I read Runner Havens and then read New Seattle, big difference in quality Options

[Eleazar]

I have only read the Seattle part of Runner Havens and I must say it doesn't even compare to the wealth of information given in New Seattle. It is almost as if Runner Havens has expected you to read New Seattle first and then update you on the current goings on in Seattle. Reading New Seattle is just making things "click" more. Realize I am somewhat new to Shadowrun. I just feel one gets a heck of a lot more bang for you buck if you go with New Seattle, if Seattle information is what your in for. You will probably need Runner Havens still because it does assist in letting you know what is going on currently and has some nice tidbits. I haven't read the Hong Kong or other sections yet and am basing my judgment on the Seattle coverage, which is really the only place I play.

The biggest shocker of this is that SR4 is allegedly catered to the new player. I would like to know what their definition of new is. That section on Seattle is just incredibly lacking compared to New Seattle. It makes me wonder why they even did it. It seems like something they just decided to do to throw a bone to people interested in Seattle. Reading New Seattle is clearing up misconception I had about Seattle due to the Runner Havens section. There just isn't enough information to get a full view of the game world there.

Does anyone else feel the same way?

[JonathanC]

Yeah, Runner Havens was kind of disappointing as a setting book. The Seattle books have gotten less and less content-heavy with each new edition, really. The same can be said of the other "city" type books...compare The Anarchist's Guide to North America to Target: UCAS, and then to Shadows of North America.

[cetiah]

Yeah, New Seattle is cool and really helped me flesh out my campaign. From the comments on this forum, though, it sounds like its predecessor, Seattle, was even better. How weird is that? I gotta look for that book.

[emo samurai]

MUWAHAHAHAHAHAHA MY FLGS HAS A COPY AND I DON'T CARE TO BUY IT!!!!

[BishopMcQ]

Thanks Emo, if you wouldn't mind PMing the info to Cetiah or posting the info about your FLGS here so that someone who does want it can buy it, it'd be great.

Don't quote me on this, but my understanding is that books like New Seattle and Denver didn't sell quite as well as the other books in the line, which resulted in the transition. Corp Enclaves, Feral Haunts, etc will flesh out more cities in the same way that Runner Havens did, which I personally find more useful.

I can always come up with the name of a bar, but having a map and key players that i can use to seed a Mission with weeks or months before the runners get to that part of the campaign is helpful for me.

[SL James]

[Blade]

I always found that SR location books didn't give any info about what the streets looked like. You had the address of thousands of places, you had everything about politics but nothing about the city itself.

Runner Havens has a at least something about it, and that's why I found it better than New Seattle. It still lacks things like pictures of the streets and details that would help picturing what it looks like, but it's better than just a useless list of places.

[cetiah]

I liked New Seattle because it gave me a map of Seattle, described various areas in terms of their local history, residential and industrial areas and such. It helped me determine where my runners live and where the contacts live, and combined with Google earth (and the beautiful package some dedicated members here made for it), it's helped me to point out various mission sites and where they are in relation to each other. Most importantly, I have an idea where the AAA zones are and where the C zones are.

None of this may mean too much to you, but I was looking for three things from the book and New Seattle had the first two:

1) A way to describe areas of the city "as characters" with their own flavor, history, personality, etc.
2) A hard look at what I can do while only focussing in one small area, so that I can expand in new areas for future runs. I really wanted to promote this idea that the runners are "local" runners and as they get good they attract attention from employers in other, more prosperous areas.
3) A giant omni-map of Seattle that would help me conduct chase scenes. Sadly, this was lacking. But there are local territorial maps that are cool. You just got to mentally fix them together in your head.

[fistandantilus4....]

ONe thing Idid like from Runner Havens is that it had a map with a key/scale. 'Bought time. But I agree that it didn't give a full view of the city. May be because they're trying to pull the focus away from Seattle and make it mroe global, but I don't think it works well as a stand alone intro to the city.

[Blade]

Yeah, for sure the maps of New Seattle were useful, but now the Shdaowrun community Google Map has everything you need. ;)
They should just have written down the link somewhere in the book.

[cetiah]

[L.D]

Ah... the old Seattle book. Now it had some good maps... :)

[Cheops]

I have to agree that SR4 certainly doesn't seem set up for new players/GMs. There is a lot of backstory to read. Kinda reminds me of Battletech in the mid 90's. Problem is that nowadays you can get the old books for free by downloading them from other players. So now there is no reason to buy the old books. Kinda leaves the publisher in the bind since sales of reprinted books won't be great but sales of PDFs will be low too.

It still leaves the new player with the problem of having to read the old books to get a true feel for the setting as current books are mostly just meta-plot updates.

