u/Sarradi

I assume not many people have played with them, but whether you have or not, what is your opinion on special races having their own progression system?

If you do not know how it works, they both have a advancement system similar to initiation where with each Initiation they can select from a list of powers (Shifter are much more restricted than drakes to avoid double dipping into their own advancement system + magic initiation).

I don't know how it was for shifters, but drakes were famously underpowered in previous editions as their "one and done" package in no way justified the karma cost and story problems they have, and having an advancement system makes them much more playable.

On the other hand one can argue that them now being a toolbox robs them a bit of their identity as two shifter or drakes can differ widely from each other.

Do you think this system should be kept for very special races in future editions? Maybe even expanded to give infected a similar system?

Mainly aimed at players, how often do you buy a Docwagon (Or equivalent) contract and trust them not to do any funny stuff with the bio sample you have to give them?

Thats probably especially relevant in 6E where Docwagon has been bought by the same company that owns Lone Star.

I recently bought Mean Streets, but so far only managed to skim through it without going it deeply.

My first opinion is quite good, with the caveat that it is very interwoven with the metaplot. Its more of an update on how the unawakening has affected certain gangs, instead of a full complete description of who the Halloweeners are for example, although the brief summary is usually enough to get the general idea of the gang.

There are also several new gangs, including two "do gooder" hooding gangs which might not be to everyones liking, but I don't mind.

You also get the same kind of update on organized crime.

Those two sections are imo rather good. Shadowrun needs more street level stuff.

My only two gripes is that the section about how to ingrain yourself into a squatting community feels a bit not Shadowrun enough. Its hard to explain, the things described like securing water access or stealing seeds for a community garden in times where most seeds are genetically modified to not produce more seeds are things I did not think of before. But it feels a bit too much like "happy community building" without the harshness I expect from Z zones in Shadowrun. Especially when just before you went through all those gangs and crime syndicates.

My other gripe is that around halfway in the book it imo loses focus. It has a miniature Threats section, ranging from street appropriate to might be the next metaplot and finishes with several big players that are imo above street level like yet another writeup of the Draco Foundation (They are really building that one up, aren't they?) and New Assets (A surprising amount of Drake content for a streets book. Which I actually like, please keep remembering that things like drakes, shifters, surged, metasapient, ect. exist and use them, sparringly, in general books instead of keeping them confined in their specific book).

The rules section about magic tattoos even references in its shadowtalk that it was included because it did not fit anywhere else. I did not look to closely at the actual rule Implementation, but honestly the jump from gang culture to special tats is not that big, so it is imo fitting.

Yes there are rules for heat, how it builds up and what it does, but I wonder how many groups use it as written and how many ignore the mechanic completely and how many use it, at best, as a guideline to "roleplay" heat.

Specifically not a review as I did not play it and also because I will add my subjective likes and dislikes to it. Feel free to post questions or your own impression.

To put the tl;dr first, I am not sure for who the book is. Space is very restrictive, logically so, but it highly limits the groups that can realistically go into space. Any player of an awakened character will be bored as his character is sidelined, the characters must be super rich to afford stuff in space and prime runners as you must be extremely skilled to get around all the security and its, if you follow the book, black trenchcoat only.

And subjectively I am not a fan of how much this goes into into pure science fiction, even outside monad supertech, with casually going to Mars in not even 2 weeks.

About the different sections

- History

The history is ok, it describes how space exploration was taken over by corporations, how the crashes affected it and creates some plot hooks that are more detailed later. I only have a subjective gripe that especially the Gen3 rockets make travelling space far too easy and fast for my personal vision of Shadowrun

- Space infrastructure

Basic information that you would need to understand like Lagrange points and what ways you can use to get into space. In itself nothing wrong with this.

- Big players

S-k, Ares, Evo, monads, pirates, SRS (doc wagon of space), roughly in order of importance and subjective usefulness (SRS would be higher).

S-K is the useful part. The biggest space player it has "normal" motivations. There are resources in space, lets get them. Also their description is not about space but about their groundside infrastructure they are building up in and around Seattle and their operations there. Things even normal runners can come into contact with.

That section is also pretty long and detailed.

Ares is more like a affirmation that they are still here. We know that they were big in space and this rather short part basically just confirms it. Interestingly it does not even talk about Ares stations that served as hubs for incursions into bug space, but only about their normal operations and that Ares is on the rise again.

Evo: Ugh. Pretext, I do not like Monads so this colors my impression. The 2/3 of the Evo entry is basically just stuff about monads and mars, in addition to the monad specific entry that comes after that, so I summarize them together. Monads are Deus 2.0, just better in every way. They have their unassailable fortress (now housing 100k monads thanks to cloning) and run inhuman experiments for science! and their own goals.

Multiple megacorps tried to attack them but were easily turned away and now they trade advanced tech with Evo so that they are left alone.

