The Best Gaming Books
What are your favorite gaming books? Mine are the ones that contain flavor and story. A well-written rule is awesome, sure, but for me story is the still the gold standard.
One of my favorite things about Shadowrun is the Shadowtalk. These are sections of commentary from in-world characters (done in old-style forum posts) about different subjects on Shadowland (1st through 3rd editions) or JackPoint (4th and 5th edition). The majority of Shadowrun books, regardless of edition (outside of the core rule book) are divided into stories posts about various topics, such as bleeding-edge cybertechnology or strange, new spirits, while the second part of the book has the ruleset for whatever they just talked about. It is supremely clever and effective, when executed well.
My favorite gaming book revolves around a major event in the Shadowrun setting’s timeline, the assassination of a president and the fallout therein: Portfolio of a Dragon: Dunkelzahn's Secrets, released for Shadowrun 2nd Edition.
The year 2056 sees the election of the Great Dragon Dunkelzahn, a popular, metahumanity-centric dragon, to be President of the United Canadian American States. In 2057, the night of the inauguration, forces unknown assassinate the newly sworn-in president by blowing up his car (he’s shapechanged into a human at the time) outside the Watergate Hotel. This understandably causes all manner of political repercussions, from the UCAS government to other dragons upset that one of their own has been murdered—and likely by a squishy mortal at that.
Portfolio deals with the aftermath from the point of view of shadowrunners, the criminals that the players most likely play and their peers, after the release of Dunkelzahn’s will. In most cases, surviving dragons would fight over the horde of a deceased great dragon, but Dunkelzahn had an appreciation for metahumanity’s ways, and both a devious sense of humor and a long-planned agenda to execute. His will dramatically reshapes the powers that be within the Shadowrun universe, setting up many of the shakeups that eventually transition into the metaplot resulting in Shadowrun 3rd edition (and 4th and 5th, if we are honest).
The thing about Portfolio is that it contains no rules. It is pure world-building. It is 112 pages of commentary among known characters on a will, as well as a bit of in-world news media about it, and it is golden. It has emotion. Dunkelzahn was one of the most popular characters in the early days of Shadowrun, and his death was a big deal.