(Shadowrun 3e) Threats 2

Say what you will about FASA's fiction-heavy approach to rpg supplements, but sometimes it gets you a book like Threats 2 - a short, but densely-packed collection of campaign ideas that was incredibly easy to read because it was essentially an anthology of twelve short stories, each one about something interesting going on in the Shadowrun universe. I absolutely blazed through this thing, and it's entirely possible that it will take me longer to write the post than it did to read the book.

The main thing I appreciate about Threats 2 is its unashamedly brute force approach to the "well yes, but what do we do in the setting" question. It's just a whole bunch of things to do, presented without further context or explanation. Eclipse Phase never released a "big book of things to do," neither did Exalted or Dark Sun or Reign. Sure, those games all had extensive and inspiring setting material you could mine for "things to do," but they never drew a big arrow pointing at a condensed list of suggestions. And look, I'm not saying Shadowrun's way was better, but it was nice to get just a little bit of meathead-level support.

The biggest challenge this book poses to me as a reviewer is that its 12 chapters have 12 different authors (though it doesn't neatly break down to one author per chapter - some chapters have multiple authors and some writers worked on multiple chapters) and each one is standalone 8-10 page mini supplement. So if I try to approach Threats 2 holistically, and comment about the book as a single work, all I can really say is that it has a lot of stuff in it. 

I actually went back and looked at my post about the original Threats to see how I handled it the first time and I guess my approach was to focus on a single nagging issue that appeared in multiple chapters and just make the post about that. Unfortunately, it's not something I can pull off twice, because Threats 2 is more diverse in its titular threats - on the metaplot front we have follow-ups to Year of the Comet, Brainscan, and Bug City, as well as some Earthdawn easter eggs, a couple of things you could probably just infer from the basic setting material (but which were nice to have spelled out) and one chapter that is arguably a crime against humanity. So what am I supposed to do? Just rapidly go through each chapter one-by-one and post my most salient observation in the hopes of covering the whole book without writing a 5000-word post?

Oh, yeah, okay, I suppose I could do that.

#1: "General Saito" - In Year of the Comet, Japan's new child Emperor decides to scale back on the overseas imperialism, but in San Francisco a rogue officer chose to defy orders and declare himself dictator over northern California. In this follow-up, we learn a bit more detail about the man and his rule and he's a compelling enough villain (he employs an image consultant) but Shadowrun's decision to single out the Japanese for being especially racist against metahumans has never sat entirely well with me and we get a bit more of that here.

#2: "Dissonant Voices" - More Otaku lore. A new group of dark Otaku has popped up on the scene, claiming to be empowered by the Deep Resonance's edgy counterpart - the Dissonance. I don't hate it, but if you want me to like it, you're going to have to be a bit more explicit about what these things actually are. I crave the sort of nitty-gritty Hard Magic worldbuilding that will drive the normie player base running for the hills. (Note: I am aware that this is not a reasonable thing to want).

#3: "Imps" - A found-footage-horror-style diary of an academic researcher whose life is destroyed when he finds a magic item that's haunted by a malicious spirit. It's all in service of introducing a twist on cursed item mechanics. As a piece of fiction, I enjoyed it. Ehran the Scribe makes a cameo appearance and he definitely knows more than he's letting on. As a form of gameplay, I have my doubts. The GM is supposed to give a PC a trap item that gradually drains their karma (xp)? Who is this enjoyable for? It could potentially work if the spirit is on the more "playfully mischievous" end of the spectrum and it was clear that the GM was using the haunting to give the players a more powerful than usual item, but overall, it seems like a risk.

#4: "The Aleph Society" - a cult that claims it can reverse magical burnout through philosophical enlightenment, but really does it by making a pact with a mysterious spirit from the Fourth Age? It's sort of in an awkward place where they're theoretically a cure to Shadowrun's worst mechanic, but you don't want to get involved with them because they're tricking mundanes with false promises to get them to make regular blood sacrifices, but then maybe you don't really care that they're doing that because the sacrifices are non-fatal and the cult's overall agenda is just "keep on being this weird, seedy cult."

