[adzling]

I do think the below statement unfortunately is not correct.
I HATE the horrifically poor quality of the product Catalyst is churning out due to it's horrific editing (or lack thereof) for clarity and sense.
It feels like the content of the books are tossed into a blender and extruded without the intervention of a real person (horribly layout is a hallmark of Catalyst's Srun line).
And yet I keep buying their tripe, primarily because I love the setting and this is what our group plays.

I wish, at some point, someone in Catalyst realized they need a change in the management of the Shadowrun line.
Get it to a place where someone who actually cares about the rules more than the fluff can spend the energy to get it right.

that's all.

If you want a true measure of how the people are responding to the Fluff level in the books look at the sales that the final test.

[Kinkerbell]

Yeah, I cant really argue with that one, Adz. The game is wonderful, but I am dog-tired of it seemingly getting hosed by Catalyst in favor of other stuff.

Wish I knew how to break into game design. I'd love to work on SR, just to be able to put my money where my mouth is.

[AJCarrington]

To ALL:

Just a friendly reminder...to keep it friendly.

@adzling - appreciate that you're frustrated with the "current state", but comments suggesting the people don't "care" are just wrong. None of us are privy to the inner workings, though at times we get glimpses. Given how strongly you seem to feel, I suggest you contact CGL directly.

[All4BigGuns]

I agree with you about the editing Kinkerbell and adzling my problem with Guns is this demand he's made more than once that we most have a 25 / 75 or less fluff vs. rules.  I've play a lot of games in my day and I've seen bad fluff, no fluff, and good fluff and IHO this books and most of the others are closer to good fluff levels than not.  The games I've played that had little or no fluff tend to louse player interest faster than the ones with a good amount of Fluff.  If you want a true measure of how the people are responding to the Fluff level in the books look at the sales that the final test.

Again, never did I say "no fluff" and my example ratio is for rules supplement books that are primarily for players (yes GMs use them too, but the players are the primary users).

We really need to go back to the old days where the larger chunks are in separate sources. Things like Shadows of North America and stuff like that are very good to be primarily "fluff" since that is the purpose. Hell, at this point, I'd love to see a Shadows of the CAS, a Shadows of Africa or a Shadows of Australia. One of these has a bit of information from Shadows of North America but not much and not really anything since, and the other two don't seem to be touched on at all.

[Wakshaani]

The biggest write-ups of teh CAS are from, in order, the Neo-Anarchist's Guid eto North America, Shadows Across North America, and Dirty Tricks.

Australia's original write-up is in Target: Awakened Lands, but had been mentioned at least in passing a few times before and since.

Africa... *sigh* ... Africa is criminally underused. A few of us are working on that, but it's not a major source of attention at this time. (You can start to see hints in Chrome Flesh, however.)

In previous editions, Africa was either "Tribal warfare" in Nigeria, "Radioactive Wasteland" for Libya, "Elves" for South America, and "Deepest Darkest" for most of the rest. It's ... it's been treated really, really badly over the years. Absolute shame. I know it isn't exactly a gaming Mecca (Hah, because Mecca is in ... okay, nevermind...) but there should be a lil' love sent that-a-way, right?

[All4BigGuns]

My point is that sources like those are really where most of this fluff should be going rather than cramming it into books that should be primarily for rules and mechanics information. Keep it coming, but in the right places.

[Dr. Meatgrinder]

My main reasons for wanting the fluff minimized in Core books are:

• They're Core books, so rules should be emphasized.  The short story at the beginning of a chapter is cool, but there shouldn't be 20-40 pages of fluff in any given location.  Put that stuff in an e-book, not the ruleset.
• I may read the fluff once and then set it aside.  I'll reference rules over and over again.  So any fluff I have to carry around is dead weight at a convention...especially when the main book is heavy enough to have a damage code.  If you're going electronic, every page of fluff makes the book slower to load and slower to turn pages and wastes precious seconds in an already-time-crunched convention slot.  The part of me that hasn't spent hundreds of dollars on the Core book hardcopies wants to field strip every last one of them to (literally) cut out the fluff and rebind the collection in a master rules reference to make them easier to carry at conventions.

