Review: SRM03-03 Burning Bridges, A SaintHax review Options

[SaintHax]

After playing this mod at GenCon 2009, I finally have read it. I feel for the most part this was a well written mod for what it was.

The fixer meeting was a nice change that will probably go unnoticed by many. The location and GM detail set the adventure in motion, and the box text was (thankfully) missing any annoying statements that have nothing to do with your character-- nothing that stated you were broke, even though you are playing at TR5/6 and can't decide how to spend your next 100k of nuyen. The mod also gave references to where things are located in your collection of books to look up (GM's everywhere rejoice).

What it is: it's really one big strategic puzzle to solve. There's very little story to be had, but plenty of opportunity to circumvent security and defenses-- or possibly hammer your way through the problem, though I'd guess that would be very messy. IMO, these normally play better with 4-5 players and more than that you normally have enough table discussion as to drag you down. Little story, but very detailed mod.

What I didn’t' like about it, was it didn't scale well. Despite the normal scaling problems, the idea didn't scale to me. This mission should be something that TR4+ pulls off. It would have been a good Prime Runner mod. A green table executing this successfully feels off. Overall it was fun to play, but probably not one I'll talk about later. The difficulty kept me attentive at the table, but the lack of a plot keeps it from being something I'm going to "ew" and "ah" over.

[Black Jack Rackh...]

Thanks for the feedback. Nice to hear the good (and bad) about my mods.

I agree that one of the most irritating things about the Denver Mods was the "You're-perpetually-broke-and-here's-how-you-feel" So very early in my writing I worked very hard to ensure that I left the roleplaying to the players.

The real purpose of the module was twofold. It opened the possiblility of a NYPD Inc. subplot (through events I outlined for the original in In and Out). It also allowed me to introduce Peace Man (who later was added to an earlier adventure, thus making this moot) who is the central figure for the three adventure storyarc I had planned as the main subplot for my additions to NYC Missions (you can play the first two Jackknifed! and Food Poisioning, but alas, the third titled A Pound of Flesh will not see the light of day (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif) ).

Mark

EDIT: and for my money I agree with the scaling issue. I just thought Missions gives so few chances to simply Go Crazy with Explosives that someone ought to help out.

[Wasabi]

[ Spoiler ]

Half our table walked away at the thought of using terrorism on a national landmark. While that may be the exception and not the norm it sure would have been nice to have a white dove option so keeping our character's IP morals consistent didnt earn the politically correct response we got:
(Paraphrased, but not by much): 'I'm sorry, even though the time slot just started we can't run it for alts of y'all because you can't repeat a mission and even though you didn't complete the mission it counts as attempting it.'

It sure would be nice to include a GM-discretion White Dove option on a case-by-case basis.
(And yes, I know some white dove options are meant as a surprise and are worth extra karma for being willing to walk away.
If its mid-mission party-optimization being thwarted as the cause of leaving such a clause out make it worth 2 less karma to the swapping player(s).

None of the PLAYERS objected to the mission. The objection was from some of our CHARACTERS and the characters objecting were mission-critical. [Mage, Rigger]

[RobertB]

[ Spoiler ]

Half our table walked away at the thought of using terrorism on a national landmark. While that may be the exception and not the norm it sure would have been nice to have a white dove option so keeping our character's IP morals consistent didnt earn the politically correct response we got:
(Paraphrased, but not by much): 'I'm sorry, even though the time slot just started we can't run it for alts of y'all because you can't repeat a mission and even though you didn't complete the mission it counts as attempting it.'

It sure would be nice to include a GM-discretion White Dove option on a case-by-case basis.
(And yes, I know some white dove options are meant as a surprise and are worth extra karma for being willing to walk away.
If its mid-mission party-optimization being thwarted as the cause of leaving such a clause out make it worth 2 less karma to the swapping player(s).

