I had come down the chimney, with presents to give
and to see just who in this home did live

David Stansel-Garner For those of you who don’t know the drill (which I assume is many) heres how it works:

David Stansel-Garner When you want to ask a question, just type it in (preferably with who it’s too in the question) and it’ll go to me, and I’ll in

turn make sure the right person gets the question.

David Stansel-Garner The Speaker chooses which questions they answer in what order, so some may take longer than others to answer.

David Stansel-Garner Today we have Rob “Sprite” Boyle, Line Developer

David Stansel-Garner Peter “Synner” Taylor, Assistant Developer

David Stansel-Garner Adam “Adam” Jury, Graphics/Web/all around Guru

David Stansel-Garner Randall “Metsuke” Bills, Former CBT Line Developer, and now roving developer.

David Stansel-Garner And myself, David “Vairdic” Stansel-Garner, Operations Manager for Catalyst.

David Stansel-Garner Now, with that said, let the questions flow!

Adam Jury By the way -- you can start typing your questions now, no need to wait. Please make Vairdic have to work on the queue. ;-)

Adam Jury Thanks for coming, everyone! It’s nice to see a bunch of familiar faces and some new people. :-)

Rob Boyle Yes, Chicago is one of the two major cities covered in the Feral Cities book, which is currently in the first draft stage.

Adam Jury a) New errata for SR4 and Street Magic should be up in February. b) There’s no news about Holostreets. There’s internal

progress, but nothing awesome to say yet. When we have something awesome to say, we’ll say it. c) That’s a Sprite or

Peter question, at this point.

Peter Taylor There will probably be an update to the FAQ after we update the various errata

Rob Boyle FAQ -- we have some Street Magic FAQ material almost ready, but more pressing projects (like, you know, books) keep getting

in the way. We should get to that soon, though (within the next few weeks).

Adam Jury We’re still working that out, but we will not be leaving previous PDF purchasers in the lurch -- you guys will be getting

your updated PDFs.

David Stansel-Garner Unwired will be a 2Q release. We’ll update everyone further when it gets to the printers.

Rob Boyle Well, we will have other books that will count as “core” or at least “advanced rules.” Runner’s Companion is intended for

later this year, and Running Wild (sourcebook on all things critter) is on the schedule for 2009. Beyond that, we’ll be

pushing forward with plot and location books, and also getting into books that deal with specific facets of the game,

like crime (Crime Time -- not the final name), corps (Corp Handbook), etc.

Rob Boyle Yeah, we’re working on straightening that out. FanPro Germany gave us the artwork with providing us with any artists

names, and that omission was overlooked on our end. But we’ll correct that in the errata and reprints.

David Stansel-Garner Not exactly, since this is a reprint there is a date that it will ship from distributors (a release date). And that Date is in 9 days

(February 25th). After that it’ll take a couple of days for it to start showing up on local shelves. We printed this one heavily,

so it should last for a while, and we’ll be watching to make sure we get a reprint in ASAP when we start looking low.

Adam Jury We’re fairly happy with the situation as it is. We keep talking about adding some forums to SR4.com, but that’s not going

to happen in the immediate future. There are some upgrades plannned on both CBT.com and SR4.com, though.

David Stansel-Garner Arsenal, Unwired, Ghost Cartels of course, there are other things in the plans, but we prefer to wait till we’re closer to

completion to announce them.

Rob Boyle Haha, no. We’re pretty content to move ahead with the SR4 rules set -- with the core rules almost all out of the way, we can

focus on plot now for a few years at least :)

Adam Jury Yes -- man, that cover was finished in late *2004* -- I remember laying out a mock cover for it for FanPro back then. :-)

Rob Boyle We haven’t quite started working on this book yet, so things may change, but right now the plan is for it to be sort of a mix

between Corp Download and the Corp Shadowfiles, with some other material. It will cover the Big Ten corps of course,

but in slightly less detail, and will cover a bunch of smaller but notable AA corps as well. It will also have source material

on corporate culture/living, laws, education, etc etc. We want to give some more “character” to corps with it. Lone Star

will probably get a mention, but it won’t be anything like the Lone Star book or a book on police procedures.

