Shadows in Focus: City by Shadow: Butte is out!, New PDF Options

[hermit]

Ever wanted to run in a place where the sun doesn't shine? Is Butte the arse end of nowhere, or a well-hidden gem? Well, now you can find out, with this new Shadows in Focus - Sioux Nation PDF.

[Tecumseh]

Does anyone know how these things are priced? I'm seeing $8 for 21 pages on DriveThruRPG. In comparison:

Aetherology - $8 - 39 pages
Assassin's Primer - $5 - 17 pages
Bullets & Bandages - $5 - 23 pages
Cheyenne - $8 - pages unknown but 4x the MB size of Butte
Sioux Nation - $8 - 39 pages

Are all setting PDFs $8 regardless of their length? Because this one looks a little thin when compared to Cheyenne and Sioux Nation. The page count seems more in line with the $5 offerings.

[hermit]

Cheyenne is 43 pages.

[SpellBinder]

Chip truth, arse end of nowhere. Honestly this is one of many places I never expected to ever be detailed in Shadowrun material.

[Grinder]

Get the PDF here.

Dangers Below
One of the tricks of shadowrunning in the Sioux Nation is keeping your eye on the things you can’t see. It’s not just the spirits and the unseen magical beings of the world—though that’s part of it—but the dangers underground. The poisons seeping into the earth from abandoned mines, and the vast complex that has been built underground, out of sight of the rest of the population. A spot where money flows and the sun never shines—what more could shadowrunners want?

Butte is an addition to the Shadows in Focus: Sioux Nation series, detailing a new location for Shadowrun players, with character info, locations, background stats, and other game resources to bring exciting twists into your game. Dive into the unique shadows of the Sioux Nation and make sure you stay out of sight of the hidden dangers!

Butte can be used with the other Shadows in Focus: Sioux Nation books or all on its use, and is for use with Shadowrun, Fifth Edition.

[Wounded Ronin]

I'm waiting for the Muncie, Indiana sourcebook. SHADOWS OF BALL STATE.

[Tecumseh]

Hermit, did you like Cheyenne? Did you buy Butte and/or like it too?

[nylanfs]

What about Elkhart, Shadows of The RV Industry!

[hermit]

Hermit, did you like Cheyenne? Did you buy Butte and/or like it too?

I liked Cheyenne. I think I even wrote it an review? Ah no, I did not. Might buy Butte too, but it has half the page count at the same price. , so I'm kinda unsure. Plus, the place has 35000 population? And I was mocking the second Germany SB for the Shadows of Smallville ... well, I guess I'll see when I'll eventually buy it. Pegasus wants to publish all the SiF - SN files in one print book, anyway.

[Tecumseh]

I really liked Sioux Nation, enough that I was considering Cheyenne simply off the strength of the previous offering. I'd be tempted by Butte if it weren't for the price/pagecount mismatch.

[hermit]

Same. Well, we'll see once my account doesn't look as anemic as it does now. at the latest when Pegasus' Sioux Nation book comes out, I suppose.

[Sendaz]

It's interesting.

If you are looking for a lot of crunch, all you are going to see in that area is some area related Life Modules along with some new Entertainment and Lifestyle options.
No new gear, though it might not be a bad idea to scoop up Parageology so you know more about some of the minerals they are talking about in it, but it's not critical if you don't.

So if your main ride has four legs, you can get the point cost for maintaining it, ie Stable.

It is pretty much a Fluff setting piece which is fine.
Obviously mining and minerals are part and parcel of the area so a lot of the stuff relates to it.
The bit about downsizing a massive BGC from being kilometres across to just being mere tens of meters around the source area was interesting, but probably not something the runners will really make use of.
Otherwise it is to the point, from the Mining operations, to underground living, to the various groups and criminal factions at play there.
With 7 out of the 21 pages to this you get a few tasty locations to pepper in any adventure you might throw in here.

Nothing in the way of statted NPCs, but several of the groups mentioned do bring up a person of interest in the group descriptions and few stats otherwise.
So you may see mention of minor power sites, but no ratings to go with it outside of the one spot for BGC mentioned above.

It could have been a little longer maybe with more location spots / personas, but it would not take a lot to slot this into any adventure a GM might want to do in the region, just flesh out some details/stats to fit your campaign/power levels/style and go.

On a side note: I was a bit disappointed that the MADA's Butte AeroTec facility did not get mentioned at all as a possible point of interest.
So maybe it's gone, though maybe it got bundled into their testing area as the hybrid rocket tech would make for a neat run onto itself for runners to procure for the Johnson.
You have to wonder if the guys at MADA who came up with their name weren't tipping the hat a bit to the old FASA AeroTech.

