[dezmont]

No one put a line in your mouth... You literally said people should stop complaining because you feel that unconditional support is important to prevent the license from changing because 6e is better than the likely nothing another company would make, and if we don't like it we should make our own rpgs.

I get your in a bad position right now swatting down bad behavior and thus may have come across as overly dismissive, but in those two posts you essentially DID say one cannot criticize the game even if they are accurate for the combined reasons of fear of harm to the line (which may be true but I think its overstated massively) and because you can't just go and do better to prove it.

That may not have been your intent, but that is the actual ultimate conclusion your argument has: stop complaining and just deal because you lack the access to resources and a platform to make a great rpg.

[FastJack]

Once again, continue with how I'm delusional. I'm sure that makes your toxic comments feel justified.

Weren't you going to stop commenting on these forums because customers told you you were too toxic for them to keep visiting these forums?

No, I was going to stop because those that don't like 6E were claiming I was persecuting them.

look whatever your feelings about fastjacks comments you have to respect him as a mod, imho.

He does a difficult job on these boards, pretty much single-handed, for free.

In my experience he's a pretty fair moderator, giving folks a lot of leeway on their posts here.

So please just keep that in mind, when you react to stuff he's posting.

Thanks adz. I try. But when dealing with the toxicity of some of the posters, it's getting very difficult, which is why I have to walk away more and more.

[BeCareful]

Ow. At the crux of this, everyone wants to salvage a bad situation. Whether it's through refusing to support a thing that had a troubled production, or not wanting to see a thing they loved die or languish.

As for me, I probably won't get any of the rule books, but I may spring for one of the setting/plot books. Still, it's a painful situation, no matter how you slice it, so I don't want to make it worse by aggravating anyone.

[FastJack]

No one put a line in your mouth... You literally said people should stop complaining because you feel that unconditional support is important to prevent the license from changing because 6e is better than the likely nothing another company would make, and if we don't like it we should make our own rpgs.

I get your in a bad position right now swatting down bad behavior and thus may have come across as overly dismissive, but in those two posts you essentially DID say one cannot criticize the game even if they are accurate for the combined reasons of fear of harm to the line (which may be true but I think its overstated massively) and because you can't just go and do better to prove it.

That may not have been your intent, but that is the actual ultimate conclusion your argument has: stop complaining and just deal because you lack the access to resources and a platform to make a great rpg.

I am so tired of all of this. As I said before, I tried the positive route. I asked people to be productive. Started up the house rules thread. Support threads that discuss the rules in detail, including how they are broken and what we could do as a community to get them fixed.

But, people only hear what they want to hear. You see me as a delusional corporate hack that only spouts whatever CGL tells me, even though it has been said time and again, I DO. NOT. WORK. FOR. CGL. I am a volunteer, which means I've put more time and energy into this game than leaving a review on DriveThruRPG. I don't care if you want to support this game or not, but I do care when your comments are so toxic that new players do not feel comfortable discussing the new thing they are trying to get into. You are literally chasing customers away from the game. YOU.

Here's how it works: You can be a positive, productive member of the forums. You can do that AND not like the current rules. You do that by being productive (Terms Of Service, rule #7) and playing nice (Terms Of Service, rule #1). When 6E first starting coming out, I was making sure those rules were being enforced because people were coming on the boards and just saying "6E Sucks!" without anything constructive to say. I was a bit more lax after the release, because their was a lot of frustration with the production value, the release schedule, and the overall response to the new release. I'm working with the other moderators to see if there's something we can do about getting this place less toxic without just deleting posts and warning/banning forum members.

I commented a bit today because I wanted to be on the forums and not just kill spammers for you guys. If, as ISP implies, I'm not welcome here, then I'll head out and start moderating without interacting.

[BeCareful]

You gotta do what you gotta do. Even still (even if it doesn't sound like it), you will be missed.

Also, I'm still enthused by the influx of new people. Thanks to the house rules/change blindness/workaround threads, they have non-angry places to get their questions answered.

