While the concept is great, it is very 90's in so far as the disconnect between Europe and the perception of it; as well as weird plot beats that play up shitty behavior, particularly fairly sexist while at the same time attempting to include 'strong' women. I guess this is to catch the players off-guard? But in reality, having some women in places of power coupled with this weird degradation (perhaps not in the 90's) of other women, left me with a bit of a bitter taste. The end is particularly over-the-top and seems odd compared to the other city adventures. It's particularly tasteless in some ethnocentric areas right off the bat. But the art is great and has more diverse representation that most things at the time of publication.

Ultimately it feels like a product where the left hand wasn't talking to the right or something. Some areas are great and conflict with problematic/conflicting story and tone.

"It all started with a simple extraction..."

Originally published in 1994, Land of the Free is billed as a cross country mega-adventure for the Cyberpunk line of tabletop games popular in the 90's. In this respect it certainly delivers. It also states that it should take about 8 sessions to complete, which I don't think is realistic but more on that later. In this adventure, the punks take on a mission to extract Adriana Young at the behest of her father, Dr. Francis Young. What ensues is the PCs in a cat and mouse race across the country being pursued by her employer, Narcoss, with numerous set pieces depicting what has become of the U.S in the setting of Cyberpunk 2020. The expanded setting can be found in the campaign book to this adventure, Home of the Brave.

I’m not sure how long a session the author had in mind, but it took us 11 sessions to complete the game using Veil 2020, a rules-light, modified system based on my own game, The Veil. The system truncates conflicts such as long firefights and other conflicts, designed to specifically be able to run these old-school adventures without the crunch. Our sessions were three hours long and the table was drop in, drop out—resulting in maybe a little bit of time being chewed up by new folks joining. However, the system massively reduces the time it takes to get through encounters and conflicts so didn't contribute that much to the increase in expected sessions. I ended up skipping some areas in the last 20 pages or so to nail the pacing I wanted and cutting out some unwanted, problematic content. Otherwise, it probably would have been 12 or 13 sessions.

I ran the adventure rules as written. It was my first time using a module/adventure. Ever. And I wanted that experience to be as close to what the module intended as possible. Time has certainly brought out some blemishes in the adventure. Particularly a lot of sexualized women in the module, most often Adriana Young herself. Sometimes even with weird connotations. For instance, a ninja set out to kill her on a plane might be introduced to the players via hitting on her; after all, she is extremely attractive, the author suggests. There is also a honeypot later in the module, in which a PC is meant to just wander away and witness a woman in lingerie, drawn to music in a house; later being possibly captured by her as she is, of course, a ninja. Each woman in the text is depicted in weird, model poses very indicative of the times. There was also some stuff x-carded at the table, such as going to the south where puritans are running around with confederate flags. That kind of stuff.

Adriana Young herself is also a plot device for the players to have their morality tested. Spoilers! A large reward keeps being offered for her to be turned over, as it is revealed that she is not only a clone but also, ala Jonny Mnemonic, carrying secrets from Narcross in her cybernetic mind (in the first couple pages of the adventure but revealed substantially later in the story to the players). The main questions posed via Adriana’s existence are ones that were explored in media like Blade Runner already. If she’s a manufactured being, is she human? How would the world react? How do the players react? Will, they sell her out for a 1,000,000,000 euro bucks or stick by her, ostensibly as she’s made friends with them as the story has gone on.

While these questions are interesting in 1994, they feel somewhat dated now; much like the sexualized art. I did appreciate that the whole point of the adventure was for the players to learn that she is a person like any other, though. Literally spelled out in the module at the end. I imagine that when this was run when published it would feel much more substantial than now, as this was not a divisive issue for my players at all.

It’s still fun to go through the motions in the module, however. After all the locations are well realized, the characters interesting. It has more diverse art than some do now, even! I was pleasantly surprised in that respect.

