SPOILERS Review of CMP 2011-07 Super Brawl Sunday, Spoilers! For really. Options

[UmaroVI]

Accept all spoilers, ye who enter here.

[ Spoiler ]

I played this mission as Banshee with S. Burton as GM. I liked this mission less than the other missions I played at Origins, although I still had fun - I want to be sure to be clear that I don't think this was the GM's fault and my criticisms are of the module only. I think he did a good job with it and was responsible for much of the fun.

Things I liked:

I really liked the background flavor of the mission. Learning more about Urban Brawl was cool. I think the basic premise of the mission was a neat hook.

The part of the plot that we didn't get involved in - the original kidnapping of the brawlers - sounded pretty interesting, as did much of the investigation of what happened.

I thought the brawlers were interesting and fleshed-out, but I wished we had more reason to interact with them instead of just taxi them around.

Criticisms:

1) The only real skills required in this mission were the ability to kick down doors, yell "OH YEAH," and shoot everyone in the face. It doesn't make sense in-universe that you would hire shadowrunners to do this rather than any number of more legal and cheaper organizations that can just bring more guns. This also left some character types with little to do. We also didn't have any real meaningful choices during the mission. Our GM did a good job working with players who wanted to try and apply other skills to the challenges, but it was pretty clear that the module wasn't giving him much to work with here.

2) In keeping with #1, I think there was just too much combat. SR doesn't pull off missions whose main challenge is combat very well, and the mission was really nothing but fighting. I think it would have been a better mission if there had been other things to do or other ways to resolve some problems. Even players who really, really like combat would probably prefer a smaller number of fast, intense battles to a long slog. I would suggest making less combats, but adding in Pushing the Envelope options for them to be more difficult for groups with more combat-oriented characters who have less subtle options.

3) The Urban Brawl minigame struck me as overly complicated but not very fun. We spent a lot of time figuring out dice pools and sorting out things like "our medic can't be the Medico, because the incredibly heavy armor they wear would make him fall over and not be able to get up" and "despite the fact that 95% of our mage's spells are banned in Urban Brawl, he's totally fine and is one of the best players." It also took quite a while to resolve. I think a faster resolution and a much more abstracted system would have been a lot better.

Suggestions:

In general, I think Ancient Pawns was a similar style of mission that worked better, and I would try to make future missions more like Ancient Pawns and less like Super Brawl Sunday.

If I were to change this mission, I'd do it as follows:

Cut one of the fights, and have the athletes in two groups of three.

Group 1 is cybered-up troll gangers with a troll magician leading them, holed up in a building with decent electronic security and some wards. Have a couple of "optional" troll street samurai that the GM can throw in for Pushing the Envelope. Have a few possible ways into the building, and make getting in the door without sounding the alarm important by giving the trolls a plan to defend their turf if the PCs decide to just boot the door down without doing any recon.

Group 2 is the wizgangers, but they should probably have summoned spirits on-hand (they should be expecting trouble!) and set to keep watch/guard the area. However, make it fairly easy for a hacker to get a look at their positions through electronic surveillance. Let the mages have a very nasty bound spirit or two for Pushing the Envelope.

The first group of rescued athletes has one athlete who uses a personafix chip for his "on-screen" persona, and is seriously shaken by the kidnapping/torture. He panics, and insists the players take him to a safe location before continuing and then pick him up before the game. How do they deal with this? They might try to solve this via social skills, rigging (to get him back remotely), driving really fast (to be able to drop him off quickly and still finish on time), contacts (getting someone else to watch him while they finish the mission), or tasers (but they'll pay for hurting him later).

The second group of rescued athletes has the Dog get loose during the fight, flip out, and start attacking the nearest moving target. How do the PCs react, especially if the Dog manages to botch their entry plan with his rampage? They might try to solve this with social skills (talking him down), hacking his personafix chip, or tasers (but again, they'll pay for hurting him later). Trying to stop him from killing anyone while they calm him down also gives less-often-used combat tactics like Subdue, Binding, etc. a chance to shine.

