[Bull]

One of the Shadowrun products a lot of people really liked was the Denver Boxed Set.  partly because it came with neat stuff (The Border Passes, maps, etc).  And partly because the book actually gave several "answers" to every mystery in Denver, and never flagged any one of them as being correct.

I'm a little confused about the metaplot discussion and complaint myself, because as has been pointed out, Shadowrun has always been metaplot heavy.  And yes, people do love Shadowrun specifically for that.  For many, many years we saw people commenting that they would buy the books just to read the flavor and the background and the plots, but never played.  (Usually, the complicated SR2/3 system was cited as the reason, which was one of the motivating factors behind the rules shift in SR4).

Bull

[Grinder]

There, I've said it, the cat's out of the bag: There's no Ultimate Big Story Guide to the Future. The metaplot isn't planned out with mathematical precision for the next decade and a half. Typically, we've got a very rough map to about a tenth of that amount of time at any given moment. Even then, if someone comes along and says, "Hey, don't you think it would be cool if we did thus-and-so here?", that map can go by the wayside for a while, to be returned to later, once the cool detour's made.

We can't tell you which ones are real and which are not because, for the most part, we don't know. We haven't decided yet. Always in motion, the future is.

You're kidding, don't you?

[Bull]

You're kidding, don't you?

Hehe.  Only partly.

Every writer has long term ideas and goals.  And every writer will lay seeds down in their work, hoping to some day grow and harvest those ideas.  But...  It doesn't always pan out that way.  Sometimes you never get to.  Sometimes the develoepr decides he doesn't want the plot to go that direction.  And sometimes a different writer picks up the ball and heads in a totally different direction than you were thinking. 

That's the nature of a collaborative world, sometimes.

Now, there's one other thing that most of us do with Shadowrun...  We're like Johnny Appleseed.  We just wander around and drop ideas into the game, with no firm idea in mind.  Sometimes we'll pick the thread back up later on if something comes to us, sometimes it's just an open hook for Gms to build off of.  And sometimes it's something for other writers to play with.

The majority of Portfolio of a Dragon was written with no real "explanation" for most of the will items.  There were a few things planned out, but for the most part it was just Steve Kenson and Mike Mulvihill (With input from a few others) dumping a box of Legos on the floor, and then sitting back to see what folks built out of them.

Shadowrun is such a vast, open world, that's one of the neat things about the game is that you can do that, without ruining the game. 

So I'd say it's about 50/50...  About half the stuff we write?  There are long term goals.  the other 50%?  Just open territory to play with,

Bull

[CanRay]

Because you say Role-playing Game to most people, and the first thing they think of is World of Warcraft, Skyrim, or City of Heroes.

And when you explain the difference, they go, "Isn't that very anti-social?"  "As...  Anti-social as being alone at your computer chatting to people over a microphone, or being with friends around a table?"  "Oh...  Still doesn't sound terribly social."  *Headdesk*

[Patrick Goodman]

We can't tell you which ones are real and which are not because, for the most part, we don't know. We haven't decided yet. Always in motion, the future is.

You're kidding, don't you?

Not particularly, no. Maybe a bit with the Yoda quote, but not about there being no highly-detailed road map. There's not. There never has been. Signposts, various possible destinations, some more-or-less vague pathways to get to those destinations, yeah...but there has never been a detailed, decade-plus long Super Secret Metaplot Document.

When the game was still at FASA, Mike Mulvihill would occasionally send out freelancer documents with various product specs and the like. One of those documents...and I think I still have it somewhere....was the closest thing to a roadmap of that sort I'd ever seen. It covered about 18 months worth of planned products, and that was it. A year and half, and exactly one of those books was actually carved in stone (that book was Year of the Comet, which as it turned out was a far cry from what Mike had planned for).

A few of the general ideas for books on that document came to pass, but they were nothing at all like what Mike had sold Mort and the other higher-ups at FASA. I'd still like to see what Survival of the Fittest would have been like if it had been made according to what Mike had in mind (at least a three-book arc of stuff), and nobody has any idea what Ring of Fire would have looked like.

The reason, of course, is that FASA closed and Rob Boyle took over as line developer under FanPro, and Rob had his own ideas of what to do with SR and where to take it. The road map Mike had drawn got changed.

That happens all the time. We don't know what the future brings, because the metaplot evolves. A lot. All the time.

So no...I'm not kidding. We don't know what's going to happen next. Ideas, plans? Yeah, those we got. But we don't know, and neither did Mike Mulvihill, and neither did Nigel Findley, and neither did Tom Dowd. And if you believe otherwise for so much as a heartbeat, you're letting yourself in for a lot of disappointment.

[Crimsondude]

I've just finished crunching numbers for a character for the last six hour straight.

I hate that shit with the intensity of an exploding sun.

I don't get it. I don't get why people want books full of guns when there's one set of stats for each type of gun with a few trivial differences. Yet that stuff sells like it had the secrets of the universe inside of it. I've spent two decades dealing with people who are a million times more concerned about their characters' shit than their characters, and it leaves me dumbstruck. And then at the same time people want more gun books, they or some other group won't shut up about power creep.

"Look, killing isn't about weapons. It's about the people who use them." Strong words coming from the most notorious arms dealer in the world, Viktor Bout.

