So I said I probably wasn't going to read War!, certainly I was never going to
buy it. However, I got set an author's copy and a challenge by [Name Withheld] and I finished the ophthalmology practical today, so I will eat those words and do a reasonably fair review of it. Fortunately for my sanity, I have discovered that my favorite Czech mead (Jan Halada Zlata) comes in three different strengths (12.5%, 18%, and 21%) so with a quick trip to the Christmas market I now have a good sampler and can get drunk enough to make it through this.
However, I
did promise to be as fair as possible, and I'll tell you what that means to me. First of all, I
know that the best gearheads and fluffnazis quit or got pushed out of the compay. I also
know that the scabs they brought in to replace them largely know little or nothing about the Shadowrun 4 rules or the Shadowrun story. So to review this as if it was an extension to the Shadowrun story
or an expansion to the Shadowrun 4 rules would be
unfair. This product really has nothing to do with the talent pool that made Shadowrun 4 what it is, so it should be reviewed on its own merits. I'll consider the story as if this was a stand alone story in a world that was very similar to Shadowrun, and considering the rules as if they were a set of test balloons for possible inclusion in a 5th edition. If I just nerd raged out every time I found something in this book that doesn't jive with the continuing story or the rules for the current edition, I'd pretty much just nerd rage the whole way through and the reader would get no actionable information. It would be like stressing out every time an episode of Go-Bots failed to live up to Transformers canon.
The first thing that really jumps out at you, and I mean right as soon as you open the book, is that this book has no introduction. Now I know, many people skip introductions, especially when it is a book that is part of an ongoing series of RPG materials. But in this case it probably would have been helpful, because the book is supposed to be about War! and yet the first section of the book hops right directly into... demographic facts about the capital city of a province in Aztlan. Why does it do this? It's not clear on reading, eventually they tell you that this city is in the middle of a war, but they probably should have established this sometime between the cover where they promise you War! and the first page, where they start talking about dry demographic details of a city you have probably heard of like twice.
It was probably supposed to be sort of In Media Res, but really the first chapter is just incoherent. Even if you know the plotline to SR
and you've been sneaking regular peaks at the development process of the book like I have, you're still left scratching your head. A lot. The book really
needed to begin with at least a one page summary of what countries were at war, and why, and why we would care about Bogotá. It didn't. It opens with some demographics of Bogotá and an in-character rant about how the narrator will tell you everything you need to know about Bogotá, starting (no shit) with a discussion of the
weather. This discussion fails to mention that Bogotá is 2600 meters above sea level and has thin air. I'm going to take a drink and move on, because the whole first chapter puts crap like the rules of fútbol and music stations in Bogotá front and center and never does get around to telling you what the fuck is going on. This reads like it was supposed to be chapter 3 and may have been padded for length. I'm left making my Lewis Black face fairly frequently.
Right. And just in case you were afraid they wouldn't get to the point of telling you what the fucking hell is going on by the time you get to the end of chapter one: they don't. Your hopes are slightly buoyed by the fact that the next chapter is a "history" chapter, and even though it bills itself as
History of Bogotá they start by ranting about the war. Again, in character, and by someone who is specifically biased, so even if they got down to the nitty gritty, you
still wouldn't be sure of what the fuck was happening. This is also where you are really glad that you're evaluating this as a stand alone product, and not part of the continuing story of Shadowrun - because the history you read there doesn't look a lot like the history you read elsewhere. You'd also be pretty annoyed at the fact that all the characters in this book are talking with totally different voices than they do in other books. But again, that kind of nit picking will only drive you to drink more of this delicious mead. The key is that it starts at the beginning - in the 2040s, even though the action is in 2072. And it takes time out t have people have off-topic discussions about drug cartels. Also it keeps wandering in and out of "overview" mode. Sometimes it is talking about the actions of individual street gangs, other times it is flipping through multi-year periods. It's exhausting when it finally gets to the point.
OK, the point is retarded. Carnivorous trees. I know, I've ranted about this in the past, and I hold to those convictions. This plotline makes no sense
at all in the context of previous SR writings. Even on its own, we're supposed to take
carnivorous tree planting as an affront that drove the two nations to war. I can't say enough about how stupid that is, so I won't. It's just there: chapter two is a history rewrite (except it's in character
so maybe it is just wrong) and the big reveal for what the war is about... is a dispute over gardening. This is possibly more inane than the Soccer War. Now, this is Latin America, which actually brought you the Soccer War, so I'm not saying it couldn't happen - I am just saying that this book does not sell this possibility. The piece after that about how even now there are deadly trees
growing in the neighborhood makes for possibly the most unintentionally funny horror section I've seen in some time. It's like the end to
The Happening.
Blow by blow of what the fuck is happening only starts on page 28. This is nominally a continuation of the history of Bogotá by the same author, but it feels like a completely different chapter. Here it starts going into hyper detail of individual events and even individual
people in the war. This could really use a map with lines and division symbols on it, but instead we get a blurb about how an influential priest in Tenochtitlan has become more influential over the last few years.
The next chapter is supposed to be about Bogotá's
culture, thus veering farther away fro the book topic once again. Actually there is relatively little discussion of the actual culture. Mostly it s whining about how the culture is getting trod upon by the fact the area is at war. Also discussions about different orders within the Catholic Church (I am not making that up). I think this chapter was supposed to present the human face of the victims of war or something. Mostly it's just a waste of space. The latter half of the chapter lists some political movements, street gangs, important NPCs, unimportant NPCs, and wildernss survival tips (why is that in Bogotá
culture, the wilderness is outside Bogotá). It's like a whole separate chapter of "other stuff" which is just an incongruous as that sounds.
