Feral Cities, A review Options

[Chrysalis]

Hi all,

Another review from me. This time it as you may have already guessed about Feral Cities. This review will be divided into three parts: Chicago, Lagos, and the rest.

Chicago was actually quite nice, it was nice that those of us who have never even played third edition get to read about a city where insects have gone amok and where the answer to all the city’s problems are special forces units in ghostbuster suits, leaving downtown Chicago with a supposed huge background count and Mad Max like groups around it. One thing that really stuck me was the different districts did not really mesh. They really did feel like they had just been plonked into the environment. So on one side we have mad inventors living in suburbia and on the other we have people who don’t shave with mirrors and make armor out of tires.

The most sympathetic character surprisingly in the Chicago section is the Lone Cockroach, who standing in front of a long abandoned kindergarten in only his raincoat you want to bring home make a cup of tea for and slather your younger brother in honey in the off-hand chance he accepts the offering.

Overall, Chicago was well written although I found that the ecology section did not really fit the book. I would have preferred on having more adventure hooks instead.

Lagos I have almost gone through. I started on it yesterday for a few hours and I have trying to read through it today as well. While fascinating in some ways, I did feel that it kept on going on and on. It was really you feel you have finally reached the end of the chapter and oh look you have another ten pages, and it doesn’t help that the chapter runs over the same material, just from different angles. Meaning that you have to read through another page of� look danger� before finding the important part about how actually dangerous drinking the water is.

So after getting bored with the text, I played a bit of a game. The word water or waterway can be found 96 times, which would mean with the law of averages be repeated at least twice per page. In comparison flesh and slavery combined only came out to 56, being repeated only once per page. I guess the moral of the story is don’t drink the water in Lagos and when you want sex go to the nation of Asamondo.

However, if you continue reading the chapter on Lagos, it does reward you being an excellent description of a chaotic town where everyone has their hand out. This is actually the first time Africa in any detail has been described and I thought it the real gem in Feral Cities.

The other urban wilds are Bogotá, GeMiTo, Geneva, Karavan, and Sarajevo, which are much more in brief with their descriptions.

I felt the idea of turning Geneva into a wild zone interesting as an intellectual challenge. However, considering how much of the world’s banking is located there, the sole international database for SINs, the United Nations, CERN, connection with Orbital Zurich, and being a country’s capitol. This attack would have effective for about 10 minutes before someone decided that the best way to remove the techno-menace would be several strategically placed EMP bombs. Switzerland having a populace that you will never see violent until someone takes away their money.

Karavan was an interesting concept, but I kept feeling that it was very similar to concepts from the 1980s of land cities in the mid-west of the United States.

The focus of the book really was on two cities, the conclusion of Bug City and the introduction to a new region through Lagos in West Africa. Ample material to pick from, Chicago was varied and a very different city in comparison with Lagos. The other urban wilds were useful, but not as immediately useful as Chicago and Lagos. I would have actually preferred on tighter writing with both cities so that Feral cities would balance it out with more information on other urban wilds.

The most negative thing I can say about the Feral Cities is that it lacks cohesion. I do not mind that they have decided to take cities and turn them into post-apocalyptic world visions. The problem I have is when there is no structure to each city.

To explain what I what I mean by a lack of cohesion, Lagos is covered in a general manner in the beginning, some of the outlying nations are covered in the middle, and then Lagos is again covered in a bit more detail at the end. This gives the impression of having three to four writers who were given the topic to write about, but covered it by going in slightly different directions. It also means that is hard to find references because you have to skim through the entire chapter for it. To be honest, I kept on thinking how Robert Young Pelton's the World's Most Dangerous Places not only was better written, but more short and to the point.

In short, if you want to buy a book which is specifically about Shadowrun and surviving the most dangerous cities in the world this is for you. However, if you’re like me who likes a better written, more balanced book with more cities, regions and adventure ideas I recommend picking up Robert Young Pelton's the World's Most Dangerous Places off amazon instead.

