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Vice is the Crime sourcebook for Shadowrun 4th Edition. Given the nature of the Shadowrun game, mind you, pretty much all sourcebooks for Shadowrun are crime sourcebooks to some extent. The various city sourcebooks all have fairly comprehensive overviews of crime in their locales, the core supplements like Augmentation all have decent sections on legality / illegality and operating in the shadows in their specific areas, e.g. Augmentation has plenty on black clinics and implanting gear that is not only illegal but in some cases, how shall we say it, second hand. So what does Vice cover and is it worth it? The latter I can only advise on, but the former I can answer. So first off, what does the book give you and how does it look?
Presentation
Vice is 192 pages of nicely laid out information, the overwhelming bulk of it pure text. There's a nice moody green cover, very low-profile and a modest amount of artwork inside - mainly nicely done scenes inserted into the text (more atmospheric than illustrative) and occasional, rather brash, full page pieces. The inline pieces are modern-looking pieces. The one-pieces hark back to early editions of Shadowrun (and a couple of them I actually recognize from earlier editions). At any rate, the artwork is functional but whether you like it or not, there's not really enough of it to be a factor either way in whether you purchase this book. Instead, the book tries to deliver its atmosphere through the writing and I'd say it delivers well in this. I'll cover that next.
Contents The book is pretty much entirely in-character articles (e.g. an essay on the mob from an ex-member, a most-wanted list leaked from internal FBI files) interspersed with commentary from the now-familiar Jackpoint community of posters engaging in their usual line of sarcasm, privileged information and light soap-opera. I'll say right now that I find the balance exactly right. Early edition sourcebooks for Shadowrun seemed to had reams of conversations between posters - and they were very entertaining. I still remember whole pieces of dialogue from the old Corporate Shadow files. But it could get in the way of actual concise information. Here, that never happens. You get enough dialogue to get feels for the characters who are posting and a bit of humour (and occasional drama), but also a brevity and a relevancy to the subject matter that serves to spark off ideas for the GM as well as suggest subtle currents of meta-plot in an elegant, integrate this into your game or not way. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Having talked a little about how the sections cover things, lets look at what each section covers.
We begin with "Crime Pays" - a comprehensive overview on types of crime and the various Organized Crime power-players. Does this organisation make sense? Well, it doesn't not make sense. When I say comprehensive, this section runs to 88 sides. The first part, "Crime 101" is a straight alphabetical list of types of crime - from Arson to Underworld Medicine. Each crime gets from one to several paragraphs explaining how this works in the Shadowrun 2070 setting,, usually with a little bit of Jackpoint commentary to add plot ideas or humour. This feels fairly rote, but there's useful information in there. For example, Forgery has a few things to say about how this is done in a world of forensic science and psychometry. Kidnapping notes how the corporations typically respond to such incidences on their employees, etc. And then we get on to the meat of the section, the Organized Crime groups. These cover (in order), the Mafia(s), the Yakuza, the Triads and the Vory V Zakone (the modern Russian "mafia"). It's rounded out with the Ghost Cartels who get themselves a seven page feature including a specific Cartel examination. The sections on each of these four main groups cover the structure of how they work, all the names and terms they use, etc. as well as their current status and issues in SR2070. There's good material here. Like the earlier section on types of crime, it's fairly by the book, but it's no bad thing. There's a lot you could surmise or extrapolate from other books and I guess depending on your game, you don't really need to know exactly how a capi relates to a Don or how people are elected to the Commisione. Still, this is a book about crime and it delivers. One nice touch is that these sections typically include a sample group - e.g. a small Mafia family or a Triad group, detailing some of the main members and their personality / interests / backstory. I should stress for anyone uncertain on this point, that it doesn't give you stats. Just biographies. If you want to put the Mafia, or the Yaks or the Vory into your game as realistic characters or insert some real Organized Crime politics into your game rather than just goons to be shot at, then I certainly see this section as being helpful. Although it's hardly a real world FBI dossier, it has the ring of plausability about it. The organized crime syndicates in Shadowrun aren't caricatures or arbitrary plot elements. They're well drawn and well-integrated into the setting. Don't expect anything you can just pick up and drop into your game for an evening's session, however. This is all pure background written to help a GM add depth to his game or trigger ideas for runs and campaigns.
