Catalyst also controls Shadowrun. The same problem is present, and the remedy is also the same.
Buy Used
Play Older Editions
Ignore Metaplot
Share The Tapes
Shadowrun doesn't have the online tools that BattleTech does, or is as visible as BattleTech, but you can find some stuff out there- starting with PDFs of the character sheets for the edition you prefer to play and runs.
You will need more than a rulebook; FASA bought into the Supplement Treadmill hard, to the point where the game wasn't complete until a handful of vital supplements hit the shelves- one for each core activity in the game (Magic, Matrix, Combat) and resources for both Runners (Gear, Vehicles) and OpFor (Monsters, Gangs, etc.) as well as places to go do stuff.
That varies by edition, and I suggest using First or Second Edition, but Third is okay.
Tossing the metaplot tosses all of the problems that the game has ever had, such as Stupid Ideas (Harlequin, et. al.) and Publisher Inserts being more important than what you do at your table.
All of this also applies to R. Talsorian's Cyberpunk (even now, most prefer 2020 over Red) despite Maximum Mike being far more reasonable than Catalyst's Poz Parade, and running them as proper games is a lot easier when you take the inhibitors off.
You'll find this to be a persistent pattern when cutting corpo gatekeeping.
Catalyst isn't the only also-ran with a poz problem borne of long-festering shitlib infections.
The company that kept H.P. Lovecraft from the Memory Hole also has this issue, one that's enveloped the latest edition of Call of Cthulhu
As with BattleTech and Dungeons & Dragons, the remedy is simple:
BUY USED!
Failing that, Captain Harlock will find you all the PDFs you will need to play the game and if none somehow exist then someone will have rewritten the manual sufficiently to get buy until either someone else finishes that job or you can get a rulebook.
Yes, COC will fulfill all your Horror needs. Survival? Sorted. Slasher? Sorted. Supernatural? Sorted. Weird? Super-sorted. The rules for Lovecraftian adventure mysteries are surprising in the flexibility of their application without altering a thing.
Are there other options? Sure. Will they be anywhere near as easy to get up and running as COC? No. Furthermore, some experience with COC will make Runequest, Elric!/Stormbringer, and Pendragon easier sells due to familiar systems and mechanics.
And you get the best benefits of having a game based on an outside property: a body of settled material to draw from whose canon is closed and no longer developed.
You can even have H.P.'s cat as an NPC and no one will care.
And you can be cheeky and do weird crossovers, in honor of the shared stuff H.P. and Howard swapped between them. (Seriously, go read Worms of the Earth and Kings of the Night.)
You thought D&D was easy to keep the corpos out? This is as easy as breathing. Use any edition's rulebook from v5.5 or earlier and GO! Everything else can be had online, and the dice you use for D&D are used here.
If BattleTech was easy to do, then The Only Game That Matters is even easier.
Play Older Editions: Yes, those editions are still available. Hit up all the used bookstores, realspace and online alike, if you need physical copies- including the big ones like Amazon. Retroclones, while they had their use, are still outshone by the originals that they copied- and the best editions are the earliest ones. Now that you can get originals, do that and use them.
Abandon Conventional Play: This is a losing proposition and has been since it arose over 40 years ago because the fucking Boomers failed to teach the kids how to play, leaving a festering wound that would get infected with the poz in the last decade or so thanks to shit like Dragonlance (and more). This is where learning from the #BROSR will serve you well and save your hobby.
Return To The Clubhouse: The old form of hobbyist social organization has to return, as There Is No Alternative if you want the hobby to stay alive.
This also means that a lot of people are going to have to admit that they do a lot of Retail Therapy and thus waste massive amounts of money on things that they don't need to play and never did.
This now extends to electronic widgets of all sorts. You don't need a Virtual Tabletop. You don't need a dicerolling application. Discord server, chat channel, voice channel, dicebot- sorted (and free).
Wizards, Paizo, etc. are all Cargo Cult corporations that rely on getting you to think in Consumerist terms as they all see their properties as Lifestyle Brands first and products second- including those who would protest this assertion. Their behavior betrays their Revealed Preferences.
Shun this.
You need a complete game (e.g. AD&D1e, ACKS). You need some grid paper. You need some hex paper. You need dice. You need some notebook paper, loose or bound at your discretion. You don't need miniatures, tokens, counters, terrain pieces, vinyl mats, etc. as they are surplus to requirements (however handy they may be). Buy your game once, buy your tools once, resupply consumables periodically (i.e. your notepads).
