Sup chummers,

Looking to purchase a setting sourcebook for a live campaign. Since a friend will be running Hong Kong, I am looking to pick up Corporate Enclaves in a week or two. Tokyo and the City of Angels are two of my favorite cities in the world and the prospect of running in Neo Tokyo and LA is def intriguing. Trolled around the web and the only review I found was a poorly written negative one scribed by a angry fanboy/gamer.

Anyways I could use some thoughts, experiences, and opinions on this sourcebook.

Thanks in advance.

-SA, aka a laid back SR GM from North Jersey.

I've found the setting books to get better each time, so my current fave is the Feral Cities. There is good info in all three, but I really like the grittiness and the overall mood that gets struck in Feral Cities. The LA write up was good for me as well, because it kind of kept pointing back to the uniqueness of the Shadows there. It had the sort of cohesive theme that I really enjoyed with the write ups of cities like Lagos. I base my game in Hong Kong, and I like the info in the book, but I felt it jumped around a bit without giving the reader a "real" feel for the city. Some GM's want more "stuff" in their cities like clubs, targets, etc, and I definitely concede those things are important. But I'm very comfortable making that crap up as I go along, so I want a bit more. I want the "feel" of the city. You get that a lot in the LA(Corp Enclave) write up and in the Lagos(Feral Cities) write ups. The Shadow Talk posts are pretty good in Corp Enclaves and IMO Friggin Awesome in Feral Cities.
As far as practical usage goes, I've only used the Enclave book for background on some of the Yakuza and MCT. I really like the info that it has on Horizon (LA), a mega that does things VERY differently than others. That has definitely got my evil GM wheels whirling with ideas.
For what you need/want I give you a recommendation to BUY.

Thanks for the feedback Tedio. Went over to the local gaming store after work today and put in an order for Corporate Enclaves.

As a GM I'm hoping that finally picking up a setting sourcebook will cut down on preperation time when creating adventures, add structure to the campaign, and improve improvisational skills. I'm a GM that flies by the edge of the seat and mostly comes up with stories out of my ass. On good days, making stories up in your head as the game moves on works. But on bad days sessions can be pretty lackluster running like that.

I found both the Neo-Tokyo and Los Angeles writeups in Corporate Enclaves to be good. At first I was annoyed by the LA writeup, as I felt it pushed the star culture and obsession with fame too far. However, having thought about it, and played in the setting a bit, I've come to like it.

Tokyo I'm a big fan of. To me, Tokyo is a combination of sort of the "standard" corporat enclave. It also does a great job illustrating what an actually functional city in shadowrun is like. All in all, I found corporate enclaves a good buy. While neither writeup was quite as alive for me as Hong Kong or Lagos, the book is worth it, and does a good job illustrating another aspect of the shadowrun setting.

I loved Neo-Tokyo. It was worth the price of entry for that. Los Angeles I found a lot harder to digest and too contrived to be honest.

- J.

My feelings are pretty much the opposite of The Jake: LA is contrived - in the same way that many of the great things in SR are (Atzlan, Tirs, etc.) - but Neo-Tokyo just fells dull and uninspired to me.

The Rotten Apple is far better done than anything you'll find in Corporate Enclaves. The most interesting part of Neo-Tokyo wound up on the cutting room floor until Ancient History posted it here, and the LA stuff is a mix of "natural disaster of the month" and the "extremely black trenchcoat and pretending to be pink mohawk" of the LA P2.0 scene. Neither gets enough attention to really be fully fleshed out.

Crap. Forgot about Rotten Apple. Should be running that one since it's in our backyard. There is probably no change that Rotten Apple is coming out in hardcover form.

I wouldn't hold your breath on it, no.

All of our PDF exclusive products are small enough that you can spend a buck (maybe 2) to print them, and put them in a binder. But, to answer your question, PDF-exclusive products will not be printed by CGL.

LOL.

