There's a lot of news today--The Twilight Horizon is available for PDF purchase and print pre-order, Corporate Intrigue is available in print, Jet Set has a street date of April 4, the Runner's Toolkit reprint will hit stores on March 21, and reprints of Augmentation and Unwired will hit stores on April 18 (PDF updates for previous purchasers should be available now). That's the summary; for more details, check out the blog post.

Jason H.

Woohoo, Twilight Horizon. Vegas time!

How do you do that?! This is the third time I've been to the SR4 homepage, gone 'nothing new', come back here to browse the forums, and when I update there's a new book out...

Alright - same format as AU, CI and JS...

First thing's first - JackPoint: 'Used Car Lot', 'Hazard Pay' and 'The Clutch of Dragons' coming up, eh? Sounds good!

- Nice intro fiction, and long - 4 pages!

- A few pages of fluff about the Consensus...been waiting for this...

- 20 pages about Vegas - pretty much in the same style as other city write-ups; looks good at a first glance.

- 13 Adventures - this time centered in North America with a side-trip to Bogotá, it seems. At first glance, these runs seem a lot more connected than the ones from CI and JS, and a number of the could easily be a mini-campaign. Makes sense, though, given that they are all about Horizon. Some technomancer stuff; some Consensus stuff; some spirit stuff--I see potential here.
Oh, and there's stats for a non-descript Fishing Boat.

- Stats for generic and named NPC - including a group of Dawkin's Group operatives. First glance I see no glaring mistakes.

So, we have great fiction, a great city, new art by Laubenstein (plus lots of other good art), and an unlucky number of scenarios...and at the very end an appendix full of info on Simsense and Personafix software!!! And *drumroll*...stats for none other than Clockwork!

There's little in the way of official dates for scenarios, but what little there is seems to indicate that everything is laid out chronologically this time!

On the bad side, there's not much in the way of maps - but from a first glance I can't see any glaring need for them either, so it may be alright. I would've liked a map of Vegas, though...

I'm impressed - things keep getting better and better!

Glad you dug it! It actually went about 700 words longer than I'd been contracted for, because once I get rolling with Kincaid it's hard to stop.

If you guys excuse me, I have a clock to punch.

hehe - he's kinda squishy...

He is, no wonder he cried so hard when he got shot.

Hm, somebody seems to like the German covers

Twilight Horizon unfortunately caught my eye right away with this: "Lofwyr denies tensions between dragons has increased in recent times, saying 'We don’t like each other much on good days, so very little has changed.'"
Big L giving interviews, on intra-draconic matters to boot? Not really...

He's saying "That ho ain't shit!". He's marginalizing Hestaby and putting forth an air that she's no threat to him, drawing a line in the sand basically.

The new (recycled) covers on Unwired and especially Augmentation are awesome.

Wasn't that about six kinds of fun?

He's calling her a liar, I think, and demonstrating to her that he can play her silly little game with the media. I didn't particularly have a problem with this.

Those covers are very nice. So nice that I'm tempted to buy the new books just for those... which.. is both wrong.. and so right..... but... expensive.

Yeah, I know how you feel...

Had the same thinking going thru my head, and i have been falling behind on my SR purchases lately...

Exactly. He is trash talking like some 14 y/o gangsta wannabe.

Lofwyr heads the world's largest corporate, political, and (probably) military power. He also is the keeper of the ancient customs and knowledge of his race...sending one of his servants on a press conference to tell the world in a highly diplomatic tone that nothing is wrong and SK remains strong as ever would befit him, but a public appearance in which he talks about dragon stuff? The king demeaning himself by talking to the rabble, revealing information like Dunkelzahn or Hestaby, who he resented for doing so?

Perhaps he was called out in a way that required a public appearance, no matter how low the rabble? As for revealing information, or disinformation, or half-information, or anything else... Well, when has he done anything that didn't cause him to have success even in the worst case scenario?

I was making a funny. The rest of my still stands, Hestaby threw down the gauntlet and he's telling her challenge accepted.

Depending on the situation, yes, that might have to be answered in public, with the full reasons why.

Codes of Duels are the same way, airing out dirty laundry in a "Honourable" manner through the cleaning power of bloodshed.

Okay, now that Twilight Horizon is out -- you know what I'd like to see?
1) A collector's PDF set of all the Artifact adventures.
2) A collector's PDF set of all the Horizon adventures.

I want to get these... but I'd rather get them all together in a bundle.

This.

Now, if there was a dead-tree compilation of those I'd get it! But I doubt that would be cost effective for CGL...

I'd be in for a dead tree compilation of the Horizon adventures. I nearly always prefer dead tree, and the Runners Black Book compilation was the only way I was buying anything in that set.

I know this is a longshot, but do reprints include errata?

Sometimes, other times they revert back to the pre-errata version.

I wonder if we ever will get to know how that happened...

I got my copy today and have to say that im quite impressed so far.
They wrote alot more about corporate business reality and consequences here than in every book combined since war.
Simsense suddenly also exists in more than Simflicks and BTLs! Lots of new shades of grey in a great variety of colours and intensity, yay!
2XS returns in the form a nice little helper for every men with a "little" problem out there
Unfortunately no hard rules for alteration statwise or qualities they may grant or i just missed something for now.

And they made some very bold decisions about plot events unfolding in salt lake city ..
I think its a statement that the new heads on charge want to draw a line between their personal beliefs and their job and setting they are writing about.

Nonetheless, its just a first impression but it looks quite interesting and entertaining, i might give a deeper review during the next week.
Im looking forward to the reading experience.

My wordcount, it runneth over.

