From the Introduction:
Holy shit I clearly have too much time on my hands...
Basically I decided to run a Shadowrun game for my players and thought it would be fun and cool to set the game in New York City (as I live just over the bridge from it). To get myself pumped (and hopefully not have to do that much heavily lifting) I read through the Neo-Anarchist's Guide to North America by FASA and The Rotten Apple: Manhattan by Catalyst Game Labs and was floored by how boring these books are and how they provide nothing useful at the gaming table, which is essential to me.
Largely I've found that most RPG setting books follow the same philosophy as the two books mentioned above and that is boring to me. I don't want large blocks of text that describe people that I and my players don't care about or will interact with. I want useful stuff.
To put it simply: Vornheim by Zak S. has spoiled me. I view it as the way that setting books should be done.
I took my Firefly: Hurtlin' Through the 'Verse hack I did of Vornheim and cannibalized it for my Shadowrun Complete City Kit and New York City Guide. While there are a few things that have been re-edited/changed, there is also quite a bit of new ideas and stuff for this book. As always the goal was to create this for myself as an easy to use tool for my gaming group, but with the goal of releasing it to the RPG community for their enjoyment. While is a NYC guide and has maps and mentions several of the neighborhoods, it can be used for any Shadowrun sprawl.
I kept this book system-agnostic because I do not any of the Shadowrun rule systems. I use Savage Worlds™. I didn't want to force that decision on others, so kept it easy to use to generate ideas for any persons system of preference.
This can also be used with any other cyberpunk book. Just get rid of the magic and metahumans and you're good to go.
Anyways– Grab some friends, grab some dice, and keep rolling!