Sorry, but I can't see how broadcasting your life as a runner - committing numerous crimes on a daily basis - over a public network works. I realise there is more to LA than P2.0 but that effectively taints all that I liked about that city writeup. FWIF I can envision it (I lived in L.A. for about a year).

- J.

That would be why they're called PDF exclusives?

Does this autobiography have to be about me?

I do need to buy that PDF...

- J.

Actually, Rotten Apple will be included in the German print version of Corporate Enclaves, together with an all-new writeup of Frankfurt.
Don't know if it will be published as a hardcover, but given the general approach of German SR publisher Pegasus Games, it may very well be.

I really have to agree with this statement, while I like the setting books they seem to be missing somthing. There just not as fleshed out as the old setting books. More then likely due to space issues. While I'm in similar camp as others there getting better as they go along. What I would really like to see is more story/setting info and less textbook fluff. Chicago did a good job at doing this.

If volume 1 of The Rotten Apple tickles your fancy, keep an eye out for volume 2, also a PDF exclusive.

Out of the three settings books, I enjoyed the write-ups for Lagos (feral cities) and LA (corporate enclaves) the most.

P2.0 and Horizon make for an interesting change of pace... I can just imagine a team trying to plan a run not based on efficiency, but what will get the most subscribers! Sure, it's dangerous, but more fame = more money, and for some fame is its own reward... Not all campaigns need to consist of gritty loners in trenchcoats.

Lagos was bleak as all hell but sufficiently different than the standard setting's bleakness to keep me interested. There's something interesting about the possibility of a city with no real governance as a setting; I think because it allows you to highlight the fun parts of a run and minimize the irritating housekeeping details of covering your tracks: admit it, sometimes you just want to blow the damn building up!!

I must admit that i didn't like Lagos that much.
Too close to the real-life situation in failed states for my taste, too little unique sixth world feel.
But then, YMMV on that matter.

IMHO, the most inspiring and useful text in the previous setting books was the one on LA, it did not only give a feel for what 2070 LA is like, but also had the highest density of plot hooks and really brought across what a GM has to pay attention to when running a game in LA.
I really got the impression that the whole writeup supported me as a GM and yielded productive insights on every page.
Plus, it constantly reminded me of cheesy LA-based movies such as Strange Days, Predator 2 and that godawful second Snake Plissken flick, which really helped to transport the overall mood of the setting and bring it to live in my mind.
Makes for the best gonzo pink mohawk location ever, even beats SR1 Berlin.

I have to add that other sections of Corporate Enclaves are almost equally useful.
As far as practical implemantation at the gaming table is concerned, Neo-Tokyo comes quite close to LA -i'd rate it on par with Lagos or Chicago, not as inspiring as LA, but it still transports what the setting is about and what makes it unique.
It's also vastly different from LA, calling for a much more subtle, legwork-heavy approach towards runs.
I also really enjoyed the Europort section, probably the most fascinating setting for a matrix-heavy campaign.
Unfortunately, it was very brief, so i'll have to do more personal research in the Rotterdam area, as i absolutely want to run a game set in Europort one day.

Favorite settings are going to vary from one gaming group to another, which is basically the idea behind the themed sprawl books. From what I'm reading here, that idea seems to be working as intended.

What if you like them all but for different reasons? Does that make you a freak?

No, it means you need to come to GenCon to say nice things to us.

Could you lot not come to Nerdcon 2009 in Hamburg instead? <.<
I had planned to write something for shadowrun. But work cut in and i got hit by writers block ._.

Quit selling out the hoodies before I can buy one and maybe that will happen.

Yeah, we need more SR Apparell!
Hoodies or something with the Logos of big Corps!
Or Dunkelzahn or something!
Or the SR1 to 4 Logos.
And the Dump-Shock-Logo!
Anybody know where i can get that in big enough so i can get a local shop to make me a one of a kind Shirt with that?

I can't be the only one who wants a good Saeder-Krupp Prime 2068 Annual Golf Outing polo.

Get there first and you'll have a chance at them!

