Hopefully something about Feuerschwinge! After the tidbits they fed us with the SOX sourcebook I'm even more excited to get my hands on some new information

Oh, yes, that one was one of the most wished over on the german official board ^^

I just want to remind that ich hasse euch.

", dass ich euch hasse"
Happy to educate. ^^

I sure wish that I could actually speak (or even read) German, or was that one Russian?.

Es ist deutsche. Fatum was cheerfully telling Stahlseele how much affection he has for him...more or less. (No, I don't read it, but I know enough to get the gist of things.)

i'm afraid you might be a bit mistaken there.
you are mixing up jealousy with genuine liking.

Or I was being facetious. Hard to say sometimes.

Only if you construct the subordinate clause with German grammar, which I didn't because I'd typed "that" by the time I decided to switch to German :3
But in all fairness, Germans getting extras irks me. Means I have to wait for dead tree books from Europe.

i pity all of you who can't partake in the german extra chapters and books . .

I pity me too, sometimes.

Indeed... Thanks.
And I was at least aware it was German. It would have been utterly sad had that not been the case. Still sad that I cannot read it, though.
Nor can I read Russian, though I know a few who can. I am getting better at my heavily Russian accented English (TV Helps... ). At least it does not sound horrible any longer, though I still need to work on it some more.

The extent of my Russian accent is about the "Get moose and squirrel!" level....

Better than my "Doctor Heavy Weapons Guy"-level.

Just finished reading it in full, here's a short review.

I was disappointed by the intro story. Too forced, too Splinter Cell for my tastes, but that's a matter of personal preference, as is most of the following, apart from a few hard facts I'll present later.
The whole war subplot seems kind of forced to me. Kill campaigns against talisleggers and their associates are understandable, if a bit silly. After all, we hunt people who deal in human remains as well. You don't want the guy who's been drinking wine from your aunt's skull to live. However, this whole scorched earth business á la "I kill you and everyone who ever knew you"? Kind of over the top.
I also did not really get all the corporate connections with Seraphim and whatnot popping up here and there. To me, it seems like someone wanted to connect a whole lot of threads that don't really go well together, and the ensuing story lacks direction and a hard theme. The whole 'trickle down effects' chapter is a bit out of place in my eyes and doesn't contribute much.

I did like the short writeups as to what the Greats are up to these days, as well as the spotlight on what the drakes are doing (and I don't even like drakes ). The chapters about specific smaller dragons and the Sea Dragon were, in general, also well written and I enjoyed reading them, but .. Urubia worth 50 billion Nuyen + unspecified amounts? Bit much ... IMO.
The fiction was also fun to read. Meeting the old fellows again under these circumstances made me smile
Interior artwork feels very good, all in all

Now to the things I did not like:
- The cover. It's awful, at least as awful as that ork on the boardroom backstabs cover. Please don't use Zeleznik for cover artwork again until he gets back to his old quality
- The whole 'tools of the opposition' chapter. WTF? A drone that shoots smaller drones at dragons? What's the point?! I mean ... I get submunitions, but this concept screams "We need to get something totally abstruse into this book!" The chapter seems forced, overall, and not well thought out. "Why yes, there must be weapons against dragons. Let's have the shadowtalkers speculate some, while throwing buzzwords around" is my general impression of the ratio behind it. Consequently, the game information chapter is equally worthless, giving stats for that weird drone and spirit piloted t-birds without providing ... actual stats, what a spirit piloted t-bird can do. WTF? I once had a brainstorming with a friend. We forced a newspaper from 1887, a shitload of polish cigarettes, trolls on vespa scooters in the Siberian tundra, a porn collection, color-coded surprise grenades, awakened Yaks with cyberlegs and a nuclear submarine in one adventure, for no other reason than 'because we can'. This chapter is like that. I think, we were really drunk. Was this the excuse for writing this?
Also ... This drone is apparently magic resistant and has 2 more dice for spell resistance tests! I'm a bit foggy. Are those actually rolled by a drone?
Oh yeah. True drake BP costs. Equally useless, IMO, but for scalies surely a feast

