The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Where to begin on a review on "Man & Machine"? It's difficult, you see, because the book was intended to be a big gear expansion for cyberware, bioware, chemistry, and nanotech. And it succeeded beautifully at that.

Yet, expectation was running high for it to be like the previous cyber books, "ShadowTech" and "Cybertechnology". Let me say right off, it isn't. There is no Shadowtalk (commentary from Shadowrun characters at the bottom of the page or the side), no gear illustrations, no fiction, no pages of science explanations for the gear. This cold "Sears Catalog" style left many readers (myself included), incredibly, feeling bored while reading this much-anticipated Core Rule Expansion.

The book is a total success for what it was intended to be, but it's a dry read.

Thus ends the commentary, so let's get jiggy with the review. :-)

Cyberware:

There is very little new cyberware here. Most of it was previously published in "ShadowTech" and "Cybertechnology", while the remaining was almost totally published in the old SR fanzine Ka*Ge. One of the new pieces of cyber comes courtesy of Mike Stackpole's short stories in "Into the Shadows" and "Wolf and Raven": Kid Stealth Legs. Cyberlegs which look like the hind legs of a dog.

Probably the main new thing in this chapter is the introduction of "Routers". Interconnectivity is brought to the forefront in M&M, and Routers are how it's handled. Any cybernectic system not purchased as a package that you wish to interact with other systems must be linked together through a Router. (So, to link an Opticam to Headware memory you'd need to bridge them through a Router.) Datajacks are also revealed as being mini-Routers themselves. They contain 5 ports (2 automatically claimed for the Brain and external plug socket connection), while full-Routers have 10 ports.

The best part of this chapter is we finally get a measurement of how much tech can be crammed into a cyberlimb, torso, eye, ect. Each limb has an ECU rating (Equipment Capacity Units), and each piece of tech has an ECC (Equipment Capacity Cost). So, an Obvious Cyberarm has an ECU of 10, and tech such as a Magnetic System for the arm has an ECC of 3. Leaving you with 7 ECU left. Very elegant and simple.

Examples of the New Cyberware: Balance Tail, Kevlar and Ceramic Bone Lacing, Flex Hands, Telescoping Cyberlimbs, Climbing Claws, Kid Stealth Legs, Cyberhorns, Cyberfangs, Cyberholster (yes, Robocop), Eye Combat Lasers, Venom Sacks, Cyberfins, Cyberskates, the Expert Chip Jack (skill bonuses for jacked Skillsofts), Independant Cybereyes (hey, now you can have eyes in the back of your head!).

Cybermancy:

Almost nothing new introduced in the Cybermancy chapter. It appears to be a completely lift&paste from "Cybertechnology".

The one difference is that getting lost in the details now happens if the cyberzombie rolls *NO* successes on a Perception Test with a TN of 5 or higher. I believe this is an editing error, but we'll have to wait and see. (It's kind of hard to imagine how you can get lost in details you don't spot.)

Bioware:

What's new in Bioware? Not much new gear, but there's a new damage system. Called Stress, and in Levels corresponding to standard SR damage system (Light, Moderate, Serious, and Deadly), it negatively affects the bioware's performance and in some cases causes the bioware benefits to shut down entirely, leaving you just with the penalty. Nasty. The basic idea is that once a piece of Bioware gets Stressed, it'll never work as well again as it did before.

Readers from "Rigger 2" will notice that this is a similar animal to Vehicle Stress.

"Body Index" is gone. Bioware no longer sets it's limits by your Body rating. Instead, the new maximum rating is "Essence + 3". This is called your "Essence Index". The total of all the ratings of Bioware you've had installed is called your "Bio Index". When your "Bio Index" exceeds your "Essence Index", you start getting wacked with penalties. (Although not as severe as from Shadowtech.)

The penalties are: Decrease to your Physical Overflow boxes (quicker death), lesser immunity (toxins are harder to resist), longer healing times, and all Bio in you is considered automatically Light Stressed. Bad, but not terrible.

