First Run. How did your players handle it?, How well did your players fare against the Red Samurai? Options

[Catsnightmare]

Long time no post around here.
Anyway, I've got a group who have expressed some interest in playing if I ran a SR3 game. Being a long time SR3 player but newbie GM, I thought about trying to run my group through First Run (though minus Villiers and Lanier, I still think meeting them in a first time run is ridiculous).
It's been a few years since I played and the Red Samurai seem to be a pretty harsh group of opponents, not to mention the cyber-zombie. I was hoping that those of you game masters who ran their players through the 3rd edition First Run modual can dig way back in the back of your headware memory and tell me how well did your players did, and/or what you changed in the scene?

[Bigity]

I think going up against Red Samurai in a real first run situation to be pretty silly as well. If it's not actually a 'first run' deal where the characters are a little seasoned but the players may be is different.

[Umidori]

Oh wow, that's where that's from.

Okay, so the guy who got me into SR a few years back threw that run at us as our starter (after basic familiarization via Food Fight, I think). But he must have tweaked it, because we were running 4th Edition, not 3rd.

The bits I remember (it was a confusing run, full of rules checking and shuffling notes and whatnot) are a firefight in the street that we got the better of because our mage and I had a weird synergy going between my sniping and his awesome utility spells, then later negotiating a little with Lanier and Villiers, then the cyber-zombie showing up with the team cornered in a corporate parking garage. That fight didn't go well. We weren't even scratching it at first, it tagged everyone at least once for moderate damage, then our mage successfully levitated a car onto it and we rallied a bit. I didn't have my Barrett at that point, was using the PJSS, got a solid hit in and then took a round that knocked me on my ass and had me mostly out of the fight. Then from somewhere (don't remember who threw it), a grenade comes into play and ends up counting down about 5m away from me and the rigger. I think the GM had me roll a composure test, which I scraped by, and then I threw one of my hatchets at the grenade from prone, just managing to knock it a couple more meters away, and rolled behind a pillar before it detonated.

Our GM apparantly decided enough was enough, wasn't going to kill us off on our first run, and had help arrive substantially sooner than was scripted, with (if I recall) a Humvee showing up and plowing into the cyberzombie for pretty nasty damage. I presume we got paid a bit of chump change by Villiers and cleared out (probably collecting our coats and stuff to leave as the GM was wrapping up due to how long the game ran).

~Umi

[Wounded Ronin]

Long time no post around here.
Anyway, I've got a group who have expressed some interest in playing if I ran a SR3 game. Being a long time SR3 player but newbie GM, I thought about trying to run my group through First Run (though minus Villiers and Lanier, I still think meeting them in a first time run is ridiculous).
It's been a few years since I played and the Red Samurai seem to be a pretty harsh group of opponents, not to mention the cyber-zombie. I was hoping that those of you game masters who ran their players through the 3rd edition First Run modual can dig way back in the back of your headware memory and tell me how well did your players did, and/or what you changed in the scene?

In my experience First Run and Food Fight can indeed result in TPKs. I see First Run as being a sort of fratboy hazing.