[Kesslan]

Well I think Runner Havens is ment really just to touch uppon specific areas. I mean look at say.. Neoanarchists Guide to Real life. It.. sorta touches on Seattle. But it's mostly about new toys and corp security measures.

It's just a book that adds a tiny bit more depth, rather than going into major detail. For that you can dig up the old books sure. And eventually they might very well make a third Seattle book that covers nothing BUT Seattle.

They dont really need to so much beyond updating existing info. But doing even that is a big job. You'd have to go through all the old books from SR1 to SR3. And I really do mean close to all of them. There's tons of info on Seattle thats scattered about in various books. And not all of that data shows up in Seattle or New Seattle.

Runner Havens however does do much what they did with Battletech. It gives you enough info on the location to easily setup a more or less proper game representation of the area. If you want more the info is there, you just have to take time to read it (Assuming you can find it). Anyone dedicated enough can eventually find that info one way or another, and it's not even that hard to do. Lots of the old books still floating about in pretty good shape.

[Mistwalker]

I don't think the sales would have been there for a new seattle source book. The amount of information that would have been updated would not have been worth it for most veteran players to buy the book, and a lot of us would have moaned and bitched about it too.

So, I think they did the right thing with RH, a bit of information, some new plot lines and away you go.

[Oracle]

The first Seattle Sourcebook had a lot more information about individual places than New Seattle. However I prefer Runner Havens because of it telling more about the "look and feel" of the city.

[Claw]

It's hard for me to compare Runner Havens, New Seattle an Seattle, cause they had different starting positions. We have to accept, that you have mostly old players, even if you start a new edition. So you can't fill a book mostly with old informations from previous editions with some additions in timeline. Old players (and so most players) would reasonably complain about knowing 80% and won't buy that book.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

[Eleazar]

[ChicagosFinest]

Seattle and new seattle rule over RH. It was like looking in the phone book and telling the best places to meet great and eat. That added to the "feel" of the city. It would have been nice to get info on sporting events, black marktet and smuggleing dens and more info about you know... CRIME.

There are a million and one things that runners can do because they are criminals. An outline should have been given about what types of crimes happen and how these opperations get started in the first place.

In the old books information was key and not just a general outline of events. At the time when i used those books it made things seem mundane but thats what made it realistic enough to belive runners lived in the YMCA.

[Brahm]

Keep in mind that:
1) Seattle is already far and away the most covered city in SR books, so as I understand it RH is suppose to be a refresher to update to current events.
2) New Seattle has more than double the page count of the Seattle section of RH. So having more detail is to be expected.

Personally I didn't get RH for Seattle. I got it for HongKong, and I do consider that well done for the 60ish pages it got. Sure it would have been better with 136 pages for Hong Kong, but such as it is. :(

What I really felt let down by is the 4 extra cities. Not by what was there, but I hadn't realized that those sections were going to as short as they are. Still glad I've picked up the book, on PDF. But even bumping the page count by 2 (basically doubling) for those extra cities would have been more than worth a few extra bucks for me. I would have even been happy to have them cut even deeper into the Seattle section to come with those extra pages.

[Demonseed Elite]

Well, New Seattle does have a lot more wordcount focused on Seattle than Runner Havens does. With more wordcount, RH Seattle could have gone into more depth on various aspects also. But the development goal of Runner Havens wasn't to just focus on Seattle. So it's a bit of a lopsided comparison if you're basing it solely on that. After all, you could say that New Seattle gives me zero information on Hong Kong. :P

I'd liked to have seen more maps in RH. Mike does a great job with the maps and I think you can convey a lot of information about a city from a good map. The one regional map/one district map decision was a dev decision so that's the way it went down, but I'd love to see more maps go up on the SR website at some point.

[Demonseed Elite]

[eidolon]

I think there might be a difference in how people are viewing the statement that it's for a "new" player.

The perspective being expressed here seems to be "I'm new, so I want to know everything that there is to know". I would say that the perspective being expressed when the books say "for a new player" is "enough to play the game and start liking and being interested in the world, but not so much that they feel inundated with so much information that they don't know where to start".

The SR world is pretty expansive, all books considered. There's way more information than will ever be used in most games (at least that's my experience and that of most everyone I've ever played with). I know from bringing people into the fold that the sheer amount of information can be overwhelming. My wife for example, the first time I asked her to play, said at first that she didn't want to because she felt like she was supposed to know "all this stuff" but didn't have time to read thirty books.

So I guess both perspectives are right, it just depends on what you're trying to get out of the books. RH can't possibly give you as much information on New Seattle, because then where would it put HK? Etc, etc.

[cetiah]