Actually, I don't know what SR clothing will be at GenCon, but when I know, I'll post it in a blog on SR4.com. Because, admit it... you expect the lady of the SR crew to blog about clothes.

More or less, but we also expect the good looking chicks from SR Art to Model them . .
Yeah, no, won't be happening any time soon ^^

Finished reading the Los Angeles a few nights ago. It was an entertaining read. Like a previous poster stated, it certainly is a different type of way to look at Shadowrunning then what the majority is used to. Instead of being discrete and inconspicuous, the players if they are members of (P2.0), are encouraged to attract the most subscriptions.. This does not necessarily mean being destructive or loud, but encourages players to make the most out of life and their mundane missions. For example, should the character approach the hot elf bartender who is serving them drinks and could make a great future contact? Should the street samurai leap over to the next building in order to save the innocent bystander from being caught in the crossfire of the guard who is about to lay suppressive fire on the street below in order to hit another runner? The answer to this questions according to the Controversial Pito section is Yes!!

Aside from that. There are many other adventure seeds and plot points throughout the LA section of Corporate Enclaves. The various off island black cyber clinics located throughout the sprawl, the fact that the majority of SE LA is under water is now walled off from Hollywood and Downtown (Thus making boats aka the Slyph that much more important.) Treasure hunting in the Deep Lacuna for various technologies, bio weapons, ground breaking research that could have been buried under water by the Earthquakes, who knows what lies below? Horizon and there near perfect status and corporate structure, which sounds to good to be true (Universal Brotherhood anyone?). There are barricaded and high security air fields and research centers outside of the city, which could lead potential runs against air force bases and nuclear silos. And a freaking Azzie army just lying in wait in San Diego.

Los Angeles comes to life, outside of it's flaws. This past week our group ran a small run centering around the black clinic located under the Drowning Narcissus night club/eatery. The team went in search for a authentic eye of a cyclops that belonged to a friend of Simon Ciara (The flamboyent mongul who has purchased the majority of Santa Monica and has begun rebuilding it). My only flaw about Corporate Enclaves - LA is that I would have liked to see a better diagram map for the entire sprawl and a more detailed map of the various locations they pointed out in the book. The one map they give only provides for coverage of 50% of the material which was discussed.

But aside from that, LA was pretty good. Looking forward to checking out Neo Tokyo.

LA is rubbish, if you ask me. It should have been developed as a standalone gamed called Duke Nukem Forever - the RPG (and thus, it at least it would have gotten out somehow). Too bad 80s over the top action went out of style 19 years ago.

LA could also have made a nice netbook, akin to that 80s style vampire book. As one of two major sprawls in CE, it just blows. This could have been about New York or Paris, but no, we had to set up Rger Rabbit land. Oh, and also, lots of Horizon worship in there. Horizon - totally unFAILable! FAIL free! Hail to nonFAIL! They should it Marisoo Inc, or maybe WIN Corporation. Then at least it would not have to pretend to fit into the setting.

Neo Tokyo is disappointing in another way - it is too mundane. It is the way Neo-Tokyo always is. Check out any near-future anime and there you go. Pity FatCat seems to have disappeared, because the old, old JIS webbook had a notably more interesting view of SR Tokyo (especially the outcast squatter communities and the metahuman underground, and the yakuza-connected Secret Police). Not everything was different, of course, but the tone was a lot more ... enticing to play there. As such, Neo Tokyo is a bit bland, though by far better than LA.

Herm, let me ask you something. Have you played in a LA campaign yet? If you have, then your review is your opinion.

LA is a breath of fresh air from the typical Shadowrun cities. I would not want to keep a long campaign there. But I would be willing to throw my runners into LA for a story arc or a few missions to change things up for them. The write up gives you enough ideas to do so.

You don't have to play something before you form an opinion on it. We can judge it by how it compares to other things we like/dislike. Besides, if he's biased against it from the start, why should he waste time and effort on trying to game it? Game time is often too sparse to waste on such dead ends.

