I've always had distaste for systems with heavy focus on advancing metaplot that outdates the older setting books and is easy to loose track of. I don't mind systems with heavy focus on campaigns with possible world changing events(such as how Pathfinder handles it), but I've preferred the setting books to not get outdated in span of same edition. But since I've only gotten chance of playing Shadowrun(5e) only once in five years and I figured out even if I get chance to play my GMs likely wouldn't follow the metaplot... Well, why not just buy the books for fiction value? I always liked reading jackpoint conversations and setting materials in player rule books, setting flavor is really best part of Shadowrun after all.
But yeah umm.... Even with that this book isn't what I expected. This was first Shadowrun plot sourcebook I had read, so I needed to check out other metaplot books to see if they are all like this or if this one was exception. More on that later. What I was expecting was something like this: Since I knew this wasn't an adventure module, I expected lot of in universe reports on the on going events, out of character text on how gm can handle the events, stats for important npcs and such, and lot of plot hooks.
Book is instead about just the on going live reporting on several seemingly disconnected events, with greater ramifications on UCAS. Basically vast majority of book is in character fiction and stats only being for token two insect spirits and the new alpha merge one. There is also that book goes through several events could have been their own adventures or even campaigns, Chigago bug war redux in Detroit, UCAS army unit disappearing, the Blackout itself, UCrash that results from all of that happening and for some reason British's person's perspective on all of these events from outside point of view to get the "how did world globally" react to it info.(note: something about that part feels off to me, like American trying to write someone who is British, but not really nailing it right)
So umm... I did get what I wanted ironically since I was going to read book just for fiction and its 99.99% fiction material with 0.01 rule stuff. But even from that perspective, it feels unsatisfying. My guess is that intended use of book is to work as inspiration for GM's own campaign that goes through same events, (but again, even in that case this is basically several different campaigns rushed through in one book) hence why it has detais like "Damien Knight is probably dead but no clue if he did heroic sacrifice, died as villain, turned out to be super bug spirit or what", its indended for GM to create their own take on matter with same end result as in the book, but they can fill in details themselves. But from my view it feels like the person causing the initial shenanigans just got bridge dropped on them out of nowhere without satisfying conclusion.
I'm not going to compare book to multiple other Shadowrun plot books I read afterwards , that would take too long, so I'm only goign to bring up Dark Terrors: That one had much better balance of in character commentary, mechanics and usable plot hooks that this one did. Unless something changed between 5e and 6e, I'm going to assume this book is more extreme case rather than the norm. Though maybe Lockdown would have been better book to buy and compare as Lockdown and this are both introductions to the new metaplot rather than deeper exploration of already known concepts(Dark Terrors is great btw).
But yeah so in conclusion: As fiction book, I did enjoy the jackpoint commentary and new twists and turns in the book, but book felt unfocused and felt like it threw lot of ideas that are going to get deeper exploration in later books. That and there were lot of unsatisfying elements in the focus: Like the book first feels like its going to be about the Detroit bug war and Ares shenanigans, but then its like "aaand it ended in victoy and Damien Knight died somehow"(though it does later get back to topic close to the end when discussing Motor City and later again when Betas come up). Basically, it feels like some plot threads got picked up and dropped anti climactically without reader really getting catharsis.
From GM source book point of view, the book doesn't really give any guidance or mechanics for GM to use to run this as campaign. Book just tells events and ending point of them and expects gm to get inspired and want to run them themselves and fill in their own detail(like how did climactic end with Damien Knight go and etc), which kinda feels like even worse take on metaplot railroad than I had thought. Like I had assumed most of metaplot shadowrun railroad is sort of "Okay here is adventure that says characters have to do x or Harlequin kills them" dealio, this is more of "Well this is status of plot after multiple months worth of events which each could be their own campaign. So either run multiple campaigns for years until this book also gets oudated, or make campaign that rushes through each disconnected plot point fast". Either way, if you as GM follow it's intended use, you won't know if your home campaign version of events will get invadilated because, for example, later book might explain what actually happened to Damien Knight. Its basically like railroad where you have beginning and end, but lack middle of it and compelling reason to want to buy ticket to train in first place. Like I've seen similar "you know how story starts and ends, but its up to gm how to make up the middle" books which did it much better guidance and inspiration wise and I've also seen many "here are multiple different possible options for what actually happened and how to run them" as well. This book's problems on gm side really come down to lack of guidance.
Dunno if this makes much sense since I'm writing this in morning and this is like first user review I've done in this site(at least for years) but uh yeah. There is lot I like in this book, but objectively I think it would be weird for me to give it higher rating when there is so many things I consider to be faux pas in rpg books.
|