Surgo wrote:Maybe offtopic here, but what's the difference between FanPro and Catalyst in terms of holding the license? When did FanPro lose it? Which guys fucked it up really badly, in terms of material?
edit: Asking so I can determine which guys to actually support with my dollars.
To a very real extent it doesn't matter who you send dollars to, because both companies are defunct (or nearly so).
The story is that FanPro licensed Shadowrun from Topps after FASA went under (itself a complicated - and frankly stupid tale of espionage, egos, and corporate malfeasance). FanPro was actually a company that was pretty much made out of the FASA people who had not either quit or gone on to work for Microsoft (taking the rights to make Battletech, Crimson Skies, and Shadowrun computer games with them). And they made some 3rd edition books of various quality: Cyberpirates was stone cold awesome and Dragons of the Sixth World was a flaming piece of shit. You know how it goes.
FanPro made 4th Edition, which was on the whole a very massive improvement. It had problems of course, like the fact that the Matrix rules basically did not make any sense, and spirits are too powerful, and skills cost too much. But seriously, it's fixable. Which is more than can say for most game systems. In fact, it's so
much more than I can say for most game systems that I went and signed up to work for them.
So FanPro made a couple of SR4 books. But then it had a huge slow down. There was a big rift between FanPro Deutshland and FaPro USA. And no, I don't know what the fuck that was all about. The end result was that all the books got held up for nearly a year and everyone in FanPro USA (including me) went to work for
Catalyst, and the SR license transfered with us. Catalyst was a company that was essentially created by a Battletech novel author. And for a while, things went along basically OK. Augmentation was produced, ad while there is some stupid shit in it, as a whole it's a quality book. Arsenal is pretty good too.
And now we come to the twin pieces of feces. The first is Unwired. Basically, I told Peter straight up that there was absolutely no way that I could make the Matrix any good without contradicting the core book, and that if I didn't get a green light to change the core assumptions I would wish him the best of luck and go to medical school without retaining position as a freelance writer. He insisted it could be done and recruited people who agreed with him to help him do it - and they failed. Badly. And worse, he then had himself a cadre freelancers who thought it was OK to go ahead and write Unwired. And they wrote Runner's Companion which was
even worse.
And well... even Peter doesn't work there any more. The Catalyst president promoted various other Battletech authors into positions of power and the lead developer for Shadowrun is seriously
Jason M. Hardy now. Sigh.
But none of it really matters, because there is
another fight brewing over financial shenanigans. Basically the company suddenly doesn't seem to have several hundred thousand dollars and Loren Coleman has been billing the guys doing tiling on his family's house as "freelance writers." Various people with a financial sake in the company are threatening to sue people (mostly Loren), and it is honestly doubtful that the company will retain the SR license when it comes up for renewal in a few months.
So the long story short is that Street Magic is a great book, Arsenal is a great book, and Augmentation is a great book. And I personally even contributed to two of those books. But no one who worked on them will see a dime from you buying copies of those books, because everyone was either a freelancer or no longer an employee of the company. And Runner's Companion was one of the worst books I've ever seen or heard about, and purchasing it for money still doesn't affect the pocket books o the people responsible - because again they were freelancers or left the company or both.
And I wouldn't bet five dollars against Shadowrun's license getting transferred to yet another made up company in the near future. And I can't think of anyone but Jenna and maybe Robert Derrie who would actually move on to go do that with whatever the new company is. Adam Jury maybe?
The fact is that every company that has ever had the Shadowrun license ha appropriately enough been destroyed by theft. But I can't really see the universe allowing Shadowrun to simply go and stay out of print - because running the old FASA intellectual properties apparently allows your company to have $850,000 or so to steal over three years. And yeah, that's more than the company can lose and stay financially solvent - but it's also more than I am looking at making in three years as a doctor.
-Username17