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Shadowrun, 4th Edition |  |
I’m not calling this out specifically as a review, mainly because I haven’t actually played the game yet, just read the core book. However, I did want to offer my impressions of Shadowrun, 4th Edition by Fanpro and WKGames.
Setting
The world of Shadowrun is cool (read: really damn cool). For those of you who are new to the hobby, or have been living under a rock, or have otherwise not heard of Shadowrun for some bizarre reason, allow me to explain why it is so cool. Strictly speaking, Shadowrun is a cyberpunk game. There’s full VR, rogue AIs, megacorporations, privatized law enforcement, coffin hotels, flechette guns, and any number of other things ripped directly out of a William Gibson novel. For cyberpunk fans like me, that’s great, and it’s generally enough. Shadowrun doesn’t stop there, though. For those who like to mix a little fantasy with their sci-fi, Shadowrun also includes a number of magical elements. It’s got dwarves, elves, orks, and trolls. It’s got dragons. It’s got vampires and ghouls. It’s got spellcasting, sprit summoning, astral travel, and all kinds of mystic wierdness. The great this is, these two distinct genres don’t seem to be in opposition within the framework fo the world. On the contrary, they make sense together and create a cohesive whole that is more than the sum of its parts. It’s an original, intriguing, and above-all, fun-seeming world to play in.
The book, itself, is teeming with flavor. It starts off with a seven-page fictional vignette, and each chapter is preceeded by a similar, half-page fiction. The artwork does a great job of reinforcing the flavor of the setting, and even the prose of the book seems to be written “in character”. It’s great stuff, it’s well-presented for the most part, and it really makes me want to play the game. One of the best things about the setting, though, is how natural and logical it all seems, despite the cyberpunk craziness and magical oddness. It’s believable. The Matrix seems to be a logical extension of our World-Wide Web, and the various commercial uses for things like wireless transmitting and RFID tags, combined with Augmented Reality accessories, create something that is very much like spam email, telemarketing, and billboards, all rolled into one obnoxious and overbearing package. It’s great.
The Mechanics
The mechanics of Shadowrun are, I think, the book’s greatest weakness. Not that they’re bad; they aren’t. They seem to be perfectly playable. However, the rules seem to suffer from a case of too much complexity. The basic dice pool mechanic is easy enough, and works fine for most rolls. However, it’s when you start getting into the specifics that things get a little hairy. There are so many specific modifiers for various circumstances, equipment, et al, that it seems like a GM who wanted to do things the way they’re meant to be done would be referring to the book a lot, which would bog down gameplay. However, that said, it would be possible for a GM to do things in a more off-the-cuff format, implementing a lot of modifier estimation and GM fiat into the equation to save time and effort. However, to do so makes 40% of the rules content in the book fairly useless. There’s also the problem of too much math. I’m a firm believer that the most complex math that should be in a role-playing game is basic addition and subtraction, with maybe a little light, single-digit multiplication. Shadowrun’s designers, however, decided to include calculations like, “An explosive’s Damage Value is calculated as (modified) rating x the square root of the kilograms used.” Huh? You mean I either have to calculate a square root in my head, or a calculator is required for using explosives? Not good, in my opinion.
There’s also the issue of some rules that are unclear, in a strange location, or apparently missing entirely. For example, you can buy a pair of AR gloves that provide tactile feedback when you’re using Augmented Reality. Sounds cool, but what does it do in game terms? The book doesn’t say. Then there’s the case of DV versus DV. In most instantces, DV stands for Damage Value. However, when you’re talking about magic, DV stands for Drain Value. There are a couple of places where Drain Value is referred to as Drain Code (an oversight, I imagine), which would have been less confusing if it had been used throughout; sadly, however, it wasn’t.
The main problem with the rules, I think, is that they’re a little schizophrenic. For the most part, the game is a rules-heavy system (not unlike the d20 System) that tries to have a rule to handle every situation. In some cases, though, the rules are vague and open to GM interpretation. Now, either method would have been fine with me, if it had been used throughout, but that’s not the case. Instead, there seems to be an overall lack of internal consistancy when it comes to rules philosophy.
What I Liked
The setting is just frickin’ awesome. The rules are good for the most part, even with the rough edges. I’d love to play a cyber-elf ninja-hacker, which this book allows me to do. The artwork and graphic design is also, for the most part, very good.
What I Didn’t Like
The rules are sometimes too complex and detailed, and sometimes too vague. It’s pretty clear that lots of attention was given to the setting, and significantly less to the rules. The book also has more than its fair share of typos throughout.
The Bottom Line
Despite its problems, I have no problem recommending this book. If you’re a role-player, and you’re at all a fan of cyberpunk, this game is worth the price of admission. Heck, I may never actually get a chance to play the game, but I’m glad to have been able to read it. It’s full of ideas, many of which you could easily steal and trasnplant into another system or game if you don’t want to use the core Shadowrun rules.
