I don't doubt it, but reading what you said apart from his subsequent response got my eyebrow up, and I'm neutral on the subject.



I've kept a pretty close eye on the thread, because the book itself is in an area I have a vested interest in. I was willing to drop the $15 or so to see if it had any Caracas information in it (it didn't, and I was disappoint, but whatev), and I don't regret my SR book purchases. I enjoy the product. While I don't think the ducats I spend give me a say in how the books are written, I at least hope my suggestions and outright criticisms will get to the people who can effect change. It's one way I can at least attempt to help the company produce a better product.

However, you are correct. We are not the boss of you, the writer, though in the end we do buy the books so you get paid. We do not control where you go and lurk and post and talk SR. DS predates the current license holder, but it is not the official site. To me, that's fine - do as you please. Injecting your snark as you have was a bad move - you don't add accelerant to a fire unless you want to watch it burn.

As I recall, the first pages started that way - bad terms used, a lot of fluff on an area that many aren't interested in, and eye-popping ratings for milspec gear I recall we had a few threads' discussion on.

There will always be people who will use hyperbole, and people whose passion trumps reason. If people expect that nobody's paying attention, then they're going to say what they damn well feel.



I haven't had any issue with what you've said, only how you've said it. I'm saving a full critique of this book until I'm done reading it - it hit the e-reader during finals week so I haven't been able to offer my full attention. As I said, the only reason to add accelarant to a fire is because you want to watch it burn.

Sure a few rule changes and all of that is probably reconcilable with canon. But the overall tone of it, from "spiritual barrier" and "cabal of sorcerers" to the [long sequence of beeps] idea of necromantic artifacts, just has nothing to with Shadowrun for me. By the way, that section is the intro for a mission to retrieve the favored scalpel of Eduard Wirths (real character). Said knife "was energized by the various ghosts passing by it, feeding o their death energies. At this point, it’s taken on a life of its own." and now it "only finds itself at home when flush with warm blood". Look, Lilarcor has an evil twin...

The most major broken thing I noticed so far is the new grenade rules.

If several grenades explode at the same area, you get to add half DV from each grenade after the first to the total DV of the first grenade.

Meaning, a full burst of 10 mini frag grenade from any automatic grenade launcher will give you 66(f) DV +5AP, plus hits (you can add them in now).

Something not as major is the new Slow spell. Gives you total immunity to bullets and any other kinetic force based attack (including Thor shots) with a single net hit, but at least theres OR and BC to balance it out.

At least theres wingsuits.

EDIT: I guess a thor shot weight more than 200kg, so nvm about that part.
and to clarify: theres some good stuffs too, like better rules for suppressing fire and leadership and such.

Okay, I wasn't exactly nice to you, and I apologise.

However, I stand by what I said about this book. It is an all-time low. I see nothing redeeming about it. Even the hot-fixes in terms of gear look bad, both in presentation and how they are embedded in this ... book, forcing players to buy it or be left behind. Is this where Shadowrun is headed? If so, this will bury the franchise for good.

Everyone else here: Anyone up for working up a map of the Aztlan-Amazonia-conflict up to the point of time WAR describes? I'd like to at least know more or less how the war is going apart from phone numbers in Bogota.

For reference:

A bunker buster cruise missile does 64P -20. A standard cruise missile just 32P -4.

I'm not trying to debate the merits of having an official forum or not, I'm just stating part of why -- in my opinion -- official fan interaction might seem a little sparse around here lately. Because there's an official forum, during my daily web browsing I go there first. If I still have the time and inclination, I then check Dumpshock. The creation of an official forum wasn't up to me (or most of the rest of us), but since it's there, it only makes sense for writers to spend some time there, yeah?

Very true.

Well, my point was that this was the whole point. So it implies the understanding of that concept.

The Designate spell bothers me.

I mean, not the ability to cause energy to radiate from a point to serve as a target designator. That's fine, though you probably need to beat your weapon's OR for it to be able to "see" the magic targeting dot.

It's the second part about needing thermo or radar implants to emulate infrared or radar designators. Since when did your physical eyes totally restrict targeting of any spell?

We already know a completely blind character can target spells just fine via astral perception. Magic in Shadowrun stems from Astral Space anyhow. How is that precious thermo or radar implant supposed to help there? I mean, you don't "see" the effects of an Orgy spell cast into an area with no people either, but that doesn't mean you can't target it.

