The Shadowrun Situation

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Fri Jul 08, 2011 9:38 pm

Dumpshock and the official forum is not representative of SR fandom in general.

I can't remember the last time I saw a hardcopy SR4 book in the wild. I think it was Augmentation like a year ago. It's been almost 2 years since I saw the SR4 or SR4A core book on a shelf somewhere, including gaming shops.

Edit: I have a feeling that CGL is betting the farm on Leviathans, hoping to cash in on the steampunk vibe going on right now.

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Fri Jul 08, 2011 11:38 pm

Honestly, I think SR fandom in general is not represented by dumpshock or the official forums or the den, nor are they aware of any of the drama of early 2010 through the present. I know I personally and all the other shadowrun fans I knew IRL fell into that category of people who were not part of the online community and simply didn't know what was going on.

I think the SR fandon in general is, for the most part, still buying books. And while it's rarer than D&D or White Wolf (it always has been), I've seen as many SR4 books on shelves in the past year as in the five years before that.

Like besides issues of 'SR should die' or 'SR needs to die', ignoring that whole discussion, I just don't think I can agree with the perception that 'Shadowrun IS dying'.

And if CGL is betting the farm on Leviathans, they've sure been releasing/planning on releasing a LOT of SR books. (No idea what's going on with Battletech, don't follow it.)

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Sun Jul 10, 2011 12:18 am

Yes, but their releases have mostly been quick PDFs as opposed to large scale releases.

Otakusensei · Post by **Otakusensei** » Tue Jul 12, 2011 6:09 pm

And quality is in the crapper. Even during the shit storm, what's left at CGL was squatting on their laurels while they drove away or shit canned the folks that made the awards and recognition possible. Now things are drying up and...

Shadowrun is dying. It feels worse to me because I thought it was already dead once. Then there was this burst of activity and creativity that made SR4. And now it's over.

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Tue Jul 12, 2011 6:43 pm

It feels worse to me because I thought it was already dead once.

I totally agree with this sentiment, but I just can't agree that SR is empirically dying in any real, financial sense or that there is any real existential risk to it. Maybe it is dead to you, like Frank said, which is fine.

Quality of recent products? I'm not sure how much of an informed opinion I have. A lot of the criticism of War! was very valid criticism. Many of the PDF-only products released recently did seem very silly to me, like 'Deadly Waves' is a good example of a dumb book I could easily have done without and probably a waste of creator time and resources. I haven't read Attitude or Spy Games so I don't really have an opinion on them. (Well, I've read Frank's opinion. : ) )

But dips in product quality happen, and they aren't always irreversible. For the survival of the brand, the important thing is that the fans continue playing it and (secondarily) that the creators continue releasing products. Quality? Quality is very nice to have. Quality can keep a game from being "dead to you". But plenty of crappy things are alive and well...and as long as something is alive, quality can improve.

Again, it's the dead/"dead to me" distinction.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue Jul 12, 2011 6:51 pm

i hope somebody else takes up the rights top the engrish shadowrun . .
preferably somebody who works like pegasus . .

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Tue Jul 12, 2011 7:00 pm

Schwarzkopf wrote:
It feels worse to me because I thought it was already dead once.
I totally agree with this sentiment, but I just can't agree that SR is empirically dying in any real, financial sense or that there is any real existential risk to it. Maybe it is dead to you, like Frank said, which is fine.

Quality of recent products? I'm not sure how much of an informed opinion I have. A lot of the criticism of War! was very valid criticism. Many of the PDF-only products released recently did seem very silly to me, like 'Deadly Waves' is a good example of a dumb book I could easily have done without and probably a waste of creator time and resources. I haven't read Attitude or Spy Games so I don't really have an opinion on them. (Well, I've read Frank's opinion. : ) )

But dips in product quality happen, and they aren't always irreversible. For the survival of the brand, the important thing is that the fans continue playing it and (secondarily) that the creators continue releasing products. Quality? Quality is very nice to have. Quality can keep a game from being "dead to you". But plenty of crappy things are alive and well...and as long as something is alive, quality can improve.

Again, it's the dead/"dead to me" distinction.

SR used to be one of the larger RPGs on the market. It definitely was for a time the go-to sci fi RPG. It's pedigree has slipped significantly.

