Do you play SR Missions? Options

[GreyBrother]

Just curious about this one. Yes it has to do with the current Drama. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

[toturi]

I got 5-8 guys in my group, depending on work commitments. Not sure if they come here, I'm the only one that lives on these here forums.

[HappyDaze]

Not sure if they come here, I'm the only one that lives on these here forums.

That's pretty common in most RPG forums, and something that a lot of 'vocal' posters seem to forget. For everyone on the boards that claims the company's new release is utter crap and they will never buy anything again, there are likely many more that never come here to post at all.

[Freejack]

I don't have a whole lot of time to prepare games with all the other things I do. The missions are excellent and formatted in little bites which are perfect for a Friday/Saturday review for a Sunday game.

We take the four hour mission and run it for 2 months. My group wanders off the reservation from time to time but the games go very well (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Carl

[DireRadiant]

I do both, I like both. Enjoying different things for different reasons is apparently not allowed by this poll.

[Caine Hazen]

Nor is there an opinion for "I only get the chance to play them at cons cause I run them locally"

Run them, Play them, love them
Runa home game, play a home game, love it...

Some of us just love SR in general

[It trolls!]

I'd love to but the closest guy to run missions here is about 500km from my place (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

[Black Jack Rackh...]

Nor is there a place for, love both, play both, write both...

Mark

[Wesley Street]

Hear hear!

[Bull]

I chose "Play both, prefer missions", mainly cause the options were so limited.

I actually don;t get to play much of anything these days. I play a handful of SR games here at home each yer, and I play a few Missions Games at cons. And that's about it :/ Mostly, it's a time, energy, and available group that wants to play issue.

But for my money, I love both, and both have their place. My "Home games" are nice for that "I can do whatever I want" feeling. But Missions games are also a blast, for many reasons.

One, because they hearken back to the days of SR1 and 2, and that feeling of a Shared World. It's a lot of fun to swap stories with other "old vets", discussing what you did in Mecurial, or Missing Blood/UB, or Harlequin.

Two, because it's kinda cool to be a part of the "Official" game. When you play Missions, you know you're actually involved with something that's a direct outgrowth of the official Shadowrun books, and there's always that chance that something you do could have a real, lasting impact on the Shadowrun world down the line (a small chance, granted. Just like a real Shadowrunner! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) ).

THree, because sometimes it's nice to have a prefab campaign to play in or work with. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Like I said, I love my home games. I love the freedom to do what I want, change what I want, and over the years I've done some crazy, very non-canon things in my games. But both have their place. Both serve an important purpose, and I'm glad to see both existing.

[Whizbang]

Yeah, I'm one who pretty much only gets to play home games online, and missions games at Cons. Perhaps one of these days I'll make it to hang out with the Atlanta group.

[hermit]

No. €3000 for one game session just is too much to ask. Besides, I'd hate to have to build a new character for every season.

I miss an option "no for no missions on my side of the pond", though. With the lots of Germans here, it might have made sense.

I'd love to but the closest guy to run missions here is about 500km from my place

Missions is run in Britain?

[Zolhex]

I agree this needs more options.

I play at home I run at home I run at con's and I run at my firebase.

I like doing them all!

[DV8]

Most of them don't make any sense to me, seem highly contrived and illogical, which is how I view almost all prefab runs/adventures/dungeons. I do, however, read them and draw ideas from them. But there's no way I could run or play in any published runs, they just don't make any sense to me.

[Wesley Street]

Most of them don't make any sense to me, seem highly contrived and illogical, which is how I view almost all prefab runs/adventures/dungeons. I do, however, read them and draw ideas from them. But there's no way I could run or play in any published runs, they just don't make any sense to me.

I'm curious... what do you find is typically nonsensical about prepackaged adventures? What's contrived or illogical? Do you find them to be poorly written or or poorly plotted? Is it hard to tie them into your home campaigns?

I've run into published adventures in all RPG systems that are horrible but there are some that were just amazing (Red Hand of Doom in D&D 3.5, Harlequin and Elven Fire in SR...).

[DV8]

Well, there is some discord between how I view the Shadowrun universe and the way the developers look at it. One of these differences of opinion I kind of summed up in my Why Shadowrunners Will Never Receive Shoe Endorsements rant. There are just some fundamentals that I can't get behind, which is why a lot of the published runs don't sit well enough for me to run them. However, I have, and will, do runs that are based on published runs, but I usually modify them to the point that it's hard to recognise the original product.