None of the PLAYERS objected to the mission. The objection was from some of our CHARACTERS and the characters objecting were mission-critical. [Mage, Rigger]

Since I was the rigger in question, let me post my thoughts:

[ Spoiler ]

As shadowrunners, we are supposed to represent deniable assets in a city that is presented as being locked down tighter than a drum. Then along comes this dude who is either inexperienced, or playing at being inexperienced who asks us to blow up a bridge. Neither situation is ideal since you're either working for a noob, or you're being set up. And he doesn't ask you to blow up just any bridge, but a national landmark. And not just any landmark, but one that is used by thousands of people every day. Putting aside the morality of potentially killing thousands of people, let's consider the professional repercussions of such an event. Your group has just committed an act of terrorism. Something that's not going to be chalked up to a little corporate espionage by the powers-that-be. You've just caused billions of nuyen of harm to the local economy. Not just the cost of repairing the bridge, but the cost in lost production hours from the thousands (perhaps tens of thousands) of workers for whom you've just removed a major traffic artery for getting to/from work. No way are the corps going to want to do business with your team after that. In fact, I suspect they would be helping any federal authorities who might be searching for said team.

I'm sorry, I had to play to my character's motivations. He would like to enjoy some of the money he's been making. Can't do that from the inside of a federal penitentiary.

The whole situation could have been written with a different mark in place. For instance, use Ellis Island, make it clear that the place hasn't seen a tourist in years, it's national landmark status has been revoked by the corporate council, and that it is scheduled for demolition, but that the demo has been held up by a radical group of Historical Preservation Society folks. Then you can use all the same motivations for your NPC. (I've read the mod now that I've "played" it.)

I run a home game, and my players will tell you that I hate it when an adventure breaks what I consider a "reality" for the setting.

BTW, I don't post this to break the author's balls. You certainly don't see me submitting any adventure ideas. But I do post this to perhaps give a little insight into character motivations for future mod writers. Thanks for reading.

Robert (aka Spanner)

[SaintHax]

@RobertB, that's my motivation for posting reviews-- and I'll get around to all the mods. Many of us will play them all just b/c they are SRM mods and we are karma junkies. However, the hope is the feedback gives SRM staff (who edit and advise) and writers an idea of what we like, don't like, and how a subsection of us roleplay.

[ Spoiler ]

While I can understand objections to taking this, I think the mod explained some of them away. We also have a real world knowledge vs. SR world. No where does it say in 2070 the bridge is a national monument-- in fact, it was scheduled to be rebuilt, so maybe it was being replaced b/c of this. If we can believe in dragons and fire spirits, we can believe that the Brooklyn Bridge is no longer a national monument (and that the south successfully left the union and became the CAS, things have changed).

The mission was also to do this with no or minimum collateral damage-- so part of the challenge was not to kill innocents. The motivation was strictly corperate again, and we checked before accepting-- it would be rebuilt.

The inexperienced Johnson did have us do more legwork than usual before we started though-- and we did suspect a set up the whole time. I never really thought of this as terrorism, since the motivation was not to spread terror. I really isn't, but could be labeled that by the news (and probably would have been). However, I've already committed so many crimes by now, it didn't register. If we could pull it off with no commuter casualties, then it's ok.

BTW, I'm definitely against extra rewards for taking a White Dove option. That implies a different playing style is better than another. It should be an equal reward.

[Bull]

As a note, I'm definitely reading the reviews. Please keep them up. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Granted, Dumpshock is a very small and specialized sampling, and we also have some feedback we've gotten at the conventions, but still... Any feedback is better than no feedback.

We're hitting BUrning Bridges in a couple weeks with our home SRM game. It should be interesting to see how the other players react. Since I've GMed this one, I'll be playing a bit more passibly, letting the rest of the group make the decisions and plans. But then, RUsh is pretty amoral, and he's not really much of a planner. So it works out (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Bull

[DWC]

I actually really enjoyed Burning Bridges. It's probably my favorite Missions module to date. You are presented with a puzzle, then given an amount of time to solve it, with a few constraints beyond the normal for the story arc. A few twists get thrown in, but most of it still boils down to find a solution to the problem and implement it. Along the way, there's plenty of time for the character to reflect on the actions the job requires, and a huge amount of leeway in how the puzzle is solved.