I agree. That's the same kind of nonsense response as "what was the last movie YOU made."

I tend to agree that L.A. has always sucked as a setting in SR, and this book made it worse--in part because I'm not a fan of Big Magic bullshit like the Lacuna. But I also think that Manhattan--being as it literally IS a corporate enclave--should have been the other major entry and not have to wait six months, a year, whatever for a netbook of what should have been in this book.

OKay. I can agree with having a dislike or like. But it's one thing to have an opinion. It's another to despise, call something rubbish, and completely trash the supplement without even playing it. There is a point when an opinion becomes something else.

And Martin. It's not "The last movie you made." It's more like saying "Have you seen the movie yet?." Or "Have you ever had a conversation with a gang member(RL) before labeling them as a cancer to society?"

Shadowrun supplements, especially campaign settings are meant to played. Whether you're sitting around at a table with a few friends playing pencil and paper RPG, or conducting either a voice based chat or post by post session. Yes. You can divulge some information from the book after reading it. But all I'm stating is to actually TRY a supplement before coming to the conclusion that it's terrible.

Ah, but we DO have that former situation. It's "have you read it yet?" And the answer would be "Yes." There's plenty to not like about a setting without having to waste one's time playing it; be it writing quality itself, recognition of specifics to that locality, originality or the lack thereof, internal consistency, consistency with other written material, functionality of the concepts presented, etc. Basically all of the various things that one can critique a game itself upon.

The latter is a nonsequitur. But in that case I'd like to respond that abstract qualitative evidence is as good or superior to anecdotal evidence. In that case, the abstract fact that they engage in armed violence generally and against "civilians" and are statistically likely to be involved in the illegal drug trade answers that question as "Yes" without the unnecessary anecdotal collection of information. This, in fact, is basically how debates about RPG mechanics are conducted where you can run the math without running a game. You can playtest, but thorough simulations are as or more effective uses of time when the goal is to break the system.

Personally, I've never run a game in L.A. Which is vexing that I can't put my personal experience living in the city to use. But the setting sucks. It's always sucked. The original writeup included such gems as turning an entire county into an amusement park, walling up entire cities within El Infierno, and basically coming off like it was written by a couple of sheltered UCLA students (the flagrant and repetitive Bruin fanboyism was sickening) who don't understand that there are dozens of municipalities in the L.A. basin and the city of L.A. is just one. They saw all the areas with dark people as being "bad" and wrote them off in a combination of ignorance and stereotyping foolishness. The current writeup isn't much better. Like I said, I hate Big Magic. So the idea that the fucking basin sank into the ocean is a non-starter for me. Everything else is window-dressing. Everything like the fact that Pito and everything associated with how it affects runners pisses in the face of decades of L.A. crime fiction and, more importantly, reality. For a regime so intent on realism they really fucked the pooch when it came to L.A. And going back a bit, how frustrating to me and pathetic in general is it that the canon setting is so bad it puts off people like me who've actually lived in Los Angeles? It's not alone. SR always seems to gloss over the stuff that I like about various cities. And somehow all the cool and interesting and boring things I've seen and done in L.A. are still on another planet from this one. At least R. Tal had the decency to make Night City.

But that is still beside the point because the argument is ridiculous for the reasons I pointed out in the first paragraph. If the setting's no good when you read about it, it's not worth the time to run.

Originally, that was the plan, but somewhere along the line that changed. Which surprised me.

You're joking, right? SR and realism just don't match up even when not speaking of magic or technology.

All of the setting books for SR4 have been kind of weak to extremely weak. And I mean that in a financial sense. They failed utterly. The format is certain to be abandoned. There probably won't be a Cities of Intrigue, and if there is that will be the very last book in that format. I would expect all subsequent setting books to be in a wildly different format one from another until they settle on one that sells well. So the insides of a book on Tir Tairngire or Mercenary Warzones won't be the same city survey crap they've been spooning up of late.