Targeting stuff with magic has always been factored based on perceiving the TARGET, not perceiving the spell!

I'd just cut that part out completely and allow anyone to create a visible, infrared, or radar emission point at the target location, regardless of their vision.




-k

Maybe you need an implanted commlink to cast the ECM spell as well.

You want more than lashing out at authors? Fine. Let's Talk.

What stinks about WAR

- Editing, format, and presentation
The book apparently went through no editing at all. Typos that would be caught simply by an MS Word spellcheck (carniverous plants ...), the book is from the future and has been copyrighted in 2011, and that's just the first pages. Weird clipping errors with the graphics that layer behind the text that renders text there hardly readible, ridiculous to downright facepalm worthy German names (really, if you don't know the language, DON'T USE IT) - given that a good portion of your customers are German, you might want to tread with slightly more care. Lots of stuff like this. I have seen many web pages maintained by a single fan who have much better 'editing'. Used to be the other way round.

- Fluff Content
The people who wrote this seem to know next to nothing about the setting. It'S a plethora of background errors - astral scouting through SdD trees is recommended (bad idea, look it up), the Marienbad setting has just been copied and slightly rewritten from SoE, Somalia is all but copypasted from the CIA factbook (conveniently ignoring the Almanach), and of course the above mentioned Auschwitz stuff that contains so many contradicitons to fluff that I would consider it a bad parody by an angry fanboy if I hadn't seen it in an upcoming print product with my own eyes.
Bogota is presented awfully. The writing seems stale, the individual shadowposters all drone on in the same mood and tone, and there is little play value in the sprawl (it also seems a bit like a travel guide to Bogota copied into a shadowrun format). It received a bit more care than the other Hotspots, but it still seems bland and generic. What's more, I don't get the feeling there's a war going on in this city.
And this brings me to the presentation of the war. It's atrocious. We get no info on the armies involved save for sporadic, eclectic writeups of their motivations. Why wasn't there a description of an Aztlaner mechanised platoon, a group of the Amazonian army, and a resistance tribe? Complete with names, organisation, and some faces and names, some personality? How about a look into a soldier's head on each side, like was done with the Aztlaner soldier in System Failure?
And why is there neither a timeline of the war (battles, advances, retreats) and a map of the conflict for the time leading up to the time War takes place? This whole section does not feel like a war at all. It feels ... eclectic, badly written, and in no way interesting. The armies - two of the most colorful forces the setting has to offer, a promarily magic oriented, critter heavy army on one side and a highly organised, moderatly magical army with a tendency for massive bloodbaths on the other, and some rebels that are looking to get crushed in between.
The international part? Not much better. Actually, a lot worse. And the 'survuival in a war zone'? Generic. We've had that twice already in the setting. Not a novel approach or anything. It reads like copypasted from some mountain men web site or something.

- Crunch Content
Hotfixes by powerful equipment. Okay, I don'T have so much of a problem with this (my group had a house rule like the Matrix gear for some time), and I see why it was done like that. But the new armor? Why strength? Why not agility? Also, some of the new equipment is either overpowered (the targeting software, smartgun for mages, ect), weird (why do we need battleships again?) and then those god-awful names ... The rules are a mixed bag. Some are good, some are useful for large-scale campaigns, but then again ... why put rules into a sourcebook again? Wasn't there something SR4 did not want to do, like put essential rules and equipment in an otherwise unremarkable sourcebook to make people buy it? I vaguely seem to remember that. PTSD rules ... well okay, nice to have them, though I don't really see why they shouldn't be applicable to general runners as much as soldiers. It's not like their life is any easier (it's actually harder, since commanding officers usually are not going to choke their troops in their sleep, or have them poisoned, but shadowrunners' employers often do).
Generally the authors seem to have as solid a grasp on the rules as on the fluff. And again, epic and total editing fail. Is there even editing happening anymore? It sure doesn't look like it.
The presentation is equally bad. No images, not even the stamp-sized ones in previous supplements. Just ongoing listing and a few frames with stats in them. Where, exactly, does the money go here? Surely not into presentation. Probably not into the writing (otherwise, I assume even those authors would have made an effort). Does it go to Topps to pay back the depts? Or what?

