Embezzlement in Catalyst

The Man Who Killed Death · Thu Apr 22, 2010 9:35 pm

Mister_Sinister wrote:
I'm guessing 'jayzk' means 'language', or, in this particular case, 'of the language'. Not sure what the fuck the whole 'drug is the first' thing is all about, though.

Probably that his priorities involved studying medicine were above mastering the language.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Thu Apr 22, 2010 9:44 pm

Or maybe Google Translate isn't perfect.

The Man Who Killed Death · Thu Apr 22, 2010 9:56 pm

CatharzGodfoot wrote:Or maybe Google Translate isn't perfect.

No shit, but my assumption is still valid. Just because it isn't perfect doesn't mean that it won't do some of the work for you. And what we have here is "drug is the first" which in the context most likely means that medicine was more important than learning Czech.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Apr 22, 2010 11:41 pm

OR instead of killing our brain cells quibbling over what Frank said you could just ASK him what he said. In English.

eeuuugh · Post by **eeuuugh** » Fri Apr 23, 2010 12:28 am

"lek" is medicine. Same root as "liquor".

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Fri Apr 23, 2010 12:35 am

eeuuugh wrote:"lek" is medicine. Same root as "liquor".

Funny how that works. The Chinese character for "doctor" includes the character for "alcohol", and yet people are still surprised when they find out that a doctor is an alcoholic.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Apr 23, 2010 4:54 am

duo31 wrote:So what books are being held up / may not see print?

I'm still upset about corp war not being released.

Well, Jason Hardy is doing his damndest to get Corp Guide out before the switchover to the new company. As far as I can tell, this is mostly a spite thing. What happened is that at least one of the writers (confirmed: Robert Derie) withdrew his contract from the book entirely after Jason locked him out of the freelancer board for being negative about Catalyst's future. So Jason got some people with no Shadowrun experience and himself to rewrite those parts of the book in a huge hurry.

And by no Shadowrun experience, I mean no Shadowrun experience. One of them seriously asked the remaining freelancers as a whole which came first, Shadows of Asia or Corporate Enclaves, because she couldn't tell upon reading them (note for non-Shadowrun fans reading this: those books are written in a "forum post" style, which means that all the comments have literal dates on them that you could just read). So in order to spite Bobby, Jason is getting the section rewritten by someone so clueless as to Shadowrun history that she does not know whether the 2060s happened before or after the 2070s. Then he s going to try to get a small print run made before the license clicks over so that it becomes too late to change and Bobby can't sell his drafts to the new company.

It really is a phenomenally petty move on his part.

-Username17

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Fri Apr 23, 2010 6:57 am

Clueless, or so pressured to deliver that she could not take the time to research her subject well enough to find out even basic stuff by herself.

Either possibility does not look good if one wants quality products.

Calibron · Post by **Calibron** » Fri Apr 23, 2010 8:15 am

Wow, what a petty douchebag, hopefully he fails.

Wesley Street · Post by **Wesley Street** » Fri Apr 23, 2010 3:09 pm

duo31 wrote:So what books are being held up / may not see print?

I'm still upset about corp war not being released.

- Corp Guide Frank mentioned.
- Sixth World Almanac, which is supposed to be a mash-up of the Shadows of... series for the 2070s.
- A thematic sequel to Fields of Fire. Basically a merc campaign book. Kicks off the war campaign.
- A thematic sequel to Shadowbeat. About the hipster, media, and music scene and interacting with it.
- Dawn of the Artifacts #3 and #4 and a sequel to the "Harlequin" adventures.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Apr 23, 2010 3:48 pm

Wesley Street wrote:
duo31 wrote:So what books are being held up / may not see print?

I'm still upset about corp war not being released.
- Corp Guide Frank mentioned.
- Sixth World Almanac, which is supposed to be a mash-up of the Shadows of... series for the 2070s.
- A thematic sequel to Fields of Fire. Basically a merc campaign book. Kicks off the war campaign.
- A thematic sequel to Shadowbeat. About the hipster, media, and music scene and interacting with it.
- Dawn of the Artifacts #3 and #4 and a sequel to the "Harlequin" adventures.

Of those, Sixth World Almanac should be the one that Jason Hardy hard charges on, because people want such a thing, and having a few countries here and there that have a retarded writeup because of pulling in some frat boy Battletech writer to deal with it wouldn't be that big of a deal.Seriously, if the writeup of Azania or Singapore made you want to cut your balls off, you could just ignore it and use the rest of the book.

War! is... frankly retarded. The centerpiece is Amazonia going to war with Aztlan over Aztln planting some trees. This core conceit requires a total failure to understand just about anything about either of those two countries. Then much of the book takes place in Bogota and delves into church politics and shit that you don't care about - especially in a book that is supposedly about shooting rockets at tanks in the middle of disputed neighborhoods in cities.

