Question about Missions Options

[sk8bcn]

Ok my question is simple. So far, I haven't bought Missions e-books. I downloaded the 2 firsts seasons that were free. If someone played them, what do you think of them? Worth playing? Basic Shadowrun stuff? Some really great?

A full season is over 100 pages, I'd like a bit of feedback about it.

[bannockburn]

The quality varies, but I can speak for at least season 3 and 4 being pretty good. I don't remember much about 1 & 2 since I never thought about running them.

[Iduno]

Ok my question is simple. So far, I haven't bought Missions e-books. I downloaded the 2 firsts seasons that were free. If someone played them, what do you think of them? Worth playing? Basic Shadowrun stuff? Some really great?

A full season is over 100 pages, I'd like a bit of feedback about it.

Like all pre-scripted adventures, they're very railroady, which is especially bad in a game about creative problem solving. But they do have some good ideas for legwork.

They're good for getting ideas and maybe maps from, and letting your players use whatever information they get to go forward however they're best able to.

[Tecumseh]

I've played through a patchwork of Missions over the years.

I liked Season 1 well enough because it's set in Seattle and I'm from Seattle and I liked to local details. That said, it used 3E rules and I was playing through it with 4E and 5E so I had to do some adapting. I liked Season 4 for the same reason, but since it was 4E I didn't need to adapt it as much.

To Iduno's point, Missions are very session-based and not very open-world. You generally won't find treacherous Johnsons and backstabbing contacts in Missions, nor will the modules explore the downtime between jobs. They'll be missing some of the character of the Sixth World as a result.

Another catch is that they're written around the "lowest common denominator", which is to say they're written for conventions where you never know what combination of PCs you'll have at a table. You could have four technomancers or no Matrix support whatsoever. As such, Missions are usually written in a fairly straightforward way that can be resolved without the express need for magic or Matrix. Those can often help but they won't be necessary. In other words, Missions usually focus on the physical world. There's almost always a fight available, although in some cases it can be avoided. (I played in one where we sidestepped a fight through good planning, good rolls, and the luck to have all the right skills and tools available.)

Depending on what edition you're playing, one of the nice things about Missions is that their FAQs (here) can function as errata and provide a bit of game balancing, outlawing some of the more outrageous possibilities. This is especially true for 5E and 6E.

But if you're a GM without a lot of time in your life for planning, where you just want a script to read and goons with stats, the Missions can be a great fit.

[SpellBinder]

The quality varies, but I can speak for at least season 3 and 4 being pretty good. I don't remember much about 1 & 2 since I never thought about running them.

Quality varies in Season 2 (Denver) as well. Hell, first mission has an encounter with mafia hacker Dean Costello, and one of the possible directions is that he tries to engage the party in cybercombat.

The one time I ran it where the PC's didn't agree to his deal, triggering the fight, the effective party leader pulled a gun. To quote a story character of mine, "Never bring a computer to a gunfight."

[bannockburn]

Well, a smart GM obviously adapts what's written to the circumstances. Sure, that's one example of being badly written (or probably more accurately: carelessly), but avoided and adapted to a more appropriate response easily enough. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Other than that, I found them a good framework to run a short campaign with a constant group where you can just add the downtime aspects, or sprinkle in filler stories. Especially the 4th season and how it dovetails into the Artifacts setting is very nice and can be the jumpoff point to that campaign (well, half of it).

[Iduno]

Especially the 4th season and how it dovetails into the Artifacts setting is very nice and can be the jumpoff point to that campaign (well, half of it).

Yeah, that was...a thing. If you're going to steal someone's work without paying them, at least don't do it incompetently.

[Ka_ge2020]

[Edit: Unproductive post.]

[sk8bcn]

ok, that's contrasted. It's neither yes or no.

I'll ask it differently :

I'm running my game focusing on big events of the storyline :

I ran Harlequin (in a rewritten form), introduced threats from the deeper space, made a campaign around Winternight, (also made a pause with piracy in the Carribean League), now I'm in the Bug storyline that will peak with Chicago, and will go after in Harlequin's Back.

And I plan so to move onto every big storyarc from Shadowrun.


Whether missions are pretty railroaded or not is not a problem for me. I can change all things that displease me. But do they containt some material worth it? I mean in game scope. Or are they more classical shadowrunning, the things you play when you start the game?

I m still stuck in 2nd ed material and I have close to a full collection SR2-3-4 and I'm on my way for completing 5th and 6th. So I wonder if it's worth it.