Okay, let's kick this pig!
Crime PaysOkay, in case anyone doesn't know I wrote this chapter almost in its entirety (To the long suffering proofers/editors: all props!), so there's going to be some heavy author-commentary on this one.
Intro FictionI have a tendency toward cannibalization, and this is probably one of the most egregious examples. Sharp-eyed runners will note that a goodly chunk of this intro fiction was actually adapted from a scene in my short fanfiction story
Countdown.
Crime 101The main point of this opening chapter was kind of muddy, one part "what constitutes crime in the Sixth World?" and one part "wait, how does crime X work in Shadowrun, and how can I make nuyen off it?" The result is...mixed, I think. I definitely threw my own author biases and interests in there (
Black Magic, I'm looking at you). The DIY sidebars by stone were actually a nice relief from trying to write in Red Anya's voice all the time - I tried to keep her perspective limited and less generalized textbookish, but I'm not sure how well I succeeded away from throwing a couple random Vory comments in there - the real trouble was making a DIY sidebar worth reading. I must have gone through a dozen different ways to burn the damn car, trying to channel the ultimate "this'll-fuck-with-the-CSI-guys" moment.
Tingling is one of those DIY that is so strange and specific, you know I had something in mind when I wrote it. Honestly, it's more the sort of service that a hurt and beat-up shadowrunner will go looking for than try to do themselves, but I think I
almost made it plausible.
The various goodies in the
Most Popular Controlled Substances sidebar will probably look familiar. I worked in references to Orxploitation (
Skraachas in Heat) and some of my favorite drugs in
Arsenal (goblin heads are these little green derms equivalent to Fomorian usquebaugh, roid patches are basically the little venom patches from
Batman Beyond) and
Ghost Cartels (tempo),
Digital Grimoire (blood fetishes), PACKS (
The Neo-Anarchist's Guide to Street Magic), and
Dawn of the Artifacts/Dunkelzahn's Will (Dawn of Atlantis: Epoch of Blood).
Controlled Substances is the first of several follow-ups to
Ghost Cartels in
Vice in terms of "what happened after," and of course I managed to work in a reference to Chicago Grey from
Feral Cities...there's a story there about one of the perspective endings for GC that didn't pan out, but I'll save it for another time.
The Paper Lotus, one of the largest and most involved DIY tricks, actually has its ultimate origin in a couple questions asked on Dumpshock years ago, and which I have been patiently waiting to include in print ever since.
Forgery is a bit thin on the ground, as are financial crime and white collar crime, but the former was covered somewhat in
Unwired and the latter two are so varied it was difficult to really pin down a solid concept beyond "all bastards is bastards." The sidebar "In Nuyen We Trust" was added to flesh things out and provide an alternative to being the uberhacker. I was hoping to go into greater detail in
Corp Guide, but the section never really came out like I hoped so I ended up scrapping a lot of it.
"Win by Losing" has got to be the most counterintuitive DIY example here.
"Stop and Squat" is real and works often enough that it happens frequently. Please don't do it.
I want to be absolutely clear about two things: yes, I borrowed/stole "Stand Over Men" from William Gibson's excellent novel
Idoru, where it was a general description of a class of criminals that preyed on other criminals, and no, the name of their group was never actually "Stand Over Men" until some other freelancer, who shall remain nameless, apparently mistook it for a proper name. Now we all have to live with it.
"It Takes A Fixer" is a direct reference to the William Gibson short story "Burning Chrome," from the collection of the same name.
In Prostitution, I was playing up on Sticks (mostly not covered so far) backstory, which involves his mother being a prostitute for the Triads, Ares, and the Universal Brotherhood - not in that particular order. It gave me an excuse for someone to talk about the life without
living the life; otherwise I'd have probably gone the
Yo Puta route only with a young and sexually vulnerable Sunshine (simmer down, ye fanfic slash authors). This was before it was generally established that TurboBunny's mother was a...lady about town.
Underworld Support StructureThis section I wish was larger. I probably would have cut or diminished other sections to really flesh this out and go into greater detail, but we'd already covered a good chunk of the specific underworld supports in
Arsenal, Unwired, Street Magic, and
Augmentation, at least to an extant.
Okay, the FastJack subroutine was a lot of work for a one-note joke.
Wednesday Night Special is another reference to Gibson's
Idoru; guns that are designed primarily for suicide (contrast Saturday Night Special, cheap guns for cheap hoods).
Overall, I think this chapter was okay, but not spectacular. The sheer amount of ideas probably gives players or GMs at least a couple ideas for runs and things to do during play, but leaves a lot of the details up to them and doesn't particularly move the metaplot or add to the background that isn't there. Tingling is probably the single most original piece of material in the whole chapter. Call it a B- for effort; I poured a lot more sweat into the next chapter.