…is the thousandth paper crane.

Yeah, it’s another “classic” of the genre that I’ve never actually read. But then I did.

These are a series of six books by Fritz Leiber that collect a bunch of short stories written about the two heroes: Farfhd, a tall Viking-analogue, and the Gray Mouser, a rogue equivalent. In these stories, they engage in various adventures to gain money. So, yeah, adventuring party. They tomb rob, work for powerful magical patrons, and get involved in mystical dealings that they are forced to stab with their swords.

I didn’t like these. The characters talked in that Shakespearean style so common in old-school fantasy and didn’t have much personality other than “I like beer.” I often couldn’t tell the difference between the two. The stories themselves weren’t that great either. Here’s a wikipedia description of one of the stories: “

One night in Lankhmar, Gray Mouser and Fafhrd are summoned by their patron wizards, Ningauble of the Seven Eyes and Sheelba of the Eyeless Face, unusually working together, to carry out a mission. They are required to enter the Plaza of Dark Delights to obliterate a bazaar that has been established there by the Devourers, alien merchants that magically mesmerise customers into buying high priced merchandise that is actually worthless trash. But Mouser arrives before the others and is enticed into the bazaar. Fafhrd, aided only by the Blindfold of True Seeing and the Cloak of Invisibility, lent him by the wizards, must perform the mission alone.

This he does, battling not only the entranced Mouser, but enchanted skeletons and living statues, against which his weapons are all but useless. But he manages to escape and rescue Mouser, who is still mesmerized into thinking that the trash he sees is really valuable, including books of secret magics.

Okay, you’ve read that and now you know the entirety of what happened in the story. There’s nothing else to it. It’s as surface-deep as you can get. Worst adventure ever.

So, yeah, I didn’t like these. The only good thing is that they were fairly short.

As for influences on fantasy gaming, other than a penchant for naming, there’s not much there. I guess maybe the concept of a thieves guild.

So, I’ve recently been embarking on a “fill in the back catalog” quest. Which is why I just read Jack Vance’s Dying Earth.

According to the cover, it’s a fantasy masterpiece. That may or may not be true. I’m only familiar with it because Dungeons & Dragon’s magic system is “Vancian.” That is, based on the magic system in these stories. And, yeah, I guess it is. More on that later.

I actually quite enjoyed these stories. Vance uses the biggest words in the English language all the time. I spent a lot of time with a dictionary while reading this. But that also means that everyone delights in verbal wordplay to an insane degree. The Cugel stories, in particular, revolve around a conman who cons his way into a good situation and then discovers its not that great a situation and has to con his way back out – over and over. Along the way, he jousts with mages, village elders, crazed cultists, and everything in between. In the same way that Conan achieves great victory at the end of one story and then is starting over from scratch in the next, Cugel triumphs over adversity at the end of one chapter and then has all his forward progress crushed at the beginning of the next. They’re entertaining. However, Cugel in particular isn’t a great person. There’s a couple instances of, well, date rape would be the closest analogue I guess. He abandons innocent people to take the wrath of the people hunting him often. He’s definitely carved from an earlier time’s ideas of heroics. So that might not be to your taste.

So, yeah, the magic system is fire and forget. Mages memorize spells, only to have the knowledge wrested from their heads when they cast the spell. Even the spell names show up in D&D (Excellent Prismatic Spray, for instance, not to mention Ioun Stones). What’s odd to me is that there’s more than one magic system in these books. Rialto, an archmage, relies upon sandestins – essentially genies/demons that he’s bound to his service. As he uses their powers, they work off the services they owe him. So, where’s that in D&D?

So, would I recommend these? I guess. I got a kick out of the verbal fencing, even if the stories themselves didn’t really go anywhere. Like so many fantasy books from that era, there’s not a whole lot of plot. It’s just adventure after adventure with little connective tissue. But I certainly found these more entertaining than, say, Conan.

Dude, a mech!

… is a member of the Universal Brotherhood.

Only 73 more pages!

Night Shift
Oh, look. Katana fetishization. Excellent.

