "insights".

Also, Command & Colors... sucks. And it's ironic you sing its praises when it also has illogically custom dice... confusing counters, and claims to simulate "Cannae" and yet the Romans and Carthaginians have the same fucking number of soldiers in that scenario. It's not that good a game, and much of Battlelore's suckage stems from Command & Colors being pretty bad.

I'm not going to argue with someone who hasn't grokked the Borg engine. Hey, FFG designers haven't either, so I guess you should appreciate Westeros. You got my respect for actually having played these games, but beyond that, I'm afraid we'll have to disagree.

[Zinegata]

Anyone who says that Risk is fun is high.

The only mainstream game more boring than Risk are Monopoly and Mouse Trap.

Risk is acceptable once you put all the stuff from the lord of the rings or star wars or whatever variants in it.

A time limit, a better resource model, the ability to actually WIN a fight instead of just take proportional losses. Add all that crap and suddenly its playable.

2210 is the best variant personally. LoTR is okay, albeit it's embarassing that Frodo still goes through Shelob's lair even though we already took the Black Gate, burned Sauron's Tower to the ground, and displayed his pantaloons for all to see. Star Wars is interesting mainly for Order 66.

Also, I'm making the FFG thread

[souran]

2210 is the best variant personally.

Yes, statement of fact is fact.

LoTR is okay, albeit it's embarassing that Frodo still goes through Shelob's lair even though we already took the Black Gate, burned Sauron's Tower to the ground, and displayed his pantaloons for all to see.

What? Those zones had names? The ring is just a timer, I assumed that the whole band of heros had been killed while leaving the shire and thats how long it took for the ring to roll along the ground and back to the dark lord. Besides, I was to busy kicking ass and conqureing the red area to actually read what the map called those places.

Star Wars is interesting mainly for Order 66.

True, but it also has more card options than LOTR. Star Wars is a little bit like 2210 but still simple enough that I could teach the whole game to my 9 year old cousin and we could play. 2210 I don't own but had a friend who did and while it was awesome to play it was good that we all had real wargame experience because otherwise it would have been slow with all the options.

[Zinegata]

I'm sorry, but any attempt to correlate commercial success with success in design is doomed the moment it mentions Pathfinder. Which you did.

Sales are sales. Pathfinder or no.

Try harder, or actually frequent the forums instead of googling them (or worse, using their internal search 'function') once in a while.

You could actually link them instead. Because honestly I find the claim dubious given your dozens of pages of errata turned out to be a mere 19 for both RT and DH combined.

Yep, because Runebound and Arkham Horror don't suffer from rolling a mediocre design into a 3-hour experience.

For a mediocre design Arkham's the best in its class. Maybe you need to redefine your definition of "mediocre design"?

Also, the fact that you quote "War of the Ring" as an instance of FFG design tells me that you simply didn't get my point. War of the Ring was designed and - what's even more crucial - playtested externally.

And Battlelore was not? Which was still designed by Borg?

That's part of why it was a success. My actual point concerned the drek that befalls us when FFG attempts design in-house. As they are prone to especially when they get a shiny IP on their hands they can rape with their splendid design "insights".

Chaos in the Old World was also an in-house. Honestly I don't understand the FFG hate. They have both hits and misses with both in-house and out-house designs. I think your over love for the C&C system is clouding your assessments.

I'm not going to argue with someone who hasn't grokked the Borg engine. Hey, FFG designers haven't either, so I guess you should appreciate Westeros. You got my respect for actually having played these games, but beyond that, I'm afraid we'll have to disagree.

No, I have grokked Borg's engine. And it's just not that good of an engine - it's limited to a simple beginner's wargame. It simply can't handle anything more than a fight between two evenly matched forces. Moreover, at "competitive" play it's more about the card play than anything else, because the board isn't really big enough to allow for real maneuvers (play something like "Proud Monster" and you'll see a MASSIVE difference in terms of maneuvering). So you may as well play a fucking TCG where there are more available decks.

And the dice are fucking unnecessary. Just use regular D6s. A 1 is a retreat. A 6 is an auto-hit. Add modifiers for leaders and close combat. Have a special rule for elephants. You don't need the fucking new dice.

Again, the system is nice for a beginner's war game. But it's not an impressive or highly robust system. GMT's other card-driven boardgames (Here I Stand, Sword of Rome) are far better. And they're so robust that they've simulated everything from the Wars of Reformation to the Cold War.

[Username17]

Is that the Jason Hardy? Shows up as an external user, and the post count stays at 1, so hard to track.

I can't really tell. The board in question lists everyone as having one post, even though Jason posts more than once on that thread. It's a Jason Hardy who signs off exactly the same way that Jason Hardy, Battletech Writer signs off on forums. But it's also not a weird way for a guy named Jason Hardy to sign things.

But it certainly seems plausible. And it would explain why Randall got him a job as a Battletech writer and then as a Shadowrun dev. And also why Jason Hardy demanded that the Ute of all people be put front and center in Spy Games, despite not actually being of any importance to anyone except Mormons. And of course it would explain why Jason and Randall support each other and Loren implicitly even in the face of obvious evidence of gross misconduct.

