Shadowrun Source Book - Cutting Black Guide/Review

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/336160

I'm only including the overall review, not the chapter-by-chapter breakdown because I hit Lemmy's character limit twice, and I cba to split it into multiple sections again. Just click the link above if you want to see the full breakdown.

TL;DR: The book is overall pretty good. It's not a literary masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, but the chapters that work, work really well. There are also chapters that are awful, and you should just straight-up ignore. There are also some very questionable editing decisions that mean you have to cross-reference things across both ends of the book, but this is something that can be overcome by taking notes and assembling a timeline yourself. This started as a review, but ended up being more of a GM guide on how to use the book. I hope nobody minds terribly.

Overall, this book is really all over the place. Some terrible editing decisions, an awful chapter that should have never made it past the draft stage, and some questionable organizational decisions, but the chapters that work really work. I think it’s well worth it just for the Detroit Rupture/Detroit Now and UCrASh chapters. There’s lots of potential shadowruns here, and if the official timeline is too tight and you want your players to see more of this important moment in UCAS history, you can always tweak the timeline yourself to lengthen or shorten it. I really do think there’s a lot of value in this book, but it is a bit of a slog to get to it.