Claws At Your Throat

Never, ever deal with a dragon. Shadowrunners have heard that dictum so often, they frequently say those words in their sleep. But what the aphorism forgets to tell you is this—what if you don’t have a choice?

The tension between dragons has been growing, and the big lizards are throwing every weapon they have at each other, including shadowrunners—especially shadowrunners. Extractions, industrial sabotage, theft, wetwork—there's plenty of jobs in all those areas, and dragons are finding ways to get reluctant runners to work for them. Maybe they’ll hide their involvement in the run, or maybe they’ll bribe the runners with large piles of nuyen or blackmail them with their past activities. Or maybe they’ll just tell the runners they have a simple choice of working for them or being eaten.

Whatever tactics they choose, the dragons are going to be active and aggressive, and if runners want to survive, they better be on their toes. They need to know who the draconic players are, what they’re up to, and what might happen to them if they fall into a dragon’s grip. They need to be ready for anything, because when dragons go at each other, the world shakes, the earth beneath them burns—and far too often, shadowrunners die.

The Clutch of Dragons provides the information gamemasters and players need to involve draconic plots in their games, from profiles of individuals dragons, their plots, and their lairs to information about the latest efforts to build anti-dragon weapons. This is a critical reference for any players who want to test their skills against the machinations of dragons—or who want to see just how much trouble they can survive.

The Clutch of Dragons is for use with Shadowrun, Twentieth Anniversary Edition.

DriveThruRPG
CGL Battleshop

Does book include stats for said weapons?

It has a drone and a vehicle, both prototypes. There's also a whole chapter that talks about these, plus a bunch of other things that are still in the development phase by various interested parties, plus discusses using some of the toys from War!, I believe.

I don't really know the specifics. I didn't work on that section, and haven't had the change to really read it, just gave it a quick skim a while back. (I did get to revisit my old friend Perianwyr though )

Bull

Heh, nothing like reaching for War to find the tools to deal with a opponent.

Nothing like adding MRSI to a 1000 karma build.

My "Buy" finger is very itchy. Someone post a review!

Greatly enjoying my copy. Haven't gotten that far in it yet but my player's are headed for a whole lot of dragon plots in their immediate future.

Wife bought it this morning and did a quick skim. What she saw, she loved. I'm actually sort of sold on the Dragon Civil War now, and we're both really impressed by the Damon chapter (it's essentially an update on Boston and we love it). Really reccommended, and that's from someone that's been swearing off CGL products for two years now.

So you're ready to buy Safehouses now?

Now CanRay Safehouses by itself is a silly option they would need some sort of mission to try it out on. I don't suppose you know one they could get to go with it?

The mission where everything goes pear-shaped, and they have to hide out while the guys with no necks and bent noses are looking for them.

...

Which is pretty much every 'run I've ever heard of.

The book mentions that all Thor Shot and indeed all orbital combat systems have been taken off line after a shadowrun team took control of a weapons platform. When did this happen???

Last Thursday.

Jet Set.

No one seems in any hurry to turn them back on, either, except for Aztechnology. And everyone else is all saying "Screw those guys".

Too many investments in Amazonia to let them get Thor Shotted to nothing.

I don't think insurance covers that.

Most insurance doesn't have an "Act of god" Clause... and Thor.. is a god...

There's only one God, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't dress like that.

Tony Stark: "Met two Gods, still an atheist."

Hulk: "Met two gods, beat them up. Gods are puny."

So anyone have a review past "Um... Dragons!" ??

This is an excellent question.

I'm wondering if the best Antidragon device the players could possibly lay their hands on is a DeLorean with a digital read-out that says 08/09/2057 02:30, and a copy of Shadowrun 2050.


Seems to me the best way to fix this 'Dragon Civil War' silliness.

This book is chock full of fluff. There's so much good stuff to read it's easy to miss something. I'm on my second re-read of the thing and I have the Earthdawn Dragons PDF open just in case as well.

I'd do a full review, but it really boils down to this: Do you like the idea of Dragons in this game and are you interested in learning more about them and their shenanigans? Your answer to that is the answer to "Should I buy this or not?".

