Shadowrun: Emergence

I've bought Emergence, and it was a very enjoyable read. I wouldn't exactly call it a campaign book in the normal sense. It tells an engrossing story and has a lot of good run ideas, but they are just that, ideas for single runs. They aren’t a connected series of adventures like the Adventure Path series are, but you could easily string them together, but the runs don't depend upon each other to work.

The story is about how technomancers become public knowledge over the course of 2070, and the emergence of the new type of AI. (They aren’t the god like AI's of third edition, but evolved normal programs.)

I have to commend the writers over at Catalyst Games, because the whole thing is told through the point of view of the Jackpoint forum users and various media events.

I really enjoyed reading the book, but the game ideas are only a small part of the book itself. They are damn good ideas though and could keep a gaming group going for quite a while. I would have given the book 5 stars if there had been a few dozen more pages of run ideas.

I also appreciated the way the story was interwoven with the setting book, Runner's Havens. Most of the runs and major events take place in Seattle and Hong Kong, so anyone using those cities as their base of operations gets the chance to be part of metaplot without having to leave their home turf. Buy both books if you plan to buy Emergence.