This is an 88 page, perfect bound, 8.5" by 11" booklet. 70 of the pages are various forms of fiction chronicling a series of events in and around Renraku Arcology (an arcology being an immense city-like structure with residential, industrial and commercial sections) that affect the greater Shadowrun universe. The fiction takes the form of Arcology promotional material, a news article, Shadownet bulletin board conversations between shadowrunners, the diary of a resident, a corporate meeting conversation, and post-mission debriefs. This fiction collectively pieces together Renraku Arcology's mysterious shutdown, culminating in the reveal of a god-like AI that has awakened and seized control of the arcology, pursuing incomprehensible goals. The AI, Deus, creates a host of new drones, including by turning the arcology's residents into brainwashed slaves, and restructures entire floors of the arcology to serve its bizarre and sadistic purposes. A resistance emerges who have safehouses and cells scattered throughout the arcology, who work towards the liberation of imprisoned residents. The final chapter following the fiction contains "Game Information" made up of descriptions and stats and a 3 page listing of the contents of the arcology's 342 floors (shown at the bottom of this post).
While there is some unique and useful information presented in the first 70 pages of fiction, I think by modern sensibilities of minimalism and at-the-table useability, a single page or two could summarize the shutdown timeline, and the freed up 70 pages could be replaced with keyed maps. The final three pages listing floor contents could even potentially be used to run the entire arcology by a GM with a flair for improvisation. So it begs the question, what do the 70 pages of fiction even do? To answer this question, I think we have to see things from the perspective of the year of publication. We need to rewind the clock back to 1998 and look at the cultural conditions that created the game.
The 80's are a period in TTRPG history that is critiqued by members of the OSR as being after the nostalgic, classical period of D&D, where railroaded Dragonlance modules rose to prominence. The narrative of the novels had more effect on the game world than anyone's home game. The early 90's were subject to much critique by the storygamers of the Forge, who were critical of Vampire the Masquerade for recycling the heavily combat focused D&D derived mechanics while paradoxically presenting them as narrativist. Both Vampire and Dragonlance leaned into meta-plot to convey a narrative rather than encouraging emergent story as is popular today. I've already mentioned meta-plot once toward the beginning of this post, but to briefly define it: a meta-plot is an overarching history of events that occur in a TTRPG world, which happen independent of the goings on at the table of a group of people playing the game. This overarching story created continuity from edition to edition, and from supplement to supplement. Meta-plot offered the simulation of a world in motion, where the changing political situations could be reacted to by players. It also provided a story for GMs, the most reliable customers of TTRPG products, to follow along with which kept them hooked and buying products to complete their collections. It's worth pointing out the irony of a product set in a hyper-capitalist cyberpunk dystopia being bloated by nearly 500% to make it a more viable product that would appeal to its audiences addictive tendencies.
So meta-plot provides a professionally written story on a grand scale that GMs can write session content for that slots into the bigger picture. In context of this understanding of meta-plot, the 70 pages of fiction can be understood to provide either diegetic information that can be provided to players as a reward for completing a mission, or as examples of railroaded missions for the GM to imitate. These lead to the eventual unveiling of Deus and the enormous arcology setting that provides a campaign worth of missions.
While this supplement provides a proportionally small amount of useful gameable content by my modern standards, I still think it presents an incredibly compelling setting. The arcology has barricaded entrances mostly connected to a parking lot with a traffic jam frozen mid-evacuation, a secret entrance guarded by the Orc Underground, a secret bunker where the wealthiest surviving members of Renraku management have holed up with a large weapons stockpile, a creepy abandoned amusement park and mall, floors that have been rebuilt into "zombie rooms" where residents are held and brainwashed via neural implants, bizarre mazes created seemingly to torment members of the populace, virtual kingdoms owned by Deus' Otaku technomancer elite, active but repurposed hardware manufacturing facilities, a roof with military grade defenses, a sympathetic origin story for Deus, and much more. While this supplement is not an actual megadungeon, it could also be the greatest sci-fi megadungeon ever made. Here are the final three pages showing the floors contents (don't judge me for the mold stains!), so you can be the judge.