-Username17

[Zinegata]

What? Those zones had names? The ring is just a timer, I assumed that the whole band of heros had been killed while leaving the shire and thats how long it took for the ring to roll along the ground and back to the dark lord. Besides, I was to busy kicking ass and conqureing the red area to actually read what the map called those places.

LOTR Risk (the full version) has a mechanic similar to War of the Ring. Sauron has a chance to capture the ring if Frodo enters an area occupied by enemy forces. So the good guys are constantly trying to clear a path for the Fellowship.

Unfortunately it turned on its head when we took fucking Mordor on turn 4. The idiot Frodo didn't see Gandalf waving his fucking staff at the Black Gates, telling him NOT to go into Shelob's Lair because some Orcish resistance was still alive in there.

The Fellowship barely survived the Shelob encounter. And we decided that Gandalf tossed Frodo into Mount Doom along with the Ring for his stupidity .

[souran]

LOTR Risk (the full version) has a mechanic similar to War of the Ring. Sauron has a chance to capture the ring if Frodo enters an area occupied by enemy forces. So the good guys are constantly trying to clear a path for the Fellowship.

Unfortunately it turns on its head when we took fucking Mordor on turn 4. And the idiot Frodo didn't see Gandalf waving his fucking staff at the Black Gates, telling him NOT to go into Shelob's Lair because some Orcish resistance was still alive in there.

The Fellowship barely survived the Shelob encounter. And we decided that Gandalf tossed Frodo into Mount Doom along with the Ring for his stupidity .

I forgot that the ring needs to stay in zones where the yellow and green armies are. That could indeed make the pathing stupid. But it never really seemed to matter much anyway especially for the players contesting the upper half of the board.

[Windjammer]

Try harder, or actually frequent the forums instead of googling them (or worse, using their internal search 'function') once in a while.

You could actually link them instead.

I did link to one such discussion for your benefit above (though I guess that Edit came too late for you).

[Zinegata]

Try harder, or actually frequent the forums instead of googling them (or worse, using their internal search 'function') once in a while.

You could actually link them instead.

I did link to one such discussion for your benefit above (though I guess that Edit came too late for you).

I thought we were talking about massive complaints about DH and RT though, not Descent?

[Windjammer]

You could actually link them instead.

I did link to one such discussion for your benefit above (though I guess that Edit came too late for you).

I thought we were talking about massive complaints about DH and RT though, not Descent?

I explicitly said, "Every time a new book comes out they [FFG] fuck up AGAIN". I think it's only fair game to point out that they majorly fuck up non-RPG books they release too, don't you?

And did you actually read the thread?

As to Rogue Trader, I recall there being at least 3, if not 4 or 5, such threads. They were started frequently in the weeks post-release. One of the earliest ones here. If you browse the RT forums around its release date, you'll easily find more. But seriously, are you too handicapped to browse the RT fora yourself or what?

[Zinegata]

I did link to one such discussion for your benefit above (though I guess that Edit came too late for you).

I thought we were talking about massive complaints about DH and RT though, not Descent?

I explicitly said, "Every time a new book comes out they [FFG] fuck up AGAIN". I think it's only fair game to point out that they majorly fuck up non-RPG books they release too, don't you?

And did you actually read the thread?

As to Rogue Trader, I recall there being at least 3, if not 4 or 5, such threads. They were started frequently in the weeks post-release. One of the earliest ones here. If you browse the RT forums around its release date, you'll easily find more. But seriously, are you too handicapped to browse the RT fora yourself or what?

Yes I read the thread and noticed it was a Descent thread .

Still, I'm not entirely inclined to predict doom, and the clamor for better proof reading honestly doesn't seem as dire as you made it out initially, much like your "dozens of pages of errata".

[Josh_Kablack]

Anyone who says that Risk is fun is high.

I gotta disagree on that. They could just be exceedingly drunk, because as a drinking game, Risk is awesome.

Drink:

1. A shot at the start of your turn
2. A shot whenever receiving a card
3. A shot whenever cashing in a set of cards
4. A shot when eliminating a player from the game
5. and a victory shot for the overall winner.

And it turns from a game of random chance and maximum aggressiveness into a game of aggressiveness balanced by physical tolerance and knowledge of limitations.

And if you don't know the limitations of your tolerance, you for damn sure do not want to play this with hard liquor.

[Calibron]

Anyone who says that Risk is fun is high.

The only mainstream game more boring than Risk are Monopoly and Mouse Trap.

I love risk and am very rarely high. Though I mostly play online with people who know what they're doing.

[mean_liar]

2210AD is awesome and one of my favorites. I've heard good things about Godstorm too, with some small tweaks which I'm unfamiliar with for having not played it.

The base game (rather than the Revised version with the objectives) is pretty lack-luster... I haven't played the revised version enough to have an opinion on it.

[Windjammer]

Reverting to one of the issues raised by Frank's OP before we specifically went for FFG getting the license...

What do people expect in the edition overhaul, on the supposition that the license changes hands later this year? In short, what do you reckon can we expect from a new, 5th, edition of Shadowrun?

(I apologize if I missed another discussion to that effect on these boards; if indeed I have, please link it.)