Which frankly is just as well. The Cities of XXX line has sold terribly because as game aids they just aren't very useful. The cities are unrelated to each other, the small writeups at the end aren't big enough to be used for anything, and you end up with a book where less than 40% of the book is actually on an area you intend to use. And that ends up not being enough information to really situate the city into a playable and comprehensible geopolitical reality. Even relatively good writeups like Hong Kong just don't have the depth to talk about the city's relations and trade agreements with other regions such that you could actually run getting into or out of that town. And that's the good writeups.

The fact remains that each of the books also has an extremely weak city as one of its major points. Seattle just didn't have the page space to get a new player up to speed with all the stuff that Seattle has got going. Hardly unsurprising when you consider for a moment that Seattle was the core setting of SR for 16 years. And for the same reason it didn't really have enough page space to give out enough new information to be particularly valuable to old players. Lagos and Los Angeles are less understandable. Los Angeles is bad because, well, it runs entirely around some frankly lame hype and some incredibly poorly conceived world ending disasters. Disasters which for lack of page space and forethought somehow have no impact on the rest of the world that they should also be ending. Lagos just forgot to include a reason why you'd care. Everything is shitty and there's nothing worth fighting for. That's wonderful, except that there actually is stuff in the world that is worth spying on and fighting over, so if none of it is in Lagos the player characters are jst going to leave. And that means that the whole section is wasted space.

"You guys are in Lagos..."
"We leave."
"What? But the adventure is in Lagos?!"
"No it isn't. There's nothing in Lagos that I want. So I'm leaving. I'm going to go to Paris, because I hear that they have stuff I want to steal. Also a good dental plan."

So basically any time you're looking at any of the Cities of XXX books, less than two fifths of it is potentially of any use to you. And none of them tie together in any way, so even if you have one that you want, you probably don't benefit in any tangible way from reading or owning any of the others. Which is why the market spoke against these books and why the future books won't be like them at all.

Corporate Enclaves is just like all the others. One of the cities is decently written enough and given enough page space to be moderately useful. In this case, it's Tokyo. The rest of the book is wasted space. Even the moderately useful city is written in a standalone fashion, which is frighteningly unhelpful in a game where you're supposed to be doing espionage and thus the political and economic interdependencies of a region are incredibly important. If you want a good setting book, I suggest Shadows of Asia, Shadows of Europe, or Cyberpirates. Cyberpirates can be gotten used on Amazon for as little as five dollars, making it a much much better buy than Corporate Enclaves.

-Frank

Can you cite any sources to back up your information on sales, Frank?

I don't freelance for Catalyst anymore, so I can't really say how the game plan has changed since the new developer situation, but the sprawl books had a limited run from the get-go. The original talk was five or six of them (and we've seen three so far). And I would have leaned towards the five, because the idea for the sixth one was a bit awkward for the format and intent.

I don't freelance for Catalyst any more either. But I do talk to them sometimes. Sales are apparently very bad.

Hardly news, indirect evidence from Amazon and similar distributors has indicated that for some time.

-Frank

I talk to them still too and I hadn't heard that. Though I'll admit I don't talk sales numbers with them very often.

I guess we'll see how it goes. I'm curious how you feel the format could be significantly improved (both in presenting the material and selling it).

What might help is if the cities were given more detail and the NPCs mentioned in the books have statistics and back stories. In other words if the style is more like Ghost Cartels or the old 2nd edition Vampire the Masquerade city source books (IE: 1st and 2nd edition Chicago by Night, DC by Night, New Orleans by night). Another campaign setting source book to possibly pattern a format after is the Legend of the Five rings setting "City of Lies (Ryoko Owari)" People spoke very positively about Ryoko Owari and the box set helped launch the L5R RPG campaign.

Doing that pretty much requires a one-city-per-book format, though. I wonder if that would actually sell better.

Seattle will be getting its own book again soon as part of the anniversary products, but that's Seattle.