If you are down that way and you see something that looks like oversized power armor stomping around with Butte(L)Tech stamped across the front, be very afraid. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[lokii]

Is the main focus that Butte is a stop on the Big Sky / Long Weekend smuggling route between Seattle and St. Louis?

[hermit]

No, it seems to be that Butte is a mining town that mines magical radicals as well as more traditional ore, and that Butte has a lot of inhabited caverns. Smugglers are a factor in the book, but not the focus.

Bought it. Full Review incoming. Maybe I'll do one for Cheyenne too.

[Tecumseh]

I'll bump this, mostly because I'm interested in a full review for Butte and/or Cheyenne.

[hermit]

Butte - a full review

Okay, read it through, and I have to say I'm a bit torn about this. Let me explain.

Shadows in focus: Sioux Nation: City by Shadow: Butte is the rather combersome title of a PDF supplement that details the mining city, Anglo reservation and Sioux Nation location Butte, formerly of Montatana. It details underworld, city layout, major players and corporations, local peculiarities and locations. It even has a map that is useful, which puts it ahead of nearly any city book CGL has published so far. Given Butte's size (it is a 65K people town, so there's just not much of it to go around), the town is handled differently from a larger city or a sprawl, which is nice. It also has some Midwest classics like a conflict between state-level (there is no federal level in Sioux Nation after all) land management and an Oath Keepers-ish redneck militia, there's T-Bird smugglers, Lakota, Koshari and intrusive Vory mobsters everybody hates (hello Red Dawn!).

Butte has five neighbourhoods - Cabbage Patch (the local Barrens low-income, impoverished and unmaintained neighbourhood, with sinkholes galore), Granite (corporate and miner quarters, and Montana Tech), Platinum (Old Town and what passes for historical buildings in the American West), Emerald (Native American Upper Class), Butte Below (underground settlements populated by Anglo militiamen) -m and each is detailed with some sites and a description, in the usual stye for shadowrun city books. Pretty neat, gives some lighthouse locations but leaves enough space for GMs to design their own stuff.

Crunch-wise, this book contains new Lifestyle modules for local stuff (such as members of Butte Gangs, a Miner background ect), and new lifestyle opotions like the ever popular escape tunnel (Which is in this file why? It should maybe have been in Run Faster?). there's also a few sample lifestyles.

All in all, despite the relatively low page count, I feel not cheated of my money. However, I feel torn about this. On the one hand, it's a nice setting and personally I have been pining for something outside the four locations always covered in North America - something outside the UCAS to boot. On the other hand, there's still no comprehensive writeup of Miami - all we have is Shadowboxer extracts, and those only carry you so far. And what is going on in this densely populated wasteland called the Boroughs and New Jersey that surrounds Manhattan? Nobody knows! But now we know what goes down in, around and under Butte, formerly MT. I don't know if that's the right priorities to set.

However, that's not to say Butte isn't a useful file if you want to set a run outside the sprawl. It's totally useful for that, either as a setting or to give ideas about similar settings (which is how I will use it, myself, in my games). I'm glad to have it and, priority issues and Miami and Boroughs-New-Jersey aside, it's a decent book.

7/10

[Sendaz]

Hopefully they keep with the same style of writeup and apply it to other regions like the aforementioned Miami or New Jersey area because those would be awesome if done in this same vein.

[hermit]

I actually have whatever I could get for New York New Jersey in a file (mixed with a bit of Gibson and CP2020). However, that required combing through all the Nyx Smyth novels.

[Deckbeard]

I've been thinking. What if the Havana write up in Hard Targets means they might be moving the Shadows in Focus series to the Caribbean League next. Could be pretty awesome.

[hermit]

Well, that would be awesome. Though from the Jackpoint pages I seem to remember the next SiF book being San Francisco, so it's probably California. Oh well, at least it's alifornia outside LA. Been quite some time since we heared of that, too.

Still. Miami. NYNJ.

[Sendaz]

I see in the Incoming section on Boundless Mercy they mention this:

Welcome to the party. [Tag: City by Shadow: Metropole]

Upcoming location piece?

Edit: Found a comment by Backgammon on Reddit dated a few months back about this being a sourcebook.

If so, it should be fairly hefty just by going by the sheer size of the sprawl it entails.

*keeping fingers crossed*

[hermit]

Yeah, that piqued my interest too.

It also mentions the Seattle Gambit, which sounds like a new enhanced fiction.

[Sengir]

I always thought that Amazonia sounds kinda cool but lacks solid details, keeping my fingers crossed...

[tisoz]

I'm waiting for the Muncie, Indiana sourcebook. SHADOWS OF BALL STATE.

KODT influenced?

[JanessaVR]

I'm still wanting some PCC books. That's the #1 area of the Sixth World I'm wanting a closer look at (the NAN books are rather old at this point). The Sioux Nation is kind of "meh" for me.