OrionPrime wrote:could we get a raw version or the writer post it, or something.... It is almost like palladium doesn't care about Splicers or its fans!
you're joking, right?
no, seriously. that does not make *any* sense at all. you may be thinking a few years without a sourcebook is a long time. for palladium, if you're not talking about rifts, that is practically yesterday. heck, in palladium terms that might still be this morning.
beyond the supernatural got their second edition core book in 2005. now, stop and think about that for a minute. 2005. 15 years ago, give or take.
at that time, they were advised that the game was incomplete, and 2 more books would be released soon to complete it; one had the monsters (imagine a supernatural investigation game without the monsters) the other had the magic rules (again, supernatural investigation game, no rules for magic).
now, how long would you guess it took before they got those absolutely essential books that they were promised? take a moment and really think about it. do you have your answer yet? OK, here is the correct answer when you're ready:
so when you think that there's a book that would be a cool but not strictly essential addition to the core book that has all the basic rules for the game, plus a fair amount of rifter material, plus a few published books, understand that fans of other palladium settings are *jealous* of how much material we get. I can assure you, the problem is not "palladium doesn't care about Splicers or its fans".
the problem is "palladium doesn't know how long it's going to take to get their books through the pipeline, and they also don't know that they don't know how long it's going to take so they keep telling us it will be any moment now". seriously, that is the situation. Kevin would love to have every single book in the pipeline done tomorrow. heck, sometimes I think he actually expects that to happen. but you need to understand, of all the things kevin is good at, estimating how long it will take to complete a book is absolutely not one of them.
I mean, here, take a look at this:
https://palladiumbooks.com/about-pallad ... ary-3-2020I'm gonna save you some time, ctrl + f and put this in: In production for February release
next, have this window open as well:
https://palladium-store.com/1001/catego ... eased.htmlnow, start scrolling down on the weekly update. look for release dates. every time you see one, go back to the store link I just posted in their just-released section and try to find any books that have been projected for release by this now.
have you noticed anything yet? any slight differences in what kevin hoped and dreamed would be done by now, as compared to what actually happened? heck if you scroll *up* from the place I told you to ctrl + f for, you may notice that literally palladium had *just released* a book and was already promising another one was going to come out at any moment.
now, there are a few possible explanations for this.
for example, it is theoretically possible that kevin is a raving lunatic who enjoys our suffering and repeatedly lies to us at the expense of his reputation purely for that reason, not even caring that it is harming his business. personally, I consider that to be sufficiently improbable to say that this is not a rational conclusion.
it is theoretically possible that kevin hates some of his settings, or even all of them, and is deliberately delaying all of the books for every setting, not even caring that it harms his business, purely out of spite for those settings. again, I consider that to be sufficiently improbable as to say this is also not a rational conclusion.
in fact, when I go through the scenarios, the only one that really makes sense to me is this:
Kevin loves his job. He is incredibly optimistic about how long it will take to publish books, in spite of the fact that history shows it will take him far longer than he plans for. He is excited for all of his settings, but simply cannot produce material anywhere near as quickly as he would like, and is frequently distracted by the fact that in addition to writing and editing half a dozen books at a time, he is also doing most of the management functions of a small business, in addition to frequently having to deal with the side effects of having lived for a long time (such as the family and friends that he grew up caring about occasionally get ill or hurt in accidents that would have been minor concerns 20 years ago, or in some cases even die, and also including the fact that some of his long-time friends and coworkers are also quite old, and the rest of the staff including kevin cover for them while they take care of that in their own lives because that's what friends do)
this matches up with what people who have actually met him say; they visit him at conventions or at the office and he's super excited and talks to them for a while and soon *they're* believing his release dates too, for a while at least.
so really, don't sweat it. kevin is working as fast as he can. if he got his way, you would have another half dozen splicers books to choose from, not to mention more options for palladium fantasy, nightbane, dead reign, beyond the supernatural, and so on, all while continuing to release a steady stream of a dozen or more rifts titles per year. but he doesn't get his way, and of the typically 24-48 books he hopes to finish in any given year, we typically get 4-6.
so understand that when he promises a book 3 months from now, what he probably means is "I'm going to write and/or edit 6-12 books first, and then your book is planned to be next in line after that" and adjust your expectations accordingly (and remember that the order he's planning on releasing things can change; after all, pushing a book a few titles back could be as little as a month's delay based on what he's
hoping for, and that really isn't all that long).