After the mission is finished, the PCs are offered the chance to play as subs in the Urban Brawl game - tell them they can get a bit of extra nuyen, and they might get some reputation if they do well, but that it will also get them public awareness. Just have the PCs roll one dice pool that's easy to calculate - something like "pick one and roll it - Weapon skill, Spellcasting, Exploit, Spoof, Driving, First Aid, Running, Tactics" and have a chart that gets you a smallish amount of Nuyen, some Public Awareness, and a little Street Cred. Sucking hard can get you Public Awareness and Notoriety, but no money or cred. The Mountain Dragons can win if they don't solve either problem with the athletes by knocking out the athlete giving them trouble and don't otherwise injure any athletes during the rescues, and they can make up for one injured athlete per exceptional success on the Urban Brawl roll (probably 11+ hits).

[Critias]

Ironically, I'm going to break my pattern and use spoilers here, since instead of making vague comments and happy sounds, I'm actually going to discuss a few things in detail to try and figure out what exactly happened and what I can do to fix it.

[ Spoiler ]

Hrm. This review's a little disappointing (especially compared to Ancient Pawns), but if you had less fun, you had less fun. Part of what may have been the problem was that PCs weren't expected to complete all three initial missions -- I can see how doing all of them would (a) eat a lot of time, (b) wear a group down, and © start to feel repetitive. Part of the decision-making process was supposed to be deciding which pairs of Brawlers to rescue, and part of the repercussions of that decision were that certain Brawlers are more helpful in follow-up jobs than others.

I'm the most surprised with the actual UB game not going over well -- really the whole adventure was supposed to be preamble to playing in the Super Brawl, after all. It was the highlight of the adventure for all three groups I've run it for so far (hell, my playtest group and I sat around after the adventure was over just to run them through the Brawl game again, for kicks), and to hear folks didn't have fun with it is kind of a downer. You should have only figured die pools once (one knowledge skill roll to help out, and that's it), save the occasional modifier during gameplay itself I'd have expected it to go very quickly once initially configuring pools. I also am disappointed to hear your medic/Medico complaint, since I encourage GMs to hand-wave away that sort of thing and only to mention the real-world gear as a sort of "gearing up" action flick montage, not dwelling on the specifics of the stats.

I list several options for how to run it (how many rolls to use, that sort of thing) in that chapter of the adventure, and I'm curious how exactly it got run; the most fun my groups had was rolling once for each of the first three quarters, then once for each play in the fourth. "It feels like a sports movie" was the feedback I got (so that it was like a quick montage for most of the game, and then more involved during the final quarter so they could spend Edge and be the comeback kids).

At any rate, I'm sorry you didn't have as awesome a time with this one as with Ancient Pawns, and I appreciate the feedback. I'll try to hear from other players, talk to Bull, and see if maybe I can tweak things a bit in time for GenCon.

[UmaroVI]

[ Spoiler ]

I think the biggest change would be to add in some stuff solvable via means other than "use gun on fucker," and especially add in more reasons to interact with the athletes rather than just rescue and taxi.

So, for us, what happened with the game is that we got a few casualties early on, and that pushed several people to the point of having not enough dice to get results other than "get more casualties." We then proceeded to hit a steady downward spiral of "too many casualties to get 5+ hits -> more casualties -> too many casualties to get 5+ hits." We realized in around Q3 that we were never going to win, and that kind of killed the excitement as we rolled out the foregone conclusion.

The other thing is that once we saw the rules, we realized that we could have won pretty handily if we'd only had the highest karma PCs play - not that we would have been jerks about that even if we had known, but it was kind of disenheartening to the guy who turned out to not have the right combination of stats and skills for any of the roles and wound up rolling casualties every round.

[Critias]

[ Spoiler ]

Did your GM offer you the chance to play in the Super Brawl as one of the NPCs, instead? That option's in there (for guys like that, who just happen to have a shadowrunner skill-set, not a Brawler), because I wanted to make sure everyone got to sling some dice and have some fun in the grand finale. I might have to highlight that and make sure it's a little more obvious to make sure GMs spot it. I know it's not as fun as playing your character, of course, and I know I tried to cover it with special options for mages and hackers, but I also know there are some Faces and B&E guys that just don't have the greatest skill-set for the "in-your-face combat for two solid hours" that an Urban Brawl game represents. I think I'll also toss in a note suggesting GMs partially refresh Edge before the Super Brawl starts, to let folks have the option to dig themselves out, if they find themselves in that sort of downward spiral.

