Underworld Sourcebook

Rating:
Summary: a Family-oriented sourcebook
Review: In _Portfolio of a Dragon: Dunkelzahn's Secrets_, the great dragon Dunkelzahn was assassinated on the night of his inauguration as president of the UCAS. The murder shaped much of later Shadowrun history - in large part due to the Big D's will, the full text of which can be found in _Portfolio of a Dragon_.

As with the other really great Shadowrun sourcebooks, this volume is organized as an electronic document from the fictional Shadowrun world, as posted at that spiritual home of shadowrunners everywhere: Shadowland. Captain Chaos (sysadmin extraordinaire) begins by pointing out the massive turmoil caused in the underworld by the sudden appearance of so much valuable stuff (and subsequent legal and illegal redistribution of wealth) - art forgery, for instance, got a big boost thanks to all the treasures turned loose by the Big D's will. Captain Chaos begins with the newly-murdered Mafia capo of Seattle and ensuing power struggles within the Finnegan Family of La Cosa Nostra. Of course, the Mafia in Shadowrun Seattle has to compete with the Yakuza, the Seoulpa Rings, and the Triads...

The subsequent Shadowland chat takes the form of articles interspersed with commentary, primarily between X-Star (an ex-Lone Star employee from their orgcrime division) and the Chromed Accountant, between them making the point that in terms of money, most crime is organized crime. (A druggie might get a few bucks in a holdup, while a Seoulpa Ring decker could use the same store's computer system to divert a few million nuyen; the organization gets more bang for its buck.) And, of course, the Chromed Accountant helps explain financial aspects such as fencing and money laundering. (Most if not all fences will be affiliated with an organization, since they need information networks to find buyers and sellers; the same for fixers.)

Each major organized crime entity receives its own analysis: the Mafia, the Yakuza, the Triads, the Seoulpa Rings, including organization charts, where each is dominant, and how their areas of influence have changed over time. The Seoulpa Rings are solely a Shadowrun phenomenon. (In the game universe, the Yakuza put aside some anti-Korean attitudes for the sake of expanding its territory and opportunities, and absorbed various Korean organized crime entities. In Seattle in the mid-21st century, however, one bigoted Yakuza chief so mishandled the various Korean leaders within his organization that eventually they were purged from the Yakuza for "disloyalty". The survivors split into lots of tiny groups with a classic cellular organization and went underground, and thus the Seoulpa Rings were born.)

After the 4 major organized crime groups, there are lots of little pieces about various gangs, concluding with a section about various under*ground* - rather than under*world* organizations - policlubs, eco-terrorists, and rebel groups. (The final section advises the GM on how to run all of the above in a campaign.)

Lots of ideas for GMs here, but no pre-packaged adventure scenarios. However, the commentary from Shadowland users scattered through the formal articles often gives examples of "yeah, that kind of thing happened to me" - e.g., somebody's friend (now deceased) ripped off the Yakuza and didn't bother to check who his fence was affiliated with, somebody else did freelance work for the Yakuza in exchange for a first-class cyberdeck (but are they *really* free of the obligation?). In one such story, the Yakuza began shaking down a small company, but when it was bought out by a bigger, tougher company, the bigger company hired shadowrunners to teach the offending crime group an object lesson, which appears to have worked - for now.