|
We're here with Adam Jury, one of the staff members at dumpshock.com, the Shadowrun fansite. 'Nuff said. He was nominated to reply to my questions, tho others got a peek at his answers.
RPGNet: Who all runs the site?
Adam Jury: There's a variety of people responsible for the content and services at
Dumpshock.com - some people host web pages there, while others help out
on the mailing lists or forums.
The breakdown of core members is like this:
Adam Jury: Maintains The Shadowrun Supplemental, administrator of the
ShadowRN mailing list and moderator on the Forums
Eleanor Holmes: Maintains The Shadowrun Webring as well as UCAS Online.
Dvixen: Maintains Mailing List FAQs and is the primary moderator of the
Dumpshock Forums.
Paolo Marcucci: Primary maintainer of The Shadowrun Archive.
Mark Imbriaco: Does most of the technical work to keep the various
server components running.
Gurth: Maintains Plastic Warriors and helps out on ShadowRN as part of
"GridSec."
We also have a variety of user pages hosted on
http://matrix.dumpshock.com from outside contributors, and other
gracious helpers on the mailing lists - David B, Marc R, Paul J. Adams,
Pete Simms, and probably a couple people whom I'm forgetting right now.
RPGNet: How did dumpshock.com start?
Adam Jury: A long long time ago - sometime in 1997 ;-) - Paolo hosted several
Shadowrun sites on www.interware.it, and internet provider that he
co-owned. However, the evil tendrils of love brought him to Canada, and
thus we had to look into new hosting. Mark Imbriaco, who had been
hosting the various Shadowrun mailing lists offered server space for the
sites (courtesy of HTML.com), and we merged the former interware.it sites,
some other Shadowrun sites, and the former iTRiBE.net mailing lists into a
larger resource, then added more features (such as the web forums) as time
passed.
RPGNet: How long will you continue working on the site? Is there a line or a goal you've set?
Adam Jury: We haven't set any such goals. Personally, we all have little peaks or
valleys; some of us get un-interested at times, but because many of the
resources on Dumpshock.com are run by just one or two of us, the whole
site doesn't suffer if one of us takes some time away. I think all of us
have ideas about what we'd like to do in the future with the site,
either entirely new features or revisions of current features.
RPGNet: If I were to decide to create a fan site, what advice would you give me?
Adam Jury: Don't make it suck. :-)
Seriously, decide what you want to put online, and then look around and
see if other people are doing similar things. If they are, think about
partnering with them. There are many - many - websites that haven't been
updated in years, and even though they may have interesting information
it's hard to find them because there's no "buzz" about them. Resources
built from multiple contributors tend to have a longer active lifespan,
and because of that, even 'old' material on active sites remains
somewhat within the public eye, while 'old' material on sites that
haven't been updated since 1996 is rarely seen or used.
RPGNet: Good advice. Has anyone associated with Shadowrun, from FASA to WizKids to FanPro, ever noticed or acknowledged the site?
Adam Jury: Certainly; several Shadowrun freelancers and Shadowrun Line Developer
Rob Boyle post on our message boards and on the ShadowRN mailing list,
as did former line developer Mike Mulvihill and WizKids owner Jordan
Weisman.
Many of the Dumpshock crew have worked for FASA and do work for FanPro
as freelancers, so there's inevitably some crossover.
RPGNet: How do you feel about all the recent changes -- the shutdown of FASA, the move to FanPro, and so on. Are you optimistic for the future of the game?
Adam Jury: I think most of us are optimistic, since the game property itself is
back with one of the original creators, and Rob Boyle had a fairly long
history at FASA working on Shadowrun. Obviously the shutdown of FASA was
unfortunate - seeing friends lose jobs is never fun - but it wasn't a
death blow for the game, and we're all glad about that.
RPGNet: Is there something you're particularly looking forward to with regard to Shadowrun, even if it's "just" a net.supplement?
Adam Jury: Well, Adam is looking forward to getting the next issue of The Shadowrun
Supplemental out. ;-)
State of the Art from FanPro is a highly anticipated release that should
be out at Gencon 2002, and it's nice to see books that FASA had planned
come out, while it's also nice to know that book ideas are swirling
around for after FanPro is finished "catching up" with what FASA had
planned.
Net-wise, things have been pretty tame lately. I'd like to see something
so cool appear that would make me say "Damn! Why didn't we think of
that?"
RPGNet: What other RPGs do you enjoy?
Adam Jury: Adam spends too much time with Shadowrun stuff to get much chance to
think about other RPGs, but recently he's messed with Fudge, In Nomine,
Over the Edge, GURPS, Kayfabe and UnderWorld.
Gurth plays D&D3 these days, after several failed attempts to get his group
to play other RPGs. He plays pretty much anything he gets a chance to,
though, and is already planning a future Shadowrun campaign, for when D&D
gets boring again.
Dvixen says "There are other games?!", but corporate spies report her and
Paolo having Earthdawn, Forgotten Realms, and VOR: The Maelstrom books and
miniatures in their collection.
Mark Imbriaco has three children, one of them less than a month old. Gaming?
Eleanor Holmes will play any game - no joke - but Shadowrun, Earthdawn, and
Vampire come to Adam's mind first when writing about her gaming habits.
RPGNet: Final thoughts?
Adam Jury: This is going to sound trite and cheesy, so I apologize in advance, but: The best thing about Dumpshock is all the cool and interesting people
I've gotten to know over the years. Going to conventions and seeing
these people is always a good time, and I really wish we could get the
chance to do so more often.
| 
