Mostly ttrpg stuff and a lil art.
Like c'mon, I know they really shit the bed with 6e's initial release, but a third version of the core book? What's this one have that the Seattle version doesn't?
Berlin could've been a whole splat book too. When was the last time we got a German centric book? 2e?
Now you got me curious. Skimming 4e PDFs on Drive Thru turns up a lot of German-focused pdfs... written in German! It looks like Catalyst at some point made a deal with a publisher, Pegasus Press, who seem to be the ones who focus on Germany and that region. So there is stuff out there that is more recent than 2e... but only if you actually read German.
The wild thing to me is the regional books were one of the things that drew me to Shadowrun when I tried it out. Being able to dip into 2e and 3e books and flesh out a setting was a lot of fun. I know that core rule books and player-focused supplements that have more rules and options are what sell best generally, but Shadowrun is one of a very few games where the setting, more than anything, is the draw. You'd think that might translate into more setting books.
Catalyst has been doing a lousy job with Shadowrun. I knew about Pegasus already, they do beautiful work and I kinda want to learn German just to use their books instead.
Compare the map of Seattle that Catalyst used for the 5e Seattle box vs Pegasus.
Oh geeze, that is night-and-day better. How would one even use the Catalyst one for anything more than an ugly poster? Meanwhile, the Pegasus one is readable and clean.
Nice thing about the Pegasus one is that it's mostly in English and I know enough German to understand the rest.
Shadowrun is extremely popular in Germany but that's why Pegasus exists, and they're serving that niche better than Catalyst itself.
I'm not sure Catalyst really has a clear idea of what to do with SR, at this point. I don't know if it's an issue of management, or a lack of vision on the part of the developers, or simply that there's not enough money in trying to properly revitalise the line.
It's saddening, though. It's such a unique setting, for all its warts, and there's passion for it out there, Catalyst just doesn't seem interested in doing more than the bare minimum to keep things ticking over.
