Thoughts about Vice, surprised nobody else has gotten to this yet... Options

[Jaid]

the bad: vice is a little bit sloppy on the editing in a few places. there's a few repeating paragraphs (i can recall noticing 2, specifically, where it repeated the entire paragraph) a reference to page "XX", a few places where it said something along the lines of "it isn't <something>, it's <the same something>", and such, getting names mixed up. also, there's a place where it talks about lone star being the police force in seattle when the context places it after the switch to KE as law enforcement.

also, there is an abrupt change from shadowposts intermixed with shadowtalk to "this is OOC RPG book material" with no notice that felt really out of place...

the good: overall, it reads well. apart from the stuff i mentioned above, the editing is pretty solid, the material is laid out in a fairly orderly manner. i didn't notice much in the way of internally inconsistent comments, and we get a hint about what happened to dragonslayer (an old shadowtalker who didn't make it to 4th, for those who don't know). since i haven't noticed any previews (i expect that will change eventually though) i'll give you a chapter-by-chapter summary.

Crime Pays: starts off with the basics about different kinds of crimes; what they are, how they're done, and most have a "do-it-yourself" column attached to them to give you an idea of how it might work on a small scale. It then goes on into a discussion of the major syndicates; the mafia, the triads, the yakuza, the vory, and the ghost cartels, each with a specific example of the organisation structure in addition to generalised information. specifics about certain branches are sparse, if they are even present at all; this is not a detailed breakdown of crime syndicates in seattle or denver or any other city, it's more of a worldwide overview.

Ethnic Syndicates: discusses specific organised crime groups that are not quite as global as the above. for those who missed them above, this includes the seoulpa rings (including a few specifics about the komun'go; for those of you who have emergence, but don't plan to pick up vice, the short version is that they're still around, including Kaz Yakamura, so far as the shadows know, but that the yakuza are now aware of their existence and would be very busy killing them if they weren't so busy having a war with the mafia. the komun'go have lots of cash, but little manpower, and are likely to be hiring a lot of independants as we as trying to expand their numbers, of course). it also includes the koshari (for those who used the old denver missions extensively, this may be useful but is not required), the fanti pirates (off the coast of africa), the zobop (caribbean area, basically voodoo organised crime groups), the kabul maffiya (afghanistan region), and the grey wolves (turkey, greece, the balkans; parts of europe and the middle east, basically).

Gangs: starts with an overview of the relative power of certain gangs, split into three tiers. tier one is basically international gangs. tier two is large gangs that are not international. tier three are the rest of them. again, this is a global look at gangs, not for a specific city. it then talks about specific gangs as examples of the various tiers; tier one includes the Ancients, Comando Verde (mostly based in metropole), Chaos Engine (a matrix gang), the Yardies (london and parts of europe) and the cutters (added by someone other than the main shadowposter). tier two includes the Ardientes (Los Angeles), the Vikings (scandinavia), the Cocotona (Aztlan), the Numbers gang (mostly prison-based gang in Azania), and the First Nations (seattle gang, allied with the komun'go). Third tier covers a lot of gangs, mostly by type; go-gangs, matrix gangs, turf gangs, wizzer gangs, theme gangs, etc. specific examples are given, mostly not very in-depth, which i won't specify here.

Other Outfits: basically non-syndicate organisations that are more specialised. specifically discusses organleggers (there are 3 major organisations worldwide, by the way), crackers, fences (who apparently have a global VPN sorta thing going on), and a few smaller players (babel network; ID forgers, caduceus; street docs, chimera; assassins, hubbard's crew; kidnap and ransom, in-secure; security company that hires shadowrunners to test defenses, ya'mas; small-scale rogue military group, bang & stick; weapons trafficking, and technitions; distractions.

Dangerous Minds: dealing with independants. the only ones you're likely to recognise are Kane, and Netcat adds in Slamm-O (in a rather non-complementary manner, of course). Teachdaire sounds familiar from somewhere (a specially-invited shadowtalker? maybe in fiction somewhere?) and snowbird is also on the list, and is one of the shadowtalkers for the vice book.

The Law: basically discussing crime and related punishments, and how they can vary from place to place. specifically talks about extraterritoriality and what that means for the average 'runner. also discusses various law enforcement organisations, including lone star, knight errant, wolverine, and the PCC police, scotland yard, and the neotokyo police.

Game Information: frustratingly, there is not so much as a chapter heading for this chapter. one moment, you're reading about cooperation and lack thereof between different law enforcement agencies, and then on the next page it's suddenly no more shadowtalk, just an abrupt transition to giving advice about how to incorporate the material in the book. while it's handy to have, some sort of visible separation beyond the sudden change in tone of writing would be nice. this is the only chapter not to include a short story at the start of it, though it's hard to know if that's deliberate or not (it would make sense, since it's hard to write a piece of fiction dealing with incorporating the setting information into your specific games; but on the other hand, it could just have wound up in the same place as the chapter heading).

also, there is no index in the PDF as far as i can tell; presumably, there will not be one in the book either.

[hahnsoo]

Teachdaire's old school entry is in "Prime Runners", page 89. He's a Caucasian elf assassin (Cybered Adept) who is known to be preternaturally fast. I'm not sure if this is the same person (until I get my copy of Vice), but I'm willing to bet it is.

[Mercer]

Yeah. I had an old GM who treated "Prime Runners" as if it was the only source of NPC's in the game. Teachdaire was something like a Grade 10 Initiate. Heck of a first run.

[Starglyte]

Thanks for the overview. Waiting for my books to arrive in the snail mail. Any setting info on what cities are mob run?

