Well, if you own or have read Mob War or Blood in the Boardroom the style should be immediately familiar, only Ghost Cartels has more detail (maps, NPC stats). However, if you absolutely hated the whole concept of the Adventure Frameworks that were presented in Emergence then you'll probably hate these too.


Which is exactly why adventure frameworks are better! They present the "core" ideas of the adventure but leave all the details open enough that a GM can adapt them to his group. Little details like, I don't know, not assuming that the group has a Hacker in order to run a Trace on some electronic data (right Cain?). The upside of "full" adventures is that they're ready to go, but are (relatively) inflexible. Previous adventure frameworks were flexible but still required a lot of work for the GM to detail locations and NPCs. Ghost Cartels does a good job (IMO) of getting the best of both worlds in that respect.

I'm done my review. It's long. I'm going to post it now.

I ran the second part of this story last night, and I couldn't have asked for a better group to conduct the supplement for. In the end they were able to discover most of the important aspects of the plot and decipher a lot of the necessary legwork. They were friendly towards Marli Brementon and her story threw that pandora's box of morality into the run. The team is currently on the first combat phase for the final battle. The team ended up arriving early and set up 2 snipers outside of the cemetery and with the mage sitting nicely around Jet Black's memorial marker with a very strong invisibility spell. When JB's people arrived (minus Risa) they were greeted by Chicago, the team leader (Ork enforcer with little cyberware and a 5.1 essence rating), and the team's rigger who was waiting in a giant vehicle in the parking lot. After a few tense moments, Chicago decided to meet with the elf privately in the church which is located in the center of the graveyard. The elf surprised Chicago though, by not going into the church and having Chicago enter on his own only to find Risa who slowly emerged from her mist form to greet him.

What happened next was some of the best Shadowrun roleplaying that I have experienced in my brief time as a player of roleplaying games. The entire run the team has been debating the question of whether or not the original Johnson was telling the truth about the run, and continued to debate even then they find out about K-Spot and his son Kerwin Loomis from Marli. With the team split 50/50 about whether or not to betray their Johnson or give the disk to Risa and company..it came down to Chicago who decided that he did not want to turn his back on a Johnson. But it was fascinating to see the exchange between Risa and Chicago, as they debated between the professionalism and word of a Shadowrun team against the depreciation of true art and form of expression in the 2070 simsense sub-culture. The team was actually questioning the run as they began to think about how they would feel if someone was trying to profit off their hard work, ala what is going on with the archaic media file.

The session ended just at the beginning of the first action phase in the initial combat turn. As it stands, Chicago is squared off against Risa in the church. His lover Jackie O is trying to get through a mage and the elf in order to assist him in the battle. The rigger is surrounded by three thugs who are about to go medieval on them, and the two snipers positioned outside of the cemetery are about to receive a nasty surprise because they have just discovered the Shangra La's spy drone. Next session the team will have some backup with two players who were supposed to join us but were unable to. Can't wait to see this all plays out.

I'm glad you're having fun. In the end, that trumps all of those "gamey" arguments.

Quoted for the truth.

Wanted to bump this thread and illeteriate the fact that this adventure is an excellent guide/resource for new GMs to the Shadowrun universe. GMing Shadowrun (And even playing it) can be very stressful, especially for new game masters, because of all of the rules, modifiers, equipment, and overall complexity of the game and system.

The creative team did a good job breaking down the adventure event by event and section by section. They give you rules on how to accomplish all of the roles and tasks that a PC might try to perform to move the story along. Such as how to hack into a commlink, how to conduct large combat situations, basics on security systems, basics on magic, etc. The module also contains quick references to the Core Rule Book in case there is a in game question so you don't need to go and flip through the book to find a ruling for five minutes.

Believe one of the reasons why the story itself isn't on par with Ghost Cartels is that since the adventure is geared towards new players, the writers tried to keep the plot simple and the threats challenging yet not death con 1 for new players.

I still use this module for adventure seeds and a quick references on how to play the game/GM.

There have been a few threads about new players and new GM's whom are either returning to the game or playing it for the first time. If you're a new GM, you should read this adventure because it's a nice introduction to the game. And PCs don't read the negative reviews about the story, because it's not bad, and you'll have plenty of stuff to do.

By all means, read it; it *is* a good guide to the SR4.0 BBB. But as an adventure, it's mediocre. The amount of railroading required alone means this is a middling adventure at best.

While normally Id get a good laugh out of the resurrection of a plot piece from "One Stage Before"(FASA 7312), I had the misfortune of that being my first ever published adventure run by my first SR GM. I loath it with a passion that I cant begin to describe. 3 sharpshooters with rifles 8, and 5 street sams with wired reflexes 3, against a pistols adept, a van rigger, and an otaku, non of which had any .

But yes, I thumbed thru 'On the Run' at my FLGS and its.... not the greatest. If you want to play a real serious game, its not at all what you want to use. Any time that plot says that to advance the adventure as written you need to break a cardinal rule of running (Don't open the package, ever.), that's just not cool. I could not use this with my normal group.

