Review of Aztlan

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Why am I reviewing a product that has been out of print for the past five years? Aside from the dates being five years old, all of the information in the book is still applicable to the game world. Besides, what's not like about Aztlan: a country controlled by a ruthless corporation where everything that a Shadowrun lives by (cyberware, cyberdecks, and magic weapons) is illegal, where the priests of the official state religion practice evil blood sacrifice, and where some unseen and unspeakable evil lurks just beneath the surface. This may not some like your ideal location take a vacation to, but it is a great place for a GM to stage anything from an adventure to an entire campaign.

OK, so Aztlan is a great place for adventures, but is the book a great supplement on Aztlan? Short answer: yes. Long answer: keep reading.

Everything from the mundane aspects of pollution in the capital of Tenochtitlán to the border war between the Aztlan and Amazonian is described. With this book you can run any type of adventure: mercenaries fighting in the border war, runners caught up over their heads in political machinations, or fighting for the truth and light against forces of evil. This sourcebook is one of the few I have read where practically every single page seems chalked full of adventure seeds. It does not merely provide the information on Aztlan but also presents many different options: one section includes a number of rumors and then, in the traditional Shadowrun sourcebook style, includes Shadowtalk where various runners discuss their takes on the rumors. There are also numerous unconfirmed reports throughout the book, told by various runners who describe what they think they saw, while still leaving much to the imagination. This allows GMs to run with the information presented here and tailor it to their own campaign. Aztlan tries to bridge the gap between presenting just the framework of a country and including every last detail and secret. It presents enough information so that GMs can run adventures in Aztlan without any extra work, but those who do put in the extra effort to flesh out the rumors and leads presented here will be richly rewarded.

Enough about the praises of the book, I hear your asking, what's actually in it? The first section relates the history of how the megacorporation Aztechnology grew out of the drug cartels that thrived at the end of the 20th-century. Aztechnology was then able to usurp control of the remnants of the Mexican state and bend it to its will, creating the new nation of Aztlan. (Now you know why Aztechnology plays by such dirty rules.) Like all history, this section provides the motivation for Aztlan’s and Aztechnology's current behavior, but still leaves enough open for GMs to customize it to their particular campaigns. The next section deals with Aztechnology itself. It discusses how its corporate structure is set up, including who might in fact be running it (rumors abound). These rumors allow for many adventures where the PCs delve into the internal politics of Aztechnology. For more high-powered campaigns, this section also includes information on the Aztlan and Aztechnology military forces.

The next section includes what Aztlan is most feared for: its magic. Here you learn about the bureaucracy of the official priesthood, how the Catholic church had to go underground after it was suppressed in the early 21st century, about the new shamanic totems that are available, and what is perhaps the most revolting addition to magic in Shadowrun: blood magic. In this form of magic the magician draws energy not from himself, thereby suffering drain, but instead draws from the life force of another, frequently by sacrificing them. Aztlaner shamans can also conjure blood spirits. These are spirits that are drawn from the living energy of a sacrificial victim. Needless to say, blood magic is a nasty surprise for your PCs and certainly gives them a new form of evil to combat.

The next few sections of the book deal with matters of a more practical nature. Here you will find such details as what the national borders are, how many people live in Aztlan, and generally how the country functions. Since Aztlan is a relatively closed country, this section also deals with how to get in, including everything from simply hopping on a plane to fighting your way over the border. You then also get what your runners need to stay alive: tips on how to live on the streets. You'll find information here on such topics as the currency, how to obtain the goodies that your players will want, namely guns, and what the laws are for using those shiny new toys. Finally, information is presented on the city that your players are most likely to end up in, the capital of Tenochtitlán. Here you get the usual information: how to get around, what sports are popular, what the city looks like, and how you have to wear an air filter if you step outside due to the pollution, etc.

