[Whiskeyjack]

Don't want silence? Stop the whinging.

"Want this company we pay money to to answer us? Then stop complaining!"

So basically "stop criticizing them and they might deign to answer us."

This mindset is royally screwed up.

[celondon]

I feel you guys are not offering advice. So I will.

Things that I'd like to see in SR6.

Less magic. By that I specifically mean reduce the amount of magic rules. Leave alchemy and enchanting for the magic supplement. And maybe rituals too...

Reduce skills. There are too many niche skills. I want more abstracted skills that can do more.

Remove cybercombat as a skill and let deckers/technomancer's use a combat skill in place of cybercombat. It makes sense because the Matrix is a metaphor, so you should be able to use your other skills in the Matrix, kind of like how foundations can use knowledge skills as active skills.

Make deck's and TM living persona's attributes equivalent. My biggest problem with the decker v TM is that decks are WAY more powerful. By a lot, like with Data Trails is now possible to get a deck with 10 to a Matrix attribute, TM's can get their logic that high, but that's only data processing, which is a lame Matrix stat.

Give us build rules for decks. Decks should also cost karma and nuyen, showing the decker has invested time and money into making the bloody thing.

I'd also like TMs to be able to focus all hacking with only Complex Forms. Make TMs more like mages.

Make the Matrix more like the other parts of the game. Firewalls, are literal barriers and can be passed through like mages going through an mana barrier, or attacked and destroyed like a normal barrer. Or the ability to take cover behind a device or piece of virtual landscape.

Allow mundane hacks to resolve faster, but epic hacks be less abstracted and more epic. Mundane hacks are things like opening doors and looping cameras. Epic hacks are entering hosts, navigating the VR landscape while the team watches over the decker/TM meat body. and finally finding the paydata. Right now the Matrix is too abstracted so that mundane hacks take too long while epic hacks are over too quickly.

Put the rigger rules together more. They're like in 5 different parts of core.

Remove gear and replace them with the packages like from Run Faster. Break down the packages in another gear supplement, so people can be more granular later. But in core, using packages by default will speed up character reaction by a lot.

I agree with most of this. Some good ideas here.

[All4BigGuns]

Simple fact is that they don't have to talk to us or provide any sort of errata or FAQ or whatever. The gaming industry went fine for a long time before those were ever a thing. Once the internet became bigger, some companies decided to be nice and give those things, and the gamers became spoiled and came to feel entitled to it. At this point, I'm all for all companies to just cease all errata and FAQ delivery because of the attitude from so many forum and social media going gamers.

[celondon]

Simple fact is that they don't have to talk to us or provide any sort of errata or FAQ or whatever. The gaming industry went fine for a long time before those were ever a thing. Once the internet became bigger, some companies decided to be nice and give those things, and the gamers became spoiled and came to feel entitled to it. At this point, I'm all for all companies to just cease all errata and FAQ delivery because of the attitude from so many forum and social media going gamers.

The world and state of the industry has changed. There is more competition for your gaming dollar now than at just about any time previously. Social media engagement is an incredibly important and vital aspect of being a successful business in today's market.

So, if you are a small publishing company, you should be doing everything possible to engage your community and make them into evangelists for your product rather than antagonists who wave people away from your products. With Shadowrun, we are almost at the later position. When someone asks, "Tell me about 5e Shadowrun" you always see the same comments: Good system, Good world, horrible editing/holes in rules, zero errata.

That's not a good place to be.

[Critias]

I get errata is not paid work, however I feel like freelancers who love the system and setting should step up even to a small extent if they're able. Exalted 2e wound up with an errata document that was hundreds of pages long, because certain then-writers just didn't want to let the game sit in the awful state it was in (this is before there was any notion that 3e would be funded). The community loved them for it. But I certainly also recognize that not all writers are that invested or willing to put in that much non-paid time to fix someone else's mistakes. I totally get that. I'm not asking for a 300-page errata doc for SR5 (I don't think it remotely needs that much, tbh). But SOMETHING that covered the big issues would be nice.

We have, and we do;  but it's not official, it's not distributed through official means, we can't always do it (we self-errata for stuff we wrote, not stuff someone else did, because it's rude as hell to try and correct someone else's work without being asked), and because it's not official or officially distributed, it's easy to miss.  For the closest-to-official version of this work I can point to (because it's not just forum posts somewhere), who do you think compiles the Missions Errata/FAQ every so often (and do you think they get paid for it)? 

It's not that we're not invested or willing -- which, by the way, is a terrible fucking thing to imply about people, thanks -- it's that we're already doing what we can, where we can, where professionalism allows, and it's easy to miss because the community is spread out across a half dozen forums, our responses are equally spread out, etc, etc. 

[All4BigGuns]

...horrible editing/holes in rules, zero errata.

That people are so overly concerned about typos, punctuation errors or slightly misaligned tables and feel that entitled to errata and FAQs is exactly the problem.