What is the point of them? At least the Acrology was in the middle of Seattle so that there were believable ways for runner teams to get in. But get them to mars, including a way back that would somehow not instantly be disabled by Monads, stranding them and then having to somehow go through a huge monad city while also avoiding cfd?

Evo has also a tiny bit of lore without monads and are basically spying on everyone while collecting scrap and run a resort.

Pirates: Basically a couple of "we need shadowrunners in space" stations. The entry is not even shy about it, those are independent places, secretly supported by megacorps, in order to have denyable assets in space. Named, very on the nose, after pirate hotspots.

SRS: Doc wagon, police and emergency service rolled into one. If somewhere something goes wrong they come and sort things out. Not within minutes of course, but as a lifeline to stranded players if they survive for some time.

Prison: Yes there a ultra secure prison in space, but next to no information about it.

- Rules

The rules starts with a in-universe description of what does not work, separates space opera scifi from real space physics and is the main reason why voidrunning is only for very special groups.

The actual game rules are strange. You have tables about muscle athropy in space, carrying capacity in zero g, but how combat is affected, despite being talked about, does not have any rules as far as I can see.

- Decking

Decking gets its own chapter introducing constellations (network of satellites, each of which is a host), some modified rules fir probing and interacting with them and the concept of lag.

And a way to bypass lag, but that is more a plot device than something players will actively employ. In the end though there does not seem to be mich difference in decking in space to what you are doing on the ground.

Some more weirdness with Null Sect and the foundation is teased, so I wonder if thats where the metaplot is going next.

- Plot hooks, Equipment, Missions

I confess I only glossed over those parts. Plot hooks details special locations that were mentioned before like a supposedly haunted ship, equipment runs the usual list of armor, drones and even space ships. I have not checked if there is something broken or out of the ordinary in there. And missions are missions.

Maybe I missed something in the later chapters but in my opinion its a very specialized book for purpose build voidrunner groups with little outside applications.

I have not kept up with the PZ2 development, so I am unsure if that has already been answered.

Many real life zoos have opened up an additional revenue stream with guided visitor-animal meetings. There are also walkable aviaries or open concept enclosures (see for example the kangoroo enclosure in the "Steve Irwin" zoo in Australia) and I also have often seen zoos where peacocks or other animals freely roam the zoo.

Will any of that be in PZ2?

I have been out of the loop for a bit. The end of the current metaplot drops a lot of hints about changes, but do we now how they will be followed up?

Are there any upcoming (rule or campaign)books we know about?

And if you do, do you use cheats to do it?

With the conjuration project you get the choice between several mercenary that continuously improve. The unit type is selected the first time you do the project.

For all mercenaries they cost no professionalism and next to no money and come in a size of 10/25/40 regiments.
Then every mercenary can get either a defensive or offensive specialization which changes the stats of the merc company.

Infantry:
Defense: -15% morals damage received and, for some reason, better fort assault when I read the stats right?
Offense: +25% Inf Combat ability and +0.1 discipline

Cavalry (unit always has 100% cav to inf ratio):

Fast: +33% movement speed, +20% shock damage, +50% better flanking
Mass: +10% Cav combat ability, faster reinforce, +0.75 cav fire

Artillery:

Frontline: +0.5 artillery shock, +0.25 morale
Backline: +10% backline damage, +15% fire damage

Personally I do not see the value in infantry, especially the defensive one. When you get 40 units for free, why not get the expensive one? The stats are not even all that great.

I quite like the fast cavalry. In my understanding the 100% cav to inf ratio only works when the merc is fighting alone, and having a fast hunter is quite nice. Especially for races other than human who start with better shock cav. Although late game the fire damage might be good for some specific infantry elements.

The artillery probably gives you the most power late game, but I mainly use the conjuration project for early game power where artillery is not that good, even with the buffs. Also the way artillery works a 40 stack is just overkill as you will overfill the backline for a long time. On the other hand, using artillery mercs as only combatant will use all 40 of them immediately by filling the front and backline.

What MTs have you found with a surprise requirement for magic in the mission tree?

So far I have seen

- Verne (requires Ward being casted or powerful mage)

- Mykx (Suddenly requires 2 legendary estate schools in the hidden MT part)

When going the aristocratic oath in the EoA you get special parliament issues that cost IA to enact.

But while the tooltip extensively explains the success chance of those issues, it fails to tell you what they even do.

Just wondering if this is actually solvable in the current version.

There seems to be far too many provinces in the mountain range to be able to control them during a disaster that triples supply usage and still have a surplus

Just wondering, do you think some of the reworks from the last few updates made the country less enjoyable or otherwise worse than before?

Or were all reworks good in your opinion?

I have the impression that going evocation and then battlemages is the by far best opening for most nations that do not get a powerful mage at start.

Not only does a early mage lets you snowball hard at the start, you also need it as defense against enemy mages in those critical early wars as a mage will single handedly win them.

That seems rather unbalanced to me.