SPOILERS Review of CMP 2010-01 Manhunt, Spoilers! For really. Options

[UmaroVI]

Spoilers ahoy.

[ Spoiler ]

"Banshee, maybe you can explain this to him better?"

"Well, I was planning on explaining that we wanted to Mind Probe his daughter, so maybe you should do the talking."


I played this mission as Banshee with Geoff Raye. I had a lot of fun at this mission and thought Geoff did an excellent job with it.

I thought this version of Manhunt was noticeably improved from the rougher version - good job on that!

For the most part I thought Manhunt was fine. We ran a bit short on time, but that was largely because we spent a lot of time interacting with interesting NPCs. Because of this there may be stuff in the very final part that we skimmed over.

Things I liked:

The NPCs were neat, and the villains were something different than the normal opposition.

The outdoor mission was a nice change of pace and gave some of our less-used skills screentime.

The mystery plot was well-done, and it didn't feel railroady. I felt like we'd accomplished something when we figured out what was going on.

I really loved the stuff you could do to help at the farm, like fortifying it, repairing stuff, treating injuries, encouraging people, etc. It gave a lot of people stuff to do with not-often-used skills and had plenty of interesting roleplaying.

Criticism:

Hackers didn't really have much to do. It wasn't a huge problem, but it would be nice to have at least a little of matrix stuff for them. A suggestion: perhaps have Hua know less about the previous animal killings, and require some Hacking to get at that data - possibly also turning up the information that the previous victims were people the mage thought were "defiling the earth" and very unlike hippy farmers. This wouldn't make hacking mission-critical but it would make it handy.

The heat rules could potentially screw over characters who were just wearing one big piece of armor rather than playing My Little Shadowrunner Pretty Princess Dressup; we had one party member who would have been naked except that another PC just happened to have a spare piece of armor lying around. It might be a good idea for Hua and/or Singh to have some spare light armor to loan out.

[squee_nabob]

[ Spoiler ]

I played at the same table as UmaroVI, and also had a good experience with this mission for much the same reason. I felt like there was a lot to do, and while we didn’t see everything, it was because we were playing with each new and interesting NPC the adventure threw at us.

I played a TM for this mission, and if I had not also been a rigger to go with my hacking, I would have been fairly useless. I don’t have a problem with the matrix not coming up on some runs (my limit is about 20% or so), but it’s always nice to have something to do. As it was, I basically just rigged my way around. Perhaps some automated turrets could be added to the microbrewery? Then the hacker can disable them and skip a combat.

From my notes the pay seemed a little low (4,400?) but that might be our group, or me writing it down wrong.

[Hida Tsuzua]

Time for another me too!

[ Spoiler ]

The adventure seemed nice and there was a nice use of a red herring. I'm unsure about the final combat since we was kindof rushed due to time. Paracritters are troublesome from a combat standpoint since they're extreme glass cannons in a glass cannon system. Having some metahumans involved too is a good idea and I'm happy it was done.