Wesley Street · Post by **Wesley Street** » Tue Jul 12, 2011 7:01 pm

I wouldn't hold my breath in regard to the SR license moving away from CGL. Despite all the crookedness, raw deals, and crappy product CGL is still a pretty significant presence (for a game company). BattleTech and Shadowrun are licenses to print money with built-in fans who don't care about politics or quality. And CGL won't give up either property without a fight.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Tue Jul 12, 2011 7:46 pm

While I agree that SR probably won't move away from CGL at this point, I disagree that it's a license to print money.

CGL stated in court that it's total intake was about a million a year. Which is nothing. I started an IT company on 500 bucks and did 750k in business within a year. In a bad economy.

At 20 bucks a book (Wholesale price let's say) you're looking at around 50,000 books sold per year, worldwide, divided among BT & SR. Lord only knows how much of that million a year is actually licensing fees to print SR and BT in non-english languages.

25k of books a year *sounds* like a lot, but it really isn't. To put it into a similar gaming perspective, small run games like GMT's P500 print probably around 1000-2000 copies of a game per run. They're considered a tiny niche wargame publisher, and they publish, on average, 15-20 games a year in 1-2000 copy increments. Which puts them on the same scale as SR or BT.

Otakusensei · Post by **Otakusensei** » Wed Jul 13, 2011 4:22 pm

When I say Shadowrun is dead, I'll back myself up by pointing to D&D and Pathfinder. Yeah, they are both fantasy games. Yeah, you can call them the "big fish" in the pond. But where the fuck is CGL on the shelves of my FLGS? They got a little section with a copy of Augmentation and Corp Guide. Oh, and the store owner refuses to stock War! and is questioning anything that comes after it. At my store it's dead.

That might not be true everywhere else, but I doubt it's got the kind of penetration Pathfinder has, and Pathfinder had a longer way to go to gain recognition. Sure it's D&D 3.75, but Shadowrun has been on the shelves how long?

CGL says they have all kinds of products on the way, that everything is fine, that it's all good. Then why isn't Shadowrun a going concern anywhere I go? In a niche industry it's nearly extinct. That's pretty fucking bad for a game that once merited videogame licenses that actually had something to do with the game itself.

But that was a long time ago. Not everyone has gotten the memo. Not everyone has gotten to speak with Jason Hardy and see where this game is going.

I'm sorry, has gone. It's tricky to call a time of death on something that will make a few bucks as long as the name is on a product. That's not good enough for me. The soul of the thing is dead. The parts have been swapped and changed too many times by people who didn't know or didn't care to maintain the whole.

It looked good for a moment there, what I understood was Shadowrun changed briefly into something bigger and better. People who cared were at the helm and while it changed, it was still Shadowrun. What we have now is a corpse being picked over for anything they can turn a buck on. I haven't given then a dollar since Vice and I'm keeping it that way as long as Coleman is in charge and Hardy is taking credit.

So maybe it's just dead to me. I'd get behind that if there was some chance of someone walking into their FLGS and seeing this Shadowrun thing, check it out, buy a copy. If they could bring it home to their friends and play, collect a few source books...

Nope. Not really an option right now. They could buy it online, download a torrent, maybe find a print book here or there. But they aren't going to stumble into it. They are going to have to work, and that means that Shadowrun is alive right now only by the graces of those who evangelize it. Lovely.

So I'm calling Shadowrun dead. Or at least so close as to be indistinguishable from dead.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Wed Jul 13, 2011 5:27 pm

*shrugs*
most of the FLGS around my location have it in stock.
both engrish and german version too.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Wed Jul 13, 2011 6:40 pm

I'm too tired to bitch about Shadowrun anymore. I'm too tired to care about Shadowrun anymore. I have about everything SR ever printed in English, and I packed it all into boxes. The game is done with me, and I'm done with it.

Ganbare Gincun · Post by **Ganbare Gincun** » Wed Jul 13, 2011 7:28 pm

Ancient History wrote:I'm too tired to bitch about Shadowrun anymore. I'm too tired to care about Shadowrun anymore. I have about everything SR ever printed in English, and I packed it all into boxes. The game is done with me, and I'm done with it.

Time to move onto the Cyberpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker, then?

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Thu Jul 14, 2011 4:20 am

Ancient History wrote:I'm too tired to bitch about Shadowrun anymore. I'm too tired to care about Shadowrun anymore. I have about everything SR ever printed in English, and I packed it all into boxes. The game is done with me, and I'm done with it.

God I hope I never get to this point.