Street Gear
At long last we come to one of the densest chapters – gear. I could spend hours staring at the numbers and comparing weaponry against each other, but I’m tired. So let’s just say “Yup. That’s a lot of gear.”

This chapter starts off with the Concealability rules. It’s important to note that this is only for physical searches so that surveillance state stuff is either on or off, depending on the capriciousness of your GM. Good to know. Then we’ve got some rules for Availability and fencing gear, which is always handy if your group has taken their dungeoncrawly heritage too far and collects all their downed foes’ equipment.

So, what does gear cover? Lots. There’s a list of common services, tons of weapons (complete with pictures!), armor, electronics, communications, simsense programming, fake IDs, B&E accessories, survival gear, vehicles, drones and tons of cyberware and bioware. There’s also charts for some of the equipment presented in other chapters, so it’s all in one place. Two things that stood out to me: MMOs in the future have a monthly fee (how quaint), and the commlinks and their operating systems all have brand names. Granted, the guns have brand names, too but a lot of the other gear is just given generic descriptors. I like this inclusion. Makes it feel more cyberpunky.

Shadowrun Master Index
Last but not least we have the index. But this is no ordinary index. No, it’s an index that includes the main book and five other “core” sourcebooks (Arsenal, Augmentation, Runner’s Companion, Street Magic, and Unwired). Everything’s color-coordinated and it runs 21 pages. It also includes a listing of all the Tables from these six books. In other words, it is the greatest index of all time. Seriously, I bought the Anniversary edition solely because of the index (Well, I probably would have bought it anyway, but I specifically wanted to show my monetary support for such an index – Little did I know my monetary support went towards home improvement). It’s sad that this sort of thing needs to be called out, but there it is.

Summation
So, in summary, what do we have here? Well, for one, we have a ridiculously long “review” that proved useful for no one in particular. Congratulations, me! We also have a really nice core rulebook for a game that fails to hit its mission statement. Not that this is anything particularly new in gaming, especially from a game invented in the ’80s. Still, it was always a pretty fun game, even if it didn’t really know what it wanted to be. But I feel like the 4th edition rules took two wrong turns: 1) the elimination of variable target numbers led to an escalation in both the number of dice rolled and the number of times those dice need to be rolled – making the game less fun in the process. Now, I’m not claiming that they’re werent problems with previous editions – I was excited to see the new edition because I wanted to see those problems eliminated. But it just seemed to lead to a whole other category of problems. 2) ascribing too much realism to their fake world. The legitimate concerns of a surveillance state and its logical extrapolations are realistic to the extreme. But they make the core premise of the game unworkable. Shadowrunners, at least as they’ve been imagined for the last twenty years, can’t exist with the security currently in place.

But the game did do some stuff right. It advanced the setting into the present – i.e. what the present thinks the future will hold. Well, okay, maybe not quite what the future will hold, but within the parameters of a ubiquitous cyberware-equipped criminal underclass. I don’t truck with nostalgia and I’m glad to see this march into the future, even if it does err towards realism over genre emulation. It also has really great art. At first, I was thinking “oh, this art is pretty good” but in the course of writing this review I flipped through my 3rd edition book (to refresh my memory on how the rules used to be) and, dear God, that art is atrocious. Like, I’m not even sure how I was ever able to play the old game with a straight face, the art is so bad. So this book actually gets bumped up in the art department after comparing it to previous products. Plus, it has the index to end all indexes.

In other good news, in the time its taken me to write this, my book has gradually warped back into normal book-shape. So yay.

It’s got to end sometime, right? Well, it’s not with this chapter.

What Goes Around Comes Around
Besides the blandest opening sentence of any story so far, this one wasn’t terrible. I almost felt something for the main character.

Friends and Foes
Now we’re up to NPC rules and they’re adequate. We start out with Grunts. Grunts act on the same Initiative count, only have one Condition Monitor each (unlike the two that most characters have), and have Group Edge. And that’s all Shadowrun has to say about minions. Personally, I think Group Edge is dumb. Why do NPCs have the same advantages PCs have? Personally, I’d ignore it. It would be nice if the shortened Grunt profiles would include what their Armor rating is, or what Damage Value their gun has. Unless I’m expected to memorize all of that.

