Hi,

As it has been discussed in the edition comparison thread, there was a lot of good fluff in previous editions, if you were to name your top favorite 5 fluff books from older editions of the game, what would they be?

Thanks,

The Limper (someone who got into SR with SR4)

Can't name five, but I will name what were my favourites...

The "Gun Porn" and "Vehicle Porn" from the previous editions! Style counts, and, frankly, when all you have is a block of stats, you're going to go for the best gun/car there. Not the one that looks best for your characters.

Whew, "top 5" might be tough, but leaving out "core books as fluff because we're on a new edition" (I love re-reading 1st and 2nd for style, frex) just OTOH and in no real order:

- Shadowbeat
- Cybertechnology (All praise be to Hatchetman.)
- Corporate Security Handbook
- Portfolio of a Dragon
- Lone Star

runner up: New Seattle (any edition; love my home setting)

I second the call for the return to gear porn. Also, "Beyond the Pale" from Cybertechnology is one of the most affecting pieces of fiction I've read in any game book, ever.

Alsø alsø, moar shadowtalk. Basically, bring back the old 2E format from the Street Samurai Catalog, et al.

Tough but IMHO the Top five fluff books:

1. Loose Alliances
2. Threats #1 and #2
3. Seatle Sourcebook (original)
4. Neo Anarchist's guide to real life
5. Seatle Sourcebook 2072

I can't limit it to just five...so I'll do an old-fashioned Top Ten list:

10. State of the Art 2063 - Lots of good slice-of-life type things, and really helps make the world feel more real.

9. Shadowtech - The interactions between The Smiling Bandit and both Wolfman and KAM were brilliant.

8. Tir Tairngire - Lots and lots of fun stuff...but I'm a sucker for the IE stuff too, as well as Laughing Man

7. Year of the Comet - The story about the Shedim was AMAZING as was the development of Ghostwalker's takeover of Denver

6. Dragons of the Sixth World - Oh boy, where to start...lots of plotlines advanced, concluded, and started in this book. IMO it was the last of the Old School style books (Shadows of Europe felt a bit flat to me compared)

5. Aztlan - Three levels of awesome in this one. First is just the book itself, then the "additional commentators"...then just that tiny bit at the end which was the first hint we got of the otaku.

4. Threats - No other book has advanced so many metaplot story threads in so few pages. Brilliant work.

3. Portfolio of a Dragon - The will itself would've been enough to put this book in the top ten list, but the stories that followed...wow...

2. Renraku Archology Shutdown - The story of the little kid at the start is creepy as hell, and the development of the entire Deus situation was handled brilliantly. If I'm not mistaken, this was the first of the "entire metaplot story in one book" sourcebooks rather than previous plots which were developed over several books, a move which I feel damaged further books. Better from a game book standpoint (everything you need to run a plot in one single book purchase), but far worse for the storytelling as there's no more anticipation and speculation.

1. Universal Brotherhood - Wow...just wow...I can't put into words...this is just brilliant storytelling. I'm talking about UB itself, not the Missing Blood adventure. It has almost no game rules in it, no Shadowtalk, and the only familiar faces that show up became familiar later on (like Hatchetman). But oh my god...just brilliance wrapped up in awesome with an nice topping of epicness.

Crap only 5... Well I guess it would be something like this

1. Original Seattle Book
2. Street Samurai Book
3. Universal Brotherhood
4. Neo-Anarchist Guide to Real Life
5. Paranormal Animals of North America

Top five from previous editions:
1. Threats. Just an awesome resource for GMs, still somewhat usable.
2. Portfolio of a Dragon. Ditto...but not really as usable anymore.
3. Shadows of North America. Couldn't run a game in NA without it.
4. Cybertechnoloy. The perfect balance of fluff to crunch. Hatcheman. And one of the two of the most disturbing comments ever in the shadowtalk:

- Cyberarm Gyromounts: "Yup, yup, gyromount arms. Been waiting for this baby. Time to get the old arms hacked off. Yup. Yup." - Weasel Boy

5. Shadowtech. Another great sourcebook, with good fluff/crunch ratio. Bioware. And the other really disturbing shadowtalk comment:

- Encephalon: "One thing they don't tell you in the owner's manual is that you can use these babies to multitask your cognitive needs." - The Smiling Bandit

That makes my brain hurt just thinking about it.

I loved Rigger books to (BB, 2 and 3) - vital to the setting, great for number-happy players. The rules...blech. But still great books. Other than marking the end of an edition. Sigh.