- The spelling mistakes. Oh the sheer mass of typos in this book is so disappointing. My favorites: With one line in between, "Kaltenstein" and "Kaltenstien". I know, this is difficult for non native German speakers (or writers in this case) but at least choose one! Next: "Naheka did not formerly sever his relationship [...]" (after re-reading that sentence: ambiguous, but I still think that 'formally' is meant), 'much' instead of 'must', 'hordes' instead of 'hoards'. Basic stuff, really. It's right there in the context! It irks me that the quality control in CGL products has gotten THIS bad. It's comes across as a lectorate consisting of Word spell check, without even reading it. Work on it, please, guys. Minor nitpick: Harlequin's name is Caimbeul, not Caimbuel. It's gaelic for 'crooked mouth', but at least the spelling is consistently wrong in the final story

- The goddamn teleport. It's so "Dragons are special snowflake" that it hurts. At best it's a case of a dragon showing off what he really shouldn't be showing off (no, Peri's special levitate spell does not suffice as an explanation for this shit), at worst it's an author who got his ideas about SR from the xbox game. This is one of the three tenets of SR, and ED planeswalking shouldn't be used to rationalize such crap. No reviving from death. No time travel. No teleportation. It's not that difficult.

In general, I didn't regret buying the book. But I do feel cheated because of the consistent quality control issues, that abound in recent SR products. There are a few things you can do to make the books outstanding again:
1.) A lectorate that's worth the name. Just take a good hard look at page 17 of used car lot. Brumley? Brumbly? Or is it Brumby, as in the original book?
2.) GET A TABLE OF CONTENTS! I cannot stress that enough. It's not difficult. You have it right there in the PDF. Saving that one page makes the book a lot harder to use. And in case of the PDF? Make the links clickable. I know you can do it. A lot of the pdfs have it. Bring it back, please.
3.) An index. I know, I can do a full text search in the pdfs, but this luxury doesn't extend to the print version.

Final judgement: It's an average book. The good outweighs the bad and I tend not to gripe with stuff I won't use (mostly the things I've mentioned in the first paragraph). 6 / 10, could have been a 7 without all those typos.

Nope, inanimate objects have an Object Resistance threshold.



Wut?

There's a mach-speed Levitate used on a large group of people by Peri, to get away from Ghostwalker. I'd assume that there was some serious spirit mojo behind it to make sure everyone made it out intact.

Yeah, ~1000km in under a minute, with a sonic boom and no one even seeing them vanish. All from a dragon with a magic rating of ... 12.
Let's see here:

Now, Perianwyr is good at casting manipulation spells. He's still limited to 12 successes if he doesn't overcast at 24. Assuming this is the case and he has 24 successes on 26 dice (32 with edge, +dice from aid sorcery from a bound spirit), the speed is still only 690 km/h. This doesn't even account for a weight threshold for a delegation of Aztlan people. Additionally he'd need to let the spell be sustained by a spirit to satisfiy the LoS requirement and keep them safe at such speeds. Possible, but in the presence of Ghostwalker, whom he just pissed off? Unlikely.
I get it. It's an in-universe-blurb, but I'll still go with bad writing here. It's probably just personal, but it was a huge disappointment for me.

Yeah, the Mach-speed thing got a LOT of discussion backstage, actually. I wrote Peri's section, but someone else wrote Ghostwalker's, and added that levitate bit in. I sat down and started doing the math, and basically said "Umm, what the frag?" when I realized the Force of the spell would need to be in the triple digits.

All in all, it's designed to be a mystery as to how he pulled it off, but I will say this... it's not Peri's levitate spell. And while it's assumed that he cast the spell by the onlookers, no one actually sees him cast anything.

There are three possible explanations that are given in Peri's section:

1) High Level Remote Ritual Magic utilizing some variant of Levitate. Not quite on the Great Ghost Dance Level, but definitely far bigger than your average Ritual Casting.

