Shadowrun
Catalyst Game Labs => Official Announcements => Topic started by: FastJack on <02-27-24/1839:45>
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March 6th!
Falling Point!
Threats, Megacorps, and more!
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Looking forward to this, I want to brush up on my homework of threats to throw at
unsuspecting players innocent individuals and another 10-Threats book will definitely help there.
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Hope it's as good as Scotophobia ;D
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I see it up on Drivethrurpg. I won't be able to download it until this evening, and read it I don't know when, but passing along the blurb and some info from the preview pages:
Blurb:
"ON THE PRECIPICE
The Sixth World feels like it’s perpetually in the middle of slow-motion collapse, disaster after disaster threatening to bring parts or all of it down. So it’s critical to know what might push some of these disasters over the edge, turning slow motion into a full-on downward plunge.
Falling Point profiles ten people and organizations standing on a precipice. Sometimes they’re the ones who might go over the edge; other times they’re looking at someone else they can push. Either way, they’re going to play a significant role in unfolding events, so runners better know about them before they run into them in the shadows.
Falling Point is a threats sourcebook for Shadowrun, Sixth World."
From the Preview:
Table of Contents tells us who is covered:
Asintmah Alliance
Cartomancers
Convergence
Denver Data Haven
The French Touch
Humanis Policlub
Michael Bishop
Psyche
The Tiding
Warpath
The Jackpoint page always interests me!
-Street date: 22 Feb 2083
-"Incoming" section lists the following products:
-- Needle's Eye
-- Final Bets
-- Smooth Operators
- And in the news section: "Aztechnology trademarks 'Flesheez'; rumors describe it as artificial flesh for ghouls to eat."
In the credits I notice that RJ Thomas (the new line developer) is not a writer nor editor, so one of the later books without his involvement, I'd guess (he's had writing credits in most of the recent books.)
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Catalyst Game Labs (https://store.catalystgamelabs.com/collections/shadowrun/products/shadowrun-falling-point-runner-resource-book)
DriveThruRPG (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/470335/Shadowrun-Falling-Point-Runner-Resource-Book)
(https://www.drivethrurpg.com/images/2216/470335.jpg)
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Man…that cover is phenomenal!
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I like how they recap a few relevant bits of the metaplots, since these groups tie into those here and there. Definitely can use these.
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And Psyche. I like Psyche.
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I like how they recap a few relevant bits of the metaplots, since these groups tie into those here and there. Definitely can use these.
Agreed, I liked that part. I have those books, but not everyone will, so that context would be important for some. Even having read those books, the summary was nice as a "out of that big book, what is the game focusing on, moving forward."
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I like how they recap a few relevant bits of the metaplots, since these groups tie into those here and there. Definitely can use these.
I'd love to see more of those in future books, personally. *hugely* helpful.
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I've seen a useful short bit of recap in an upcoming book, but not allowed to say which one and what, on account of the CGL HTR squad ready to bust down my door if I post it. :-X
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I've seen a useful short bit of recap in an upcoming book, but not allowed to say which one and what, on account of the CGL HTR squad ready to bust down my door if I post it. :-X
Ooo... I bet it has something to do with Europe? :P
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Europe is a myth, just like Australia. They sound like nice, but we all know there is not such thing as a nice place ;D
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If Europe is not a myth, apparently it is a far off and isolated land, only reachable brave sailing ships or something. Scotophobia says at one point "Trying to get information out of Europe right now is becoming almost impossible." Perhaps with luck some early steam ships are running and we'll have more fulsome news in a few weeks :D
(I get it, they have a word count, so can't cover everything in detail. It was just that line that cracked me up. After all, Europe is part of the matrix, connected to the same hosts, etc. Multiple Jackpointers from Europe, and many of the rest have contacts there. So why would it be harder to get information from there than anywhere else?)
ETA: to be clear, I love Scotophobia overall, it is one of my favourite ShadowRun books as a GM. But I can love it, and still see some little issues.