[steelybran]

FastJack - We get where you are coming from.

At the end of the day, we want a game that is fun to sit down at the table and play.  The setting is great - there's no real reason to alter the setting, just to continue expanding on it.

I'm certainly willing to give 6E a chance.  I won't be able to really sit down and play it until the first convention we make it to.  I'm hoping that gives the person who runs the games a lot of opportunity to help us grasp it quickly and resume playing.  I'm hoping to have 5E and 6E versions of my character, just in case.  I'm pretty invested and want to see their story play out.

People should have a place to voice their concerns and issues, but they shouldn't actively scare away new players either.  Hopefully we can all figure out the best processes for it. 

[penllawen]

I don't care if you want to support this game or not, but I do care when your comments are so toxic that new players do not feel comfortable discussing the new thing they are trying to get into. You are literally chasing customers away from the game. YOU.

I've never told anyone not to play Shadowrun. I've suggested to a few folks they ignore 6e and get 5e, though. I fear that if they read 6e in its current state, they'll find the broken stuff, bin it off, and never come back. I think recommending 6e to people is a good way to chase them away, honestly.

[Hephaestus]

"Only" 506 people...exactly how many people do you expect playtest these things?  As I said, I don't know what would be considered standard, but I would have thought 500 to be extremely excessive...

In my mind, not really. That was some fast math to say if every playtester had 12 people who were uncredited, which is probably not the case. Considering they said there was some overlap, it would probably be in the 150-200 range, which is still relatively small for such a major overhaul of the system.

To compare, Privateer Press (ttg company of ~25 people) has a Community Integrated Development (CID) forum that has 1,127 active members, 99% of whom are unpaid volunteers. They flow changes in the beta stage to the forums usually 4-6 months prior to release and let them run for 2-4 weeks to gather data. The changes could be anything from new models, to revised rules, to game mechanic overhauls. That system is run by 4-5 people.

I bring this up because in my mind, this is a prime example of a small company getting their player base involved in the design process in a very good way. It lets players' voices be heard, lets them see how their interaction can change the game, it gets people psyched about new releases, and/or gets them buying old models that may not have seen play for a while. But most of all IMO, it shows people that they have plans and are making continual positive progress, which keeps the good will flowing.

[Lormyr]

Critical appraisal that turns toxic. Fish rotting from the head, so we should fire Line Developers. Vote with the wallets and don't buy the game. Whatever gets you guys through this. I know I'm done with the drama. I'm supporting the game so we can get more books and more game. The routes you're taking lead to Catalyst looking at Shadowrun as not profitable, expecting them to pour money into something that won't make them money, or try to sell an IP that is not profitable to another company. Good luck with that.

For what it is worth, I personally do not have any problem with your or anyone else's view of 6e or Catalyst. Folks are allowed to have different perspectives, and having differences doesn't make anyone toxic. Neither is telling a company you would like them to improve, and offering suggestions for ways to do that.

I have no desire to see Shadowrun die - it is my favorite setting. I also don't have a desire to see Catalyst fail. My sole concern is the integrity of the game and product. By that logic, I literally have no concern for whom possesses the IP, so long as that company respects and takes care of it.

Additionally, just like none of the critics should stop posting, neither should you man. All sides of the perspective are valid. If there is anyone you can't stand interacting with just block their ass. It's a simple solution that will save you some headache and probably help alleviate some of the stress that is causing you to feel like you shouldn't post. Win win I think.

Edit: That vote with the wallet comment was specifically towards the terrible editing process and quality control. It had no bearing on the actual game or mechanics of 6e. That's an entirely separate issue for me.

[FastJack]

Critical appraisal that turns toxic. Fish rotting from the head, so we should fire Line Developers. Vote with the wallets and don't buy the game. Whatever gets you guys through this. I know I'm done with the drama. I'm supporting the game so we can get more books and more game. The routes you're taking lead to Catalyst looking at Shadowrun as not profitable, expecting them to pour money into something that won't make them money, or try to sell an IP that is not profitable to another company. Good luck with that.