EDIT: It's also worth considering that SR4 took a different direction in regards to setting NPCs and statistics. Those appeared in the campaign books (like Ghost Cartels) which are linked to the sprawl books as their settings. So the campaign books contain more information and statistics on NPCs in Seattle, Hong Kong, etc. as they pertain to the campaign.

Nice one about largos, frank, except there is a hole in it the size of a shadowrun.

Runners do not go somewhere because they want to go there, they go there because they run takes them there...

In the end, sales numbers are fluff vs crunch in nature. A book of pure fluff will have lesser sales by its nature, as its more a GM tool (and in the case of SR, people that want to keep up with the metaplots) then a players tool. On the other hand, books that provide the players with new toys, will potentially be bought by the players (mostly if the campaign goes on, and the players start to plan their characters at home between sessions).

Unfortunately, I think they are going to go a direction that I don't approve of that will fill me with rage. Granted, there are a lot of things that fit that description, but if they go through with what they were talking about going through with, I think that rage will be justified. I have no control over that.

What they should do is throw down books that are like sections from Cyberpirates. Speaking about a thematically and geographically linked region is just far more useful than anything they've been doing. A book about location should provide a potential campaign focus, as well as a solid point of view and a potential story arc where you could plausibly use the whole thing in a game. People don't want to buy a book where they know that 90% is going to be filler. Here are some examples of how that might throw down:

The Silk Road
"The crumbling barrens of metroplexes around the world are strangled by the ever present lure of zen and cruder opiates. Fiercely addictive, soul destroying, and incredibly attractive for people who cannot see a future of light and achievement - the legacy of the poppy is big business in the criminal undergrounds of every nation. Of every city. But while Mafia soldiers peddle heroin refined to medical purity and then cut a thousand times with who knows what on the streets of Rome and pre-measured hits of zen are dispensed by Jo Pok faces in Pyongyang, that's not where we're going. We're going to the source. To the remote mountains of South Asia where Persian and Burmese plantations grow the poppies where it all starts. We're going to The Road. The hidden refineries, the smuggling routes, the secret armies that get the goods to market. No one cares about the hit of smack you need to get through the day here. We're talking kilos. Tonnes.

The Road claims the lives of ten thousand people every year, but the money's too good and no one is talking about ending the war any time soon. From Rangoon to Tehran there are too many nuyen to be made, too many deaths to be avenged, for anyone to back down now. Welcome to the Opium Wars. What side are you on?"

So we've got a 128 page book, right? That's a multiple of 16 so it makes it cheaper on the publishing angle. We break it down something like this:

