[X] My Assistant

[linei]

Definitely.
As a GM I see characters totally foregoing legwork at all most of the time.
Personally I think that's because the core rules don't cover legwork as much as for example combat or magic. Just by reading the core rules, legwork falls more or less completely under the table.
I do mostly GMing, so I do tend to read a lot of (prefabricated) adventures. There always are tables on legwork included in these adventures. But most players don't even know these tables exist. They simply don't get the idea of asking their contacts about things. How would they? They haven't been told how important it is. How much more information about the proceedings they might get.
After you've told them about the possibility of using their contacts in this way, after having the first few successes with this angle, players tend to use legwork much more regularly.

Stealth is the same and something different at the same time.
Stealth isn't covered in the core rules, with the exception of an odd sentence here or there. Combat and weapons are covered in that great detail ... how would a player know that stealth is even an option? Just like playing Splinter Cell for the first time if you've just played Doom or Quake up until then. You just don't know that this option is out there and that it makes life easier (and healthier :-) ).
On the other hand, the life of a Shadowrunner tends to get boring (in the eyes of many players) if he doesn't get to exchange some bullets with a guard from time to time. It seems player revel in these moments. They NEED a hard fight from time to time.

Give the runners enough obviously powerfull opposition and they tend to discover stealth really fast.

[ Spoiler ]

These SR Missions-adventures are quite usefull to present relative weak (because they are new) characters with an opposing force that won't be conquered through pure firepower. So congratulation to the authors of these adventures on this point.

Just give them a battle here and there.
'In case of doubt, roll in grenade and come in firing.'


Oops. this has become one large posting. Seems you touched the right spot.

[Dr. Black]

Agreed!

I find I have to explicitly mention Legwork for the Newbs and some vets too.

[Dr. Black]

Demolition Run

[ Spoiler ]

Just ran this last night. I had 3 characters, decker (southern style - complete with drawl and idiosyncrasies), Medium weight sammy with good stealth and decent b/e skills (real rough and tumble, uncouth dwarf) , physad with good stealth - light sammy - face - and b/e skills (ex covert operative, really suave, picture james bond except female). They all relied quite a bit on skillwires to cover many different positions on the team. The group had some to moderate experience, no noobs.

It came off without a hitch. Given that they didnt have any magic support I through the mage in there only to make them nervous.

They scouted the facilty by night and day. Did all the legwork/matrixwork. They even took legwork to new levels that I had to addlib to satisfy their insatiable thirst for knowledge. Finally curbing them by mentioning the profile they were creating with so much investigation.

They went in the next evening following the meet. Right after the shift change.

The Stealth/Sammy and Physad went in with the decker providing matrix overwatch. I found it interesting that the system stats had 6s with a 12 for Slave. Given that he edited the video feeds and then provided info to the onsite team as to the location of the guards (that he could see), it made that a bit of a challenge.

The onsite team had Ruthenium suits, along with stealths of 7 and 8 and traceless walk, they made short work of the guards. They took out all the guards with tasers and were only spotted/heard twice - right as they shot the Security guard in the shack and one guard on partol. Neither got so much as a word out before collapsing convulsively. Judicious use of Plasteel restraints and duct tape kept them all quiet.

I rolled randomly for locations of guards when they went into the buildings and then played it from there. The troll opened a door just as they had lined up on it and took one dart in the chest, down he went.

They even looted the place and moved the missiles to point at the building - just in case the demolitions packs didnt level it. While one guy was settings explosives looting and adjusting the missiles, the other ran 2 klicks to the car and drove up to the compound to load everything up.

They did have a challenge getting the unconcious troll out of the basement though. Dwarf str 6, and human str 2. They spent a while rolling him around and used the elevator.

Overall I was very impressed with the characters handle on everything. There was definately some humor as the various personality types interacted.

#1 "Ready to come up the elevator, where's the guard?"
Decker "What guard?"
#1"The one working on the machine above me!"
Decker "heck, he's on the floor"
#1 "whats he doing on the floor?"
Decker "drooling it looks like"
#1 "what?!?"
#2 "He's tagged and bagged, sorry I didnt update you"

I thought of all kinds of ways I could have made this even more challenging, but my goal is not to wipe the floor with the characters. Excellent legwork and planning, good stealth, a broad set of skills (except for magic), and they got the job done like a top flight Spec Ops team should.