2) A Spirit Did It. Free Spirits have a fun power a LOT of folks forget about: Astral Gateway. They can transport people physically into the metaplanes. And no one knows how the metaplanes connect to the physical world.

3) Some unknown Dragon Magic or Metamagic (aka, the MacGuffin).

My totally non-canon explanation? Combination of the above. A high level Invisibility and/or Illusion mixed with Astral Gateway, possibly being powered by a Ritual Group offsite somewhere. The rift opens and is obscured by illusions, Peri uses his muti-target levitate to move everyone through the gate, and a minute later they exit another gate thousands of miles away, because either the spirit or the astral dimension itself allowed for that.

Chances are Ghostwalker knows exactly what happened, but never expected Perianwyr to betray him, so was caught by surprise. Everyone else there though? Totally clueless. And Ghostwalker isn't about to admit he got outfoxed, even for a second.

I can think of a lot of explanations, just the fact rubs me the wrong way. Even more so as I really like Perianwyr. He was so reasonable, even in the old adventures, and now he gets this dose of special snowflake sprinkled on for ... no apparent reason at all
Don't get me wrong. I like mysteries. I also like stuff I can't immediately explain rules wise and I even use it (yeah, I know, bad GM!). I think that dragons can pull of things that mortals can't even begin to comprehend. But I also think, that this should be subtle. I don't want dragons to be LOLWTFOMG powerful to every onlooker and have players and characters cringe in fear. A healthy dose of Respect with a capital R? Of course, but not "unkillable thing that can do all kinds of things you don't and you'll be dead before you know what hit you". (Well, the normal dragons, at least. Greats will remain protected by plot armor )
In this case it was very much on the nose, and that rankles with me.

As a side note, in Earthdawn sourcebook The Blood Wood, his name was spelled "Caimbueul", in what could be considered the oldest historical source.

Levitate gives target a movement rate, and the Movement Power does increase Movement Rate, so technically you can combine both. For one target, a Force 12 spirit could routinely achieve a speed of 1,200 km/h (8 hits on Levitate Force 12 makes 84 meters per turn, multiply by Movement Force 12), 2,000 km/h with Edge. But for only one target at a time.

As far as game mechanics goes, maybe it would be for the better to simply assume Peri found an unique Atlantean artefact from the Fourth Age, the Ring of Great Dragon Escape, that can instantly and safely propel a party a thousand kilometers away from the nearest Great Dragon.

Little Treasures is from 95, Blood Wood from 97. The name given in little treasures is Caimbeul. Still in either case there has been a lot of inconsistency with the name throughout the different sources, which is why it's only a minor nitpick for me

I don't think that particular effect will show up again, by the by. It's bound to have cost someone a lot of resources (spirit favors, overcost pain, ritual materials, an artifact, whatever) and probably isn't worth doing again at this point in the Sixth World. Heck, it's entirely possible that Peri didn't actually have anything to do with it, or maybe someone else loaned him the mojo to test it, knowing that there'd be debt involved, or he might have tripped over a unique spell that no other dragon has and he's keeping it close to his chest.

I dunno.

But Teleportation's long been teh Holy Grail of Shadowrun magic, so, an effect this close to it? Probably gonna stay underground for a while.

Hey, leave me out of this crap! I'm Black Trenchcoat, not Pink Mohawk damnit!

I will for one be one very sad little panda if GW takes him out. I guess I just don't understand the motive behind it (I don't see much motive behind any of the CoD plots but take that for what you will). I'm also a Peri fangirl. NGL.

I would like to request that, in the next book, Abstruse be completely statted out with his photograph on the page.

