Some of the "new" adept powers hark back to some ED adept magic. Beastmatering are Swordsman's Windwalking are two that leap immediatly to mind.

I'm having my character learn Embroidery Skill just to be on the safe side.

i thought windwalking was the next best thing to flying. the glide power allows you to walk on thin branches and water, not air.

…At least at this magic level.

~J

heh. y'know, a 40mph gust of wind represents a lot more resistance than a thin branch...

I've always assumed Traceless Walk had a visual effect similar to Air Dance, just for fun's sake. The powers don't have much in common (being sneaky, compared to an init boost), but I find it appealing wholly on a fluff level.

Okay, I know I'm lagging with my review, and forgive me if I repeat what others have said, but I didn't have time to read all 15 pages of this thread .

This book rocks. It's excellent. I hope it sets the standard for the SOTA series henceforth. If it does, it will make these books the flagship of the line.

Games of State adds an element that has been long, long overdue. The new gear is great, the information is great. But I was disappointed not to see more on tradecraft -- like maybe a skill called Tradecraft, for instance. What's a dead drop? What's it mean to "double back" an agent? What is a dispatched defector? How are networks organized? What does it mean to "sacrifice" one or "roll it up"?

For years I've been using a knowledge skill called Spycraft to represent this kind of expertise in my games.

The adept chapter was nice, although I think the idea of the Ways gets a lot more ink than it needs. "Many adepts arrange their powers around a theme." That's pretty much it.

And some of the powers need rewritten. Between Kinesics and Improved Negotiation, an adept could talk people into filleting their own children and serving them to the adept with lemon butter.

Behind the Badge is very good. Let's face it, the old Lone Star source book was longer than it needed to be.

I especially liked Culture Shock, with the top ten lists and so on. That part of the SOTA books provides a great way for events to develop in the Sixth World year to year.

Do people like the name of Yamatetsu mission to Mars ?

Yeah, that's the only thing I did in that book, finding a name

indeed. appropriate.

Isn't it supposed to be about 1% of the world's population that's magically active? I don't remember how many people live in Seattle in the 2060s, but I'm guessing it's more than 1,200!

I very much enjoyed that section also. Good to see that humanity really isn't any closer to understanding magic.

On a slightly related note, a question about Witches. They're cited as having a "variant" of the anchoring metamagic. My read of that passage was that other than ritual sorcery, a witch's only way of "casting" a spell is through an expendable anchoring focus. So I suppose my question is about that little "variant" word. What exactly is different about a witch's version of Anchoring? Is it the fact that they begin the game with it, or is it something like... they don't have to bond an expendable anchor to use it?

I asked the only mundane in our gaming group (she plays a troll) what she thought about magic. "Duh, I got magic wand what fires 12.7mm dum-dums and if de buggers like to wear some kind of pansy armour spell it soon go through dat. And if dey got a bullet barrier shure aint much cop against my harpoon gun! Mages aint that much cop, they shit emselves and run when they saw that Shedim, ha, ha, ha. Me and Max sorted that!" Note Max is a medium machine gun.

THANK YOU FOR A GREAT BOOK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

State of the art 2064 is a great book, I especially enjoyed the chapters on adepts, the old world magic & culture shock! But the other chapters have been full of useful information as well.

I think it's great to see an update on adepts, it's long overdue & since I play a adept/face the new social adept possibilities are just great.

As a european I also would like to applaud the inclusion of even more info on european magical traditions.

On a side note I would just like to thank the authors for including alot of earthdawn nods, it's good to see an increase of these in the last few books.

Keep up the good work y'all I hope to see a State of the art 2065 sometime in the future.

So far what I've read, I've liked. The chapter on the adepts is quite good, they did need some more options and the Ways give some structure to creating an adept. The law chapter gave some useful insights, especially the section on prisons (evil chuckles from the GM ). The spy section should be very helpful in increasing my players paranoia, especially the IMINT!

Downsides (IMHO), the aura camera. I'm not convinced by that so I doubt if I'll use it. Stuff. Not enough of it. I liked the bits of gear that were in there but I would have liked more. Having said that, with the large amount of info on European magic (which I haven't read yet) something had to be dropped, and after SOE the magic did need bringing out.

Could we have more Stuff in SOTA 2065 please?

Overall, so far I like it, and I think it's an improvement over SOTA 2063.

Now that we've got over the initial shock of the adept expansion, I'm interested in knowing what people think of the other sections of the book.

Since I've recieved more than 10 mails asking for clarification on the matter, I'd like to point out that New Metamagic clearly states (emphasis mine):

Eh - I stand by my:

Gambling section was over-developed for the impact it will have on most games.