Very good quality writing. Good Harlequin moments too.

Query for you, Bull: how useful would this book be as a GM resource, while running a group through Season Four of Missions? (Next weekend is SRM 04-01, in fact) ...?

I'm doing missions as well, but after the next one, Frosty is going to contact the guys about some missing artifacts. By the time we're through with those, we should have caught our timeline up to where Missions and Clutch of Dragons is.
I've already started planing seeds. The first adventure my group did, as a get them together thing, was to rescue a teenage girl who'd been kidnapped from her expensive boarding school. The Johnson was Daisy, from the 3rd ed First Run. For those not familiar, Daisy is an agent or Hestaby. So, unbeknownst to the party, Jessie, the girl they rescued is an un-expressed Drake whom Daisy has been keeping an eye on. It's just a dangling plot thread that I planned on picking up later, and I'm hoping Clutch of Dragons will give me more ideas on where to go with it.

I'm glad I have a friend who still buys CGL stuff so I can check out this stuff when I'm curious about a new product. I looked through the book for a bit (just the first two chapters, so keep that in mind) and...okay, my mother said if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. So here's my review.

...
...
...
Ummm...The words are perfectly legible...


Okay, more seriously, if you like what CGL's been doing the past few years, you'll probably like this. The few chapters I read, I hated every single thing I saw. But I've also hated everything I've seen coming out the past 2-3 years. Jackpointers are talking about Lofwyr being Loremaster as if it's a given fact and that the trial detailed in Survival of the Fittest actually did have its box scores published on the screamsheets. Everything about dragons has been demystified and it just completely does not interest me. However, I'm a bit of a 3rd Ed grognard when it comes to Shadowrun, so keep that in mind. Therefore, as I said, if you liked all the stuff CGL's been putting out, you may love this book.

I personally will not be buying this book nor will I check it out when I'm at my friend's. Between my outbursts while reading this and my constant ranting when reading Shadowrun 2050, I think I may be banned from using his computer when I'm over.

And after all the hard work I've done.

Not much of a resource, honestly, least at this point. Season 4 so far is all taking place before he events of Clutch, due to various delays, and Missions isn't very dragon heavy to begin with. So far there's only bee on very brief dragon sighting in the entire season, and that just a cameo and only if you know what you're looking for.

Bull

Coolness, and thanks for the specific response. I'll hold off on this one for a bit, then.

Sorry...I really hate pretty much everything about the direction the books have taken since CGL took over and the last even decent book I read was Emergence and even that felt like a rehash of the SURGE chapter of Year of the Comet. It was ruined by the fact that this "mysterious group of people who can control the Matrix with their minds" were already statted out in the core rulebook as starting player characters. The writing was good, but anything approaching suspense was killed by that. And it's gone downhill from there (with the exception of the timeline half of the Sixth World Almanac). And for me, it hit a peak with Shadowrun 2050. It just looked like a mess that was thrown together last minute when CGL saw the massive Kickstarter Returns got and wanted in on the action. It couldn't make up its mind when it was set, I lost count of major errors with the timeline or events when I was somewhere in the 30s (and that's leaving out little things), and it just really didn't feel like any real time was put into it.

Again, I haven't read the whole thing, but Clutch of Dragons feels exactly the same. "Well, we redid Fields of Fire, Shadowbeat, Threats, Cyberpirates, Paranormal Animals, State of the Art, and Seattle Sourcebook. What's left?" "Dragons of the Sixth World and Mr. Johnson's Black Book" "Brilliant! Final manuscript is due next Wednesday and we'll publish the PDF the following Tuesday."

Yes, that was hyperbolic, but it's my impression of CGL's attitude toward Shadowrun. Release too many products in too short a time period without spending nearly enough on writing, editing, art, layout, etc. So everything comes out looking like a rough draft with errors all over the place with the sort of amateurish visual look you'd except from companies back in the OGL days of the early 2000s. BattleTech gets all the money and attention and Shadowrun's treated like a redheaded stepchild. I don't blame the writers and I only barely blame the editors. I blame CGL for putting too much on the schedule without giving any of it the proper attention. It means a lowered quality across the board. I'd much rather get a few really good books every year than 20-30 or more crappy PDF-only releases.

