I know what you mean about checking out smith and tinker once I found out they had the rights I keep on checking out their web site for any news. I've been playing Shadowrun since the 2nd edition came out.
There is one thing I love about RPG games is that you get to make a character that only you have so Cliffhanger when you are making the characters layout for use to play please remember to but in as much as you can that will let us customize our characters to be just ours. I've heard about some of it in the Q&A forum you posted (again thanks for that forum it lets me see what kind of game Shadowrun will be and I'm so happy about what I'm hearing). If you can't put all the stuff you have in mind on the lunch of the game just keep adding on as time move forward and money comes in.
One question you said you where looking into totems, are you going to have both hermitic and shamanic spell worms in the game?