He's an ork. Among other things.

I got mine from my local gaming store this past week.
I really like the book so far, nice cover art, good selection of artwork inside , and great setting information.
My only wish is the following: I wished they had added a map for each city they covered.
IMHO I would have felt fine to see a couple less artwork and a few more maps when I first opened the book.
Good job never the less.

Indeed. It's kind of hard to lead a permanent revolution when your race has an average lifespan of about 40 years and you were pushing that back then. He struck me as someone who'd best be used as a martyr for the revolution.

Leonization is so wonderful...

Indeed. But he'd be more useful dead.

Picked up Runners Havens at Compleat Strategist yesterday. Can't wait to go though it.

Ordered it via Caiman/ Amazon a few minutes ago and will have it at the end of next week. Finally.

Got it. Havn't read it yet. Might post more...

Hooray. Maps. Including Hamburg. Thanks FanPro.

Finally got some time to read through the HK section of Runner Havens. Overall excellent overview, plenty of information to make a good setting.

Some things I would add to enhance the feel of being in a different city and culture.

Population density is very high. Some examples of what this means. It's perfectly normal for a Central city street to be filled with thousands of people on one block. There will be even more people at a major department store sale. Think of the most crowded event you've been to, it's that crowded somewhere on the streets of Hong Kong every single day several times a day. For Runners this means that crowds of innocent bystanders are part of the normal operating conditions.

Conversely, there are parts of Hong Kong that are within touching distance of a street or buildings, yet it's likely you won't see anyone walk around in there. Simply because there isn't a cement path to walk on.

The huge population density also leads to some interesting traffic patterns. For example the South side of the island has beaches that are practically deserted during the week, everyone is working, but on weekends you literally could not find a spot to put down a towel. It's amazing to look down at the beach and not be able to see any sand at all. Next, there's one road to the beach from Central, very few people own cars, imagine the continuous lines of buses and the bus lines to take people back and forth from the beach. This is pretty much at every beach for every weekend of the summer. Including remote islands.

Moving around. You do not generally use cars, lots of public transportation available. Parking can be an incredible hassle. You do not generally just park on the street. Implications for Runners is that you need to carefully consider the value of having a vehicle and using it.

Urban environmental features to highlight. Raised pedestrian walkways. You've seen city elevated highways to ease traffic flow through a city, well in Hong Kong they have raised pedestrian walkways so you can walk for miles without needing to worry about stopping at a crosswalk to cross the street. Convenient steps every block leading to street level. But you don't need to use those, because most buildings have mezzanine level shopping, no need to go down to street level ever again! Speaking of buildings, most downtown are bottom couple of floors are retail, upper floors commercial and basement levels are retail. From Central all through Wan Chai you can travel at Mezzanine or basement level fully covered and air conditioned comfort. That's miles and miles of interconnected buildings on several levels.

Some events not mentioned that are interesting.
- Dragon Boat Festival
- Bun Festival
- Chinese New Year... it's different than western new years.

I'm surprised the Peak Tram was not mentioned, and Temple Street only got mentioned once in passing.

Expatriate community is a small but important part of Hong Kong, mostly because of the relative concentration of wealth. There are a lot of clubs for expatriates, HK County Club, HK Golf Club, HK Jockey Club (Where retired HK race horses go....) America Club (Horrible US food for those that miss it.). There are lots of expat schools, English, American, Swiss/German.

One club not mentioned is the Correspondents Club, where a lot of the media that covered the various south east asian conflicts used to hang out, probably be an interesting location to use for runners. (Lots of spooks used to hang around too, either as media, or to pump the media)

Very well-informed feedback, DireRadiant.

The Dragon Boat Festival, Chinese New Year, Peak Tram, and Temple Street were all going to get sections in my original sketch of the Hong Kong section, but just couldn't be fit when it came down to word count. I am, however, in the process of setting up my website and there will be additional non-canon information posted there. Likely including those sections.

I tried to reflect some of the nature of the enclosed walkways in the Splendid Dragon Path, which is basically a cross between a walkway and an arcology. It's the Mid-Levels Escalator on steroids.

This seems the best place to bring this up. Any idea on an eta for Runner Hvaens in the UK my flgs hasn't seen hide nor hair of it yet.

Please help I really want that book and Street Magic...

It's in stock at both Leisure Games, and Orcs Nest, so it is available.

Other holiday that I wished was in there is the one in the Fall where you pay homage to the deceased. You burn paper money and leave food out for the spirits that are said to come back to visit. I remember when I was there visiting my relatives and I burned a few. More elaborate things would be to burn paper construction of cars, houses, servants, etc... Just add a twist with the SR world and magic/spirits and voila. Something very fun.

edit: Ah, here it is: the Ghost festival http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Festival

another edit: About the dragonboat festival, an interesting aspect is throughout the world there are dragonboat races in places such as Atlanta, DC, etc... Groups (some are basically company sponsored) compete in the local area and then there is a US final showdown in NY. The winner from that would go on to HK to compete. I can see this happening especially with many multinational companies 'sponsoring' boats (AT&T in Atlanta is a perfect example, the team is virtually all employees and they spend months training for it) along with hosts of organizations also sponsoring teams. There's some run potential I see for this, especially with teams that are going to HK for the bragging rights of winning a dragonboat race.

I picked up 'Schattenstädte' last week as well, but sadly had little time to read yet. At first glance I like the art much better then that from SR4. Oh and I was positively surprised to read a sidebar about the X-change, while I was riding the bus today - this 'group' was one of my fafourits from the 'Target:Matrix' that I liked very much in general.

Otherwise I can only say so far:



I like how many references to old SR books (as old as 1st Edition) I have picked up on a quick glance allready

Got the book, looks nice, Carracas had a nice feeling. Haven't read much more yet. The fluff pieces are a nice touch.

What the hell happened to ol' Juan (won't even try to spell his last name)? There's been hints about him for a long time, and now he's written out without much info. Or is he really dead? I'm also pretty disappointed how badly they've handled Tir Tairngire. Man, I sure do hope that these small crumbs of info aren't the last we hear of them.

This information comes from SoLA, but I think I'm free to post it because we've made references to it in other books that have since come out.

Juan Atzcapotzalco was killed in a terrorist bombing attack on the peace summit meeting between Aztlan and the Yucatan. Also killed in the bombing was the shaman who was overseeing Teo­tihuacan (I believe it was Teo­tihuacan, I forget the shaman's name right now, he's in T:AL). The feathered serpent Dzitbalchen was implicated as being the mastermind of the bombing by Aztlan authorities. Dzitbalchen went into hiding but was eventually handed over to Aztlan by the feathered serpent Pobre (now the provincial governor of the Yucatan). Dzitbalchen was sentenced and executed for his crimes, marking the first state execution of a dracoform.

I'm sure I read it elsewhere too.

Indeed. I know I've seen references to the summit bombing before.

I'm so sure I read about the bombing in SOTA:2064, but I don't have it here to look into it.

edit: typo

Had a good day so far?

Where's the

In the German-only Almanac of the Sixth World. Or something like that.

Feared so. Hoped it was available online.

I'm still a bit disappointed how this mystic might-have-been-a-cyberzombie gets killed seemingly easy.

As for the chapter about Seattle, I liked the ACHE-project, though it sounds a bit ridiculous that such an expensive piece of real estate gets turned into a "housing community", dude, who wants a goddamn prison on Renraku avenue? But the idea is kinda neat, plus the fact that they left the upper stairs with this mystical vibe. Any guesses what's up there?