The main reason Ancient Pawns offers a few more negotiation/stealth options is because in some of those jobs players are after trinkets like toy badges or (potentially) are just out to steal some hoods or something. Kidnappers aren't going to be as willing to part with their kidnappees, and so the general idea was just to present a series of firefights as "warm up," but with nothing stopping characters from still using stealth and/or high technology to get it done (drones, etc). It's also no coincidence that two of the kidnapped players specifically offer quite a die pool for mundane or magical healing, and it's suggested they offer it to PCs (so that anyone who gets worn down in earlier fights can get patched up in the back of the van on the way to rescue the next batch)...

I'll mull it over and chat with Bull if I can, and see what I can do to try and add in some social or other interactions that make sense given the core idea of a game (rescue kidnapped pro athletes, then play the Super Brawl alongside them). Psycho gangers aren't generally the sort who are big on just being talked out of this sort of thing, so combat really is the answer in most of those cases...but I'll see what I can figure out before GenCon.

I'm sorry you guys didn't have as much fun with this one. I do appreciate the feedback, though.

[UmaroVI]

[ Spoiler ]

I think it's fine if ultimately the solution to the gangers is shooting them in the face - but it would be good if having the ability to hack helped you do that. Again, more interaction with the players would be a great opportunity to work some face skills in.

The other issue with the minigame is that there's 0 tactics involved, but lots of dice. Honestly, if we'd gotten our asses handed to us less hard that might not have mattered as much; we might also have liked it more if we hadn't just waded through 3 and a half hours of straight combat.

The last issue is that there wasn't clear indication of which players should play NPCs. For example, we had a mage who (I think) had 5 magic, 5 spellcasting, I think probably like 1 perception, and didn't have either appropriate Knowledge skill. We assumed he'd be fine - after all, he'd held up fine in the combats - but his dice pool was only about 14, and he quickly got sucked into a downward spiral.

The same problem also holds in reverse - a fragile van technomancer with a Logic stream could easily have a mid-20s dicepool; of course, if they were just as good at hacking but had a Charisma or Intuition stream they'd be much less good.

I would suggest:

a) Streamline it. It shouldn't take long to resolve.

b) Simplify how you calculate dicepools to something that basically boils down to "the dice you'd roll on your best out of [list of skills]" so you don't have odd things like Logic-stream technos being better than Intuition-stream technos and so people can reasonably predict how good they are at it.

c) Make weak players more "don't help you" and less "suck you down." Having one bad player on your team will get Chicago 2 extra dice and hit your entire team with a +1 threshold; that's really harsh, and especially makes that one guy feel really, really bad.

[Hida Tsuzua]

I played with Umaro for this adventure. For reference, most of my mission experience is 2nd season and the current CMPs.

[ Spoiler ]

Combat in Shadowrun has very deep issues. It's very offense heavy and the difference between an effective combat character and an crummy one are huge. This is typically fine in most adventures since there's typically only 1-2 fights and there's a lot more than just use gun on target overall. Super Brawl Sunday's big issue is that it's just combat.

From the sounds of it, the intent of the adventure design is to rescue as many players as long as your health holds out and then once you're done, play a mini-game. I think overall it'll be roflstomp some gangers or get destroyed by them. If it's the former, you'll be facing 3 fairly meh combats. Since there's nothing else to really worry about, that's fairly unexciting. I'll rather have 2 more interesting mini-runs than 3 combats.

The Super Brawl mini-game needs work. It's way too detailed. Why do I need to know the specific armor and guns when I'm making abstract die rolls? For a book or something, that'll be cool so the GM can adjust the level of detail to the adventure. But for a missions game, it's very annoying clutter that sometimes cause weirdness. For example Xerxes my high logic medic gnome can't wear the medic armor without magic or drugs. There's also the fact that a single guy who isn't roll as much as everyone else really can doom the team and that can be frustrating for all involved. It isn't obvious that you might be the lodestone either. I was a tad worried Xerxes was going to be, but instead it was a heavy hitter due to the having a good logic + tactics roll. I was able to borrow a copy of the Super Brawl rules from the GM so I'll do my suggestions on changes once I can go though it.

