That's an old topic now, but I'm starting with Jet Set to pull out three reviews in a row to catch up with the latest SR books I've read.
Though it says "a shadowrun sourcebook" on the cover, Jet Set is a campaign book that follow the same template as Artifacts Unbound and Corporate Intrigue. It has 170 pages divided into 19 chapters (plus the Jackpoint login and an index).
As usual, the first chapter, The Kingdom of the Air is some general themed background on how the rich and famous lives. It's 7 pages long, most of it description or accounts of Danielle de la Mar (a rich woman lobbying for a more tightly controlled Matrix "to better protect consumers and children," and receive lots of support for the megacorporations), the Grand Tour, Johnny Spinrad, Richard and Samantha Villiers, and High Prince Larry Zincan.
The 17 following chapters are adventures in the Plot Point template, starting with an in-context Jackpoint file or a short story, an overview, an adventure divided into "plot points", some locations and some characters. Once again, plot points are a purely visual template : a plot point can be a single scene in an adventure, and an entire mission, part of a small campaign, in another.
[spoiler]Semiballistic Impact is some sort of random encounter for the GM to insert whenever his PC will take a semiballistic flight. It gives a good example of something you should not do in a detailed published adventure : to sum it up, if you play as written, the entire team ends up killed if they fail at a Cybersurgery+Logic (3) test (I guess it meant Cybertechnology) or a similar knowledge skill (actually, they can maybe survive if they strictly do not attempt anything for a while after failing that roll, and have the Pilot Aerospace skill when it comes in hand).
Subroutine is about the exfiltration of a rock band and its manager from a nightclub in Hong Kong. Made original by the underwater nightclub inside a shipwreck.
Nine-Tenths is an investigation into the death of several people Dunkelzahn bequested something.
In Photo Ops, the PC pulls three runs to escort celebrities trying to end the Amazonian-Aztlan war by touring Fort Worth or Bogota and doing stupid things. The two first part are really fun, the third one is more classic.
Operation Blindside is very high-level mission that sends the PC to Bogota, Aztechnology HQ in Tenochtitlan and Aztechnology space station to sabotage their military sats.
One Step Ahead is a serie of missions to find traitors inside S-K military forces, and the sabotage other corporate militaries in the world. It's made clear it's the first step of some metaplot.
Aztlan Counterstrike is a serie of missions for Aztechnology in Bogota area: investigating a traitor, raiding militias, and rescuing an Aztlan unit.
The Dragon Slayers is a serie of missions aimed against dragons in general: retrieving two magic items, and disrupting a press conference.
Foreign Policy is an escort mission in Tir Tairngire and Mount Shasta, to rub elbows with Larry Zincan and Hestaby.
In Nine Lives, Soren Johansson hires the PC to assassinate some of the Nadja Daviar clone fixers introduced in Street Legends.
Shell Games has the PC rescue the mother of a Seattle politician abducted to pressure him into giving up an election.
Dragonchasers requires the PC to escort a Triad-connected oriental dragon in human form (no reason given as to why a dragon would need an escort in the first place) from Denver to meet a Yakuza-connected free spirit Tokyo. For some action, Vory attack the Triads in Denver, and Yakuza attack other Yakuza in Tokyo.
Out of Egypt is about stealing an ancient artifact in Cairo museum for S-K and getting an offer from Johnny Spinrad to betray their employer.
The Giggling Assassin is a follow-up to Corporate Intrigue adventures Insubstantial Rumors, Floating Secrets, Hard Truths and Cold Facts. The title and the short story at least are. The adventure is a datasteal followed by a delivery to an e-ghost heavily hinted at being Captain Chaos, whose actual connection to the aforementioned plot is rather thin.
A Taste of the Tour has the PC attending Grand Tour events in Paris, to arrange meeting, spy on famous people and get thrown out for actually not being rich or famous.
Pure Wrath provides ridiculously thin connection to the previous adventure to send the PC into the Angel Towers arcology in London and battle with insect spirits.