Did ever catch the part where they talked about Arnold Swartz going into politics? Made me laugh when I read it, and years latter it came true.

Top 5

5 Sprawl Sites
4. Street Sam's Handbook
3. Threats 1
2. Universal Brotherhood
1. Renraku Arcology Shutdown

The Sprawl Survival Guide was a really nice fluff book. It might not have the whole 80s cyberpunk feel of older books but it had a lot of nice and much needed information on the daily life.

Me too cant fit it to 5 so here's my top ten in no particular order:
Cybertechnology
Shadowtech
Dragons of the Sixth World
Shadows of Asia
Shadows of Europe
Fields of Fire
Street Samurai Catalog
Loose Alliances
Sprawl Survival Guide
Year of the Comet

Heh almost half of those are "gear books", but they just have so much great fluff especially the first two.

Some of my favorite fluff books:

Cybertechnology
Fields of Fire
Atzlan
Portfolio of a Dragon
Shadowtech

Street Sam
Shadowtech
Shadowbeat
Paranormal Guide to to Real Life
Neo-Anarchist guide ot north America

not top 5 but also loved
lone star
universal brotherhood
Fields of Fire
Atzlan
Sprawl Sites
Original Seattle Book

Wow I could have pretty much just copied tete and said this.

Universal Brotherhood and Shadowbeat definitely rank up very high.

Bye
Thanee

Thanks folks, I will attempt to get a copy of those titles that seem to be popular

1. Universal Brotherhood (creepy creepy creepy) I loved this book. As Abstruse says the book not the Missing Blood adventure.
2. Aztlan
3.Tir Tairngire
4.Shadowbeat. I totally derailed my GM at the time with this book. He had this whole amnesia story line going on and figured who ever wiped our memories set us loose as street rockers. Problem was I enjoyed the whole rocker thing as switch from the typical shadowrun that we never got around to figuring out who we really were, plus we got good enough and popular enough we didn't care. If only it was so easy to become famous in real life .
5.Portfolio of a Dragon. I loved and hated this book. So many story ideas but I was never sure which ones I could use without having to do a re-write later if Canon changed things. Plus Dunkie was dead. That kinda sucked.

Nah Dunkie dieing was fine, the crap from the novels where he sacrificed himself sucked. It was flat out ++Awesome when they implied this may have been done by lowly humans. I don't mind IE and great dragons, but I hate when they become gods.

Oh man! How did I forget UB?? Okay, tied for one of my spots: Universal Brotherhood.

And now that I think about it, I suppose that System Failure is technically from an old edition now, so that too! Love that book.

Lemmeeseee...

1. Shadowbeat- Great starter for 1e/2e that established that Shadowrun existed in a living, breathing world that didn't have to have everything to do with Corps v. Runners. I'd been begging for a 3e or 4e update to show the evolution of pop culture, all we got was SOTA 2063 with its half blurb which was sorta ok, but Yay! Can't wait for Attitude!

2. Prime Runners. WE NEED A 4E PRIME RUNNERS. That is all. It's a great fluff book to get interesting ideas for characters, stories, and interesting takes, like the CAS ganger who was the second coming of Bobby Fischer. You just don't see enough written about this book, and it's still relevant to modern era, just update and shift things around.

3. Tir Tairngere. You got the good feeling this was an expose on a country nobody knew about, plus I live in Oregon so it was cute to see how things had been shifted around. Plus Nigel Findley wrote it.

4-10. Screw it. EVERYTHING FINDLEY EVER WROTE FOR SHADOWRUN. Man had a way with the canon and keeping things consistent and entertaining. Think about it. Tir Tairngere, Aztlan, Paranormal Animals of NA, Paradise Lost, both NAN books, N-A Guide to Real Life. There's a reason you've seen his works brought up in this thread again and again. NDF's been well missed these 15 years.

11. Cyberpirates. It was a bit jagged, but it had an experimental style that you'd see in later Target: books that just seemed to work for the post single writer era.

12. Portfolio of a Dragon: Kenson did some of his best work with Unkle Zahn's will. Like said earlier, the effects of this book have been felt ever since it dropped, and I'm sure there are still GMs who are finding new things in the will to mess with players' lives.

Ack, I could go on, but I'll end up having a reason for damn near every book at this rate.

LOL I almost put that but then I realized neither the original Seattle book or the Street Samurai Catalog was done by him

I don't have many of the older source books, but here are the ones I liked the most:

1. Shadowtech
2. Bug City
3. Universal Brotherhood
4. Fields of Fire
5. Cybertechnology