At the end of the day, with rules for addiction out there, and the general 'opposed nature' style of Shadowrun, I was guessing that GMs would be able to extrapolate things like "If you have an emotion chip for happy and a situation comes up that would make the user unhappy, derive a threshold for the chip, based on the intensity of the counter-emotion, and roll dice." It was intentionally loosey-goosey and after a couple of tries on my end, I finally said "Meh, our gamers are smart. They'll figure it out. I'll use this space for more Stuff."

If needed, I'll dig out the prototype stuff I discarded and sling it for people, but it never got to a form I liked (obviously).

The main thing was showcasing some Horizon products, having fun with some brainbenders, and maybe, just maybe, having a few people go, "Wait a sec. Just what, exactly, are the limitations on what Horizon can do to my brain?" and "Hey, Pulsar! What's that guy been doing of late, anyway?"

If there's anything else that you read between the lines, well, that's up to you.

After reading the location info (no time for more than skimming through the adventures yet) I'm seeing TH as a bit of a mixed bag: Writing, art, layout, consistency, and the other "technical" aspects are all fine and well, but the content so far is a clear missed opportunity.
The description of Vegas in SoNA was not exactly a high point of world building, as the authors seemed to assume that somehow legal gambling and prostitution could manage to draw anybody out of the woods in the vice-filled Sixth World. And here is what Twilight Horizon lists as "Things to Do":

• Gambling (Craps, Poker...)
• More Gambling (Betting from sports to weird prediction markets)
• Even More Gambling (Betting on dog fights and full-contact sports which occasionally leave somebody dead)
• Sex
• Drugs
• Shows
• Shadowrunning (duh!)

Yep, the same stuff as before and no attempts to make any of it more believable. In fact, while SoNA still mentioned that tourists should not stray from the main streets, by 207x that does not seem to be an issue...

That last point doesn't seems to be that much of a stretch - Vegas is living on it's ability to draw tourists in and will do it's utmost to keep the place as safe and fun as possible. In my opinion you can find unsafe areas, but they will tend to be the pushed into the dark corners, afar from teh main streeets and making most sidestrets reasonably safe.

The main crime are likely to be bee pushing dubious drugs and chips, loansharking to unlucky gamblers and the like rather than mugging and gangs shootouts. Those in particlar are likely to be stomped on quickly and fiercely if they happen anywhere near where a tourist is supposed to be. with a really quick cleanup to keep it as out ot the tourist's eye as possible.

Any word on how much underworld crime is going on? Infighting in the mafia, attempts of other syndicates to get a foothold in Vegas, that kind of stuff?

Nope, seemingly nothing in that direction

Shouldn't that be the main part of every text about Las Vegas 2070?

Only if you believe a setting that's supposed to be SciFi but stuck in the present gets better when adding some 1960s

Always!

Purchased it. Love it.

Running a game based on it starting next Tuesday. I'll let you know how it goes. Question though, how dangerous is the matrix supposed to be? The fatality count seems pretty high, so how do data searches and such go off?

So, don't leave us hanging, normal, how'd it go?

Oh, sorry about that.

My party seems to be deathly afraid of the Casinos, to the point where they were completely afraid to go on any job involving one, despite high pay offered. Next session is this coming tuesday, but we left off with the party losing a member (It was the PC's fault. He did something pretty stupid, and didn't want to burn an edge, so he's rolling a new char), and the rest of the team waiting to hear back form contacts, hoping something pays off.

Next run is likely going to use the desert as opposed to a Casino. Don't really find it fun to scare my party so much, but it is what it is.

"Casino security is like an onion. It's layer after layer after layer and the more that you peel back, the more you want to cry."

Yeah. It'd be a more congruous experience if the group had a largely homogeneous playstyle. As it is, one member admitted that if planning goes on for more then a half hour, he's just going to say fuck it and do something. He also happens to be the guy rolling a new char. I love the guy to death, but it's one of those things that gets to be a pain in the ass to GM for.

Rolling...?
Are you sure you are playing the right game. I haven't been rolling any characters since 1989, and certainly not in SR.

Slang for creating (Or re-creating) a character that caught on online, from back when stats were rolled. It's still used in World of Warcraft, for instance.

Another parlance, but one that bugs me, is 'Toon'. When I'd be on City of Heroes and would get comments of 'Nice Toon!', I'd just stand there for a minute, like, "... what?"

Still hurts my head.

I use gamer parlance when talking with other gamers. Your lack of comprehension of the terms used doesn't mean much to me.

Yeah, I cringe when I hear ppl use 'rolling' (unless it's a game where you actually roll dice to create a character) and 'toon'...getting too old I guess!

The desert 'run would scare me more than the casino job.

Especially if told that part of the needed gear is a shovel.

"In this world there are two kinds of people, my friend. Those with loaded guns and those who dig; you dig"

Yeah, after a night in the Mojave, they'll *beg* to get back into a casino.

The phrase "my Shadowrun DM..." still makes me cringe.

I just finished going through it myself, and my only complaint is the lack of closure in regards to what the hard result is to Horizon after the technomancer/spirit runs. The Zuckerburg's "my god, what have we done" doesn't really cut it.

It feels like another big blue ball like what happened with Artifacts Unbound. As a consequence, I'm feeling really wary about the eventual Boardroom Backstabs tie up book.

Aside from that, I think it's the best execution so far of the new AU, CI, JS format. They just, really need a baldfaced "This is what really happened, here's where we're taking the metaplot, but here's some pretty good ways to deviate if you want", like the old books had.

You might notice that there's an Actualy Play section on the official Shadowrun4 boards.

There, you can input what happened during your adventure things like "Who wound up with the Coin of Luck?" and "What corporation has the right sto a certain Idoru superstar's next album?" ... in essence, letting the fans have more influence on where the story winds up.

As such, 'What really happened' isn't know when the book is printed, but a bit down the line.

You should pop over there and submit some results.