[Shinobi Killfist]

...Yeah, covid is likely a sales factor, but it is also hardly the only one in play.

You know Covid could go either way, it could reduce or increase sales.

With everyone stuck at home more money might be spent on a hobby you can do at home, like say TTRPGs via roll20 etc.

Of course it should be relatively easy to show this by looking at other publishers sales over the same period.

If their sales are generally dropping then Covid has likely had some negative impact on 6e.

If they have not, or have increased then you know it's certainly the srun playerbase rejecting Catalyst's latest shovelware.

I was about to mention the same thing, its crazy how much sales have spiked for some businesses, the heirloom bean company i order from the pizza oven i ordered all stupid delayed not because of covid crippling there workforce but because of the unprecedented increase in sales. At least some hobbies you can do at home are booming. I'd expect the same in gaming, but maybe the lack fo face to face is hurting it more than id expect with things like zoom existing.

[Shinobi Killfist]

Michael, I really hope you were using grunt rules for those fights with 36 combatants. I think I'd rather stab my eyes out then move for 30 individual NPCs in combat...

It´s also very very important to make sure that the whole group of grunts can only earn a max. of 2 Edge per round, so that the PC can already ignore one half of the AR-DR comparison in 90% of times 

That phenomenon is one of the reasons I feel the game plays better without a cap on edge gains.

Maybe..  Edge moves seriously slowed my games down to to point 5e was far quicker, some of that is familiarity, but that is just core rules, how many edge moves were added in firing squad, how many will be added in the rigger book, then the magic book. I'm not sure I want more edge gain even if i think the balance needs it. If a player has 80 options to choose form every time they act the turn is going to take forever without being a hardass on time.

[Sir Ludwig]

Just my thoughts.

Covid/Gaming:

When people are working more from home and spending more time in Video Conferences....  do you they want to spend another 4+ hours only doing the same thing for an RPG?  It would be interesting to see how that medium has faired in all of this.

Edge:

I am looking forward to the new edges that come out.  I think most players will stick to the same 5(+\-) edges that suits their character.  I am already seeing it in my groups.

Regards,
SL

[FastJack]

Just my thoughts.

Covid/Gaming:

When people are working more from home and spending more time in Video Conferences....  do you they want to spend another 4+ hours only doing the same thing for an RPG?  It would be interesting to see how that medium has faired in all of this.

Edge:

I am looking forward to the new edges that come out.  I think most players will stick to the same 5(+\-) edges that suits their character.  I am already seeing it in my groups.

Regards,
SL

Personally, I'm playing in more games now than ever, all over Discord and Fantasy Grounds. Cutting down on the drive, meetup, and food runs means players have more money for the game products (at least, that's the excuse I've been using for my purchases...)

[Shinobi Killfist]

Its doubled my games.  I live a hour north of SF, they either live in SF or 20 minutes south of it.  2 different groups one on Saturday one on Sunday.  With the drive I did it once a week, my Sunday game(SF location, hour drive vs hour 20, and that's without traffic).  With zoom I do it twice a week, rolling the Saturday game in as well.  When this is over I suspect I'll use zoom to to continue with them more often, except when I DM I'll make the drive. I prefer in person but damn a hour drive is a hour drive. I live 5 minutes from work for a reason.

[0B]

I would disagree...

In the age of Social media, feedback and reviews are almost useless, as 'the spin machine" and "hype train" can spin whatever narrative they wish, but that doesn't make a product good, bad, or even viable...

Not to mention, that many "reviews" these days are not even from the customer/audience base (and more from 'outrage', political narrative, attention).

Sales are the only thing you can go by...
But to say a product is "failing" you need to account for all factors  and Covid is a factor....(could be up, could be down)....

Until you look at the big picture, you have no real idea...

I disagree. When you're looking at the success/failure of a product, you look at sales. If you're looking for the reasons for success/failure, the most accurate way is doing qualitative research on the customer base. The best way to do this would be an anonymous survey sent to a random sampling of CGL's target player base, asking "Did you buy this? Why/why not?" You can do some quantitative analysis of this by having specific reasons set aside ahead of time (IE, check which boxes correspond to your reasons for buying/not buying the game), but unless you do some qualitative research ahead of time to know what questions to ask, your survey's going to be impacted by your own biases.

Next best thing is looking at reviews and social media. Yes, this is going to be biased towards the vocal minority on both ends of the spectrum. No, I don't think SR is important enough that the powers-that-be are trying to "spin" things. I don't even think you can argue that platform mods are spinning things. The reason I suggest this is that I don't particularly feel like sending out a survey to anyone and everyone who is in SR's target player base. I don't have the resources for that, and it seems a bit weird to send out a survey about a product that isn't mine.

And if you're looking at the quality of a product, that's a whole other enchilada not covered by any of the above.

[adzling]

....I live a hour north of SF....

You're very close to me, Novato?

[Marcus]

Clearly outcomes are going to vary, but I haven’t gamed this much sense right after college. I could easily have a game ever night of the week and twice on Saturday and Sunday. So yeah gaming is for sure happening. While dead tree books maybe down, and honestly given Amazon I’m not at all sure that’s true, at very least online sale would only be strengthened currently. A product doesn’t have to be quality to be successful. A system can have holes big enough to drive trucks through and still return big profits, or a system can be really great and still utterly fail. That’s business, I’m sure everyone here has seen both of those things happen. In the end did the company make enough profit to make it worth keeping on going with IP isthe only meaningful outcome.

[0B]

Agreed. It's true that sales are less than they were before. There's no empirical evidence of why that would be the case, short of polling people.

