[Ursus Maior]

I'm not sure, how Catalyst Games work in the inner circle or how much they have on their plate right now. But relying on the good will of their customers for almost a year with SR5 is reckless. The mistakes and omissions made in the core rule book, Run & Gun and Street Grimoire alone are too many to count. For some point I hoped they would fix everythin in the print versions and giving away free updated downloads to early adopters. But that seems not to be the case. And while it's a damn shame to buy a faulty PDF, it's a waste of money to buy the print version of a badly edited book. I pre-ordered the RG. Maybe I'll cancel that...

[Agonar]

Yeah.  I can buy the pdf, and later down the road download an updated copy when they fix it, but with the book that's not the case.

I like to have physical books, but $50 is a pretty hefty price tag for these books, considering the errors within.  Considering that you can download updated PDFs, it really would be nice if they would release the PDF before sending it to the printers.  There was a page and a half of errors and mistakes posts caught in the first 24 hours of release.  Face it, gamers find errors, mistakes, and continuity issues more than proofreaders and editors do.  When you are focused on finding mistakes of one kind, you might miss the others, and that seems to be the case here.

Had they waited, even a week, they would have 4 pages of posts to go through, fix the mistakes found, include the omissions, etc.  Knowing that, I would gladly preorder the book, but knowing that the physical copy will be identical to the pdf I have, I really don't have the money to spend on this book, until such a time that it's complete and/or fixed.

[DWC]

To be fair, the proofreaders catch a lot of this stuff.  It just doesn't get incorporated into the final document.

[Mirikon]

To be fair, the proofreaders catch a lot of this stuff.  It just doesn't get incorporated into the final document.

Then what is the point?

[Csjarrat]

To be fair, the proofreaders catch a lot of this stuff.  It just doesn't get incorporated into the final document.

Then what is the point?

Exactly. fucking waste of time even having proofreaders if none of what they catch even gets fixed!

[Tarislar]

Agreed.

To me it should work something like this.

1.  Proof Readers catch errors in the "alpha"
2.  Errors are Fixed.
3.  Release PDF.
4.  Massive swell of public catches even more errors & issues that need nerfing.
5.  Those errors are fixed.
6.  Book sent to Print.

That way at least when the book comes, its got "most" of the stuff fixed from say 30 days of PDF reading by the community.

I'm really shocked that they sent a book to print that will have this many glaring errors in it.

[Kincaid]

Agreed.

To me it should work something like this.

1.  Proof Readers catch errors in the "alpha"
2.  Errors are Fixed.
3.  Release PDF.
4.  Massive swell of public catches even more errors & issues that need nerfing.
5.  Those errors are fixed.
6.  Book sent to Print.

That way at least when the book comes, its got "most" of the stuff fixed from say 30 days of PDF reading by the community.

I'm really shocked that they sent a book to print that will have this many glaring errors in it.

That's not a very realistic process.  You can't just decide to publish a physical book and then go out and do it a week later.  It's a very involved, very expensive process that requires lots of legwork ahead of time.  Step (4) in this process is way too open-ended to allow Catalyst to adhere to any sort of schedule with whoever does their publishing.  You don't need to playtest to figure out how to fix the Rain Forest Carbine, but you would need to playtest to see which version of Commanding Voice is "correct."  All this takes time and pushes you further off schedule.

It seems to me that the process at Catalyst is overly-siloed (this is pure conjecture, btw).  People working on one project may or may not have a vague idea about what's going on in other projects and there doesn't seem to be a centralized way of cross checking.  This is how you end up with Personalized Grips without a cost, two different versions of Commanding Voice, and references to non-existent rules.  Ideally, someone needs to act as the final arbiter of all things crunch before things get shipped.  That's easy to say, but considering the freelancer:staff ratio in most gaming companies, much much harder to institute. 

[adzling]

It's called an editor.
something they seem to have thought was not worth the investment.

[Insaniac99]

Agreed.

To me it should work something like this.

1.  Proof Readers catch errors in the "alpha"
2.  Errors are Fixed.
3.  Release PDF.
4.  Massive swell of public catches even more errors & issues that need nerfing.
5.  Those errors are fixed.
6.  Book sent to Print.

That way at least when the book comes, its got "most" of the stuff fixed from say 30 days of PDF reading by the community.

I'm really shocked that they sent a book to print that will have this many glaring errors in it.

That's not a very realistic process.  You can't just decide to publish a physical book and then go out and do it a week later.  It's a very involved, very expensive process that requires lots of legwork ahead of time.  Step (4) in this process is way too open-ended to allow Catalyst to adhere to any sort of schedule with whoever does their publishing.  You don't need to playtest to figure out how to fix the Rain Forest Carbine, but you would need to playtest to see which version of Commanding Voice is "correct."  All this takes time and pushes you further off schedule.

It seems to me that the process at Catalyst is overly-siloed (this is pure conjecture, btw).  People working on one project may or may not have a vague idea about what's going on in other projects and there doesn't seem to be a centralized way of cross checking.  This is how you end up with Personalized Grips without a cost, two different versions of Commanding Voice, and references to non-existent rules.  Ideally, someone needs to act as the final arbiter of all things crunch before things get shipped.  That's easy to say, but considering the freelancer:staff ratio in most gaming companies, much much harder to institute.

Green Ronin has a publishing routine almost exactly like Tarislar describes.  They get it a ready as they can (steps 1-3) then release the PDF and a Print-preorder and give people 1 month to find errors before the print version is finalized with the printer. It would hardly change the workflow and it would fix a lot of the problems that Catalyst has.

 The funny thing is the only incurred cost on Catalyst for a vastly improved product is a few additional hours on the freelancers or the book's lead to incorporate those changes, much less expensive than the editor they either need to fire or hire.

