From:	Ojaste,James [NCR] James.Ojaste@**.GC.CA
Subject:	Mike Mulvihill on STATE OF THE ART
Date:	Wed, 25 Oct 2000 12:08:18 -0400

> From: Patrick Goodman [mailto:pgoodman13@************.com]
> Sent: October 25, 2000 08:36

> From: Mike Mulvihill, Shadowrun Line Developer [shadowrun@****.com]
>
> Next summer will be the first of new update/upgrade gear books for
> Shadowrun 3. Many of you have heard me talk of it. It is
> called State Of The Art.

> The Fiction Theme book would be, for example State Of The
> Art: Security or
> State of the Art: Mercenary or State of the Art: Special Ops.
> The fiction
> would cover the basics of the theme and all the gear would
> lean (but not be
> totally be exclusive) towards the theme.
>
> The Rules Theme would be like the State of the Art: 2062 - but with a
> fiction section in the front. There is no overall pattern to
> the book and
> information could jump from place to place with no specific
> continuity.

I could live without the fiction (which, while I might enjoy it, I'll
only read once), but I like Themed books. For one, it means fewer
books to lug around (mages generally don't need R2).

FoF is one of my favourite supplements - not because it had spiffy
tech, or because it had neat rules, but because it fleshed out the
world by describing (through the gear and rules provided) what mercs
in SR are like. The best thing about SR is the world itself.

Take a Covert Ops theme - that covers a heck of a lot of territory.
How do spies in SR exist? Are they Bond-type spies (never *really*
going undercover, at least not for more than an hour or two), or do
they do lots of deep-cover work? Why bother with industrial espionage
when the world has Riggers? Gear and rules help greatly to not only
flesh out the world, but give people ideas.

Perhaps it could be presented as a targetted megacorp catalogue? That
is, SOTA: Mercs is the catalogue of stuff they try to push on mercs;
that wouldn't mean that the gear within would be useless in other
areas, of course, just that that's the focus, the primary market.

James Ojaste
(no, I'm not dead, I just feel like it)