JMH: If you or one of your agents are spying on this, I don't think any of this breaks NDA. If you disagree, alert me immediately by email and I'll redact anything that retroactively violates my NDA.
I received a request for disclosure via PM and I figured I'd make it public.
My Catalyst Credits, to the best of my recolllection, by N.
Street Legends - I'm the guy that wrote up Lugh Surehand, Haze, and Hans Brackhaus. I got flamed for at least some of these on DS--I think it was for Lugh Surehand not being OP enough. I was still brushing up on my SR4 system mastery at the time so I thought his Magic rating and Metamagics were adequately excessive. A few Dumpshock trolls disagreed. I also got to write up Rigger X (I was confused by some of the finer points of how remote operating drones worked and I got flamed on DS for it) and Richard Villiers and Miles Lanier (two of my favorite characters in anything ever).
Street Legends Supplement - I got to write up and stat Harlequin. However much you hate that character, writing his official canon stats (even if you think I fucked them up badly) was one of the happiest moments of my life. I also got to write up Damien Knight, which was pretty cool, although the exercise of how much high-end deltaware you can fit into a nominally human person and still leave them with at least four points of Essence gave both me and JMH migraines.[/i]
Corporate Intrigue - I wrote the adventures "Nothing Personal", "Project Imago", and "Runaway Train". At the last second, I also got roped into writing the adventure "The Villiers Divide", but Jason didn't exactly have to twist my arm. Of these adventures, I'm most proud of "Project Imago". "Runaway Train" and "The Villiers Divide" are tied for second.
Artifacts Unbound -- I got paid a token pittance to write some last minute stat-blocks for unimportant NPCs.
Jet Set -- I wrote the adventures "Nine Lives", "Shell Games", "Dragonchasers", and "Out of Egypt". Of this bunch, I'm proud of all of these, but most proud of "Shell Games" and "Out of Egypt".
Clutch of Dragons -- The important thing I wrote for this one was the two-part story "The Things We Do For Love". For some fucking reason, I did not receive a fucking byline, and I'm still salty about it.
Way of the Samurai -- I co-wrote this with my close friend Russell Zimmerman who you know as Critias if you post on big purple, dumpshock, or the official ShadowrunTabletop forums. He was very much lead writer so my input was minimal.
Storm Front -- Nothing problematic about that title, right guys? I wrote the entire chapter "Lightning In Denver" and the accompanying "Game Information". It's tied for my second favorite thing I ever wrote for Shadowrun.
SHADOWRUN FIFTH EDITION -- I wrote the Gear Chapter. Three months after playtesting with no substantive editorial comment on the chapter during that entire time and two days before we went to layout, the Line Dev rewrote the entire chapter. Stats-wise, Jason changed all of the damage values for all of the guns to arbitrary random numbers that somehow made sense to him. Prose-wise he ruined my best joke in the chapter by not getting the reference, being a butthurt Mormon, or both.
Splintered State -- This was the intro adventure for SR5. I wrote and playtested the entire thing. It was published in 2013. It is tied with "Lightning In Denver" from Storm Front for my favorite thing I wrote for Shadowrun, even though it was written for SR5 which sucks.
Jason refused to give me my name on the cover or the spine even though I was the sole author, on the grounds that it was "an adventure, not fiction, and that's policy". Over that, I quit CGL to focus on my own company from 2013 to 2016, when I returned to write exactly one story for their fiction editor, John Helfers, before Jason fired me for openly shitposting about SR: Anarchy on the Den about a week ago.
Keep in mind that for 70% of the above content, I was following the Line Developer's marching orders with limited input, like you do when you're a freelancer for a big game company. The other 30% is pure me, though.
Also keep in mind: any of you who are tempted to say something to the effect of "everything you wrote for Shadowrun is fucking terrible and you are fucking terrible, kill yourself" please try to keep in mind that I actually literally tried to kill myself five days ago, and maybe reconsider.
Although I expect "I've never heard of any of that shit, did anyone actually read the books from 4th Edition's lame duck period?" to be a more common response.
Last edited by Neurosis on Tue Aug 30, 2016 7:13 pm, edited 9 times in total.
