[Kincaid]

We can't pre-publish stuff in the pipeline because of NDAs.  That's why I strive to include "at my table..." disclaimers in most of my rules-related posts.  It could also simply lead to more confusion.  My take on something could be--and often is--totally different than another freelancer's take.   Having lingering rules questions answered by something as arbitrary as who posts first is a terrible approach if the goal is clarity.

[prionic6]

I understand that you can't do this currently. But NDAs can be changed or Catalyst could give someone the authority to post something. It's not a god-given situation.

[Novocrane]

More capacity in synthetic skulls would be nice if only for taking improved synth skin at a level higher than 1

I'd rather see the capacity requirement of improved synthskin ditched, while False Face & Junkyard Jaw have theirs halved / quartered, tbh.

[quanaco]

With that not being possible, we try to kick ideas around and help one another out, but it isn't a perfect system. I know I'm utter pants when it comes to making spells, for instance. Playtesting catches some bugs, but there's orders of magnitude involved ... say you have five writers, fifty playtesters, and five thousand players who buy the book ... you can probably guess who'll catch more flaws. This is why we try and harvest things and make errata, or at least see if things are operating as intended.

Why not harness the passion and talents of your fans and open up the crunch for external play testing? It seems to have been working pretty well for the other guys. The community seems to be pretty willing to help out, given the reams of fan generated errata and rules explanations you can find here.

[DamionRayne]

With that not being possible, we try to kick ideas around and help one another out, but it isn't a perfect system. I know I'm utter pants when it comes to making spells, for instance. Playtesting catches some bugs, but there's orders of magnitude involved ... say you have five writers, fifty playtesters, and five thousand players who buy the book ... you can probably guess who'll catch more flaws. This is why we try and harvest things and make errata, or at least see if things are operating as intended.

Why not harness the passion and talents of your fans and open up the crunch for external play testing? It seems to have been working pretty well for the other guys. The community seems to be pretty willing to help out, given the reams of fan generated errata and rules explanations you can find here.

This.

If video game dev's from stonehearth, to kingdom come, to galciv and star cit can sti down, on their forums, and talk to us about everything, open things up to playtesting and even show live development of a product on a live stream? This "NDA" and "We don't want to share anything until it's done" nonsense has to stop. Time for transparency. We love you guys, and we love shadowrun. Let US playtest and help you for crying out loud. It worked for Pathfinder and the guys at Paizo, and it's working Onyxpath who are redoing WoD, and I must say..they're doing a lot better with their products as of late. Now I'm harsh, and so are others, but if we didn't love this world, this game, and really truly care about it? We'd not buy anything and SR would die. Now, to the writers, well done. You give of yourselves to keep our fave game and world alive, and while you don't deserve abuse..we can still give feedback and criticism. Long as, of course, it's non-abusive and actual feedback.

[SichoPhiend]

The NDA may not be under their control.  This may come down from TOPPS.

[adzling]

Given how many errors there are in each release and how quickly the community finds them all (a few days after release usually) Imho they should open the entire editing process to the community.

I so wish this was not required and they got their editing game together but man it's been 2 years now and they still can't get their act together.

Heads would roll most companies by now.

[ughsoclever]

p164, the section on Immunization just ends abruptly, in the middle of a sentence.

For every dose administered past the first,

As for opinions, I kinda like the CFD stuff. It feels like something that totally makes sense in the sixth world, and I'm a bit surprised it didnt come up sooner. Brain hacking nanotech possessed by rogue AI's seems cyberpunk as hell.
The fluff is all pretty good, maybe a little on the heavy side, but nothing that needs major work. I'd agree that the fluff and crunch should be more clearly separated, so you don't have to don't have to go wading through backstory just to find a quick rule in the middle of a game.

The editing in the books could definitely use some work (I mean, its clear from some of these mistakes that nobody actually proofread the whole thing cover to cover, which is something any editor should do before sending something off to print. I'd be fine waiting an extra day or two for my PDF if it didn't have so many glaring errors.)
The smaller errors and inconsistencies are frankly more annoying, as they are more likely to result in rules ambiguity when its not clear which section of the text is correct, or if any of them are. There definitely needs to be more regular FAQ/Errata type things.

The fact that the book came out 3 days ago and we've already found a small mountain of errors means they're not hard to find, and in most cases not hard to fix. I imagine most of us would be more than happy to proofread things before they get sent out, no charge.

The lack of a index/decent TOC is annoying, though the PDF is searchable, so its not ruined. They are definitely necessary for the print run though. Actually playing a game using hardcopy rules without an index is a nightmare.

[DWC]

To all...I passed the feedback along regarding the ToC (for both Chrome Flesh and Data Trails) to Jason this morning...he is aware. I believe that time constraints were the main reason for not including more detailed versions... They are considering releasing PDF indices, but no time frame at the moment.

Why doesn't he just fix the PDFs, upload the new ones to DriveThru, and let everyone who bought them get the update?  That's kind of the benefit of buying PDFs.

[Zar]

Why do these books have so little of what I expect and a whole bunch of stuff that isn't useful in the average group?  Do they not have anybody working for them that designs crunch?

[adzling]

This will never happen.
It's been 2 years since Core and at least a year since S.G. and no updated /fixed PDFs there.
If they haven't fixed S.G. and it's many horrific errors, omissions, inaccuracies, formatting errors, editing errors et al there's no reason to expect them to fix anything else.
Period.

To all...I passed the feedback along regarding the ToC (for both Chrome Flesh and Data Trails) to Jason this morning...he is aware. I believe that time constraints were the main reason for not including more detailed versions... They are considering releasing PDF indices, but no time frame at the moment.

Why doesn't he just fix the PDFs, upload the new ones to DriveThru, and let everyone who bought them get the update?  That's kind of the benefit of buying PDFs.

[UnLimiTeD]

Just asking this out here, if they added an Index, I suppose I could just fuse the two parts with an editing software and create my own links?

[Miri]

Just asking this out here, if they added an Index, I suppose I could just fuse the two parts with an editing software and create my own links?

If the PDF wasn't password locked, sure.

[AJCarrington]

Just asking this out here, if they added an Index, I suppose I could just fuse the two parts with an editing software and create my own links?

Yes, I believe you could. I've also toyed with updating some of the PDFs, but have never been able to find the time...one day though

Regarding updated PDFs...typically that is only done when the book gets reprinted (IIRC). Not ideal by any stretch, but the process as it currently stands. I'll pass the comments on again...hopefully, once Con season winds down the team will find the time.

[Wakshaani]

Why do these books have so little of what I expect and a whole bunch of stuff that isn't useful in the average group?  Do they not have anybody working for them that designs crunch?

There are no dedicated Crunch guys, no. The writers *often* bounce stuff around between them, but not always. In a perfect world, we'd have one dedicated Mechanic who could make everythinga ligned and perfect, and we'd all have an office building that we worked in together so we could just poke a head in one another's rooms when needing to check on stuff, BUT, we don't have video game developer money to have, say, a 'dedicated coder' who pulls in six figures a year.

There *is* a playtest team, however, and a proofreading team, and I'm sure AJ could drop some links down for those of you who *would* like to get in there early and help out with the process. There are legal things to sign, and I don't know the pay rate (I *think* you work for product, but don't quite me on that), but, the opportunity's there.

Who knows? You could go from there to getting a writing gig yourself! Stranger things have happened. Heck, they let *me* in, so.