(Shadowrun) New Seattle

Aw, man, I was setting such a good pace in June, then politics happened and now I'm most of the way through July and I've only finished my second book for the month. It's a real shame, because New Seattle (Stephen Kenson) is exactly the sort of book that I'd normally finish in the space of a day. It's a guide to Shadowrun's signature setting that rapidly moves from subject to subject, most of which are pretty interesting. We've got Matchsticks, an old-fashioned jazz nightclub for our futuristic cyberpunk/fantasy setting? Great, I can read a paragraph about that. Or the Scatterbrains, the obligatory clown-themed gang of psychopaths? Yeah, sure, let's hear what the Shadowland comments section has to say about that (mostly, it's pretty predictable, but the suggestion that they get along so well with the Kabuki Ronin due to their shared love of whiteface is going to live rent free in my brain).

New Seattle was a bit of a challenge for me, as a long-time Shadowrun fan because it summarized, but did not advance the game's metaplot. Why am I getting a synopsis of Bug City in this book set halfway across the country? Did something new happen? Is there some Seattle-specific angle I'm missing?  No? It's just an early 3e setting book getting everyone on the same page? I can live with that, but I pay for these books so other people can get lost in the sauce, so maybe try to step up your game WizKids.

No, wait, what am I saying? I actually do not need new metaplot with every title. What I am, in fact, looking for in a city-centric setting book is information that allows me to run games set in that city. And by that metric, New Seattle has its highs and lows. The "History" chapter was largely unnecessary, but the "Welcome to Seattle" chapter had a ton of useful and oft-overlooked specifics - weather patterns, local tv stations, a list of chain restaurants and department stores. I wish it was twice as long and just super condescending. I normally dislike when an rpg book over-explains some basic concept, but even though I already know what a fast-food restaurant is, I'd love to know exactly how that has failed to prepare me for a cyberpunk/fantasy fast-food restaurant. Especially in a city-book, the minute difference between "the good Denny's" and "the sketchy Denny's" is exactly the sort of local savoir-faire that makes a place feel lived-in.

Though let me rein myself in a little bit. I'm not going to start criticizing a book for failing to adopt an untested experimental format (though feel free to picture me standing on a rooftop, screaming into a thunderstorm, "'The street finds its own uses for things,' means that a cyberpunk book should be 90% devoted to cultural, intellectual, and literal paths of desire!"). I do, however, feel like New Seattle, more than any other Shadowrun book I've read so far, lives and dies by the strength of its Shadowland comments. Sometimes the main text will blandly describe a building and the comments will be "yeah, I heard that place contains valuable items a rival megacorporation might want to hire someone to steal" and it's like, I guess technically that's useful information. I'm not going to say its unwelcome or pretend that if the book had just stopped at the building description I would not be complaining about how it didn't present me with any plot hooks. But then, some other sections will have comments along the lines of "oh, yeah, that bar is absolutely riddled with shapeshifters" or they'll just casually ruin some dude's life by outing him as an undercover cop and as unrealistic as it is, I kind of wish they could all be like that.

Overall, I really liked New Seattle. It didn't give me any new gossip, of the sort I love to rant about, but it was on the upper half of the usefulness curve. The last twelve pages were nothing but a long list of no-context business names, accompanies by meaningless addresses and micro-descriptions, and as a longtime GM, it brought a tear of gratitude to my eye. I may not get any particular pleasure from reading that McKuen's Scrap and Salvage Yard is on 3rd Avenue and Madison Street and "A continual eyesore amid the splendor of downtown, but an excellent source of parts," but I just know that a smartass player is going to ask me for those kinds of details. And really, providing a quick answer to the sort of questions you'd never think to ask is the highest use to which an rpg setting book can aspire.

Ukss Contribution: Seattle's fire control services are contracted to a private company that also sells fire insurance. Though it's not technically part of the contract (the company is paid by the city, from tax revenue, and not directly by individuals), people who have insurance with the company have a higher priority than the uninsured. It's somehow the most cyberpunk detail in the entire book and also a reference to one of the world's oldest protection rackets, which is pretty much the sweet spot for the genre and a great bit of worldbuilding that I'd love to riff on.