Next, we have Prime Runners, who are full-fledged characters. You should use the full Build Point character creation system for them, because you have lots of time and love making characters. Thank god the Runner’s Toolkit includes an alternate system for building these guys that takes less time.

Next are Contacts. These are cool as they enforce genre expectations. You need to know other people that can help you out with information, selling loot, or acquiring restricted equipment. The rules for these seem cool. I especially like the glitch effects (the walls have ears). We then have a list of potential Contacts. Each describes what sort of information or gear they have access to as well as alternate takes on the basic template.

Lastly, we have Critters, or as they’d be called in any other game – Monsters. Because what’s a dungeon-crawl without monsters (except that they’re rarely used in corporate facilities as guard animals)? This is another section of Shadowrun that disappoints me. With the infusion of magic into the world, a lot of new fantasy critters have shown back up, except they’re explained as scientifically as possible. Yes, vampires operate just like your typical 18th century lurker-in-the-night, but it’s caused by a virus. Yawn. There’s a long list of powers. As a change from previous editions, the dice that critters roll for their powers are based on Magic, which varies by critter (previous editions tended to use Essence, which was always 6). I like the inclusion of the Sapience “power” as it wasn’t always clear in previous editions which critters had the wherewithal to develop culture.

There’s a short list of ordinary critters, which includes Sharks (because there’s a lot of shadowruns that take place underwater I guess). Then we get the Paracritters, which have wacky magical abilities. We get the classics like the Barghest, Hell Hound, Ghoul, and Sasquatch. Spirits are also in this section. I already mentioned I like Spirits and that hasn’t really changed. Perhaps their most frightening ability is that they possess Immunity to Normal Weapons (If the Damage Value of your weapon isn’t higher than their Armor, they ignore the hit. And that’s before accounting for autofire). Spirits are bad.

Lastly we have Dracoforms, or dragons. Shadowrun takes their dragons from every culture, so we have eastern dragons, western dragons, and even feathered serpents and leviathans. They’re suitably bad news. One odd inclusion is that they have a Natural Weapon of Bite/Claws with a Damage Value of 10P, AP -2. Except the Natural Weapon power states that a creature can make an Unarmed Attack of half Strength doing Stun damage. The weakest dragon has a Strength of 30, so their Unarmed Attack would be doing more damage without the inclusion of the Natural Weapon. Sure, it’s not Armor Penetrating or doing Physical damage, but at 15 Damage, I think that’s gonna overflow into Physical damage just fine (and that doesn’t even account for the +10 Strength Great Dragons get).

Speaking of Great Dragons, they’re next. It’s basically a template that gets applied to the appropriate Dragon statline. It’s weird that their Natural Weapon doesn’t increase with that jump in Strength, but their Armor does. Great Dragons also have a new power Twist Fate, which allows them to manipulate Edge expenditure. That’s just mean. One of the Twist Fate powers is odd as it can cause a character to reroll all dice that gained a hit. Except this is a Simple Action for the dragon, which means it would have to delay its action. Not sure that’s the best use of that power.

And that’s NPCs. Whee.

It’s time to build the mecha…

 

… is highly contagious.

This book just goes on and on and on…

Hat Trick
Worst detective story evar. Just because the author points out that its a hackneyed plot doesn’t infuse the story with fresh life. It’s still hackneyed. A better writer might have been able to turn that around, but no.

Running the Shadows
This is the “odds and ends” chapter. It covers a wide range of topics, so I’ll try to hit ‘em fast.

First, we have healing. There’s two types, First Aid and Medicine. I’m a little confused by the Healing Modifiers Table as to which skill it applies to. Both? It’s especially amusing because you can apply both to yourself, but one of the modifiers is for an uncooperative patient. “Stop being such a baby, me. It’s just a flesh wound.” Again, cyberware screws you, as its harder to apply healing to a heavily cybered character.

