Ghost Cartels Hardcopy, Thoughts and such.... Options

[Demonseed Elite]

I shows. I made note of him in my review as an undoubtedly "memorable" villain. The only mistake I see is that the later adventure frameworks don't mention him enough so less experienced GM's won't necessarily pick up on the fact that Tenoch should be dogging the characters at every turn in that last arc. As a compliment to you, I loved the idea of the "shorn ones" villains that I couldn't wait to implement them, so I'm stealing Tenoch and his buddy and putting them in my present campaign starting next adventure. It should be good times...

Tenoch--as well as César da Silva and Yajé--came out of one of my late-night, over-caffeinated brainstorming evenings about a year ago (wow, time flies). He goes back to my Shadows of Latin America writing on the Aztech warrior orders, which was put into one of the sidebars in Ghost Cartels. I wanted to try to put a face to the badassery of the AZT guerreros. Peter and Jen took him from there and really did a great job!

[Synner]

To be honest, while as GM I loved Tenoch and Chikao as recurring foes, I think my players really got a kick out of dealing with Huk. One of them keeps asking me to go back to H-K and I'm pretty sure its because he wants to find out what happened to the Triad bad ass after the events in the Kowloon Walled City.

As for César... I suggest everyone keep their eyes on the website for a Christmas present.

[Fortune]

Synner Claus is going to town?!?! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[toturi]

Synner Claus is going to town?!?! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Egads, Fortune! I keep having the mental image of Synner as a Bubba the Love Troll in red milspec armor going, "Ho! Ho! HO!"

[Ryu]

Egads, Fortune! I keep having the mental image of Synner as a Bubba the Love Troll in red milspec armor going, "Ho! Ho! HO!"

His sled is moved about by possessed reindeer (The spirits in question know the Levitate spell). A group of green-clad pixies is along for the ride, distributing presents (instead of coal you get C4, complete with detonator). (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[toturi]

Dirty Pretty Money - I went through this scenario's climax battle again. Further note: Although I improvised using Unwired's Risk Management Engineer(Pro Rating 5), why is there no statted pilot for the FBI helicopter? By RAW, a hacker could very easily seize control of the air support. Or is this the archilles heel that was built in?

[Prime Mover]

Edit: Moved to its own post.

[Rad]

Actually the scenario assumes that you manage to grab Goldman from Chikao and co somehow. This means getting creative not trying to win a straight fight. The characters are not intended to "win" this encounter as a standing firefight with Yakuza hitmen and an FBI ERTeam. In fact, they could very well end up dead if they try.

Most of the enemies in Ghost Cartels were designed with specific weak points and vulnerabilities that could be exploited. Chikao's unit is weak on magic, for instance, with only the cover in the car park helping balance that. They're not meant to be pushovers that the gamemaster can "upgrade" to provide the appropriate level of opposition though. As a developer, I'm very much of the school of thought that the published stats should be faithful to the character or group's place/role in the setting and his/it's threat level should be consistent with the established background rather than the game as played at any specific table. That means the ERT are an elite team with tactical awareness and coordination, and that the Yakuza is fielding some of their heavy hitters to resolve the tempo issue.

Hmm, maybe that was the run where our magical support couldn't make it to the table. Might explain a few things.

Still, pitting the team against an enemy force that only the mage can hope to defeat is bad game design. You make the rest of the group superfluous redshirts, and I doubt that's what they came to the table to play. I agree that NPC stats should match their position in the game world, that doesn't mean you should put the PC's up against someone they can't hope to defeat.

Note that I don't necessarily mean "defeat in combat" here. That wasn't even our first resort, but apparently the guys we were up against also had a super-badass hacker that put ours to shame--and one of our hackers is an AI that currently has admin control of the giant maser in geosync over Tokyo.

The hackers couldn't do anything, the combat characters couldn't do anything, the faces couldn't do anything since the Yak's weren't feeling much like negotiating. As for Chiako, his stats actually broke the rules of the game--our GM had to change some of his ware because as written, he would have had negative essence.

Both groups that I ran this for managed to pin down the Yaks just long enough for the FBI to come in, taking different routes when those two groups duke it out over Goldman. One group focused on snagging Goldman in the confusion and getting the hell out of dodge before the FBI worked their way to them. The other group decided to take on the law, bad mistake. Overconfident players will find their runners in to serious trouble, but ultimately this encounter should only be lethal problem if the players assume their characters can be the last men standing. A tactical FBI ERT with magical overwatch should walk all over the characters if they decided to make a stand.

I'm actually sorry that I edited out a line which said "This is the "run" part of Shadowrun."

Also note that it's very easy for the gamemaster to adjust the number of Yakuza present to balance the difficulty. And if the team makes appropriate use of cover, it should make for a memorable battle... like most of the confrontations in Ghost Cartels, the vibrant characters and the tough opposition should make for interesting roleplaying experiences.

