What happens when the two primary editors of The Shadowrun Supplemental both get parts in an upcoming Shadowrun book? They sure as heck don’t get much editing finished! What happens when a car crashes into an editor's house, doing enough damage to force her to live in a hotel for a month? She sure doesn’t get a lot of editing finished! What happens when the other editor takes on a last minute assignment for another gaming company? He sure as heck doesn’t get a lot of layout finished!

That was the theme for this issue; as soon as we started to make some good progress, something else came up and stopped it. Which is our explanation for why it’s so late, something that I really hope to avoid in the future. The good news is that over the last few months we’ve had chance to pick and choose some other articles from our backlog, and we’re a little bit more organized than in the past. Not as organized as I hoped to be, but more organized than this time last year.

You may have noticed a slight change in the organization of this magazine and official FanPro LLC Shadowrun products. Much of the material has been divided into two sections, one for pure in-character information, the second for game information such as character and gear statistics, rules and "the truth"—distilled briefly from the in-character material—so gamemasters have an easy reference that they know is factual without the possibly misleading shadowtalk.

This is the model that we’re trying to follow from now on. Some articles do not need this treatment—for example, an article with new rules (Such as Shadowrun D8 from TSS-13, or Seven Samurai from TSS-15) but no in-character information doesn’t need a seperate Game Information section—it’s all game information! Likewise, a short in-character article like the Soy Processing Units from TSS-16 doesn’t need a Game Information section if there are no major rules or game information.

This new style is a slight change from the way things were previously organized, and it makes writing Shadowrun material slightly different from before. In some ways it makes it a bit more difficult, because the game information needs to be a bit more defined than the in character text—however, this gives you a strong base to write the in-character material from. That’s the order I suggest when writing material in the new style: start with your outline, then move onto the game information, then once the game information is more or less finished, work on the in-character material. You’ll probably have to revise some of the game information when you’re finished with the in-character section, because the in-character text often prompts new ideas and interesting twists. Writing in this order helps ensure that you know where you're going with the in-character material, and helps prevent meandering digressions that don't add anything truly useful.

We encourage all authors to use the new format when submitting works—it will increase your chances of being featured in the magazine!

Shadowrun, Matrix, and all related terms are copyrights of WizKids LLC (1989 to the present date.), All rights reserved. All names used without permission. This compilation of material is copyright ©2002 Adam Jury