This is Denver: City of Shadows (1994), a campaign setting for Shadowrun. First off, I have to say, I hate hate hate digital art from this era – it almost always looks like something out of Lawnmower Man – but the cover art here manages to not offend me. Which is not to say I like it, mind.

A lot of art to love inside. The map of Denver is quite nice and takes its cues from the isometric map of Cyberpunk 2020’s Night City. Lots of art from the usual Shadowrun suspects as well. MVP is probably Karl Waller, who did the cover pieces for both booklets and that nice hacking illustration. Er, I mean decking. Or whatever. There are also two ID cards which allow access to the Sioux Nation and the United Canadian and American States, which is a nice feelie. On the other hand, there seems to be a significant uptick in in-universe slang in the text, which kind of grates on me (yea, I know, I love Planescape and I’m a hypocrite. Taste is a fickle thing).

Denver as a setting is interesting. Like Seattle, it sits in the crossroads of six neighboring nations and plays host to all the various megacorp interests, which gives you plenty of material for grand conspiracies and corporate sabotage. It also moves the focus to Shadowrun’s Native American tribes, which thanks to the return of magic, are resurgent and powerful. They always seemed to be background players in Seattle and it is nice to have the spotlight on them here.

There is a lot going on in Denver and I dig it. At this point, Shadowrun had its sea legs, so the whole production feels much more self-assured than the earlier sourcebooks – there is a little bit of everything I expect from a Shadowrun book and the city feels alive in a way the Seattle of the Seattle Sourcebook doesn’t. That said, Denver also kind of pales in comparison to Shadowrun’s Seattle, which benefited from being partially developed over dozens of sourcebooks and adventures. That makes Denver feel like a secondary setting for off-brand Shadowrun, which is a bit of a bummer.