On the other hand, nearly everything in this book will help me run better, more complete games of Shadowrun, so what am I complaining about, exactly?
Branding. I guess. Is that anything? Reading a cyberpunk rpg and coming away with a vague distaste for the necessity of branding in a capitalist economy? Maybe. But it's a petty annoyance at most. Not worth a blog post (or even the time I've spent on it thus far, mwah! ha! ha!)
So let's treat this book as five separate mini-supplements.
"Games of State" (John Szeto) is an extremely workable alternate campaign model, but spy stories run into a single fundamental issue that the book itself was kind enough to express with perfect eloquence: "If you really think about it, espionage is a broad term that describes just about everything that ever takes place in the shadows."
The chapter asks, "what if Mr Johnson worked for the CIA?" And the answer was, "very little would actually change." Love it. No notes. Even though it was the exact opposite of groundbreaking, it helped to get a little nudge to think about a whole new set of potential employers and their unique motivations for hiring mercenary criminals. It adds a bit of variety to the party's legwork checks.
And don't let my dismissive tone fool you. I really liked this chapter. Beyond being moderately helpful to me as GM, it also did more than any chapter except the last to flesh out the Shadowrun setting. Did you know all of the Big Ten megacorps possess nuclear weapons? That certainly puts a new angle on extraterritoriality and the Business Recognition Accords (which I always thought was kind of a goofy idea for an international treaty regime, but it looks like I didn't have all the information - oops.)
"The Path of the Adept" (Joshua Howell, James Nugent, and Peter Taylor) might be my favorite of the first four chapters, largely because Adepts are my favorite Shadowrun character type, but also a little because I want to believe it's at least somewhat "state of the art."
Have they just printed more Adept powers, or are people in the setting discovering new Adept powers? The book works just as well with either assumption, but I don't know, maybe it's silly of me to be on the lookout for signs of the progression of the mana cycle. The timeframe of the game is far too short for any significant changes to take place. But when this chapter started talking about "The Way of the Artist" or "The Way of the Speaker" as if they were new things people were just now learning about, there's a part of me got excited at the thought that Sixth World might be rediscovering some form of Earthdawn's Disciplines. Obviously, that's more of a multi-century project (though when a commentor says the Danaan families' elite knightly orders are "not yer average adepts" that's exactly the sort of cruel backstory tease that always gets me riled up).
From a mechanics perspective, the chapter merely exacerbates the biggest problem with the Adept archetype - the resource you use to grow "vertically" is the same as the one you use to grow "horizontally" and you have a very strict budget. It might be tempting to buy six points worth of separate powers, and this book offers some great new options like Gliding, Facial Sculpt, and Commanding Voice, but a more optimal choice would be to buy one point of powers six times.
Honestly, Adpets just need a better set of rules. Maybe your Initiation level could unlock new Power choices and you could spend karma points to improve these powers individually, up to a cap determined by your Initiation . . .
(I'm a regular scamp, I am.)
"Behind the Badge" (Robyn King-Nitschke and Malik Toms) is absolutely essential material that should have been in the core book (or, at least, in the Shadowrun Companion). Player characters are criminals, and this chapter explains how law enforcement works. I don't think I need to draw a diagram here.
Like many fictional depictions of the police, it runs the risk of becoming Copaganda. . . and honestly, it's a bit surreal to watch this dance, with the hindsight provided by the BLM movement. Because the text will absolutely shoot off some uncompromising critiques of the police . . . by putting them in the mouths of the Shadowland commentors, who are notoriously unreliable narrators. Now, the main text that the "comments" are riffing off isn't exactly pro-police, at least not with the level of enthusiasm that conservatives demand, but it will say things like, "breaking the rules in some ways can lead to mass outcries and riots or worse - investigation and punishment from higher authorities. . ."
And, like, it's cynical. You're a sheltered white kid in 2005 and you're reading this, you're going to think "whoa, this chapter was written by criminals for criminals, bias much?" It's saying that some police officers plant evidence, escalate conflicts with minorities to justify lethal racist violence (though the minorities in question are trolls and orks, natch), and even use torture to coerce confessions. But then it also says these practices are kept in check by fear of public accountability. Why, if there were inconvenient video of the police using unnecessary force on a subject, violating their fifth amendment rights in process, those police could get fired, and maybe even wind up in jail themselves.
I hate to be the doomer guy, but that's not quite cynical enough for real life. It's definitely not cynical enough for cyberpunk's dystopian satire of capitalist excess. It is highly unlikely that the legal phantom zone created by extraterritorial corporations contracting municipal policing services to toothless civil governments will lead to greater respect for proper police procedure. I'm pretty sure the Business Recognition Accords are like Qualified Immunity on steroids.
If you make the necessary allowances, however, it's a very useful chapter.
"Old World Magic" (Audun Bergwitz and Peter Taylor) is almost pure setting material about European occultism and I have basically nothing to say about it. It's good stuff, but you're not likely to use most of it. Maybe as NPC texture? You could create about a dozen distinct character backgrounds, which is great if you're going to play a dozen different characters and you want them all to be European spellcasters.
I guess the Aesir aren't anti-nazi enough for my tastes (in the Shadowrun universe, the magical Norse pagan revival has its roots in the neo-nazi movement). I also became a little uncomfortable when they contrasted European shamanism with Native American and African analogues (one is a "complex philosophical patchwork" and the others are "more primal.") But aside from those two things, it was just a bunch of extra worldbuilding, presumably done entirely for its own sake (and possibly to satisfy the appetite of the European Shadowrun fandom for more locally relevant material).
The last chapter, "Culture Shock" is pretty much the only one that lives up to the book's title. This version catered a bit more to shadowrunners than the last one, talking about unsolved crimes, the ten most wanted criminals, and paranormal mysteries in lieu of more mainstream stuff like movies and television. I am on the record as wanting more pop-culture fluff in my sci-fi games, so it feels like a step backwards to me, but I'll admit, it's probably more useful for games.
I am also on the record making a joke about how the frequent too-on-the-nose comparisons between orks and Black people would inevitably lead to a discussion of orkish rap music, and it's clear in retrospect that I was not being prescient but actually remembering this book. There's no direct evidence that orxploitation music sounds all that much like late-90s hip hop, but the biggest star of the recent trend was an ork with attitude who goes by the pen name "CrimeTime." Also, many of these artists have connections with street gangs and will blur the lines around their personas as performers by assassinating rival musicians over petty feuds.
Great material for a crime drama, of course, but damn.
Overall, bait-and-switch title notwithstanding, this was a great book. Just a bunch of interesting stuff, given enough space to show why it's interesting without wearing out its welcome. Now, "State of the Art: 2065" that's when they're finally going to start talking about the state of the art, right?
Ukss Contribution: Link clubs. There's this global franchise of trendy nightclubs, with locations in some of the world's hottest party towns, and they use augmented reality so that the crowds of all their locations blend into one giant mega-party. It's kind of a nifty idea, even if it might prove challenging to adapt to fantasy.
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