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If Europe is not a myth, apparently it is a far off and isolated land, only reachable brave sailing ships or something. Scotophobia says at one point "Trying to get information out of Europe right now is becoming almost impossible." Perhaps with luck some early steam ships are running and we'll have more fulsome news in a few weeks :D
(I get it, they have a word count, so can't cover everything in detail. It was just that line that cracked me up. After all, Europe is part of the matrix, connected to the same hosts, etc. Multiple Jackpointers from Europe, and many of the rest have contacts there. So why would it be harder to get information from there than anywhere else?)
ETA: to be clear, I love Scotophobia overall, it is one of my favourite ShadowRun books as a GM. But I can love it, and still see some little issues.
I think it's a joke regarding the real life problems that Scotophobia messed up books that had already been published by Pegasus Press (i.e., they're about six-twelve months ahead in the timeline and didn't know about the coming "week of death").
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I think it's a joke regarding the real life problems that Scotophobia messed up books that had already been published by Pegasus Press (i.e., they're about six-twelve months ahead in the timeline and didn't know about the coming "week of death").
[/quote]
Ah, thank you -- that is context I didn't have.
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yeah, basically they were still using the old chronology progression of 1 year in real life = 1 year in game time not realizing/not having been informed that it had been changed to 1 year in real life = 6 month in game time.
Which caused the German timeline to be in early 2084 instead of early 2083 as per the later supplement (Wild life and Falling point).
Considering how fast some aspect of the Shadowrun timeline can move that can be quite significant.
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Good to see this out. The French Touch and Michael Bishop are exciting. The Warpath and Humanis chapters are also great, but my versions would have been written very differently. I particularly like 0rkCE0's thread in the HP chapter.
Did it appear earlier (I know it didn't make it into the cyber book), or is this book the first time that it's been revealed how Roxy is still alive and back on Earth with a new body? I cannot overemphasize how significant this is because, IMO, he's always been hugely constrained by other factors before now. 2083 Roxy has the potential to be a (literally) walking Dunkelzahn's-will-level plot device.
Convergence was my pitch, but obviously not my contribution. The only thing I will say is that, in Shadowrun, those with power use magic, the Deep Resonance, the Dissonance, cybernetics (in the most abstract definition of Cyber) to predict and shape the future. The single greatest obstacle has always been a combination of bandwidth and bias - there's too much information, and too many known and unknown biases shaping how information is produced and consumed. Convergence may have found a way around or through that obstacle, or at the least, found a better solution than anyone else has yet to achieve. At the same time, everyone else Shadowrunners worry about or should worry about is still grinding on as-is and is looking for better fixes with the goal of figuring out what the optimally predictable future will be and controlling that as much as possible. Convergence is basically Google in 1998. It's the best-working search engine in a sea of them. The difference is that IRL, Yahoo! and AltaVista wouldn't have murdered you for getting in their ways.
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Good to see this out. The French Touch and Michael Bishop are exciting. The Warpath and Humanis chapters are also great, but my versions would have been written very differently. I particularly like 0rkCE0's thread in the HP chapter.
The French Touch is a fun one, I did not write it (it's from the same author as the Marianne chapter in Null Value and of Néo-Révolution), but I did help with some of the research in the background and identify who is part of the FT... mostly to help us write La France des ombres.
Warpath was my contribution. On one hand I wanted to consolidate all the pieces of lore we had since SR2 that was sprinkled all over the place, then on the other hand, now that the UCAS was brought low(ish) offer possibility of what they are looking to do to push to agenda... as well as to deal with the internal politics.
Out of sincere curiosity, how would you have tackled Warpath?
Convergence was my pitch, but obviously not my contribution. The only thing I will say is that, in Shadowrun, those with power use magic, the Deep Resonance, the Dissonance, cybernetics (in the most abstract definition of Cyber) to predict and shape the future. The single greatest obstacle has always been a combination of bandwidth and bias - there's too much information, and too many known and unknown biases shaping how information is produced and consumed. Convergence may have found a way around or through that obstacle, or at the least, found a better solution than anyone else has yet to achieve. At the same time, everyone else Shadowrunners worry about or should worry about is still grinding on as-is and is looking for better fixes with the goal of figuring out what the optimally predictable future will be and controlling that as much as possible. Convergence is basically Google in 1998. It's the best-working search engine in a sea of them. The difference is that IRL, Yahoo! and AltaVista wouldn't have murdered you for getting in their ways.