On a slightly more meta note, I do like your "mini-runs" style of adventures Critias. It allows for variety, choices, and makes it easy to adjust for time. In my experience, most adventures tend to be set-up and then the actual run (for example, do some legwork and then hit a place) or straight railroads (any metaplanar quest). While admittedly it's more cut down versions of already cut down adventures, I think it gets to the good part of Shadowrun. Also, if I do a "driving from point A to point B is half the mission" adventure again in Denver, I may have to burn the place to the ground.

Edit- Tag fixing.

[UmaroVI]

[ Spoiler ]

I decided to test out the Urban Brawl rules to see whether the problems I saw are inherent, or whether they had to do with us being short on Edge, having odd characters playing, or rules mistakes.

I used the Bounty Hunter, Combat Mage, Enforcer, Gunslinger Adept, Street Samurai, and Weapons Specialist from the book - all of these are combat archetypes that one hopes would be good at Urban Brawl, or at least not suck at it. I assumed all of them started with full edge, and I also assumed the players know the rules of the game and are playing smart. I also assume they rescued every athlete. I’m assigning positions based on what a given character can get the best dicepool for, even if it's an odd position, like having the Enforcer be an Outrider because that's the position he's best add by the numbers. In short I gave the players every advantage possible.

An important note: “playing properly” means “spending edge every time your hits are low enough to lose a player,” not “saving edge till the end to pull out a big win.” Urban Brawl is a “downward spiral” type of game - once you lose the momentum, it stays lost and generally just gets worse and worse.

Bounty Hunter is playing Heavy, rolling Agility 3 + Longarms 3 + Shotgun Specialization 2 + Athletics 2 + Synthacardium 1 + Monster 1 + Armor/Weapons 2 = 14 dice, defaults on the Logic test for 2 dice, Edge 3.

Combat Mage picks some random position and just uses Spellcasting for Magic 5 + Spellcasting 5 + Perception 2 + Vision Enhancement 3 + Fury 1 = 16 dice, defaults to 3 dice on the Logic test, Edge 2.

Enforcer is oddly enough best at Outrider, rolling Reaction 5 + Pilot 1 + Pistols 4 + Speed 1 + firepower/armor 2 + IP 2 = 15 dice, defaults to 1 dice on the Logic test, Edge 2.

Gunslinger Adept is a Banger, rolling Agility 5 + Gymnastics 3 + Pistols 4 + Pistol Improved Ability 2 + Smartlink 2 + Fury 1 + Armor 1 + IP 2 = 20 dice, default to 3 dice on the Logic test, Edge 4

Street Samurai is a Heavy, rolling Agility 8 + Gymnastics 3 + Automatics 5 + Smartlink 2 + 1 Monster + 2 armor/weapons +2 IPs = 23 dice, default to 1 dice on the Logic test, Edge 2.

Weapon Specialist is a Blaster, rolling Agility 4 + Perception 0 + Vision Enhancement 3 + Heavy Weapons 2 + Smartlink 2 + Dog 1 + firepower 2 = 14 dice, default to 2 dice on the Logic test, Edge 3.

Step 1: Establish Dice Pools
Logic tests:
Bounty Hunter: +2 hits (16)
Combat Mage: +1 hit (17)
Enforcer: +1 hit (16)
Gunslinger +2 hits (22)
Street Samurai +1 hit (24)
Weapons Specalist 0 hits (14)

Q1:
Bounty hunter 4 hits +.5 Chicago
Combat Mage 5 hits: -1 Causalty
Enforcer 4 hits +.5 Chicago
Gunslinger 8 hits -1 Chicago
Street Samurai -1 Chicago
Weapon Specalist +1 to next roll
Chicago: 5 hits, -2 for casualties, inflict 3 casualties, -1 ignore next casualty is -2 Mt. D

