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"Built from a thousand kilometers of flesh and steel, it writhes in the passions of those who live in it. Everyone and everything is connected here; there are no accidents. Take a walk down any street and read the writing on the wall: 'Welcome to the Sprawl, chummer. Too bad you could make it.'" (Steve Venters cover art for Shadowrun supplement Sprawl Sites, FASA, 1990)
The Sites of the Sprawl in Sprawl Sites for Shadowrun (1st Edition)
Sprawl Sites.
The Greatest Roleplaying Supplement Book of All Time.
Maybe you’re writing your own adventures. Maybe your players decide to mess with the GM and want to go to the mall to buy balloons. Or maybe, in true RPG tradition, you want to start them off in a…
Bar
Your runners will take one of the booths in the back. Always in the back.
There is never going to be a scenario where your PCs go into a bar and Nothing Happens. Something will always Happen. You meet with a contact. You connect with Mr. Johnson. You are trying to relax after a run when a pack of wiz-kid gangers decides to start trouble. Always keep your Ares Predator II ready.
Meet Cleg. He will provide your runners with all the food and drink they will consume in game, so tip well.
Small Restaurant
“Welcome to Bee Burger, would you like to try our new Honey-Blasted SoyBeef CyberBurger with Cheese?”
Small Corporate Office
They really keep the wage-slaves in tiny cells, don’t they?
Cheap Hotel
Though it’s not like the runners can really talk.
Body Shop/Clinic
Encouraged by the presence of sinks, discouraged by the absence of bathrooms.
This is Sprawl Sites (1990) and it is probably my favorite Shadowrun…I don’t want to call it a sourcebook because it really feels more like a tool kit. I love tool kits!
Basically, it is a set of encounters, modular world pieces and contacts (Shadowrun’s ingenious NPC archetypes). Everything you need to throw together a scenario on the fly, really. The locations are probably the most useful - in addition to floor plans, they also include notes on who or what might be there and how they work. Most GMs will already have a good idea of what a restaurant is like, but they might be a bit at a loss for what a Talismonger shop is like. In this way, Sprawl Sites contributes a lot to the lived-in feel of the Shadowrun world.
I love Shadowrun contacts. I think these brief rundowns, accompanied by portraits, is an excellent way to give GMs barebones NPCs to work with that are interesting, encourage creativity and have a clear place in the overall world. There is probably an argument that you don’t necessarily neeeeed these contacts in addition to the ones in the core rulebook, but I don’t honestly see how having them is a bad thing. I might feel differently if they weren’t all illustrated by Jim Nelson.
The random encounters are maybe a little less useful than the rest, at least in terms of throwing stuff together on the fly. There are like, 130-something of them and they are organized thematically, so like, Yakuza encounters and Troll encounters, etc. I see them more as kind of encounter seeds – more useful as a framework for prep than a random game element (I am not a huge fan of random encounters though). Again, these all gave me a better handle on how the world of Shadowrun works and feels.
More books like this, please. Pure, modular, scenario building resources.
More Sprawling Sights of the Sprawl in Sprawl Sites for Shadowrun (1st Edition)
More sites from Sprawl Sites.
Dock
Granted, not the most exciting of maps.
But this guy?
Inside that duffel bag is a CMDT Combat Shotgun.
This is a longshoreman, and this is how he’s statted:
Yes, he has Wired Reflexes (1), Firearms: 7, and no patience for runners with no shipping agenda.
Bank
Whether your runners hit it big and want to open an account or want to try their hands at some good old fashioned bank robbery, look no further than Dawes, Dawes, Munny, Grubb & Banks Fidelity Fiduciary Bank.
Try to sleaze past this guy!
I say, chap, prithee.
Hospital
This is where your characters live between adventures, getting reacquainted with their Street Doc.
That's actually a cocktail he's holding, and those things that look like eyeballs? They're just olives. Filled with eyeballs.
Monorail Station
The most amusing part of this entry isn't the map, but the accompanying artwork which is a photograph of some Shadowrun minis:
"Dragons suck fire!" is actually quite offensive to dragons.
