Har' leQuin, Any tips or war stories? Options

[Mortax]

So my group is getting prepped to run Harlequin's Back in a few weeks. We already ran the original Harlequin and......there were many glitches.

So have any of you run this and have any tips, warstories, ideas? Yes, I've posted this question before but the only answeres I got were:

1. Use the search function (which I did and found nothing......)
2. The players need to be advanced and willing to save the world.

Any help or talk you guys could give?

Thanks all!
Jeremy

[warrior_allanon]

havent hit HB yet, still working through the first Harlequin book, and i swear, if our mage sticks his astral head through another bloody door i'm gonna just geek him right there

[Mortax]

:-) That sounds like a fun story.....

[Cain]

[Dog]

As a GM, check carefully the introductory exposition part. It jumps back and forth for a few pages, so if you try to follow it linearly in your book, you might miss something.

Also, keep in mind the presence of a certain NPC, who is mentioned early on to be accompanying the PC's all the way through. The individual sections tend to forget about her. You may want to anticipate what she'll do in a lot of the programmed encounters, or just consider not letting her show up in some places.

As a player, you won't always be able to rely on your gear, but at some points, you will need a whole lotta firepower. The goals are pretty straightforward, that's a good thing, but to reach them, you'll be doing a lot of puzzle solving and recognizing of metaphor. Don't worry about contacts or etiquette skills, this time.

[tisoz]

did a search, bumped a few threads

[PlatonicPimp]

So all the harlequin pollution on the forums is YOUR fault.

::Kachunk::

Best run, boy.

[tisoz]

I found it silly that the most talked about adventure ever could not be found. Maybe I would have only got 1 hit if I spelt it Har' leQuin.

[TheNarrator]

Couldn't you have just posted links to the threads in this thread, rather than bringing a bunch of old threads up to the front page?

[tisoz]

Maybe Mortax' computer will not let Mortax click links either. (Hey mine was giving me that problem.)

[ Spoiler ]

And I am a post pumper.

[Chibu]

I wasn't refering to this time in particular producing no results, last time they spent a while talking about how to use a search function. This time I had to click search over a half dozen times before I got thread results.

[Mortax]

Please ignore the above screen name. Chibu and I share a computer with a few other people, and I didn't realise his name was logged in and not mine.

[Dog]

Just thought of something else:

Early in the game, H says something like "keep your eyes open and your goal will become evident." I'd really stress this part. Because of the metaplanar weirdness, characters can become inclined to throw their hands up in futility of trying to understand what they should be doing. Remind them (even out of character, if you're inclined,) that if they just go with the flow, they will somehow just know what they need when the time is right. Then when they see the bone, or the sword or whatever, play up the "eureka" factor. Once the players realize they can explore the strangeness and do what seems right, and you'll point these things out, they'll be more accepting.

[spotlite]

How do you DO that, Dog? Everytime I'm reading a thread thinking 'this isnt' really helping me...' there you are with an ideal post!

I've played and GM'd HB, and I very much agree with Dog. Some of it is simply not feasible for the players to figure out unless they're all very very good OOC, and the GM is bang on the ball 100% of the time. In HB, that's quite a tall order because its really a bunch of entirely different roleplaying games thrown into one. I think it offers something for everyone, and the first scenario tends to grab everyone's attention immediately anyway. If you can just hold onto that...

Anyway, while physads have the most advantages in terms of ability-shift, with SR3 rules HB will be owned by background skills in the main. The ability to use more esoteric skills to figure out what a course of action should be will mostly be more important than many skills except maybe combat which in my experience there is actually plenty of.

As a player (which is how I first encountered it), I found large parts of it quite frustrating because I'm just not really a lateral thinker, and as a consequence when I Gm'd it I went quite easy on the players in terms of the sort of brain power they required. That and the fact that I insisted we do the lot in one, 36 hour gaming session, anyway. By the end everyone was wound up so tight that they really CARED about the outcome. They REALLY wanted to get the job done and finished. (We even managed it without anyone falling out which I was quite impressed by!). Don't get me wrong, there was an element of 'must get sleep... will this be done soon?' but it manifested in the players really driving the plot forward toward the end when in my opinion it gets especially taxing on the brain (regardless of the amount of sleep you've had). having said all that, when I played it myself the first time, I still really, really enjoyed it. Its a wonderful experience but you've GOT to have a GM good at handling the weirdness of the metaplanes. Fortunately, ours was excellent. And hopefully when it was my turn I was OK. I wouldnt' reccomend that marathon session for everyone though. I wouldn't attempt it now, but that's cos I'm old and knackered.

The only thing I will say, which I hope is not a spoiler, is be VERY careful with the end decision. Make sure as best you can that those players are choosing what their characters would do, especially if any of the players have been through it before. As a GM, make the end as memorable as you can be. Character death is a very real possibility all the way through, but oh boy, the end? Anyway. Don't want to talk too much about that here.

Point is, it IS a challenging run, for both GM and players. I personally think there are
a few places where the players could do with a frickin' bone throwing to them based on what's actually written in the adventure. Its pretty good in terms of continuity with information where its supposed to be and usually detailed enough. But if I remember right, the 'debugging' sections such as they are could do with improvement. Read it thoroughly first, and make notes. Make sure you can run this, for your players, and your playing style (I don't mean you might not be able to, I just mean don't be afraid to alter it to fit you), and make sure any plot holes you DO spot are well restructured so that they aren't there any more. I found it essential to make detailed notes of what should happen when, what should be discovered by the players where, and so on. But my memory is especially crap, so perhaps that's just me.

[Velocity]

[Mortax]

Thanks all, this is helping a good bit.

My players all have a decent amount of brain power, and I'd like to think I do too. So hopefully we can get through this. I'm trying to decide exactly how to split it up to keep them from getting board. Also, I don't know if we have the stamina for a 36 hours session......damn you guys are deicated.

And to answer a few questions I should have in the first post:

I'm the GM

We are doing this durring Christmas break.

And we play something in between SR2 and SR3, we basically went through and re-wrote the rules to be a hybrid, fixing the problems in SR2. Mostly........
I"m still re-working the decker rules, I'm almost done. Would have been done were it not for a slight problem involving a falling wall and amnesia, but this is off topic.

About how long did it take for most of you to get through it? # of sessions and hours?

Thanks!

[Dog]

'bout 10 weeks, IIRC. One session of five hours a week = 50 hours(!)

[Mortax]

..........slot me.

What have I gotten us into? :-)

[Tanka]

[Kyoto Kid]