Attitude is all about style and the world of media and celebrity in the Shadowrun future. It is a superb reference but it is almost all background and information, very much a flavor sourcebook while there are some new equipment and rules, it is focused on adding depth to the sixth world not rules to the game.

Attitude: Sixth World Swagger for Shadowrun written by Lars Blumenstein, Rusty Childers, David A. Hill Jr., Jason M. Hardy, Adam Large, Je D. McLane, Cynthia Celeste Miller, William Murray, Elizabeth V. Nold, Malik Toms, Filamena Young, Russell Zimmerman and published by Catalyst Game Labs.

Attitude is a style guide and more for the world of Shadowrun, but style ties into a lot of things in the future of the Sixth World it is quite wide ranging. The majority of the book is descriptive and written “in world” that is from the point of view of the characters in the setting as if they were data files on a discussion forum.

After a short introduction there is almost forty pages of information on the Runners’ scene including topics such as managing your reputation, useful contacts and much more. This section is extremely useful for both players and GM, giving a good look at how runners fit into the larger world as well as many good tricks of the trade.

Then it moves into entertainment: the Music scene, the Trid scene, and the BTL scenes giving information on the scenes, the major players there, and provides adventure ideas tied to these industries. Even if you do not want to run entertainment-based runs, it helps to flesh out the world to know more about these media work in Shadowrun.

Next it is sports, which is a mix of old and new, with a discussion of leagues and teams and, of course, cheating. Pirate Media, for the shadow side of news and performance, but a media that could be used by (and may be sympathetic to) runners. One of my favorite pieces of the pirate media section are the cult recreationists who obsessively recreate old shows and movies for various purposes. A section on working with celebrities, which can lead to unwanted fame for a runner, is mostly fiction but paints an interesting cautionary tale.

Be Your Own Boss, on being a team leader, and Diving Off The Edge, which is advice on making your own luck rounds out the advice for runners. A selection of the characters that are referenced earlier in the work is given more detail for use as NPCs.

Lastly, there are new styles, clothing and toys for runners and normal people of the future alike (and the only mechanics in the entire book). New toys almost always make players happy and GM get some fun toys for the NPCs as well.

Disclosure: As a featured reviewer for RPGNow/DriveThroughRPG, I received my copy of this product for free from the publisher for the purpose of this review.

If you're the type of player or GM who really likes to immerse themselves in a game world, then this is the type of product that you'll love.

With extremely limited mechanical information, 'Attitude' focuses on what make the Sixth World tick. The opening chapter runs you through a basic induction for Shadowrunners and has a nice twist that I'm thinking of using as a story idea in my current campaign.

You're then presented with chapters on Trideo, BTL, fashion and music. Each chapter covers the concepts from an in-game perspective, offering examples of current chart-toppers, and runs the gamut of tastes. Ever wanted to know what gothabilly is? Check out the music chapter. Want to know the plot of the latest Trideo shows? That's covered too. The chapter on BTLs is an eye opener and has lots of good ideas for future runs.

However, I found the sports chapter to be the most appealing, especially as Urban Brawl was covered in a little more detail.

There are plenty of nods to the two decades plus history of Shadowrun, with some of the NPCs from the early modules (Dark Angel and Maria Mecurial come to mind) making cameos in the book.

Overall, I'd highly recommend this book for the excellent content. My only two criticisms are the extreme disparities in the quality of the interior artwork; and as I mentioned in my review of 'War!' the writing direction of Catalyst and their obsession with including profanities in the book. I'll repeat my comments here: Shadowrun has a well established language and phrases that cover swearing that still make the books accessible to younger gamers. Ignoring this in favour of real world four-letter words serves no purpose whatsoever.

My personal tastes aside, I loved the book and will be supplementing my PDF with a print copy too.

This book is very hard to review because its going to be useful and not useful in different ways to different people. This book is an update to several older books including the Neo-Anarchist Guide to Real Life, Shadowbeat, On Stage Before, and others. First off it lives up to the name Attitude as much of the street talk comes off as an internet flame war in places. The first few chapters will be less useful to veteran players as its more about where shadowrunners come from and what life is like which we have all read before. They also give some common mission ideas and some general advise that may or may not be useful to you. Next they go over music artist and trideo all of which felt short but I LOVE that stuff so maybe its just me. They also go over BTLs, Sports, Pirate Media, some Celebrities. All these sections are as useful if you find them interesting. I think for old timers this is really a 2 or 3 star book but for new shadowrun players its probably 4 stars. I would have liked to see the "where do shadowruners come from" and "life on the streets" and "gear" sections dropped and put into another book so we could have had more on the music, sports, etc. For example each music artist has a one or two paragraph summery, I would have like to see them get a full page at leased.