The Shadowrun Situation

Otakusensei · Post by **Otakusensei** » Sat Jan 01, 2011 10:58 pm

Ok, I just reread the sections in Arsenal and I understand what they are complaining about on the official forum. But there are still problems.

Information-Based indirect fire is a sensor test that adds to an indirect attack.

Designator-Based indirect fire add the net hits from an attack test using the designator to the indirect attack.

All fine and good until you realize that Designator based is basically worthless on a modern battlefield unless you hand waive away the weapons ability to figure out what designations are intended for it. That's a problem with the core rules, that is basically highlighted by the Designate spell. And then Aaron shows up and posts about encryption showing he mixed them up as well.

Clusterfuck, still a bad spell.

kzt · Post by **kzt** » Sun Jan 02, 2011 12:44 am

SR3 indirect fire were were awful. I haven't even looked at the SR4 version. But since nobody involved in writing them seems to know anything about how indirect fire weapons work I'd guess they are no better.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Sun Jan 02, 2011 1:26 am

They know nothing about anything but sucking up and maybe fraud I'd say.

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Sun Jan 02, 2011 5:28 am

So it's the new year. Weren't we supposed to find out around now if Topps was renewing CGL's license?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Jan 02, 2011 7:22 am

Schwarzkopf wrote:So it's the new year. Weren't we supposed to find out around now if Topps was renewing CGL's license?

In a few weeks, yeah.

-Username17

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Mon Jan 03, 2011 7:46 pm

Unbelievably, i actually finally got a reaction to the designate spell as safety system O.o

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Mon Jan 03, 2011 8:41 pm

Stahlseele wrote:Unbelievably, i actually finally got a reaction to the designate spell as safety system O.o

What reaction was that?

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue Jan 04, 2011 1:29 am

fectin wrote:
Stahlseele wrote:Unbelievably, i actually finally got a reaction to the designate spell as safety system O.o
What reaction was that?

In a Nutshell?
"It doesn't work like that!"
Well, someone else pointed out that the spell works exactly like electronic Target Designators.
Meaning that THEY work like a deterrent too . .

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Tue Jan 04, 2011 3:14 am

Dammit, no one took that bet of a dollar. I could have bought myself a soda at work with that.

hermit · Post by **hermit** » Tue Jan 04, 2011 9:20 am

So they reponened the War! thread?

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue Jan 04, 2011 11:36 am

Never been closed i think O.o
And we're arguing in the rules and gear thread instead ^^

Otakusensei · Post by **Otakusensei** » Tue Jan 04, 2011 4:49 pm

Nah, they closed the thread after Matt took my not calling him by his screen name as an attack.

The thread is open again now, but by closing it they basically spawned a slew of War! debates in other threads.

And by "debates" I mean people pointing out how there are issues with the book.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue Jan 04, 2011 7:05 pm

Hmm, must have missed that O.o

hermit · Post by **hermit** » Tue Jan 04, 2011 7:12 pm

What's the reception of War! on other forums in the english-language community, like rpg.net or GitP?

Semerkhet · Post by **Semerkhet** » Tue Jan 04, 2011 7:35 pm

crizh wrote: As far as I can tell no proofreading has occurred since the start of the trouble at CGL.

6WA only has one credited proofreader that proofed anything else as far as I can tell, the rest are various freelancers and insiders. Lars is gone most tellingly.

And War! has no credited proofreaders.

Just as an FYI that doesn't break NDA, there are 22 people on the Google Docs proofreading distribution list for the first chapter of Attitude. Since it was distributed for proofing December 29th, three people, myself included, have collectively contributed a fair number of suggested changes. So some proofreading is happening. I cannot say how and whether those suggested corrections will be incorporated into the final product.

hermit · Post by **hermit** » Tue Jan 04, 2011 10:06 pm

Well, at least that. Doesn't really help the content, of course. If it is as rotten there as War! is ...

But at least they have some proofing done. Just hope they a) pay the proofers and b) mind their corrections, in an un-Hardy type of way.

Centurion13 · Post by **Centurion13** » Thu Jan 06, 2011 4:14 am

FrankTrollman wrote:
Schwarzkopf wrote:So it's the new year. Weren't we supposed to find out around now if Topps was renewing CGL's license?
In a few weeks, yeah.

-Username17

Could you keep abreast of the situation? I don't see Topps not giving them the license at this point, but you never know. And Coleperson is still in the driver's seat.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu Jan 06, 2011 10:49 pm

And we have a german alt.war starting, that wants to take care of the mistakes done in regards to the german stuff in War!
Met2000 and the german Bundeswehr for example.
Or something like that . . maybe a pre-emptive strike errata . .

Youth · Post by **Youth** » Fri Jan 07, 2011 1:02 am

Otakusensei wrote:How long would it take a hacker or techno to find the wireless of the weapon, decrypt it, exploit it and send it the new information? How difficult would that be?