Everyone had fun, including me. We basked in the retro cyberpunk aesthetic. Old brick phone, 90’s style, over-the-top action. They stuck it to the man every chance they got.
While the sort-of grand finale at the end was predictable, the players still enjoyed the cheesy nature of it all in keeping with the 90’s aesthetic. You can still get a lot of enjoyment from these adventures and I learned a lot running this one. I plan to run Eurotour next, in fact.

I write reviews at consumingcyberpunk.com and you can find the actual play described here on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr13_CTDdVM&list=PLdShDUcnZ1VFvG4kr5RKGoCChEawbtiA7

I gave it 4 hours in the audiobook (23%). I tried. Listen, I like commercial fiction as much as the next person but a book without internal consistency drives me wild. I don’t care about the odd punctuation mark or typo at all.

But when refugees are described as being equally as dangerous as the Nazis and somehow even the ages of the characters backstories leading up to the present time doesn’t make sense, I’m out. It’s long enough that there’s still another 12 hours, had it been shorter I might have pressed on. Too many red flags.

Read the first two issues and just couldn’t get into it.

It is a magical thing to read these in order, all at once. There’s barely a few pages here that I wasn’t that into. Those just just from the fifth books collection of stories. Everything else really does build nicely on each other. From books to the short stories afterward, the overall narrative benefits immensely from the buildup. Each book I liked more than the last even though all were incredible.

The only gripe would be I expected more artwork and the font is very small. It’s a heavy book on your lap reading in bed but those are all small gripes that didn’t hamper my experience much. Books that clock in at 280 pages were 150 ish in this one, making the fiction quite dense to get through sometimes. I don’t think I’d want it to be any bigger though, haha!

I like this much more than Essential Rumi because it features a few translators, often translating the same poem, which gives a lot more context and exposes the translators' “goals”, POV, intent, etc.

It’s really interesting consuming it in this format, and really shows how Coleman, author of The Essential Rumi, isn’t really translating anything, but reading a translation and then trying to take that into an internalized lesson to be imparted; often in a puritanical and Christian way. Stripping it of Eastern qualities and imbuing it with Western. You can especially see this with animal motifs.

I’d still like to consume something whole that was translated accurately but it doesn’t really seem like something like that exists in English, so this seems the best. And it is quite profound and interesting, much like The Prophet from Gibran. Though, I think I prefer the Prophet because it is a whole and complete work, with a thematic throughline that is incredible. And the prose is just better, IMO.

2019 reread: I’m going through for roll tables in Hack the Planet and can’t use much because it’s all drawing from an aesthetic not really compliant with the game, but it’s a great read still. Lots of great world building and stuff, again, I wish was explicit in the movie.

I wish some of the details revealed in this book had been made use of and overt in the movie, it would have definitely helped the PR disaster and brought others to the movie.

A strong debut. This traces the path, or perhaps even the mythology, of an ancient ‘evil’ plaguing the North from before colonial times to 2030. It jumps forward in time linearly, building a new interconnected short story with a new character each time, slowly making the connections apparent up to the final conclusion.

It’s a fairly satisfying story this way too, using time to draw parallels between colonialism and state oppression and this natural, ages old opponent. I thought this was pretty solid, but it does have sophomoric issues. Not all of the stories connective tissue works that well toward the conclusion and feels superfluous. Some characters are more well realized than others. The language is minimal and doesn’t get in the way. Earlier stories are really evocative and have some natural momentum to them that others do that, and the verbiage and diction reflects that, somewhat miring those particular stories.

But in a 167 page book, it’s not as though it’s truly bogged down, and the setup in the beginning is enticing enough to get through it just to see how it all comes to a head. I also liked how the archeologist, Hank, was pretty indicative of both academics and how white people tend to interact with indigenous people, and it didn’t feel shoe horned in. If there’s any word to describe the book in its totality, I think it’s organic. Looking forward to what the author produces next with such a strong first effort.