No I am not Robert Young Pelton.

[Ancient History]

The above post is brought to you by Robert Young Pelton.

Heh. No, seriously, its a fair cop. The organization is a bit uneven and chaotic because the locales are unregulated madhouses occupied by the criminal, the destitute, and the insane. As cheesy as it sounds to say "It is not a bug, it is a feature," the authors were trying to get across how very different these sprawls are comparable to places with working governments and utilities. The disconnect is in part because without any sort of restriction or regulation beyond "Come any closer and I'll kill you and sell your still-warm corpse to the ghouls for a ham," you really can have little enclaves of SCA rejects farming hemp and muttering "prithees" next door to a rape gang that provides them protection in exchange for food and clothing.

[Snow_Fox]

So it is out there? and Amazon's guess of Xmas '08 was not too far off?

[Grinder]

The PDF's already out.

[Ancient History]

The PDF is available, the hardcopy has not hit the street yet.

[Snow_Fox]

like SoLA?

[Ancient History]

No, SoLA exists in the realm known as "Development Hell." Feral Cities is actually already been released electronically, and has been printed, but I can't give you a street date on when it will be in stores because I am a Lowly Freelancer, and all Teh Knowledges rests with the people that handle that end of things.

[Chrysalis]

The above post is brought to you by Robert Young Pelton.

Heh. No, seriously, its a fair cop. The organization is a bit uneven and chaotic because the locales are unregulated madhouses occupied by the criminal, the destitute, and the insane. As cheesy as it sounds to say "It is not a bug, it is a feature," the authors were trying to get across how very different these sprawls are comparable to places with working governments and utilities.

Still I would have preferred even an outline than feeling like it is several sources and notes brought together. Maybe more signposting would have been useful.
I belive the Lone Cockroach must be the ""It is not a bug, it is a feature," you are referring to.

The disconnect is in part because without any sort of restriction or regulation beyond "Come any closer and I'll kill you and sell your still-warm corpse to the ghouls for a ham," you really can have little enclaves of SCA rejects farming hemp and muttering "prithees" next door to a rape gang that provides them protection in exchange for food and clothing.

Is this a reference to the movie Doomsday?

[Ancient History]

Not that I'm aware of.

[Chrysalis]

Fair enough, although it also involves SCA enactors and cannibalistic gangs. Worth looking at with friends over popcorn. They tried filming bits of it in Glasgow.

[Snow_Fox]

No, SoLA exists in the realm known as "Development Hell." Feral Cities is actually already been released electronically, and has been printed, but I can't give you a street date on when it will be in stores because I am a Lowly Freelancer, and all Teh Knowledges rests with the people that handle that end of things.

lol for those of us long time posters SoLA is becoming the lost grail, or the UB file before Missing Blood was published.
Until I can see the h/c I'm going to doubt.

[Grinder]

SoLA and Feral Cities are two different books, so where's the point?

[Snow_Fox]

the point is they are both nebulous at this momment in time and space. some have seen them many have not

[wusselpompf]

the point is they are both nebulous at this momment in time and space. some have seen them many have not

as far as I am concerned there is a difference between "I can buy the pdf at several online-stores, have it on my pc and street date will be 13th of january" and "nowbody really knows when and in what way it will be released, but we'll see someday" (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Wesley Street]

Worth looking at with friends over popcorn. They tried filming bits of it in Glasgow.

Or while drunk. It will probably make more sense this way. Herds of cows just down the road but the Glaswegians resort to cannibalism. A huge cache of fancy cars and equipment but we'll stick with bows and arrows and horses, thank you very much. This movie goes out of its way to not make sense.