Following the section on these main Organized Crime players, there's a section on Ethnic Syndicates that runs to about twenty sides. This covers things like the Fanti pirates of Africa, Seoulpa Rings, the Koshari (Native American syndicate) and the Caribbean based Voodoo-lovin' Zobop. Even the name of that last one fills me with glee. At some point, every GM should probably have his group face off against Jamaican zombie gangsters. I don't see the Ethnic Syndicates section being critical to anyone's campaign, though if you're heading off the beaten track to run a game in the NAN or Africa, you're going to love this stuff. However, I see this as being excellent fodder for odd missions and strange enemies. You can still use all these groups with a little imagination. A group of native american gangsters in Seattle to arrange a smuggling deal with the Gianelli family, sabotaged by the Eighty-Eights? So many ways you could make a colourful run out of that! In fact, I think I'll run that with the PCs trying to get their charges safely to the border whilst Chinese assasins hunt them down. Love it!
Right, now we come to the section I was really itching to read when I got Vice - gangs! This is my personal interest for my game, not that I didn't enjoy reading the Syndicate sections or find that useful... But a lot of the stuff in there I'd personally seen before due to my familiarity with previous editions (although to be fair, this is the best treatment we've seen yet, I think). But gangs have never received a decent coverage until 4th edition, in my opinion. But the scatterings of treatments we've seen of them in 4th, such as in Runner Havens, have all pointed towards a more realistic and better thought out take on them than we've yet had. In Vice, I'd say we get a really good run down on them. We get a couple of pages on how gangs work - hardly comprehensive, but still useful, and then about twenty sides talking about specific gangs in SR2070, starting off with the top tier - groups like the Ancients and the Cutters, talking about how they're structured and what they get up to, a smattering of second tier gangs who by their nature, are more limited in scope and detail. And then it's rounded out with some general notes for third tier gangs, splitting them up into groups such a Wizzer gangs, Matrix gangs and theme gangs (such as my eternal favourites - the Halloweeners. They die in droves. They've been wiped out twice. And they keep on coming back). This section is sadly not that long. But I'm not sure what I could add. It does what it says: gives you a feel for how the gangs operate at their different levels, it's well written and stimulates my GM mind. It also puts its finger on the difference between even the largest gangs and the Syndicates, and gives you a feel for how they interact. It's a useful section for anyone wanting to put gangs in their game as more than simple (panther)cannon-fodder. But again, like the previous section, I have to stress it's useful on a background level rather than providing anything you can just drop into a mission.
After gangs, there are just a few sections left to go which I'll cover fairly briefly. "Other Outfits" covers specialist groups / crime types, such as Organ Legging, Hacking and Fences. I've got to say that the Fences section is quite interesting and ties into just how your Fixer might operate. "Dangerous Minds" gives you eleven sides of Interpol's Most Wanted. Including Jackpoint poster Kane (who provides an entertaining commentary on his own Wanted file) and, for long-time Shadowrun GMs, Teachdaire (just in case, you know, you want to kill off your group in a hurry). Again, I have to stress, these are biographies; they don't come with stats. Mainly this is a section of ready-made villains, I'd say. With the exception of Slamm-O! who gets his own entry added to the most wanted list, kind of. What sort of criminal gets piqued that they're not on Interpol's most wanted list? Made me laugh, anyway.