- Tone
That's hardest to pin down, but the whole book feels slightly ... smelly ... in tone. It smells of swastikas and beer. The frat boy bit about Auschwitz, the whole general tone about how soldiers are better than civilians ... maybe this is common among Americans, but I don't like it. At all. Then the part about Somalia ([bad N-word] never change, could be the title) ... sorry, this is a bit much to just attribute to bad writing. Given that BattleTech always had a slightly ... right-arm-raisy slant ... well, I guess it's to be expected from BattleTech authors, but I don'T care for such shit one bit.

And I spent money on this. You see, it's not limited to Americans to have a bit of a money bottleneck every once in a while. I really don't feel I got my money's worth here. Not in the least. That it is a de facto essential book makes this all the more aggravating. Basically, I pay €12 for 20 pages worth of gear. Badly written and worse presented.

There. Happy?

Happier, yes. Feedback mixed with insults is still more useful and constructive than insults alone. I'm trying to spread the word to the non-DS-regulars to check this thread. Being specific like this means they can know what fans don't like, as opposed to just being called names, which doesn't really promote any sort of improvement, y'know?

For every vocal douchebag there is several quiet people who appreciate your work.

Okay. And where was I insulting? Okay, the n-word, but it was for illustrative purposes only (hey, the authors titled the part on Auschwitz Work Brings Freedom). Edited.

One thing I can say is that the editing issue has been a concern of mine since before 6WA hit the e-reader. Indeed, there are errors that spellchecks could've - and should've - caught, but there they are.

edit: Something insulting that probably shouldn't be there - "I guess it's to be expected of Battletech writers."

Auschwitz is supposed to be haunted with a very serious background count. (6 I believe)
You do know that Work Brings Freedom was an actual Motto printed over the gates of Auchwitz?
I actually appreciate not sugar coating history because it makes people uncomfortable. The Nazi Death Camps have been symbols of what it takes to get a 6 Background Count for many versions of Shadowrun. So that's not a problem per say.

I'm a little confused about Necromantic Artifacts though. What kind of artifacts?
I'm going to have to read that section myself cause that just seems weird.
The U.S forces buried all of the dead they found, when they liberated the camps. I would expect there to be necromantic components (the ground itself, parts of the buildings). But artifacts? that seems weird.

I'll probably pick up war, but i've been really disappointed by the editing.
I mean, how hard would it have been to do a word search and replace for Dollar to Nuyen.

All I see is what I see (I'm not especially privy to the layout, editing, etc, steps of the process), and I wasn't involved until War! was all wrapped up, so I didn't see anything to do with it -- but I know that on a few more recent projects, several of us freelancers are sending our drafts back and forth amongst ourselves before submitting them formally, and a key part of that is trying to find basic typos and similar errors, for one another.

It may or may not have been common practice for War! (and it looks like it wasn't, judging from some of the complaints), but I know that at least some of us are working hard to make sure our material isn't spotted with these sort of errors.

Are you fraking kidding me, a 14F availability gadget costing 10k that give +1 dice for LOS indirect combat spells and requires the character to have cyber-eyes with smart link, is over powerred in your opinion.

Maybe that's a too harsh, but I stopped reading BattelTech because this undertone was getting on my nerves (what with the Clans and their supersoldier breeding and aryan soldier caste dictatorship being written up to be BESSER ALS DU). Maybe it's changed since then, I dunno. It's no surprise to me this tone - new to Shadowrun, as is, aside from the Charette Novels - coems from BattleTech writers who probably think it normal.


Good to know. However, it clearly did not happen here.

This book feels like it has been produced by people who don't give a damn about either the book, the topic or shadowrun in general, and make no effort to conceal this. And a book that has seen zero oversight from the higher-ups in CGL.


I assumed that was a typo, the author confusing cybereyes and smartgoggles. Okay, not that bad, but it still just should not be. Also, grenades and yadda yadda. Didn't want to copypaste RvD.

Whenever you invoke the silent majority fallacy, god kills a kitten. Please think of the kittens.

It's appreciated, but there is another factor in this - final editing isn't occuring. When Those in Charge are putting these together, errors are going to crop up when the work is set in the layout templates, there may be continuity errors, etc. Nothing gets my goat more than reading a good piece of text and turning the page to find something else entirely, and the duplicate timeline bodies on multiple pages in 6WA really killed the enjoyment of the book for me. A lot of this would've been caught on a final proofread before it went to the printer, and it concerns me that it's being done improperly or not at all.

Well I'm not sure if I'm silent but I'm certainly not shouting as loud as you and I think War is just fine.

And more importantly that it seems to be systemic.
It's not like 6WA was an anomaly. We're actually starting to see that it was foreshadowing of product quality to come.

