SR5 Missions kicks off!, Chasin' the Wind - PDF, $5,99 Options

[Grinder]

Get the PDF here.

Deadly Cold Wind

It’s been nearly twenty years since disaster struck the city of Chicago, transforming it into an urban hellscape, and some people now believe it’s suffered enough. The Governor of Illinois has initiated and ambitious plan called Project: Takeback to reclaim the feral urban jungle. What’s more, he’s put money into the effort, and that’s the language every corporation on Earth understands. Suddenly, the race is on as the megacorps scramble to claim pieces of the Windy City. They’ll be butting up against the dangers of the Containment Zone and each other, so they’re going to need all sorts of deniable assets. The shadows of Chicago are coming back to life.

In Chasin’ the Wind, what starts as a simple run into the Containment Zone gets more complicated by the minute, and before the night is over shadowrunners might encounter rogue assassins, a feral runaway, and a mysterious massacre in the heart of one of the worst urban areas in the world. But if they survive, there’s more than just pay waiting for them at the end. There’s pizza—Chicago-style.

Chasin’ the Wind is the first adventure for Season 5 of Shadowrun Missions, Catalyst Game Labs’ living campaign for Shadowrun. It is designed for use with Shadowrun, Fifth Edition.

[Slithery D]

[Crossposted to the main Missions thread.]

Okay, I've thought over this mission for a couple of days, and I'm prepared to offer my opinion: hot garbage.

It gives me no pleasure to say this, and let me caveat by saying this is my first Missions purchase: maybe this underbaked development and cartoonishly nonsensical background is common for Missions vs. regular adventures.

A spoiler free summary: the runners are sent into the Chicago containment zone (no longer contained) to do a pretty simply run. While there, you receive calls for another run from a second Johnson. Later yet, you receive a call for a third run; unknown to you, it is related to the second run. Hijinks may (or may not) ensue.

There's a lot to complain about here. Let's take the first run, installing a Macguffin in two locations. The first has a minimal guard force. Are they hostile? I guess so, since they're described as guards. But who do they work for? What is their agenda? Why are they guarding the location? Can I negotiate access, or do I have to disable them? (Evading isn't practical.) These all strike me as good questions, but you won't see them addressed in this product. Literally all you are told is that there are guards there and here are their stats. WTF?! Did I just buy into a gang war if I kill these guys? Interfere in a corporate project? And why is one of them (out of three!) a quite competent mage? Surely there's a story here that might result in consequences.

And I'm sure there will be when your GM notes the deficiency here and writes his own backstory. So why did he buy this, then?

The second Macguffin installation location is more straightforward. And boring. Unless you pick the Pushing the Envelope option, you just have to find it and overcome some (minor) skill/extended test requirements. But if you choose to Push the Envelope:

[ Spoiler ]

There just so happens to be a crazy sniper hanging out who thinks everyone is a bug, so he shoots them. It's the CZ, reasonable enough hazard. Oh, did I mention he's a marksman adept with maxed Agility and lots of bonus skill dice, enhanced accuracy, and no range modifiers shooting from a concealed position that a reasonable (but not fair) Perception test should only give a small chance of spotting? I hope you like getting sniped by 17 dice shooting with a limit of 8 and a damage code of 13P, AP -4 without a defense roll. Never fear, though, after the first guy dies instantly there's plenty of cover/concealment to finish the mission after that.

So far it's bad, but it's just underdeveloped. But with the second run things just become stupid, with no plausible reason for these events to occur or your target location to exist.

[ Spoiler ]

So twenty years ago, before the CZ went up, Shiawase bought a subsidiary that had kidnapped a six year old girl to experiment in mind/matrix interfaces before Otaku even existed. Why did they kidnap a six year old girl? No idea. Probably because they were a spin off of a U of Chicago and National Laboratory joint venture, and unlike megacorps those guys are always up to evil shit, unprotected by extraterritoriality. Also, megacorps apparently purchase small corps without due diligence and only discover illegal secret research in the basement after the fact, which they then of course continue.

Anywho, during twenty years of CZ related chaos, this research continued. While everyone else in the CZ fought for the bare necessities of survival, this clinic conducted advanced research, found that the little girl was a latent technomancer, apparently years before technomancers existed, and then cloned her repeatedly and put 5.2 essence worth of delta grade bioware into her. Food and bullets in the CZ? Expensive, very hard to come by. Delta grade bioware in the CZ? So cheap we can put it into our technomancer subject, crippling her Resonance down to 1, and inexplicably making her into a physical killing machine who can then beat to death all of the staff after removing her own cranial bomb with a camera and a knife. (Who knew they were so easy?)