Thus my review. If you like what Catalyst has been doing with Shadowrun, you'll like Clutch of Dragons. If you're looking for something to change your mind (like I am every time I pick up one of the 4A books), you're not going to find it here. And since I seem to be in the minority, I guess they're doing something people like since I've only run into a couple of Shadowrun grognards over the net with everyone else playing 4A.

Let me step in as someone who agreed with Abstruse about the state of Catalyst at the time.

What I've read of Clutch - which is, admittedly, the first whole chapter of the book, a little further in, Peri's entry, and Damon's entry, I really enjoyed this book. The writing is fresh and relatively error free (much better than Conspiracy Theories) and advanced a lot of interesting things. I'm still not entirely sold on the Dragon Civil War - mostly because the two dragons involved have no real reason to be bitching each other out - but at least in this book, things have been spelled out to a degree that I'm actually pretty excited by.

I've told my players that I'm going to be incorporating a lot of stuff from it into our current campaign, because what I saw going on with Ghostwalker I could see working for it. The players work as Ghostwalker's special forces, essentially, and the whole theme of the campaign is corruption, so I think it's a pretty awesome fit.

I also have to say that Peri's entry is engrossing, and that's due to both an explanation of who Peri is and what he does, and he advances metaplot in a way that I honestly cheered for. I want to see Peri get down and dirty; dude is an ex-assassin for Aztlan, he knows how to wreck shit. Doing what he did to Ghostwalker means he knows something is up, and color me intrigued.

But. Damon is most especially mine, and my wife's, favorite chapter. Not only is it a great writeup of an admittedly minor character in Sixth World canon (I think Dragons of the Sixth World was his first appearance?), but it's funny, fresh, and had me rolling my eyes - in a good way - the entire time. Not only did the author flesh him / her out perfectly, but he also gave Boston (my hometown) a great update and lots of hooks to play with. Seriously, if you're even considering this book, skip the metaplot heavy parts and read Damon's chapter; you'll roll.

Getting to speak to Bull at Gencon about all of this really renewed my faith in the current CGL crop of writers. I even picked up Elven Blood on a whim, and was floored by what I read (and can't wait to run it). I'm excited to pull some money together for Land of Promise as well, because I want to read more of what Critias wrote.

So while I was one of the loudest (admittedly) voices a few years back decrying CGL, I"m honestly excited by what's going on now. I'll admit it - I've changed my tune. And that's not a bad thing.

(Quick note, now that I'm thinking of it - is there any chance we'll ever get an update on the Polish civil war / Calozerca?)

IIRC, Calozerca adding his weight to things pretty well finished it off. I *think*. Poland should be in "Rebuilding under a new government" mode right now.

Of course, that still doesn't explain who Cal is, why he was locked up, and who set him free, which are all three rather interesting questions.

No idea where updating that situation will fit in, but I gotta say that I, for one, and interested.

Awesome, 'muse, I'm glad to hear it. I look forward to hearing from you (or your players) once you get the chance to sit down and sling some dice with it!

Another country heard from.

I didn't know Harlequin was a Chris Jericho fan.

He's a fan of a lot of things. Comes with having so much experience watching things.

His buttons alone are proof of that.

Only gotten to the crunchy bits so far, despite having the book for over a week, but the following made me chuckle:

One last interesting point about the Black Arrow. It's being developed with something highly technical called “Redundant Processing Manufacturing.” That sounds like the type of buzzwords corporate types love to throw around, but I'm not sure what it means. It doesn't seem to imply anything good enough to be a actual feature ofva [sic] weapon.


Yep, the contents of That Book have officially turned into mysterious rumors
(The actual rules also don't mention the Redudant Process Manufacturing mod...instead they tell you to treat the thing as having the Magic Resistance quality, which means it does nothing unless you find a way to make a drone roll a magic resistance test)

Drones rolll magic resit. . . .Oh, no, wait. They roll object resistance.

