[ShadowsOfEurope] Penta reviews SoE, From book start through France Options

[Penta]

Hi all. I recently picked up Shadows of Europe, SotA64, and Mr Johnson's Little Black Book.

I read SotA64 first, and am currently reading SOE.

So I figured I'd work through the book, reviewing it chapter by chapter.

General stuff - OK, this didn't feel too bad. The NEEC, in light of recent RL events, makes me giggle uncontrollably. The perspective on OC was useful. Magic was less than useful, but SotA64 made up for that.

AGS - Um, OK. One can see the scars of the original Germany SB. It's a perfectly useful setting, but...Ugh. It would take a lot of work not to have players kill me, because it just makes no sense. Now, a specific gripe: Bavaria. The Eugenics Project. As soon as I saw that (in 2042, no less! For SHAME! For SHAME!), I wanted to kill whoever wrote that, even in the brief summary fashion. Eww, people. Ewww. That was a (relatively) minor thing, though I still want to hurt whoever wrote that, which really does seem like a "let's pee on genocide" bit. Otherwise, the AGS looks decent. Barely.

Austria - I dunno. I couldn't really find a use for this country. Seems OK.

Czech Republic - I'm sorry. Can I have whoever wrote this. I want to kill you.

It felt like this country just had to be special. Happy happy bright light Care Bear Stare. Nothing bad could possibly happen to the Czech Republic, apparently, because it's just special. :please:

Grating as hell. A useless setting as a consequence. Damn. And Prague coulda been so cool, too. :(

France - Urk. So much promise, but the reality is that I can't see France, portrayed as per the book, being at all a useful setting if the runner team is from outside France. Or the players, for that matter. Which is likely to be the case. Entirely too much is left unsaid. I can't put my finger on it, but it feels...incomplete.

More to come later.

Oh, and a side note. I've only had these books for a few days, but thus far, they've held up well to my abuse.

That is a good sign, compared to earlier books, which hardly lasted very long.