What comes next is a pretty decent chapter. I'm so surprised I'll drink. It's a chapter on mercenary units and each mercenary unit gets a writeup by a member of a specific mercenary unit. He starts by puffing up his own CV by talking up the action his unit had seen during the conflict. Then he talks about some other mercenary units. It introduces things that matter in the context of war in general and this war in particular. It would have been better if every unit had been being talked up and related to the unfolding events, but even as-is, the chapter gets the job done. Definitely needs tinkering, in that some of the stuff is labeled "pregen" and appears to be in omniscient 3rd person narrative game text despite being inside a section that is nominally in-world, but other than that it mostly holds up. Worth the page space.
Next chapter, we are back to fappery. It's called "The War" and you'd think it would be
about the war in progress. It gets there eventually, but the first page is dominated by an essay about how brown people like fútbol. Anyway, there is then a discussion of motivations for the different countries. Unfortunately, it's motivations
in general rather than motivations for the current conflict.
That part is still relatively unexplained. Or rather, the explanation still seems to be that Aztlan has been encroaching on Bogotá
for no reason and then they planted trees
for no reason, and then the ecological religious zealots determined that was the last straw
for no reason. Then there is some discussion of other factions.
I'll do the rest later, right now I am going over to my girlfriend's place.
But sure. That's a chapter by chapter breakdown. But what about the major themes? Why am I so relentlessly negative all the time? Let's count the ways:
Errors
Typographical errors run amok in this document. There's one (or more) on practically every page. It doesn't look professional. I personally write unprofessional work in my free time that I release to the public for free, and it has less typos than this. Prepositions appear to be largely optional, different spellings are used for the same thing on different pages, and so on. But the thing that really grates on me is that the book doesn't keep its own
internal facts straight. Little details like where things are, who did what, and when events occurred should at least be consistent in the book, whether or not they agree with previous books in the series or real world details.
Jackpointers
OK, Shadowrun has a cast of contributing writers who are posting on a forum that is the books you are reading. It has ever been thus. There has been a complete turnover of authors and it is unreasonable to expect them to read back through all the old canon material and have the people talking with the same "voice" they used in the past. But this is just really bad. The people don't keep the same voice within the book. They can't even keep their voice consistent
within the same page. Here are two comments by the same character on the same page:
Revolting. They call this a “clash of cultures?” Hardly. Feels more like an eradication of a culture to me. This is far worse than any alleged atrocities Amazonia may have committed fi ghting this war. And frankly, given the crap Aztlan is trying to pull in Bogotá, you can hardly fault Amazonia for fi ghting so hard against Aztlan’s tyranny.
Not to sound heartless, but in times of war, civilians have always paid the price for war being fought in close proximity to them. No matter how hard you try, you’re always going to have civilian casualties. It comes with the territory.
I a not making that up. Those are both posts nominally from the same character made on the same page of the same book.
Watch Your Language
I'll fully admit that my own Deutsch and Español are rusty and were never that good to begin with. Nevertheless, when I read the bits that are supposed to be in German or Spanish, I find myself cringing constantly. It's not even consistent. One page will talk about "The Capitolio Nacional" and on the next it will talk about the "Capitolio National". Weird juxtapositions of English words and other languages. Like some of the drafts had auto-correct on at some point? I don't even know, but it looks really bad. The weird thing is, last time I checked, they had natives on staff for both languages. None of them worked on this particular project, but you'd think they could have sent over an email asking "Dude, how badly are we butchering your native language?"
Mega Damage
Rob left them something of a land mine in the SR4 rules as regards making military grade numbers work out. That is, he moved to a non-proportional damage system for SR4. As long as we keep things human level for the most part, it kinda works OK. Suffers a bit from the "two hits" problem, but it's generally OK. For larger things it doesn't work so well. The reality of hardened armor is that for every one point of Body you get 1/2 a health box and 2 points of armor, for a total average damage reduction of 1 damage. But to penetrate that much more armor, an attack would need to do 2 more damage. So for a bigger vehicle, you'd need a weapon so big that it is unreasonable to expect to do anything other than vaporize it in one hit just to scratch the paint. You'd think that a book about War! would be a good place to reintroduce proportional damage rules and put things on some sort of log scale where tanks could suffer minor damage again. They didn't do that. The big weapons just do stupidly titanic piles of damage and the bigger vehicles simply
can't suffer minor damage from anything. So the answer to the question of "This part of the rules doesn't really work very well, I wonder how they are going to work around it?" is, unfortunately: They Didn't.
Is That True?
A good rule of thumb is that if text is being written by someone in-world, then that text is someone's
opinion. And like all points of view, it probably contains some elements of truth and some elements of falsehood. An equally good rule of thumb is that if something is omniscient game text that is talking directly to the actual reader of the actual book, that this text is "true" within the context of the game. That dichotomy has held up for years over multiple editions. I can't tell what the truth value of anything in War! is supposed to be. They have rules text boxes with stat lines and such right in chapters that have fictional authors in the fictional world.
Stay on Topic
A lot of stuff just sort of wanders around. Like the chapters had a completely different focus right before editing or something. Maybe the writers just had too much pot. I don't really know. But you keep running into subsections that have nothing to do with the book as a whole, and often aren't even tangentially related to the stuff immediately surrounding them. This is an actual excerpt from an entry in the Bogotá Culture chapter:
Peter Hunt is an elusive gure. From what I could tell, he doesn’t work in Bogotá, but rather is working out of another undisclosed Horizon location somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere.
This isn't even the worst example, just the punchiest. There is quite a bit more page space given over to revealing that the author doesn't know who this person is or why we should care. Don't ever write something like that.
-Username17