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Shadowrun has been around for over two decades and just as much time has passed in-game. As a result a lot has transpired in the setting, especially as Shadowrun is a game that focuses a lot on the fluff. Over the years the setting has expanded as more and more of the world and its history were detailed. While this provided players and GMs alike with plenty of material to use as inspiration it also means that important setting information is scattered across dozens of books, most of which are no longer in print. This makes it difficult for new players to get a thorough grasp of the setting and even veteran GMs can find it hard to keep track of everything.
Shadowrun also has a problem common to most metaplot settings - obsolete information. As time passes in-setting, older books become outdated. This was particularly true of the 'Shadows of' series, which were released just before the third edition was wrapped up and the timeline was jumped forward 6 years. These books provided descriptions of the countries of North America, Europe and Asia in the early 2060s. Anyone playing a game set in the 2070s might wonder how much those countries had changed over the past decade.
The Sixth World Almanac hopes to solve these problems. The first half of the book is a giant timeline, starting at 1999 and going as far as 2072. The second half covers some of the more important countries in the game, including most of those in the Shadows series and adding a few from South America, Africa and Australia.
History
The timeline provides roughly one page per year. Each year is covered with a series of bullet points which describe the important events that occurred. One event from each year is looked at in detail - a news report, blog entry, intercepted transmission or the like is posted, providing the perspective of someone alive at the time. Examples include a BBC report on the Russian invasion of Poland, the final transmissions of the pilot of EuroAir Flight 329 as it was attacked by the dragon Sirrurg and a review of the first episode of a new talk show hosted by the dragon Dunkelzahn. The excerpt is then followed by a few comments from Shadowrunners. These usually focus on the excerpt, but sometimes talk about one of the other events of the year. They often provide alternative interpretations of events or describe the impact they had on the shadow community.
There are a few pieces of fiction scattered throughout the timeline. Reasonably well written, each is about a shadowrunner who gets caught up in the events of the year. 2-4 pages long and with some decent artwork, they help break up the timeline a bit.
Obviously this section is useful for anyone who wants to familiarise himself with the history of the Shadowrun setting. It is also a useful reference for GMs who are trying to recall when a given event happened. This section also covers the years that passed in the gap between the 3rd and 4th editions, an especially handy resource for anyone who is curious as to what happened during that period.
Geography
The second chapter covers each of the continents in turn, starting with Africa. Each continent starts with a two-page piece of fiction and artwork, again usually featuring a Shadowrunner in the middle of an op. It then goes to each country, starting with an overview from 'Aetherpedia', the sixth world's equivalent of wikipedia. This generally gives a quick overview of the country's history then describes some of the more important cities and unusual areas of interest. There is also a map of the nation and the national flag. There then follows a few comments from the Shadow community, providing some additional insight and covering some of the secrets the primary article didn't go into.
In addition to updating a lot of the material from older editions this chapter also covers a lot of areas that have been barely touched on in previous supplements, such as Africa and South America. Some of these countries have been partially covered in various supplements or have featured in adventures, but the almanac gives us a much better overview of the continents as a whole.
Folded into the back of the book is a beautiful poster sized map of the world that shows the political boundaries (including which ones are disputed) and various important cities and sites of interest.
Flaws
This book is an excellent resource. Players new to Shadowrun will find it a great way to get to know the setting, while those of us who have been collecting it for years can use it as a handy reference and useful update of the older material. It's so good I'm almost tempted to give it a score of 5 for both style and substance.
But I can't, due to an unfortunate series of simple but annoying errors that really bring down the value of the book. These are found in the timeline. In a number of cases the bullet points describing major events for a given year actually refer to another year already covered. For example all of the details for 2006 and 2020 are the same. While this only occurs a few times, it is extremely annoying. Not only does this mean that details for certain years are completely missing, but it reduces the value of the book as a reference. Any GM who wants to find out what happened on a given year could easily mistake a duplicate entry for a valid one. In some cases it can be difficult to figure out which entry is in the correct place - did Japan launch its solar-power-collecting satellites in 2006 or 2020? Did Iran and Iraq go to war in 2040 or 2044?
There are a few other minor flaws, again mostly in the timeline, but the above is the biggest one. It's an easy enough mistake to make - someone performing layout accidentally pasted the wrong information into a given text box, which was then missed by the editor - but it's sloppy and raises questions about the validity of rest of the timeline.
It's very disappointing, as this would otherwise have been a perfect book. I don't think it's enough to knock the value of this book down too far, but it definitely justifies a drop from 5 points to 4 in both style and substance.
The Sixth World Almanac is still a great read and a brilliant resource, but it fails to achieve perfection due to an easily avoidable error that should have been caught. I understand that CGL were under a lot of pressure at the time and that this (and other) books faced a lot of problems, but that doesn't change the fact that valuable information has been omitted. The quality of the rest of the supplement just makes it worse by comparision.
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