For a minute, I used to be "a guy" in the TTRPG "industry". Now I'm just a nobody. For the most part, it's a relief.
Trank Frollman wrote:One of the reasons we can say insightful things about stuff is that we don't have to pretend to be nice to people. By embracing active aggression, we eliminate much of the passive aggression that so paralyzes things on other gaming forums.
hogarth wrote:As the good book saith, let he who is without boners cast the first stone.
TiaC wrote:I'm not quite sure why this is an argument. (Except that Kaelik is in it, that's a good reason.)
Wishing death on people is against the rules. Pretty sure telling people to kill themselves falls into that category.
What was the best joke in SR5 that Jason ruined?
Kaelik wrote:Because powerful men get away with terrible shit, and even the public domain ones get ignored, and then, when the floodgates open, it turns out there was a goddam flood behind it.
It wasn't really a great joke to be honest, just a reference to a band I (am ashamed to admit) really like. It almost certainly wasn't the best joke in SR5 (that's the rules themselves, *rimshot*), but it might have been the best joke in the gear chapter.
Second best after the "Guns Near Me" app, actually.
ANYWAY, I fluffed the Ruger Super Warhawk as "LOUDER THAN GOD'S REVOLVER AND TWICE AS SHINY!".
Jason changed it to the much weaker "louder than a jet air liner and twice as shiny", presumably to avoid offending Heavenly Father and His .357 magnum.
Omegonthesane wrote:Wishing death on people is against the rules. Pretty sure telling people to kill themselves falls into that category.
I sometimes forget that TGDMB HAS rules. I'm sure I'm not alone on this.
Last edited by Neurosis on Tue Aug 30, 2016 6:28 pm, edited 3 times in total.
For a minute, I used to be "a guy" in the TTRPG "industry". Now I'm just a nobody. For the most part, it's a relief.
Trank Frollman wrote:One of the reasons we can say insightful things about stuff is that we don't have to pretend to be nice to people. By embracing active aggression, we eliminate much of the passive aggression that so paralyzes things on other gaming forums.
hogarth wrote:As the good book saith, let he who is without boners cast the first stone.
TiaC wrote:I'm not quite sure why this is an argument. (Except that Kaelik is in it, that's a good reason.)
No, we are all well aware of the rules.
But despite evidence pointing into the opposite direction, we are actually not all horrible people here.
We may have horrible tastes though.
I readily agree that SR4 is technically the best system, but i still prefer SR3 over SR4 for example.
And no, do not kill yourself. Even if my german sense of humor has appearantly led some to consider it. it led more to consider homicide with me as the object of their desire of course.
Welcome, to IronHell.
Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.
Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
Omegonthesane wrote:Wishing death on people is against the rules. Pretty sure telling people to kill themselves falls into that category.
I sometimes forget that TGDMB HAS rules. I'm sure I'm not alone on this.
It just makes the few we do have all the more important.
Someone asked what a foreigner could do to prevent Trump becoming president. Our few rules are so important that saying but not explicitly advocating [REDACTED] was against them.
The Den. We may not have many rules, but the ones we have will not be toyed with.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.
You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
Neurosis wrote:[*]SHADOWRUN FIFTH EDITION -- I wrote the Gear Chapter. Three months after playtesting with no substantive editorial comment on the chapter during that entire time and two days before we went to layout, the Line Dev rewrote the entire chapter. Stats-wise, Jason changed all of the damage values for all of the guns to arbitrary random numbers that somehow made sense to him. Prose-wise he ruined my best joke in the chapter by not getting the reference, being a butthurt Mormon, or both.
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?
Last edited by Smirnoffico on Tue Aug 30, 2016 9:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Neurosis wrote:[*]SHADOWRUN FIFTH EDITION -- I wrote the Gear Chapter. Three months after playtesting with no substantive editorial comment on the chapter during that entire time and two days before we went to layout, the Line Dev rewrote the entire chapter. Stats-wise, Jason changed all of the damage values for all of the guns to arbitrary random numbers that somehow made sense to him. Prose-wise he ruined my best joke in the chapter by not getting the reference, being a butthurt Mormon, or both.
right, i knew i had seen some freelancer say that the matrix access was not intended at some point, i had forgotten where and who it was untill now.
