Dirty Tricks is a sourcebook of 162 pages, divided into 10 chapters (plus 2 short stories). The cover reads "a deep shadow sourcebook" but, unlike its predecessor (
The Clutch of Dragons,
Spy Games...) it doesn't contain any gear. The theme is politics, mainly North American politics.
Voter Intimidation (4 pages) is a short story on runners involved in a shooting during a vote in Puyallup with Humanis members.
Slinging Mud & Stuffing Ballots (12 pages) is a small guide on political tricks: smearing campaign, hiring people to attend meeting, funding smaller candidates to divest votes, dead voters, intimidation, tampering the vote, and outright assassination. It rather well done, it can give ideas to gamemaster who don't follow the political game too closely and may not know those tricks. Some of them aren't going to make a game (gathering a crowd for a meeting is not something that would keep a team of hardened runners holding their breath) but can still be used in the background for flavor. The author took a lot of examples in the twentieth century (Richard Nixon, archduke Franz Ferdinand...). I guess he intended his exposé to look more serious this way, rather than inventing the examples he needed in Shadowrun timeline. As a result, some part sounds a little dated, and you're left to wonder how different something like the Watergate could be with the Matrix and Magic.
As a side note, the paragraph on how an electrical meter works doesn't really belong there.
Anatomy of a Scandal (5 pages) starts with a summary of the 2056 and 2057 presidential elections in the UCAS, plus a handful of other political scandal of the 21st century, which explains the role of whistleblowers and media strategies to handle a scandal. Not much to say on this one. Maybe it could have been merged into a single chapter with the previous one.
Executive Entertainments (5 pages) deals with how prostitution work for the rich and the powerful. Less silly than it may sound, since it helps imagining how and where runners' targets may spend some of their time. In this regards, it would have been perfect if the book also featured information on the rest of the time, the public and private meetings, the interviews, etc.
Taking the Bullet (5 pages) is about bodyguard work. The first part is short list of some official protection services, like the UCAS Secret Service. It only deals with official/governmental services, and makes no mention of private companies like Ares' subsidiary Executive Protection Services or HKB's Risk Protection Factors, which you would expect to play a significant role in Shadowrun, as not every candidate running for the House is going to get a Secret Service detail.
The rest of the chapter gives a few details about how a bodyguard is expected to operate (how close to the customer, lethal weapons or not) and the "lockdown" (getting the customer to a safehouse and not moving for a given time). It can give ideas to gamemaster, for runners to be either the bodyguards or the attackers but the chapter is a bit short. It would have been so much better if it addressed how to deal with snipers, bombs, magical attacks, spirits' Search power...
Seattle (14 pages) is mostly about the "Proposition 23" campaign, the vote on the Seattle Ork Underground status. A sizeable part is a summary of the
Shadowrun Missions Season 4 story arc "Buried Underground". It reads like all summaries of RPG campaigns: if you played it, it's uninteresting because you already know everything there is to know ; if you didn't, it doesn't really make you eager to play it, and it doesn't leave the room for you to develop your own campaign either. The chapter is mostly worthy for the information on Kenneth Brackhaven staff and the political context for the next gubernatorial election.
UCAS (23 pages) covers the ongoing electoral campaigns for 2074 in the Senate, House of Representatives, Governors and Mayors (plus a list of possible contenders for the presidential election in 2076). There are a lot of things on the country at large (including, for the first time, a complete list of the UCAS states, Canadian states included!). The biggest flaw here is, it's unlikely a Gamemaster will get his PC to travel across al the UCAS to take part in every races from Nebraska to Maine, especially when he has little information on the places themselves (obviously, that part is more of a problem for an European audience). The way it is written, and somehow consistently with an electoral period, Washington looks like awfully quiet while all the politicians are touring the country (somehow for the better, since running in Washington would require you to buy another sourcebook,
Conspiracy Theories).
The last part of the chapter deals with the major political topics: a possible war against the Pueblo, the Sioux or the Algonquin-Manitou, food shortage, and dragons. Like
Clutch of Dragons, you get a taste of the big changes coming for the 5th edition.
Dirty South (26 pages) goes to the CAS. While both the UCAS and CAS had so far a pretty equal coverage as countries (in
NAGNA,
SoNA and
6WA), the former also had updates for its major cities (Seattle, Chicago, New York, Washington...). This chapter is a our of the CAS, where the political races takes a back-seat to states' description. Among the thing missing in this approach, we have to go back to
Shadows of North America to know what the major political parties are.
