A boxed set that describes the city of Denver and its surrounding area, the Front Range Free Zone: a territory split between, and jointly governed by, six different nations. This has made the whole zone into a hotbed of politics, smuggling, corporate maneuvering and intrigue.
At the time, Denver was intended as a second “official” setting for Shadowrun, an alternative to the more usual Seattle. However, other than the set itself, the only book published that took place in Denver was the adventure Divided Assets, giving the impression that FASA discovered that most players preferred to remain in Seattle.
The box contains two books, two maps and two sector passes. The book with the black-and-red cover is referred to as the Denver Sourcebook in the credits, so that is the title used here as well, though it does not appear on the book itself. The black-and-blue book is titled the Denver Gamemaster Book on its cover, however.
Denver Sourcebook
This book is intended for both players and gamemasters, and does a thorough job of describing the city of Denver and its surroundings in the usual style: an “in-world” text supplemented by comments from Matrix users. It covers all the normal topics such as basic information about the city, a history of how the Front Range Free Zone came to be, a description of how the place actually works in the 2050s, etc. Most of this is essential information for setting a believable campaign in Denver, and provides plenty of adventure hooks for the gamemaster.
Denver is also home to the Nexus datahaven, so this gets a chapter all to itself, describing the datahaven itself, its physical location and the people who run it. This chapter also introduces otaku to Shadowrun, though it remains a bit mysterious about them and what they can actually do. (It would take until Virtual Realities 2.0 for game rules to appear for them.)
The last part of the Denver Sourcebook consists of in-depth descriptions of the six sectors of the zone: Aztlan, CAS, Pueblo, Sioux, UCAS and Ute. Again, the way these are described will be familiar to anyone who has read other Shadowrun location sourcebooks.
Gamemaster Book
The second book consists of a number of distinct parts. After an introduction, it tells about the spirit of Denver—powerful free spirits that live in the city—as well as important people, locations and organizations. This whole part of the book is set up so that the gamemaster has three choices for each: usually a simple, mundane explanation; a more involved or dangerous one; and a complicated or very dangerous one. This lets the gamemaster tailor the NPCs and organizations to his or her needs while not needing to improvise much, and has the added bonus that players can read the book and still not know which explanation/description will turn out to be true in the group’s campaign.
The last part of this book contains game rules. Much of this chapter consists of rules that had already been published in other books, but usually slightly modified to fit Denver’s situation. For example, there is a table for DocWagon response times like in The Neo-Anarchists’ Guide to Real Life, but for Denver’s sectors rather than Seattle’s districts. Many other rules are new, often to deal with Denver specifically, such as rules for border check and patrols. Most of these should come in handy in campaigns when players need to cross borders frequently—something that is almost unavoidable in a Denver campaign.
Maps
Of the two maps, the smaller one covers most—but not all—of the Front Range Free zone, with each sector and the surrounding countries in a different color. It is not really more than a map that shows how the sectors fit together and indicates the main streets and highways. The larger map is an isometric view the downtown core, showing the streets and individual buildings, as well as the dividing walls between sectors and other points of note. About two-thirds of this map is the actual map, the other third is a legend of the more important buildings shown in it, which are marked with letters and numbers. On the one hand, this map is much more useful than the sector map because it is more detailed, but at the same time it will only come in handy for adventures that actually take place in the busiest part of the city.
Sector Passes
The credit card-sized, plastic sector passes exist in six variants, one for each sector. The front side has some text and graphics in black, white and blue proclaiming them to be travel or entry passes (or some similar wording) while the back is printed in black and white with instructions or a bit of legalese about the pass and/or the sector. Each box contained only two random ones: for the Aztlan and CAS sectors in the reviewed copy.
The entire box set is available as a bootleg PDF on the Internet, made by an unknown person in 2003. Both books plus both maps are contained in a single PDF file, with bookmarks to allow easy access to them. The text is not searchable, though it is clearly readable.
Aside from putting everything into a single file, there is another peculiarity with this bootleg: the Denver Sourcebook part appears to use A4 paper size, while the Gamemaster Book seems to be Letter-size; the sector map then consists of two separate scans but in landscape orientation (that is, with the long edge horizontal), and the downtown map is oddest of all. This has clearly been scanned in parts that have then been assembled into a single map, but it is much smaller than all the other pages—about one-third of the width of the other pages—while still having good detail if you zoom in on it.
Use with Other Editions
All rules in this set are for Shadowrun, Second Edition and the Rigger Black Book; this makes it easy to use the set with the first-edition rules, as the only things that really need changing for this are some damage codes. Use of the game information with the third-edition rules requires a little more effort because the vehicles’ statistics need to be updated, though this is easy because most of these appear in later vehicle books.
For fourth edition, almost everything in this set will be out of date: the rules are entirely obsolete, and the background material is only of use if the campaign is set in the 2050s instead of the ’70s.
Supersedes
- Currency rules from The Neo-Anarchist’s Guide to North America
Superseded By
- Vehicle statistics by Rigger 2
- Year of the Comet
- Shadows of North America
- Vehicle statistics by Rigger 3 and 324
A Mile High and Six Feet Under
Welcome to the Front Range Free Zone. (That’s Denver for you outta-sync jokers.) It’s a subdivided, drek-infested, dead-dry tinderbox waiting for some political pyromaniac with slippery fingers to drop a match. It’s the center of the black market for most of North America and the crossroads of six nations: Aztlan, CAS, Pueblo, Sioux, Ute, and UCAS. They get along with each other about as well as the rest of us do, all jandering for position and a slightly bigger piece of the turf. It’s home of the Nexus, the Denver Data Haven, repository of more black information than Maria Mercurial’s diary (maybe).
