To be honest I barely read them. I’ve had the CRB in hardback for most of two years and I think I’ve read all the stories in there by now, but they were amongst the later of the parts I’ve read (I probably still haven’t read all the way through all the campaign variants and some other material in that portion of the book). They were kind of there, neither exciting nor awful – I did think that some illustrated facets of life in 2075 fairly well (the use of AROs, the entire rigger one), so they were useful in that way.
Boston: Lockdown is the one other book I have in hard-back—and a lot of the book was fiction. I did read through all of that in the main portion (eventually, I gave it a break for a week before getting to the final bit – it started jumping around weirdly like they were running out of page count so just cut stuff, or something), but I think I only read one of the chapter header stories (at the beginning, burglarizing the yacht). I thought that was a bit of a case of ‘oh yah, we are bad-ass shadowrunners, and we are so good that we are never under threat and never roll badly.’ I did steal part of that scenario for my own game for getting them out on the harbour when the crazy dragon flight/fight happens so that they had a cool view without being rained on, so I guess it was inspiring in that way? Oh, and it made me look at gel ammo more carefully (coming from first edition I hadn’t initially give much thought to anything that increased armor, because the impact back then was huge).
Everything else I have in pdf (because cost), and I find reading at any length in pdf to be extremely aggravating on a laptop screen (which I’m using), and the formatting of those stories makes them even more aggravating to read on screen than the regular material. I randomly tried to give one a try in Hard Targets, and it ended with the protagonist (dev/grrl maybe? One of the jackpointers) getting kidnapped, which was not a very satisfying ending, and didn’t really encourage me to bother with any of the others.
In general I read rule books for reference. I want them clear, easy to read, and to make it quick and easy to find the information that I need to make up my own stories . I do want color/flavor/fluff, but I want it to be concise teasers that fire up my imagination. Right back in first edition the opening story was dull, but the character quotes on the archetypes were what sold me on the game. (the NPC quotes were pretty darn good, too). I’m not saying to get rid of the chapter header stories because presumably some people like them. I’m just saying please don’t rely on people reading them.
