Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => General Discussion => Topic started by: Loki on <04-20-17/1541:45>
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So I was away from SR for a few years, a combination of when 5e dropped I was put off by some of the changes and my usual game group was more focused on our home brew superhero game/setting. Then a month or so ago I get invited to a 5e game and since SR is one of my top 2 favorite settings despite my unhappiness at the additional(and IMO unneeded) complexities of 5e I joined up.
First thing I notice is that PDFs are the same price as hard copy. Seriously?? I could understand that if the prices of pure supplements like Cutting Aces weren't around what other games charge for core books, but they are and it's ridiculous.
Compounding that frustration was the second hurdle I encountered, shoddy editing. Every single book is missing charts and stats with errata being left to the community to locate said omissions and one guy to compile them, doing it unpaid, in his free time. So errata is YEARS behind which is pretty pathetic for a professional game company.
Lastly is official support. It has been nearly a year since there was a post in the official announcements subforum and who knows how long since the tumblr thread on new products has been updated. Does corporate even give a devilrats backside about this game anymore, aside from as a revenue stream guaranteed by fanatical fans willing to overlook their chicanery?
I love this game and it's world, don't get me wrong. The writers still do a damn fine job with plot, metaplot, and even rules. Just wish it wasn't being treated like an unwanted step-child.
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A couple of points:
- PDFs are not the same price as the books...a quick check on DTRPG should answer any questions you might have
- I'll let Patrick chime in re the errata and such, but he and the team have cranked though a lot
- The CGL Tumblr does get updated fairly regularly with new product info (though is has been a little quieter the last month or two)
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Pre sale prices on DTRPG watermarked PDFs are the same as pre sale prices of hard copies on Amazon. If DTRPG sells hard copy I have no idea where to see those prices.
Patrick and crew do a fine job and I've nothing but respect for them. They are not the issue, that they are having to do that work in an unpaid and barely official manner is. When the Pegasus versions of the books have much of the missing data that CGL takes months to years to get to their customers it says something about the companies priorities. The same with your work on hyping new books. It is appreciated, but where are the people who actually get paid to run this company. I know Hardy is still around from his forum moderation, so why no official announcements on new products any more?
And maybe I have some misapprehensions looking at this from the outside and being a recent returnee to the game. But it looks to me like a world I love is once again being slowly put out to pasture by the company (not writers) responsible for it.
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Pre sale prices on DTRPG watermarked PDFs are the same as pre sale prices of hard copies on Amazon. If DTRPG sells hard copy I have no idea where to see those prices.
I think what you are referring to as "Pre-sale" is actually just DrivethruRPG listing the MSRP of the book. There isn't a sale so to speak as the DrivethruRPG site listing the price difference between the hardcopy and just the pdf. I think they do that so that people can't claim that DriveThruRPG is selling the actual books at a lower price. End fact, though, is that yes, the PDFs cost less than buying the physical books.
Otherwise, your apprehension about the company not seeming to put much of an effort into the support of the product is shared by many of the fans, I think.
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I think what you are referring to as "Pre-sale" is actually just DrivethruRPG listing the MSRP of the book. There isn't a sale so to speak as the DrivethruRPG site listing the price difference between the hardcopy and just the pdf. I think they do that so that people can't claim that DriveThruRPG is selling the actual books at a lower price. End fact, though, is that yes, the PDFs cost less than buying the physical books.
Otherwise, your apprehension about the company not seeming to put much of an effort into the support of the product is shared by many of the fans, I think.
Ah, ok. And my cost expectations may be off. I did spend the last few years not needing to buy books. The one game I did buy stuff for is a small time affair so were pretty cheap.
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Well, and there's that whole embezzlement thing that Catalyst never actually recovered from. /sarcasm font/ Can't imagine why... /sarcasm font/
http://www.catalystgamelabs.com/2010/03/17/catalyst-game-labs-press-release/ (http://www.catalystgamelabs.com/2010/03/17/catalyst-game-labs-press-release/)
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I'd happily buy pdfs, hard/soft cover books, special edition books, miscellaneous satellite products (looking at you tarot deck), etc if CGL stayed on top of the quality of their products. In. A. Heartbeat.