Reclaiming Lost Sheep has the PC working for Richard Villiers to investigate Miles Lanier wereabouts, escorting a fake Lanier for convoluted reasons, and finally trying and automatically failing to catch Lanier. Like Project Imago in Corporate Intrigue, there's still no actual explanation on what's going on with the guy.[/spoiler]
The last chapter is the Character Trove. As far as I understood, it should feature the named NPC that appear in several adventure (even if one of them is only a possible cameo, like Johnny Spinrad in A Taste of the Tour) and generic nameless characters. More or less. There is a named NPC, Coal Ember who's there despite only showing up in only one adventure, and some dubiously generic character name like the "Apep Consortium Risk Management Engineer" (why not just "Risk Management Engineer" ?).
As you may start to suspect if you have read the adventure description, the title of the book, the back text and the first chapter are somewhat misleading. Those who were expecting Jet Set to provide the elements to campaign The Persuaders! will be in for a disapointment. Only two adventures, Photo Ops and A Taste of the Tour, really are about the topic Jet Set claims to be about. Some tries to tie in with in a more or less subtle way like having the PC meeting someone in a classy restaurant. Most authors seemingly went for the original meaning of "jet set" from the 1950ies when it simply described the people who were travelling using jet airplanes (which, at that time, was synonymous with the rich and the famous) to write globetrotting adventure that does not involve any of the rich and wealthy socialites you would expect from the title of the book.
A side effect of this is that Jet Set lacks focus and cohesion. You jump from small-time adventures like Shell Games or Pure Wrath to a major plot like Operation Blindside, or yet-another Miles Lanier adventure. Artifacts Unbound had a clear focus ; Corporate Intrigue as well, but only because the chosen theme was broad enough. That issue left aside, the adventure aren't so bad (only Semiballistic Impact would really need to be much more "open"). As some authors tries to cram small campaign in a single chapter, the adventures sometimes require a lot of work for the GM.
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And a row of more specific comments :
- In Nine-Tenths, Craig Sanchez is featured on a list of persons Dunkelzahn bequested an item that get killed. Craig Sanchez stpry was already told in Blood in the Boardroom adventure "What's in a name?" (basically, Dunkelzahn used Sanchez as a vessel for Buttercup to experience the life of a poor slag for one year, but the spell resulted in Sanchez knowing Buttercup's True Name without knowing he knows ; Dunkelzahn bequested him an amulet that masks his aura to prevent Buttercup from magically locating him to kill him). In Corporate Guide, it was hinted at Buttercup's secretary Julia Sanchez is her daughter, and he's possibly dead (since she inherited a trust fund). There are no reference or account to this in Nine-Tenths, which make me suspect the author simply did not know about it.
- Jean-Claude Priault is described as a former Corporate Court judge (on page 54), settling the case after Corporate Court self-contradicting information (on pages 27 and 157).
- The Dragon Slayers has the PC facing two gorgons and a lindworm, but doesn't give any reference for the GM to figure out it needs Running Wild for stats.
- "Since the shakedowns by the Bot’Kham have become more and more common, the Skraacha have installed a very patchwork network of security cameras." If you did not read Seattle 2072, I wonder how you're supposed to understand what the hell this is about. Well, as far as the adventure goes, all you need to knows is there is a very patchy network of security cameras in the Ork Underground.
- In Dragonchasers, the adventure assumes the PC will start to search Choi Mu in Denver underworld, but it actually doesn't give them any reason to do so, since they only have a name and a picture.
- In Pure Wratch, the Human Nation is one of the faction fighting for the control of the Angel Towers arcology in London. And in Reclaiming Lost Sheep, Miles Laniers is attacked by people whose comlinks contain "iconography and a few incoming messages that indicate that the attackers are part of Human Nation". The Human Nation used to be a secret conspiracy of highly-placed political and corporate players. Not the kind to engage in gang turf warfare and sending explicit message ot their henchmen. Humanis/Alamaos 20,000 would have been more appropriate.
