The new Shadowrun book: Dirty Tricks is out! On election/Halo 4 release day!

I love the idea of politically themed campaigns so I'll probably pick this up. Wanted to run a politics game ever since Runner Havens came out with all the Seattle election stuff in but that book was out of date before I got chance

I am looking towards some good posting from my man Kay St. Irregular.

Kudos for the release date. That made my day today.

Echo.

Double echo.

So, what's in there? Any delicious new crunch?

I'm...not sure what makes you think it would be a crunchy book.

And I don't say so to be snarky! I just mention it because it's a pretty metaplot heavy book; it's background information, it's political updates, it's that sort of thing...and, in my experience, it's been pretty up-front about that in advertisements and previews and stuff.

Attitude was probably the most fluff-heavy book imaginable, and it had crunch in it that fundamentally changed armor in SR4A. So I think it's a reasonable question to ask.

Obviously, my belief that (a) any book can have juicy crunch related to its topic (b) CGL's fluff hasn't been all that engaging for me as of late.

I see two more releases teased in DT's. Any word on release for Eurowar Antiques?

Hmm, I thought that was included in MilSpec Tech 2?

I'd also be interested in Parageology, seemed to have dropped off the radar for some time and now it is back

What about the Ork Undergorund book?

Also, EuroWar Antiques is part of Runner's Black Book 2 and contains the Ruhrmetall Behemoth and other 2E/3E German only vehicles, if I'm not mistaken.

Ork Underground is my fault, and I don't know when it will be done. Initially another Author was going to write it, but he had to step back from the project. I took the project over fully from there, but... I just have far, far too much on my plate between my day job, "real life". and Missions. I have 20,000+ words sitting on my computer already, but it's far from done

Slacker....

Just kidding!

I was just thinking how cool it would be to do a political based campaign when all the hoohaa of election was going on.

I think with my runners the best thing one party could do would be to some how get the OTHER party to hire my shadowrunners against themselves.

The ensuing farcical attempt at subtlety will ensure the political party that hired my runners will get in trouble for it.

Where's CanRay when you need him?

Playing Shadowrun. Bad for productivity, what, what.

So, anyone going to buy the book and review it, or will we just discuss the upcoming releases and go home?

I'm waiting for the dead tree-version.

I posted my review on the Shadowrun4 forums. I didn't post my review on DriveThru because I don't want it to sit there with the sole review being overwhelmingly negative because I don't think the game needs the negative press.

A link would be helpful.

Also, will post my own review of this soon.

Probably this one. Then again, Shadowrun is a big assortment of stereotypes so I'm waiting for a third-party opinion on how bad they are

Hopefully, a slower, more in-depth review will look past the broad brush and start picking up on other aspects.

Hopefully.

DWC's brief review reads very much like a review from someone living in the current day what-would-be CAS and is annoyed at the coverage it got. I can understand that in a way as living in the UK we've had some poor treatment over the years from various games. Many RPGs struggle to acknowledge places outside the US at all. Shadowrun really isn't one of the worst for this imo. Sengir is right though, it all comes down to stereotypes in the end. England is all royal pomp and magical stones. Obviously that isn't true for 90% of people living here, but when an outsider reads it as an extrapolation of an imaginary future it would be fun and different. If we're being totally honest, 2073 CAS wouldn't be radically different from the UCAS in terms of personalities and attitides. More independence, same people, but where's the fun in that? If everywhere was the same then there may as well just be a Seattle setting and an *insert name here*. It's perhaps not great when the place you live receives a stereotypical writeup, but for me (who's never been to america) it's just giving me another alternative setting to play in where we can ham up the southern stereotypes as I'm sure people do when they play UK based games

I am quite excited and interesed in the book though. Should have enough juicy bits in to work with.

As a Russian,

Actually, I live in the part of Virginia that's part of the UCAS, was born in DC, and spent most of my life in PA and NJ. Admittedly, I lived in Charleston, SC for 5 years as a very small child, but I've been all over the world for work. I guess I've moved around enough to recognize the depth that the whole world has, and played Shadowrun enough to be sick of how shitty every part that isn't Seattle gets treated in the source material.

When the same boring parts of the setting get rehashed over and over in agonizing detail and the rest of the world gets the same shitty treatment every time, I get sick of paying for it. I sat down and reread the whole book on Sunday, and it's actually worse than I gave it credit for the first time. The stuff about the CAS is insulting in its rabid adherence to stupid stereotypes that are 50+ years out of date today. The political landscape reads like it was written by someone who learned everything he knows about politics from Jon Stewart and Chris Mathews, and has a complete and total lack of historical perspective. 2073 CAS should be very different from the UCAS, much like Canada is very different from the US.