It’s all waiting for you, chummer. Can you handle it?
Denver is a boxed campaign set for Shadowrun, Second Edition. It contains a players guidebook full of public and shadow information about the city and its surroundings, and a gamemaster sourcebook that describes the locations, local folk, secrets, and surprises of the Treaty City as well as offering rules and suggestions for making Denver as dangerous as it gets. The campaign set also includes a poster-size color map of the Front Range Free Zone and a pair of security/travel passes for two of the city’s six sectors. Which will you get, chummer? Aztlan, CAS, Pueblo, Sioux, Ute, or UCAS? There’s only one way to find out…
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1994Denver, the Treaty City. Politically divided, it’s a hotbed of intrigue, deal making, and desperation. Are your runners savvy enough to master Denver’s streets, or will you end up bagged and processed like so many before you? Denver is a boxed campaign package for Shadowrun that provides source material for the players, plus a book of background elements for the gamemaster to choose from to make every Denver campaign unique. |
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1995Denver, the Treaty City. Politically divided, it is a hotbed of intrigue, deal making, and desperation. Are your runners savvy enough to master Denver’s streets, or will you end up bagged and processed like so many before you? Denver is a boxed campaign package for Shadowrun that provides source material for the players, plus a book of background elements for the gamemaster to choose from to make every Denver campaign unique. |
Feature Review: Denver Boxed Set
Rating: ***
Publisher: FASA Corporation, 1100 West Cermak, Suite B305, 5th Floor, Chicago, IL 60608
Author: Nigel D. Findley
Price: $25
Reviewed by Jeffrey W. Cisneros
Shadowrun is FASA’s most successful roleplaying game line so a release as large as the Denver boxed set is an important one. First, let me point out that I was given a prerelease copy to review. All I received was a manuscript, but with a little begging was able to snag a full-color copy of the cover art. The piece, by Dave McCoy, is beautiful. It does a good job of attracting attention without offending the eye. The skyscrapers in the background of the illustration are reminiscent of the real Denver.
When I first opened this product I anticipated excellence, considering who its author is. I’m sorry to say that I was somewhat disappointed. While this is not a bad product, it lacks the fiery inspiration of Tir Tairngire.
The Player Manual
The Player Manual, while offering some very useful information, causes sensory overload. It presents a great deal of side commentary from fictional “logged-on” characters. For those of you who don’t read Shadowrun products, these inserts, through rumor, innuendo and artful lies, often contradict information provided in the main text. The intent is to offer greater insight into a subject, presenting several different perspectives onto it.
This campaign supplement takes the technique to new heights, but to the product’s detriment. Pages seem too “busy” and don’t read very well. Nonetheless, if you have the patience, Denver offers some very useful information.
The Player Manual is divided into six sections: local information, history, the current situation, power groups, the nexus and corporate descriptions. The local information section provides meteorological details, geographic information and directions for getting around the sectors that make up Denver or Front Range Free Zone area. The local information section is a promising start.
Disappointment sets in with the book’s history section. It begins with a discussion of how Denver became the FRFZ, This is where the “online” inserts begin, and they’re particularly troublesome given the subject matter. A game setting’s history needs to be presented clearly so that the background of the campaign is easily understood. This is particularly true for Shadowrun. One of the reasons that the game is so popular is that no one knows who the enemy is or where it’s coming from. That being the case, you don’t want to be confused about the historical setting, too.
Fortunately, The Player Manual improves with the sector guide. It provides lots of useful information, offers some genuinely interesting rumors and divulges a secret or two. This section is rich with the information that players want. Information includes descriptions of sectors’ interesting areas, alws, penalties for breaking those laws and sector boundaries. Here, too, computer messages are intriguing rather than intrusive. At long last, after digging through the fluff, we see just how good a campaign setting the FRFZ is.
The Gamemaster’s Book
The Gamemaster’s Book is tightly written, coherent and much less confusing than The Player Manual. This book provides a lot of extremely useful information with a minimum of inserts. It, too, is divided into sections. The introduction gives the gamemaster some choices. At major points in the campaign you’re offered three options of how to execute a plot, complete with justifications of why each occurs. This flexibility is one of Denver’s major selling points. All too many “canned” campaigns offer a static plotline.
The next two sections detail the spirits and major NPCs of Denver. Their descriptions involve the three plot options, each of which influences how the characters behave. The next section deals with locations and places of interest. A particularly intriguing spot is Mikey’s Chips ‘n’ Drek in the Ute Sector. This rundown store houses a rather big surprise for those who base themselves in Ute. This section also dealds with organisations of itnerest, including a little Yakuza action for those who like a mixture of traditional and near-future themes.
Finally, you get the rules for play in the Denver campaign setting. All of the necessities are taken care of: how to get there legally and illegally, air travel options, airport security, border security and banned items. There’s even advice on how to gamemaster life in Denver, with all the little quirks that make life interesting.
It’s gratifying to see that the Shadowrun system is being supported. Let’s face it: most game companies aren’t megapublishers with thousands of dollars to throw around. So, rather than invest in a brand new game that would sell better, FASA is putting its money in smaller releases that sipport its biggest game.
Overall, I recommend this product. For all its problems it still makes a useful addition to any Shadowrun campaign. And, if we don’t support FASA’s efforts to maintain the Shadowrun line, the company might not support it either.