[Jaid]

Thanks for the overview. Waiting for my books to arrive in the snail mail. Any setting info on what cities are mob run?

not too much about specific cities, mostly it talks about regions where they have power. in general, most anywhere in those regions will have a mafia presence, though of course it's a question of how strong (likewise with most of the big guys, actually). some specific cities are mentioned, however. i can try and dig up the specifics for you later, if you'd like... got something else i'm trying to track down atm.

[Aaron]

The Game Information chapter had a vignette in front of it at one point. Not sure what happened there, but it does exist. It may have been cut to be used elsewhere (I hope so, anyway, I kinda liked it).

[Starglyte]

not too much about specific cities, mostly it talks about regions where they have power. in general, most anywhere in those regions will have a mafia presence, though of course it's a question of how strong (likewise with most of the big guys, actually). some specific cities are mentioned, however. i can try and dig up the specifics for you later, if you'd like... got something else i'm trying to track down atm.

Thanks for the info. No need to since I got the books coming in the mail sometime next year, so I can look it up myself when they get here.

[Adam]

The Game Info chapter lacks fiction for space concerns; the book was running a little chunky. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Ancient History]

Ah, man. I was gonna kill Teachedaire and let the players steal the magic ring from his corpse. Dang.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

They surely can invest those 24 karma into something more useful.

[BookWyrm]

So....I should wait until the print version comes out, so the editors can fix these errors? (BTW, when *is* Vice hitting the shelves?)

[Method]

Ah good ol' Teachedaire. He was probably my favorite NPC from the Prime Runners book. I think I used him once years ago and my players are still scared to death of him...

[Adam]

So....I should wait until the print version comes out, so the editors can fix these errors?

We'll issue an update to the PDF for all buyers.

(BTW, when *is* Vice hitting the shelves?)

When the date on the calendar is equal to the street date that we have not yet announced.

[Jaid]

hmmm... ok, i'm having a little trouble tracking down the misplaced paragraphs i mentioned earlier. i've been asked for their specific location if possible, and i'm starting to think it may have been just my eyes playing tricks on me (though i've found a few nitpicky spelling errors and such elsewhere, nothing that really detracts from the product on the whole).

so, if anyone does find a repeated paragraph (i thought there were 2) or a misplaced paragraph (i'm a bit hazy on whether the one i noticed was one of the repeated paragraphs or not), could you post it here? and until someone can find a specific location for those errors, assume that i was just delusional i guess =S

@ Adam: could we at least possibly get a chapter heading of some kind? also, any chance of the fiction getting posted online (here or on the shadowrun4.com website?)

(on a side note: looking closer, the final chapter does appear to be in a slightly smaller font, in addition to not having anything to separate it from the previous chapter; if i'm not mistaken, the book is currently dead on 192 pages, which puts it at 12 groups of 16, with 16-page groups being the standard for bookbinding to my knowledge, so i guess adding the one page is unfortunately not going to work. which pretty much leaves the option of shrinking some of the artwork (which would be a bit of a shame, it all seemed to be pretty nice artwork to me) and then redoing layout of the entire book (i'm just gonna guess that at this point, Adam isn't going to volunteer to redo layout for the whole book though (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) ) i'm guessing you were faced with the unpleasant choice of either adding 14-15 pages or removing 1-2, and you picked the one that kept your costs (and therefore our costs) from rising?

[edit] wow, just reading through i had to go back and correct some spelling here... i think i need to go get some sleep (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) my spelling went waaaay downhill =S [/edit]

This post has been edited by Jaid: Dec 28 2009, 06:00 AM

[Adam]

Exactly -- it was either nip and tuck, or expand out to 200 total pages, and adding pages takes time and money, and sometimes, you just can't let be perfect be the enemy of good.

I am not *promising* any changes before we go to press, but in all cases when the PDF goes out in advance of the book hitting the printers, I'll see what I can do to accomodate reasonable and sensible requests. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Adam]

And ... there will be a revised Vice PDF, probably as soon as this week.

[Fuchs]

Possible

[ Spoiler ]

Kane got his girl out from the Aztlan prison (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) .

[Casper]

What sort of crunch has been included in the book?

[Cardul]

And ... there will be a revised Vice PDF, probably as soon as this week.

Um...Wow, that is fast. I have not even bought it yet, and you are saying
it might be revised when I can get it on friday?

[Adam]

Yes. Could my post have been made more clear? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Jaid]

What sort of crunch has been included in the book?

well, if you get the hardcopy, it'll probably be crunchy for the first little bit of chewing. then it'll get soggy and more spongey, i would guess.

(or, in other words: very limited. the only 'crunch' i can think of offhand is that the gang section has 'scorecards' for the various gangs that rate them on firepower (by category; ie matrix, magic, equipment, etc), manpower, professionalism, training, etc. there might be something else, but if there is, i can't think of it offhand; no new weapons, equipment, qualities, races, skills, spells, foci, echoes, or critters that i noticed, if that's what you mean)

[Zen Shooter01]

I haven't found any crunch, either, and I like that. There's plenty of great info on organized crime, and aside from the sloppy editing, I like it. It's given me a lot of ideas already. There aren't any rules in the book, but I say, good. Why clutter up the SR4A system with more and more rules scattered all over the place? V works fine the way it is.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

And ... there will be a revised Vice PDF, probably as soon as this week.

Great, thanks. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Nomad]

Overall, a worthwhile read. I especially enjoyed the DIY additions, but then again, I think I've been watching too much Burn Notice.

[Ancient History]

I know that feeling. (New episodes soon!)