Texas, Georgie, Louisiana and Tennessee are getting the lengthy description. Texas mostly deals about the sale by Aztlan of occupied Texan territory to Ute businessmen, causing a serious diplomatic crisis between the CAS and the Pueblo (again, 5th edition and all that). Scale doesn't go a lot below state-level. Racism is one big issue throughout the chapter. It certainly gives the CAS a distinct feeling, but I think I would have had a bit more "sensitive" approach than simply replacing "black" by "ork" (New Orleans is 50% black nowadays, so it must be 50% orks in 2074...). The whole "Southern Pride" thing is funny or one page or two. After that it gets boring.
Tsimshian Protectorate (18 pages) goes back to that small places forgotten by SR. The former government and MCT left the country ruined and ravaged by mining and pollution, economical crisis, and public debt. There are toxic shamans, the revolutionaries who overthrow the government still armed, politicians unable to agree on anything, and foreign powers using them as proxies. With population below the million, we get a very detailed description of the election, district by district (maybe a it repetitive as a result). Tsimshian could be a great place for a campaign, it just lacks one story arc, something a little more exciting than besting polls by 4% in the 4th district.
United Kingdom (11 pages) is an inventory of political forces in the United Kingdom of Great Britain. You get a good view, but nothing's really going on. The parties themselves actually doesn't are very different from the existing ones. Without the Lord Protector and his administration, UK no longer is "V for Vendetta" and what we got instead has a lot less flavour. The chapter is the opposite of the CAS chapter, with really little information on the country proper, the cities or corporations. So you got to combine 2 pages from
Spy Games, 33 from
Conspiracy Theories and 11 from
Dirty Tricks to get to play. It would comes in hand to know who is Adam Dashwood and what an "o-three operative" is.
Memory in Time (3 pages) is a short story on a runnr working for the Black Lodge to recover an artefact. It centers on exactly the kind of characters that I can't stand: flawless, powerful-yet-cool-yet-wise. YMMV I guess.
Power Brokers (15 pages) describes three "politically active groups": the Black Lodge, the Human Nation, the Illuminates of the New Dawn and Danielle de la Mar.
The Black Lodge still strays further from its original depiction in
Threats. The centuries-old secret magical conspiracy now have a Matrix site that lists its members in universities... Even if we're told the list may be fake (!), the whole idea just doesn't . I wondered for a while if that part wasn't intended to be for the Illuminates of the New Dawn (for which it would have fully made sense) and wrongly inserted. A big part is devoted to campaign funds Black Lodge moles are embezzling from corporations.
About Human Nation, there are a few names tossed around, the resignation of the UCAS Secretary of the Treasury, the nomination an elf as a VP in the CAS (which are political events you would have expected in the previous chapters), and how racist legislation are passed under the guise of unrelated laws (something known as
rider).
The Illuminates of the New Dawn gets only a single page, which tells us they do the same thing that the Black Lodge does.
Danielle de la Mar, previously introduced in
Jet Set is a billionaire leading an international campaign to better control the Matrix, protect privacy and the children. The plot has the potential for several adventures, but I feel we only get the strict minimum to justify future changes in the Matrix.
Game Information (5 pages) gives a handful of advice to the GM for political ops, and 27 plothooks tied to the previous chapters. No gear, no NPC.
Overall,
Dirty Tricks is quite good. I'd probably rank it as the best sourcebook of the "Jason Hardy era" so far. It gives GM the material they need to write their own stories, stories where the PC can be the protagonists, instead of NPC. The chapter breakdown makes sense, you get intertitles to easily find a specific item (and though they don't appear in the table of contents, they are bookmarked in the PDF). I even liked most of the illustrations.
Obviously the book is not perfect (how can one be?). As I pointed out in the
errata discussion, there are mistakes, typos, and the likes. From tim to time, it still lacks a proper introduction for some things you need to have read previous books to know (though it's way rarer than it had been in other books ; still, the whole Borinquen/Puerto Rico should be explained the first time...).
