It paid in the short run. The long run remains to be seen. The mission is never over (sorry, that's Delta Green, look at me mixing my RPG metaphors).I hope it paid in the long run to work for those "very professional, smart people".
There are NPCs in Street Legends that a competent, let alone optimized, runner team could totally kill without breaking a sweat. I statted two of them: Rigger-X and Haze.I thought Street Legends to be a silly penis-extension DMPC book, which, let's be fair, it kind of was. Street Legends Supplement was wholly unnecessary, as was statting out the Last Knight of the Crying Spire - if only because the tie-in material between Earthdawn and Shadowrun is so woefully languished that it's kind of laughable and pitiable at the same time.
That said, of course it's a silly DM boner book. I don't take offense to that. I'm gonna repeat this a lot but Jason decides what gets written, I just try to execute the plans that Moronai hands him down on the golden plates/b].
Whether or not it was unnecessary, statting out Caimbuel was some of the most fun I've ever gotten paid to have in my life. Even if paid should be in quotes because the hourly rate worked out to like less than $2.00 per hour because MY GOD those stats.
Take a break from hating the fact Harlequin even has stats to notice that I slipped the following past JMH: I inserted the spell "Demolish Pants" in his spell list. Actually, maybe JMH noticed it and actually has a sense of the humor. Some of the time.
though I will admit to enjoying The Things We Do For Love.
Thank you! It is either the second or third best piece of fiction I've ever written (not just for SR: period) depending on whether you like Harlequin or ork gang bangers on Kamikaze and Deep Weed better. (I like both equally.)
Were the Accuracy numbers that made a Pistol a more accurate sniping weapon than a sniper rifle your fault, or his?
FTR, I was vehemently against LIMITS, including Accuracy, from the moment I joined the writing team. But the design team unilaterally overruled the writing team every time the subject of Limits was questioned.
How I WANTED "Accuracy" to work was as a small dice pool bonus or penalty, like a -1 for a Remington Roomsweeper or a +3 for a Ranger Arms SM-3. Everyone with actual power told me to shut up and that's stupid.
Tl;dr I can't exactly remember, but I would guess that the Mormon done did it.
PS: I'd love to know who designed the first edition of the PDF of the Core Book that went to drivethruRPG, because it is the single most regrettable purchase I have ever made in my life, given how it's laid out and presented - I have to zoom way the fuck in and THEN center the fucking page, on a fucking 1280x1024 monitor, to say nothing of my 2560x1440. Oh and Ghost forbid I ever fucking try to run a search, because it defaults back to the horribifuckus fuckup that it opens in.
PPS: What drove the decision to drop Food Fight from the core book and put a fucking random run generator in its place?
No clue about any of this particular dumbshit, above my pay grade.
But then, when I left freelancers were actively talking about how Ghostwalker should fall in love with a human woman, so I think the disease had progressed too far by that point.
LOL! I think that this was a year or so before my time.
We laugh, but the question of what exactly to do with Ghostwalker is and always was an open one. Ghostwalker was and is a bad idea. He came in and overturned a setting that a lot of people used, but not in a way that players could interact with or benefit from. The simple fact of the matter is that there have never been any stories told that were better for Ghost Walker being in them. And that includes the stories that were exclusively about Ghost Walker in the first place.
I do have to disagree. As a 16-18 year old boy reading the book (YotC) where Ghostwalker returns, Godzillas the entire fucking city of Denver, and then claims it as his personal fiefdom "BECAUSE DRAGON"...I loved that shit. My soul got a full chub.
Oh, that's an interresting part. Can you tell how this chapter came out to be what it was and what actually happened there (in setting)? Because when I read it, it seemed like a big mess of everyone doing something and end up doing nothing.
Unfortunately, can't remember many of the adventures - I usually skip them, will check them out now though.
EDIT: I'm not implying any bad writing, I was really confused with the whole story, characters seemed acting out randomly, without any real purpose and in the end happened... nothing? Or something?
Actually, what the hell is fucking going on and OH SHIT SOMEBODY HACKED THE NEXUS AND OH DOUBLE SHIT NOW HARLEQUIN AND GHOSTWALKER ARE FIGHTING ON THE 16TH STREET MALL FUCK FUCK SHIT WHAT THE FUCK NOW AZTECHNOLOGY HAS TAKEN BACK THEIR QUARTER OF CITY TRIPLE WHAT THE FUCK was meant to be a feature, not a bug, of that chapter.
In a way, it all involves Harlequin doing something that is simultaneously ludicrously complicated, extremely destructive, and undeniably stupid in a fit of misdirected rage, which is:
a) To my mind, perfectly and entirely in character for H.
b) ACTUALLY why I like the character so much.
Puck helps him because Puck (in my headcanon) is AGGRESSIVELY Chaotic Neutral (with STRONG Chaotic Evil tendencies) and also because Harlequin paid him x million nuyen, where x is some arbitrary, astronomically high number that only a complete idiot would ever refuse.
The tl;dr of Lightning in Denver is: Harlequin and Puck invent analogues to Occupy and Anonymous in Shadowrun and then use them as proxies to take a giant shit in Ghostwalker's big dragon cheerios because ANARCHY IN THE UKFRONT RANGE FREE ZONE!
Then Ghostwalkerzilla vs. Knight of the Crying Spire, FIGHT!
If you want, I can send you a point-by-point blow by blow by PM a week from now of what really happened behind the scenes in that chapter and why.
