Shadowrun deserves better

[500 Toads]

Shadow run anarchy 2.0 is not being kickstart or created by catalyst it’s being created by a French company who licensed it and did all the translation/localization for SRA1

It did in fact have a Kickstarter campaign, which transitioned into being managed via Game on Tabletop; and Catalyst is involved because they still manage the IP and it is up to them when there'll be a general release. BBE wrote SRA2.0, but on behalf of CGL which is calling the shots.

Backers already have their PDFs, but the physical versions haven't yet been sent as the files weren't really finalized for print until... well, the "final stages" of that started yesterday.

 

[MacDhomnuill]

It did in fact have a Kickstarter campaign, which transitioned into being managed via Game on Tabletop; and Catalyst is involved because they still manage the IP and it is up to them when there'll be a general release. BBE wrote SRA2.0, but on behalf of CGL which is calling the shots.

Backers already have their PDFs, but the physical versions haven't yet been sent as the files weren't really finalized for print until... well, the "final stages" of that started yesterday.

Yes the kick starter is not being run by catalyst, CGL is only promoting it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Before I ever touched a D&D book, I was absorbed by Shadowrun.

This was thanks largely to the SNES and Genesis games. I can still remember the first time I played them. SNES first and then the Genesis game later.

In between the 2 I learned of the trilogy of novels about Sam "Twist" Verner. I still love The Artful Dodger. Best Decker this side of Seattle.

Eventually started getting my hands on the RPG books. This was 2E.

I've owned every edition (even 1E). Yes, also Anarchy.

I'm one of those people who think 3E is the best of the main line and quality has gone hill sinse. 6E is one of the worst edited and error prone RPG books I have ever owned. The sheer amount of errata is staggering.

My main issue with SR is the rules crunchiness. It refuses to change. No matter how much it changes it refuses to slay some sacred cows. D&D figured out it (though its still far to bloated), why can't SR?

This of course brings me to Anarchy. 1E was fine. I get what it was going for. And despite it's flaws it was still the best version of SR to play simply because it was Rules Lite. 2E seems to have fixed all that and is bar none the best version of SR to play. IMO.

And of course the other video games. not sure much to say about the arena shooter but the trilogy of top down games that came out 6+ years ago. Good stuff.

ANYWAYS.

With the success of Cyberpunk 2077 I was like where is Shadowrun? Deus Ex? Why aren't companies jumping on this?

Things I learned, while Catalyst has the publishing rights for the TTRPG, SR is owned by Microsoft and they don't give a naughty word. This is very obvious by how they care not how badly Catalyst does with their TTRPG product. Not to completely dump on Catalyst, at least they keep the torch burning. They just really need a "come to Jesus moment" when it comes to SR and frankly I don't think they care enough. SR6 drove that nail home for me.

Why would they care about a new video game? Top down or FPS. Maybe if someone came to them with a sack of cash, but CP2077 seems like lightening striking whos to say if a modern SR game would be as lucky. (Someone call the BG3 guys). Can you imagine a CP2077 style game but it's Shadowrun? Or even akin to the Deus Ex games. Perchance to dream.

And if the owner of the IP doesn't really care then not much can be done about it. It took a French company that actually gives a naughty word about Shadowrun to make a Good SR game. (SRA2E) To bad they don't believe in PDF with purchase of a physical book. No one is perfect I guess.

I've often heard that SR is beloved more in certain other countries and that always seems to be true. Germany has some of it's own SR products not found here? I think?

So yeah, I really wish SR was bigger than it is. It used to be mighty and now it's just barely a thing. I need a Manganello to step in and do what they can to revitalize it.

At least I have SRA2E. There will always be fans, even from other countries to help keep it alive.

I mean you've summed up pretty well why SR hasn't done great despite potentially being an IP which was extremely well positioned.

It really comes down to two things:

Catalyst and Microsoft.

Catalyst have handled the property very badly, and had a lot of very bad ideas and poorly-implemented ideas, and seem to have been perhaps overfocused on maintaining what they saw as existing markets rather than developing a game more people might want to play. Like, I get that SR was "big in Germany", but guys that doesn't mean SR had to stay only "big in Germany". Yet it seems Catalyst can't really think beyond that.

