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The latest offering from Catalyst is Ghost Cartels, a far-reaching campaign book. Given their track record, I'm sure that they produced something of quality. But is it what they promised?
Let's take a look. Ghost Cartels is a 160+ page pdf, with fairly decent production quality. Those who have read my past reviews know I've had nightmares trying to print out Shadowrun pdf's. I'm pleased to say that there were no problems this time; however, I went to a professional print shop. I have no idea how it would print at home. I will say that there are nine full-color maps that probably would choke a printer, but I'll get into those later.
Ghost Cartels, like many recent books, opens with the Jackpoint main page, which looks distressingly like the MSN homepage. It then boldly launches you into... something. If you read it for a while, you eventually get the impression that it's about a drug of some sort. You're treated to page after page of meaningless talk on this drug, plus corporate files, magazine articles, and so on. Things keep jumping around so badly, it's hard to keep track of what's going on.
This was so bad, it's headache-inducing. And I mean that literally: I had to take an ibuprofen and rest for a bit while attempting to read this section. Individual parts are quite clever, but overall, the editing is absolutely atrocious. There's nothing about the adventure, nothing introducing you to the campaign, nothing at all but random bits of shadowtalk, going on and on. I can find very little good to say about this chapter, it must be endured to be believed.
Finally, 45 pages later, we're granted merciful relief in the form of a Game Information chapter.
This chapter opens with an apology for the first chapter. It explains that it's meant as player material, things to show the players the progress of the drug's history. Unfortunately, it's not designed to be handed out, so players would have to slog through all of it. Additionally, certain parts of the first chapter essentially spoil things that happen later in the campaign. Basically, everything could have been handled better with a proper introduction and about ten pages of player handouts.
The chapter then goes on to explain that it features a new campaign style: the campaign track. That is to say, rather than presenting us with a series of fixed adventures, it gives us adventure frameworks, for GM's to build their own campaigns around. It then goes on to give us all the information we need to start running the campaign: a timeline, list of major players, even some statted NPC's, complete with very ugly Poser artwork. Over a third of the way into the book, we're also introduced to the drug Tempo, which will be the basis for everything that comes in the campaign.
The next chapter introduces the adventure frameworks. There's an introduction on how Tempo is affecting Seattle, then you're out the gate and running. The adventure frameworks are essentially a few short descriptions of scenes, some NPC stats, and some other notes. I actually like this approach, since this is how I build adventures: I just take a skeleton idea, and flesh it out as I go. Some may not like this approach as much, preferring to have everything pre-statted for them.
The adventure frameworks in this section are actually quite well done. About the only negative thing I have to say about is is that they're a bit railroad-heavy. For example, in one framework, the party is discovered by a potential enemy, no matter how they hide their tracks. (Ironically, the next chapter carries an admonishment to not railroad your players.) Also, these adventures presume that your PC's are amoral bastards, willing to kill innocent bystanders in cold blood. You can get around this in a few ways, but not without changing the tone of the campaign.
After a climactic assassination of a Yakuza boss, the team is given the chance to get out of town to let things cool off. They're offered the chance to go to Hong Kong, and travel there at the end of the chapter. At the start of the new chapter, they're somehow back in Seattle for the first adventure, then off to Hong Kong again. This was very jarring to read: If the next chapter is to take place in Hong Kong, they should start there.
Unfortunately, they don't stay there. You're almost immediately whisked away to Neo-Tokyo, where even though you're supposedly on the run from the Yakuza, you end up working for them anyway. You're also asked to keep no less than fifteen different Yakuza factions and individuals straight, within a page of each other. By the time you've got all that figured out, you're tossed into Las Angeles, for just one more adventure this chapter. These adventures only have the slightest connection between them, and while they'd work well as one-shots, they don't do well as pieces of a campaign.
The final chapter begins in Las Angeles again, where the big GMPC makes an entrance. The opening adventure devolves into a battle, no matter what the PC's do, and they have to be saved by the big bad evil gal for the adventure. Then, the PC's have to accept her offer to follow her to Caracas, or the entire campaign dies right there. Once in Caracas, the PC's are hired as bodyguards for the BBEG. Eventually, it all comes to a head, and they have a battle versus a bunch of Tree-Ents in the Amazonian rain forest. Finally, they get to watch the BBEG walk away, almost scot-free.
As you can tell, I was less than impressed with the adventures in the last two chapters. The first isn't so bad, they PC's are simply whisked around the world with little rhyme or reason to it, nominally hired by one group but constantly being hired out to other factions. Somehow, “Shadowtemp” doesn't have the same ring to it as Shadowrunner, but that's essentially what they become. Some of these runs might make good stand-alone adventures, if your run is set in Neo-Tokyo or Hong Kong. But as a campaign, they're just not interconnected enough. They're mostly excuses to show off published cities, and probably drive up sales for the locale books.
It's in the last chapter where things begin to truly fall apart. We have heavy railroading, an invincible GMPC who will be needed to save the PC's, tight assumptions about what the characters will and will not do (*cough*alignment!*cough*); basically, we have all the common mistakes GM's can make. These runs also only make sense within the context of the campaign, so they won't work well as stand-alones. It's another sloppy mess that you have to slog through. Finally, we get to the maps. Since I always have my pdf's printed out in black-and-white, these maps don't look particularly impressive to me. I suppose they'd look better in color, though. They are off-scale, and aren't big enough to use as tactical maps. I can't see much use for them except as player handouts-- except they have GM-only information on some of them. So, really, I can't see much use for them at all. They're nice, but I'd rather have things that are more usable.
To sum up:
Let's put it simply: does Ghost Cartels deliver us a fully-realized campaign, in the vein of Harlequin or Brainscan?
In a word, no.
Does it deliver something else? Maybe.
Ghost Cartels is meant to be a different kind of campaign, a “campaign track” instead of a series of set piece adventures. And on that score, it definitely delivers. The adventure frameworks are a good concept. I find them to be perfectly suited for my GMing style, since I like to wing it. For the people who like to spend more time pouring over the adventure, they can still do that.
But as a campaign itself, Ghost Cartels is on much shakier ground. The first chapter of adventures is excellent, a good example of how this new format should be done. If it weren't for the railroading, it'd be nearly perfect. The second chapter is much rockier, and the adventures seem to have little in common with each other. This can be fixed, but not without a lot of hard work.
It's the final chapter where we have problems. Most of the basic mistakes that a GM can make are made in this chapter. The players are asked to follow an improbable trail, and any deviations can cause the campaign to crash inward on itself.
So, in summary, we have one very good chapter, a decent one, and a poor one. That would normally be a middling score, but there are two other things to consider. The first is the amazingly bad first chapter of shadowtalk. I still remember the eyestrain from trying to follow it. The second thing to consider is the editing, which is also horrific. One poster on Dumpshock counted over twenty errors on a single page! The book is loaded down with grammatical, spelling, and other mistakes, enough to make things even more disappointing.
So, for the final score:
Style: Except for the truly awful Poser pics, the artwork isn't bad. And the new style of campaign deserves mention here. I'm going to go ahead and give it a 4 for effort.
Substance: When it all comes down to it, you only really get one chapter of good game material. And even then, you have to contend with the bad editing. The rest of the book goes from decent to horrifying. Most of this could have been fixed with better editing, so I'll rate it as a 2.
Epilogue:
I'm sure there are many who are going to pass this off as “another attack on SR4”, both here and on Dumpshock. But the truth is, I actually liked this book. I just think it's flaws outweigh its benefits. I feel that in the hands of better editors and proofreaders, this book could have really shone.
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