Most Henious Published Run, -it's an opinion, not a review Options

[Tiralee]

Hi-ho, tormenting players and since I've got 2nd edition adventures I've not run, was wondering you opinions on them.
Note: Some I was thinking of sticking up there, but they're more "combined adventures", listed below for your delight.

Also-rans:
Super Tuesday (God, did anyone do this in one go?) & Shadows of the Underworld. Two books that could be rolled into one pile of icky ow.
Harlequin & Harlequin's Back - Basically one monster rollercoaster of hurt.
Renraku Shutdown & Brainscan - Time to print out new character sheets. Should be known as SR-TPK.

And for the trigger-happy of us:
DNA/DOA - uh, yeah, we shot your kids, sorry about that...can we hang out with you guys for a while?


I've not listed a few others, never played them but would like to and like to know your thoughts on them.

Ta,
-Tir

[Eisenbeiß]

The most hurting adventure I've ever played is Universal Brotherhood. Force 10 Bugs and Gangers with APDS ammo were almost a death sentence for our 200+ karma characters.

This post has been edited by Eisenbeiß: Aug 13 2010, 08:40 AM

[MK Ultra]

Well, my players complained most about Super Nova (in the First Run collection of 3rd Ed), due to the Cyberzombi+Red Sam opposition, though they had fairly strong characters and handled them ok.

From the GM perspective I think That one in Tir T. from Corporate Punishment was the toughest with the hardcore ghosts hit team was worst among those I ran.

Euphoria was very memorable, as the PCs waded through hords of helpless worker ants just standing in the way and getting shot, so the ant warriors could repetetively ambush them (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

There are probably some harder adventures I read, but have not run them, so ..

Hmm, I should start reading some of those old adventures again *nostalgia*

[Notsoevildm]

I'd vote for Imago, which is set in Scotland not England btw. Some of us are very touchy about such things and have itchy trigger fingers.

[ Spoiler ]

Facing attack helicopters and corporate hit squads with the paltry gear we could scrape together in a country where guns are a real no-no. Not fun. Once things heated up, I don't think my gunslinger character was on less than M physical. But she still did better than the two physads who both took deadly physical at different points in the adventure.

[Samoth]

I'd played just about all of these, so I voted for Queen Euphoria and Bottled Demon.

Euphoria was our first exposure to bug spirits. Bottled Demon can be instant death if you do something you shouldn't with the idol.

[treehugger]

As a player, UB was insane, but there is another story, i cant remember it's name, that was completely nuts, nothing special about the story, but the goons where all super powered, like a street shaman part of a small low level gang that was initiate grade 5 with a level 6 power focus ...
Most early stories published for SR was technicaly flawed with no sense of balance and logics when it camed to rules and statistics.

[Tiralee]

Notsoevildm - quite right, but I had to use a lot of the English Sourcebook to get the adventure running. And since we were mage-heavy, well, it wasn't kind. Aspected sites. God damned inbred scottish lairds....

Yeah. Bottled Demon - don't even THINK of using that Ju-Ju. Force 10, without karma bonding. Oh, no, nothing good can come of this....

Corperate Punishment, was that the "doublecrossed in Tir with the Ghosts and that uber delta-grade assassin because the princes liked being raging d#$kholes"??
Seriously, we know they're not nice people, but, god, could they be made any less likeable? Old Golden-snout had more empathy.
Yeah, didn't run that one. If the group decides to go into the Archology and take out a big chunk of Seattle, it's their decision, fair enough...but that adventure was punishment for punishment's sake.

(Unlike the "Golden Key" foci one. That turned out surprisingly well. "You wake up with no recollection how you came to be in what looks like the dense forest of the Pacific Northwest. You're all dressed to the nines and a key made entirely of gold is nearby." "......Seriously? Ok, next time, we don't eat the salmon.")


God. The brazilian kiwifruit monster one in "Predator and Prey". My group would have beaten me to death with the sourcebooks if I pulled the "Goddamned spiders on a plane" drek they railroaded you into.

-Tir
(nice to see that it's not my imagination, but the entire-book adventures ARE designed to make players cry.)

[Blastula]

As a gm it was Queen Euphoria for me. Mowing through the hordes of scrub spirits left my players feeling pretty cocky till the heavies showed up and started the PC mulch farm. 3 out of 5 PC's bit it and I had to get new glasses from a related dice hurling incident.

[lunaco]

Just being curious, where did u get those adventures? I never heard of them. Are they oficial compaign books or free online.adventures?

[Eisenbeiß]

The listed adventures are official and really old. e.g. Dreamchipper was published in 1989.

This post has been edited by Eisenbeiß: Aug 13 2010, 09:15 PM

[Tai-Pan]

I can't speak for which titles as I already have most of them but Chimera Hobby in Appleton, WI has a bunch of old SR adventures, as many as 6+ copies on some of them.

[Johnny Hammersti...]

So in a positive light we can say that adventures have generally improved in that there is a bit less rail roading.

Anyone remember the adventure from the SR1 GM screen?

I never ran it, but it sits in the bathroom at my mom's house and provides well, minutes of entertainment for me each time I'm visiting.

[Bira]

Just being curious, where did u get those adventures? I never heard of them. Are they oficial compaign books or free online.adventures?

You can find some of them for sale in PDF format on DTRPG.

[Tiralee]

Well...they're sitting on my shelf - an rpg shop had a "bag of SR stuff for $50" so I bought a few...(Missed out on the bag which had Rigger 3, Cannon Companion & Magic! God damn. Got a ton of Matrix-related stuff and a pile of adventures instead.)