Next there’s Toxins. As a dungeon-crawly game, I guess poison effects have a place but it’s always seemed sorta lame to me. “Hey, your character is going to suck for awhile. Hope you don’t mind.” As far as rules go, these seem fine. I like the fact that Sleep Deprivation is written up using the Toxin format. If it fits, why not?

Next, we have drugs. This is the most roleplay-oriented section in the whole book. There’s lots of advice about how often your character should roleplay their drug cravings, how to roleplay the effects of drugs, and just generally a lot of handwaving. I don’t have a problem with that. It’s just odd that this is the section of the game that decides to forgo rules and concentrate on roleplaying. Not to say there aren’t rules. It kind of amuses me that the cocaine equivalent gives you a +1 Charisma. It’s odd that hallucinogenics have the lowest Threshold to avoid Addiction but hallucinogenic BTLs (Better-Than-Life chips – simsense chips that let you experience someone else’s life with the gain turned WAY UP) have the highest Threshold to avoid Addiction.

Next we have Security Systems. As a general description of the sort of defenses shadowrunners might run into at the location they’re about to ransack, I have no problem with this. However, when we get into nitty-gritty rules involving individual systems and the tools that overcome them, I’m less excited. Look, I get that this is the section on traps and that traps are a staple of genre, but there’s a big difference between a pit trap (which ultimately is just an inconvenience) and a laser tripwire system (which turns the infiltration into a shoot-out). One is yet another obstacle in a long chain of obstacles on the way to the treasure, while the latter is a session ender. It also feels a bit like pixelbitching, in which the GM can place the one sensor that the party didn’t account for in their most-of-the-session planning marathon. Leave that critical lock-picking tool at home? Hah! Adventure over! This section also the single worst modifier in the entire game. Join me in the next paragraph for a rant.

The Pheremone Scanner Table (which has all of two modifiers) lists “Menstruating (females only)” as a modifier. Are you fucking kidding me? Is that the sort of detail that the writers of Shadowrun think is important? Is there any reason that this would ever come up, from a purely role-playing standpoint? Is this the sort of message we should be sending to potential female gamers? “Hey, you know that thing that happens to you once a month that confuses and frightens me? Well, it’s a liability. Go make me a sandwich.” Fuck you Shadowrun. In addition, how is this represented in the rules? Because I don’t see any other mention of gender in these rules anywhere (other than “attracted to character” in the Charisma-linked Skills section, but that could go either way, or the same way really). So, the one time that gender is a factor, it’s negative towards women. This is the equivalent of the ol’ +2 Charisma, -2 Strength bullshit from the 70s. Not to mention its a stupid fiddly rule for a detail that is NEVER going to come up, except to annoy an entire gender.

*Ahem*

The next section is on Reputation, which is tracked three ways: Street Cred, Notoriety, and Public Awareness.  I generally like this section as its a rule reinforcing the genre and that happens so rarely in this game. It’s also awesome that one way to gain Notoriety is “working for a dragon” which just backs up the ol’ Shadowrun tagline “Never, ever deal with a dragon” with an actual game effect. That’s awesome. But that goodwill goes away when we get to the Identification section that details all the ways that not having a SIN can screw you. Because I definitely want to play a criminal in a surveillance state. That won’t be difficult or anything.

Speaking of criminals, it’s always struck me as odd that Shadowrun uses the word “Karma” for its Experience Points. That sorta implies that the PCs are out doing good deeds, which they are decidedly not.

Next we have Gamemaster Advice. This is mostly your standard GM advice that you’ve seen before, but with a few added sections on the typical Shadowrun adventure and a breakdown of the types of opposition you might face. I’m going to quote two pieces of advice in this section. See if you can spot the issue. “If [the players] don’t sweat for every Karma point and nuyen they earned, then you’re not pushing them hard enough.” “…the gamemaster can fudge the dice roll to keep the character alive.” Those two things are opposite, you stupid game. In the discussion on prep time, the GM is also encouraged to not give the players enough time to adequately plan their infiltration. I guess so you can hurry up and get to the part where it all goes wrong anyway and the bullets start flying.

I hate this chapter so much.