And now, my personal long-delayed review of the boxed sets, starting with the Beginner's Box!
Ok, something I also want to get out of the way first: While the Edge of Now and QSR books are ripped from previous releases (Edge of the first chapters from the SR5 core book and QSR being from…well, the original free QSR). That said, they are NOT the exact same thing as the original releases. Some parts have been partially rewritten and there are even some additions that weren’t present in the originals. So no, it’s not a complete copy and paste job.
For the purposes of review, I'll be looking at how useful the set is for new players and GMs (both people new to Shadowrun, or new to TRPGs in general) this will include: is everything there that needs to be, is everything explained with clarity to understand the basics, and is everything presented clearly enough for instant understanding. So for everything missing or that's not explained clear enough, it is a more serious matter for new players and GMs, especially those to TRPGs, on the impression that you leave on how the system work and it's dependent on how well you sell the system to potential new customers.
So in other words, NOT from the perspective of teaching veteran SR players how to play 5th edition (although I do intend to find that out).
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Edge of Now
Ah yes, the Edge of Now…somewhat of the more controversial addition to the box. Because yes, it is essentially the Life in the Sixth World chapter from the core rule book. Some of the passages have been slightly rewritten, and the only notable addition is a section at the end that talks about Seattle and gives a paragraph summary on each district.
Now here’s the thing: I don’t mind the fact that this is just an excerpt of the “Life in the Sixth World” chapter. What I DO mind, however, that it’s not properly labeled as such.
See, if it was labeled as such, it actually would have been an excellent decision in marketing. If they had done so, it would have served as a preview of part of the core rulebook. It could have done its job at enticing buyers to start thinking about picking up the core rulebook. Unfortunately since it isn’t labeled as such, when new players do get the new rulebook, they’ll be looking at the Life in the Sixth World chapter and going: “Wait, what? Didn’t I just read this?”
As for its’ use on getting players up to speed on the setting, well…it can or can’t work.
A 26 page document can be still a bit hefty for new players to get through. A new GM I can see reading through it with no problem, but using it for the players, not so much. In order for it to work, you’d have to hand off a copy of Edge of Now to everyone to read through. But even then some players might not want to read through it (especially if you have players where the prospect of reading through any material seems like an intimidating task). The other alternative is to read the whole document aloud to your players…and that’s hardly appealing either. While TRPGs are basically a different form of storytime, at least the players are still involved by adding to the story in their own way. And at least back in the days of story time, you had pretty pictures to entertain your juvenile young minds, Edge of Now doesn’t even have that. All it has is the image of Seattle and the logos of the megacorps, and that’s it. So, if you try to read it aloud, your players are probably going to get bored. And it’s not as if the thing is a subject of light reading; it’s a 26 page document, with no pictures, and is very text heavy. It’ll likely take up a good chunk of a session, or even an entire session. And after awhile, the players are probably just going to stop the GM and start wondering if this is one of those fabled non-dice RPGs.
So then the only option you’re left with is to just summarize Edge of Now…which chances are, summarizing the Shadowrun setting for new players is what veteran GMs have already been doing.
It’s all the more frustrating if you have the kind of players who expect the GM to be the guy to explain EVERYTHING…which tends to be especially true for newer players.
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Quick Start Rules
The notable additions are found mostly near the last third of the ruleset. For starters, the adventure in the back is the classic Food Fight adventure, Stuffer Shack, Food Fight Table and all. After that section, we have the “Next Mission” section, which not only includes plot hooks of what players could do after Food Fight, but it also provides a GM 101 section and a couple of NPC stats (unrelated to the Food Fight NPCs). Now these alone are a huge improvement over the original QSR. GM 101 section should go without saying and is a boon to any new GM. The plot hooks afterwards allow for the players to keep going after Food Fight is over especially if one were to kick off a formal campaign from there. And that NPC stats (from a Street Ganger, to a Mercenary, to a troll Businessman) for use in later adventures. Again, big help for those that want to continue, and I always welcome premade stats.
Other than that, the QSR is mostly the same as the previous one. The other difference being that the examples changed to accommodate the stats of these new pre-gen characters.
That said, there is one addition that this new QSR doesn’t have that it really, REALLY needed:
Rigger rules.
There are no rigger rules at all in the QSR set, meaning that Hardpoint the dwarf rigger is essentially unplayable in the Beginner’s Box Set as a rigger. And while the QSR does define what a drone is, it makes no reference at all that drones could be controlled in the same way as devices, or at the very least doesn’t make it explicit enough. And it doesn’t differentiate between a cyberdeck and remote control console. A GM already experienced with SR4-5 would know that you’re supposed to roll Pilot (Vehicle) + Reaction or Gunnery to get drones to do their thing, but a new GM won’t know this. And the rules don’t really give much of a hint otherwise.
Which is a damn shame, since I personally feel that the drone rigger is just as unique to the setting as the Street Shaman or the cybernetic street samurai. As far as I know Shadowrun’s the only TRPG that does anything this unique with the “wheelman” class versus any other modern/sci-fi TRPG, since you’re usually married to your vehicle Plus it’s also damn cool with the idea of having a Steel Lynx combat drone or your armored van bust through a wall to bail your team out.
