Denver - The City of Shadows
Campaign Set
Shadowrun
FASA
Corp.
Boxed Set - [sterling]15.95
Welcome, Chummer, to the Treaty City. You've got to tread carefully here, more
so than perhaps anywhere you can name. Denver is the crossroads for six nations
and the centre of most of North America's black market dealings. Denver is a
hotbed of fear and paranoia just waiting for some simple thing to go wrong so
that it can erupt into some poor excuse for hell.
The Denver box set contains two books, the players and the GMs, that have over
200 pages between them and a poster sized map (whose colours don't seem to
totally correspond to those on the table given! - you can make most of them
out, but don't try telling me where Pueblo and Atzlan are at a glance!), and a
pair of security/travel passes for two of the city's sectors. I got permits for
the Pueblo and UTE sectors but the others on offer are Atzlan, CAS, Sioux, or
UCAS.
As I've already mentioned, the Denver sector map suffers from a slight colour
co-ordination problem. Luckily, the Downtown (FRFZ) map is a lot better with a
clear points of interest table to the right of it showing the locations of the
major buildings in the area.
The players' book is 168 pages long and written in much the same style as other
Shadowrun sourcebooks such as Tir Tairngire an The Seattle Sourcebook. It
contains public access information with added comments from various hackers,
anarchists and deckers. A short history of the city of Denver is provided along
with a quick overview of the state of Colorado. The book then goes into lengthy
discussion on Denver in 2055 and the status of the real power behind the city -
the black market network. Then comes the information on Nexus, or the Denver
Data Haven as it's often called, from its humble origins on the Internet and,
later, the Matrix. If someone wants to hide some data of dirty washing away
from the world, or wishes to be simply subversive without the listening ears of
the corporates, then this is the best place to do it - if you can find the
correct paths through Shadowland and other pirate nets that is.
Detailing the six sectors that make Denver what it is takes up nearly half of
the players book. You do get a lot of information for your money though. You
wouldn't believe how hard it is to live in a city that has six sets of laws,
six governments etc. You come away from it realising that the only way Denver
can exist and hold itself together is through its underworld dealings.
The gamesmaster book (62 pages) provides additional information on the people,
places and events mentioned in the players book. It also gives you three
versions of background info. that your players won't know. These will not only
allow you to create your own truth of what Denver really is, but throughout the
book each version of the truth is rated. The easiest rating for each will mean
that it is reasonably straightforward without too many hidden plots, while the
last is really twisted and nasty, and usually leaves your players totally
screwed up at the end of it all.
New and previously printed rules from a variety of sourcebooks are also
included to help out those new to the Shadowrun game and who would prefer an
alternative setting than that of Seattle. This is generally speaking an
interesting read but does leave most of the actual reality of the city up to
the individual GM
Overall: A good supplement but, as is usual in these campaign sets, be prepared
to put in the work to make it complete.
Review by Angus Abranson
Product supplied FASA Corporation
