Review – The Assassin’s Primer (Shadowrun)

The Assassin’s Primer provides information about assassins, killers for hire, in the Shadowrun setting.  While I was worried about the choice of professional killers for an early sourcebook, after all Shadowrun characters can be quite violent enough as it is, the (in game) author of this work advises restraint and minimizing damage beyond the target.  Such things are welcome in the realm of character (and player) advice.  Beyond that, it provides a useful -if short- reference to the types of assassins and a basic overview of how they work.

Shadowrun: The Assassin’s Primer, is a short piece on assassins and other killers in the Sixth World, how and why they operate and some advice on what sort of skills and tools they will need to survive and prosper.  It is a good general overview and of use to shadowrunners as the tricks of the trade overlap considerably.

The only new toy is the venerable (very by 2072) SVD sniper rifle and there are five new assassin’s creeds (code of honor) qualities, four of which are positive and one negative, which give a few more tools to flesh out hitters but some of them are definitely better suited to NPCs.  There is also a short section for the GM on integrating ‘lone wolf’ characters (like assassins) into a game, which is nice.

Overall, a not unuseful resource and a good read, but nothing really new is presented here.  It may be best suited as a handout to new players to shadowrun as an “in game” introduction to some of the main themes of the setting.

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.