You don't need Wizards. You don't need Current Edition. You don't need Conventional Play. Wizards does. Paizo does. Several others on this business model, in varying forms, do- and all of them are either about to go down or are about to jump ship.
You don't need them to play the game for the rest of time.
You just need to be able to replace worn out products, and that's getting easier by the day on a capability level- it's other things getting in the way that's at issue, and they can be worked around.
Of all the games out there, D&D is the easiest to cut out the gatekeepers. That too many of you don't even try is, well-
But simply ceasing to play the game is not the answer. This is not the first time that BattleTech fell victim to corporate fuckery. The people that matter, the audience, responded with a masterclass in how to deal with this shit. Razorfist explained this well a while back.
And in light of the above recent development, Razorfist revisited the topic last week.
Buy used. Share PDFs. Rewrite the manuals (they could use it) and share those manuscripts. Done and dusted.
Maps? Don't need them. Miniatures? Don't need them. Record sheets? Available online. You can print them out as required for free, all of them, and you don't require minis to play- counters do just fine.
And MegaMek is a thing, is free, and replicates the tabletop experience to a tee- something even Harebrained's adapation does not.
Used book stores not only have plenty of used game manuals, but also used novel tie-ins. Go read those; they're fun reads.
You don't need to give Catalyst a penny to play the wargame or the RPG addon, especially if you get really bold and recognize this as something you can run with Classic Traveller.
Which also means that you don't need to bother with Catalyst for making and sharing your own stuff. The aforementioned Black Pants Legion memed new stuff into the game AS SHITPOSTS. (The latest? The Urbanmech LAM.) Don't be cucks and wait for approval from hostile chokeholders; just make shit and GO!
And if you think this can't be applied to other games, you really are a Tourist that doesn't belong here.
Early this past week Jim Ward died at the age of 72.
Jim Ward, the man behind Drawmij the Magic-User and other notable NPCs in The World of Greyhawk, was the man that contributed to the following (and more):
Deities & Demigods
Greyhawk Adventures
Pool of Raidiance (novel)
Gamma World
Metamorphosis Alpha
By now there's plenty of articles about the man's death; this one will be as good as any of them.
Gary and Dave get the glory, but we forget men like Jim at our peril because they were just as important to building the foundation of the hobby in their own contributions. Jim in particular contributed to the fantastic futuristic adventure side of the hobby with Gamma World and Metamorphis Alpha, a pair of games that would join Traveller as the works making way for successors now dominating that space: Fallout, Wasteland, BattleTech/MechWarrior, etc.
The old guard are leaving us. Archive what they know and did while you can so that knowledge is not lost.
And rest in peace Jim. There's a seat at the table waiting for you.
This past Wednesday, Roll For Combat came back with more bad news for Conventional Play, and this they they meant it.
Stephen nails it: "(Current Edition) is what they say it is."
Couple that with the report on the Mobile Trash version of Monopoly and you see why I beat this drum so hard. All of the signals are there, and they are not subtle, yet Cargo Cultists keep insisting that Nothing Ever Happens so Nothing Will Happen.
No, everything is going to change about Conventional Play AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO STOP IT.
You now, AGAIN, have independent validation of my position. What are going to do about it?
You don't have friends. You have Gaming Buddies. If those people only bear your presence when you're playing, then they are not your friends.
Friends don't need the excuse of an activity to make time for each other.
If this is your situation, you have far bigger problems than the collapse of Conventional Play. You have problems that I cannot help you with, nor am I inclined to help you with, but I will not be miserly in charity.
You are tolerated because you fill a seat, you are mostly are a useful cog to them, and likely you're also the one that runs the game and organizes everything but otherwise you never hear from them unless you reach out first- you are being USED.
That's not a sign that you need to adapt to a seismic shift in the hobby. That's a sign that if you weren't providing free entertainment for them, you would not even exist so far as they are concerned.
Run. Away. They are treating you like shit, and you're letting them. Stop. Go somewhere else. Do something else. Fix whatever it is that's wrong with you that put you in this position first, then come back to the hobby after you're made whole and functioning properly.
That's all I have to say about this. Get. Help. That's the end of this post.