The Orkz Gangstas didn't appeal to me at all, nor did the parallels between East-West coast rapper rivalries. I didn't object to the Ork language as it has a basis from the implied Earthdawn past.

The Law Enforcement section was more interesting and I'll have to re-read when I have more time.

The Corp Kid Club section was interesting, but it didn't emphasize the basic idea of "there's more to life and shadowrunning than is dreamt of in your smartlink, Ratio" as much as I might have liked.

-Siege

Overall, I stick to my guns on this one -- great book, all around.

The only section I wasn't terribly impressed with (Magic in Europe) had less to do with the content itself as the general topic; I don't really care. When the worst thing I can say about my least favorite chapter in a sourcebook is "I didn't really read it, 'cause I don't see it mattering a whole lot," things aren't going too shabbily.

While the stuff in the Old World Magic chapter is indeed geared towards the European roots of the various traditions and their background, we did try to keep it usable for most players, even those in games that don't cross the Pond.

For instance, the background and rules for Wiccans and traditional witches are equally valid in the American, as well as the European theatre. Druids are admittedly rare elsewhere, but that's what the wanderers are for. Norse magicians might be a little out of place too, although you might want to consider those rules if you ever use Winternight for example. Though the varieties of theurgy presented in the Christian Magic section work best for those denominations described, they provide a general outlook for Christian mages of any denomination. The section regarding the hermetic paradigms and the academic conflict, while grounded in Europe, is meant to involve the entire hermetic (academic) magic scene and consequently any character who has had some form of formal hermetic studies whether they be in Boston, Prague or Tokyo.

Given the multi-national aspects of the world in 2064, I don't think it would be unheard of to find Norse shamans in North America and various plausible reasons abound.

Shark might manifest in some poor slob in the middle of Arizona -> granted, I predict a move in the poor shaman's immediate future, but nothing prevents Shark from appearing to who Shark so desires.

-Siege

Ya never know where your bloodline runs sometimes - who knows, maybe great Grand-dad has a bit of a history on (in?) him.

-Siege

I like to think of the sheer number of German and Jewish immigrants to this area in the SR NAN heartland from the Northeast, and wonder---Whose gods are bigger?

On the rules for surveillance satellites, if any cut parts go up on the site would it be possible to get ratings for places like Asgard or the independents since Shadowrunners are much more likely to use them rather than national networks?

You know, Birdy, I never thought I'd see the day when this would be supplementary reading for SR. That day has come.

-- The rules for surveillance sats don't make a lot of sense (the optical sats are science fantasy) and the "toys" for the spy section were pretty . . . odd . . .(cigarette micro rocket? What is this, Get Smart?).

It's been a while but yeah, its a very good book and a nice source for inspiration. As is this (for any shaman) and this (as inspiration for hermetic and theurgy ritual magic)

Actually, the cigarette rocket is quite clearly taken from You Only Live Twice, where Bond uses it to kill one of the technicians/guards in SPECTRE's secret launch center control room.

Or, you know, the RL cigarette gun perhaps.

here's a question. the Motion Sense power requires a Perception roll against a TN based on the size of the individual you're trying to get a 'lock' on, with the sense. what perception mods apply to this roll? one assumes that visual mods don't, but what about hearing mods--what about hearing cyber/powers, such as the High-Freq / Spatial Recognizer combo? can you use the bonus dice from the Select Sound Filter for the Perception test? what about the dice from Olfactory Booster?

Well, motion sensing would most likely rely on displaced air as a method of detection. That would limit relevant senses to extremely low frequency hearing or touch. So I'd say that you use all tactile modifiers or hearing modifiers if you have low frequency hearing.

er, gah. it says "through magical sensory perception of the surrounding mana". also says "even when sight, sound, or smell detect nothing". guess my question is answered.

Ok, so only modifiers for astral perception would be worth counting.

hm, possibly. it is blocked by astral barriers.

One thing I don't understand. In the police chapter they state, that some police forces are allowed to use spells such as mind probe and others are not.

I always wanted to know:

Where is proof when a cop mind probes (or just truth analyzes) a shadowrunner? The cop only knows what he was searching for. How can he show it to the judge? What keeps him from arresting and grounding an innocent worker just by telling: "I mindprobed him, HE killed this old lady last night. His alibi is worth a pile of shit!"

You see the problem? As soon as a justice allows mind probes or analyze truth no answers of magical active officers can be trusted anymore.

Did I forget a special rule? Is there a possibility to show a mundane user the result of a mind probing?