Sounds very much like what we did. We barricaded the lower entrances of the parking garage the Yaks holed up in, and snuck up to the top floor, keeping behind parked cars for cover. Then we had the fastest member of the team run and grab the target while the rest of us laid down covering fire. Our guy pulled a Marty McFly, leaping off the parking structure with our mark, and into the waiting palm of one of our Skytrain's full mechanical arms. Then the Skytrain rose up and hosed down the Yakuza while the rest of us bailed.

Still, we barely got away with it because even our fastest runner couldn't run in, grab the guy, and run away in one pass. Thanks to the way the rules work, he was stuck in the middle of the Yakuza for a full pass, and barely made it out alive. As for adjusting the number of Yakuza, Chiako was badass enough to take on our entire group alone--none of us could even damage him, and we killed a fragging dragon.

(Well, feathered serpent, but who's counting? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) )

Again this is only a problem if the characters assume they can "win" a fight. If they leave the spirit to do its thing the dealer will commit suicide. Fighting the spirit one on one is going to be tough - though not as tough as trying to face down one of the Yama Kings later on. Shadowrunners are tough, but there willa always be something meaner and tougher in the world - so runners need to be creative and think out of the box. One of my groups let the dealer get shot up and abandonned by the spirit, then Healed him (which made the magician who took the heavy Drain seriously pissed when the Olaya later tied off loose ends in front of him).

Sounds like bad game design to me. We're talking about a scenario where completing your job requires either subduing a guy possessed by a great-form plant spirit--or using out of character knowledge about what will happen if you leave him alone for a while. I don't recall for certain what we did here, I think we used his link to track his position and hung back, waiting to see what happened.

As for him getting shot up, how exactly did that happen? Nobody was able to touch this guy when we ran it--the spirit's immunity to normal weapons power made him nigh-invulnerable to bullets.

When the FBI showed up later, we bailed. Fortunately we had used a spirit to posses a mob hitman, and have him set charges on the place where the Yakuza and Mafia were playing cards--we bailed as soon as the FBI showed up and let him finish the job alone.

All this makes me wonder how the groups are going to navigate the Kowloon scene. No line of sight to speak of for magic, very short distances to enemies, lots of hand to hand, threats around every corner.

Wasn't there for that one, but our team killed the Yamma king--even being one man short.

Note that we've never said that this campaign was designed for starting characters, just that it could be played by starting characters - notably the first story arc. The opposition only gets steeper in the later arcs. I had a lot of fun with Tenoch.

I'll say. We just ran the part last night where the friggin' Azzie army shows up at that drug-dealer's compound. Now that was the pinnacle of bad game design:

Strip the players of all their weapons and vehicles, then position them out in the open well outside of running distance to any cover and send about forty guys with millspec gear after them. Oh, and have them lob a fragging mortar at the team before they get to act.

Our only option was to run, and the way the rules work, even that was nearly impossible. Hell, if we hadn't rolled well, we would have had a TPK in the first pass before any of the players got an action. The background characters are the ones who are supposed to be completely helpless, running for their lives--not the players. The point of the game is to have fun, being totally out-classed and reduced to window-dressing for an entire scene is not fun by most people's understanding of the term.

Don't get me wrong, some parts of Ghost Cartels were very good--most of it in fact. But these moments that read out like a bad GM power fantasy really bring it down.

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[Edit] We just finished running Ghost Cartels, and I have to say, the end really made me change my opinion of this thing.

It was great: Lots of opposition, high-end craziness with spirits and double-crosses that had our team constantly looking over their shoulders and made it very clear we were embroiled in something much bigger than ourselves. There was a lot of challenge and tension, but it never reached that point where it was too much to throw at us.

Of course, the pinnacle of the night for me was probably when a free spirit possessed our team's uber-fighting adept (He's been playing the same character for over a decade, and has ridiculous amounts of karma.) The spirit possessing him attacked my character, and in a flash of insane luck I nearly killed him with a riposte. If I'd followed up with my finishing maneuver, they'd be finding his corpse on the jungle floor.

It was a great cap to the run and settled a long-standing rivalry that's been building since we started Ghost Cartels, as I somehow kept finding myself up against the uber-opponents our GM intended him to face. Or maybe not, since he's been threatening to kill me in my sleep since I hit him with 20 successes and left him unconscious and bleeding out with a set of broken ribs.

The payoff was also amazing, and made all those situations with ridiculously impossible odds seem almost worth it. Taken as a whole, Ghost Cartels was really good, but it does better as an isolated one-shot than something you'd plug into an existing campaign because a few of those scenarios have a *very* good chance of killing some PC's no matter how good they are. Blatantly unfair situations and tragic, untimely deaths make for good storytelling, but it's not as fun when it's your regular character that you have a lot invested in on the line.