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Seriously, I brought on a friend of mine who is an experienced tabletop player and GM (he's also here on the forums) for the sole purpose of acting as my official "anti-stupid stick" while I design my game. I run everything past him first to check for any glaring issues.
It's. Not. Difficult.
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It's super hard when you don't give 2 shits.
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It's super hard when you don't give 2 shits.
I'd be firing people left and right at this point. Absolutely inexcusable to leave it to the customers you are supposed to be serving to fix your product. I love Shadowrun, I truly do, and it infuriates me that it may very well die because the people who own Catalyst can't. stop. fragging. up. The tabletop gaming industry has enough woes as-is.
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Fish rot from the heads.
Just sayin'.
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who knows how long since the tumblr thread on new products has been updated.
May of last year, when I stopped updating it because I no longer had the time. I did it as a favor to Jason and others, not just at Catalyst but also in support of Harebrained Schemes and Cliffhanger. I did it on my own time for free because I saw value in it before CGL had a tumblr, but it does now, and because I had free time that no one at CGL had then or has now. You're lucky you got an extra year. I should've stopped in 2015. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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[Narrator voice] A hush falls over the crowd. [/voice]
*Mic drop*
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I think Catalyst (and most gaming companies, truth be told) would benefit hugely from having a dedicated community manager. Not someone whose doing it on the side on his or her free time to help (bless them for trying). Managing communities is a job. Communicating on the various channels -- forums, tumblr, facebook, twitter, whatever -- and making sure the information reaches people is a job. Too often, game companies believe it's something easy that can be done on top of everything else, but it's not.
It's even worse with tabletop companies such as Catalyst, because actual employees are only a handful and freelancers can't really talk for the company and often don't know everything that's going on. We saw it repeatedly here: Critias, Bull and the others are doing their best, but what fans really expect, what they're really waiting for, is some official answer from Jason or Randall, people who are actually speaking for Catalyst. Without official answers from Catalyst, it feels like the company doesn't care.
I work in the video game industry, and I too have been in the position of being the lone designer/writer who tries to answer questions and keep people informed while trying to make a game at the same time, and in my experience, it just doesn't work. Comes a time where you just don't have time or energy for it anymore, and discussing on forums is exhausting and sometimes disheartening, especially if you're emotionally invested in what you're discussing with fans/customers.
Also, let's face it, we designers/writers are rarely very good at this communication thing, and we can make things worse as a result.
So sure, hiring a competent community manager has a cost, and on the surface no direct benefit. But that doesn't mean such benefits don't exist. In fact, they are worth every penny in my experience. With a CM, fans are informed and know their opinions are read. Someone from the company can address their concerns and discuss their ideas without it being automatically read as "the actual designer answered my post so now it's like he made a blood promise to change everything". And designers and writers can focus their energy on designing and writing without feeling it's their duty to answer fans on forums because no one else does. Everbody's mood improves. Most of the time, people just want to be properly informed, and to know their feedback has been heard. When this basic communication fails, things can become toxic.
tl;dr: Catalyst, please hire a community manager ASAP.
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As always, the issue is money. How much would it cost to have someone in that role? Would someone do it for, say, $10,000 a year, which is well below minimum wage? That's more than the company could bear, while less than someone would charge.
The RPG industry isn't a big, profitable industry, and the money you have in even a small video game company dwarfs all but the big two (Wizards of the Coast and Paizo) by a large degree. Most companies are little more than a guy who converted a room in his house into an office and a 'warehouse' in his garage, with his wife and kids serving as shipping manager and packing team, hiring an artist and praying the printing costs don't put him out of business. Catalyst's better off than that, but not by a ton. The industry is *tiny*.
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As always, the issue is money. How much would it cost to have someone in that role? Would someone do it for, say, $10,000 a year, which is well below minimum wage? That's more than the company could bear, while less than someone would charge.
It doesn't even have to be someone full time. A CM working one day per week would already be an improvement over the current abandoned websites, lack of updates and never addressed issues.
But yes, it always come down to money. So the other side of the question is this: how much money Catalyst is losing -- or at least not making -- because people are not aware the products are available or even exist, or come to the forums and from reading them get the impression this is a company that doesn't care about its products and players? (I don't personally think this is the case, mind you. I think Jason and Randall are doing their best but have their head to the grindstone by trying to do everything by themselves. However, I'm pretty sure a newcomer judging from the prevalent opinion on the communities would assume otherwise.)