Not to interrupt your frothing at the mouth, but I don't believe any of the writers for War! have a BattleTech credit.

That's the joke in the title. Get it?


Yeah. Apparently yes. Pity really. Always loved the setting. Well, maybe the German crew will fix the worst of this.

We're getting a little off topic from War! here, but since I don't have it yet, I'm still game for a conversation...

As far as Battletech goes, I'm just a fan (I can't bring myself to pay for a BattleCorps membership just to submit some fiction to them, or anything like that). From a fan's perspective, then, I think it was always pretty clear that the Clans were, inasmuch as any single faction in Battletech, the bad guys. They were presented -- about 20 years ago -- as a marauding wave of almost inhuman invaders, who were soundly in the "antagonist" camp. A few of them had a few noble traits, but by and large they were introduced to the setting to be reviled and challenged, not praised and emulated.

Since then their image has softened somewhat, but so has their actual in-game presentation. Many of them have expressed doubts about the integrity and success of their breeding program, some have jumped ship to Inner Sphere factions that will honor "freebirth" characters more, and generally speaking cracks have been showing in their caste system since almost day one. They've been clearly presented as the bad guys, and then as the bad guys with the openly failing system...and then, most recently, quite a few of them have just been quietly ignored as the plot focused on Word of Blake and a bunch of other stuff, instead. So they've been swept under the rug.

*shrugs* Your mileage may (obviously) vary, but I guess I just never really saw them as praising the Clans, really, or putting them up on a pedestal. They were the bad guys, for the most part, and those that were individually presented in a positive light never struck me as being unlike, say, a Rommel or a von Stauffenberg. Honorable men that were the exception rather than the rule, stuck fighting in a system that they didn't necessarily agree with.

That said, I think there's been a similar tone in quite a few Shadowrun products, and for a very, very, long time. As an admitted fanboy of quite a few SR1 books, for instance, I'd just point you towards either of the Tirs, particularly in their own books. I love 'em for it, but there's no denying those are a pair of Elven Fascist states. Likewise, Japan's often been pigeonholed into the "we're super honorable in a self-promoting and racist sort of way, but our Zen balance makes our samurai dudes just better than you!" shape, hasn't it?

I'd hardly say these sort of undercurrents are new to Shadowrun...and, if anything, I'd say that the more recent crops of Shadowrun writers has been softening those sorts of mentalities. Compare Tir Tairngire from 1993 to the Tir Tairngire in the canon of 2010, for instance. Even the SR-Japanese are in the midst of a civil feud to decide just how conservative, metaracist, and honor-bound to keep the Empire, in fact.

So, again, I can't speak specifically on what's presented in War!, but I can say that I think, if anything, the macho, ubersoldier, fascist regimes are on the downswing in Shadowrun (and in Battletech), not on the rise.

Yes. This is exactly what concerns me. I'm pleased that writers are passionate enough to continue to bring us SR product, but the editing issues start to tell me a story of a company that may not be as passionate about the back end.

Now let's see how much more entendre I can slap into my postings today.

To an extent and meh. That's hardly in the vicinity of 'radical change.'

One complaint about the tables at the back: White on Black sucks for those who print their PDFs or even just the tables. Also, the compiled tables are incomplete. Messes with the quick reference notion.

That's your opinion, and I disagree. I enjoyed the book, and enjoyed the new toys, setting, and rules.

I admit, I don't get the joke no.

I guess I'll have to read the section to see.

I could see Titling the section on Auschwitz "Work Brings Freedom" as a commentary on how fucked up the place is. It's something a shadownet geek would do. It's the kind of historical/cultural referencing that us geeks love to pull of.

But if it's there as a joke.. I don't get it.

About BattleTech

The 'Clans' have been a psuedo Neo-Nazi group since the first battletech book. I think they were inspired by Wrath of Khan originally.

As for shadowrun, it's always been there as a social commentary. The Ork and Troll issues, the Humanis Poli Club, Tir, The Five Nations. If anything we've lost a lot of that lately, with the changes in Ork birth rates, the closing of the Japanese Imperial Metahuman Island.. and other things too numerous to list.

I honestly never got that feeling. It was always noble and superior clanners versus backstabby and sneaky but weak inner sphere. I appreciate this view, it's what it should have been like, but I never got the feeling it was intended to work like this. But admittedly, my knowledge of the setting is quite old.