No one would stand for Shadowrun declaring that San Francisco had become an enclave of dirty, naked, stoned, gay, vegan socialists. Why are people ok with the CAS being given the same tired stereotypes?

I would, I think it would be quite funny!

That being said, I get your point. I'd like to see a UK setting done by someone that lives there. I've always put this sort of thing down to the (again, RPGs in general not specifically Shadowrun) writers mostly being from the US and writing from their own perceptions, which is all they can do.

I had an idea for a UK setting I always wanted to write out but never found time

The classic Shadowrun way would be turning SF into some kind of hedonist dystopia. Big cliché as a starting point and dark outcome...

The London Sourcebook was written by Carl Sargent & Marc Gascoigne, both of them Britons (Carl's Welsh, Marc's English). So...you've got a UK setting (originally) written by someone who lives there. How's that working out for you?

That's pretty much what Oakland was like in the old CalFree book, with the addition of fighting oppressive Japanese invaders (a concession to the 80s Japanophobia if there ever was one in SR).

Speaking only for myself -- I had nothing to do with the chapters in question -- I'm okay with it, as a Kentuckian and a Texan, because that's just how Shadowrun is. The game's whole deal, their whole genre conceit where geography has been concerned, has almost always been "turn the clock back to the stereotype." The Japanese are all samurai and bigots again. The British have Druids and Trollish Highlanders and ley lines and Pendragon running around. The NAN is a thing. Germany had anarchists take over and blow everything up and broke into a hojillion countries that are all as interesting as a full-sized country everywhere else in the world. Every other corner of the setting got the same rough treatment back in the early days, where every society got writ large simply by virtue of being broad-brushed, and every nook and cranny is full of something dystopian and terrible to make sure it stays a sad sack of crap world, and writers since those early days have run with it.

So the CAS stays the rusting, red-state, conservative, backwater it always has been in the books. Texas Rangers are running all over the place, they've got a bigger military than most places ('cause they're busy trading shots with not-Mexico and not-USA, on and off), they don't like minorities (but they have a huge population)...yeah, it kind of sucks, but it's also kind of always been that way. The writers work with what they've got. Instead of retconning the CAS into a utopian wonderland, they work with whatever the last book had to say.

*shrugs* It's not ideal, but it is what it is.

Well, I haven't read any Shadowrun UK Sourcebooks which is why I was careful not to limit my comments to Shadowrun. For years we played Cyberpunk 2020 and I always remember Rough guide to the UK reading like it was written by an American. No idea if it actually was mind.

From your comment, is it good or not? I couldn't tell which point you were making

All written up by natives, no less. And it's all turn back the clock too, what with the monarchist Saxons (seriously, I'd buy fascist neonazis any day, but monarchist?), the backwards-minded Nazi Bavarians and Badenians, the North German League ... even the states have been redone to pre-napoleonic days for the most part, with the addition of two magical kingdoms and the Black Flood because it's not cyberpunk without ecological catastrophes. And 1920s Berlin.

DidS was also written by natives and the descriptions of Westphalia, Bavaria, Rhine-Ruhr, or Hamburg were not exactly free of stereotypes. And I must say that the general flair of these settings, while sometimes heavily overdone, is not that bad. Except the redneck bible-thumpers into Westphalia, everybody knows that should be Bavaria

(Yes, the German and US South are surprisingly similar -- the locals tend to have a high opinion of the place, the rest of the country not so much, and the rest of the world somehow considers it representative of the whole country)

Good, bad, it all depends on what floats your boat.

Personally it was not what I envisioned for Shadowrun in the UK, but I can live with it, since I've had 20+ years to get used to the setting.

Ahahaha, word. WORD.

Keep in mind that several areas were put together around 1990, while others have been detailed more recently. Georgia, and Atlanta, New Orleans, and Louisiana, and Texas have all been given previous write-ups, for instance. Transforming them from what's established is possible, but needs a good reason. If you wanted, say, a vegan Texas where all firearms were outlawed and the musical norms were based of EuroPop, well, you could write it, but it would fly in the face of continuity.

