Philosophical Musings of a Book Nerd

This was one of those books that when I was a lot younger and saw that it had just been released, I bought it. It was interesting that with TSR books I pretty much knew what was being released and when, however with Shadowrun I never really knew what was coming out until it hit the selves. Maybe it had something to do with Dungeons and Dragons having its own magazine whereas Shadowrun didn't (or at least didn't have one at the time, not one that I knew about). Anyway, Dragon Magazine was one of those magazines that die-hard roleplayers would buy every copy that came out, despite the fact that in the long run what was actually printed in the magazine was really little more than space filler designed to keep roleplayers happy (isn't that what most magazines are about?).

I suspect also that I had access to information as to what TSR were releasing and when. It was not all that hard to come across that information because, despite advertisements in Dragon Magazine (and they advertised more than simply TSR products) TSR would also regular provide information on what was being released and when. I also hung around a group of people that managed to get their hands on such information (usually through Dragon Magazine though).

Mind you, this was back in the days before the internet as we know it. Even as late as, well, 1994 (the year this book was published) I did not have much knowledge or understanding of the existence of a world wide web. We did not have a modem (which is ubiquitous now) nor had I used Netscape Navigator (the pre-cursor to Windows Explorer, or my browser of choice, Mozilla Firefox). As such, information generally went out the slow way, normally through promotional materials sent to gaming shops and through magazines.

Dragon Magazine still exists, but we have much quicker access to product release information now than we did previously. In fact we have much more access to news as a whole. Come to think of it the who nature of print media is changing faster than many of the old guard are able to keep up with. People aren't buying newspapers anymore (well, they are, but not as much), they are simply jumping onto the net when they want to find out what is happening. I suspect that magazines like Dragon are also declining in circulation as such information is also readily available on the net (usually through blogs). However, there are probably still a lot of die hard roleplayers out there that believe that they have to get their hands on every piece of published material to remain up to date.

Oh, I haven't said anything about this book. Well, to wrap it up, this book is the mercenary sourcebook for Shadowrun and, well, contains weapons, vehicles, and other stuff for mercenary type characters. I am sure I own this book somewhere, but it is most likely sitting in a plastic crate in my parent's back shed, not gathering dust because the crates (I believe) are sealed and the dust simply settles on the crate instead.