Shadowrun RPG (6th Edition) - Gamemaster Screen

As far as DM screens go, this one is a winner. You get a handful of reference sheets that you can pull out and pass around if need be or to consult yourself as well as several sheets of art. There are plastic sleeves for the 6th Edition card decks which are actually insanely useful in real-time play if you need to whip up a bad guy on the fly or keep in mind what your players have. The heat modifier tabs were a little stiff but with some movement they're going up and down fine anymore and the sticker sheet has a LOT of updated symbols from various organizations large and small in full glorious color.The only downside as I see it is the fact that this isn't a portrait style DM screen. I like mine tall, and I can see that taking the cards in mind had to have them instead make it a landscape style DM screen. It's not a big deal to me but it was visually disappointing and I'm a big girl so it honestly makes me feel a little troll sized.

Are you into Shadowrun 6th World (edition)? You need this product because it has job aids for building characters, running magik and way more. Well made and colorful. Must have if you are a GM, highly recommended if you are a player. Also, get all the card sets to go with your game. These ‘extra’ products make the game so much easier to play. So get all the stuff, you’ll be happy you did.

After a long hiatus from Shadowrun, I jumped back in with the 6th Edition andI would say that this game screen seems to reflect my first impression of 6th edition...what works, works really good, and what doesn't work is kind of "meh".Here's what I really dig...1. They built heat trackers one the player side of the screen so players can see where they stand with the major corporations...and provided stickers so that a GM can swap out the organizations that are actively playing a role in the player's campaign. These stickers are reusable, so I haven't seen any damage to my screen from putting a sticker on and taking them off.2. There are free sheets with various tables for things like Deckers/Riggers or Character creation...this is a cool feature because there is only so much information that can be placed on a four-panel screen and Shadowrun has a lot of possibilities...so the panel tables are reserved for the major needs of running a campaign and the stuff that may or may not be crucial to your game can be placed behind the screen on your tabletop. (There is also a plastic slide on the front, which allows you to swap out different art OR tables you want your player to have access to (such as during character creation) ...you get a lot of choices.3. One of the things that had me scratching my head was the Rogue's Deck. I bought the Rogue's Deck even though I was skeptical as to why you wouldn't just create a book of Rogue's. Well, when I bought the GM screen, I discovered that there were pockets on two of the inside panels of the GM screen and these pockets were compatible with that card set. Pretty cool bonus for me, because I had the Rogue's Deck and this helped me to see why that product existed.4. The construction is solid. The screen feels a little heavier than other screens I have bought in the past...the addition of the heat tracker makes for a pretty thick and heavy screen when it's all folded up...but this is a bonus for me because I like sturdy construction. My books tend to get heavy usage and with that comes wear. So I need this type of reliability in my gaming products.Now that being said, there are some drawbacks. Some of which are flipsides to the stuff I dig.1. Remember how I dug the idea of the Rogue's Deck and how they incorporated that into the screen? Well, that feature takes up half of your inner screens panels. That is a ton of real estate to give up for an accessory. If I didn't own that product, then I would have been pretty mad about having two useless panels when those panels could have had tables or some other useful nugget of information for me to use. It would have been better if the small resource cards that came with the Rogue's Deck had been packaged with the screen....but they weren't. So either you spend another 20 bucks to make this screen complete or you will have to devote time and effort to design your own cards and get some use out of these two panels.2. Another Rogue's Deck rant..the deck didn't come with a box, which is not the screen's fault, but if the screen was going to rely so heavily on the Rogue's deck functionality, each of the Rogue's pockets could have been at least big enough to accommodate a reasonable sized card stack. I broke up my rogue's cards by subject (contact, magic-user, decker/rigger, sammy/merc) into small stacks and figured that the screen could probably accommodate all of the cards- which is why it didn't come with a box. And as it turns out, they can, but if one of your stacks is too thick, it will mess up your pocket by pulling the plastic pocket off the screen. So be wary of this.3. Speaking of those pockets, be careful, they separate off the screen very easily. Remember Trapper Keepers back in the day? Well, I thought putting a print inside one of these plastic pockets would be a similar process, pull the plastic up a little and slide the print inside. Well, the plastic can't take even the slightest pressure before the plastic separates from the screen....so best to put a little of the print in the pocket and slowly work the print inside by sliding it from side to side...this screen is entirely too sturdy a product to have cut corners on what is a major key to the customizable functionality that this screen uses as a selling point.So overall, I like the product, but I would have liked it so much more if the bonding of the plastic pockets had been as well constructed as the heat tracker. I also feel that it's kind of silly force gm's to buy two products to make this game screen a complete functioning product. Considering the need for an extra product, then this $20 game screen is technically a $40 game screen and it would be better if Catalyst had been honest about that. It turned out good for me because I'm so desperate for expansion modules that I already had the product in question, but somewhere out there is someone who had no intention of buying a Rogue's Deck and wanted their game screen to be a complete product. I hope they read this review, and it helps them avoid that type of disappointment.I love that Catalyst is attempting to take one of the greatest game settings I have ever experienced and streamlining the rules for people who like to focus on the Role-Playing over the Rule-Playing, but right now that transition is a little clumsy, so you guys really need to take more care with managing players expectations.I gave this product 3 stars, because it's a good product, but there are some issues that you need to be aware of and I know when I use reviews to make purchasing decisions it's always the people who rated in the middle who had the most helpful experiences...so I'm hoping you can see that I like this product, but it is not without its disappointments.

So many uses for this game, and well built. Players can see immediate responses to working factions against each other using the sliders on player viewed side. There’s handout cards for most actions to give to players or use. I am impressed.

I don't know if I would say the price is totally justified as the product is not exactly what I was expecting but it's not bad.You get a lot of cool artwork with it that are double-sided which is nice but I don't really know how I'm supposed to use it other than to put one of them on the front for my players to look at when we play...The few sheets that come with it for looking at stats and quick references are all too big to actually fit into the one place which is available for it which is the spot that I mentioned above for the artwork.There is a second spot that looks like it should have a plastic envelope so that you could insert either another artwork of your choice or one of the two big reference sheets but it is just... There...The stickers that come with it are pretty cool and there's a lot of them and they seem like they are reusable.The heat tracker for the different corporations is a neat feature but it is pretty limited since it can only go from -2 up to positive 2... If the game only goes by these numbers that's fine but I think the game can actually get to much higher extremes...The inside panels of the screen have a couple of useful things in them but then the two side flaps have very small pockets which I guess are for like note cards or something but even those I don't think would fit and nothing came with it that I could see even coming close to fitting inside those...

Perfect product as advertised!

I stopped buying GM screens years ago. But after listening to a podcast interview and hearing about the GM screen (pre-release of the product) it actually sounded awesome and useful. So I purchased it and assumed what I had heard in the interview is what the final product ended up being.Nope. Pure DREK OMAE. Save your money, go print reference sheets and staple them to old greasy pizza box cardboard, it would be a better product.The only nice thing I have to say is they don't have a dude flipping the bird smack dab in the center of the screen like they for for 5th edition.