Q2: Score 1-0 Chicago
Bounty Hunter: 5-2=3 hits, +1/2 Chicago
Combat Mage: 2 hits, edge to reroll, 8-2=6 hits, -1 ignore next casualty, 1 edge left
Enforcer 3 hits, edge to reroll, 11-2=9 hits, -1 ignore next casualty, -2 Chicago, 1 edge left
Gunslinger 7-2=5 hits, +1 next roll
Street Samurai 10-2 = 8 hits, +1/2 MtD
Weapon Specialist 5-2=3 hits, +1 to next roll
Chicago 5-2 = 3 hits, -2 ignore next casualty is -1 MtD

Q3 Score 1.5-.5 Chicago
Bounty Hunter: 2 hits, edge to reroll, 5-1 = 4 hits, +.5 Chicago, 2 edge left
Combat Mage: 6-1=5 hits, -1 ignore next casualty
Enforcer: 6-1 = 5 hits, +1 to next roll
Gunslinger: 7-1=6 hits, +1 to next roll
SS: 5-1=4 hits, +.5 Chicago
WS: 6-1=5 hits, -1 Chicago
Chicago: 7-1 = 6 hits, -1 for ignore casualty, -5 MtD

Q4-1 Score 2.5-.5 Chicago
Bounty Hunter: 4 hits, edge to reroll, 8-5=3 hits, +.5 Chicago, 1 edge left
Combat Mage: 6 hits, edge to reroll, 11-5=6 hits, 1 ignore next casualty, 0 edge left
Enforcer: 8-5=3 hits, +.5 Chicago
Gunslinger 8-5=3 hits, +.5 Chicago
SS: 7 hits, edge to reroll, 16-5 = 11 hits, -2 Chicago, 1 edge left
WS: 6 hits, edge to reroll, 9-5=4 hits, +1 to next roll, 2 edge left
Chicago: 4-2=2 hits, 1 ignore next casualty is -1 MtD

Q4-2: Score 4-.5 Chicago
Bounty Hunter: 6-1=5 hits, +1 to next roll
Combat Mage: 5-1=4 hits +1 to next roll
Enforcer: 6-1=5 hits +1 to next roll
Gunslinger: 7-1=6 hits +1 to next roll
SS: 10-1=9 hits, +1 point
WS: 5-1=4 hits, +1 to next roll
Chicago: 5 hits, -5 MtD

Q4-3: 4-1.5
Bounty Hunter: 8-5=3 hits, +.5 Chicago
Combat Mage: 6-5=1 hit, -1 MtD
Enforcer: 4 hits, edge to reroll, 7-5=2 hits, -1 MtD, 0 edge left
Gunslinger: 7 hits, edge to reroll, 11-5=6 hits, +1 to next roll, 3 edge left
SS: 11-5=6 hits, +1 to next roll
WS: 6 hits, edge to reroll, 8-5=3 hits, +1 to next roll, 1 edge left
Chicago: 5 hits, -5 MtD

Q4-4: 4.5-1.5
Bounty Hunter: 7 hits, edge to reroll, 7-7=0 hits, -1 MtD, 0 edge left
Combat Mage: 6-7=-1 hits, -1 MtD
Enforcer: 4-7=-3 hits, -1 MtD
Gunslinger: 9 hits, edge to reroll, 14-7=7 hits, -1 Chicago, 2 edge left
SS: 8 hits, edge to reroll, 16-7=9 hits, -2 Chicago, 0 edge left
WS: 3 hits, edge to reroll, 5-7=-2 hits, -1 MtD, 0 edge left
Chicago: 2-3 = 0 hits

Q4-5: 4.5-1.5
Bounty Hunter: 7-4=3 hits, +.5 Chicago
Combat Mage: 8-4=4 hits, +1 to next roll
Enforcer: 5-4=1 hit, -1 MtD
Gunslinger 6 hits, edge to reroll, 15-4=11 hits, -2 Chicago, 1 edge left
SS 10-4=6 hits, +1 to next roll
WS: 8-4 = 4 hits, +1 to next roll
Chicago: 1-2=-1 hits, no casualties