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QSR Character Sheets-
We have a grand total of 5 character sheets in both this and the Alphaware box: Gentry the human decker, Coydog the elven street shaman, Hardpoint the dwarven rigger, Sledge the ork street samurai, and Ms Myth the troll face(!). The sheets themselves and their layout is overall good. The only thing that can get confusing is that for the skills, while the sheets do say that the number in the brackets is the final DP, it doesn’t say what the parentheses is supposed to be. And that they’re all cluttered together so it can be difficult to read, and lord help you if that character has a specialization.
Now I am not going to comment on how optimized the characters are; number crunching isn’t really my thing. So between this and the Alphaware review, don’t expect me to say much on the subject as I’m the wrong guy to ask for that kind of thing. That said, I will say that in terms of DPs and in the skills of what each character is supposed to be best at, the DPs tend to average out in the 10-11 dice range. Highest end is Coydog’s Spellcasting (13 dice) and Summoning (12 dice by default, 14 dice with specialization in Air Spirits). Now obviously opinions tend to vary on what’s the best optimization, but personally I think the 10-11 range works fine enough on consistently doing well at what you need to do.
One little touch I like is that for gear, they list a specific brand name with each piece of gear gives a unique flavor to each character.
Now the artwork is…a bit mixed for me. On the technical side of things, it’s very well done and detailed. I’m a bit annoyed that the same artist who did the original SR5 book cover art didn’t do But personally, there’s some hits and misses. Coydog, Sledge, and Ms Myth looks absolutely awesome and I love how they turned out. Gentry and Hardpoint on the other hand…not so much. Gentry has this really chiseled face and wide forehead, and really wacky looking hair, which altogether makes me think of Universal’s Frankenstein. Hardpoint looks…completely goofy and off. Dude’s got this creepy looking grin on his face and sporting wild, long hair. And while this reinforces the stereotype of your typical dwarf, but given that, according to his dossier in the Alphaware box, he’s described as being the most clean-cut and professional of the team, you’d think he’d make his appearance a little more…presentable?
One important note is that these characters are NOT chara-gen or Missions legal. Critias himself has admitted that he tweaked the characters to make them a little bit more powerful than your average starting runner. Personally I’m not too tweaked that new players can have a little bit of fun with characters then they normally would, and I don’t about you guys, but from my experience, newbie players aren’t going to try to stop to try to reverse-engineer pre-gen characters. And even if they wanted to, they’d have to have the core rulebook and know the rules of charagen to do so, and if they do already, what the hell are they doing stopping to play from a Beginner’s Box?
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Ms Myth’s Dossier
Oh Ms Myth…the troll face. Right now I can hear all of you optimizers grinding your teeth in frustration.
On one hand, Ms Myth’s stats are a good demonstration to new players that, despite some tweaking around (sometimes extensive, other times not), you can make an atypical build work. On the other hand, it could also have the adverse effect of making players think that the troll would be the best build for a face…which I don’t think I need to explain how inaccurate that statement is. Still, I can understand wanting to give representation to all the core metatypes…and both the troll and the ork are known for being the physical bruisers, so one of them had to get stuck with the atypical archetype. And for what Ms Myth ended up turning out to be, she still does well at her job.
The dossier part of this I’m not going to get into for now, since the majority of the other dossiers are found in the Alphaware box, and I’d rather comment on when all of them are together. As is, I will say that the dossier is very well written and from reading through it, I do think I get a very good feel of how Ms Myth is like as a character.
As for the run itself…without getting into spoilers, basically it’s Ms Myth doing a long con and setting up for an actual shadowrun. Which yeah, is an excellent idea to showcase what the face can do outside of negotiations, and is an excellent introduction to one aspect of shadowrunning to new players. The long con, when one usually thinks of Shadowrun, is not the first thing that comes up. Or, rather, when performing a run, not the first thing people think of. And whenever newbie’s first see the face, chances are they’ll think of the guy that negotiates or is the silver tongued devil. Here, they introduce some of the more elaborate things that a face could do and taking their base abilities and using them for more advanced purposes. The best part is that in terms of role-playing versus roll-playing, you could go either way. The adventure itself only gives the dice rolls and extended tests that the player should be making. And while it may be very boring to do so, it’s perfectly serviceable to do just the extended tests. That said, the adventure does explain what’s happening in each Scene enough so that for roleplaying, you’re given a lot to work with. What I typically do for these kind of moments is that I let the player roleplay the negotiation/persuasion, and if they do particularly well or bad, give them the appropriate modifiers to their DP and (if I’m feeling generous) to the threshold number. This particular approach works well for the adventure, but it can work well the other way.
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Final Verdict:
Overall…it’s ok.
The main problem I see is the lack of much goodies to the set. You get the slightly different QSR rules, some new character sheets, an excerpt of a chapter from the core book that explains the setting and not the history, a solo adventure and extensive back story on ONE of the pre-made characters, and an excerpt from an upcoming Shadowrun novel that not everyone is going to read. While some of the changes to existing material are significant enough to not be completely superficial, there isn't much else to justify the purchase if you only want the Beginner's Box. As it sits, most of the real goodies are in the Alphaware box, but we'll get there when we get there.
If you have the free QSR already, there’s not much incentive to get this box over that. Otherwise, the only time that you should get the Beginner’s Box is if you want to get both that and the Alphaware box. So as it sits, and given the price point, I’d say get the Digital Tool Box version.