[Mirikon]

Indeed. I'll be honest, and say that for a normal character, I'll be using things from SR4A, Runner's Companion, Arsenal, Attitude, WAR!, Unwired, Street Magic (if awakened), and Augmentation (if not awakened/emerged). But the parts of all the books that excite me most aren't the crunchy bits. They're the absolute gold mines of 'fluff' that do so much world-building for you, and help get your head in the mindset of the setting. Makes it infinitely easier to make a deep, compelling character.

[FastJack]

I've just finished crunching numbers for a character for the last six hour straight.

I hate that shit with the intensity of an exploding sun.

I don't get it. I don't get why people want books full of guns when there's one set of stats for each type of gun with a few trivial differences. Yet that stuff sells like it had the secrets of the universe inside of it. I've spent two decades dealing with people who are a million times more concerned about their characters' shit than their characters, and it leaves me dumbstruck. And then at the same time people want more gun books, they or some other group won't shut up about power creep.

"Look, killing isn't about weapons. It's about the people who use them." Strong words coming from the most notorious arms dealer in the world, Viktor Bout.

Ironically, most of the time I choose the gun based on the artwork attached.

[Mirikon]

Heh. For everyone except street sammys or weapons specialists, I usually just get the same gun. Yamaha Sakura Fubuki. Sometimes I'll have two of them, one loaded with EXEX ammo, the other with Stick-n-shock. But in general I pick a concept, and then make the stats fit. This is easier in Shadowrun than other settings, because the world is so incredibly detailed. I'll admit that I completely revamped my combat mage after going back and reading the Tir Tairngir book, and I have a Street Samurai that was one of Deus's Blues. And then there's my catgirl. Because, as one Jackpointer said, real, live catgirls are evidence that the spirits want us to be happy.

[nakano]

Ironically, most of the time I choose the gun based on the artwork attached.

Having run the game for 20+ years, I would say that half of my players pick their guns based on image.  When they visualize their characters, the gun needs to look right, look cool and project the image of the character they want to play.

As to the crunch vs. fluff thing:

Hi my name is Nakano, and I am a fluffoholic.

Give me metaplot, adventures, source etc over crunch every time.  In my perfect world, all but 1-2 releases a year would fall into these categories, with the remaining releases being SOTA style crunchtastic books.

[Mirikon]

I'll also admit that the PDFs that made up Runner's Black Book are favorites of mine. Only thing I've used out of any of them is a drone or two and the houseboat, but it adds options, and gives me horrible, horrible ideas about where to go with a character.

[Digital_Viking]

Because you say Role-playing Game to most people, and the first thing they think of is World of Warcraft, Skyrim, or City of Heroes.

And when you explain the difference, they go, "Isn't that very anti-social?"  "As...  Anti-social as being alone at your computer chatting to people over a microphone, or being with friends around a table?"  "Oh...  Still doesn't sound terribly social."  *Headdesk*

I'm as good of friends with the folks I game with as with people I've known 20+ years. The first person to call me and offer condolences when my wife miscarried last year? A guy I raid with in WoW. When we were at the point of losing our house a few years ago, the people on a forum I'm on organized a fundraiser to help us out. I easily talk as much to my gaming friends as I do anyone in the meat world. That's pretty damn social.

[CanRay]

Ironically, most of the time I choose the gun based on the artwork attached.

Style is very important!

I'm as good of friends with the folks I game with as with people I've known 20+ years. The first person to call me and offer condolences when my wife miscarried last year? A guy I raid with in WoW. When we were at the point of losing our house a few years ago, the people on a forum I'm on organized a fundraiser to help us out. I easily talk as much to my gaming friends as I do anyone in the meat world. That's pretty damn social.

I know that it can be very social (I've known online folks for almost two decades that I've only met once.), but the idea that a bunch of people around a table joking and laughing together is "Anti-Social" is what gets me.  That was the point I was trying to drive forth, not the "Alone in the basement" as much.  I was just giving it as a comparison.

I mean, hell, look at the people who only X-Box and talk Smack, "Isn't that nice that Little Jimmy has friends?"  "Isn't he a little young for that Saints Row game?  I heard it was worse than that Grand Theft Hooker Killing I heard about on the news."  "He's old enough, I mean, he's almost EIGHT."

[Wakshaani]

I loves me some Metaplot, but I also love the 'behind the scenes' snippets and details of what life is like in the 6th world. If the big guys would let me, I'd release an entire book of nothing but Shadowtalk. 174 pages of Jackpointers just talking about Things. Maybe three people would buy it, but I'd die a happy guy. Somewhere around here, I have some old stuff I did up for some players, detailing how day-to-day life looks for people at different economic levels based on Lifestyle. I want to do a big writeup for GridGuide (tm) of all things, and do up a big ol' list of gear (including guns) that doesn't publish a single stat... "The following guns are functionall the same as an Ares Predator, but made by different companies. They are..." I dig Shadowrun name brands, flash media, and NERPS.

What can I say? I'm a big ol' social studies nerd.

[nakano]

The PDFs have become a big favorite of mine, despite that I initially hated the idea of either getting them or waiting 2+ months for DTF releases.

The PDF "only" releases are some of my favorite products in many ways over the years.  The limited page count means a tight focus on what the book is.  This format makes for fantastic crunch.