Shadowtalk - July 4th 2001
by Rob Boyle

By the time you read this, Year of the Comet will be off to the printers.

As many of you are aware, this book is the first Shadowrun book under the new regime. FASA announced at the end of January that they were closing up shop, leaving a small horde of Freedonian expatriates sad and scrambling for new jobs. Some of the FASA crew moved on to WizKids (well known for their Mage Knight collectible miniatures game), while other dispersed throughout the industry. Among the WizKids bunch was Mike Mulvihill, the former Shadowrun developer, who is now en route to a new office in Seattle, where he is discovering that Redmond is really not very barren (yet).

FASA sold most of their game properties, including Shadowrun, to WizKids. WizKids isn't really a publishing company, however, so they licensed Shadowrun out to Fantasy Productions (FanPro), the German company that has been translating FASA products for the German market for years. Despite their suggestive name, FanPro has nothing to do with pornography or BTL chips (yet).

I was lucky enough to be hired on by FanPro to develop their English language Shadowrun books. For those of you wondering how I got such a wicked job, it's because I was working for FASA for over three years. I started off as an editor, but switched over to assistant developer last year when the Shadowrun release schedule swung into high gear.

I am looking forward to working with FanPro; they have an excellent reputation in the German gaming scene, and in person they are a very fun and interesting oddball family to work with. Somehow, I fit in there. I am very excited to be keeping Shadowrun alive with them, and I'm confident that we'll live up to the same standards of quality that FASA put into its products. I consider Shadowrun to be the best cyberpunk game out there, and there are quite a few twisting paths that I plan on taking the dystopian storyline down. I will also be working closely with Crazy, the German language Shadowrun developer, who has done wonders with previous Shadowrun books in deutsch.

One of my goals for the Shadowrun game is to liven up its net presence and provide more useful tools online for players and gamemasters. To this end, we've roped in the talented Adam Jury (of Dumpshock and The Shadowrun Supplemental fame) to help assemble this modest web site. If there's anything you'd particularly like to see from us, just drop us a line. Our inboxes are always open.

Year of the Comet has been a long time in the making, and was already a blip on the radar when I started working at FASA. There have been many starts, stops and fits during its production, and it feels quite good to finally kick it out the door where it can make its way into your hands. Have fun with it. We did.