The thing about TTRPGs is that they aren't often in competition for each other. Sure, I might decide to play FATE instead of D&D one weekend, but I've still paid for the books for both of those.

Some like Cyberpunk and Shadowrun may "compete" more closely, but even then, the fans of each system are distinct groups.

[Shinobi Killfist]

....I live a hour north of SF....

You're very close to me, Novato?

Santa Rosa

[adzling]

doh! now i remember we have chatted about our proximity in the past ;-)

[jim1701]

Clearly outcomes are going to vary, but I haven’t gamed this much sense right after college. I could easily have a game ever night of the week and twice on Saturday and Sunday. So yeah gaming is for sure happening. While dead tree books maybe down, and honestly given Amazon I’m not at all sure that’s true, at very least online sale would only be strengthened currently. A product doesn’t have to be quality to be successful. A system can have holes big enough to drive trucks through and still return big profits, or a system can be really great and still utterly fail. That’s business, I’m sure everyone here has seen both of those things happen. In the end did the company make enough profit to make it worth keeping on going with IP is the only meaningful outcome.

I think this is true for a while but leaving aside any debate about rules the poor editorial values are going to continue to shed customers. For myself I spent a fair bit of money on 5e and I kept thinking they would fix the editing problems but it never really happened and the quality never really improved even in the new products. 

As MC says there are a ton of good systems out there edited and designed by people who actually know what they're doing. There's also plenty of setting material in existence for Shadowrun. I don't really need to give CGL any more money if they can't produce better quality material. Running Shadowrun in a decent ruleset really isn't hard. I truly feel for the freelancers that produce work for this game. I think they deserve better. 

[tenchi2a]

Clearly outcomes are going to vary, but I haven’t gamed this much sense right after college. I could easily have a game ever night of the week and twice on Saturday and Sunday. So yeah gaming is for sure happening. While dead tree books maybe down, and honestly given Amazon I’m not at all sure that’s true, at very least online sale would only be strengthened currently. A product doesn’t have to be quality to be successful. A system can have holes big enough to drive trucks through and still return big profits, or a system can be really great and still utterly fail. That’s business, I’m sure everyone here has seen both of those things happen. In the end did the company make enough profit to make it worth keeping on going with IP is the only meaningful outcome.

I think this is true for a while but leaving aside any debate about rules the poor editorial values are going to continue to shed customers. For myself I spent a fair bit of money on 5e and I kept thinking they would fix the editing problems but it never really happened and the quality never really improved even in the new products. 

As MC says there are a ton of good systems out there edited and designed by people who actually know what they're doing. There's also plenty of setting material in existence for Shadowrun. I don't really need to give CGL any more money if they can't produce better quality material. Running Shadowrun in a decent ruleset really isn't hard. I truly feel for the freelancers that produce work for this game. I think they deserve better.

I look at it as Shadowrun has been a dying IP for the last 15 years. (Since WizKids got the licence)
With the printing of 4th edition it has been nothing but a downward spiral for the brand with every new edition driving away more and more of the fans that made it a big name in the RPG industry. The took a unique and beloved combat system and made it the current generic system that was popular at the time. A trend that has continued to this day. 6th is just the next failure in this 15 year run.

Another issues that has plagued Shadowrun is when it was first made. Due to the timing and the tech of the time, Shadowrun now comes off as very old-school cyberpunk truing to shoehorn in modern-day tech.

It may be a unpopular opinion but at this time IMHO Shadowrun either needs a reset or to just be shelved. In its current stated there is just to much baggage for new players and the system will not appeal to old players. And CGL needs to stop trying to follow trends and chase after the simplistic rules crowd who, after working in a game store I can tell you have the attention span of a moth, and remember the fans that supported them all these years and try to make a game that they will like.

Just my 2 cents.

[0B]

You know, the other day I was doing an archive binge of a long-lived webcomic and ran into commentary describing 4e original as a "World of Darkness" ripoff. I was trying to figure out how much of that was just the regular "change is bad" that comes with a good proportion of any TTRPG audience whenever a new edition is released. I've heard decent things about 4e 20th Anniversary, but this was before that. (It's also worth noting that World of Darkness based a lot of its rules decisions on original Shadowrun's rules, so it might be chicken and egg there)

I guess the difference there is that in the comments, there's more than 1-2 people talking about how the new edition is the best so far.

I would be curious to see what the true size of Shadowrun's player base is, compared to the past. It's true that CGL has been hemorrhaging fans since Fun Events about a decade ago, but the TTRPG industry as a whole has also been growing during that time.

[jim1701]

You know, the other day I was doing an archive binge of a long-lived webcomic and ran into commentary describing 4e original as a "World of Darkness" ripoff. I was trying to figure out how much of that was just the regular "change is bad" that comes with a good proportion of any TTRPG audience whenever a new edition is released. I've heard decent things about 4e 20th Anniversary, but this was before that. (It's also worth noting that World of Darkness based a lot of its rules decisions on original Shadowrun's rules, so it might be chicken and egg there)

I guess the difference there is that in the comments, there's more than 1-2 people talking about how the new edition is the best so far.

I would be curious to see what the true size of Shadowrun's player base is, compared to the past. It's true that CGL has been hemorrhaging fans since Fun Events about a decade ago, but the TTRPG industry as a whole has also been growing during that time.

I've only played WoD a few times at cons but I imagine it's the fact that they roll a bunch of d10's and count any die that is a success and subtract any die that is a one.  It's not exactly the same but the first time I played it I was like this is strangely familiar. 

As to player base that's a good question.  I can say I haven't met a player that doesn't know what Shadowrun is or has played at some point but not a lot that are currently playing.