[Marzhin]

As always, the issue is money. How much would it cost to have someone in that role? Would someone do it for, say, $10,000 a year, which is well below minimum wage? That's more than the company could bear, while less than someone would charge.

It doesn't even have to be someone full time. A CM working one day per week would already be an improvement over the current abandoned websites, lack of updates and never addressed issues.

But yes, it always come down to money. So the other side of the question is this: how much money Catalyst is losing -- or at least not making -- because people are not aware the products are available or even exist, or come to the forums and from reading them get the impression this is a company that doesn't care about its products and players? (I don't personally think this is the case, mind you. I think Jason and Randall are doing their best but have their head to the grindstone by trying to do everything by themselves. However, I'm pretty sure a newcomer judging from the prevalent opinion on the communities would assume otherwise.)

This actually reminds me of something Karl Lagarfeld once said: "you have to throw money by the window if you want money to come back by the front door."

[MDMann]

I can say how CGI (Colombia Games Inc) handle their Harn product (which is very high quality). They're a tiny company, much smaller company than Catalyst. They've also had much more severe financial events than Catalyst which almost broke the company and are still unresolved over 20 years on and with the death of one of the principals. I don't know their turnover or profit margins but they're small. Quality is very high. Biggest complaints? Release schedule is slow (though steady) and prices are very high.

They effectively have a dedicated voluntary community manager who runs the fansite. He's not paid but gets freebies for his time, in pdf which keeps costs very low.

They use freelancers who do all the writing whilst the owners edit (after peer review). Canon is checked extensively and fanon is taken account of. They're not paid much. The highest paid freelancer is their core artist. The freelancers engage with the community and release as fanon the stuff they do that isn't accepted. Which since they write at risk is substantial. One of the editors or coordinators posts to the forum fairly often.

They've recently hired a community coordinator who organises public events and they're running flash sales on drive thru for introductory pdfs. No idea what he's paid, but he organises volunteers for conventions who get freebie pdfs for their trouble.

On their website, they have direct sales and offer a discounted subscription service and discounts for returning customers.

Their maps are easily the best I've ever seen in rpgs. By far.

Medieval low fantasy. A bit crunchier than shadowrun.
It's well run.

[DragginSPADE]

To pile on for a moment...  I agree with above posters who are concerned about quality of editing, or lack thereof, in 5th edition.  I have one further pet peeve though, that I haven't seen anyone else mention so I wonder if it's just me....

MAPS!

 "A picture is worth a thousand words" goes beyond just pretty art, a location book without at least one map in it is..... words just fail me.  I was amazed and annoyed when I bought Boston:Lockdown and realized it didn't have a single bloody map of the Lockdown area.  I bought Hard Targets in large part because it was the first SR book ever to cover Cuba in significant detail and then realized again that there wasn't a single map of what the place looked like in the 6th world, where all these neighborhoods described in the text reside, etc.  I finally resolved that Catalyst won't get a single plugged cent more from me for any location book that doesn't include at least one decent visual representation of the place described within. 

[Loki]

To pile on for a moment...  I agree with above posters who are concerned about quality of editing, or lack thereof, in 5th edition.  I have one further pet peeve though, that I haven't seen anyone else mention so I wonder if it's just me....

MAPS!

 "A picture is worth a thousand words" goes beyond just pretty art, a location book without at least one map in it is..... words just fail me.  I was amazed and annoyed when I bought Boston:Lockdown and realized it didn't have a single bloody map of the Lockdown area.  I bought Hard Targets in large part because it was the first SR book ever to cover Cuba in significant detail and then realized again that there wasn't a single map of what the place looked like in the 6th world, where all these neighborhoods described in the text reside, etc.  I finally resolved that Catalyst won't get a single plugged cent more from me for any location book that doesn't include at least one decent visual representation of the place described within.

I can not believe I overlooked this but you are so right. Also the big fold out "map" in the Seattle sprawl box is ridiculous. Yay, I know where some corporate HQs and a couple major highways are, but it tells me almost nothing else about the area covered. If I want to see districts I instead have a little card map to use. SMH.

[AJCarrington]

I'm watching Pegasus pretty closely...hoping they release a PDF of the Seattle map...looks REALLY good.

[Wakshaani]

I'm watching Pegasus pretty closely...hoping they release a PDF of the Seattle map...looks REALLY good.

I'm hoping that we can release it here as well.

That thing's *so* *beautiful*!

[Jack_Spade]

Yeah, I'm delaying the start of my next campaign for these maps.
Combined with the new SOTA ADL/Germany book (and hopefully with Forbidden Arcana) I expect this May to become pretty taxing on my bank account

[DragginSPADE]

I'm watching Pegasus pretty closely...hoping they release a PDF of the Seattle map...looks REALLY good.

Is there any possibility that they'll release maps of other locations that Catalyst has described only in words, like Havanna or Constantinople?

[Sascha Morlok]

We think about releasing a "map pack" of all the maps we made. But our schedule is still very crowded and it lies at the very bottom of the pile.