[Prime Mover]

Honestly I don't know whats pulled me into this conversation. But honestly I don't ever see SoLA being released other then a bonus online pdf. Material is out of date and the format a thing of the past. If anything I see it being cannibalized for other projects or an nostalgic look back at material offered up. (IIRC it wasn't even finished edited/layout anyways)

[Mercer]

Or while drunk. It will probably make more sense this way. Herds of cows just down the road but the Glaswegians resort to cannibalism. A huge cache of fancy cars and equipment but we'll stick with bows and arrows and horses, thank you very much. This movie goes out of its way to not make sense.

Doomsday to me reminded me of that old quote by some wag or another, "It was original and good, except what was good was not original, and what was original was not good." That said, Doomsday is a profoundly stupid movie that I enjoyed immensely for reasons that the filmmaker both intended and did not intend; as mindless entertainment goes you'd be hard pressed to find anything as entertaining or as mindless.

Still, as a Shadowrun player, it's hard not to appreciate a movie with cannibals, knights, zombish diseased weirdos, cybereyes, big guns, special ops hit squads, and Rhona Mitra. I preferred to make a game of spotting which scenes were stolen virtually shot-by-shot from better movies. In a lot of ways, it was like flipping through a really awesome basic cable package. "Hey, it's Escape From New York. Hey, it's Aliens. Hey, it's The Road Warrior, and Lord of the Rings and Excalibur and Beyond Thunderdome."

All of this is going the long way round to saying that "you really can have little enclaves of SCA rejects farming hemp and muttering 'prithees' next door to a rape gang" is as good a summation of the "plot" (I use the term affectionately, but loosely) of the movie as anything I have yet read. Of course, so is, "the movie goes out of it's way to not make sense."

[Muspellsheimr]

the point is they are both nebulous at this momment in time and space. some have seen them many have not

Except the PDF release is always 2-4 weeks before the hardcover. Feral Cities is no different in this manner than Arsenal, Augmentation, Ghost Cartels, Corporate Enclaves, Unwired, or Runners Companion. Or any upcoming book, or as far as I am aware (I wasn't paying attention at time of their release) Shadowrun 4, Street Magic, Emergence, & Runner Havens.

[Demonseed Elite]

Honestly I don't know whats pulled me into this conversation. But honestly I don't ever see SoLA being released other then a bonus online pdf. Material is out of date and the format a thing of the past. If anything I see it being cannibalized for other projects or an nostalgic look back at material offered up. (IIRC it wasn't even finished edited/layout anyways)

Yar, it's already being cannibalized for other projects. Some material from SoLA appeared in Ghost Cartels.

[Grinder]

the point is they are both nebulous at this momment in time and space. some have seen them many have not

Feral Cities has been releaed. The PDF can be bought at the well-known online shops. The hardcopy version will come into the stores anytime soon.
SoLA on the other hand hasn't been released and probably never will.

[Adam]

the point is they are both nebulous at this momment in time and space. some have seen them many have not

As we announced when we released the Feral Cities PDF, Feral Cities has a Street Date of January 13th. It's printed, shipped to our warehouse, and in the process of shipping to distributors and stores over the next two weeks. If you want a copy on the 13th, give your local store a call this week and ask the to order a copy for you, and you should have no issues picking it up on that date.

[Daddy's Litt...]

Except the PDF release is always 2-4 weeks before the hardcover. Feral Cities is no different in this manner than Arsenal, Augmentation, Ghost Cartels, Corporate Enclaves, Unwired, or Runners Companion. Or any upcoming book, or as far as I am aware (I wasn't paying attention at time of their release) Shadowrun 4, Street Magic, Emergence, & Runner Havens.

Ghost Cartels is not out in hard copy yet either. SF is a little bit of a Luddite, she likes hard books.

[TW]

*looks at shelf* Ghost Cartels definitely is out in hard copy!

[Ancient History]

Yeah, Ghost Cartels is already printed and available.

[Grinder]

Ghost Cartels is not out in hard copy yet either. SF is a little bit of a Luddite, she likes hard books.

I fully understand that, but it's simply wrong to say that Feral Cities is not available yet and will suffer the same fate as SoLA.