[grandmaster_cain]

I think the reviewer's biases come out too much in the review - some of the criticisms aren't valid because they're based on the -opinions- of how something "should be" in their mind, instead of something more objective.

All reviews are based on something subjective, on how things "should be". Everyone's going to have their own opinion. The whole point of writing a review is to demonstrate yours.

Granted, this is rpg.net, but I thought the "let's all boycott FanPro" was unprofessional and not constructive.

Not: "let's all boycott FanPro." It's: "Don't buy FanPro pdf's until they start bundling print-friendly versions." I think you should support them on their hardcopies.

But the rest is just a rant. So what if the main villain is a vampire? There are vampires in Shadowrun; they aren't White Wolf just because they have a vampire and dice pools.

Yeah, and there's vampires in D&D as well. Vampires as a critter to fight is one thing. Vampires as the plotting schemers who move their pawns, while never getting their hands dirty, is mostly a World of Darkness thing. Even D&D Ravenloft never presented Straud as an unstatted bogeyman, capable of anything the GM wanted.

I like Shadowrun because it's *Shadowrun*. There's lots of things that could have been done here. The Shadowrun world and history is so rich, there's dozens of things they could have pulled from, without once even coming close to World of Darkness themes. I mean, even now, GM's are still pulling useful things out of Dunkelzan's Will. AH is probably the biggest Shadowrun metaplot expert out there, and I'm sure he could give you dozens of hanging threads without needing to think about it. I'm not nearly as good as he is, and I can do that.

He's being way too nice to the book-- it's a piece of crap, written to push up a badly-developed game.

Uh, no. It's not terrible. It's a pretty good GM aid, and it's a medicore module. It just happened to miss the Shadowrun style. Adam and co have enough style to make up for that.