For what it is worth, I personally do not have any problem with your or anyone else's view of 6e or Catalyst. Folks are allowed to have different perspectives, and having differences doesn't make anyone toxic. Neither is telling a company you would like them to improve, and offering suggestions for ways to do that.

I have no desire to see Shadowrun die - it is my favorite setting. I also don't have a desire to see Catalyst fail. My sole concern is the integrity of the game and product. By that logic, I literally have no concern for whom possesses the IP, so long as that company respects and takes care of it.

Additionally, just like none of the critics should stop posting, neither should you man. All sides of the perspective are valid. If there is anyone you can't stand interacting with just block their ass. It's a simple solution that will save you some headache and probably help alleviate some of the stress that is causing you to feel like you shouldn't post. Win win I think.

Edit: That vote with the wallet comment was specifically towards the terrible editing process and quality control. It had no bearing on the actual game or mechanics of 6e. That's an entirely separate issue for me.

LOL, Because I'm moderator, I *have* to keep my block list empty.

[Lormyr]

Well that is highly unfortunate. I would suggest just ignoring them then, but I know how difficult that is to do. Sorry dude.

[dezmont]

My personal moderation style is to just delete low effort insult posts (1-2 sentence stuff someone wrote in a minute. Longer stuff, even if toxic, can't be dealt with so casually) and a PM wrist slap.

It is pretty clear people are way to comfortable just  akedly insulting people. While I get the worry about seeming neutral and the desire to leave these up to not seem overbearing I don't think any value is lost if the ONLY goal of a post is inflammatory and contains no greater argument. Like bigfer posts can be toxic too, but you don't need to put much thought into deleting posts that are NOTHING but people trying to pick a fight and insult people as bootlickers or cults or a mob or whatever.

Also, beware of transference! It is easy to imagine everyone who has a similar viewpoint to be using the same tactics and using the same tone, and misapply arguments from one person to another. I did it in this thread myself on review, and am sorry about that!

[wraith]

Critical appraisal that turns toxic. Fish rotting from the head, so we should fire Line Developers. Vote with the wallets and don't buy the game. Whatever gets you guys through this. I know I'm done with the drama. I'm supporting the game so we can get more books and more game. The routes you're taking lead to Catalyst looking at Shadowrun as not profitable, expecting them to pour money into something that won't make them money, or try to sell an IP that is not profitable to another company. Good luck with that.

What else do you expect us to think, as fans, FJ?  We have no control over the company, and it is very obvious that something is wrong with the process of generating Shadowrun content given the declining quality of the works being published.  I'm not even talking the subjective stuff like 'I don't like this mechanic', I'm talking about the outright editing mistakes, copy/paste errors, and basic mathematical problems that lead to massive errata before most of the public even has the game in hand.

At the end of the day, the Line Dev, and those working directly with him, are responsible for the quality of the content published on the line.  Jason Hardy's been in that position for a decade now.  I don't think it's outrageous for customers to expect not having large amounts of novice mistakes in the content he's signing off on.

[Singularity]

I kind of regret sharing the link now...

Don't, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for introducing this group of roleplayers to me; I probably would never have known about their videos otherwise. Additionally, the video solidified some of the things I was working over in my head. It took me a couple days to watch it all, but other than a couple items where I think they misremembered something they were talking about (more than likely because they didn't have the rules in front of them to reference, it seemed to me) most of their points were issues my group had as well. We grasped how the new edge mechanic worked well enough, we just didn't particularly care for it, and like they said in the video: If you don't like the edge mechanic, you will not like 6th edition, because it's intertwined with everything.

I ran the adventure in the beginner's boxed set and for the first session we went over the basic rules and studied the edge mechanics and the actions they could take with it. After I was sure everyone had a decent grasp of the basics, we had a pre-fight fight between a randomly picked ganger from the adventure, and a character played by the most experienced player in the group, and went through that as a safety check to make sure we were doing things right. We discovered we had missed a step, corrected it during combat, and then started the adventure. We just didn't like the system the way it was set up, in addition to the various reported errors in the boxed set (which I had been warned about on the forums here, so I had a copy of the main rulebook nearby for reference). We double and triple-checked rules in the boxed set with the main rulebook, just to be safe, and made sure everyone was helping each other as much as possible with their turns so that no one was overlooking important items.

