RE: [HoE] Junkers Gear and a minor rant [shane]

["Erik Kjerland (S&T Onsite)" <a-erikkj@microsoft.com>]

I think we understand the limitations of your time and space in books.
We're just lamenting the absence of material that each of us finds more
important.

Is there any way you can provide some info (on this list or on your site)
about the tech level in 2081?  Were hovercars the standard transportation?
Underground tube trains connecting cities?  How large were cities?  Were
they self-sufficient?  How large were the largest cities?  Did sprawling
suburban areas exist?  What about holographic projectors?  Monofilament
wire?  Neuro-computers hardwired into the brain?  Implanted retinal
targeters?  What was the level of agricultural tech?  Disposable  printers?

And these are just questions I came up with in a couple minutes.  I'd really
like to see a 500 or 1,000 words on American lifestyle in 2080.

<< That's why I said, I might be a little jaded, but IMNSHO opinion, I don't
 feel that I could run HoE "out of the box" like I could with Deadlands.
 There are way too many gaps (mainly in setting, background, and gear) that
 would prevent me from playing it until more info came out. >>

Well, I disagree personally, but agree from the company point of view.
Personally, we played HOE for many months while working out the rules for
the
character types, then fleshed out the details of the world as we went.
Officially, however, that's fine. We had the same complaints when Deadlands
came out (this year's junkers are yesterday's shamans). You just have to
think
of it as the rule book and the world book (or the AD&D Players handbook,
DMG,
and whatever setting boxed set you're using). And sure, I'd love to put out
the worldbook at the same time, but I can only write so fast. (I even said
this in the main book, page 18.)

So I'm going to stay out of this discussion until early Oct. when Wasted
West
hits the shelves. And you'll be happy to know, the gang here liked what John
and I wrote so much they didn't cut the extra 16 pages we wrote--they just
added them to the book at our cost.

Our goal is to give you enough rules in the rulebook that you can play the
game as well as ALL of the weird character types. We did that just fine.
Sykers, Doomsayers, Templars, and Harrowed all have the basic powers in
place.
As for Junkers, John Hopler wrote this section and then had to fit it in the
space I'd left him--which wasn't much. The rules for junkers *are* complete,
there just aren't enough powers to do all the stuff you want.

Shane