Areas that had never gotten coverage before, like Oklahoma, Arkansas, and South Carolina, were blank slates and could be defined for the first time. You might see that these areas are somewhat different than other states. I'm not certain where you're having the most issues, however ... on the one hand, you dislike stereotypes that are 50 years out of date, which are hilighted to showcase the differences between the CAS and the UCAS, but also want to see the CAS be different than the UCAS. I'm not certain what would have made you happy here, but I do apologize if it left you unhappy. That'd be a failure on my part. On every page, there should be an idea for a character, a plot point for a shadowrun, an adventure seed, an interesting nugget that makes teh reader go, "Huh. I can use this." If you got through an entire section, let alone the entire book, and got nothing of value ... well, that's on me. I'd be happy to discuss it with you, however. It could be a failure to deliver ideas, it could be bad ideas, or it could simply be bad writing; I'm willing to enteratin any of those possibilities.

Drop me a line, we'll chat.

I'm not unhappy. I'm disappointed. Most of North America was a blank slate. Rather than put anything interesting there, the CAS's empty parts got a big "here there be ignorant racists" stamp, and were promptly forgotten. The rest just got forgotten entirely.

What I was hoping to see was the CAS finally get a treatment on par with the UCAS, or CalFree, or the Tirs. Then again, the two most important events in the book don't actually talk about how they effect the nations they take place within. The Rio Gambit says nothing about the PCC and the NatVat situation doesn't go in depth into how the Carib League is dealing with the Azzies and their dragon problem.

The terrible curse of pagecount, there. There should be follow up in future products, re the PCC and the Carrib League. The latter was 'born' into Shadowrun with the pirate and smuggler subsection, and likely won't get heavy treatment until another of those comes along. There's certainly some reaction inferred, but not as in depth as the other sections.

As for 'here be racists', in some part true, in other, I'd beg to differ. Mississippi, for instance, is treated as a lost cause, left to rot while those with the ability to move out in droves. Natural disasters keep striking it, magical forces are on the rise, and no one ever sends help because it's broke and could never repay it. You get a setting. Plot elements are then introduced, such as a particular corp thinking that the situation needs to be changed, so steps in and does so. How does this help the corp? How are others wanting to take advantage, or up-end, that situation and why? Will a different corporation come in and raid for resources?

Here you have a situation that might look like a racial issue on the surface, but is, in reality, an economic one, and the potential setting for a game. Are your players cold-hearted professionals? Then you can send them there on missions for decent pay but facing relatively easy opposition. Are your players more inclined to 'hooding? You have a golden opportunity laid out in front of you, as well as a setting that can really use the help. Rewards aren't likely to be financial, unless certain corporate elements get involved, but are there other ways that the locals can help?

Ideally, a sourcebook will work on several layers. Some people will love the political minutae and dig in hungrily, devouring the interplay between factions, personalities, and which party in power can make a difference. Other people don't give a whit about politics but would like a new setting. Others make their own setting but want to see where the metaplot is heading (Did anyone make a big move in Dirty Tricks in this regard? I'd say yes.) ... Still others want new guns and cool cars. That last group, sorry, nothing new in that regard. Finding a balance between going deep into one subject, shallow into several, or mixing mediums, is the tricky part. It's entirely possible that some sections just don't click for what you needed. Hopefully, you'll get something more useful in the future. It's also possible that the book was exactly what someone wanted. Not heard from that side yet, but, it might happen. If it doesn't, well, I'll wear the albatross for a while. I'm new, after all, and a far cry from perfect.

There are lots of particulars that can't be talked about due to Non-Dosclosure Agreements, ongoing plots, and so on, but I'm more than happy to discuss what I can, expand on concepts, and so forth. Feel free to ask about stuff, or point out where improvement is needed. (And if you liked something, mentioning that's nice as well. )

I do really like the breakdowns of the Senatorial and Mayoral races in the UCAS. If the political minutae had been applied to more than one nation, I'd have been really happy with it. I guess I've always been in denial about Shadowrun having made a conscious effort to treat every place that isn't the UCAS as a sideshow.

I couldn't care less about cool cars and new guns. I like new bionetics because I like the transhumanism in the game, but really none of the mechanics for weapons or vehicles are internally consistent enough to stop me from slapping a new name on something, arbitrarily tweaking a number or two, and calling it a day. I like politics. I like macroeconomics. I like the scheming and the dirty tricks and all that goes with them.

But why are there so many orks in Mississippi? Something had to give them a reason to concentrate there before everyone who could afford to decided to leave, otherwise a state with a current population of 3 million wouldn't end up with 1.4 million orks and 0.6 million non-orks.