Welcome, to IronHell.
Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.
Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
The "carrot" model of matrix interaction remains an incomprehensible pile of gibberish that fails at every level from genre simulation to playability. It's a pile of garbage all the way down. I would still bet actual money that the reason Hardy insisted on it is that I had told him that it couldn't be done well.
Discussions of how it works are inherently missing the point. The bottom line is that it doesn't work.
Neurosis wrote:Also keep in mind: any of you who are tempted to say something to the effect of "everything you wrote for Shadowrun is fucking terrible and you are fucking terrible, kill yourself" please try to keep in mind that I actually literally tried to kill myself five days ago, and maybe reconsider.
Great, here I wanted to be "funny" and just copy paste the "everything you wrote yadda yadda" part and you had to go and ruin that for me. thanks, Obama.
back on topic, I am so out of the loop that I don't even recognize most of the titles. only actually read Fifth Edition (partially, because fuck, even I have limits. no pun intended), but having to write the Gear Chapter under those conditions sounds like "fun". I hope it paid in the long run to work for those "very professional, smart people".
To a man with a hammer every problem looks like a nail.
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.
I think I'd better not say much of anything else about the rest, though I will admit to enjoying The Things We Do For Love.
That said, that explains why the Gear chapter was so disjointed and shit, if it was rewritten in two days. I can kind of see his logic in the damage codes being changed, but it's the logic of an idiot. Were the Accuracy numbers that made a Pistol a more accurate sniping weapon than a sniper rifle your fault, or his?
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?
Last edited by RelentlessImp on Thu Sep 01, 2016 7:52 am, edited 3 times in total.
I did not understand the logic behind Street Legends, because it was basically Prime Runners 2.0, and Prime Runners was one of the most derided books of 2nd edition. 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.
Ghostwalker falls in Love with a human woman . . *hums* pop goes the weasel!
Welcome, to IronHell.
Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.
Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
Hell hath no fury like a great form free ancestor spirit of man . .
Welcome, to IronHell.
Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.
Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
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.
Even if you decided for some brain addled reason that you really wanted to give the Aztecs a stinging defeat and have them give up their slice of Denver, why the fuckity fucksticks would decide to have the cause of that be an invasion by a new Godzilla no one had heard about? That cheapens the players' contributions. If the Aztecs had just pulled a Berlin and just announced one day that they could no longer afford to divide the city and you were welcome to tear down the wall and commence unification, that would have been fine. Having a giant space dragon force the issue irrespective of the actions or inactions of the rebels is fucking awful.
There's nothing that has ever been done or can ever be done with Ghost Walker that isn't shit. He's a shit character who does nothing but shit on the setting and infect things with his shittiness. The more out-there Ghost Walker proposals you saw are basically a symptom of the underlying disease. But the underlying disease is Ghost Walker himself. He's a terrible and unsalvageable character and writing him into the setting was a mistake.
I can agree that Ghostwalker is a pointless character and since that is all I really remember about him, I can call that shit. But you harp too much on the whole Aztec angle. sure, popping them out did not matter at all for the game, so it was shit, but Denver was also not the sole reason they didn't nuke the entire planet in a fit of rage, so who gives a fuck about politics, because no matter how, with or without Aztec, that shit didn't really affect what players were doing, at best just to whom they were doing it.
Still, I really thought there was a plan to bringing Ghostwalker onto the scene back when it happened. ah, the naivete of youth. that alone qualifies him for being a shit character. pointless magic drivel.
Last edited by Rawbeard on Thu Sep 01, 2016 2:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
To a man with a hammer every problem looks like a nail.
They could have done so much better.
He IS the big D's brother kinda sorta right?
Imagine him coming through the portal caused by his brothers untimely and violent death, still confused, looking for his body, coming to terms with the 6th world and then finding out just what exactly happened, what the big D sacrificed to save the world and free him.
He could have taken over Runners Inc. Been a more hands on figure with leading on the good fight his brother had tried to start and take care of making sure that his last will was taken care of ass he would have wanted it.
