SwiftOne Speaks
by Brett Sanger [ swiftone@dumpshock.com ]

The old axiom about not judging a book by its cover includes the title. For every bit of imagination lacking in the title of Threats 2, inspired twists exists in the 12 "threats" inside.

Developers: Rob Boyle and Mike Mulvihill Size: 120 pages Cost: $18.00 ISBN: 3-89064-652-2 URL: www.shadowrunrpg.com Rating: 4 out of 5 Pros: Scheme-inspiring complications at an accessible power level Cons: GMs only. Thin and sometimes vague rules.

My first warning is that this is a book for gamemasters only. Not because of the rules (which are somewhat sparse regardless) but because of the ideas. Many of the threats are threatening mostly by surprise (only one threat, General Saito, details a topic of "common knowledge" in the Shadowrun world, and several haven’t even been hinted at.) Should a player learn of the existence of the threat before encountering it in-game, much of the excitement and mystery will be gone. As with several Shadowrun books of this nature, players should be discouraged from reading the back cover. (At least the title isn’t as harmful as Renraku Arcology: Shutdown.)

The book consists of 12 sections, each detailing a "threat" via in-character Shadowland posts, followed by a page or two of game usage. Each section is by a different author (save one author who wrote two sections), most of whom have contributed to Shadowrun products in the past. For the most part, each section is stand-alone, with no reliance on the other sections.

The writing quality varies with the authors, but this is the ideal environment for most game writers: Write in-character material to inspire, just enough of a rules skeleton for the reader to flesh out, and then stop. This may be a problem for some readers: Anyone expecting Threats 2 to resemble a premade adventure or a campaign setting will be vastly disappointed. The threats are often subtle, and will probably work best as either parallel to an existing campaign, or the puppet master behind the scenes of a campaign.

The original Threats compilation had difficulties with too many of the threats being at a power level beyond most groups. Threats 2 contains a few globe-spanning conspiracies of incomprehensible enormity, but there are several entries far more likely to be encountered (and even survived) by the average team. Even the larger conspiracies have a few suggestions for how these large conspiracies would create local effects and situations for teams who aren’t taking on world powers.

Threats of magical, mundane and technical natures are revealed (sorry, no man-eating cars yet), and the fundamental rules are given, usually along with suggestions on how to have the players encounter the threat. The rules are often pretty thin, and the GM is given a lot of leeway in deciding how things really work. Some GMs will find this freeing, needing only the inspiration of the in-character materials to come up with devious plots and sub-plots, while others will likely find this annoying, wanting a single straight answer that they then have the choice of deviating from.

Personally, I would have been quite happy to see some of the in-character material either trimmed for more rules details, or trimmed for more in-character inspiration (sometimes three one-line contradictory paranoid shadowcomments are worth more than a page of details.) While some of the entries were fine, others took up far more space than they seemed worth. On the other hand, I suspect this will be the case for most readers, with the offending entries changing based on personal gaming preferences.

Threats 2 is superior to the original Threats compilation, and is a worthy addition to any creative Shadowrun GM's library. Doubtless containing the essence of a backlog of three years of Shadowrun plot ideas, it can keep your game fresh for some time to come. Unfortunately, it’s not terribly useful for a player, nor do I recommend they read it regardless. Likewise, GMs seeking definitive and clear rules, or those not interested in running extended campaigns, will not find it as beneficial. My rating reflects my preferred style of off-the-cuff intricate plots, so adjust based on your own preferences. Some threats are low on the following list not because they were poorly written, but because they lacked adequate suggestions on how characters would encounter them.

Top Three

General Saito

The Aleph Society

Betrayal

Bottom Three

One Nation Under God

Order of the Temple

Dissonant Voices