Who are the main authors of the book?

Depends on which section. The CAS is mine, for instance, which is why I'm hoping to change some minds on it.

While you're certainly allowed to be disappointed (you paid money for it, your opinion counts), and while I don't mean to sound like I'm dogpiling here, I think you're overstating the "blank slate" a little bit. An awful lot of stuff has been written, even if just scattered in bits and pieces here and there, over the years. I know from talking to Wak, and reading Wak's draft, that he was trying to touch base with a few corners of the CAS that hadn't been specified much, but that he was also doing so while staying internally consistent with what has been said about the CAS.

We try not to be in the retcon business if we can help it. You complain about the broad-brush racism, for instance, but I think if you look at why the CAS broke off and made its own country, and if you look at how the CAS has been painted in the 20+ years of canon material since then, you'll see that it's not like that's Wak's fault. Hell, even in the "desperately pro-CAS" Shadows of North America write-up, they come out and say that the CAS was formed in protest of the welfare nanny state and influx of liberals from Canada in "their" USA; there's your finger-pointing at real-world Conservatives right there, and it was written how many years ago? 6WA goes on about how "isolationist policies and a...conservative social mindset" has kept major change from ever taking root, and while the Technocrats have occasionally been handed some political success, just look at the rest of the major parties that have traditionally been in power.

I mean, I'm a guy who grew up in Kentucky and lives in Texas, now. I get it. I know plenty about real-life people talking real-life shit about the south, and I know it rankles. But Wak's a Tennessee boy, himself. He's not out to paint an ugly picture of the CAS for shits and giggles, he's working in the sandbox he's inherited from previous writers.

If you wonder why the Tennessean that gets airtime (Rebel Yell) is something of an ass, it's because I wanted a counterpoint for my home state. If I just went in and was all, "Ooo, Tennessee is teh best thing ever! We're rich and cool and everybody loves us and all our stuff is amazing," people would be trying to choke me, and rightly so. So, instead, I painted a bright picture with a narrator who's an ass. You're *supposed* to dislike him. He shortchanges other states because he's a navel-gazer, like most of the CAS has been written up to be in the past. Isolationist, racist, etc.

You have four voices at work in all, all of which are semi-reliable.

Southern Belle is from Georgia and a senator's daughter. She's the viewpoint of the "True American" coalition. Big into being the 'real America' and wanting to reunify the United States, but with the South as the capital. She tends to think of the CAS government as the 'boss' and that the other states should fall in line with the federal-level government. Quite simply, she knows what's best for other people, so they should do what she says. The True Americans are also expansionist, wanting to retake all American soil, and with that a push for a bigger military (Like the Kitty Hawk) ... they see the Pueblo Corporate Council as vital allies against a common Aztechnology threat.

Rebel Yell is an Ork RIgger from Tennessee. She's the viewpoint of the "True Southerner" coalition. Wants nothing to do with the old America or the UCAS (All those Canadians and Yankees screwed it up!) and wants the Confederation to stay isolationist, keep its nose out of other people's business, lower taxes (In general ... he doesn't pay any, obviously) and is a big proponent of state's rights. He's also a loudmouth braggart and an ass who thinks his state is the best place on Earth and that everywhere else sucks because it isn't Tennessee.

Guillotine is a vampire from New Orleans who has a smaller worldview... doesn't care about politics, or making money, or doing anything other than living the sweet life, a hedonism that gives not a whiff for what goes on outside the city. Or a lot of what goes on *in* the city. This is the viewpoint of someone who doesn't follow politics and just wants to go through their life without being bothered by rules. Dismissive of the working class, business types, or anyone who focuses on 'petty' things. Guillotine's job is to givesa more free-spirited view than most.

Texas 2-Step is a Texan, one who supports the idea of a Texas Republic that's separate from the CAS (In theory, if not actively working towards it), thinks the Confederation should be more focused on what's important (Which is, of course, Texas), and is upset that the people up in Atlanta can't understand how they need more military, *now*, to deal with the threat across the border. Quite reasonable, considering that they've lost half the state already. He's on a border state, and a hot, hostile border at that, and wants to defend his homeland against alien invasion. Everything else is secondary to that.