[celondon]

It's not that we're not invested or willing -- which, by the way, is a terrible fucking thing to imply about people, thanks -- it's that we're already doing what we can, where we can, where professionalism allows, and it's easy to miss because the community is spread out across a half dozen forums, our responses are equally spread out, etc, etc.

I've seen several posts of yours and other freelancers correcting things where they can and I'm deeply grateful for the efforts. The fact that no one at Catalyst collates and publishes these things officially has to be even more frustrating for you than it is for us. Keep up the good work and know it's appreciated, even as we criticize the state of the product.

[odd]

and it's easy to miss because the community is spread out across a half dozen forums, our responses are equally spread out, etc, etc.

This was part of the reason Falar put together the SR5 FAQ wiki, but it hasn't gotten traction which the community could help with (anyone can update the wiki) but again it just hasn't gone far.

[jim1701]

Simple fact is that they don't have to talk to us or provide any sort of errata or FAQ or whatever. The gaming industry went fine for a long time before those were ever a thing. Once the internet became bigger, some companies decided to be nice and give those things, and the gamers became spoiled and came to feel entitled to it. At this point, I'm all for all companies to just cease all errata and FAQ delivery because of the attitude from so many forum and social media going gamers.

I don't have the largest collection of RPG games in existence but I do have quite a few and in my personal opinion 5th edition Shadowrun is by far the worst edited RPG I have ever seen in 30 plus years of gaming.  Note I don't say the worst it is the worst RPG (the rules aren't broken just too many places where they are contradictory, incomplete or vague) or the worst written (the fluff is generally quite good) but the worst edited. 

In the Total Warfare ear the Battletech team has produced 400+ pages of errata, clarifications and rule changes over 10 years.  That doesn't even count corrections to record sheets or TRO entries.  They have set up a system on their forums to maximize efficiency in reporting problems and minimize the effort needed by the devs to sign off on the changes. 

Shadowrun 5th edition has been out for about 2 1/2 years and has produced what?  7 pages?  9?  Color me not impressed.

Call me a complainer or whatever you like because I really just don't give a shit honestly.  If TPTB don't want to bother with errata then they should please just come out and say so officially.  Otherwise they need to come up with some kind of plan within the framework of their existing resources and get the ball moving. 

[Whiskeyjack]

We have, and we do;  but it's not official, it's not distributed through official means, we can't always do it (we self-errata for stuff we wrote, not stuff someone else did, because it's rude as hell to try and correct someone else's work without being asked), and because it's not official or officially distributed, it's easy to miss.  For the closest-to-official version of this work I can point to (because it's not just forum posts somewhere), who do you think compiles the Missions Errata/FAQ every so often (and do you think they get paid for it)? 

It's not that we're not invested or willing -- which, by the way, is a terrible fucking thing to imply about people, thanks -- it's that we're already doing what we can, where we can, where professionalism allows, and it's easy to miss because the community is spread out across a half dozen forums, our responses are equally spread out, etc, etc.

Look, let me be clear - I don't know the investment of people, and I don't feel obligated to assume the best, though I think it's proven that the writers care a lot more than management does (as evidenced by y'all posting on here when you can). And thank you for clarifying where exactly the issue in the pipeline is (though we basically all assumed it anyway).

I don't know how many writers would say "sure, I'll do fixes for free, to make a better product" and how many might say "nah, I'm not doing errata, because I don't give away my labor for nothing," both of which are eminently reasonable positions. I'm not saying writers should do effectively unpaid errata work and possibly put themselves in a bad financial position, or if they would rather pick paid work over unpaid fixes, or would rather not add extra work hours to their lives. I don't think you have a moral obligation to work for free to make corrections. And I get that you guys are potentially in the unenviable position of writing, say, a chapter, without really knowing what might be said two chapters later that contradicts you in the final product.

I think probably the main difference between the SR errata and, say, Exalted 2e, is Exalted errata had the existing buy-in of management to OK it, consolidate it, distribute it, and trust that the writers doing it knew what they were doing, and it's unfortunately that you guys haven't been afforded the same level of agency with regard to putting out errata, except as related to Missions. That's in no way your fault.

[That people are so overly concerned about typos, punctuation errors or slightly misaligned tables and feel that entitled to errata and FAQs is exactly the problem.

Nobody is saying typos or badly-done tables need errata (unless the badly-done table renders it impossible to interpret, in which case, it sure as hell does deserve errata). Typos just shouldn't happen in the first place. In an ideal world they wouldn't, hell, I get a few would still slip through because it happens, but we're so far beyond that that you're just arguing a straw man here.

[I've seen several posts of yours and other freelancers correcting things where they can and I'm deeply grateful for the efforts. The fact that no one at Catalyst collates and publishes these things officially has to be even more frustrating for you than it is for us. Keep up the good work and know it's appreciated, even as we criticize the state of the product.