No matter how terrible Shadowrun's present and future may be, I'll never forget the great times I had with the game in the past. To me, Shadowrun will always be bigger than the company that currently makes it or the writers who currently write it.

Kot · Post by **Kot** » Thu Jul 14, 2011 12:43 pm

Ancient, you're probably just bitter. I have reached the same with Earthdawn a while ago, when nothing new - besides Cathay - was made. After a kick-ass book of Kratas I had my hopes high, and even though the RedBrick team did a lot of good, the system was still in the 'dark ages', with partially overhauled mechanics and barely touched fluff. Don't get me wrong, I find the ED fluff really great - even the late SR3 books weren't this good. But I've seen it already, and I wanted something new... So I drifted away from ED, bitter and looking for something else. Well, I found Shadowrun, spending some pretty penny on those books and - again, this time even for worse - being disappointed by the way SR was handled...
Then I thought 'what the hell?', and decided to do the same as I did with ED. Ignore the books I didn't like and company that made me sick, and go on with playing the game. And it worked really good.
And now SR4 has a good chance of being released in Polish. It has a chance to do some good, because there are people here who still play SR, though it's SR2. We'll see...

Otakusensei · Post by **Otakusensei** » Thu Jul 14, 2011 4:00 pm

Schwarzkopf wrote:
Ancient History wrote:I'm too tired to bitch about Shadowrun anymore. I'm too tired to care about Shadowrun anymore. I have about everything SR ever printed in English, and I packed it all into boxes. The game is done with me, and I'm done with it.
God I hope I never get to this point.

No matter how terrible Shadowrun's present and future may be, I'll never forget the great times I had with the game in the past. To me, Shadowrun will always be bigger than the company that currently makes it or the writers who currently write it.

You can only live in 2072 so long. What's being put out today is only Shadowrun so far as it says so on the tin. Granted, you and your friends make what's in the tin Shadowrun by playing it. That's why so many people seem to have no trouble with bad rules, they make due and have fun anyway.

But when I can't sit down and enjoy my favorite roleplaying game without thinking about the people who are no longer part of it, the people who stole from it, the people who write for it and don't give a fuck about it... It's hard to make that work.

Kot · Post by **Kot** » Fri Jul 15, 2011 7:40 am

Well, you can use your own brain and imagination to further explore the storyline. Without silly wars over hentai trees and such...

UmaroVI · Post by **UmaroVI** » Sat Jul 16, 2011 12:09 pm

In unrelated news, Possession Traditions are now banned in Shadowrun Missions. I do find it a bit curious, since they're nowhere near the biggest balance problem in SR4 unless you start abusing the magic replacement trick combined with cyberware, which I don't think anyone was.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Sat Jul 16, 2011 12:59 pm

Oh... it's never a good sign when the official adventures start to ban things that have been in play since years.

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Sat Jul 16, 2011 4:22 pm

Like what?

The Vigilante · Post by **The Vigilante** » Sat Jul 16, 2011 5:16 pm

UmaroVI wrote:In unrelated news, Possession Traditions are now banned in Shadowrun Missions.

Fuchs wrote:Oh... it's never a good sign when the official adventures start to ban things that have been in play since years.

Schwarzkopf wrote:Like what?

Are you really having trouble following this conversation? Are those fanboy glasses giving you reading troubles ?

Kot · Post by **Kot** » Sat Jul 16, 2011 6:37 pm

Are you having trouble with not being a dick?
Geez, what's wrong with people these days. Is a civil conversation and basic politeness 'sooo last month' already?

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Sat Jul 16, 2011 7:10 pm

Kot wrote:Well, you can use your own brain and imagination to further explore the storyline. Without silly wars over hentai trees and such...

I stopped following the official time line somewhere around bug city. Since then I picked and chose what I like,d and ignored a lot.

The Vigilante · Post by **The Vigilante** » Sat Jul 16, 2011 8:12 pm

Kot wrote:Are you having trouble with not being a dick?
Geez, what's wrong with people these days. Is a civil conversation and basic politeness 'sooo last month' already?

I don't mind being polite to those who bother to read twice before posting. That kind of basic civility seems to be 'so last month' too I guess. We're not talking about some nugget buried on page 6 of this thread, he's got the information two posts above his.

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Sat Jul 16, 2011 8:22 pm

Sorry, I missed the line about possession traditions, my bad. I don't consciously recall 'missing' it, so I must have completely failed to see it.

Guess I should slow down my forum browsing.