This actually reminds me of something Karl Lagarfeld once said: "you have to throw money by the window if you want money to come back by the front door." :)
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I can say how CGI (Colombia Games Inc) handle their Harn product (which is very high quality). They're a tiny company, much smaller company than Catalyst. They've also had much more severe financial events than Catalyst which almost broke the company and are still unresolved over 20 years on and with the death of one of the principals. I don't know their turnover or profit margins but they're small. Quality is very high. Biggest complaints? Release schedule is slow (though steady) and prices are very high.
They effectively have a dedicated voluntary community manager who runs the fansite. He's not paid but gets freebies for his time, in pdf which keeps costs very low.
They use freelancers who do all the writing whilst the owners edit (after peer review). Canon is checked extensively and fanon is taken account of. They're not paid much. The highest paid freelancer is their core artist. The freelancers engage with the community and release as fanon the stuff they do that isn't accepted. Which since they write at risk is substantial. One of the editors or coordinators posts to the forum fairly often.
They've recently hired a community coordinator who organises public events and they're running flash sales on drive thru for introductory pdfs. No idea what he's paid, but he organises volunteers for conventions who get freebie pdfs for their trouble.
On their website, they have direct sales and offer a discounted subscription service and discounts for returning customers.
Their maps are easily the best I've ever seen in rpgs. By far.
Medieval low fantasy. A bit crunchier than shadowrun.
It's well run.
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To pile on for a moment... I agree with above posters who are concerned about quality of editing, or lack thereof, in 5th edition. I have one further pet peeve though, that I haven't seen anyone else mention so I wonder if it's just me....
MAPS!
"A picture is worth a thousand words" goes beyond just pretty art, a location book without at least one map in it is..... words just fail me. I was amazed and annoyed when I bought Boston:Lockdown and realized it didn't have a single bloody map of the Lockdown area. I bought Hard Targets in large part because it was the first SR book ever to cover Cuba in significant detail and then realized again that there wasn't a single map of what the place looked like in the 6th world, where all these neighborhoods described in the text reside, etc. I finally resolved that Catalyst won't get a single plugged cent more from me for any location book that doesn't include at least one decent visual representation of the place described within.
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To pile on for a moment... I agree with above posters who are concerned about quality of editing, or lack thereof, in 5th edition. I have one further pet peeve though, that I haven't seen anyone else mention so I wonder if it's just me....
MAPS!
"A picture is worth a thousand words" goes beyond just pretty art, a location book without at least one map in it is..... words just fail me. I was amazed and annoyed when I bought Boston:Lockdown and realized it didn't have a single bloody map of the Lockdown area. I bought Hard Targets in large part because it was the first SR book ever to cover Cuba in significant detail and then realized again that there wasn't a single map of what the place looked like in the 6th world, where all these neighborhoods described in the text reside, etc. I finally resolved that Catalyst won't get a single plugged cent more from me for any location book that doesn't include at least one decent visual representation of the place described within.
I can not believe I overlooked this but you are so right. Also the big fold out "map" in the Seattle sprawl box is ridiculous. Yay, I know where some corporate HQs and a couple major highways are, but it tells me almost nothing else about the area covered. If I want to see districts I instead have a little card map to use. SMH.
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I'm watching Pegasus pretty closely...hoping they release a PDF of the Seattle map...looks REALLY good.
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I'm watching Pegasus pretty closely...hoping they release a PDF of the Seattle map...looks REALLY good.
I'm hoping that we can release it here as well.
That thing's *so* *beautiful*!
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Yeah, I'm delaying the start of my next campaign for these maps.
Combined with the new SOTA ADL/Germany book (and hopefully with Forbidden Arcana) I expect this May to become pretty taxing on my bank account ;D
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I'm watching Pegasus pretty closely...hoping they release a PDF of the Seattle map...looks REALLY good.
Is there any possibility that they'll release maps of other locations that Catalyst has described only in words, like Havanna or Constantinople?
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We think about releasing a "map pack" of all the maps we made. But our schedule is still very crowded and it lies at the very bottom of the pile.