Then we get a surprisingly good section on "The Law". You'd think the criminals would be the most interesting in the book, and I suppose that is true. It's just that the criminals known as the Police get some of the most interesting bits. For anyone who feels that Shadowrun has become less dystopian in its most recent edition, "The Law" will help. I have to give a special mention to the fiction piece that opens it, which really sets the scene: "What about Justice?" Nice line. Law enforcement in general and in a few broad locations such as Neo-Tokyo, UCAS and in the megas, is covered. Again in general terms more often than specifics. The section on the UK doesn't amount to much more than "It's a police state, the coppers get away with whatever they want."
Finally, we get to a section called "Game Information". This is something that has been utterly absent from the book so far. So what does it contain? Well, not that much game information, actually. It's certainly got nothing that looks like stats in it. It's more about how crime fits into the world of 2070, what you should consider when designing a criminal organisation or a gang. There's nothing radical in this and certainly nothing rules-y. A couple of sides of adventure suggestions finishes this section off. These are very bare bones - e.g. the runners are hired by the team to go after data in a specified node. Unbeknown to them, their Johnson is actually a member of a Matrix gang that wants to test its own security. Okay, that's, uh, to the point, I guess.
So that's the content. Sorry that took a bit long. I'll cover my thoughts on the product as a whole now:
The Review
Having read through the above, it might seem I'm damning Vice with faint praise. To an extent, I'm afraid that's true. To a long-time Shadowrun GM like myself, a lot of the information on the Syndicates will be familiar, although Vice is well-written and presents the information very nicely this time around (and the commentary from various Shadowrunners really adds to it, rather than distracts). Even if you'd only read books like Runner Havens, there's not much in this book that really shakes up what you know or couldn't guess to some extent. But that's not to say this book isn't useful for interesting or even funny in places. It's all of these. I'd say if you were a GM that wanted to add more crime elements to your game or were newer to the setting, then this book would be very useful. It's very important that you go into it knowing what you're getting though. You will not find lots of ready-made gangsters that you can drop into the game, you will not find a passage saying "an Oyaban can send X men at you with Y amount of cyberware". You will find yourself role-playing the next Fixer or Mafia Johnson more believably and when the players threaten some local gangster you wont find yourself saying "don't mess with me, I'm connected", you'll find yourself saying "Do you know who I am? I'm a Gianelli? You want to mess with the Gianellis? We OWN this town."
As a resource to give yourself a crash course in crime and the Shadowrun setting, Vice is good. It's weakest area is by far the Game Master's section. You get little guidelines on just how powerful in real terms these people are. Something that would have been really useful would be a short section on what a typical Don would be able to field or what sort of resources they can draw on. This would run counter to a lot of the book because part of the message is that there isn't a typical Don. But nonetheless, it's the sort of thing a GM might be grasping for when running an actual game. And I'd have traded all the tiny adventure ideas and a small portion of the in-character articles, for a a few more fleshed out ideas for adventures.
Still, that isn't what it sets out to do and it's a solid book. If you're strapped for cash and you want a Shadowrun sourcebook, I'd recommend some of the others first. Certainly the core four (Arsenal, Augmentation, Street Magic and Unwired) are going to be higher on the priority list for almost everyone not only for the obvious crunch but because these books also enrich the setting. If you want a pure sourcebook, then Seattle 2072 will be the critical book for any games set there and Feral Cities or Runner Havens for games set in the locations they deal with. If you want gangsters and gangers to throw at your players, you're better off getting Ghost Cartels and cutting it up to serve as needed. Still, if you've already got these or you definitely have an interest in criminal aspects generally, this is a worthwhile book. I feel bad giving it only the marks that I did. Like most 4th edition products, this is good quality stuff. I just feel that it doesn't quite set the world afire after reading things like Ghost Cartels or Seattle 2072. It does what it says on the tin, basically - an entertaining, comprehensive overview on Vice in SR2072.
Note:This review was based on the PDF only. I can't therefore comment on any issues in final printing, but given that they allowed the PDF to go to a second revision to catch errors before they sent it to print, the two should match well and the Shadowrun books are usually good quality in my experience.