Also, as a sourcebook on politics,
Dirty Tricks maybe focus way too much on the electoral process. A lot of political issues are rarely touched upon: campaign funding, lobbying, cabinet/government appointments, public procurements... As a result, the corporations are mostly left out of the picture. When funding is really discussed, it's cases of embezzlement without the corporations knowing. I think there could have been a lot of interesting things to say, especially in the UCAS, who are supposed to be the biggest victim of corporate meddling into public affairs. It lacks things like defense contracts (if there ought to be a war, where are the Seattle representatives that should campaign for Federated-Boeing contracts?) or appointments of corporate executive (instead of an ex-Goldman-Sachs becoming US Secretary of the Treasury, you would have an ex-Ares as CAS secretary of defense, or ex-corporate attorneys nominated as federal judges or even judge of the Supreme Court).
But, still, good job.
____________________
I've posted some comments in the
errata discussion. Some additional comments from me:
- "after a stint with the UCAS Army’s CID." That one shows up often. I wonder, is the Criminal Investigation Command that known for an US audience? (I can tell you that outside, it's not) Or am I right in suggesting the acrony should be explained?
- "[President Colloton]'s had her share of shake-ups (bugs working with the CIA, distancing the UCAS from Ares, accusations of New Revolution involvement) in her terms"
Wait, bugs working with the CIA?
- A constitutional change we didn't know about previously (as far as I remember): "the [UCAS] Representatives serve four-year terms, and states split their seats for election each two years"
- "The [Puerto Rico/Borinquen] facility handles approximately eighty percent of Aztechnology’s processed food production."
Cyberpunk, dystopian, whatever, but way crazy. If you assume Aztechnology production is churning just as much Mondelez International (the knacking and food products of Kraft) does nowadays, that would be something like at least 8,000-10,000 tons coming out of that single factory every day. It would require about twenty "chinamax" cargo to sail every day day (and as much to arrive). Since most ingredients would need to be imported as well, Puerto Harbor traffic would be twelve times that of Shanghai nowadays, or more than all the Chinese port combined.
And that's assuming Aztechnology is only
on par with Kraft Food. As far as the story requires it, eight or eighteen percent would have been way enough to cause food shortage in North America (or simply the only factory producing a key food preservative additive).
- "Carrier Strike Group I is based out of Newport News, VA"
That would leave the Norfolk Naval Station (on the other side of the strait) quite empty. I'm still toying with the idea of Norfolk hosting a large Ares Arms/Knight Errant base instead.
- "All known supplies of tempo dried up years ago. Nobody can get a fix anymore, no matter how bad they want it."
So it seems the David Cartel, Graciela Riveiros and Yaje failed to produce tempo.
- "I manage to get a lock on the Haitian guy and blast him with the thingy. He screams, then falls over, leaving a ghost behind that’s trapped in this green electric bubble thing that I shot at him."
As far as I understand, the Dunkelzahn Institute of Magical Research has an anti-shedim weapon of some sort.
- The El Paso Incident, if, again, you believe the rumors, was [the CAS Army magicians] testing out some new configuration.
I'm not sure if this refer to Sirrurg attack on El Paso described in
The Clutch of Dragons or something else.
- "Mount Clips (formally Mount Magazine, but the nickname stuck; thanks Ares!)"
No, actually, no comment on this one.
- "In the decade since Gunderson went down in Miami, South Florida’s been unable to keep a decent security provider." Previously, Gunderson Corporation's subsidiary Atlantic Security handled law enforcement in Miami. The company was taken over by Aztechnology (with the son of Gunderson CEO joining Aztechnology board). I guess Aztechnology management considered the Miami contract wasn't profitable enough, first reduced cost and then did nothing to retain the contract.
- "Last year, the UCAS passed a law requiring metahuman gun buyers to undergo a more rigorous background check than humans. These checks can take anywhere between six months to a year."
- "Another law that recently passed radically increases costs for legal metahuman immigrants wishing to settle in the UCAS and has increased the time it takes for these immigrants to obtain the necessary paperwork to become legal residents. The wait time has jumped up by another five years."
- "In the CAS, the congress recently passed rules doubling the sentences for metahumans who have committed violent crimes."
As far as racist legislation can go, the Human Nation have not been particularly subtle or clever on these ones. Such law are such overly racist that as soon as they'll be enforced, it'll cause a huge backslash (and probably get overturned by the Supreme Court). Of course, it makes a more lot sense if the intention is to show metahuman voters than their senators and representatives obviously don't care about racism and let such law get passed, and that they either shouldn't vote, or vote for loudly pro-meahuman candidates that will get the human voters frightened.
However, the third law could actually pass even a progressive Supreme Court scrutiny on the basis that elves and dwarves have longer lifespan.