Now, we finally get to the rules: a total of seven pages out of a 184-page supplement. Contained here are the mechanics for the new shamanic totems, how blood magic works, and stats on some new weapons that the Aztechnology security forces use. Here you also find numerous statements that blood magic is only allowed for NPCs and never for PCs, which, given the power hungry nature of some Shadowrun players, is probably a good thing. In a location supplement like this, I think it is a good idea to put the game mechanics in one central spot so you don't have to continually flip through the book looking for rules. I also like how there are so few rules, since the point of the book is to describe the nation of Aztlan, not to present many new rules for the game.

Aztlan also does a very good job of presenting its material in a very stimulating manner. Each of the sections of the book is written from a different perspective: the section on how to get into the country is written from the perspective of a UCAS briefing on how its spies could infiltrate Aztlan, while the section on living in Tenochtitlán is written from the perspective of a local runner. Far from being disconcerting, these changes of voice actually keep the book very interesting to read; they help maintain the illusion that the entire book is in fact a compilation of various documents that intrepid hackers have pulled together on Shadowland. As mentioned above, the book is full of ShadowTalk, in the usual Shadowrun matter.

To provide more information on the big picture, there is an additional layer of ShadowTalk. These comments are presented by the big players in the Shadowrun universe: the dragon Dunkelzahn and the immortal elves. The back story here is that Dunkelzahn is trying to get the elves to tell the humans about what is really happening in the world. For an in-depth, but not perfect, analysis of these comments, see this excellent web site. Aztlan, and perhaps Harlequin’s Back, serves to closely tie the Shadowrun universe with the Earthdawn universe. From the explicit references to blood magic, to the subtle hints of horrors and corruption, to other references to the paths of magic followed by the Earthdawn disciplines, you'll find many references to Earthdawn in this book. While this will likely please some people, others have grown quite tired of the interconnectedness between Earthdawn and Shadowrun. For these people, I would advise to either steer clear of this book or else simply ignore the references.

The main problem you'll have in using Aztlan is if you have players who have read the Dragonheart Trilogy or you wish to take it as cannon. The trilogy wraps up a number of the rumors and potential plot threads presented in Aztlan in what I consider to be too neat of a manner. If you take the events of the Trilogy space literally, then the main Aztlan threat has been illuminated and thus one of the most intriguing parts of the sourcebook has been put to bed. Considering that no runners should have actual knowledge of what happened in the Trilogy, and it seems doubtful that FASA, now WizKids, will release future products dealing with the horrors now that they've been laid to rest, if you simply ignore the events of the Trilogy, then you can run a successful campaign dealing with the potential threat of Aztlan.

Is Aztlan a perfect sourcebook? No, it does have some faults. I would have preferred more information on how to get a standard group of runners involved in Aztlan. As it stands, it is somewhat difficult for the GM to come up with ways to get runners from Seattle to Aztlan. Some in character comments from runners on how they got involved with Aztlan, or perhaps a "GM Advice" paragraph or two in the rules section, would have been appreciated.

Finally a few comments on the art in Aztlan: Overall the art is very good; each picture fits the surrounding text quite well. While not all the art is excellent, there are no pictures that I would classify as bad, and none of the pictures depict scenes that are contradicted in the book (something that is of great annoyance to me). Eight full color plates in the center of the book help to further bring to life of dark realities of Aztlan. There is even a fold-out full color map of Tenochtitlán at the back of the book. Of course, I would have also liked a good map of Aztlan itself, which is inexplicably missing.

In case you can’t tell, I think that Aztlan is a great addition to any Shadowrun GM's library. No matter what your players are interested in, there’s something in here for them. Shoot first, ask questions later type players with all the latest in goodies? Send them to the fractious border between Aztlan and Amazonia to fight in the civil war there. Goody two shoes players who always need to do what's right? Introduce them to the evils up of blood magic and the attempts to bring back the horrors. The biggest problem in using this book will be finding it. There are copies floating around out there, particularly on eBay, although they have been known to go for quite high prices. No matter what, I seriously doubt you'll be disappointed after you get this book.