• Page 1-4: Intro Art, Index, Credits.
• Page 5-8: The Price of Apathy - a discussion of the business of the opium trade. Its costs and its profits. Give a page over to short paragraphs discussing the market for opiates in a dozen different cities. Discuss the human cost both to the massive casualties taken by the smugglers and growers and the human cost to the addicts whose lives are destroyed in every corner of the globe.
• Page 9: Full Page Picture.
• Page 10-15: The Price of Apathy Continued.
• Page 16-26: A Better Mousetrap - a discussion of the different levels of refinement in opium, the investment required to produce different types and the benefits of doing so in terms of ease of transport and value. Also a discussion of the practice of "cutting" and the dangers of overdose, resistance, and dependency.
• Page 27-35: All Roads to Rome: Getting to Europe The route, the dangers. Kabul to Tehran to Tiraspol or Belgrade.
• Page 36-39: All Roads to Rome: Kabul at a Glance A quick guide to the city of Kabul. Absolutely zero time spent on individual bars.
• Page 40: Full Page Picture
• Page 41-47: Kabul at a Glance Continued.
• Page 48-58: All Roads to Rome: Tehran at a Glance A quick guide to Tehran. Also no individual gyros joints detailed or mentioned.
• Page 59-60: All Roads to Rome: Landfall A very brief description of getting stuff into Tiraspol and Belgrade and out into Europe as a whole.
• Page 61-64: Lost in the Triangle: Getting Out of Asia The route, the dangers. Rangoon to India or the sea. Trying to get things out of the South East Asian warzone's "Golden Triangle".
• Page 65: Full Page Picture.
• Page 66-69: Lost in the Triangle Continued.
• Page 70-81: Lost in the Triangle: Dacca at a Glance A very brief glance at Dacca, again from the perspective of smuggling opium in. No business writeups.
• Page 82: Lost in the Triangle: Ho Chi Minh City at a Glance As above, but Ho Chi Minh.
• Page 83: Full Page Picture.
• Page 84-93: Ho Chi Minh City continued.
• Page 94-96: Lost in the Triangle: Landfall A brief discussion of the border controls in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Tokyo.
• Page 97-110: Chasing the Dragon A discussion of the factions involved in supply side conflicts.
• Page 111: Full Page Picture.
• Page 112-114 Chasing the Dragon: The Black Dragon A roster of the current troops and deployments of the Black Dragon Triad, a typical mid-level participant in the fight over opium resources.
• Page 115-119 Chasing the Dragon: The Thai Royal Guards A discussion of the Thai "government" and the deployment of soldiers to alternately assist and hinder the transport of Opium across their loosely owned territory.
• Page 120-124 Chasing the Dragon: The Hand of Allah A discussion of the forces of the NIJ supporting Hand of Allah and their military campaign to control more of the opium refineries in Persia.
• Page 125-127 Epilogue A short discussion on places to insert Shadowrunners into the chain of supply.
• Page 128: Full Page Picture.

Each book should explain itself in the very first page about how you could use the entire book in a campaign. None of this grab bag crap that tells you right away that you aren't getting good value for your money.

-Frank

Frank!
Where have you been old bean? O.o
Long time no see!
Good to see you again!
How are you doing?
You gonna come here more often again?

While I would personally enjoy writing a book structured along the lines of The Silk Road you suggested, I'm not really sure it solves the problem. I mean, some of the criticisms I've heard of the sprawl books to date are the opposite of the direction that this suggested format goes. There are many posts here on Dumpshock pining for the old little location blocks from the original Seattle sourcebook. Which I personally found entirely useless and you totally avoid in your format suggestion, but to play devil's advocate here, I could easily imagine that being a criticism of this suggested format.

Also, your setting books are built around an even more narrow theme than the current sprawl books. Which again, I think would be fun to write and fun to read, as the writer will get to really dig into the material (which I felt like I had the opportunity to begin to do with Hong Kong, but not fully realize). But, devil's advocate again, how many groups are going to feel they even need to bother with these settings? If they aren't going to have a campaign revolving around the drug trade (particularly the Asian drug trade), is any of the material in this book useful to them? Sometimes I wonder if the good reception for the Hong Kong material has been because it was a less narrow theme than the other sprawl books. Hong Kong, while being an interesting foreign setting, still fits easily into a lot of games because the "runner havens" theme broadly fits runners. Whereas corporate enclaves and feral cities might very interesting, but are not as easily used as the backdrop for a typical Shadowrun campaign.

And at the root of the question is understanding how Shadowrun groups play, which I honestly don't feel like the developers have a clear picture of (and to be fair, I don't feel I do either). Are GMs more likely to move their players from location to location around the world to follow a plot (whether it is Ghost Cartels or the Silk Road opium wars) or are they more likely to pick a home base and largely stick to it (the old Seattle model)? And how much can development direction influence the behavior of the customers: Fourth Edition pushed to make Shadowrun more global, but does that mean that GMs and players are actually doing that?

Sure. People purchase a book because it has value for them. More specifically that it has enough value for them to warrant the cost. Now the wider a net you cast, the more people it will have some value for but the less value it will have for any particular person. So you're going to see a curve where the more schizophrenic you make the book the more people would appreciate owning the book but the less they'd be willing to pay for it (because the value it would have to any particular person it had value to would be less). If the value people would have for it falls below the official price it will not sell. That is the case I think with the "cities of" format.

