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Dumpshock Forums _ Shadowrun Missions _ Review: SRM03-01 Ready, Set, Gogh
Posted by: SaintHax Apr 26 2010, 06:51 PM
More minor editing errors-- Everyone's Your Friend appearing on the footer of Map #2, etc. I enjoyed this mod, but to be fair some of my gaming group thought it was on the verge of the silly side. While the Johnson did need to be slapped, the premise seemed very feasible to me.
I am on the fence about this part though
[ Spoiler ]
The mod "teaches" us that unprofessional Johnsons need to be controlled-- I like this reinforcement, but we dismissed his activities as bad writing (assumption) and suspended some realism and role playing b/c of this to speed up play. I expect that this lesson will be followed by the SRM staff editing out scenes like this that are just bad writing-- I want consistency, and then I'll like this addition.
There's a lot of detail in this mod: maps, security, art exhibits (which interested me enough to look at ALL of them, even a menu handout. There was also a point that stopped the table for ethics, or in my table's case "professionalism" discussion: could we do something. The higher thinking moment, rewarding combat (option), and details made this an enjoyable mod for me. In addition, the rewards (and even some of the corporate affiliations goals/rewards) were nice too.
All that sunny stuff, I do have one pretty big complaint: TR scaling. Wow, was this missed! There's a huge jump at TR 3, and then it levels out a lot.
Posted by: Silver12 Apr 26 2010, 11:43 PM
I've never GM'd this mod, nor have I read it, but I have to say when I played it last year I had a great time!
I enjoyed trying to figure out how to accomplish the main goal of the mission and, one of my favorite fight scenes was in this mod.
Thought it was interesting, and yes, a little silly to some extent, but for me that actually made it more fun.
As a player, I wasn't ever bored, and again, I had a really good time playing. A good table and a good GM obviously helped...
Posted by: DWC Apr 28 2010, 02:57 PM
Loved this module, though it did lead to part of the event discussed in my comments on SRM3-00.
[ Spoiler ]
I've been a MoMA fan since I visited it on a class trip in high school. Liked the place so much that I maintained a student membership all through college and went at least once a month, so revisting the place was really neat.
Initially there was a bit of confusion over which museum we were hitting. Don't recall whether it was the GM or one of the players who kept mixing up the Met and the MoMA, but we almost wound up breaking into the Met, which would have been really, really awkward. That was just one of several places where we overcomplicated things. Getting a van to steal the tank turned into a long and bizarre tangent, and our overthinking getting the tank from Deltona's place turned a simple in and out into a near catastrophe.
As weird as the interaction with Deltona was, I kind of liked it. The dichotomy between Deltona's demeanor and Hong's neatly distinguished the "do a favor for a crazy rich guy" part of the module and the "you're being hired by corporate security" portion. The impressions made also played into how my PC viewed Hong when he came across him later on in SRM3-00, by the way.
As for the challenge ramping up at TR3, I took a look through this one after playing it and I have to agree. The combination of the increase in staff and the TR dice make trying to stealth past them quite tough, and the layout of the museum makes trying to brute force in and out extremely difficult, especially when carrying an aquarium. It's definitely something not to be attempted at TR6 without a very, very solid hacker and a very slick team.
Posted by: SaintHax May 3 2010, 12:48 PM
Oh, forgot these-- some minor "reality" errors that should have been caught in editing. One bothered a teammate more than me:
[ Spoiler ]
During the meet w/ Ieto, he somehow get's your commlink number. Our hacker thought it was hacked, and it's extremely doubtful that anyone would have hacked our hacker's commlink, or us under his protection. So, there should have been something explaining this that wasn't dues ex machina.
At the same meet, the Guardian spirit was described as "looking exactly like any other member of Mr. Hong's security, except his shades don't come off in combat". This implies he passes for human to people not viewing astral-- which goes against RAW. Spirits always look like spirits no matter what manifestion they take, unless they have "Realistic Form" power (SM pg. 95).
Posted by: LurkerOutThere May 3 2010, 07:04 PM
In response to Sainthax:
[ Spoiler ]
The spirit in question does indeed have the realistic form power. The comlink rining thing didn't bother me is Horizon is the the information sifting corp, getting someone's comcode number should have been child's play. TR Scaling was kind of missed but I felt the added dice was handy to have as it gave a sense of where they were from a non combat perspective (stealth, social engineering).
Posted by: SaintHax May 4 2010, 12:32 PM
QUOTE (LurkerOutThere @ May 3 2010, 03:04 PM)
In response to Sainthax:
[ Spoiler ]
The spirit in question does indeed have the realistic form power. The comlink rining thing didn't bother me is Horizon is the the information sifting corp, getting someone's comcode number should have been child's play. TR Scaling was kind of missed but I felt the added dice was handy to have as it gave a sense of where they were from a non combat perspective (stealth, social engineering).
Oh, the first part bothers me more
[ Spoiler ]
It does have realistic form in the write up, I didn't check as that makes no sense to me. That would make it either an Ally spirit (not the case, b/c there's no mage in the party, and it's too personal for anyone to lend out independently) or a Free spirit-- which should be a TR 5+ thing. In addition, if it was a free spirit (that should have been noted) it would have had other powers not listed (e.g. Banishing Resistance, as does an Ally spirit).