David Stansel-Garner We’ll be doing monthly chats, Shadowrun’s will be on the 3rd Saturday of the month (CBT is the 2nd).

Rob Boyle When we did SR4, the Matrix rules were the one part of the book that received a complete overhaul, rather than, say,

just a conversion. It was also radically revised several times as we put the book together -- we just weren’t happy with

how parts of it were turning out and some of the drafts were still not simple enough. So ultimately it didn’t end up as

polished as I would have liked, or as other parts of the book. It is rather difficult to provide a system of that sort that is

both semi-realistic in regards to real computer functions and fits with the rest of the rules, yet is still somehow easy to

grasp and simple.

So with Unwired, our approach has been to polish it as much as possible. It’s not a complete revamp, because we don’t

want to negate a big chunk of the core book, and we don’t think that’s necessary. Our goal has been to identify things

that were clunky, broken, or confusing, and try to fix them.

David Stansel-Garner We are currently working on several games in-house that you should see news on in the coming months.

Adam Jury I’m pretty sure that’s in the cards. Translating stuff always ends up being more tricky than expected, that’s for sure. ;-)

Peter Taylor We’ll be mixing things up a bit, depending on what works best for the plots we want to develop. For instance, Ghost

Cartels will feature a new format that combines some features traditionally only seen in canned adventures or campaign

books with elements of tracked campaigns (such as MobWar or Blood in the Boardroom) and event books (like

Emergence)

Rob Boyle it’s funny, some people think they’re overpowered, some people think they’re too powerful (when you count sprites). We

havn’t revamped them, but we’ve gone into further detail on how they operate and given them some more options.

Some of the new echoes kick ass, there are some advanced uses of threading, and we also added the equivalent of

technomancer “traditions” (called streams) and “mentor spirits” (called paragons). Plus there are a bunch of new sprites.

There are a few other rules tweaks we’ve made that give them a bit more edge.

David Stansel-Garner We’ve done a lot of testing with different times on the BattleCorps chats and have found that 10amPST (-8GMT) works the

best for the majority of people world wide. It unfortunately isn’t very freindly to those down under however.

Randall Bills It hasn’t been too bad, actually. However, the biggest challenge, without a doubt, is the minutia. For example, if I need to

know where X image is for a reference in CBT, my brain can almost always instantly pull up what book, if not the exact

page reference; then it’s a quick scan and it’s fired off to the artist. Don’t have that with SR at all, so often I have to go

back to the developers to hunt material down. The other minutia is one of often not knowing exactly what are the

things that need to be emphasis and what are we trying ‘not’ to do any more. Using CBT, again, as an example, I’ve tried

really hard to show a myriad of terrain and alien flora/fauna in CBT art...something that was lacking for years, despite

the 2k plus planets involved in the universe. Again, just means going back to the developers more than I’d like... ;-)

Peter Taylor Well, Ghost Cartels as a plot has a lot more going for it than might be obvious. For one it features a plot that highlights

a number of locations and setting elements we’ve been looking forward to exploring in SR4. It’s also very much a

street-level plot that focuses on the underworld turmoil set off by the appearance of a new drug that takes the streets

of major sprawls by storm. Finally it also shows off some of the characters and locations we’ve been seeding in our

location books.

Rob Boyle Well, there was a lot. We wanted to fix subscriptions and slaving, give TMs a bit of a boost, break nodes down into different

types (peripheral, regular, and nexi), offer other encryption offers, clarify agents, deal with the Agent Smith issue ...

there’s probably more that I’m forgetting. Plus we wanted to offer an assortment of advanced options: programming

rules, AIs and other Matrix threats, skillware options, hacker and security tricks, etc etc

Rob Boyle That’s a possibility for 2009 actually, though we haven’t finalized that schedule yet, so I can’t say for sure. I’d like to see it

though.