Attitude is... basically a successor to Shadowbeat. And that means that it could go either way as far as awesome or shit. It's supposed to lead into the New Horizons plotline, and I still prefer the name "Destroying News" for this book. The biggest current problem with this book is actually Jason Hardy himself, since he put his foot down on not including any references to memetics - which in turn pretty much obviates New Horizons actually being about anything. And that kind of puts a serious cramp on Attitude being about anything either since it's a lead-in for a story that doesn't matter or cover any new ground.

Spy Games is supposed to be all cold war James Bond stuff. Which has promise of course. It's pretty much the revamp of what used to be called "Cities of Intrigue" and later "Cloak and Dagger." The target city is Denver, which was unfortunately ruined as a setting for intrigue by being under occupation by fucking Ghostwalker. Of which, there is pretty much only one solution. So the obvious thing to do would be to run with Ghosthunters, then do Spy Games after that, and then do War! as a natural progression that ended up remaking the Treaty of Denver and rewriting some of the borders. That evidently made too much sense, so Jason decided to not run Ghosthunters at all, and then do War! and then do Spy Games afterward, set concurrently with the hot war in progress, but on the other side of the continent involving mostly factions that don't care about the outcome. Jason wants the book to revolve around the Ute, which is weird because they have no real power and no one cares about them except the Mormons. Basically... I have very low expectations.

The three adventures on the table are all pretty missable, since they are all just Immortal Elves wanking on you. While they promised that this time around the IEs would be less annoying and one of them might even get a bullet to the brain, it's still just not a plotline that I find particularly interesting. It's a plotline about a half dozen mary sues and their boring interpersonal drama. They aren't even major power brokers in important countries or major corporations, they are just some rich dudes fighting over a shockingly modest family fortune.

-Username17

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Fri Apr 23, 2010 6:06 pm

I still wonder what would have happened if there had been a character with astral hazing in one of the DOTA Adventures where Frosty is the Mary Sue . . Imagine her not being able to do a single frigging thing because all of her magic is seriously gimped. The whole Ghoul-Rush where Frosty lets lose an area attack spell to kill them all at once after having done NOTHING before in the complete Adventure? Yes, the ghouls would go blind as soon as they go near the group because their one point of magic gets extinguished and their astral perception goes bye bye . . and frosty STILL can't get a spell off at them either . .

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Apr 23, 2010 6:28 pm

Stahlseele wrote:I still wonder what would have happened if there had been a character with astral hazing in one of the DOTA Adventures where Frosty is the Mary Sue . . Imagine her not being able to do a single frigging thing because all of her magic is seriously gimped. The whole Ghoul-Rush where Frosty lets lose an area attack spell to kill them all at once after having done NOTHING before in the complete Adventure? Yes, the ghouls would go blind as soon as they go near the group because their one point of magic gets extinguished and their astral perception goes bye bye . . and frosty STILL can't get a spell off at them either . .

I've never read DOTA. I don't really feel that I have to, because as I previously indicated: it's about a very minor plotline that I don't give a fuck about revolving around a mary sue character that I don't give a fuck about. I never liked Frosty. I still don't like Frosty. A Frosty-centric adventure path was pretty much guaranteed before it hit print to be something that I did not like.

But yeah, I've heard people complaining about that scene. The PCs get overwhelmed by a ghoul attack (which should be... um... fatal, since the ghouls aren't taking prisoners), and then Frosty uses a bullshit spell at OMGWTFBBQ force to blow through all the ghouls at once and save the day for no reason. There are just so many ways that could fail to make any fucking sense at all. Like, PCs can actually just have FAEs - which would take out a bigger section than any spell could. And so on.

Even before we get into the "having the stupidly powerful NPC come in and save everyone at the last minute to remind everyone how much bigger of a penis she has than you do" is terrible cooperative storytelling fodder, just the action itself doesn't make any sense within the context of the Shadowrun game.

So yeah, honestly I don't really give a rat's ass if those adventures get delayed or canceled by this current process. I was never going to read them anyway.

-Username17

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Fri Apr 23, 2010 7:26 pm

And again, you don't stand alone with your opinion.
Many people bitched about that one . .

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Apr 23, 2010 7:51 pm

It makes you wonder why they don't build a long-term campaign module that boils down to: 'Kill the Immortal Elves and cause the economy and government of Tir to fucking collapse'.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Fri Apr 23, 2010 7:54 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:It makes you wonder why they don't build a long-term campaign module that boils down to: 'Kill the Immortal Elves and cause the economy and government of Tir to fucking collapse'.

That would be fucking awesome.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Apr 23, 2010 7:59 pm

The Gaming Den, let us make it happen!