All four of them have strengths and weaknesses, and their individual situation colors their viewpoints. Had it been a bigger book, each state would have had a local turning in information (Like 'Mud Duck' from Mississippi), but it's only a sixth, so, that wasn't possible. From there, I wanted to touch base on the areas that had been covered (Atlanta, N. O, and so on), showcase some changes, some things that weren't changing, and at least introduce other areas ... I could have removed, say, Virginia, and put that space towards more on Atlanta, but I made the call to at least touch on every state instead, help introduce new ideas instead of only talking about what we'd seen before.

Would it have been nice to, say, release the same volume of information, but only about Atlanta? Possibly! There's a lot to be written there, and I expect big things to come out of the Cord Mutual Building, for example, but I wanted a broader, if shallower, go at this time. Again, that was my call and if you want to call me on it, that's both fine and fair. Was talking about Oklahoma having wanted to join the PCC for years and how there's job opportunities out in Tulsa, instead of detailing a cnongressional race wise? Maybe, maybe not. The UCAS section, when I was reading the drafts, was doing a great job on that. Adding more of the same would make people who liked that happy, but, again, I prefer more breadth to doubling-down. A book that was nothing but congressional races risks turning off people. A little mix-up has the potential to bring in more people. If everyone loves the UCAS section and dislikes the CAS, then they'll know that, in the future, the solid political way is a better way to go. Had everyone hated the UCAS and loved the CAS, then maybe a full-blown Shadows Across CAS book could be dialed into the pipeline.

So, uhm. I'm probably being long-winded about now. Sorry about that. Southern Baptist from a small town in Tennessee (Lawrenceburg, for the record, same as Senator/Actor Fred Thompson) ... we tend to go on.

Stereotypes and simplifications are good because it's a fucking game and, for everyone that is not a native, we don't have 20 years to absorb the subtleties of a place. You want a basic overview with 2-3 sticking points as to what make it unique, and you want those things to be fun, not perfect lab cultured accuracies. LA is the city of Hollywood and sunken treasures. New-York is the city of corporations. Ares is the weapon company.

Locals are never happy because "it wasn't done right". If it was done they way they want, quite frankly, it would be the most boring shit in the world. Just a 1:1 projection of today into the future without dystopian elements.

This is Shadowrun. Everywhere and everyone sucks, and nothing progressed in a linear fashion, and gaming material must be easy for me to absorb so I can set one game in it.

...Actually, as an LA native, earthquakes, Hollywood, race riots, and the 10 Freeway really do accurately sum up about 90% of the city.

And as a dirty Yankee that moved down South for his wife, I'm going to say that while the South isn't crazy racist, it's still there. We're lucky to live in one of the most liberal cities in the state, but you still totally get that vibe around the state sometime, you know? And I hate that, and I want to think better of people, but you really do see it.

Saying that, I was a really big fan of the SoNA write-up of the CAS back in the day. There was a concept for you! A country heartened by the election of a dragon to office to revitalize their country, take it away from the folks that are plunging it further and further into backwoods hillbilly territory, and remind the world that the South are the True Americans! Great concept. If this book has moved away from that, hey! I'm still going to use the South from 3e.

But knowing that it's Wak writing (and Crit mentioning he read it over) I can't see it being too crazy racist. Myself and my wife know Wak pretty well offline, and I know he wouldn't make any sort of effort consciously to plunge it away from that. So we'll see.

Also, the most shit-talking I ever hear about the South is always from the natives. Just sayin'

Having discussed our local area with my wife, we've both decided that it would be a haven and stop over for drug smugglers from the far western and eastern sides of the state as they hightailed it up north to make money in the much bigger metroplex to the north of us. It would mostly be homegrown drugs and booze, and lots of smaller organized crime, with the bigger outfits operating in said bigger metroplex.

Both said metroplex and our city would be havens for biotech corporations working on genetic testing, with a large Japanese and German population.

(Opinion as a french guy: London Sourcebook is a great sourcebook IMO).

Now, about the stereotypes, I must say I like a gamingplace to have an extra flavor. I must say, when reading for exemple the Neo-anarchist guide to North America, I end up asking myself: 'kay, what does this place have that makes it unique in comparison to Seattle.

And when it's nothing, I just end up with a "bah well I skip that place as a gaming place".


Shadowrun has it's background flaws that devs cannot really erase (Like NAN size for exemple...). Ok they could find something to add flavor to a country that doesn't pick on stereotypes BUT I take stereotypes any day to a setting that follows the global uniformization in culture we kinda live. Because when I play, I want something special.


ps: I haven't Tirty Tricks. This does not reveale any opinion about the book.