My own premonition is that a change of hands could very well lead to a significant overhaul, as opposed to a 4.5, given how recent the Anniversary Edition (which I'd dare to call a polished 4.1) came out. What I mean is: I don't envisage that a new publisher would see a lot of money in supporting the rules version (or an ever so slight 'rectified' version thereof) of his licensee predecessor.

Just expanding on that point: It's the bane of the core rulebook's commercial pull, in other words. (Referring here to a proclamation by Ryan Dancey once, how anything you publish after your core rulebook / core player's guide is solely intended to drive more sales back to the core rulebook. Witness Paizo's not passing up the opportunity to publish their own "core rulebook".)

So my follow up questions would be:

1. Where do you see 5E going, if it was heading towards a significant departure from 4E?

2. What do you think the chances are of 5E being a superior to game to 4E Anniversary Edition + Frank's "Ends of the Matrix"?

Just curious, and looking forward to your answers.

[Username17]

So my follow up questions would be:

1. Where do you see 5E going, if it was heading towards a significant departure from 4E?

2. What do you think the chances are of 5E being a superior to game to 4E Anniversary Edition + Frank's "Ends of the Matrix"?

The reality is that SR4 sold more copies than all previous editions of Shadowrun. Combined. So the core mechanics of SR5 are going to be pretty interchangeable with those of SR4. Oh sure, skills will be added and removed, most everyone involved in the process will admit in their candid moments that "Dodge" was a poor skill and depending on who gets the chapter you can expect it to be revised or eliminated. But the core mechanic? The thing where you add Attribute to Skill and roll that many dice against a Target Number of 5? That stays.

Basically you're looking at the kinds of differences a between SR2 and SR3. Differences generally subtle enough that they won't bother doing an update booklet for Augmentation. Some of these will be positive, like maybe a cost rebalancing in favor of skills at the expense of attributes. Some of these will be little head-holding fuck-ups, like the mysterious Combat Spell Drain updates in SR4A that were so explosively shitty that they had to errata them to be "optional" within weeks of publication. How many changes are good or bad depends extensively on who is making the calls. That is, what company gets the license isn't really going to matter. Whoever is sitting in the Captain's Chair, their order is going to be "Stay the course broadly speaking and fix some stuff that." Seriously, that's going to be the orders from on high. It will fall to the foot soldiers to actually make that happen - the writers, the editors, the development lead, the playtest staff.

And you know what? It almost doesn't matter what the company is as to who it gets to do that. There is some permanent bad blood drawn up over the whole... thing. Of course. I mean, a lot of people won't work with any of Loren's Fellowship any more. Ancient History has said straight out that he won't work with David A Hill Jr. or Jason M. Hardy any more - and I sure don't blame him. But let's be real here: the chances of Jason M. Hardy being taken on by the new company are very small. Anyone who stayed on and supported the criminal element to the very end is damaged goods, and the new company won't want them. I would put the odds of Ancient History writing the "And So It Came To Pass..." chapter of SR5 at roughly 75%. You know, whoever is nominally in charge of the new corp.

But I don't know who they are getting to write the new Matrix rules. They will be new Matrix rules. Like, brand new. There have been like 10 different wholly incompatible Matrix rules so far, and you ca bet your ass that SR5 will have brand new Matrix rules too. Call me an optimist, but I think the next batch will be an improvement on the last. The Ends of the Matrix itself has been being handed around various Shadowrun writers as a "must read" document for Matrix design questions. I would bet five dollars that whoever gets the Matrix chapter is going to be thinking about exactly those questions and unveiling their attempt to answer them without invoking the "Brain Hacking" boogeyman. Whether they do a good job of that depends on the wargaming skills of the section author. But I figure it extremely likely that they'll be starting with the right questions to answer.

Vehicle rules will be redone because no one in the design community likes the SR4A vehicle rules. Point costs will be fiddled with because they always get fiddled with.

But yeah, people have weirdly short memories and there are a lot of incompetent people in the world. It's entirely possible that the president of the new corp will end up hiring his nephew and gaming buddies to write key rules chapters and it will suck as badly as anything that Jason Hardy wrote himself. I haven't seen that roster. Because that roster doesn't exist, because it's going to be formed after one of the companies bidding on the license actually gets the license.

Some high quality talent is extremely easy for the new license holder of Shadowrun to pick up. Let's be real here: Ancient History was willing to continue working even while he was telling other freelancers that the company was outright lying to them (which they were), and only pulled his contracts when they locked him out of the freelancer forums for sedition and offered him the laughable plan that they were going to go ahead and publish his work without payment until after the license award in late May. That's a series of insults so egregious that it would get Lenin to quit Russia. Some high quality talent is going to be hard to get: Jason Levine walked on Catalyst years back over contract shenanigans, Stephen Kenson makes real money now and just got majorly burned on Seattle 2072, and Frank Trollman has fucking medical school to work on. It will be interesting to see who they rope in to do various projects, and I would pay real money to watch the various "This time it will be different, and we know you still love Shadowrun" speeches they give t valued veterans.

But cautious optimism is not unreasonable.

-Username17