Cryptanalysis has a period of 1 CT for each test, and can only be done after the device's signal has been found. So, if encryption is an issue, then the missile has already traveled 6 kilometers before the encryption could possibly be finished. However, decryption it isn't necessary for an Exploit action, unless the missile's guidance system is encrypted (e.g. they set the target, encrypted the information and launched it.) The Matrix rules aren't defined enough for me to say whether or not, by the RAW, a file could be accessed and internally encrypted at the same time (iow, encrypted within the device could mean not accessible to the device.)

Still, this spell is dumb, but so are the scatter rules, so who gives a shit about guided missiles anyway?

sirdoom · Post by **sirdoom** » Sat Jan 08, 2011 1:55 am

Stahlseele wrote:Met2000 and the german Bundeswehr for example.
Or something like that . . maybe a pre-emptive strike errata . .

Which will be interesting, as I am writing the german add on including Argus, MET2k and the Bundeswehr... and actually WAR!(US) doesn't say a word about the Bundeswehr or the German Army. The stuff about Argus/MET2k is somehow suboptimal but far from bs.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Sat Jan 08, 2011 1:49 pm

nice to see you stumble in here too, because your stuff was what i was talking about ^^#

Fucks · Post by **Fucks** » Mon Jan 10, 2011 7:41 pm

Does anyone know where the outlines of upcoming books have been posted? There are rumours about Nadja Davier reappearing in an upcoming adventure, more info can probably be found in one of the leaked freelancers board-shit.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Jan 10, 2011 8:17 pm

Fucks wrote:Does anyone know where the outlines of upcoming books have been posted? There are rumours about Nadja Davier reappearing in an upcoming adventure, more info can probably be found in one of the leaked freelancers board-shit.

The scribd account we were linking too earlier is down. Either someone made a DMCA claim on it or whoever on the "inside" who was putting things there totally noticed that it wasn't that secure and people involved in the arguments were just reading the damn things. So now if I want to share stuff from the Champagne Room, I have to copy/paste it instead. Which is a shame. Of course, I already did that on this thread with the Nadja Daviar train wreck, so whatever.

It's not actually that interesting. Basically it's a clusterfuck where Jason, Brandie, and James sit around throwing around the idea that Nadja Daviar is back. And um... that's about as far as it gets. They never figure out anything to do with that. It's just that Jason really likes NPCs and thinks that filling up wordcount with discussions about NPCs (even NPCs who nothing is know about and are not involved in the plot) is top shelf material and needs to displace something like say, a map. So they riff off of each other about various ideas for bringing Nadja Daviar back, including having an army of Nadja Daviar impersonation bunraku led by the real Nadja Daviar become a network of fixers that the PCs could work for - and that's it.

They never came up with:

A motive for Nadja Daviar to come out of hiding.
A reason for PCs, or really anyone else, to care that she did.
A set of actions Nadja Daviar could take that would meaningfully change from the fact that she was Nadja Daviar and not any other random Elf who happened to have some money and brown nipples.
A way to even tenuously link her to their stupid fucking Spy Games plot.

So... why is she back? The actual authors of the section haven't figured that out yet. Seriously. I'm not even making that up.

Here's the original from Jason:

Jason wrote:The big question is: How do we make such a product attention grabbing? What unique elements can we put in it that will get people excited about it? One thing I'd like to do is solve an unsolved mystery or two--notably, I'd like Nadja Daviar to return in this book (with hints of her possible return appearing in Spy Games). So where's she been? How can we tie her re-emergence into existing plotlines? What other elements can we include that will grab the attention of anyone who has ever been the least bit interested in Shadowrun?

And the answers that the scab contingent came up with were "Herp." Also "Derp." It really doesn't go any deeper than that.

-Username17

Fucks · Post by **Fucks** » Mon Jan 10, 2011 10:01 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:. Of course, I already did that on this thread with the Nadja Daviar train wreck, so whatever.

Yeah, this thread with its 102 pages atm. I didn't want to spend days to find the information I was looking for. So thank you very much for bringing the info up again.

@Nadja Davier's return: It all comes down to "she's a NPC and she's cool and has brown nipples"? Dude, that sucks. Even more so if CGL decides to pump up the story of her return in adventure-length. When exactly does their license expire? Wonder which company might be willing to pick it up, though.

hermit · Post by **hermit** » Mon Jan 10, 2011 10:33 pm

So... why is she back? The actual authors of the section haven't figured that out yet. Seriously. I'm not even making that up.

Because Hardy thinks that makes for a good story. Like NPC collections and vagueness that fucks consistency up are a great book. I like to imagine Hardy's brain running screenings of 20s cartoon animals dancing while he comes up with such ideas.

Also, since it has been brought up repeatedly but only refered to, what IS their Spy Games storyline, and what is their idea for Horizon?