Abstruse is a hacker based out of Austin, TX, with a focus on stealth and data (he started off in college selling fake SINs to get into bars). Lives in a flat on Willie Nelson Blvd and Congress (used to be a luxury condo building until Aztlan invaded) with a great view of the Azzie side of the border. Has a massive hatred for Aztlan and acts as an information broker for intel on them. Runs a shadow node for Austin. Has a lot of contacts in Lone Star and manages to bribe his way out of most trouble with information (or suppression of information). Big on metahuman rights, but isn't a member of any policlub. Doesn't like to meet in person, but he's a fixture in the punk scene (though he will NOT discuss business at a show). Icon is a guy in a sharp black suit, white shirt, thin black tie, fedora, and a long black coat. Iconography on his programs (all custom-written) fit either the theme of a 1930s style gangster or a gentleman thief (.45 automatic, lockpicks, smoke bombs, cane with a taser, Derringer on a wrist-slide for a one-shot attack app, etc.). Has a friendly rivalry with Slamm-O due to various run-ins back in the early 2060s.

I can provide stats if necessary, but he's got around 100 karma on a standard build. His tactics involve subtlety and he has no issues retreating if necessary. He's a half decent shot with his custom Colt Manhunter, but garbage with anything else.

Austin's a terribly active place for a game. I've always considered it, but it seems like it's a bit ... narrow ... in terms of focus.

But neat!

I lived in Austin for six years and always was annoyed at the short end of the stick Texas cities always seem to get in Shadowrun books. Houston's currently the 4th largest city in the country. Austin's listed right below Seattle on the "Best Places to Live" lists. Dallas/Fort Worth is second only to New York City in terms of metropolitan area. Yet NOTHING interesting happens there like it has in New York, LA, Chicago, Seattle, Denver, etc. And as an Austinite (specifically one who lived south of the river), I was greatly peeved with the splitting of the city. So I translated that into the character. I have both 3rd Ed and 4th Ed versions of the character, and I always use him as my default NPC hacker even though I set my games in Seattle. Adds a bit of flavor to have your off-site hacker be halfway across the continent.

Well, you had Aztlan taking half of Texas back in the day. That's more info than a lot of states have had. You've also had Sirrurg causing trouble down there with his burnination of the countryside in Aztlan, the CAS, and the PCC. (See Clutch of Dragons for more on that!) ... compare that to, like, Arkansas.

Say what you will, but at least it was an excuse for me to add something about it to Spy Games. I agree that whole chunks of the country -- some that have the population/sprawl to support solid stories -- get ignored, often in favor of the coasts...but some of us try to sneak in something, when we can, to remind folks that our favorite CAS towns are still kickin', and worth more than the occasional "here there be rednecks."

Why we haven't had an update on anything in Boston for awhile continues to annoy me..

My game is currently running in Austin and I'm trying to throw the notes together for folks to collectively groan at. As someone who has barely left New England, I tried not to be too cartoony with what's going on there, but I'd rather sacrifice accuracy for fun at that stage, y'know?

I'm working on that....

War came to Austin. a war that was lost. While this is a very alien concept to Americans, it also really, really ruins a city's livability.


I used it as a gateway to Aztlan more than once. after all, the border to Aztlan has been upgraded from Israeli standard to North Korea in Shadowrun, so weak spots like Austin are useful. At least that's how I run it in games.

Bogota seems to be doing OK.

...

OK, OK, I'll try to stop harping on Bogota!... Er... War!.

I've seen this thread without a hundred posts denigrating War!

As the guy who wrote that chapter: it is NOT a Chris Jericho reference. If anything, it's a Mad Max/Road Warrior reference, but what I was thinking was more of late 1970s/early 1980s US Culture, and also reference of such in The Simpsons. Mainly, I wanted something dated, obscure, and (in-universe) thoughtlessly offensive. : )

Authorial intent = clarified.

For what it's worth, I also don't think that H really thought at all about putting it on, at least not on a conscious level.

As a Dragon fanatic, I had to take a look at this from a friend who buys everything Shadowrun still. It picks up some good threads, and some of the individual writing is pretty good, definitely some of the most fun fiction around, but the fact that everybody apparently knows everything for sure now is a little weird.

The editing is still borderline embarrassing. Quite aside from the spellings, dropped words, mis-punctuations and whatnot, there are strange reversions of previous canon that is easier to view as simple mistakes rather than retcons or new information. It makes me worry about 5th Edition. They're putting together a whole new rulebook one assumes.