#5: "Can You See the Real Me" - a mystery/horror tale whose only purpose is to introduce a new type of creature - the advanced Sheddim, who possess recently-dead bodies, but, unlike regular Sheddim, have the ability to heal those bodies well enough to return them to a convincing semblance of life, thus allowing them to infiltrate metahuman society and work their wicked schemes without alerting the monster hunters to their presence. Yeah, okay, that's a pretty good pitch for a monster.

#6: "One Nation Under God" - a revanchist conspiracy that works to restore the old United States of America by sponsoring terrorist violence and political turmoil in the UCAS, the CSA, and the NAN. It wasn't quite bold enough to make explicit the law-enforcement-to-right-wing-extremist pipeline, but the theme was there, if you wanted to look for it. Using them as a campaign antagonist would probably make for a pretty unusual Shadowrun game, but I think it might be worth it.

#7: "Betrayal" - OMG! Ares Macrotechnology is secretly experimenting on the insect spirits it was tasked with eliminating, attempting to monetize and weaponize a deadly threat to the entire human species?! Who could have ever seen this coming? Good, Shadowrun, good.

#8: "Dealing with Dragons" - Drakes are just a weird idea overall. The dragons have magically engineered servants who can switch between humanoid form and the form of a miniature dragon. Why is this appealing to them? It would be like a human having a sheepdog that could transform into a little gnome in their off hours. I can see some niche uses for such a thing, but it's probably not worth the effort. I'd only ever really use drakes in a game if I wanted to characterize dragons as being a bunch of weird little freaks.

#9: "Beneath the False Face" - Per wikipedia: "The Haudenosaunee Grand Council issued a statement online in 1995 about the Haudenosaunee policies regarding masks. These policies prohibit the sale, exhibition or representation in pictures of the masks to the public. They also condemn the general distribution of information regarding the medicine societies, as well as denying non-Indigenous People any right to examine, interpret, or present the beliefs, functions, or duties of these societies." Bad, Shadowrun, bad.

#10: "The Network" - A bit of resolution to the cliffhanger at the end of Brainscan. Turns out my interpretation of the ending was incomplete. Deus did download his code into the brains of his victims, and did psychologically condition them to reassemble that code on the Matrix once the immediate threat had passed, but this was not as clean or as quick a process as I was imagining, and a rival AI's code got mixed in there with his. So the next plot being set up is a semi-conscious Matrix cold war between the Deus fragments and the Megara fragments over control of the network of organic computers that could potentially reconstruct either, both, or a hybrid of the two. And because the organic computers also happen to be people, the network nodes also have a say in the outcome. It's an interesting plot, but it borders on the overly baroque.

#11: "Order of the Temple" - The Knights Templar are back. The plot has the potential to read as anti-Catholic, but it's a staple of the modern occult conspiracy genre. Then again, the modern occult conspiracy genre does have a bit of an anti-Catholicism problem. I think this particular presentation manages to dodge the worst of it, because it incidentally highlights how fucked-up it is that the Shadowrun backstory turned two prominent Catholic countries (Mexico and Ireland) into weird fantasy lands (Aztlan and Tir na Nog). Not sure if that's enough to make me use it in a game, though.

#12: "Those Who Have The Gold" - There's a joke entry in Dunkelzahn's will where he leaves 34 billion dollars to some rando, because the guy's ancestor leant him a gold piece hundreds of years ago (although, with typical draconic parsimoniousness, this figure was calculated with a 1% APR). Apparently, the beneficiary of this largess was a skilled accountant who was laid off from Fuchi, hit rock bottom, became addicted to BTL chips, and then swore revenge when Richard Villiers snubbed him at a high society party, post-inheritance. It works well enough as a plot. But I think something this silly should probably have a funnier presentation.

So, to sum up - Threats 2 is mostly very good. There were some rough patches, but as a whole it added a lot of value to my Shadowrun collection. I'm glad to have read it.

Ukss Contribution: The advanced Sheddim. They're a versatile monster type - murder mystery, social/political threat, physical threat, or even potentially just a misunderstood visitor from another reality (the latter isn't something Shadowrun really does, but I might give it a try).