[voydangel]

I completely agree that they need to change something, at least enough so that the changes/fixes that the editors and freelancers are reporting are being implemented. I also think that an extra (full-time & dedicated) editor would also improve things a bit, but really, just fixing the already identified stuff would go a long way here. And I think the 30 days of community feedback before sending the book off to the publishers can work, and would work here with some minor adjustments. But again, the big question here is "why are the edits, rules clarifications, and errata that are being reported not making it into the product?" The 4e and 4a books were good, what happened? what changed?

As for this business model: it is flawed and incredibly annoying, not to mention insulting to those of us who have been loyal "shadowrunners" for many years. I would much rather see one good book than 4 small hastily published ones. 4a got us "Arsenal", whereas in 5e, in order to get the same info, we need to buy "Run & Gun", "Bullets & Bandages", "Gun Haven 3", "Coyotes", AND "Stolen Souls". Street Grimoire is looking to be a similar setup where we will need to buy 3 or 4 books to get everything that was simply "Street Magic" in 4a. /sigh

I for one just think we need to try as much as possible to lay blame at the feet of the correct guilty parties. Unfortunately, it's also very hard for those of us at the lowest levels (aka customers) to identify with whom the problem actually lies due to the NDA's and lack of transparency in the corporate/publishing hierarchy and "chain of command".

[Ryo]

Street Grimoire lists nine writers, ten playtesters/proofers, and two editors. The only way I can imagine having that many people work on the same project and still turning out something with this many errors is if they literally aren't talking to each other. The hands don't know what the fingers are doing, let alone the feet, so its no surprise when the body ends up in a crumbled heap at the bottom of the stairs.

I do proofreading and editing, and was one of the people listing pages of problems within hours of this thing going live. Even if they don't want to crowdsource their proofing process by releasing the PDF a few weeks before sending the book to print, they should at least get one guy who reads the book cover to cover at the end of the pipeline, writing down every single problem he can find, and they don't ship it until all those problems are solved.

As much as I would like to assume Catalyst is competent enough to do that, I found several basic grammar errors within the first few pages, including on the freakin' back cover. (Check yourself. "With more options, deeper rules, deadlier threats, and dozens of way to have fun with magic"). It's a lot more understandable 150 some odd pages in, when you've been combing through a book for hours and are starting to skim more and more. But the second paragraph in the entire PDF has an error in it that wasn't caught, which leads me to believe nobody spent the time to go looking for them. (Or, like DWC suggested, the proofers do catch it and for some insane reason, the people in charge say 'fukit' and don't bother fixing it.)

[Dangersaurus]

Edit: no point piling on. I think they get it.

[Ariketh]

Agreed.

To me it should work something like this.

1.  Proof Readers catch errors in the "alpha"
2.  Errors are Fixed.
3.  Release PDF.
4.  Massive swell of public catches even more errors & issues that need nerfing.
5.  Those errors are fixed.
6.  Book sent to Print.

That way at least when the book comes, its got "most" of the stuff fixed from say 30 days of PDF reading by the community.

I'm really shocked that they sent a book to print that will have this many glaring errors in it.

That's not a very realistic process.  You can't just decide to publish a physical book and then go out and do it a week later.  It's a very involved, very expensive process that requires lots of legwork ahead of time.  Step (4) in this process is way too open-ended to allow Catalyst to adhere to any sort of schedule with whoever does their publishing.  You don't need to playtest to figure out how to fix the Rain Forest Carbine, but you would need to playtest to see which version of Commanding Voice is "correct."  All this takes time and pushes you further off schedule.

It seems to me that the process at Catalyst is overly-siloed (this is pure conjecture, btw).  People working on one project may or may not have a vague idea about what's going on in other projects and there doesn't seem to be a centralized way of cross checking.  This is how you end up with Personalized Grips without a cost, two different versions of Commanding Voice, and references to non-existent rules.  Ideally, someone needs to act as the final arbiter of all things crunch before things get shipped.  That's easy to say, but considering the freelancer:staff ratio in most gaming companies, much much harder to institute.

Green Ronin has a publishing routine almost exactly like Tarislar describes.  They get it a ready as they can (steps 1-3) then release the PDF and a Print-preorder and give people 1 month to find errors before the print version is finalized with the printer. It would hardly change the workflow and it would fix a lot of the problems that Catalyst has.

 The funny thing is the only incurred cost on Catalyst for a vastly improved product is a few additional hours on the freelancers or the book's lead to incorporate those changes, much less expensive than the editor they either need to fire or hire.

Incidentally,  White Wolf has been doing this on some products as well.  So it's a viable process, but I suspect it also requires a lot of work.

-Ariketh

[Tarislar]

Step (4) in this process is way too open-ended to allow Catalyst to adhere to any sort of schedule with whoever does their publishing.  You don't need to playtest to figure out how to fix the Rain Forest Carbine, but you would need to playtest to see which version of Commanding Voice is "correct."  All this takes time and pushes you further off schedule.

1.  See above.  It works for other companies.

2.  We are not talking about some undetermined time here. 
It took literally HOURS for a whole slew of errors & problems to be found.

Set a timeline.
2-Weeks for customer base to send in errata.
2-Weeks to fix any issues found.
1 Month after PDF release = Ship to Printers.

We are not talking about major layout revisions here.  (at least in some cases)
  We are talking in about simply deleting a single sentence in many cases, or a simple spelling error.
All that stuff make for a MUCH better product IMHO.

Seriously there shouldn't be as many grammar errors as we are seeing in these books.
Let alone the references to all the other products that don't exist yet.

[Sternenwind]

But you are talking about money, additional costs.