Harlequin is a good example; I hated it. It just didn't make too much sense to me, but then again, I was never very fond of the IE/ED tie-ins.

[ornot]

I have to admit that I use the missions in my home game. I've never been to an official event, but the prewritten runs save me prep time, and I'm lazy. I don't run entirely RAW, so playing in an officially endorsed game might lead to some difficulty for me, and frankly I prefer the freedom of not being official.

I have no idea where that puts me in the poll.

[GreyBrother]

You prefer homegames, it seems to me.

[Bull]

Well, there is some discord between how I view the Shadowrun universe and the way the developers look at it. One of these differences of opinion I kind of summed up in my Why Shadowrunners Will Never Receive Shoe Endorsements rant. There are just some fundamentals that I can't get behind, which is why a lot of the published runs don't sit well enough for me to run them. However, I have, and will, do runs that are based on published runs, but I usually modify them to the point that it's hard to recognise the original product.

Harlequin is a good example; I hated it. It just didn't make too much sense to me, but then again, I was never very fond of the IE/ED tie-ins.

Yeah, generally I modify the hell out of any adventure I run for my home games.

I've also got a couple of adventures I've run a couple times over the years that run "concurrent" with published modules. I have one run that takes place during the events of Elven Fire, for example, with the NPC runner team thats doing EF basically failing the adventure, and the PCs are trying to track down a missing person during the fallout of that.

[Sir_Psycho]

I've never run a prefab. I read the free SRM products such as the SR3 Missions and the SR4 Denver missions, when I'm bored or looking for some inspiration. I've considered using with some new players I'm trying to GM. I thought I'd just let them run free in the Sixth world for a bit before they met up, and lack of player knowledge is frustrating. The hacker is currently with a ShadowSea hacker + IC in combat because he didn't want to submit his AID. The player is also a real world programmer and AI enthusiast, so convincing him of how the Matrix works is difficult.

Maybe the defined structure of SRM will help me out, if I modify them for Seattle and add some liberal personal touches.

[DV8]

I've also got a couple of adventures I've run a couple times over the years that run "concurrent" with published modules. I have one run that takes place during the events of Elven Fire, for example, with the NPC runner team thats doing EF basically failing the adventure, and the PCs are trying to track down a missing person during the fallout of that.

That's actually a pretty good idea. It cuts down on the development time of the run for the GM that way. Hmmm, thanks for that suggestion!

[Metapunk]

I am the GM to my current group of runners, we only have two guys who have been playing shadowrun before, so I take in games from others, try them out.

but for the campaign we are running atm I am writing my own stuff:)

so I do both and I like both.

[Fyndhal]

Just curious about this one. Yes it has to do with the current Drama. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

I honestly have no clue how I would go about PLAYING in an SR missions game. Close as I could figure, Missions is like the Living Greyhawk thing that WotC did with D&D and they are run at conventions. Since I rarely, if ever, attend conventions, that isn't a terribly viable gaming solution for me.

[Freejack]

Not sure about that. I don't think it's a con specific thing. A Commando can run it at local shops too during the Mission arc and then feed the information back to the Mission Director.

For me though, it was a nice pre-setup and simple set of missions that let me and my players get used to the 4th Ed rules. Heck, we've been playing the missions since Sept of 2007 and we're only on the 14th mission _and_ we've skipped a couple.

It also has some tie-ins between some of the missions. The guy you meet in mission 3 is still there in mission 5 and 8. So how it ended in 3 will be reflected when you meet him again in 5 (examples of course).

Plus when you screw over someone or kill off a few people, there are repercussions. My group has already encountered a few of the folk from past missions including one very psyco (now) shaman who has captured one of the party and needed to be rescued.

And the group really gets in to the background created by running the missions. We have a Denver map up on the wall with stickies marking all the places they've visited. At the beginning it was somewhat sparse but it's chock full of history now.

Carl

[Mercurian]

I've never been a fan of running premade modules/adventures for any game system I've played. They're great for ideas and for keeping up with metaplots, but they tend to be a bit too linear for my tastes. Adventures always seem to fall apart with my group: "no plan survives contact with the enemy (PCs)". With the amount of on-the-fly adjustments I have to make, I may as well stick with a free-form game instead of sifting through text looking for anything that I may have missed in the adventure. That, and I feel that it ceases to be the same story once I have to 'edit' it. I guess I'm just particular that way.

Steal the ideas and run!