Adam Jury Well, that’s one of the advantages of buying the PDF... ;-) Giving out the maps for free isn’t something that we’ve talked

about before.

David Stansel-Garner We are exploring some interesting avenues regarding novels.

Rob Boyle I wouldn’t say they’re a major part of the book, but they do get covered. The Security chapter has details on security rigger

and there are a few other rigger tricks in the book. Vehicles and drones (and sensor software) were covered in Arsenal,

of course.

Peter Taylor I think you’ll find that at least some of the material your looking for will be in Runners Companion. We’ve penciled a Mr

Johnson’s Companion into the schedule but that’s further down the line

Rob Boyle There’s a section on hacking cyberware in the book, but it’s more of a review of the rules for doing so and general guidelines

for handling it for the GM --- we don’t go piece by piece on what you could do with different implants, as that

would just take too much space. It does specificaly talk about hacking smartlinks and providing false diagnostics.

David Stansel-Garner Unfortunately, there is some confusion over the legal status of current translation rights. Publications which continue to

appear in Germany would seem to violate the license we have negotiated with WizKids Games. That said, we currently

have our contract under review in with WizKids, and once that is approved we’ll be moving forward with the foriegn

sub-licenses.

Rob Boyle Yes, Unwired has a Tweaking section. I’m not sure we’ll need it for Runners Companion, as a big chunk of that book will be

optional rules. Not sure about Running Wild yet.

David Stansel-Garner We are in negotiations with a German publisher to create German Language books. See above for more.

Rob Boyle No, we don’t have plans for a rigger book at this time. We feel we’ve covered them pretty thoroughly in Arsenal, Unwired,

and even Augmentation (biodrones) for now.

Adam Jury Big answer, taken from a post I made to DSF about this subject earlier this month:

Adam Jury There’s something I want to make really clear about Shadows of Latin America: It is not a complete book. It is not “finished”

by any stretch of the imagination. There are many steps taken after a book’s drafts are turned in by the authors: development

[the developer reads/edits all the chapters, make sure that facts match up between them, that they’re presented

consistently, that they aren’t missing information, etc], editing [the nitty gritty of checking for spelling mistakes,

grammar, other stylistic and legibility issues], artwork [which includes not just the artist’s time to build the artwork,

but the art director’s time to figure out roughly where illustrations should be placed, what should be illustrated, and

back-and-forth with the artist over rough drafts], layout/production [making sure it LOOKS like a Shadowrun book] and

proofing [catching last minute mistakes, especially ones that were introduced in layout.]

Adam Jury Years ago, when IMR agreed to take on SOLA, it was believed that FanPro would be delivering them a product that was at

*least* past the editing stage. However, the person developing SOLA dropped out of the project [for a better job opportunity

-- no complaints about him!] and FanPro simply never had time to finish the project, as it was during the SR4

time crunch and the freelance developer was hired to keep the project on track while Rob concentrated on SR4.

Adam Jury Now Catalyst is “stuck” with the task of finishing it, several years after it was relevant to the timeline, with several years

more expectations built up, with more expenses than intended, with the authors annoyed that their work hasn’t been

published and they haven’t been paid -- and as you may have noticed, HoloStreets isn’t exactly moving fast, either [and

that’s a whole other kettle of fish.]

Adam Jury The above paragraph is not me complaining about SOLA: I’m just pointing out that the SOLA situation, bluntly, sucks for

EVERYONE: Catalyst, the writers, and the fans.

Adam Jury Some companies release game books shorter than that answer! ;-)

David Stansel-Garner Unknown at this time.

Rob Boyle Yep! Plus more critterware, critter-oriented gear, and critter magic.

Adam Jury We made a deal with FanPro GmbH to buy those domains last year, and they renegged on that deal. We are continuing to

try and re-establish that deal, especially now that they can no longer publish any Shadowrun material.

Peter Taylor There’s nothing currently in the schedule but its the sort of thing I’d personally like to see some time down the road

David Stansel-Garner Ok folks, looks like questions have slowed down. Let’s to a last call for any questions and we’ll wrap this up.