The best part of this chapter is how Bioware interacts with magicians. No longer does it reduce Magic and Essence! Instead, it just hinders your Magic rating, in a manner similar to Cyberware, coming off the Magic Rating and you round down the fraction. However, and here's the sweet part, you haven't actually lost that Magic Point (or Points). As soon as you remove the Bioware, you get it back. You can't take a Geas on this Point, since you actually haven't lost it. (And I imagine the full rating not counting your Bio is used for Magic Loss tests, unfortunately. Remember, the higher the Magic Rating the easier it is to lose a Point from Magic Loss during a test.)

M&M introduces Cosmetic Bioware, and kudos to Mike Mulvihill for doing so! Shadowrun has long ignored how cybertech and bioware affects the average consumer, instead focusing on combat uses. That was fine for a game, but it gives you an incomplete view of the Shadowrun society. This is definitely a step in the right direction.

Some Examples of New Bioware and Cosmetic Bio: Cat's Eyes, Thermosense Organs, Skin Pigmentation, Chloroplast Skin, Muscle Toner, Nictitating Membranes, Scent Glands, Metabolic Arrestor.

Nanotechnology:

This is the best chapter in the whole fraggin' book! Gotta love this stuff. Nanites are now true robots, no longer bacteria as from "ShadowTech". And they are responsible for most of the upkeep of cyberware in the human body, along with being very effective weapons. Think of them mainly as repair drones. You've got to read this chapter to understand it's beauty, a summary does no good, but trust me you'll love it.

Here's a complete list of the new Nanoware: Bioware Regenerator (repair Bio Stress), Cancerand-Plus (on-demand chemical carriers), Cutters (aka "juices"; these are what the Bumblebee drones in the Arc are carrying), Cyberware Repair Unit (repair Cyber Stress), Fingerprint Mappers (turns your prints into anyone else's), Gemini(nanotech-based drug which triggers a certain emotion), Gremlins (nanites which enter the body and damage cyberware), Nanite Hunters (hunter-killer nanites, which can be programmed to target anything), NanoSymbiotes (reduce healing time), Nanatattoos (shifting tattoos), Nantidotes (on-demand antidote carriers), Oxy-Rush (nanites that let you hold your breath for hours), Retinal Tailors (change your retina pattern to someone else's), Taggants (these nanites mark you in one of two ways: by lacing you with a metallic pattern that will trigger magnetic-anomaly detectors, or by being a blood-borne free-floating information capsule; popular for tagging convicts).

Chemistry:

Not a whole lot to add to this, beyond what was in ShadowTech. You're finally given common street drugs in this chapter: Novacoke, Bliss, Burn, Cram, Nitro, and Zen. Standard addiction rules, and chemical stuff from ST like DMSO and Atropine. Included are a listing of Magical Compounds, but no cost or Avail numbers for them. Examples: Immortal Flower (regeneration power), Spirit Strength enhanced movement, reaction, sense, and physical atts), and Witch's Moss (critter power of paralyzing touch).

Rules:

Crunchy bits time. Surgery and damge effects chapters round out the book. As mentioned before, Cyberware and Bioware now take Stress as damage. Herein are also new rules for how you can stay conscious after hitting 10 boxes of Stun or Physical. All in all, very nice.

Two notable mentions: The book explains how Cyberware is powered, and how the various MegaCorps relate to these fields of technology. It turns out, Cyberware is powered off the human body, not off energy cells.

A moment of quiet reflection: For those disappointed M&M's dry flavor, remember that this is meant to be the definitive Core Rule Expansion for Cyber/Bio/Nano in SR3. Whereas "ShadowTech" and "Cybertechnology" were mere sourcebooks. There's a big difference between the needs of the two.

The Shadowrun SOTA books (due to be released about annually, starting at GenCon 2000) will fulfill all our desires for fun gear books with a lot of illos, in the theme of "ST" and "CT".

My recommendation on M&M: Buy this book. They did a fine job on it. Just don't expect it to be what it's not.

Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

Man & Machine
Author: Robert Boyle, Martin Gotthard, Eleanor Holmes, Michael Mulvihill, Sebastian Wiers Category: game Company/Publisher: FASA Line: Shadowrun Cost: $20.00 Page count: 160 ISBN: 1-55560-363-7 SKU: 7126 Capsule Review by Tom Adams on 12/21/99. Genre tags: Fantasy Science_fiction	Where to begin on a review on "Man & Machine"? It's difficult, you see, because the book was intended to be a big gear expansion for cyberware, bioware, chemistry, and nanotech. And it succeeded beautifully at that. Yet, expectation was running high for it to be like the previous cyber books, "ShadowTech" and "Cybertechnology". Let me say right off, it isn't. There is no Shadowtalk (commentary from Shadowrun characters at the bottom of the page or the side), no gear illustrations, no fiction, no pages of science explanations for the gear. This cold "Sears Catalog" style left many readers (myself included), incredibly, feeling bored while reading this much-anticipated Core Rule Expansion. The book is a total success for what it was intended to be, but it's a dry read. Thus ends the commentary, so let's get jiggy with the review. :-) Cyberware: There is very little new cyberware here. Most of it was previously published in "ShadowTech" and "Cybertechnology", while the remaining was almost totally published in the old SR fanzine KaGe. One of the new pieces of cyber comes courtesy of Mike Stackpole's short stories in "Into the Shadows" and "Wolf and Raven": Kid Stealth Legs. Cyberlegs which look like the hind legs of a dog. Probably the main new thing in this chapter is the introduction of "Routers". Interconnectivity is brought to the forefront in M&M, and Routers are how it's handled. Any cybernectic system not purchased as a package that you wish to interact with other systems must be linked together through a Router. (So, to link an Opticam to Headware memory you'd need to bridge them through a Router.) Datajacks are also revealed as being mini-Routers themselves. They contain 5 ports (2 automatically claimed for the Brain and external plug socket connection), while full-Routers have 10 ports. The best part of this chapter is we finally get a measurement of how much tech can be crammed into a cyberlimb, torso, eye, ect. Each limb has an ECU rating (Equipment Capacity Units), and each piece of tech has an ECC (Equipment Capacity Cost). So, an Obvious Cyberarm has an ECU of 10, and tech such as a Magnetic System for the arm has an ECC of 3. Leaving you with 7 ECU left. Very elegant and simple. Examples of the New Cyberware: Balance Tail, Kevlar and Ceramic Bone Lacing, Flex Hands, Telescoping Cyberlimbs, Climbing Claws, Kid Stealth Legs, Cyberhorns, Cyberfangs, Cyberholster (yes, Robocop), Eye Combat Lasers, Venom Sacks, Cyberfins, Cyberskates, the Expert Chip Jack (skill bonuses for jacked Skillsofts), Independant Cybereyes (hey, now you can have eyes in the back of your head!). Cybermancy: Almost nothing new introduced in the Cybermancy chapter. It appears to be a completely lift&paste from "Cybertechnology". The one difference is that getting lost in the details now happens if the cyberzombie rolls NO* successes on a Perception Test with a TN of 5 or higher. I believe this is an editing error, but we'll have to wait and see. (It's kind of hard to imagine how you can get lost in details you don't spot.) Bioware: What's new in Bioware? Not much new gear, but there's a new damage system. Called Stress, and in Levels corresponding to standard SR damage system (Light, Moderate, Serious, and Deadly), it negatively affects the bioware's performance and in some cases causes the bioware benefits to shut down entirely, leaving you just with the penalty. Nasty. The basic idea is that once a piece of Bioware gets Stressed, it'll never work as well again as it did before. Readers from "Rigger 2" will notice that this is a similar animal to Vehicle Stress. "Body Index" is gone. Bioware no longer sets it's limits by your Body rating. Instead, the new maximum rating is "Essence + 3". This is called your "Essence Index". The total of all the ratings of Bioware you've had installed is called your "Bio Index". When your "Bio Index" exceeds your "Essence Index", you start getting wacked with penalties. (Although not as severe as from Shadowtech.) The penalties are: Decrease to your Physical Overflow boxes (quicker death), lesser immunity (toxins are harder to resist), longer healing times, and all Bio in you is considered automatically Light Stressed. Bad, but not terrible. The best part of this chapter is how Bioware interacts with magicians. No longer does it reduce Magic and Essence! Instead, it just hinders your Magic rating, in a manner similar to Cyberware, coming off the Magic Rating and you round down the fraction. However, and here's the sweet part, you haven't actually lost that Magic Point (or Points). As soon as you remove the Bioware, you get it back. You can't take a Geas on this Point, since you actually haven't lost it. (And I imagine the full rating not counting your Bio is used for Magic Loss tests, unfortunately. Remember, the higher the Magic Rating the easier it is to lose a Point from Magic Loss during a test.) M&M introduces Cosmetic Bioware, and kudos to Mike Mulvihill for doing so! Shadowrun has long ignored how cybertech and bioware affects the average consumer, instead focusing on combat uses. That was fine for a game, but it gives you an incomplete view of the Shadowrun society. This is definitely a step in the right direction. Some Examples of New Bioware and Cosmetic Bio: Cat's Eyes, Thermosense Organs, Skin Pigmentation, Chloroplast Skin, Muscle Toner, Nictitating Membranes, Scent Glands, Metabolic Arrestor. Nanotechnology: This is the best chapter in the whole fraggin' book! Gotta love this stuff. Nanites are now true robots, no longer bacteria as from "ShadowTech". And they are responsible for most of the upkeep of cyberware in the human body, along with being very effective weapons. Think of them mainly as repair drones. You've got to read this chapter to understand it's beauty, a summary does no good, but trust me you'll love it. Here's a complete list of the new Nanoware: Bioware Regenerator (repair Bio Stress), Cancerand-Plus (on-demand chemical carriers), Cutters (aka "juices"; these are what the Bumblebee drones in the Arc are carrying), Cyberware Repair Unit (repair Cyber Stress), Fingerprint Mappers (turns your prints into anyone else's), Gemini(nanotech-based drug which triggers a certain emotion), Gremlins (nanites which enter the body and damage cyberware), Nanite Hunters (hunter-killer nanites, which can be programmed to target anything), NanoSymbiotes (reduce healing time), Nanatattoos (shifting tattoos), Nantidotes (on-demand antidote carriers), Oxy-Rush (nanites that let you hold your breath for hours), Retinal Tailors (change your retina pattern to someone else's), Taggants (these nanites mark you in one of two ways: by lacing you with a metallic pattern that will trigger magnetic-anomaly detectors, or by being a blood-borne free-floating information capsule; popular for tagging convicts). Chemistry: Not a whole lot to add to this, beyond what was in ShadowTech. You're finally given common street drugs in this chapter: Novacoke, Bliss, Burn, Cram, Nitro, and Zen. Standard addiction rules, and chemical stuff from ST like DMSO and Atropine. Included are a listing of Magical Compounds, but no cost or Avail numbers for them. Examples: Immortal Flower (regeneration power), Spirit Strength enhanced movement, reaction, sense, and physical atts), and Witch's Moss (critter power of paralyzing touch). Rules: Crunchy bits time. Surgery and damge effects chapters round out the book. As mentioned before, Cyberware and Bioware now take Stress as damage. Herein are also new rules for how you can stay conscious after hitting 10 boxes of Stun or Physical. All in all, very nice. Two notable mentions: The book explains how Cyberware is powered, and how the various MegaCorps relate to these fields of technology. It turns out, Cyberware is powered off the human body, not off energy cells. A moment of quiet reflection: For those disappointed M&M's dry flavor, remember that this is meant to be the definitive Core Rule Expansion for Cyber/Bio/Nano in SR3. Whereas "ShadowTech" and "Cybertechnology" were mere sourcebooks. There's a big difference between the needs of the two. The Shadowrun SOTA books (due to be released about annually, starting at GenCon 2000) will fulfill all our desires for fun gear books with a lot of illos, in the theme of "ST" and "CT". My recommendation on M&M: Buy this book. They did a fine job on it. Just don't expect it to be what it's not. Style: 3 (Average) Substance: 5 (Excellent!)