OR is a threshold, not a dice pool...if the only difference was that drones rolled an "object resistance" test and not a "magic resistance" test I wouldn't complain

Im surprised that nobody mentioned that Harlequinn gets a full stat writeup. He's basically an Immortal Elf with Max stats across the board via sustained improved ability spells, and 24 grades of initiation, and almost every metamagic. He has several spells quickened and ready to be activated based on various conditions and it specifically says something along the lines of "If he needs to know a particular spell... he already knows it."

And this is because events have weakened him to the point that he HAS stats!

People may not have mentioned it because he got those stats in Street Legend Supplemental, they were just reprinted in Clutch.

Oh, trust me, I bitched enough about that on Twitter to my confused spambot followers when I saw that in Street Legends. I was about ready to [redacted due to violations of multiple federal, state, and local laws as well as USDA regulations on livestock] somebody over that. Very much not happy. But I've ranted that one mostly out of my system.

Yeah, that surprised and annoyed me too. I mean, when did it become public knowlege in the shadow community? Has the subject been touched in SR4 before? Would have been nice if rumours about would have been spread in shadowtalk comments of prior books.

Dragons of the Sixth World, page 17, had a Draco Foundation employee posting information on Shadowland about what's a Loremaster, and how Ghostwalker asked for a fight upon his return. It doesn't say Lofwyr got the title, but it already made the joke on box scores.

It was an homage, not a theft

Who wrote the entry about Harlequin, "The Man Who Laughs"? It's quite hard to read with so many insider jokes and somehow weird sentences (at least for non-native speakers).

System Failure was pretty clear on this: Poland is a free state, the Russians pulled out, the rybokrats are gone or gone to the ground.

The one with a few year blocks missing, eh? :ь

I must say I just find the current metaplot not engaging. Dragon Civil War (dragons are fighting, what else is new), artifact Dragon Ball Z, War Over Trees, etc. Even the Yucatan rebellion, Tsimshian politics or the fate of California interested me much more (despite me joining the fandom well into the fourth edition), because they both affected vast masses of people directly and were still PC-scaled; they did't have ubermaxed movers and shakers as pretty much the only acting players.

I'm all about the small-scale stories, personally. The trick, there, is the location. If you only talk about Seattle stuff, people who don't play there aren't going to 'waste' money on a book. Too large a scale, however, and you eliminate the PCs of most groups. (Look! Dragons!)

Finding the right balance is the trick. One thing I personally like is an idea of a thing that's happening in one spot that has echoes, where someone's local group can pick up an aspect of it and do their own thing. For instance, after seeing Ares' new weapon fail in Desert Wars, people start turning to another corporation's weapons. This leads to the streets being flooded by both Ares' failed weapon line and notes that someone is making cheap copies of the main competitors line. Rumor has it that company A, B, or C might be behind it, but others think that Ares is undercutting the other guy themselves, making poor knockoffs of their weapons to flood the market and get people back looking for Ares quality.

With something like that, you get several levels it works on ... megacorps glaring at one another, people sniffinga round teh sources of the knock-offs, people looking to get bargain bags of guns for use in whatever (Gang war? Warlords? Arming a bunch of SINners to go on a crime spree and riot in a major city? Arm a bunch of bug hybrids to blaze across Chicago? Come up with your own stories, whee!), GMs can have weapon fixers complain to PCs that took them as contacts, adventure seeds crawl out of the woodwork ... it's a story with legs. Mind you, not everyone will agree. Some people have no use for that storyline at all (And, I might add, you don't see many people talk about the Excalibur plot very much), but there's stuff *there* if you want to use it.

Getting the levels right is, to me, the hardiest part.

Well, that's inventive, but how are you going to keep the cow from kicking the bull to death or getting away? And just how much lube are you going to use to get the poor bastard in there in the first place?

I wonder what we will get as extras for that one over here O.o