Margin Calls is a plot sourcebook for Shadowrun, Sixth World (6E) published by Catalyst Game Labs. Released in 2025, it follows the upheavals set off by the Lethal Harvest metaplot and focuses on corporate power shifts, economic fallout, and the changing dynamics of big business in the Sixth World. The book is available in both hardcover and PDF formats.
In Margin Calls, the “game” of corporate ascendancy becomes a central narrative current in the world of shadowrunning: megacorps scramble to recover, adapt, or collapse as the economic ground continues to shift, leaving opportunity and risk in equal measure.
🏢 What’s Inside — Structure & Core Material
Unlike traditional adventure modules that guide a group through a specific sequence of missions, Margin Calls is best understood as a strategic backdrop and plot engine for corporate intrigue campaigns.
📊 Corporate Landscape Updates
The bulk of the sourcebook is dedicated to detailed updates on AAA-rated megacorporations — the biggest economic and geopolitical actors in the Sixth World. It explains how these corporations survived and evolved after Lethal Harvest, what power they have reclaimed, and which have risen (or fallen) in their stead. It also highlights emerging corporate powers poised to upset the established order.
These sections are heavy on narrative and strategic overview, giving the GM a vivid picture of the economic ecosystem players operate within, as well as potential motives and rivalries that can drive dramatic tension at crunch time.
🔍 Business, Beneath the Shadow
In Margin Calls, the focus is less on specific runner missions and more on the big picture of economic conflict — market downturns vs. upswings, strategic mergers and assassinations, and the everyday calculations of risk vs. reward that govern Sixth World commerce. The metaphor of a “margin call” from financial markets — when debts come due and assets need to cover liabilities — is used narratively to reflect how corps and runners alike must pay their dues or face collapse.
This corporate focus extends to the street level as well: the knock-on effects of megacorps jockeying for position ripple into the shadows, generating runner hooks, black ops, and underworld machinations.
🕶️ Setting & Faction Dynamics
While some plot books lean strongly into action sequences, Margin Calls invites the GM to build intrigue and tension from economic positions and shifting alliances. Its strengths include:
- Megacorp Strategy & Motivation: Each major player is given context — what resources they control, where they’re weak, and how they plan to leverage opportunities. This helps referees color runs and NPC motives beyond superficial “kill or steal” missions.
- Conflict Drivers: The book supplies narrative threads connecting corporate politics to street-level consequences, where shadowrunners can be hired to tip balances, sabotage plans, or extract valuable information.
- Emerging Entities: New and rising corporations are spotlighted, offering fresh allies and antagonists for campaigns.
In this sense, Margin Calls is arguably as much a Runner Resource Book as it is a plot tome, giving GMs setting currency to ground shadowruns in a living, breathing corporate competitive landscape.
🧠 Narrative Tone & Campaign Use
Margin Calls sets a tone that is corporate thriller, economic warfare, and shadow conflict rolled into one. It leans into markets as theatre: deals, takeovers, and power plays are just another form of conflict, and runners may find themselves caught in the swirls — or hired to generate them.
📈 Strengths
- Campaign Context: For groups that enjoy worldbuilding and setting depth, Margin Calls delivers a rich backdrop that can cultivate multiple arcs without dictating them.
- Adaptable Hooks: Because the content is primarily narrative and descriptive, referees can extract runner hooks that align with their playstyle — from espionage and corporate infiltration to leveraging economic uncertainty for profit.
- Street & Corporate Interplay: The supplement doesn’t just describe boardrooms — it connects corporate upheavals to shadow economies and underground marketplaces, tying macro and micro play together.
⚠ Considerations
- Not Mission-Heavy: Unlike adventure modules with scripted runs and maps, Margin Calls delivers setting and plot scaffolding rather than prewritten missions. GMs expecting a sequence of ready-to-run encounters with maps and stat blocks will find little of that here.
- Preparation Required: Because much of the material is descriptive, a GM may need to invest prep time to turn corporate overviews into playable scenes — briefings, run hooks, and conflict escalations.
- Lore-Intensive: The focus on post-war corporate fallout makes this book heavier on context and less on immediate action, which can be a boon or a hurdle depending on your group’s tastes and pacing.
🧩 How It Fits Into 6E Play
Margin Calls slots neatly into the broader Sixth World narrative arc by exploring the fallout, reconstruction, and new order following a major shadow war. In doing so, it creates a foundation for campaigns that span multiple themes:
- Strategic corporate rivalry
- Runner involvement in high-stakes economic sabotage
- Factional manipulation and black ops
- Business incentives as motivators for shadow activity
Because it deals with the aftermath of a major metaplot event, the sourcebook functions well as a transition point between big narrative arcs (e.g., from Lethal Harvest) and localized campaigns focused on street-level consequences.
🗡 Final Verdict
Margin Calls is an ambitious, narrative-heavy corporate plot sourcebook that prioritizes setting depth and strategic context over prebuilt missions. It excels as a reference and plot scaffolding tool for GMs who want to ground their campaigns in the shifting tides of megacorporate power following major events in the Sixth World.
If you prefer mission-driven modules with ready-to-run content, this book may feel like preparatory reading rather than table-ready pages — but for groups that enjoy weaving their own runs from a richly described backdrop of corporate intrigue and economic tension, Margin Calls provides fertile ground.
Recommended for: referees and players who enjoy corporate politics, emergent campaign hooks, and worldbuilding.
Less suitable for: those who want scripted missions, sets of stat blocks, and quick plug-and-play engagements.