Tairngire yes, Tir na nOg not as much, or rather, in a much more disturbing way. It was somewhat of a mild shock reading about their horribly restrictive anti-terror laws. Because they require more involvement of the judiciary and are harsher on arbitraty assassinations and nabbings than many IRL states are, among them many western democracies. One week of being kept without trial (it's a lot longer in Britain, the US, France ...) and swift trials before a military jury (eh, Guantanamo ...). I get that it was intended to be an eco-fascist dictatorship. But what does the fact that most of it's eco laws are mirrored in the legislations of many EU states then say? It was a mild 'why didn't I notice this while it happened' moment. Admittedly, that's something that meets the eye, but ...

And I never got that 'but the Tir really IS better than you' vibe I got from the Clanner stuff.

After looking it up, though, those were written by Charette. Author of Kauft nicht beim Elfen. Maybe it's just that, and I've been rather unfair. I sold my rules books a long time ago together with the minis, cannot check there.


I sorely miss the old Tir. It was my all-time favourite place to place a campaign's final villain.


Yes, and I miss this (Elf birth rates over 300 fertile years also should start to become an issue, btw). The world's becoming too streamlined and nice. We also have Facebook and Google implemented (as seen by Americans, not Germans. ).


It's a really bad, tasteless and not funny joke.

Work Brings Freedom.
ARB3IT MACHT FREI.
And yes, the e is, indeed, turned around in the writing above the gate.
It was meant to persuade the victims that they could get out of jail by playing the work hard card.
A lie, obviously. just like the showers.

In the context of this book, the work of one guy/group frees auschwitz from the magical dome . .

How do you free Auschwitz from its Rating 6 Background and Blood Spirits?

is there a "calling something a fallacy" fallacy?

By popping undead schmucks and stealing their necromantic treasures!

Okay I think my head exploded.

I mean I love Zombie Nazis as much as the next guy.. but.. really?

I am sorry, but I did not write this book. The purpose of this setting is to go there and shoot undead former prisoners (okay, jews is not entirely accurate, there also were gays, gypsies and russians) and loot the necromantic treasures hidden there. Because this tetsuo guy tore down the magical dome keeping them in and now it'S a free for all for enterprising awakened investigators!

There is a excerpt up there somewhere (post by Sengir). Look for it. Really, I wish I were making this up.

And now for a bitter little question from me:
If we were to take this book, remove all mentionings of the shadowrun universe and replaced it with the Battletech Universe . . would it still be bad?
Seems as if most stuff people are bitching about is stuff many people both inside and outside of the universe would want for Battletech . .
I'm kinda surprised there's no mentioning of multiples of 30m (one battletech hex) in all of this . .

If only it were easy to tell when you were making stuff up.

Yes. At least the fluff. The Crunch probably would fit well with BT. Especially the orbital artillery. Finally, artillery worth spending money on! With that much of a kill zone (about 5 hexes across), you'd actually hit something! The price of the killsat would probably screw royally with the setting, IIRC a Mech weighs in at around 1 bn credits too.


There'S an excerpt where everyone can see for themselves. Were you involed in War? If so, why not spend your energy on improving your writing instead of flaming?

I've never seen you complain about my writing before. Which parts in particular did you find sub-par?

I guess it would be too much to ask for you to apologize for your asinine statements about BattleTech writers screwing up War!?

Sorry, ninja edit to be more precise.


If those involved weren't BT writers, I apologise. Then replace Battletech with a generic crap writer. Okay?

I get why people are offended by this (and I'm probably going to piss a few people off by saying this), but that's a pretty SR-universe thing to do. There's a ton of people out there who feel Auschwitz is one of those places that should be turned into a memorial of Things That Should Never Be Forgotten Or Done Again for the rest of time, and I don't have a problem with that. History is a good teacher. That said...

Come 207X, some yahoo figures out he can sneak into the memorial, work some magic, and start making cubic assloads of nuyen off of it. People all over the world can scream "atrocity!" and "travesty!" and get all up in arms about it, but the fact of the matter is that I totally buy that some creative entrepreneur would try it. For every semi-educated shadowrunner out there who raises a moral, ethical, or taste-based objection to going into Auschwitz to attack the ghosts of atrocities past and steal their bones for profit, there's going to be a dozen haven't-gotten-killed-yet-somehow Cram-addled gangers from the sprawl who are more than willing to take Mr. J's 5k plus 5% (and 5 injectors of Cram) offer and try to score big at the Zombie Camp of Dr Mengele, with tac-network, submachineguns, and heavy-metal soundtrack brought to you by Ares ThugLife™. People have been pyramid-, grave-, or tomb-robbing for all of time, I don't see why this would be different... "sacred Indian burial grounds" ring a bell to anyone?