She then flees onto the streets. A couple of weeks later, Saeder Krupp finds out this abandoned lab is out there. (Clearly Shiawaise just forgot about it during the CZ years, and they were funding delta grade bioware independently all these years.) They hire runners to go secure it and find proof that they always owned it all along.

What you actually find is proof it's a Shiawaise subsidiary, and twelve clone chambers of the escaped subject, all networked, WITH ONE EMPTY. Do you wonder if the escapee is a clone, and what happened to the original girl? You shouldn't, because they don't contemplate any such issues in this adventure. There is a discussion of consequences for putting the escapee BACK INTO THE EMPTY TANK in case you're crazy psychopaths, but none whatsover of what would happen if you tried to free/awaken the other clones. Nor, strangely enough, if you should call Shiawaise, trying to get a better payday, to let them known Saeder Krupp is trying to steal the secret of infinite free delta grade bioware production in a location without utilities or reliable food and water, which frankly is a lot more important than the fact they discovered technomancers years before anyone else and possibly can clone them with Resonance abilities intact.

Is this stupid enough yet? I won't bother telling you about the third run, which is being hired by a local Lone Star cop (through an Aztechnology Johnson, of course) who somehow, after twenty years of Bug City, kept worrying about a kidnapped six year old and somehow attached that open file to the sudden appearance of a mid twenties woman with no memory and the same first name. Which somehow came to his attention even though no one at all has any reason to suspect anything about her where she squats after escaping from the lab and killing everyone.

Absolutely atrocious.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

So... Just curious... Is this little girl the one out of Dunklezahn's Will? One of the players at our table just has to know...

EDIT: I ask, becuase there is a reward for information on the 6 year old girl lost in the CZ. It is important that she survive, apparently.

[Slithery D]

Not unless there was a Samantha Carroll in the will.

Incidentally, the reason the Aztech Johnson hires you for a Lone Star cop is he's trying to build up favors and alliances. Did I mention that this cop is a black sheep who is very unpopular with both the local Lone Star management and the media? It's just natural that Aztechnology would reach out to their friendly neighborhood Texas AA corp through this guy.

[Slithery D]

Aha! I found a reference to why the guards are at MacGuffin site #1: it's in the description of the mage guard, of course, rather than in the actual scene description. "A male dwarf combat mage, here to protect the interests of the smuggler groups who call [location] home."

[Slithery D]

Something that is smart about this adventure, every adversary is explicitly described as having wireless turned off on their gear...

[Bigity]

Something that is smart about this adventure, every adversary is explicitly described as having wireless turned off on their gear...

Muahahahaha. That is hilarious.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Muahahahaha. That is hilarious.

And the lunacy continues. Even the Writers know that the Wireless Boom (and the hacking thereof) is nothing but Crap. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[mister__joshua]

Something that is smart about this adventure, every adversary is explicitly described as having wireless turned off on their gear...

That does seem weird. I mean, even after the long discussions on this board, you'd expect anything from an official product would back their design decisions and run wireless on, or what's the point? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/indifferent.gif)

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

That does seem weird. I mean, even after the long discussions on this board, you'd expect anything from an official product would back their design decisions and run wireless on, or what's the point? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/indifferent.gif)

The point is that even the writers know that what was pushed out in the Main book is crap. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)

[TeOdio]

I left their wireless ON when I ran it, and the decker (1st time Shadowrun Player at that) had a blast. When I ran it was still an early draft but it is mostly there to build contacts for Season 5. I found it to be a bit "busy" for an intro to the new season. Definitely a stretch to get it all done in 4 hours with a table of people new to the system.

[Bigity]

So did the decker single handedly shut them all down, or was it similar to having an extra 'gun' in the group?

[binarywraith]

The point is that even the writers know that what was pushed out in the Main book is crap. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/love.gif)

I have no words. But clearly we're overstating how bad it is.

That said, I'm looking forward to getting ahold of this adventure. I used to run a lot of SR3 in the CZ, because my buddies in college were big Aliens fans, and wanted a bughunt campaign.