Q4-6: 5-1.5
Bounty Hunter: 6-1=5 hits, +1 to next roll
Combat Mage: 6-1=5 hits, -1 Chicago
Enforcer: 8-1=7 hits: +.5 MtD
Gunslinger: 9 hits, edge to reroll, 14-1=13 hits: +1 MtD, 0 edge left
SS: 8-1=7 hits, +.5 MtD
WS: 5-1=4 hits, +1 to next roll
Chicago: 5-1=4 hits, +4 points

Final score: 9-3.5 Chicago

Summary: this game took a LONG FUCKING TIME. I cannot stress this enough. This is WAY too long; it took 69 rolls of huge pools of dice, plus all the rerolling from edge. It took us an insane amount of time to do this, and that was WITH us knowing how to play and not needing it explained. The other problems with this game would be a lot more excusable if it weren’t so tedious.

As you can see, the players got absolutely roflstomped and had pretty much no hope of victory, despite being all combat archetypes and having completely full edge tanks plus all athletes rescued. Also, the outcome was pretty clear by about 4-2, but that was only halfway through a really long game.

The way this game and our game went is that we tried to stay afloat out of the “-1 Mountain Dragon player” range for as long as possible by blowing edge and tried to get a mix of points and Chicago casualties, then we got a few bad rolls, Chicago got one good roll (which will happen sooner or later, because they have a small and thus spiky dice pool), and inflicted a bunch of casualties. At that point Chicago just stomps the PCs into the floor, inflicting ever-increasing threshold penalties as the PCs run out of edge and lose more players and points, finishing up with Chicago using their last roll at the end of the game for a huge boost of points. Chicago scored more points in the last 5 minutes of the game than the PCs scored total.

[Critias]

[ Spoiler ]

Just to make sure I'm crystal clear, here, I'm not trying to argue with my responses (or anything like that), just out to see exactly what the problem might me. Like I said, every time I've run it folks have loved it, and most of the feedback I got (like from our German crew, who I was coordinating with with their Blut & Spiele book) was that the Urban Brawl game was too easy. So I'm...I dunno. Just trying to narrow it down. So I am listening, even if it sounds like I'm just full of questions and arguments or whatever.

In the above example, by the way, were you rolling 2 dice per PC (for Chicago), or 3?

[Hida Tsuzua]

[ Spoiler ]

As the dice roller for that series of tests (my arm still hurts), I was rolling 12 dice or 2 dice per PC for Chicago.

[UmaroVI]

[ Spoiler ]

What kind of characters were you testing it with? If all the PCs had been on par with the Street Samurai and the Gunslinger - or if those two characters had just told the other PCs to not play or to play NPC athletes - it probably would be easy.

The issues are:

1) Too long!
2) It's very spiraly- once you start losing you WILL lose, it's nearly impossible to make a comeback. By contrast, if you get a leg up on Chicago you might well keep it the entire game.
3) A few poor athletes really sink a team.

If you play with a team of 6 copies of the Street Samurai out of the book you will probably roflstomp Chicago. If you have a few people more like the Weapon Specialist who don't quite fit into one of your roles, you will get roflstomped. There's not much room inbetween.

[Critias]

Just a heads up and another "thank you" to the folks who've given feedback on this puppy since the Origins run-through.

[ Spoiler ]

I sent Bull a few changes...emphasized that a social option is another possibility for each of the give encounters, clearly told GMs "fuck encumbrance, it's the Super Brawl" and to let players wear whatever they want to just for the big game, and let it be known that not every stealth-ninja or silver-tongued-devil is cut out for the high octane, high aggression, game of Urban Brawl: and so reminded GMs to give players the option of rocking and rolling as one of the professional Brawlers, if they want in on the action. I also made sure the document's clear that the suggested "Urban Brawl in Nine Rolls" method wasn't a must-use, and if folks want to handle it quicker, they certainly can.

It's a few small(ish) changes, but hopefully they can get through in time for Gencon so folks can enjoy this one more. There's no time this late in the con season to make major overhauls, but it's my hope that these few will smooth over some of the rough edges and make it more fun for everyone.

[UmaroVI]

Glad we could help and thanks for taking the feedback well.