David Stansel-Garner I’d have to know what area, and who the stores distributors are. Currently there should be no problem getting any Shadowrun,

Fourth Edition product from Catalyst through any maor distributor in the US.

David Stansel-Garner That would be up to the local publisher. If we included little updates for every country we sell the products to we’d triple

the page count ;)

Rob Boyle I think it’s fairly likely the German publisher will continue to do that

Peter Taylor While we’re focusing on cramming the core rule books with as many goodies and options as humanly feasible, and we’re

actively avoiding spreading additional rules out over 15+ sourcebooks, its pretty safe to assume that we’ll get round to

adding rules and new gear at some point in the future.

Rob Boyle We don’t have plans to go back in time and cover that period, but as we detail new locations, plots, and characters, we’ll

flesh more of that backhistory out.

Rob Boyle I should be clear, though, that our focus is on developing new plotlines and new history.

Peter Taylor Any backstory provided in new releases will feed into the current setting and current plots rather than focus on wrapping

up loose ends.

David Stansel-Garner Those are mass market outlets, and traditionally are behind on releases. We focus our sales to the Hobby trade primarily,

so they’ll always have the book sooner. That said, there is a large shipment of books going to our distributor that

services the mass market which should make the books available through the big book stores. Remember though that

your best bet for getting the book right away is your local gaming store.

Adam Jury However, at this time we -- or the distributor that handles our books to the book trade -- are not selling to Amazon.com

Adam Jury Dave posted a thorough answer to this to the Classic BattleTech forums last year:

http://forums.classicbattletech.com/index.php/topic,26887.msg643115.html#msg643115 [Clicking on that link should

open in a new window and NOT boot you out of the chat. :-)]

Rob Boyle Not too far -- most of the activity is still focused around Earth orbit, Luna, and the Lagrange points. As we’ve noted, there’s

an Evo base on Mars, and there’s probably exploration going on of the Belt and other interesting places. There may

even be some secret corp bases further out. Now that he Kiliminjaro mass driver is in operation, though, space traffic is

booming, so there’s a lot more going on than we had in Target: Wastelands, and it will keep growing.

David Stansel-Garner Licenses in the game industry are typically 3 years with a right of first refusal.

Peter Taylor If you mean metaplots, then yes we have several storylines cooking right now, several others have been seeded in recent

books, and we have a few surprises waiting in the wings...

Rob Boyle Not in the immediate future, but we will get to that at some point.

David Stansel-Garner As a virtual company there are no real “offices” per se. All of us operate out of our homes (though my office is probably the

closest you’d get to a real office since we do all of the shipping and filing from here).

Adam Jury In my experience, game company offices look just like any other company’s offices, just... messier. *eyes Sprite*

Rob Boyle that was extremely organized clutter, thank you much.

David Stansel-Garner That hasn’t been discussed at this time, though I personally would love to see more SR minis.

Rob Boyle We hope to keep a good balance. Emergence was more tech, obviously, but Ghost Cartels leans more towards magic.

Either way, we’ll always be making an effort to represent all facets of the game -- we’re not going to be leaving hackers

or magicians out in the cold.

Peter Taylor Runners Companion will feature most of the stuff people are expecting, metavariants, SURGE, unique character options,

loads of new qualities, some SSG-type material and some other surprises.

Rob Boyle We haven’t put the final book spec together or solicited to authors for this book yet, so it’s still up in the air. There are a

bunch of good possibilities, but I can’t really say what it will be at this time. We’ll try to represent all (well, most) of the

It_trolls_ Where do you see the role of PDFs compared to paper on the gaming table now and in a year? Would you like to eventually switch to

David Stansel-Garner Likely there will be a mix of types. We’d love to get ideas on what you’d like to see.

David Stansel-Garner Ok folks, looks like we’re about done here.

David Stansel-Garner I’d like to thank Rob, Peter, Adam, and the for once silent Randall for their time, and even more so I’d like to thank you all

for showing up and asking such great questions.