Has anyone run the Arcology? Options

[The Jake]

Either the events in Shutdown or the campaign module (forget name)?

- J.

[Fortune]

Brainscan, and yes. Why?

[Ancient History]

Both, yes.

[spotlite]

Yup. Lots. Ran a solo campaign for someone that lasted 3 real time years involving the Arc. That place is the source of more houserules than anything I've ever seen...

Also played in there with another GM, before I'd read the books. Most frightening roleplay experience of our lives and we bottled it and got out without completing our job because we really weren't in that much of a hurry to die...

And I've GMed two normal runs into the Arc post-shutdown. But as I said, we had to houserule lots of things because of player inventiveness and some crucial rules clarity issues in the face of them! So I can give lots of opinion and conjecture, with possibly even a smattering of actual fact thrown in if we're all very lucky, but I could never claim My Word Is Law.

[The Jake]

Sorry for got the name. Brainscan.

Just curious how it went with all of you, your experiences with it, final thoughts, etc.

- J.

[Jason Farlander]

I ran a campaign involving a self-designed arc run followed (a few runs later) by Brainscan (the runners had caught Deus' attention). Half of the party died in the first Arcology run (medusas and bumblebees), and one of the characters died in the final Brainscan run (they were better prepared, but there were also some new threats like the gorgons). Despite the lethality, overall it ended up being, perhaps, the most all-around entertaining campaign I've yet run. My group and I quite thoroughly enjoyed it... though most of the characters decided to retire afterwards. ('twas a bit grating on their nerves...)

Why do you ask?

[The Jake]

Brainscan is probably my favorite campaign, apart from perhaps the UB.

I've always wanted to run it :)

- J.

[Kagetenshi]

I love the place. Use it liberally, if behind-the-scenes most of the time.

~J

[Velocity]

With the help of various Dumpshockers, I'm actually working on a complete re-imagining of the entire arcology concept. It's going quite well. :)

[The Jake]

I was chatting to CircleMaster tonight and he said that Brainscan was awful in that it was all railroading and left little for the PCs to do and the ending was uber-NPCs duking it out leaving the PCs out.

Did anyone else feel this way?

If so, did you rewrite the module or do anything to change it?

- J.

[mfb]

as i understand it, jason levine originally intended to have only the deckers attack Deus, while the rest of the team fought off some kind of bio-experiment breakout.

[D.Generate]

Its only railroading if you run brainscan cover to cover, the way the book is set up you can run the missions all seprate save the last few. I've been mixing in runs and throwing misdirection out everywhere. I find its best to write notes and remeber what you need to and not have th premade book lying around.

Now in my other group only 2 of the current players even know of the shutdown the other 4 have no clue about the events in shadowrun of late. The last thing they know in the time line is big d's death. I talked to the other 2 and told them not to say anything about the shut down to other players and my plan is to get the whole group in the arc on the night of the shutdown. I'm hoping that will be fun and put the fear of god back into their over confident playing styles.

Other than that Arc runs rule and I'm not sure I wantot end the take over on the time line in brainscan. I think having an entity with way more potential power than even a great dragon running the show for quite a while. Plus it makes it good for the nights when plans fall through but gaming must still go on to pull out a quit improv run.....always soemthign in the arc that needs to be found/rescued/destroyed.

Sorry about and horrible mispellings or grammer but its 3 am and only the caffine and the voices are making my hands move right now.

[Kagetenshi]

[CirclMastr]

[Ol' Scratch]

I agree completely with CirclMastr... I really dislike scenarios like Brainscan and Survival of the Fittest as they're "runs" that basically delegate the players to just coming along for the ride, as if they were in a video game or something. Plus any sourcebook that has text to the effect of "and if there was ever a time a GM wanted to screw his players over, now's the time" like Brainscan (or is it Shutdown? I can't remember) well... that really just irks me to no end. Having a scenario where the characters end up getting a datajack forcibly installed if captured, sure, that's cool. Comments like that... not so cool.

But then again, I tend to prefer gaming sessions where I share the storytelling responsibilities with the players as opposed to dictating something to them and just letting them roll dice to kill bad guys and get around obstacles, but otherwise have very little impact on the story itself.

Metaplots are nice for setting the mood and giving a GM something to work with, but they suck for involving the characters in directly unless they're power players on par with the abilities of Harlequinn, Damien Knight and Lowfyr. Even the novels tend to gravitate towards uber munchkiness to keep up with the metaplots. <coughs in the general direction of a certain drake>

[Shockwave_IIc]

Brainscan for me (as GM) was a pretty good set of adventures with the exception of the actual run on the arcology, For me it was like running death trap dungeon. How ever the lead up advantures are quite good and with the exception of a couple you can put your own runs in the middle of them to space out the events.