[All4BigGuns]

My main reasons for wanting the fluff minimized in Core books are:

• They're Core books, so rules should be emphasized.  The short story at the beginning of a chapter is cool, but there shouldn't be 20-40 pages of fluff in any given location.  Put that stuff in an e-book, not the ruleset.
• I may read the fluff once and then set it aside.  I'll reference rules over and over again.  So any fluff I have to carry around is dead weight at a convention...especially when the main book is heavy enough to have a damage code.  If you're going electronic, every page of fluff makes the book slower to load and slower to turn pages and wastes precious seconds in an already-time-crunched convention slot.  The part of me that hasn't spent hundreds of dollars on the Core book hardcopies wants to field strip every last one of them to (literally) cut out the fluff and rebind the collection in a master rules reference to make them easier to carry at conventions.

Meatgrinder, you sir are awesome.

[I_AM_ZHOUL!!!]

Some fluff is important, no doubt.
For example product or item descriptions as you note Wak.

It's the endless reams of fan-fic and shovel-text that you have to wade through to find the actual content.
It's made 100% worse by not having a TOC that is helpful in the slightest.

My trick is to skip the next chapter and roll into the backend of the chapter I want the Rules for. Works pretty well at cutting through my aggravation of scrolling past 12 pages of Fluff per chapter.

@Wakshanni... why the short story about some kind of Semi-Cybermancy but then no Rules for it??? I wanna etch magic symbols on my bones and go negative Essence too!!!!!

[Darzil]

My personal objection is not fluff / crunch balance as much as it is with insufficient space to cover some crunch. For example, in Run Faster, alternate playable metatypes get around 1/2 page each, which feels incredibly rushed, and is all presented as possibly unreliable fluff, with some of the rule explanations missing. This in a book where space was found for 25+ pages of collected equipment groupings. I cannot understand how this was considered the correct balance.

I want both fluff and crunch, but if there isn't room to explain how something works to make it playable, either cut some fluff to make room or cut it entirely.

[Csjarrat]

What would be good to see is what they do for war gaming a lot now, sell the hard copy as two smaller books in a sleeve; one fluff, one crunch. Nice slim rulebook for gaming with and still retains fluff for those who enjoy it

[Dr. Meatgrinder]

What would be good to see is what they do for war gaming a lot now, sell the hard copy as two smaller books in a sleeve; one fluff, one crunch. Nice slim rulebook for gaming with and still retains fluff for those who enjoy it

I was really happy when GW did that for 40K, for exactly the second reason I mentioned.  The rules-only book takes a lot less space and weight in a minis bag than the previous edition's core book did.

And I made it a point to buy both the mini-rulebooks for Warmachine/Hordes when they came out.

[Dr. Meatgrinder]

Meatgrinder, you sir are awesome.

Thanks!

[AJCarrington]

I'm kinda torn here...I love the fluff embedded in the books, but also appreciate the arguments for separating the two. In *my* perfect world, books would remain as they are, but we'd have a separate SRD the would compile all rules into s single location. To be honest, I'd even be willing to pay for this separately from the books.

[Csjarrat]

What would be good to see is what they do for war gaming a lot now, sell the hard copy as two smaller books in a sleeve; one fluff, one crunch. Nice slim rulebook for gaming with and still retains fluff for those who enjoy it

I was really happy when GW did that for 40K, for exactly the second reason I mentioned.  The rules-only book takes a lot less space and weight in a minis bag than the previous edition's core book did.

And I made it a point to buy both the mini-rulebooks for Warmachine/Hordes when they came out.

Yeah, seems to be the standard now, Corvus Belli did it for the 3rd ed of Infinity too