2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Techno-horror as only Shadowrun can give you, April 25, 2007
This review is from: Renraku Arcology: Shutdown (Shadowrun RPG) (Paperback)
This sourcebook has been a long time coming for many Shadowrun fans. Pieces of the history behind what happens have come up in SR paperback stories and previous sourcebooks dating back to the first editionrules. What you get is a nightmare type setting to create adventures and runs with. Imagine a horror movie about a building at least a 1/4 mile in size filled with strange machines bent on your destruction. Add a cult that worships the building's computer that controls those machines doing experiments on what's left of the people inside. Now you got the picture.
Like many sourcebooks this one is mostly written as transcripts from messages relayed on the Shadowland Matrix (Internet on steroids), which gives the book a nice fictional flair aside from being a gamebook. The sections of the book cover the events as they happen at first, but then become an analysis of the current situation. You get plenty of ideas for adventures, but no actual adventures are detailed (although you do get suggestions).
The last 1/4 of the book is new rules for the various robots, drones, and characters you would run into. If you're into rigging and are thinking new cool drones forget it. These drones are too weird to work outside of being adversaries in the Renraku. The Otaku information, on the other hand, can be helpful if you ever want to use them as future NPCs or maybe even characters (wouldn't recommend it).
This book is too wild to pass up. I recommend it for any Shadowrun campaign regardless of whether or not the focus is technology and such. If nothing else it's very interesting reading.
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