This is my, Tsuzua, and Squee’s review of the Street Legends supplemental. It’s not a review of Street Legends itself - only the new material.
Quick Summary: This product has well-written background pieces on the characters, but they often veer away from helpful information and plot hooks and into fanfiction-esque writing about blatant Mary Sue characters.
The biggest problem, however, is the abysmal quality of editing. There’s numerous errors in the character sheets - on average 2-3 per sheet, and many of them blatantly obvious things that should never have made it into a published product. Also, the character sheets are not made with consistent style or notation - something that could easily have been fixed with a proper style guide.
General Problems:
As mentioned, the character sheets are done in an inconsistent style, which makes them confusing to read. Some characters do skill (specialization) 4 (6), others do skill (specialization) 4 (+2). Some list skill boosts as Skill 3 [6], others as Skill 3 (+3). Some hackers list matrix IP on a second line, others do not. Some people list languages separately, others under knowledge skills. This is the sort of thing that could be easily fixed, and not having done so exemplifies the lazy, sloppy editing endemic throughout the Street Legends supplemental.
Software and cyber/bioware suites really should list their components - there’s no reason to not take a little bit of extra space to prevent the reader from having to cross-reference like that.
Characters have martial arts, but none have any maneuvers. Why?
Typos:
Here is a list of typos I happened to notice while reviewing. I’m sure there will be an errata soon to fix them.
P6 “had place bounties” should be “placed.”
P12 “smart skin2” should be “smart skin 2.”
p29 “KnowledgeSkills” should be “Knowledge Skills.”
p38 “Bug City then-Captain” should be “Bug City, then-Captain.”
Character by Character
Because the different characters were done by different writers, I’m going to review each separately. Due to spoiler concerns raised by FastJack, I spoilered the remainder of the review.
Street Rage:
On the whole, Street Rage is one of the better characters. His background gives a good explanation of his motivations, and it’s easy to see how to integrate him into a campaign as an antagonist. The picture is good and matches the description well.
His character sheet has some errors. He has “Home Ground,” but no indication of what or where it is. Also, his goggles have Smartlink, but not Image Link, which is illegal.
Hard Exit
I find it hard to care about this character’s existence. She’s basically just a shadowrunner who’s better than your PCs will ever be, with no indication of how she might be relevant to a game and a background that reads like a fanfic. The artwork is good on its own merits, but doesn’t match the description: while it’s believable that the drawn character is part Tejana, there’s no way she looks Tejana enough to be discriminated against purely on the basis of her appearance as the her background suggests.
Her cyberarm has 2 empty capacity. This is very odd because she could have another point of armor with no drawback at all for 1500 nuyen. Why wouldn’t she do that? The brackets on her cyberarm and the implanted commlink are erroneous - the right bracket after “2/2” should instead be after “hot-sim.” Her H&K 227-S is listed as using subsonic ammo, but has AP-4 listed instead of AP+2.
Kane
Kane is pretty cool and his background story is fun. So...what do you do with him? There's really no plot hooks here – he's a character with a finished story arc. Why do I care? He seems like someone's wish fulfillment fantasy, not like a useful NPC.
Kane’s armor doesn't total correctly. It should be 11/9, but is listed as 13/13.
Mihoshi Oni
Mihoshi Oni has an interesting enough writeup, and is more easy to integrate into a campaign than some of the others, since she's a freelancer for the Yakuza and thus could easily come in contact with many PC groups. The fluff is a bit on the fanfic side, but okay enough, and the picture is great.
Mihoshi is listed as having Unarmed Combat 8, which is illegal and also odd since she’s supposed to be a Blades specialist. She cannot have both Arcane Arrester and Magic Resistance since they are exclusive. Why does she have Moderate Addiction (Alcohol)? There's no mention whatsoever of this in her backstory. Finally, Mihoshi has a quality called “Mundane.” No such quality exists and none of the other mundane characters in the book have this listed.
The Smiling Bandit
He's actually relevant! It's easy to see how PCs might care he exists, and he has motivations and personality besides “being more awesome than you.” Gold star!
