Cyberpirates: A Shadowrun Sourcebook

by Michael Mulvihill, Jennifer Brandes, Chris Hepler

The Cyber-Pirates Sourcebook, for Shadowrun, describes the thriving criminal empires built by ambitious entrepreneurs who answered the call of the sea. Lured by the glamour of the pirate's life and rewarded by easy pickings, the cyber-pirates sail from the Caribbean, the coasts of California and Africa, and the South Pacific to plague governments, corporations, travelers, and tourists alike. These romantic villains keep secrets and pursue goals that make them as dangerous as they are intriguing.

Genres: Role Playing Games, Gaming

Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[David Sarkies · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was one of those sourcebooks that as soon as I had discovered that it had been released I purchased it and suddenly discovered that for the next week and a half I was officially broke. Roleplaying books have never been cheap (and they still aren't, which is why it is better to purchase them secondhand) and the price sort of goes up when you realise that either you don't need them, or you can simply make the rules up for yourself. In another sense it sort of promotes laziness, because (at least where I am concerned) I simply fumble around with rules until they release a book that details a specific ruleset, and I purchase it on those grounds.
Cyberpirates takes the Shadowrun world out onto the ocean, though the setting is mostly around the Carribean. The book is sort of set into two sections, with one detailing sea combat and oceanic adventures, and the smaller, rear section, looking at the Carribean in the 2050s (though the book itself is set in 2059).
I guess the reason that I was so excited about this book was because a part of me liked sea adventures, and in a way I liked the Shadowrun world as well because it was close enough to our world that I could make adventures that ran like Hollywood Movies, but it was different enough that one could add a number of fantasy elements into it as well. However the problem with Shadowrun was, not so much that the rule system made it deadly (and yes it could actually be quite deadly, if ran properly) but that the amount of detail that had to go into the enemies made creating the modules difficult at best. Mind you, I am partly to blame because when I created my adventures I would tend to write them up as if to publish them.
I guess the other difficulties that came out with Shadowrun is the idea of the Astral Plane and the Matrix. The thing is that if a character went into one of those two regions (and only certain characters could venture there) then the rest of the group would be left twiddling their fingers. I did attempt to run one game where one of the players dragged me out of the room to do his matrix runs which left the other ten people sitting in the room doing nothing, and surprise, surprise, they all ended up leaving. Okay, this particular guy was an attention hog, but I was also partly to blame for letting him drag me out.

[Jenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cyberpirates: A Shadowrun Sourcebook by Jennifer Brandes (1998)