Microsoft have simply sat on the IP for well over a decade. They made one game, which was weird and before-its-time gameplay-wise, and still fondly remembered, then completely and totally gave up. I guess at least they didn't vault the IP like EA or some others would, they let Harebrained licence it out, but I strongly suspect the reason we're not seeing more SR stuff from Harebrained, despite the SR games doing well and a modern SR game likely to do better, is that MS probably has some pretty unreasonable terms for use the licence now. Unfortunately the licence was sold in the '00s era of perpetual licence sales so unless MS changes its mind on this, we'll probably never see an SR game again. Particularly now MS seem to have started penny-pinching their games department and have abandoned exclusives. MS also doesn't seem to be doing any "joined up" thinking re: the companies they own, for better or worse. They're just sort of acting like each company (Blizzard, Bethesda, Obsidian, etc.) can sink or swim on its own, and don't seem to be helping (or hindering) them or getting them to work together or providing access to existing MS IPs or anything. I can't say that's purely bad but... it seems like it might be creating a lot of miss opportunities and slightly sub-par games (at least from Bethesda and Obsidian). They're also shutting down a lot of smaller MS-owned studios because they didn't make enough money despite making critically acclaimed games, which seems... short-sighted.

 

[Cergorach]

This is the place where the game often breaks down. I wonder if hacking was treated more like an "approach" or a "feat" - not an entire class/archetype. Rigger the same.

The problem with that is that the whole character concept was centered around being a Decker and/or a Rigger, if their gimmick was only a roll, they would be sitting on their hands the rest of the session... There are other ways to do it, but none of the official versions have done it right imho.

Sigh. I played Earthdawn 1e with one of the creators back in 1993 or 94, and enjoyed the heck out of it. Never played again, but it sure looked gorgeous and was an amazing setting.

I still love the presentation and feel of Earthdawn 1e, and it's a shame they severed the connection between Earthdawn and Shadowrun.

But actual Europeans would feel like "who T.F. wrote this junk," whereas my fellow US-ians wouldn't know better and just play it.

You mean all the Americans writing fantasy RPGs based around medieval Europe... Like D&D, etc.

While people say "It was the 80s/90s...", what they mean by it, how you interpret it, and what the actual issue was are pretty different imho. The issue was not that 'it was the 80s/90s', it was because the world was technologically smaller. It was not written with hate in mind, it was written in ignorance. At the time (1989), the Internet didn't really exist as we know it now, it's users were extremely limited, as was the content. The World Wide Web only started in the early 90s. That means that the information that was available was limited by the media you consumed and what your local library carried. The book was written during the cold war, even published before the wall fell. I would say that even some of the 'experts' at the time that weren't native themselves had some very troublesome views...

They wrote about things they didn't know about and creatively filled in the blanks, they used stereotypes, as is done often in fantasy and sci-fi. And there were some pretty accurate comments in there about certain groups that would subvert cultural heritage (often not even their own) and take it to extremes. I thought the idea of a nation of racist elves was pretty funny and on the nose. I found the idea of native Americans taking back their land and putting the 'immigrants' into reservations pretty ironic as an outsider.

But as with any game, you take what you like and change what you don't. Mexico as a nation still existed, it just got taken over by a very powerful dragon and it's minions. The country was still there, mine got wiped off the map on the other hand according to SR canon... I just ignored the canon and went with my own interpretation of the Netherlands in Shadowrun. The Germans did a pretty good Germany source book for SR 2e, far better then the Americans did... I would have loved to have seen someone from Mexico or a native American writing their version/culture of their nation in Shadowrun.

I still prefer the SR 1e/2e/3e world over the 4e/5e/6e SR world, for me it's pretty much 2050-2070. But even before that some of the Fasa books tried to please everyone, which imho made the world more bland. And the many who tried to make a SR with the serials filled off, none of them really captured the SR feel. At best people would use the rules to play actual SR...