Him hating aztlan and them being responsible indirectly for his brothers death because he sacrificed himself to power the dragon heart to stop the horrors from coming over too soon so that would have been a hook right there to start the war against aztlan. And playing on the fact that the big D was the most beloved single being on the planet by probably a fair margin he could have also gone with a xanathos gambit to actually wage a big war against aztlan. Machinations behind the scenes, dismantling enemies he can not openly attack.
Welcome, to IronHell.
Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.
Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
That would probably have made a cool novel -but in an RPG it's just masturbatory metaplot.
Make a setting, fill it with hooks. Include some information for people who want to project forward from the present day. But learn the lesson of the 90s. Don't write metaplot.
Schleiermacher wrote:That would probably have made a cool novel -but in an RPG it's just masturbatory metaplot.
Make a setting, fill it with hooks. Include some information for people who want to project forward from the present day. But learn the lesson of the 90s. Don't write metaplot.
Now that i think about it, you are right, it would still be massively stupid for player world interaction and metaplot <.<
Welcome, to IronHell.
Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.
Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
For a minute, I used to be "a guy" in the TTRPG "industry". Now I'm just a nobody. For the most part, it's a relief.
Trank Frollman wrote:One of the reasons we can say insightful things about stuff is that we don't have to pretend to be nice to people. By embracing active aggression, we eliminate much of the passive aggression that so paralyzes things on other gaming forums.
hogarth wrote:As the good book saith, let he who is without boners cast the first stone.
TiaC wrote:I'm not quite sure why this is an argument. (Except that Kaelik is in it, that's a good reason.)
Pretty much all great dragons - and other immortals - are pointless as characters. It is next to impossible to interact in a meaningful way with any of them. They can get whatever they want either by brute force alone, brute force and Mindprobe or brute force and Influence. That's already be a problem in any RPG, just even more so in a game whose core concept is the protagonists are hired to do things on someone's else behalf. Tom Dowd I think came up with the "tradition-requires-you-hire-someone" idea for Harlequin, which was recycled in Survival of the Fittest. And that still barely lets you interact with them because it's part of the setting that shadowrunners shouldn't meet the actual employer. The other option to give the PC some leeway is putting two immortal beings in the same room and ask them to take a side, and either the other to leave without a fight, or the PC to be spectators of a scripted fight.
Great dragons were technically manageable in second edition as long as you played their critters status straight and deprived them of a Karma Pool. Then third edition officially gave them a Karma Pool. Dragons of the Sixth World fixed it at 50 or more, with the option to use it to nullify any one's hit. Fourth edition down9powered that with the introduction of the Edge attribute, but at the same time the introduction of fixed TN and the joke that becomes Drain Damage (along with the fact dragon break the rules with skill rating 8 in Conjuring and 10 in Sorcery) make their magic even more powerful, even before Street Legends/Street Legends Supplemental gave them Magic attribute over 25 and made sure to remind everyone they ought to have multiple bound spirits over rating 10 (and even more skills beyond the rule max).
Great dragons may be interesting as background faction for other NPC that you can actually use. "Celedyr" is about R&D labs and nubian and celtic cybered warriors communicating in rare languages, like "Mitsuhama" is about Yakuza henchmen and automated turrets. Nobody ever wondered if Taiga and Toshiro Mitsuhama were good characters or not. You can take almost any plot involving Hualpa, Lofwyr or Dunkelzahn and just replace them with the Amazonian government, a Saeder-Krupp board of directors or the Draco Foundation. The only plots that wouldn't work that way are those who specifically rely on those dragons opposing other unstoppable dragons (yes, Lofwyr does have a personal feud with Alamais that a board of directors would not give a shit about - but you can also replace Alamais with a terrorist organization that S-K board have to eliminate for avenging an attack/PR purpose).
Now the idea of trying to do some non-shit with Ghostwalker sounds like an interesting exercise.
Related to that, SR material frequently mentions that no one wants to run against Saeder-Krupp because it's ran by a dragon. But, seriously? Is there seriously a real danger that Lofwyr will drop everything else he's doing and will go hunt down some criminals that attacked a lab he owns? I mean, Robot Chicken made a joke about Bush personally going to fight Osama, but apparently in Shadowrun this is a real danger?
