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First of all, I have to say that Ghost Cartels is a well written, well thought-out campaign sourcebook. While I have tried to shun reading other reviews on the book, nonetheless I must add my own dialogue on the matter of certain mistakes. Out of the 160 page I discovered 1 terrible mistake (which I suspect was a layout or editorial kerfuffle, 5 mistypes , and several minor vocabulary, stylistic or grammatical mistakes. In my own professional opinion as a proofreader it’s perfectly acceptable from a group that only uses editorial services.
The only negative comment about the writing is that of the opening story for chapter “the Source”. First of all I found it to be… poorly written by some man from South Hampton whose world somehow involves Japanese swords and Mexican rap. In truth, I found most of the forced Mexical drug pusher dialogue – well to be rubbish. I would have preferred that they actually spoke either real Spanish, or a smattering of Colombian Spanish vernacular equivalent to their station. The image on the right, a noticeable shift down from the rest of the high quality in the book does not assist in this assessment. During the course of the reading of the preamble of Ghost Cartels, the impression received was that this is campaign sourcebook could have happily been published in the 1990s, during the great cocaine push. In truth, I suspect that at least one of the source material used was either the movie Traffic (a quasi-documentary on shipping of drugs into the United States during the 1990s) or the memoir of a DEA or FBI agent, which focused on the drug traffic during the 1970s to the 1980s, which I partially remember reading a few years ago. Nonetheless, it would be interesting for the contributors to respond in what were their primary inspirations and source material for this campaign book – outside of Shadowrun material and Howlin’ Mercy of course.
One aspect which I thought would have been described is BTLs. Unfortunately, the basic book of Shadowrun 4th edition does not go into much detail. In actuality Ghost Cartels is one of the only books to actually talk about “beetles” in any detail. My wish is that the upcoming Vice book, which I have to admit I have great expectations for, would give much more detail as well as game effects for BTL usage. Perhaps even an entire chapter on drug use and drug construction.
The Olaya Cartel, the cartel which Ghost Cartels primarily focuses and its linkages with Tempo give numerous ideas for development of adventures for Shadowrunners as they become further involved in the great upheavals in the underworld. During the course of the reading of the campaign I was constantly thinking of how as a player I would approach the adventures. At this I would wish to place an aside and say that everything forthcoming will be quite revealing about some of the metaplot of Ghost Cartels and if you do not wish to ruin your appetite then may I recommend that you stop reading here.
It is quite obvious that the team should demand a face, a mage, a hacker, and a street samurai. To be honest, what I was impressed with is how much of the campaign involves negotiation with different parties without necessarily revealing anything to the others. In addition, some of the Seattle adventure really does demand strong law enforcement connections and actually makes some of the adventures quite easy, especially if they do end up in Caracas.
The way in which the players become involved seems very plausible and not forced, as they become more involved with Kaz Yakamura and the Komun’go there is a reasonable expectation for them to accept the parting gift of Kaz Yakamura and be hired into Henry Uribe’s retinue. As the subsequent adventures unfold, I would expect a deepening emotional attachment with their handler Sacristán and her very charismatic boss Henry Uribe. The reason why I wished to bring this up is that when Sacristán is shot and killed by Aztechnology forces in the Baltimore Towers, their allegiance is more likely to shift from Riveiro, someone is quite obviously possessed by a spirit to that of Henry Uribe. Even if they were to continue with Riveiro, her consolidation of power (highly similar to the increasingly paranoid behavior of Kaz Yakamura) would be a clear indicator of a building up of a situation which will involve conflict with Henry Uribe and the Olaya Cartel.
It is far more likely, that the Shadowrunners will long before the events of Caracas will actually try to assassinate Riveiro or try to discover a way to eradicate Yáje. This also clearly indicates that the last adventure in the group of delivering a sapling to Yáje/Riveiro is not in their interests, especially as she will be switching over to the Davis Cartel/Aztechnology. At this point the Shadowrunners have ceased to be valuable and will probably involve either being killed by Aztechnology, Primeiro Vaga, the Spirit Cabal, Sirrurg, Ghost Cartels, IDEA, ARM, DISA or perhaps if they are lucky only have their beating hearts ripped out with an obsidian knife by the slightly over-zealous, but single-minded Aztechnology warrior Tachi.
I believe this is what in modern parlance is called a plot “cock-up”.
Something which was not clear was that were the Shadowrunners informed about being the foreigners used in the creation of the PR scandal in Neo-Tokyo. If they are it turns into a very straight and quite frankly boring run, while if they are not, I could see the run ending with the team being killed or worse. As to the answer to the Tempus “mystery”: I think the developers, at least during the writing of Ghost Cartels, have yet decide how to continue this metaplot in future campaign books. However, they would love to keep their readers guessing in the hopes of future book sales, novels, or movie deals. I distinctly remember something from Street Magic that free spirits prey upon karma and seem to be draining Tempus users as part of the possession. Anyways, it all has something to do with a Spirit Cabal of Shadow Spirits bent on avenging mother-nature and a draconic version of Bill Oddie called Sirrurg. The mystery is somehow hidden in the rules of Free Spirits in Street Magic – and at that I shall leave that mystery for others to conjecture.
Overall, I have to say that Ghost Cartels does in part live up to its reputation as a solid book. However, the end of the campaign will demand much more work from the GM as their guardian angel in making sure the players characters do survive.
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