[All4BigGuns]

In general, most of a game's player base is not qualified for much more than catching minor errors like spelling or minor grammar. As much as modern players seem to think they know how to design a good game, that isn't true except in a very niche case where they're specifically crafting something for their particular group.

[adzling]

I think this is true in general.
However have a look at the Rigger 5.0 errata thread as an example of what a community can flag as editing errors/ contradictions.
This is quite separate from game design/ rule design.
It's a lot of free eyes who care deeply about whatever aspect of the game they are interested in.
This can be an asset to Catalyst if managed appropriately.

I would say take some of the fluff $$ and spend it on harnessing the community's engagement and paying for more editing.

The fluff is killing Shadowrun imho.

In general, most of a game's player base is not qualified for much more than catching minor errors like spelling or minor grammar. As much as modern players seem to think they know how to design a good game, that isn't true except in a very niche case where they're specifically crafting something for their particular group.

[falar]

The fluff is killing Shadowrun imho.

Your opinion is not widely shared. Of the three-four groups I've run with, none of them had this as a complaint.

[jim1701]

>It might even help them internally to make themselves into a better company by asking the hard questions and getting the right people in the right positions instead of continuing to pump out more sub-standard work riddled with rules errors and horrific editing.
This is a good closing point. IRL, while I wear many hats, one of the things you could say I am is a business analyst. Optimizing businesses and their business processes is something I do, and do exceedingly well. So big disclaimer: I have NEVER discussed the intricacies of CGL business operation with anyone at CGL. This is PURE observation, from a very narrow window. That being said. what I observe is pretty simple: CGL, as a business, does not have the resources to change and improve. The people that are in place are mostly capped in their abilities, due to both raw knowledge and time available. To change, CGL needs to hire more people in more places. These people cost money. Money CGL does not have. And the return on investment WOULD NOT BE THERE. That is the most important point. CGL would likely go out of business if they attempted to significantly improve their processes.
So, improvements do happen. As I said in my previous post, some feedback is taken in. Some feedback HAS been taken in. But overall, you need to understand the business of publishing RPG books is a piss-poor business that operates with pennies. There isn't much room to make big changes we can all see are needed. There just isn't the money to do so.

Sorry, given the excellent example set by the Battletech team over the last decade or so since the release of Total Warfare I just can't accept that the Shadowrun team is incapable of setting up the same kind of infrastructure to support and improve the Shadowrun product line.  This isn't about spending more money. 

AFAIK the Battletech team accomplishes a lot of what they do through the recruitment of volunteers to basically fill the roll secretaries to keep the incoming flow of data from the public organized and to collate and organize the outgoing errata, clarifications, changes, etc. generated by the Battletech staff.  By my conservative count this has resulted in the release of more than 400 pages of documentation containing errata, clarifications and rule changes for the Battletech product line since the release of Total Warfare in 2006.

The only reasons I can fathom that the Shadowrun team has not copied this success is either the Shadowrun team leaders have been unable to recruit volunteers for these tasks or they are unwilling to do so. 

[Fabe]

The fluff is killing Shadowrun imho.

Your opinion is not widely shared. Of the three-four groups I've run with, none of them had this as a complaint.

 I'm with Falar. I love the fluff in shadowrun. sure maybe the amount of fluffy could be cut down in the more rules orientated books like limiting it to short stories at the start of every chapter and maybe jackpoint comments. But to say its killing the game might be a bit extreme .

[Herr Brackhaus]

While it's been over a year since I offered, I'd still do some volunteer editing and quality control if given the opportunity.  I have some professional editing experience (which is part of why the flaws gall me so much). 

I'd second this; while English isn't my first language, part of my job is to write and proof read technical documentation. Not speaking the language natively also gives me a different perspective that might indicate where more concise statements might be more prudent than elaborate language, and I'd be more than happy to pitch in for free if only to help with grammar, layout, and general QA.

I know crowd-sourcing has been mentioned as being too resource intensive in the past, but maybe it's time to revisit this? I can't imagine that it would be more work to go through QA feedback from 5-10 people than having to QA a whole manuscript by yourself, for example. We do Formal Technical Reviews at my work place all the time, and having a list of major and minor issues as well as simple grammatical errors to go through certainly is an effective approval-by-committee process for us.

[thePrimarch]

In general, most of a game's player base is not qualified for much more than catching minor errors like spelling or minor grammar. As much as modern players seem to think they know how to design a good game, that isn't true except in a very niche case where they're specifically crafting something for their particular group.

I'm not sure I agree with that. While there are plenty of examples where that is the case (overpowered and erratic homebrew designs are common in every tabletop RPG), I think most of a game's more experienced player base is capable of identifying game-breaking flaws and rule mismatches after exposure and playtesting. For that matter, a lot of companies make use of exposure and playtesting in order to identify problem areas or oddities that would not necessarily have been caught in the editing process -- Paizo, for example, has made great use of player input and PFS playtesting in creating their new class books. Maybe we could try something similar for new crunch sourcebooks? That might allow us to fix editing on tables as well.

Moreover, the player base is great in one area that game designers always have trouble with: overall fluff libraries. Player-managed wiki sources are popular for a lot of fictional universes because crowdsourcing all available details off of OCD game fans is way easier and cheaper than spending time doing it yourself.

[adzling]

If you could improve the rules greatly by cutting 10-20% of the fluff wouldn't that be worth it?

That's a totally different argument than "cut all fluff/ don't put fluff in rulebooks".

One that I think we could all live with, happily.

The fluff is killing Shadowrun imho.

Your opinion is not widely shared. Of the three-four groups I've run with, none of them had this as a complaint.

