An SR5 actual game report Options

[Backgammon]

So, before I begin, just for full disclosure: while I am a CGL Freelancer, I did not work in any way, nor did I have any input on the development of SR5. That's that, read the rest as you will.

Last night was my group's game. We are currently running the Coin of Luck mission from Corporate Intrigue (which, incidentally, is an amazing campaign book. I highly recommend it). This was our first game with SR5, everyone having converted all their chars and etc. One did not have much time, so he outright switched his character to the Brawler Adept, which is close enough to what he had before.

The team had just entered the dreaded Kowloon Walled City. First thing they ecounter are some thugs beating up a man in front of his child. Turns out the Brawling Adept has a Code of Honor that doesn't like that, so she steps in. Words are spoken, threats are made, but the gangers won't back down (narrowly failed Intimidation test). After some posturing, the biggest of them goes mano-a-womano with the brawler to settle things. Our first taste of very basic SR5 combat. Rolls are fluid, and moments later, after suffering a minor cut from the ganger's knife jab, the brawler puts the ganger down. So far, so good.

Next, the continue on into a "building", more like a pile of rubble, and cross over to the next one via a narrow plank walkway. The toll sammy's weight causes it to collapse, but his Gymnastics 6 allow him to nimbly scramble safely to the other side. Once there, the team's hacker runs a perimeter search for Silent icons. He rolls wells, and spots a gaggle a few feet below them. Hmm. This is unusualy in Kowloon Walled City, where few people have any Matrix devices. He beings investigating, randomly Perceiving the Icons for more details. He encounters a commlink, which he Hacks-on-the-Fly. Gaining a Mark on it, it turns out it's the Master device for a bunch of other sutff, uincluding cybereyes. So, having hacked that stuff, he proceeds to pipe into the cybereyes and gains field of vision. Black Chrysanthemum Triad members and brokering a organ deal with Ghouls. Wow, would have been bad if they'd just stumbled into that, so everyone thanks the hacker. The team decides these scumbags deserve no mercy, so the sniper gets into position and the rest of the team advances. The hacker continues to wrack havok. He trips an alarm on another ganger's commlink. The meeting being typically tense, the Triad assume the Ghouls are pulling something and weapons are drawn, though not immediately fired. Unfortunately for them, the hacker continues his merry game, and hacks a gun and causes it to fire a round. That's enough to ignite that poweder keg, and shooting commences. The sniper makes a few gangers explode while the team engages two Triads trying to make a run for it in melee. Another very fluid round of dice rolling sees the Brawler use Called Shots to Disarm a Triad before the Troll and Brawler beat the Triads up. Everyone cheers when the brawler kicks the gun out of the Triad's hands - a cool move for sure! And everyone shakes their heads sadly when the sniper causes something like 14P of damage in a single shot to a poor Triad guy.

The team moves on, reaching a suspicious looking courtyard formed by 4 buildings. Pretty juicy spot for an ambush. They have no real reason to expect one, but Shadowrunners are a paranoid lot, so they advance cautiously. Of course, paranoia is a healthy thing. Turns out there IS an ambush. The sniper's background includes the Enemy quality, which (while he doesn't know quite all of this) is in fact the Fallen from Quebec (the sniper's homeland). Now, those Very Scary and Cunning Psycho Bastards are bad-ass motherfuckers, but Hong Kong is a long way from Quebec, so what's reaching out to the runners is a locally hired team of runners (I grabbed 5 of the archetypes from SR5). Their team hacker is very competant, so a stealthy battle of detection between the Player's hacker and the opposition begins. The opfor gets an in in that the sniper, because he's a paranoid pig-headed kind of guy, refused the hacker's offer to slave his stuff to his. Being much less defended, the opfor's hacker spots him and proceeds to one-shot brick his Sniper Rifle's Smartlink, and half-brick his cybereyes. The opfor's sammy tosees a grenade at the team, which the Player Troll Sammy does a Quickdraw Test on to throw back, and succeeds. Gunfire starts being exchanged, but no hits yet. The poor Elf Face Chick tries to run out of the middle of the courtyard, but runs right into the opfor's Troll Bounty Hunter's shotgun instead. Thankfully for her, she dodges the shotgun roll.

So, that's where we left off for the night. All in all:
* I was able to do 2 and a half Combat scenes in one sitting, which is *unheard* of in our previous SR4 games. Without a doubt, dice rolling and combat is much more fluid and faster now
* We all LOVE the new hacking. Even though the hacker is much less powerfull, finding it much harder to Matrix-dominate the opposition, he really enjoys it a lot more. The challenge is much more fun, and everyone really loved the scene with hacking the Black Chrysanthemums. The sniper didn't mind too much getting his rifle bricked, just part of the challenge, once again.

All in all, everyone agreed this was a really awesome game under the new mechanics.