We just weren't happy with the system. They got through the initial part of the adventure, and then elected to walk away rather than continue on. To be honest, as a GM that was a bit disheartening for me; it's the first time I've ran a game where we didn't at least finish the adventure (the one TPK I've had as a GM in a different game doesn't count; it technically ended when the last character died). The adventure book had suggestions for dealing with characters who might try to leave, but honestly I wasn't going to force my players to play something none of us were enjoying. There are too many things currently that just don't make sense to us (not as in we can't understand the rules, we understand them just fine, but more along the lines of "Why was it done like this?").

For example one of the things that they touched upon in that video was the fact that their combat character (Havoc?) could have assaulted a facility wearing just a bikini and mechanically it works just as well as wearing armor, and they weren't wrong. When I first read the official posts talking about mechanics, and some posters calling out problems, I thought it was just the standard edition change jitters. I was wrong. I felt that (pre-con) it was way too early to make such decisions, but I was wrong. Lesson learned. Additionally there are so many, many editing mistakes and errors that were visible to me, and I'm not even familiar with previous versions of Shadowrun; why were things that seemed to be from previous editions but no longer exist being referenced?

Don't get me wrong, I love the Shadowrun setting and one way or another I will carry on with it, but for now I'll be stepping back from it for a bit. I have a bunch of other game systems' beginner boxes to run my group through, and that should give Catalyst time to get things straightened out. When the official release of the main rulebook happens, I'll see what people are saying and more importantly I'll go over the updated copy of my PDF and see if there have been enough changes to entice my group to give it a second try. If not there are other options available like using the setting with other game systems (The Sprawl, Carbon 2185 (when  it comes out), IZ 3.0 (when it comes out), etc.). Alternately one of my players suggested trying to go with 3rd Edition Shadowrun; this has the added benefit for me, if I can acquire the books, of allowing me to experience all those great stories from the past (the Universal Brotherhood, the Renraku Arcology, etc.). One way or another my players are going to be dealing with the bugs, whether I use a different system and just use the upcoming campaign and sourcebook as references, or whether I run the original adventures/campaign (assuming I can get them).


As a note for Fastjack: As one of the new players (well, GM) to Shadowrun please know that nothing anyone has said here chased me away from 6th Edition; this was a mutual agreement by my group that it (the new edition) doesn't work for us. For what it's worth, you have my sympathies; gamers are a very passionate and vocal group of people, and sometimes I imagine dealing with that must feel like trying to put out a forest fire with a hand towel.

[Marcus]

At the end of the day no one is happy with the situation we have.

I think Fastjack does a great job at a totally thankless and trying task in this moment. Believe me I would have loved for 6e to have been good or even mostly acceptable, every version of SR is and has been flawed, everyone has to deiced for themselves where or if they draw the line. Singularity you did the right thing in starting the post, the feedback they gave isn't perfect but it's fair as is your feedback. What was said was what folks liked and what they didn't. It's not one sided, and it's drawn from first hand experience with the system. There isn't a more fair review method then that. For those who are like me and are frustrated with 6e believe me I feel you. I have not been shy in my criticism of 6e. But to include toxic personal attacks is going to far. The thing we don't like is 6e not those whom choose to support it. The playtest question is irrelevant at this point, the only question that matters is what happens going forward. What's done is done they aren't going to walk this release back, if you look at the pdf price of 19.99 they did that for a reason and they clearly know it's flawed. To me the only realistic ways forward is vote with your wallet and/or sit and see if the errata team can pull off some kind of major miracle. I can't sugar coat this having now seen the text, I don't think it's possible, but there clearly are some people who like it, and I wish them all the joy it can bring them.