The text says that the spirit (not listed as an ally spirit-- which has different rules) is on loan to Ieto. While a mage may loan out a summon or bound spirit, they are not ever lending out an ally spirit. It seems to me that Realistic form was given to this spirit as an off the cuff decision, and I'm not a fan of it. Very unrealistic (I mean ShadowRun realism, of course) to me.
I still like the mod, but this was an error, IMO
Posted by: LurkerOutThere May 4 2010, 09:11 PM
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Well given his position of power and importance I can entirely see an ally spirit being loaned by a sec mage to Ieto, perhaps his own personal security mage did so because he was unable to be present. I totally agree with you that the whole thing feels very much "wouldn't it be cool if" but at the same time the nuts and bolts arn't there. Once again Ieto is completely defenseless against spells. I kind of got the feeling that Fense was a story thread they were putting in for later that might have never got picked up.
Posted by: DWC May 5 2010, 03:25 PM
[ Spoiler ]
Unless there's something else weird about it, the guardian spirit should have Magical Guard, which provides Ieto with all the spell defense that a magician would provide, along with Fear, which is crippling at high forces even when it isn't backed up by a few TR dice.
Posted by: Chance359 Jul 6 2010, 04:06 PM
I just ran this last night for my local group, which had a balanced crew of 2 sams, 2 technomancers, a drone Rigger (from the book), and a mage. They ran at table rating 5.
[ Spoiler ]
The initial meet went well, one of the technomancers was set up as a pornomancer, he pulled 4 net success resulting in a payment of 15,250 which by missions standards is a goldmine.
My first problem while theres a couple of dozen guards,, there's no stated museum administrator. So I had to come up with one, who the team proceeded to kidnap and replace with their face. They broke into his apartment with the intention of offering a choice between his morning coffee and a Laes ciggarette or a couple of gunshots.
During his struggles he was shot multiple times and his doc wagon bracelet started screaming. After a few good con rolls and some spoofing by the other technomancer the face conned doc wagon and then got the team out with the target intact.
Then things went to hell. The team took major offense to Ieto's opening spiel including blackmail. We ended up having to edit and rewind back to before Ieto made his offer. Eventually after explaining how the value of what he was offering was worth more, the team accepted and re stole the painting.
My problems with this mod are the following
[ Spoiler ]
Giving the GM all the information about how to fight their way into and out of the Museum, but nothing about how to social their way in.
I didn't care for how in the first couple of missions, there was always a bonus round. Just when you think you've finished the GM pulls out more to do.
Ieto's reward for stealing the painting should be increased, especially if he is willing to throw out blackmail in his opening negotiations.
Posted by: LurkerOutThere Jul 6 2010, 05:22 PM
I was at chance's table last night so i'll throw in a response.
[ Spoiler ]
Actually Ieto's pay isn't that bad for what is essentially a half hour job, the problem is he tries to have you do the job for no play and not getting blackmailed initially which is part of why we were really leaning towards murdering him. Basically Ieto walks into a situation where his personal position is rather weak and threatens armed shadowrunners with a threat that he can't really follow up on without bruning his objective in the process.
Posted by: SaintHax Jul 6 2010, 06:08 PM
Payment error
[ Spoiler ]
QUOTE (Chance359 @ Jul 6 2010, 11:06 AM)
The initial meet went well, one of the technomancers was set up as a pornomancer, he pulled 4 net success resulting in a payment of 15,250 which by missions standards is a goldmine.
4k base + (1k * TR) starts you at 9k/runner @ TR5 for this adventure. Plus 250/net neg. hit (max 5), gives you 1k more for your 4 net hits. Should be 10k, your runners got a big bump.
As a side note, I've seen a lot of payouts vary greatly between GM's.
Posted by: LurkerOutThere Jul 6 2010, 06:36 PM
It's 250 X TR per net hits, his math should be right. As the pornomancer in question I think I did my bit for the team then and there. 
Of coruse then over the course of the rest of the mission I had to shoot myself.
Posted by: Chance359 Jul 6 2010, 06:45 PM
"Each net hit will raise the price (250¥ * TR) to a maximum of 5."
I read that as for every point of table rating, increase it by 250, so TR 5 should be 1250 per hit. The face spent edge to max his hits which gives him a total of 6250 from negotiations + 9000 from the initial offer.
Posted by: Bull Jul 6 2010, 07:14 PM
Missions payouts are... Screwy. For Season 3, there weren't any good guidelines for what Missions should pay, and each writer had different ideas. You could get crazy good pay for some relatively easy Missions, and so little money for really tough jobs that you go "WHy the HELL would my character even consider this"? (Burning bridges comes to mind for that last one. I know that had I not wanted the karma and to run the mission, my character would have walked away from it).
We're hoping to set some better guidelines for a lot of this stuff in Season 4.
(I know, I know, I say "Season 4" a lot. Can't be helped. It's a little ways off yet, but it's the first place we'll get the chance to implement these things. With the Promotion System going into effect, it'll also be a chance to put a lot of characters on a level playing field for these new rules and guidelines as well.)
Bull
Posted by: SaintHax Jul 6 2010, 07:29 PM
QUOTE (LurkerOutThere @ Jul 6 2010, 01:36 PM)
It's 250 X TR per net hits, his math should be right. As the pornomancer in question I think I did my bit for the team then and there.
Of coruse then over the course of the rest of the mission I had to shoot myself.
*doh* A.D.D. text skimming get's me again
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