If you read the start of the poll, you'd notice the "Single-book adventures" limitation, so no "Predator and Prey" or Mob War sourcebook/adventure combos.

Also, so what if they're 1-3rd ed? Like it or not, some of the "old" adventures had wild and horrible ideas. There's a reason why people go back to them, they're still good. And it's nice to watch old-time players go pale when they see the cover of Euphoria. Yes, they know what it's about and STILL play it and play it hard*.


-Tir

*Bonus Karma for correct use of quotes from Aliens.

[Fyndhal]

God. The brazilian kiwifruit monster one in "Predator and Prey". My group would have beaten me to death with the sourcebooks if I pulled the "Goddamned spiders on a plane" drek they railroaded you into.

My character for that one had Phobia: Spiders on his sheet. EVIL GM, he ran that just because I had that disad.

[CanRay]

So many things I missed out on. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

[Red_Cap]

I feel your pain, CanRay. I feel left out.

[Cain]

Senility is setting in. What was the one set in Hawai'i? The one where you end up facing down a dragon? That one was pretty tough, IIRC.

[Acme]

Paradise Lost, and I've run it three times... It can be harsh or fine depending on how players do it, and boy can they fuck that run up.

The first time I ran it, one of my players had an otaku that was a royal PITA. They got through the office building and to the employee that was the ALOHA member and very major to move the plot forward. I RPed him pretty well, being resistant at first but the otaku apparently didn't want any of that so he blew the guy's head off. I had a heart attack and had to scramble to get it back on track.

My favorite time was the third one. The players were fairly new but still went through it well, though one player running a troll samurai when we got to the same office part got his cyberleg disabled by laser security (he let us know later that he had grenades in it so a little higher and there'd be paste) and then the nerve agent that one of the VPs had on her computer liquified his lungs. A little later was a great scene where a different player who had a dwarf rigger who was afraid of water ended up becoming the major target of the kraken that the players encounter when they go to M3's R&D department.

Good times.

[The_Vanguard]

Yeah, I've had good times with Paradise Lost. The kraken and Naheka are tailor-made for memorable moments.
Visit Hawai'i. See the sights - taste the fish - fight the dragon.

The adventure also features the La Maison d'Indochine which I have often revisited in my games over the years. Nothing beats French-Asian colonial cuisine when you need to go posh and exotic at the same time.

Btw, the adventure was written by Nigel D. Findley who also published the novel House of the Sun (part 2 of the Dirk Montogmery series) at roughly the same time, which is also set in Hawai'i. The setting must have meant a lot to him and I think it really shows in the wonderful cultural details sprinkled in. E make loa Haole indeed.

[KCKitsune]

I just got done reading 2XS and House of the Sun... good books both. It is a fragging shame that Nigel had a heart attack. I would have loved reading another of Dirk's adventures.

[Faradon]

I think I would vote for DNA/DOA from the old adventures... but from the newer stuff SRM02-03: The Grab. I have never killed so many players in a 4th ed adventure before. I think out of 5 or 6 PCs at the time I KILLED 2, had 2 more in overflow. Also during the "chase scene" they lost 1 fully loaded Van that belonged to the rigger. All in all by the time it was done the players told me they refused to play in Denver any longer. LOL.... not quite a SR Tomb of Horrors, but still a lot more fun for the GM than it ever could of been for the players.

After this I had to run some "easy-mode" stuff to build their confidence back up and keep them playing.

[crash2029]

As a GM and a player I really enjoyed Dreamchipper. It's got a posh party, infiltrating a huge ganger meet/riot, and hunting Red Jack. My character Car, who has since retired to become a very respected international fixer, cut his teeth on Dreamchipper. I even ran it for SR4 once.

Pretty much my only gripe with Queen Euphoria is that

[ Spoiler ]

you cannot save her.

I really hate that. Though I got a kick out of Against the Hive Masters in Sprawl Survival Guide.

I liked Imago when I ran it and when I played it. It gave me an excuse to use my Scottish accent. When I played it we were waiting for info in Edinburgh and got bored. We decided to steal the Gundestrup Cauldron from the museum. Unfortunately we got sidetracked before we could do that. Though, my thief/decker/face/jack-of-all-trades Car did manage to divert a shipment of encephalon II's that we sold for a decent profit.

I never will forget the description for the Pink Pitbull from Total Eclipse. "Late neo-tacky." I love that. Though being an arachnophobe the fight against aa bigass spider-spirit-thing wasn't fun.

Due to my humor-laden approach and the fact I could not help my self from making comments about the text, Eyewitness went from Night of the Living Dead/Nosferatu to Abbot and Costello meet Frankenstein. Ah, well.

[Mongoose]

I'd vote for Imago, which is set in Scotland not England btw. Some of us are very touchy about such things and have itchy trigger fingers.

[ Spoiler ]

Facing attack helicopters and corporate hit squads with the paltry gear we could scrape together in a country where guns are a real no-no. Not fun. Once things heated up, I don't think my gunslinger character was on less than M physical. But she still did better than the two physads who both took deadly physical at different points in the adventure.

No kidding. My eponymous character

[ Spoiler ]

had to pull the heirloom claymore from above the castle mantle, because it was the only way we could figure to take out the guys in security armor (with some hefty spell defense / shielding from an intitiated security mage, plus maybe some background count) who were trying to get in and ruin the fun. Forced the GM to make up stats on the spot- Str + 3 M, reach 2, iirc. With strength 8, it worked the charm, especially as the party mage threw an improved invisibility spell on me, and I rolled something like 34 for intitiative.

[Acme]

The NAN runs aren't half bad either for stuff to carry over. I used to use the Blue Flame club as a carryover meet location for a while after that.