I haven't read War! yet, and so I've got no idea if the tone of the writing is part of the problem. But in terms of "does it fit the setting?" Profiteering off the agony of long-dead victims is pure Shadowrun (and is usually cheaper than trying to produce the same number of new victims, so that's where the corporate interest will be).

Your attention to detail is something we should all aspire to.

Indeed. Starting with my track record for use of spellcheck function on submitted writings and my skill in knowing the year we currently have. Proficiency in a foreign language optional.


He'd live for day, maybe weeks, before the Israelis off him, but certainly. The problem is:

There never was a magical dome. There never were undead jews. There never before were necromantic artifacts or anything else worth robbing there. The whole setout, apart from tastelessness, is very much NOT Shadowrun. It's a generic snicker-snicker let's do wild and mildly rebellous stuff setting.


Ah yes. the 5K would not even cover the flight there, and why the hell should Johnson spend money to ferry in some fuckups from Seattle when Poland is such a rich source of much less undependable cheap talent who probably will get the job done rather than do drugs and pretend they're living in a Vin Diesel movie. But then again, I play the game on a much less loony, Jason Statham base. It's a lot more serious and deadly with me. YMMV, as always.

Still, ignoring everything that's ever been written about the setting is a bad move.

But not knowing a damn about what year to put on products.

Jesus Christ on a cracker, there's plenty of room to complain about Catalyst's publications without making up ridiculous shit. The typos are horrible, there shouldn't be that many in a released product. I can't treat your criticisms with any sort of respect with how much crying wolf you do.

How long should I wait for you commentary on my 'sub-par' writing?

Considering the actual street date is going to be sometime in 2011, the copyright date of same isn't that terribly bad, especially as there's only 15 days left in the year.

I don't remember Auschwitz ever being detailed as anything beyond an example of a high rating background count, but then I've not read the Germany sourcebook in years, and don't speak the language (so I don't know what any of the German-language supplements have said about the place).



There's Sprawls in Poland, I assume, and gangers, who make wonderful deniable assets (since all of their friends and family are SINless and will tell the cops to go to hell), and they work on the cheap. You may feel that the drugs+loud music+automatics mix is loony... I think it's a pretty good example of the kind of scene you'd probably find today inside of a car full of gangbangers about to pull off a drive-by shooting, and updating it for 207X isn't much of a change. They're pretty serious and deadly. "Professional," not necessarily, but of the selection of people available in the world who are willing to Shoot Someone Right In The Face For Money, "professional" doesn't describe most of them.

Unlike you, I don't claim to work in the publishing business, nor do I demand money for my crap. If that's common practice, fine, it seems this was mentioned by others too. And I didn't make this up, mind you. I wasn't informed about American publishing practices, oh my! However, I can formulate sensible sentences in English. How's your German again (with War, this is a relevant question)?

Also, the typos remain, as do the various format issues in CGL product, wrongly copied tables and whatnot. The release date was amusing, nothing more. And it's not typos that don't show up on a spellcheck and hence are hard to catch, mind you. I'd get a homework I hand in with such typos back. And that's not publishing, that's bloody meaningless homework for bloody meaningless university seminars. You (as in, CGL and the current authors) expect to receive MONEY for work so riddled with mistakes. Big difference.

You see, you're looking for reasons not to take criticism seriously (pretty lame reasons too, considering you're doing your best to be insulting yourself). Admittedly, nobody here is sugar coating anything, but you don't have any right to expect this. Not as long as CGL churns out deeply flawed and unsatisfactory product like the Almanach and War.


There was a bit on it in Shadows of Europe (place is evacuated and angry angry spirits are being contained by Sylvestrines; also, wild hunt-esque troops of concentration camp inmates on death march routes). Not very much about Auschwitz in the Germany book for license reasons, only stuff on camps on German and Austrian soil.


Shadowrun Poland is more like Iraq with more and different corporations and less appealing weather (but nicer beaches). Just had a civil war to get the russkies out ended and now fight another amongst each other (think post-89 Afghanistan). If anything, the guys for hire there are the likes of Sunni militiamen from Falluja or whatnot, not American-style gangbangers.