Widening your horizons from the underbelly of Seattle, the iconic home of the shadowrunner, Coyotes looks at how you cross borders from one region to another, particularly if you lack the papers or resources to just take a flight to your next destination. With the published adventures becoming more and more world-spanning, this is a useful and timely addition - and it can be fun to include in your game (she says, remembering how a certain were-tiger character was smuggled across a border in a crate...)

Beginning with a fluff page of mock activity on a 'runner website and three pages of atmospheric fiction to set the scene, the main body of the work describes - mostly in-character - how a Coyote or people-smuggler operates in the Sixth World. It's dangerous but can be lucrative as well... perhaps your 'runners will want to try it as a trade, or at least need to organise a border crossing as part of their 'run. Or it may be that they need to be somewhere that they are not welcome so more orthodox means of travel will result in an arrest at the airport. Or they may need to leave undetected after stepping on the wrong toes...

Costs can be significant, and there's a handy table to give an idea of how they are calculated (with a note that it is merely a guide for Game Masters), and there's also discussion on the resources that the Coyote needs to ply his trade, and how he defends himself from his 'cargo' as well. Corporates too sometimes have need of a Coyote, and some even have them on the payroll, although that's one of those things they are unlikely to admit.

So now we know a bit about how they ply their trade, where do you find one? Most people use a fixer when they need to engage the services of a Coyote (and that's where aspiring Coyotes tend to look for work). That's discussed as well, so once a need has been determined the deal can be struck.

The discussion then moves on to the borders themselves, looking at the various challenges of trying to get through a checkpoint and of trying to cross the border elsewhere - that is, someplace you should not be crossing at all. Security will involve physical, magical and Matrix elements; and there are notes on how to hide that which you do not want discovered (like were-tigers in boxes...). Borders can be classified as easy, normal, hard and very hard; and details are provided about typical border guards, procedures and security (of all kinds) at each level. So what do Coyotes do that's worth paying them for? A few ideas are provided here, to go along with what has been mentioned before. Six sample Coyotes, fully statted-up, are provided in case you need one in a hurry or just want to look over a typical one's build before creating your own.

Finally, there's a short border crossing adventure, Piping Hot. Drop it into a campaign when you want to introduce your 'runners to the fine art of border crossing. A distraught fixer needs some people moved and his regular Coyote isn't answering. Can the 'runners help? Particularly as said Coyote left detailed instructions on his preferred route just in case he needed rescuing...

All good fun with plenty of scope to make travelling to the job as entertaining as actually doing it; whilst the adventure is quite fun and lets you test the water of the border crossing game with ease.

Return to Coyotes page.

Reviewed: 4 March 2015