That is both interesting and frightening. We've always been warned of the danger of the rise of the Machine/AI never of the rise of our search engine.
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Roxy's return was *supposed* to be a book or three ago, but his page got cut for space reasons and never got slid back into a book. I still want that original page out there somewhere. Need to ask the boss if I can share it since they own it, not me.
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Meanwhile, I like to think his current body looks like Matthew MacFadyan. There’s no shortage of super-tall British villain actors to choose from (and given the Deadpool rumors, they’ve now cast every one I know of except for Mark Strong, ironically), and it would be gilding the lily to fancast Cavill.
I don’t have anything else to add. Good work.
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Scotophobia says at one point "Trying to get information out of Europe right now is becoming almost impossible." Perhaps with luck some early steam ships are running and we'll have more fulsome news in a few weeks :D
I think it's a joke regarding the real life problems that Scotophobia messed up books that had already been published by Pegasus Press (i.e., they're about six-twelve months ahead in the timeline and didn't know about the coming "week of death").
Maybe. It could also reflect the turmoil that happens in Europe. Since the Week of Death was meant to have a high impact on the runner scene and among Shadowtalkers, Pegasus Press went some length to focus on have a lot of them to be either killed or disappeared. During christmas time they published an advents calender of stories - each focused on a german Shadowtalker and a lot of them ended deadly.
So during such a time when most runners went into hiding, information is hard to get.
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yeah, basically they were still using the old chronology progression of 1 year in real life = 1 year in game time not realizing/not having been informed that it had been changed to 1 year in real life = 6 month in game time.
Which caused the German timeline to be in early 2084 instead of early 2083 as per the later supplement (Wild life and Falling point).
Considering how fast some aspect of the Shadowrun timeline can move that can be quite significant.
Wait, what? When did that change happen? For that matter, WHY did that change happen?
I do understand that the pace of a game in play will almost never keep up with the game calendar at a 1-to-1 ratio, but a) lagging behind is not the worst thing, b) it makes the timekeeping really easy, and c) it has over 30 years of tradition to it.
Was this announced somewhere, or just put together with the jackpoint dates of books? (I haven't paid much attention to those dates, and have just been assuming things were ticking along like they always have).
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Was this announced somewhere, or just put together with the jackpoint dates of books? (I haven't paid much attention to those dates, and have just been assuming things were ticking along like they always have).
I believe it is mostly through the date in the book since the inception of SR6. There may have been a previous discussion, but I am unaware of it. I'm just aware that bit of the of the issue.
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yeah, basically they were still using the old chronology progression of 1 year in real life = 1 year in game time not realizing/not having been informed that it had been changed to 1 year in real life = 6 month in game time.
Which caused the German timeline to be in early 2084 instead of early 2083 as per the later supplement (Wild life and Falling point).
Considering how fast some aspect of the Shadowrun timeline can move that can be quite significant.
Wait, what? When did that change happen? For that matter, WHY did that change happen?
I do understand that the pace of a game in play will almost never keep up with the game calendar at a 1-to-1 ratio, but a) lagging behind is not the worst thing, b) it makes the timekeeping really easy, and c) it has over 30 years of tradition to it.
Was this announced somewhere, or just put together with the jackpoint dates of books? (I haven't paid much attention to those dates, and have just been assuming things were ticking along like they always have).
I've been aware of it for a while, and even had the official conversion formula at some point but lost it. I suspect 1 reason is because otherwise, the plot just went too fast. By the time you get a proper wrapup of a big metaplot, 4 years down the line, it would already be waaaaaay late. Either the universe was already in year X+2 by the time we got told what happened in year X, or the plot was going at a glacial rate. By condensing the game-time, so it's now 2 real years per game year, you no longer have that problem.
As a rough guideline, every 2 real years the start of con season equals the start of a gameyear. So in summer 2020 we started 2081, and now summer of 2024 will be roughly where 2083 starts for real.