Now hold on a second-
It's true that unsolicited feedback is rarely helpful. It's not a matter of sensitivity or whatever, it's just that nobody owes you their time/attention, and there's nothing stopping you from giving your review or criticism elsewhere.
The author, in this case, specifically stated he's looking for feedback. So the above is not the case.
I think Lormyr might be off the mark: this isn't the only place where people talk about shadowrun, so I think it's a bit hasty to assume that he's singling you out. There were two posts on reddit about it,
one with 0 points talking about using the word "confederate" for a weapon as insensitive (And with a 20 point comment describing how the poster completely misinterpreted that section), and
one about the t-shirt cannon with discussion about the book itself in the comments. There were also some negative reviews on DTRPG.
It's also true that if you are criticizing a work, you do need to separate the work itself from the author. This isn't just because of the meme about CGL and editing (Or who's responsible for what), but also because you can't actually define someone's skills or character based off of one of their works. It's irresponsible to try and do otherwise.
The inverse is also true- criticizing the work itself is NOT a criticism of the author. You aren't attacking anyone or singling anyone out by talking about a book. I would also go back to my point about how you can't take any single work as defining about an author's skills or who they are as a person. (If you could, I would certainly have to tone down what I post on AO3...)
This is also a rare case- usually, with game books, you only know who wrote what section if the author comes out and says it. However, Krime only has one author on it, and if I'm not wrong, the author either paid for editing himself or got some friends to do it for free. So it's not as much of a "group effort" as other game books are, but all the above about criticizing work vs author still applies.
However, I don't have the context here, so apologies if I'm talking over Lormyr or CanRay about this and bringing up something neither of them intended.
Back on topic...I'd say it's definitely a pink mohawk-y book, and players using that style will like it more.
I read it mostly for the fluff, so I don't have a strong opinion on the mechanics. The game I've been running is Shadowrun in the Sprawl, so anything from here that I use is going to get re-statted anyways. I do want to try out 6e again, now that there's been two rounds of errata, and that Firing Squad has smoothed over some of the more jarring details of combat.
I do know that grenades in 6e are OP: I don't mind the increased lethality, or forcing players to rely on cover, but I don't think that's represented across the board with all weapons. A bullet to the head can be just as lethal, if not more so, than a grenade, and I don't think that's represented.
From a "gamey" standpoint, grenades do not rely on line of sight, and they are AoE, which gives them two advantages over other weapons. If they're also a significantly better choice in terms of damage, then there is a mechanical problem: either the table bans or limits them, or every character starts carrying a lot of grenades to even the playing field. There's been OP weapons in the past in SR, but it's tricky when it's all weapons in a certain category are OP. If this were a case where frag grenades had a ridiculous DV and the rest were fine, that'd be a different scenario. This is all general, though, I don't have the context of what you're talking about and I'm not sure if I care to know who did what in a SRM game or why that has anything to do with the book
The characterization of Krime is very "hammy" or "chewing the scenery," in a way that I absolutely adore. There is a very good sense of rhythm and pacing in the text. You can map out the high points and low points to show that the sentences are structured in such a way to appear authentic, engage the reader, and express what the narrator "sounds" like. This is something I find difficult, I tend to use a lot of long sentences that veer dangerously towards "run-on" sentences. Even if the personality of Krime comes off as "too much" for a reader, the structure of the sentences and word choice used will ensure that the reader is engaged with the text regardless (Not every character has to be "likable" to be "enjoyable.")
I like some of the "tongue-in-cheek" ways of handling exposition. A lot of times in SR books, jackpointers seem like they just copypasta'ed a wikipedia article into chat, but Krime never sounds like that.
Krime Power Rounds increases the muzzle flare and acoustic report (that means “sound of a gunshot”—we learned something today!) one level higher!That just cracks me up. The ongoing "story" about Krime trying and failing to tank their vehicle sales is also funny
