[Mystic]

Starting off with the character cards:

Nyssa Hallas' art shows a Caucassion elf when the card describes her as a black furred nocturna

Lancer: Card says she never removes her helmet but the art shows her with no helmet on

Katsu Takashima: card says he's an adept yet art shows him with cyberware, under SPELLS Lightning Bolt, Mass Agony, and Stunbolt shouldn't be bold

Quinn "Chippie" Turk: under QUALITIES Day Job 3 and Home Ground (Street Politics) shouldn't be bold

Lady Zelda: the second line of the second paragraph shouldn't be indented

...And the worst for last...

Gregory "The Red Stare" Orlov: archetype lists him as "Street Dweller/Wannabe Runner" (which is a copy of Kevin) when it should read something like "Vory fixer" or "Vory fence"; under KNOWLEDGE SKILLS Games of Chance 5 and Smuggling Operations 4 shouldn't be bold; under CONTACTS it lists Mafia Consigliere [Connection 3/Loyalty 2] but Orlov is part of the Vory not the Mafia

Art...yes art. I'm not going to throw anyone under the bus but the art thing was out of my control. I can't speak for the layout errors, but as for Olrov... Well, The Red Stare may be Vory, but he's known to sell to anyone with the right cred. The Mafia Consigliere may not be a "friend", but not so outright hostile so to impede business. For now.

 

[Fizzygoo]

Is that weird blue dome thing suppose to be the Renraku Arcology? I thought it was suppose to be more pyramid shaped. Seeing how I'm reading Never Deal with a Dragon I know the Arcology is off Alaskan Way and that's the only big building off Alaskan.

Based on the original dimensions from the 1st edition Seattle Sourcebook, the ACHE and the Aztechnology building should look like the following images.

Satellite view

View from near the Space Needle (looking SE)

Note: Location, height and ground level dimensions are accurate to within 10 meters. The general vertical-pyramid shape of both are based on the descriptions in the book and the constraints of reality.

[Wakshaani]

Dude. That second shot's kind of awesome. It's easy to forget how LOOMING that thing is.

[adzling]

Yeah those two map images are like 1000% more useful than the silly red line drawing "map" art included in the box set.

[Bull]

When i was doing Missions Season 4 and we were planning and playing in the Ork Underground and Downtown Seattle, I had a Google Map I would occasionally mark up and use as a rough reference guide.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=zVXjLg6WiRfo.kLeiac1ftJhU&hl=en&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&msa=0

Some of the stuff on there is specific to individual Missions, but could give you a loose idea of things.

[lokii]

Well, the issue has been raised: http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=19922.0

I did take note though that at least the Bellevue Barrens got cropped out.

[lokii]

Dude. That second shot's kind of awesome. It's easy to forget how LOOMING that thing is.

Though one should not forget, that Downtown Seattle has more, taller and more spread out skyscrapers than the current downtown area.

[Zar]

Artwork -- as always -- is to be taken with a grain of salt.  Writers and artists don't generally have the opportunity to collaborate, and in some cases (like this one) most of the card art is re-used artwork from other books, anyways;  so the art director made do with what was available to him, based on the information he was given (which isn't always the information provided by the writer). 

It helps, whenever you're reading a game book, to just think "Wow, what a neat picture!  I wonder what tangentially-related-at-best neat text goes with it!"  Any time we can line things up better than that (like the SR5 cover and intro fic) is icing, not cake.  No one's thrilled about it, but that's just how it works.

Yes but this issue is only because Catalyst settles for mediocre development instead of making quality.   Freelance work shouldn't be used as a crutch.  Shadowrun is such a visual game.  People look to the art for inspiration.  It really should portray what was intended or the content should be altered to make the art work.  These seems like another rush job to me.  Wouldn't Catalyst make more money in the long run if their products were give some passes through quality control?  It seems like Catalyst rather take the money and run instead of give the customer a good value for their dollar.

 I'm hoping that they least go through some more passes before they put this product into print.

[adzling]

That Seattle "map" really is a joke.

It's lack of utility, and the ability to recognize such during development, is a clear indicator of poor art direction.

I mean it's totally useless, no street names, no major highways called out, no neighborhood names, no place icons, whole sections of Seattle cropped out.

It really does exemplify how Catalyst has lost the plot.

[PiXeL01]

Most resources are being funneled into Battletech for reasons

[Beta]

I could be mis-remembering, but I thought I recalled reading that an artist had been doing a piece, and as part of it had created this pretty cool looking map of the city and had put a lot of work into trying to get things in the right place, have the right look, etc.  Then that Catalyst thought it looked so cool that they decided to print it as part of the Seattle box set.

No, I don't have a link, but pretty sure I'm not totally imagining this?  Would probably have been a post in the latter half of last year (based on my extremely vague memory dating abilities)?

This ring a bell with anyone else?

[Wakshaani]

That'd be lawsuit city, so, no.

(Unless the Powers That Be went in and bought it after the fact. That *could* happen. But just plundering somebody's work? Not a chance.)

Skipping over the map, what do people think of the other stuff? There's a LOT of stuff in there, after all.

[Herr Brackhaus]

I've chosen to wait for the next sale, to be perfectly honest. While I would like to support the writers for all the hard work they're doing, I'm just not happy enough with the products that Catalyst has been putting out to buy it on release. With Rigger 5.0 I have all the core rules I wanted from SR5 and I'm planning another campaign starting in 2069 where I've got tons of reference material, so I likely won't be buying anything new Shadowrun until Catalyst either a) gets their act together and starts releasing quality content again, or b) their products go on sale like last Christmas, at which point I'll just buy all of it at once.

I am looking forward to seeing what happens with Brackhaven, so I guess I'm disappointed that wasn't wrapped up in this release.

On that note, I feel like a lot of plotlines are not going anywhere at this point; CFD is in lockdown (lolpun!) mode, the Megacorporate audit is in a stalemate, the whole Ares thing has failed to materialize in any significant way, Brackhaven is STILL Governor, and we haven't really gotten any substantive information about what any of the Dragons are up to (what happened to Sirrurg, what's Lofwyr doing now that SK slid down to the second top spot, where is Damon anyway (!?), how is the Orange Queen recovering from her slap on the paw, the heck is Ghostwalker doing after the smackdown with Harlequin and Aztlan's subsequent re-entry into Denver, how is Celedyr really handling the whole CFD debacle while juggling the Loremaster title, will we ever learn what happened to Feuerschwinge from a canon perspective (!!!), why have the Eastern Dragons like Aden and Lung gone all quiet).

Anyway. Not trying to beat on the writers here, so I'll just come back to this one when I pick it up in the future at some point.

[lokii]

I could be mis-remembering, but I thought I recalled reading that an artist had been doing a piece, and as part of it had created this pretty cool looking map of the city and had put a lot of work into trying to get things in the right place, have the right look, etc.  Then that Catalyst thought it looked so cool that they decided to print it as part of the Seattle box set.

You remember correctly, the map started as the board for Hostile Takeover: http://catalystgamelabs.tumblr.com/post/105300081506/when-artists-blow-you-away

[Nightmare]

That'd be lawsuit city, so, no.

(Unless the Powers That Be went in and bought it after the fact. That *could* happen. But just plundering somebody's work? Not a chance.)

Skipping over the map, what do people think of the other stuff? There's a LOT of stuff in there, after all.

I already mentioned the probs on the character cards earlier in the thread...will be going thru the books over the weekend looking for probs on them and will post next week what I find.  As sourcebooks, their aren't too bad...does remind me a bit of the SR 3E New Seattle book in the way things are portrayed/laid out a little.