So yeah, I think that having a book about Drug Wars, a book about Human Trafficking, a book about Research Theft, and so on and so forth would be good. It would be good because each would have a high value to people that it had value for. That means that the people who wanted it would be willing to actually purchase it. But more importantly, because it would have a high value for people who intended to use it, it would generate positive word of mouth. That is, no one gives five out of five to Feral Cities or Runner Havens. In fact, no one even gives a review of Feral Cities or Runner Havens on Amazon because it doesn't make a strong positive impression on anyone. Corporate Enclaves only got one review and it was a two. Throw down a book that has a high value to interested players and you'll generate a pile of reviews - positive reviews. And that will drive sales better than anything else you could do.

A setting book has to carve out a potential market. And the "cities of" books don't really do that. A book like Silk Road, Freedom and Bondage (human trafficking), or War Zones (mercenary units) would have a well defined market. Remember that the most important demographic for identifying what the target demographic is is the target demographic. The people who would find value in the book need to be able to identify themselves as people who would benefit from owning the book so that they'll set money aside to buy that book.

-Frank

I'm still skeptical.

You lost me on the whole part about Amazon reviews. Amazon is pretty devoid of roleplaying book reviews aside from Dungeons and Dragons products. Even books in popular lines like Vampire get five reviews at best unless it's the core rulebook. I don't see even wonderfully written RPG supplements getting a lot of rave reviews on Amazon. I don't think that's so much the fault of book content or format than it is with how RPG books are sold and marketed.

I do agree with you that books in that format would have more value to the people interested in the topic. And to be honest, they will usually be more interesting books to those readers, because they will really focus on unique and deep material. But where I'm skeptical is that you can increase sales by making niche books in an already niche market. Even assuming that the book is deemed wonderful by the target demographic who is interested in the topic (which wouldn't necessarily be the case), will the opinions of those people make Joe the Random Shadowrun GM feel he needs to pick up the book for his group? I get a lot of great feedback from Shadowrun GMs and players about the Hong Kong material in Runner Havens, but the majority of those same people are still running their games in Seattle. Which leaves me wondering what would be more desired by the audience: a book about The Silk Road opium wars or a book about the drug trade in Seattle?

If you'd prefer, we can go to the RPG Net reviews. It's not a lot better over there. Corporate Enclaves didn't even get one there.

On the flip side, let's see what it looks like when someone puts a review up there of something that has a well defined niche - like Augmentation. See the stark difference? That's the difference between writing a book where people who want to use it are able to get a lot of value out of it.



I am living the stereotypical Prague lifestyle where I live in a classy abode where my neighbors make porn for "All Internal" and the police arrested me at gunpoint in the middle of the night from my flat so that they could take me to a prison cell and read me the results of a legal appeal I had made. Which were that I had won the appeal. Then they let me go again after signing and paying for 8 separate fees of less than 4 Euros each.

But I was posting here essentially to check that the account still works. I'm finishing up my board game, so when I get the torrent of it working, I'll be posting a link here.

-Frank

FrankTrollman, welcome back. Glad to know I'm not alone in not liking the new format - especially LA. I was feeling like I was the lone voice of dissention here.

Demonseed, I think Frank is saying that having a book dedicated to a theme (and ideally linked to a theme) and detailed sufficiently is what retains value. This is why books like Smuggler Havens and Cyberpirates were popular.

To me, it feels like these new location books are so chock full of fluff that it is of more enjoyment to the writer than it is of any use ot the GM. Sure they're enjoyable reading, but if they're not useful - either hard mechanics (new vehicles, totems, weapons, etc), new locations, maps, etc, then my work is still cut for me as the GM and I will feel less likely to buy them.

The main redeeming feature for me is a lot of these books contain cities I've never seen before or desparately want to see writeups on. I'm just missing out on the details. But Frank is right, Neo-Tokyo was the only one I felt that was reasonably detailed to be usable out of the book.

- J.