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Dunkelzahn’s Secrets - A Dragon Portfolio
by Tomas Deeny (fauxpas@cy-net.net)
Well, the news is out. Big D is Big Dead. FASA’s newest product, Portfolio of a Dragon, Dunkelzahn’s Secrets [7122], describes the death of the friendliest dragon in the Sixth World and discusses the ramnifications of Dunkelzahn’s assassination.
While most of FASA’s Shadowrun sourcebooks take the form of an electronic document found on the decker’s paradise of Shadowland, where one sourcebook takes place one month and the next sourcebook is set in a time period after that, this book is different. The Portfolio is set up as a series of documents on Shadowland that are posted days or weeks apart from the others.
The book is seperated into an introduction, the assassination of Dunkelzahn, the will, posts on the aftermath of the assassination, an updated list of companies and people in the world of 2057, and investigations into some of the items in the will.
The assassination of the dragon takes place on the 9th of August, 2057. The section on the will takes place almost a week later, the section on the companies and people appears nearly three weeks after the assassination. Posts of investigations of items in the will appear a few days later. This allows the GM to gradually add information into thier campaigns. Instead of saying, “Oh, Dunkelzahn was just killed and here’s a list of thirty new corporations and groups that have just been added into the game world,” the GM can add some of the groups into the background before the organizations are thrust into the spotlight. This staggering of information gives the GM and the players the illusion that the Shadowrun world is a real world; that the world is constantly changing and moving; that as one reads this sourcebook, they are actually going through the two month period that this book covers instead of being at one point and reading how everything has already happened.
The introduction calls the Portfolio a “unique supplement for the Shadowrun game universe”, and it’s true. The Portfolio is a springboard of ideas for any GM. Unlike previous products where ideas for runs were scattered around, this sourcebook not only has dozens of ideas for runs scattered in the text, but it also provides a list of over 200 people, places, and items to get ideas for runs from.
In the introduction, the information on the UCAS elections of 2056 and 2057 are revealed, along with a timeline from mid-2056 to 14 November, 2057, to weave into your campaign. Suggestions are given on how to work the death of the dragon into your game, and it provides a good starting point for new campaigns or a good turning point for ongoing campaigns.
The next section, the assassination of Dunkelzahn, is delivered as a transcript for a news broadcast and incorporates interviews with various people. This section is set at about August 10th.
Following that is the will. The will goes on for several pages, with hundreds of items given out or held as prizes in contests, such as “Five million nuyen to the first person or group of people who can …” It becomes obvious while reading this section that Dunkelzahn may have been the most wealthy being alive in 2057. Each bequest in the will can serve as an adventure hook or even a campaign theme. That alone makes this book a nice GM tool. And as a bonus, the will was made public on the 14th. Your gamers can pick and choose their adventures instead of you, the GM, having to plan out the adventure only to find that the players don’t want to, say, run the Aztlan border.
Fallout is the next section in which various people in 2057 post messages about how the dragon’s death is going to affect the world as they know it. Info on new runs, info on a new powerful company, info on society. Info, info, info.
A few weeks later, Captain Chaos posts the next section, The Players, with a synopsis of twenty-five of the newest or most radically changed organizations in the aftermath of the assassination and reading of the will. A lot of new people for your campaign.
This is followed by three short stories that illustrate how to use the will as an idea machine for your campaign. I’ll admit that after reading the will, I thought that only about a fourth of the bequests could be construed into full fledged adventures. Only after reading the first story, “The Sleeping Dragon”, did I realize how to incorporate some of the will’s bequests into adventures. Although with “The Sleeping Dragon”, I thought the author was going to tie all 200 items and people together.
The second story is “Who Watches the Watchers”, a story that talks about a[nother] secret organization that your gamers could already be a part of. And you won’t believe who’s at the top of this one. In an earlier post, I mentioned how I wished that the GMs had a chance to know about this organization before this book so it could be brought up in our campaigns instead of after the fact. I now see that I was wrong - the part of the book that “Watchers” comes from takes place a month after the first event in the book (Dunkelzahn’s assassination). There is ample time [a month, gamewise] to incorporate the Watcher organization into your campaign.
The third story, “In the Cards”. Well, I don’t know what to say about this one. It’s in first person, with Talon [from Awakenings] helping out someone who is being attacked by spirits. The story felt weak, somehow. Probably because it seems out of place in this sourcebook. In a 112 page book that is supposed to be an electronic document with a liberal policy of posting addenda to the text, this is the only part of the sourcebook that is an actual fictional story. As such, it stands apart from the book in style and appears not to belong. But as an illustration on how to incorporate one item from Dunkelzahn’s will, it is a good example. And it has a great last line.
The artwork style is varied throughout the book. Spot illos range from solid black/white art with no or very little shading (Larry MacDougall, Peter Bergting [omitted from the credits page]) to Kent Burles’s Jack Kirby-influenced style incorporating a wide range of gray tones. Personally, I favor MacDougall’s and Bergting’s style of artwork and wish that FASA would pick one style of artwork or similar styles for a sourcebook. Until this book, I wasn’t that impressed with Jeff Laubenstein’s artwork - then I saw the Death tarot card on page 105. Very nice.
All in all, a very well done sourcebook. The only changes I would have made would have been to keep one style of artwork in the book and to exchange the “In the Cards” story with “The Sleeping Dragon”. The book feels odd ending on the Talon story. I recommend this sourcebook for anyone starting a campaign or anyone who wants to feel the full impact of the 2057 election on your campaign.