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Fri Apr 23, 2010 8:44 pm

Worst GM I had in Shadowrun ran Harlequin. He had not the best graps of English either, so missed the "And the IEs will never be defeated so we don't give them stats" page. Our troll samurai punched out Ehran the stupid scribe and we dragged his trossed up beaten up figure to Harlequin.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Fri Apr 23, 2010 10:55 pm

Fuchs wrote:Worst GM I had in Shadowrun ran Harlequin. He had not the best graps of English either, so missed the "And the IEs will never be defeated so we don't give them stats" page. Our troll samurai punched out Ehran the stupid scribe and we dragged his trossed up beaten up figure to Harlequin.

Don't see how that's supposed to be bad ^^
If you can get close enough to one, they are supposed to go down like anybody else . . Hell, Harlea Quinn could be taken down by a single hacker, being the Matrix Noob he seems to be while playing the SR4 WOW Version . .

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Sat Apr 24, 2010 12:42 am

Stahlseele wrote:
Fuchs wrote:Worst GM I had in Shadowrun ran Harlequin. He had not the best graps of English either, so missed the "And the IEs will never be defeated so we don't give them stats" page. Our troll samurai punched out Ehran the stupid scribe and we dragged his trossed up beaten up figure to Harlequin.
Don't see how that's supposed to be bad ^^
If you can get close enough to one, they are supposed to go down like anybody else . . Hell, Harlea Quinn could be taken down by a single hacker, being the Matrix Noob he seems to be while playing the SR4 WOW Version . .

It was the only good thing... he railroaded us into a capture scene, against the module even... 1 km away, disguised as street cleaners, "The garage opens next to you, you stare into the cannon muzzle of a tank!" We sent a scout (PC) ahead, 5 hours in advance to a meeting spot - "Oh, he was taken out right before, hours before. I did not mention that, you did not ask"

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Apr 24, 2010 4:02 am

Jason shut down the Freelancer forums altogether.

So concerned are they about the fact that they have leaks that they are shutting down communication with everyone. They are starting over with personal messages to people they think they can trust. Communications are now officially at an all time low.

Weird how simply... untrusting... people get when they are themselves completely untrustworthy.

-Username17

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sat Apr 24, 2010 5:33 am

FrankTrollman wrote:Jason shut down the Freelancer forums altogether.

So concerned are they about the fact that they have leaks that they are shutting down communication with everyone. They are starting over with personal messages to people they think they can trust. Communications are now officially at an all time low.

Weird how simply... untrusting... people get when they are themselves completely untrustworthy.

-Username17

Yes, you'd think they have something to hide and are frantically trying to keep their skeletons in the closet.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Apr 24, 2010 5:56 am

The bogeyman looks a lot like the mirror. Thieves triple lock their doors. Mobsters get out of any car that doesn't start right away. And con men don't trust their allies and friends.

-Username17

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Sat Apr 24, 2010 9:45 am

I'm guessing it might have something to do with the Corp. Guide chapter written and redacted by Ancient History. Which got rewritten by Jason Hardy and leaked out to Ancient History it seems, by not one but FOUR people. And he did not have one good word for the draft it seems.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Sat Apr 24, 2010 12:15 pm

On RPG.net

Jason MH;12061420 wrote:Quick clarification--the boards have not shut down; I'm just not going to be using them for a time. And I think the fact that multiple people are leaking drafts of projects is a pretty good reason to not use them for a bit.

Jason Hardy
Shadowrun line developer

On Dumpshock:

JM Hardy wrote: Quick comment on the freelancer forums--a few weeks ago the password to the forums was changed, and as part of the process of giving out the new password I asked people if they had sent in NDAs, and if they hadn't, to send new NDAs in. The fact that a non-final draft leaked out (and some other things) indicated pretty clearly that leaks were still happening, so for the time being I decided to use other channels to communicate with freelancers.

It has nothing to do with people taking shots at me. People can like what I write, people can not like what I write, and that's fine. I've been writing a long time, and I can accept criticism. But it is unfair to writers working on Shadowrun to ask them to put their drafts into a forum that is supposed to be private but is not. Writing in a shared world is generally a collaborative process, and it's valuable to have a chance to put up drafts that you know are imperfect so that you can get input from the other freelancers. The fact that imperfect drafts could be sent out to people who were not on the boards would inevitably (and understandably, in my view) make freelancers gun shy about posting drafts there, and that would hurt the working process. So I came up with a new process that would allow information to be shared.

Also, there are other reasons for keeping drafts private, including keeping a lid of what we are working on. If I don't believe the forums can support that kind of confidentiality, then the forums become a less useful tool. I tried to boost confidentiality one way, and it seemed not to work. So I'm trying another way.

Jason H.