For about six weeks now, I've been reading the Shadowrun 3rd Edition core rulebook. Currently, I'm mid-way through the Vehicles chapter, and have chapters on Magic and the Matrix to read, and then I'm done (I skipped ahead and read the rest out of sequence). In all, there are some 90 pages that I've still to get to.
Unfortunately, I realised last night that I'd rather gouge my eyes out than go back to reading it.
It's not that Shadowrun is a bad game - hell, I've played it (way back in 1st Edition days); I know it's a good game. It's not even that the rules are overly complex, although there are a lot of special cases and exceptions. In terms of difficulty, Shadowrun is around Warhammer Fantasy Battles. It's definately easier than AD&D 2nd Edition with it's mess of supplements and contradictions, and I had few problems with that.
It's just that Shadowrun 3rd Edition is boring. Big blocks of monotonous text, very little illustration, and examples that only show base cases, rather than the corner cases where examples are most needed (but that's a flaw I've seen in every RPG I've ever read). There doesn't seem to be any excitement to it - and this is from someone who had no problem wading through the D&D Epic Level Handbook.
I hate to call for a new edition of any game, since that usually means the existing player network have to go out en masse and buy all-new supplements, but if Shadowrun were to survive, I think one is badly needed.
I'm rambling, as per usual, but I think that my point is that how you present something in a game is at least as important as, if not more important than, what you're actually presenting. And, if you can't even present your core rulebook well, you're stuffed (since the prevailing wisdom is that that is the only book you can rely on selling in decent numbers).
Archived comment by Mort:
ReplyDeleteWell FASA died... not sure how much it had to do with the new edition of Shadowrun, but it was their biggest selling product so..
I belive some German company took over the publications for Shadowrun, but I havn't heard anything about a new edition of the rulebook.
One thing about the Shadowrun rulebook is that it has tons upon tons of information in it, basically they took what made up four books in the old editions and crammed it into one book for 3rd. This means you save money as you only really need one book to run the game, but, and I guess to save space, there are not many illustrations, which is a bit boring. As for the text itself being boring, I've found this to be the case in all FASA products I've got, the rules for Battletech are boring enough to make baby Jesus cry.
But hell, I'll take boring rules over fucking plastic, badly painted, clickly shit anyday. (No, I'm not annoyed with WizKids, no no, not at all, not at all... You ruined Battletech you bastards!!!)
Archived comment by me:
ReplyDeleteWeren't they bought by Microsoft, who wanted one of the licenses? I though that was how they acquired Mechwarrior? Then they ditched the RPGs, 'cos Microsoft like to make money.
Anyway, I'm all for games that require only a single book to run. However, I have to question the value of this in the case of a book I can't bring myself to finish :-)
Archived comment by Mort:
ReplyDeleteNah, as far as I understood it Microsoft somehow managed to buy the exclusive right to produce computer games based on the Battletech universe, they never actually bought the company as such. So when FASA managed to fold all on it's own the rights for computer games stayed with Microsoft, the rest of the FASA products were snapped up by WizKids, who proceded to produce the horrible crap known as Battletech: Dark ages. WizKids then licensed some German company to produce stuff for Shadowrun, but I belive they have only released supplements in German so far. As for the rest of the FASA products, I suppose they are in WizKids hands, and I doubt they will ever see the light of day again.
Unless they make more clicky shit out of them I suppose...
Archived comment by Mort:
ReplyDeleteFrom the archives of rpg.net, a thread about the fate of FASA. Which, in typical rpg.net style, rapidly procedes into a flame war, only this time it's multi-lingual.
Apparently they didn't go bankrupt, they decided to pull the plug before that happened.
For even more information, look here, thank you google.