It's a staple of fiction (and rpg's) that characters/players will do anything you tell them not to do,eventually.

Agreed it was an oversight by the author to not at least address the issue of the players wanting to stop the run after getting the disk, but its certainly not difficult to overcome from a GM standpoint. My player did exactly the same thing, I simply had the Johnson instruct them to verify the contents of the disk as genuine and offer them additional pay for the trouble.

That's a good idea, wish I'd thought of it. I ran this adventure last year when our Shadowrun group first started. My PCs missed the entire 2nd half of the adventure because they refused to be curious about the contents of the disk, and went straight to Mr. Johnson.

I had to railroad the PC's a LOT on this adventure to get them into the scenes that were described. Even THEN they came up with completely odd-ball ways of resolving the scenes.

For example, the scene where the PC's steal the Commlink from the Orc rock star near the beginning. There's listed many many ways the PCs can get inside the concert venue and get backstage and hack/steal the Commlink.

The hardest part at this point was explaining to my new players why they couldn't simply hack the Commlink from the Matrix, why they needed to go get it.

ANYWAYS.

My players went and hired orc prostitutes to distract the bouncers at the entrance. Then the shaman of the group shapechanged into a raven, waited for someone to open the door to the dressing room where the Commlink was, flew in, and flew out with it.

But even with multiple attempts to railroad them into investigating the content of the disk, the players still wanted to just meet up with Johnson and get the payoff. They were too concerned with their Shadowrun reputation, and didn't want to do anything to piss off Mr. Johnson.

From a GM's perspective though, I learned a lot from reading through this run... ironically what TO do and what NOT to do as a GM.

Nice. Players should be rewarded for ingenuity. There's nothing wrong with the way your players accomplished that. However, considering it was supposed to be a run for new GM's, the adventure text should have clearly explained the reasons why the commlink couldn't be hacked from the world-wide Matrix (you don't know his Access ID, even if you did, the commlink is off).

Shouldn't that be: Never betray a Johnson until you have proof he intends to betray you.

And the addendum to that: Assume the Johnson is going to betray you, have the double-cross ready for when he does.

Imp

Oh...yes...I ran one stage before with my old group, as an opener to a campaign, because I had not had time to prep it, and, well, hey! Here is an adventure on my shelf! Yup..it is third edition..OK..yeah..that solved that...

It was hilarious when my players pretty much utterly destroyed everything by virtue of such things as: having a sea-copter for their rigger, having thermographic vision...and having an Oyabun as a Friend for Life, and having contacts with a go-gang already...However, it was also an absolute blast to run, because of how FUBARed it was!

I was wondering what all this "don't poke your nose into Mr. Johnson's business" stuff came from. I mean, "Buzzkill" from SR4 shows a team actively not trusting Mr. Johnson, and as a result getting out reasonably alive. I'm fairly certain that's not the only bit of fiction that holds finding out as much as possible about a job as an exemplar of how to be a shadowrunner.

It's interesting to me that the "be professional" sentiment runs counter to the "rage-against-the-machine" mentality of the runner subculture. If it was me I'd be cracking that bitch open even if I was told not to but that's just how I roll.

Apparently there are two terminal points on the shadowrunner sliding scale... the Company Man/Soldier vs. The Free-Thinking Anarchist. Neither extreme is the correct one and staying at one end will eventually get you burned (depending on your GM, naturally).

Any good group should have at least one character at each terminus. Not only does it provide different work methods, it provides odd couple style hilarity outside of work.


BlueMax
/"Who got their pink hair dye on my straight razor!?"

Quoted FTW.

Opposing viewpoints on professionalism makes for good roleplaying.

I agree with Malachi. There are flaws in the transitions from scene to scene in the adventure, but a GM can work around them. Initially my team was not going to accept the job presented to them because they felt as if it was to much of a needle in the hay stack story.

Two things.

1. The adventure was written during the initial days of the SR 4th Edition when FanPro was still trying to get a tone for the the 4th edition. "On the Run." was a guinea pig for the game at the time it might have been what the writers and developers of SR 4th had geared for the game. There is a good chance in the upcoming "Runner's Toolkit" package CGL is coming out with in conjunction with SR4.5 the editors will have cleaned up some of the transitional messes in the original incarnation of "On the Run."

2. The adventure is geared for new players, and new player characters in general. From the opening description and tell it as it is portion, the runners are brand new to the Seattle Shadows. Thus, this is their first adventure and job in the 6th world. The way I saw the run, is that heck runners have to pay their dues before being hired for the prestige jobs. "On the Run." is a "okay you get payed minimum wage for an incredibly taxing job" kind of run. If the mission is played out in it's entire version, there is a good chance that the runners can come out of the adventure with a boat load of new contacts, which is a benefit outside of the monetary rewards.