Pyramid Pick: Man and Machine (for Shadowrun 3rd Ed.)

Pyramid Pick

Man and Machine: Cyberware

Published by FASA

Written by Robert Boyle, Martin Gotthard, Eleanor Holmes, Michael Mulvihill, and Sebastian Wiers

160 pages, $20.00

It's that time again! With the advent of Shadowrun, Third Edition, FASA has been revising all their semi-core books, those things you don't need but know you're going to buy anyway. Much like their compilation of the various magic sourcebooks into Third Edition's Magic in the Shadows, Man and Machine covers the material found previously in several books: The Street Samurai's Catalog, Shadowtech, The Neoanarchist's Guide to Real Life, Cybertechnology, and possibly others. So, on the one hand, they've just invalidated about $60-70 worth of books. On the other hand, they tastefully replaced it with one $20 tome. So, what do you get for your money this time around?

Man and Machine covers the full gearhead gamut for body augmentation, with an added helping of random trivia that is mostly related to that theme. Major sections include cyberware (pp. 8-48), cybermancy (pp. 50-59), bioware (pp. 60-79), nanotechnology (pp. 80-100), chemistry (pp. 101-122), damage and healing (pp. 124-134) and surgery (pp. 135-151). It sounds extensive, and it really is. It will take a while to get a handle on everything, even if you're just deciding which rules to keep or toss for your own campaign.

The typical Shadowrun gamer's eye will be drawn first to that familiar standby, cyberware. This section covers a lot of material experienced . . .

This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.



Article publication date: January 7, 2000

Copyright © 2000 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.