+1

The difficulty is, I think, for all that you guys try to clarify on the forum and stuff, a lot of people won't interpret anything short of officially-stamped errata to be, well, binding and official. I like getting the clarifications, sure, but they fall into a weird canonicity spot vis a vis the RAW, especially when the correction-post itself is confusing or contradictory or creates its own problems (as has happened).

[Patrick Goodman]

Sixth Edition isn't even being discussed.  There are SR5 products on the schedule for at least the next two years, with others under discussion beyond that.

[celondon]

I don't have the largest collection of RPG games in existence but I do have quite a few and in my personal opinion 5th edition Shadowrun is by far the worst edited RPG I have ever seen in 30 plus years of gaming.  Note I don't say the worst it is the worst RPG (the rules aren't broken just too many places where they are contradictory, incomplete or vague) or the worst written (the fluff is generally quite good) but the worst edited.

I have seen worse. FAR worse, in fact. But I no longer purchase products from those companies, and that is one of the big reasons.

[adzling]

Yeah with all due respect ALL4BIG I really don't see the whole "throw the product over the fence and ignore the customers" as a rational way to do business in this century.

It used to work, back before the internet and social media but not anymore.

If you produce a sub-standard product and don't attempt to make things right (or heck even talk to your customers) then how can you expect to have their continued excitement in your efforts?

[DeathStrobe]

I'm with All4BigGuns.

This is not a miniatures war game or a card game. The rules for a role playing game are a framework to facilitate story telling. Yes, Shadowrun is crunchy, like REALLY crunchy. Especially compared to its contemporaries, like Dungeon World, Numenera, FATE, etc. The problem is that less crunchy systems don't feel meaningful. Like getting a new arm in Numenera is just fluff to explain how you just leveled up. In Shadowrun getting a new arm usually means that arm is faster and stronger and may even have a cyber weapon inside it.

Shadowrun also does leave some things open to fluff interpretations too. Like if spirits can talk or just what they look like. They're all treated relatively the same.

Rules will never be perfect. Things will never be perfectly balanced. GMs will always need to make interpretations or make called on how to do something within the framework of the system. I'd personally like more options and new books and leave RAW/RAI to the Rules forum to figure out.

[MijRai]

Big, if you think it is a problem that people don't like spending their money and then receiving shoddy products, then you're the problem.

I remember starting to count errors in Street Grimoire; I hit fifty errors before I hit fifty pages.  That is shit.  I have professional editing experience; I'd have been reamed if I'd let something like that get by me at any point in the process, much less the final stage.  There's no freaking excuse; copy-pasting that shit into Microsoft Office and hitting autocorrect would have caught half of it, easily.  Actually going over what people decide to copy/paste would have fixed the other half (not copy-pasting things would have been better as well, but c'est la vie).  Lay-out is something else they botched.  That was the worst book in the edition so far, but the others aren't much better. 

The part that makes it worse is when it comes to mechanics; contradictions, vagueness (mechanics, not fluff), obvious imbalance.  They couldn't be bothered to explain that Naga have no arms, or what Vanishing does for Pixies (or the lack of depth on mechanics that should apply to metasapients in things like Lifestyle).  The ability to make a scooter break the sound barrier.  The lack of balance in Spell Drain.  The absolute horrid treatment of Technomancers.  Addiction.  Rigger 5.  Street Grimoire.  The list goes on.  This falls on the editing stage, where it should have been caught and rectified.  A house-rule here or there is fine, sure.  Almost every table has a few.  At this point, I'd be writing a fifty-page-plus errata in order to run the game.  I'm not wasting my time on that when I have access to other games that are a hell of a lot better managed and maintained.  Shit, I'm actually putting together an entire system/setting with some friends right now, and we're in our second year of play-testing.  That's where I'd rather put my time.  I know people who've tossed 5th Edition out the window to run Shadowrun on different systems because they're so dissatisfied with the current problems.  These people I'm talking about aren't your so-called entitled, millennial cry-babies (it's obvious who you're blaming).  They're veteran gamers who've been playing longer than my parents have been alive in some cases, or since I was born. 

If they expect us to pay them, they sure as hell better start fixing their work.  If it isn't worth the money, people aren't going to pay.  I know I'm not going to write a novella's worth of house-ruled Errata just to make the game freaking fully functional.  I've already hit the point where I'm not buying new Shadowrun products until I am satisfied things are being rectified.  I'm sorry to say I doubt it'll happen at this point in time, but I'm not wasting my money if the product continues the current course.  It sucks, since the freelancers and other writers make some phenomenal fiction and give the setting a good name; the mismanagement of the system is flat-out driving me crazy. 

As far as my response to the original author's point goes; I don't want to have a 6th Edition to fix Shadowrun.  I want them to fix 5th Edition like they should.