Genesis 7 and new Shadowrun 6 major version

We are currently talking longer than usual with updates to Genesis, but that doesn't mean we are inactive - on the contrary. While this mostly is true for Shadowrun, the general starter application 'Genesis' gets an update too.

Genesis

Since nearly 2 years now Genesis includes the possibility to provide custom data files and descriptions. The feature itself is documented in our Wiki, but not hinted in the application itself and even for entering descriptions usually not something inexperienced users will use. Every now and then someone stumbles over that feature and asks for help on our Discord server. So we like to make this more accessible.

The settings menu will now provide buttons that open the character directory or custom data directory in your filesystem browser. This should help you either locale your characters our the place for your custom data file.

With the new Genesis version, roleplaying modules can make use of another cool feature: directly provide custom descriptions from within Genesis. While this is mostly irrelevant for Splittermond (and therefore not used there), where you can buy a text license from the publisher, it is useful for international Shadowrun players.

Simply clicking on the edit icon opens a dialog with a textfield where you can enter text. The text is immediately saved to disk in the custom data directory.

I decided to update the Genesis version to a new major version, so prepare to see a "Genesis 7" soon.

Shadowrun 6 Plugin - 2.0

As I wrote in previous updates, we have been working on "Double Clutch" for some time now. In the meantime the new book has been released digitially in a US and DE version (and a physical US pre-release at Gen Con). It required significant changes to the underlying code to make it work.

"Double Clutch" (or "Vollgas" in Germany) features a module-based sandbox to build custom vehicles. I am mostly done with that (see screenshot). I need to test the proper effects of all modifications yet, but the backend and frontend code is functional.

A sideeffect of allowing to build custom vehicles is that I know have general support for storing custom gear within characters. If new books will add similiar gear generators, this should be possible.

At the moment (My wife and I are again relaxing in a vacation home by the sea) we are redesigning the PDF to improve the listing of drones and vehicles. Currently those appear at 3 places on the sheet - once in a small table on the 2 base pages, once in a large table on the Rigger page and a last time with one (ugly) element per vehicle on the extended gear pages - and none of these have all information you may need.

We decided to strip vehicles and drones from the Rigger page and use the space gained for new information (e.g. specific Rigger edge actions, a Driving styles element). In exchange the vehicle elements on the extended gear pages got an overhaul.

This is not final yet - abbrevations must be explained, fonts may change, but I think you get the general idea. Most noteably is the option to upload custom images for your vehicles that will be included on the PDF.

A new invisible feature is that we are able to provide language dependent data for gear, qualities and so on. In the past international users often would need to accept that Genesis considered the german data as the more up to date data since they included more recent errata - which of course lead to complaints. For "Double Clutch" 7 DIN A4 pages of errata have been included in the german version, but we likely provide english users the original Catalyst data.

Updated core rolebook (City edition)

Also at Gen Con Catalyst released an updated version of the core rules with a new round of errata. Some of those are important for character generation (e.g. it is now explicitly allowd to use initiation/submersion at character creation, but explicitly forbidden to add new spells/complex forms. You can again save up to 5 karma or 5000 Nuyen for career mode. You don't distinguish alchemic and regular versions of spells anymore. ...)
If my information is correct, Pegasus intends to update the german core rules in a similiar way.

We began changing the Shadowrun 6 plugin to reflect these new rules changes, but this may take a bit longer since some implications are more complicated (e.g. What to do with characters that have alchemical version of a spell? It needs to be converted to a regular version or the karma needs to be refunded.)

With all these changes upcoming, I think it is about time to give the Shadowrun 6 plugin a new major version - so version 2.0.0 will be next.

I hope you understand why this takes a bit longer at the moment and are as excited as I am be the prospect of the new version.