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A few months ago we announced a contest for fans to design their own mission for Shadowrun: Crossfire. We received some intriguing submissions, and the time has come for fans to vote both on the Fan Favorite mission and on the Wildest Ride! Votes can be submitted at a forum thread posted for that purpose, or they can be e-mailed to randall@catalystgamelabs.com. So get voting, and good luck to all the designers!

It’s a big, big Sixth World out there, with lots of danger and weirdness and shadowruns waiting for the right team. At the august and elegant Shadowrun headquarters,we’ve been pondering the best way to give Shadowrun fans a chance to explore the various parts of the world, and the solution we’ve hit upon is the Shadows in Focus series. For this series, we will pick nations that have not been covered recently in Shadowrun products, or places that have not been covered at all, and get an in-depth look at that spot. For each location we pick, you’ll get a national overview, detailed looks at two large cities in that nation, two adventures set in the selected nation, and an Enhanced Fiction short story to help immerse you in that locale.

Up first: the Sioux Nation. The initial book in the series, called Sioux Nation of all things, is out now (Battleshop, DriveThruRPG), ready for you to explore! With information on major cities, corporations, law-enforcement entities, power sites, and more, this book has all you need to bring Shadowrun adventures to the Sioux Nation. Whatever type of run you specialize in, be it smuggling, corporate espionage, talislegging, high-level extractions, or what have you, the Sioux Nation is waiting to throw challenges your way!

We’ve been working hard in Shadowrun-land to provide the dedicated Shadowrun public with the novels for which they’ve been clamoring, and we have great news on that front! Dark Resonance is now out (Battleshop, DriveThruRPG, Amazon, and print copies can be found in bookstores and game shops)! Written by Phaedra Weldon, contributor to the award-winning Spells & Chrome anthology as well as author of the Zoë Martinique series of novels, it tells a twisted, enthralling tail of technomancers, families, and deep-seated vendettas. Here’s the synopsis:

SOME SECRETS CAN KILL YOU…

Kazuma Tetsu is a technomancer—one of the rare people who can manipulate the Matrix without technology, using only the power of their mind. But he’s on a more personal mission—he’s searching for his missing sister, Hitori. Following her trail leads him into a tangled web of corp execs, mercenaries, and double-crossing rogues—usually just another day in the Sixth World.

But as Kazuma digs deeper, he uncovers a plot that could bring about the end of the world. Upon seeing a simulation of the Resonances Realms accessible to technomancers, an A.I. declares it will use the realms to ascend to a higher plane of consciousness. The intelligence’s goal seems impossible, until an imprisoned and manipulated group of technomancers accesses dissonance to open a gateway to a new realm—possibly the heaven the A.I. seeks. But opening this dissonant hole in the Matrix could trigger global disaster, and it’s up to a team of shadowrunners, including a couple of denizens of the fabled JackPoint, to free the trapped technomancers and stop the Dark Resonance before it destroys the entire Matrix—and worse …

And Hell on Water is out there as well and has recently been added to the Kindle shop in addition to the Battleshop and DriveThruRPG. So go and get your Shadowrun fiction fix in!

All right, we may be a little past the time of mass gift giving, but there is never a wrong time to play Shadowrun and to dig into the immersive Sixth World setting. With that in mind, we have a new novel called Hell on Water available; you can get electronic copies at the Battleshop or DriveThruRPG, while print copies can be found wherever fine gaming books are sold, including Barnes & Noble (they have a listing for it on their site here, though it currently sports the plot summary for the subsequent novel, Dark Resonance. We hope to have that fixed soon).

The author of Hell on Water (me, Jason Hardy, the guy writing this post) has described it as “the craziest novel I’ve ever written.” Here’s what it’s about:

THE LONGEST JOURNEY

Six shadowrunners. Three mysterious packages. And twelve kilometers of a dangerous, dilapidated bridge across one of the wildest sprawls of the Sixth World.

It should be a simple job. Retrieve three sealed packages, then take them across the city of Lagos to their destination. All the runners’ skills will be tested—they’ll face ambushes, double-crosses, and more, and along the way they might be able to answer the question of just what’s in those packages, and why they’re so important.

The team has a lot on their side, including a street samurai who’s a legend on the streets, a hotshot rigger with a lot of enemies, a young shaman seeking justice, a decker with a dark secret, and a pair of pros from Seattle trying to keep up with everything the unfamiliar sprawl throws at them. But the deadly streets and sinister neighborhoods of Lagos contain their own unique dangers, and it’ll take every trick the runners know to complete their mission and escape the city in one piece…

Along with the novel, we have a new Mission called Liberation (Battleshop, DriveThruRPG) that features a seemingly simple run that gets complicated. In Chicago, so the complications go beyond a double-crossing Mr. Johnson and straight into the realm of the twisted and bizarre. Here are the details:

NOTHING COMES EASY

Every shadowrunner knows the fear that comes with the words “milk run.” Anytime something is supposed be easy in the Sixth World, it’s guaranteed to come with unexpected headaches and danger, and that holds especially true for Chicago. Lothan the Wise, an egotistical troll mage who is extra irritating because he has the skills to back up his braggadocio, says he has a simple job. There’s no question that things will get more complicated than he expects—the only question is how things will go wrong, and which of the dangerous denizens of the feral sprawl will leap up to cause trouble. Runners will have to be fast, flexible, and able to think on their feet—but isn’t that part of the basic job description anyway?

Liberation is the latest adventure in Shadowrun Missions’ fifth season, and it has everything needed to throw players into the wilds of the Chicago sprawl and see if they can come out on top. Whether players are at a convention, in a game store, or playing a home game, Liberation has the plot, the details, and the game mechanics needed for an exciting run.

SRM 05-04 Liberation is for use with Shadowrun, Fifth Edition.