Unfortunately, his character sheet is one of the most error-ridden. He can't have 2(5) matrix passes - he should only have 1(4). He has Erased and Code of Conduct, both of which have different versions and with no indication of which he has. He has a commlink with System 4, and a lot of enormously expensive milspec programs that he can’t use properly on it. Also, for a guy who really, really hates having cyberware to the point where he refused to implant actually useful things like an Encephalon, why does he have datajacks? You don’t actually need one anymore, let alone two.
Slamm-0!
The background fluff is a gag that goes on waaay too long. It should probably be about half the length it is, and contain about a quarter the number of in-jokes. All I have to say about the picture is that it looks like a man with above-average agility if I've ever seen one!
Like the Smiling Bandit, Slamm-0! is an error-ridden mess with a commlink that can't run his ridiculously expensive milspec programs. Especially inexcusable seeing as he has hundreds of thousands of nuyen worth of expensive milspec programs with options and stuff...but he a commlink that can't use them. He has Codeslinger, but no indication of what matrix action it’s for. He has Inspired (Matrix Graffiti), which doesn’t need to be picked for a specific artisan skill, and he doesn’t have Artisan. Slamm-0!’s earbuds have no rating. His baseball bat is weird. First, it's a more effective weapon than any other non-electrical club in existence. It does as much DV as a mace, but with -1 more AP. Also, it has -1 concealment? That means it is smaller than a heavy pistol. What?
Buttercup
“In metahuman form, Buttercup appears to be a petite Japanese girl in her late teens.” This does not even remotely match her picture, which is the epitome of NO KAWAII <(x-x)<. That aside, the fluff answers the important question: “why do I care.” Buttercup will hire shadowrunners, and the entry explains what she'll hire them to do, where, and why.
I'm assuming that the various ways Buttercup works completely differently from other free spirits (like being able to Summon, or apparently being able to earn karma without making spirit pacts) is because she's too cool for rules. However, why does she have unexplained bonuses to Counterspelling, Etiquette, and Spellcasting? I can't find any source on her character sheet. Are those in addition to the specialization bonuses? Are they only for the specialization? What's up there? Lastly, Business Lingo is a specialization of a language, not a language.
Damien Knight
The fluff does a good job establishing Knight's history and provides some usable plot hooks, but could really use more “why do I care?” It’s a bit more forgivable for him, since he’s a fairly important character for everyone in the sixth world to know about and it’s not too hard to think of plot hooks related to him.
Damien Knight is wearing too much armor for his body, and is encumbered – but it isn't factored into his statblock. Also, he has a Satellite Link..on a Signal 10 commlink. Satellite links are only Signal 8, so this is pointless. Finally, he has no sim module, but he has Biofeedback Filter instead of Armor.
I like that he has a cyberarm, with nanohives to boot, so at least that's it for the “cyberarms mark you as an obvious killer cyborg, oh noes” and “nanohives were never meant to be put into cyberlimbs” arguments.
It is odd that he has no geneware – PuSHeD seems like an obvious thing for him to have gotten, in particular. Also, SR4A p119 lists him as an example of someone with 7 social skills... but he doesn't have 7 in any social skills.
Anne Ravenheart
She completely fails the “why do I care” test. She's a comically powerful mage who used to hire shadowrunners, but now doesn't and just uses in-house Ares teams, and investigates vague things for vague reasons.
She can't have 5 watcher spirits, only 4, because her Charisma is 4. She cannot have Magic 14. Her maximum magic is 13, since she has 8 initiations and 1 point of magic loss due to cyberware. Also, what tradition does she have? Is she a shaman? It's odd to be a shaman with Intuition 6, Logic 5, and Charisma 4 – but it just doesn't say anything.
Harlequin
Harlequin’s fluff is not bad, albeit far too long. He doesn’t really have any purpose besides showing up and doing awesome things while your party watches, but that’s not really the fault of whoever did this particular writeup. His picture is actually pretty cool, but lacks the buttons he’s repeatedly described as having.
The random number of random force buttons thing is just stupid. Why would you want to roll 20 dice to figure out the force and number of his foci? Why would you care? What does it add? In general, his character sheet reads like someone’s masturbation aid. I especially like the sidebar explaining that his tradition is like Hermetic, but so much cooler.
Gwynplaine, on the other hand, is much more useful than Harlequin because there are plot hooks built in, and it’s actually relevant to many campaigns.