I'd also like to chime in against adding white dove options to Missions. Instead, I like the idea of making allowances for players to swap to a different character after the first scene (but before the Affiliation tasks come out) if the pitch for the job is something the PC wouldn't do.

[Warlordtheft]

In spoiler tags to not give the mission away, but here are my quips/comment:

[ Spoiler ]

I'll say this, those Humanis terrorists---somebody like the FBI should really do something about them and stop focusing of the metas just for being meta...... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)
-Chrome Demon (Troll Lead Guitarist for Demon Spawn) to reporter when asked about said incident on a ORC rights Matrix Forum.

To me the trick wasn't so much causing the damage. It was doing the deed and getting away with it.

My thoughts-home game btw-I almost refused the mission as the Johnson acted like a noob. The number of corporations (b/c of the affiliations) that knew what the frag we were doing, also made me want to scrap the whole thing. All this despite our best effort s to keep it off radar.

[rumanchu]

My group took to the mission like a duck to water...but we *did* have a funny moment in our RP Wave between sessions.

[ Spoiler ]

We had been going on and in (in character) about our plans for how we were going to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge, when someone stepped OOC and said something along the lines of, "We should make this clear that we aren't *actually* planning to blow up the *real* Brooklyn Bridge. Just in case."

[LurkerOutThere]

Just ran this a few days ago, still hoping for a chance to play it commentary is below:

[ Spoiler ]

Well right off the bat my group freaked out, and I can't say that I blame them, even though the payment was fairly generous when all was said and done they still felt like they were underpaid.

The security at the bridge seemed really hap hazard an amazing number of guards topside but only dumb drones watching the maintenance area? Additionally matrix security (as usual) wasn't very well laid out, is the caisson a node, how far does it's signal reach, how far does the DWTS systems signal reach, why is it's device rating so pathetic (as in any monkey with a comlink could break in)? As per usual for the team they did the best to have their ducks in the row to do an infiltration inserting a delivery into the DPW system. Since there was no actual checkpoint at the DPW entrance other then the drones there wasn't even anything for the face to do there. They did get into a bit of a jam on the way out but that was pretty swiftly spotted as all the drones had absolutely terrible pools. In retrospect I should have had the rigger jump in to one, but even then it would have bene too little too late.

Addendum: I'm not ragging on the module it was quite enjoyable to play and run it just felt like there were some kind of glaring oversites, perhaps by design. Additionally thank you thank you thank you for not repeating the ridiculous "your broke and you feel bad" trend from Denver.

[rumanchu]

Just ran this a few days ago, still hoping for a chance to play it commentary is below:

[ Spoiler ]

Well right off the bat my group freaked out, and I can't say that I blame them, even though the payment was fairly generous when all was said and done they still felt like they were underpaid.

The security at the bridge seemed really hap hazard an amazing number of guards topside but only dumb drones watching the maintenance area? Additionally matric securty (as usual) wasn't very well laid out, is the caison a node, how far does it's signal reach, how far does the DWTS systems signal reach, why is it's device rating so pathetic (as in any monkey with a comlink could break in). As per usual for the team they did the best to have their ducks in the row to do an infiltration inserting a delivery into the DPW system. Since there was no actual checkpoint at the DPW entrance other then the drones there wasn't evne anything for the face to do there. THey did get into a bit of a jame on the way out but that was pretty swiftly spotted as all the drones had absolutely terrible pools. In retrospect I should have had the rigger jump in to one, but even then it would have bene too little too late.

Addendum: I'm not ragging on the module it was quite enjoyable to play and run it just felt like there were some kind of glaring oversites, perhaps by design. Additionally thank you thank you thank you for not repeating the ridiculous "your broke and you feel bad" trend from Denver.

You know, the funny thing is

[ Spoiler ]

My group jumped at the chance to blow a bridge up -- the payment was certainly secondary to the "freedom" to use heavy explosives to completely destroy something. On the other hand: I made sure to play up the fact that the bridge was not the revered landmark that it is today, and a large part of the planning for the demolition was centered on clearing the bridge of civilians.