 I'm with Falar. I love the fluff in shadowrun. sure maybe the amount of fluffy could be cut down in the more rules orientated books like limiting it to short stories at the start of every chapter and maybe jackpoint comments. But to say its killing the game might be a bit extreme .

[Reaver]

I find it interesting that you think "Fluff" is killing the game when one out of seven posts here is a request for MORE fluff!

(What sports teams are there)
(What is happening in this country)
(What is going on with this person)
(What are the laws of this country)
(What is this faction up to)

And those are just the first few that come to mind....

If people are asking questions like these and others, then there must be some demand for fluff.... don't you think?

[jim1701]

The fluff is killing Shadowrun imho.

Your opinion is not widely shared. Of the three-four groups I've run with, none of them had this as a complaint.

Really?  It pretty much killed our Shadowrun campaign.  To be fair though it isn't the fluff  to crunch ratio that was the problem.  The problem that frustrated us until we just gave up on it was that the crunch part of the books themselves were written in a fluffy way that often made the rules vague, confusing and/or incomplete.  There are still some pieces of equipment from Chrome Flesh that while I know exactly what their purpose is in game the writer failed to get around to actually describing the game mechanics!  Our GM just got tired of trying to figure out what the authors intended with this rule or that and decided it wasn't worth the effort and I really couldn't blame him. 

[All4BigGuns]

I find it interesting that you think "Fluff" is killing the game when one out of seven posts here is a request for MORE fluff!

(What sports teams are there)
(What is happening in this country)
(What is going on with this person)
(What are the laws of this country)
(What is this faction up to)

And those are just the first few that come to mind....

If people are asking questions like these and others, then there must be some demand for fluff.... don't you think?

This just proves that there needs to be a return of those primarily-fluff sources so that that stuff can be included. That doesn't change that the general over-emphasis of the fluff in rules supplements is damaging to a game.

The rules are far more important since beyond the stuff in a core rulebook, fluff can vary from table to table but the rules need to be comprehensive and stable no matter where you go.

[adzling]

Some fluff is critical, no doubt.

My point, to clarify, is spending limited $$ on shoveling fluff into every book is a poor substitute for better authored rules.

So I am 100% NOT saying, cut all fluff!

I'm not even saying "make more rules than fluff in a book".

What I AM SAYING is spend some of those fluff $$ on making sure your dang rules work and the editing is better, far better.
See my back of napkin $$ analysis earlier in this thread (its probably wrong but the general gist, spend more money on better rules and cut back the fluff 10 or 20% is valid imho).

I hope that clarifies my position so folks don't keep putting words into my mouth.

I find it interesting that you think "Fluff" is killing the game when one out of seven posts here is a request for MORE fluff!

(What sports teams are there)
(What is happening in this country)
(What is going on with this person)
(What are the laws of this country)
(What is this faction up to)

And those are just the first few that come to mind....

If people are asking questions like these and others, then there must be some demand for fluff.... don't you think?

[Darzil]

I think the balance of Fluff and Crunch is less important than rules that work.

I would love some of the outstanding repeated questions that come up time and again in the rules forums to be answered clearly.

I certainly appreciate that it is time consuming and expensive to do this well, certainly more expensive than doing fluff well.

However, a process to do it effectively would be very valuable in the long term, I suspect (but cannot prove).

Would love to not hear "we should have used 4th" almost every session.

As a GM what I would really love is one place to go to for information, whether Fluff or Crunch.

[Critias]

On the topic of freelancer input and how likely we are to post in any given thread, and speaking only for myself, I don't "avoid" this place because my precious fee-fees would be hurt, I avoid this place because, generally speaking, there's no point in my posting.  The problems that people drag up again and again and again are problems that are above my pay grade, as a freelancer and a writer, are often problems that the complainer doesn't understand in the first place, or both. 

It's like someone ranting in line at a gas station about the price of gas, insisting the gas station has raised the price of crude oil to cover for the cost of selling cigarettes, expecting the store employee to do anything about it.  Sure, maybe there's a legit complaint there, but it's multiple different topics that are related (but not in the way the ranter thinks), but also it's multiple different complaints that are so far above the pay-grade of the register-jockey working at the gas station that the complaints themselves are laughable (and it would be unprofessional for someone working at that gas station to bad mouth that gas station, anyways, even if they agreed).  So why bother responding, and trying to explain any of that for the Nth time?

[ScytheKnight]

I kinda got tired and skipped past the last page or so of posts due to the back and forth, but did want to say a couple of things.

Re: Fluff in crunch, particularly 3 books of CFD.
The problem with this is that it wasn't 3 books going over and over the same thing... it was 3 books following the continued unfolding of the CFD crisis, each book is set further along the metaplot timeline. And well, there's a rather simple solution, don't read the fluff? I'll admit that being more focused on running pre-generated content as this is my first time GMing I've been skimming most of the fluff.

Re: The fluff is just fan-fic.
As a writer, Fuck You.

Re: Editing issues, bad tables/conflicts/etc.
It does suck, but remember that editing is just as difficult and time consuming, if not more so, than the actual writing itself. I've been working on a Twine interactive fiction project and an update changes the way a system works. I had to basically completely re-do an entire segment to work with the new system and damn near lost half of it in the process.

Re: Finding solutions.
It does sound like CGL is in between a bit of a rock and a hard place here... so what can we do to help? For a start, by helping, be constructive. Constructive feedback of what's wrong instead of screaming to fix it can help. Constructive feedback of what works well can give writers and editors valuable feedback on what to aim for in the future.

As someone with a bit of a writing background, and also someone moving into their final stage of a Bachelor's in Game Design, is there anyone to talk to about seeing how and where I could possibly help out?