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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not for 3rd Edition,
By A Customer
This review is from: Shadowrun Companion: Beyond the Shadows (Paperback)
Beware: If you're looking for the 3rd Edition version of the Shadowrun Companion, this is not it!
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
TSS: Why do you need this book for your game?,
By A Customer
This review is from: Shadowrun Companion: Beyond the Shadows (Paperback)
The Shadowrun Supplemental has fast become the most controversial publication of the twenty or so that comprise FASA's cyberpunk fantasy role playing game "Shadowrun". The edges and flaws allow you to take your character into greater depths of detail, but are also a min-maxer's paradise. The 100 point system for generating characters is far more versatile than the old priority system, but it also produces characters that are far more likely to be mages or metahumans, or both, because the cost in points of such traits is not nearly so high as it tends to be in the priority system.
The alternate campaign ideas are a good start, but they're just a start. I think that whole new game supplements based on other popular sci-fi fantasy would do very well under a Shadowrun rules system; but in order for a genuinely rich gaming environment to be created for an alternate campaign, new availability charts, street indexes, legality ratings and special rules have to accompany. A good example of this is Bug City, which is very much a cross between Mad Max and Aliens, in terms of genre and atmosphere.
Some of the suggestions for new pools are likely to make dice tests out of combat more complicated, along with increasing the raw number of dice involved, and they serve no real purpose. Combat pool can be used to dodge, or attack. Magic pool can be used for defense, drain resistance or casting spells. What would you use an athletics pool for other than adding dice to athletics tests? What would you use a social pool for except assisting social skill tests? Athletics is a straight skill roll to gain successes "Let's see... I could throw in my whole athletics pool for this test, or I could save it for.." For what? Pools refresh when you're next eligible to act, and athletics skill requires a full action. Social skills are either straight rolls or opposed tests, so what would a social pool be saved for? It would only serve to destroy the balance maintained by availabilty ratings by doubling the number of dice players can roll to find rare items and sell stolen gear; and the target numbers wouldn't change.
Paying cash for karma or recieving karma for cash can not be based on a straight scale if it is to be used at all. Like the basic factors in every field of the shadowrun game, there has to be a law of diminishing returns. If you keep spending karma to raise your atrributes, you'll find that it gets harder and harder to do so, and the results you see will become less and less significant. So it should be in the cash/karma balance. I leave it to the game masters to work this for themselves, but the system as they have it is unusable in my opinion.
Despite its shortcomings, I have to reccomend this book to anyone who has ideas for characters that they haven't been able to realize with the existing system. I reccommend this book for the possibilities it can offer and the good ideas it contains. I also offer a word of caution. This rules supplement was not constructed with the careful attention to balance and long-term insight that produced the SR2 main book, and as such, many of the options it presents could ruin your game.
That's all. Thanks for your time.
Gunnm
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is a great book,
By
This review is from: Shadowrun Companion: Beyond the Shadows (Paperback)
This book although from second edition works nearly perfectly with third. This book goes over metahuman subtypes, shapeshifters, enemies, edges and flaws, and evan alternate campaighnes like Lone Star Doc Wagon and evan the military. This book is a must have but if you play the third edition make shure you get the third edition companion if it's available.
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