Sorry for such the long post, but It was the first of the Missions that I have GM'd and am pretty excited about it.
[\spoiler]

[Deacon]

[linei]

[bitrunner]

Keep in mind that all the demo adventures (especially #2) have been reworked and are being reviewed by the Commandos right now - they'll be posted to Adam soon...

they have been corrected for a lot of the mistakes (mostly stupid editorial ones) that have been made, but there are some tweaks for game play and "realism" as well...

for example:

[ Spoiler ]

in Demolition Run, the rocket launchers now have just those EMP charged anti-drone rockets. Sure, the rigger will have to check for damage and the drone will drop into the complex and be lost, but it makes more sense than total anti-vehicle rockets...i've also modified the description so that they can still be used to destroy the building, but because of kinetic energy and a great deal of luck, rather than explosive force. they also have tamper circuits on them to prevent, or at least make it extremely difficult, for the runners to steal - they might get a rocket or two, but not the launchers...

[RedmondLarry]

Demolition Run (#2)

[ Spoiler ]

After the first time I ran Demolition Run, I had the missile storage be underground, and missiles would came up one at a time as part of launching. They could steal one missile with a Launch Weapons B/R ( 8 ) test with a base time of 24 hrs. Or they could try to snag one as it launched, in which case it would self-destruct when it detected it was 'off course'. :)

[linei]

Demolition Run

[ Spoiler ]

The runners went through the whole scenario almost perfectly. They scouted the area (missed the first shift change), even scouted the facility astrally. Then decided to climb the fence at the security shed. Having three runners across (one watching their backs from outside) they conquered the security shed flawlessly. There they used to controls to launch the missiles on the facility. They even used one pack of explosive from the Johnson to blow up the security shed.
Two patrolling guards were stunned and taken outside the facility to keep them alive.
The runners even discussed ways to get the remaining guards out before the explosion but couldn't decide on what to do.

A Dark and Stormy Night

[ Spoiler ]

I had some great players this time, including a mouse shaman with a high lockpicking skill. So the stairwell doors proved to be no problem for them when they had shut down the elevator. They even banned the fire elemental flawlessly.
Nevertheless, the facility got to their nerves. They were frightened deeply when they reached the decontamination room on sublevel 4. But they managed to get through it all, killed John without hesitation, than mowed down Bishop with 20 or more bullets ... I guess their nerves were wearing out at that time.

[bitrunner]

Linei's Dark & Stormy Night:

hehehe....ehhksalent..... :D

[Corporate Raider]

It looks like most posts have been by GMs, but I'll add one from the player's perspective.

the dunner ran two SRM mods at U Con last weekend. I briefly stopped by as he was setting up Mission Briefing, and it was well organized. He was dealing with a few new players to SRM, and at least one that had never played SR3. He had copies of all the SR3 archtypes available to allow for immediate play, and went over the basic rule structure before they began the run.

I played in Demolition Run with 6 other players on Saturday night. the dunner kept things flowing with such a large team, and gave everyone a chance to participate. One rules discussion re: valid spellcasting targets while astrally projecting was quickly resolved to everyone's satisfaction.

Now on to some spoilers re: Demolition Run:

[ Spoiler ]

I was cautious initially when we began this run. It is the first one I've played where large scale destruction was called for against corporate security. We did a moderate amount of legwork, and I have yet to be on a team that ignored that aspect of the game. One of my team members secured some schematics of the facility, and I negotiated for some matrix scouting and overwatch with a decker contact. Another of us called a Doc Wagon contact about the security surrounding the facility just hours before we blew it to smithereens! I hope the dunner added to that character's log sheet that he lost that contact.

The run itself was a cake walk. An astral recon by our shamans, combined with video feeds secured by the decker made it easy to find the fatal flaw in the security setup. A few gel rounds, stunballs, zip fasteners and a roll of duct tape later, the security guards and technicians were being dragged out of the facility before the charges were triggered. The only thing we failed to do was find file H and steal the work drone.

[bitrunner]

to Corporate Raider

[ Spoiler ]

hehe, well, as you've probably read elsewhere, the first couple in the demo series are supposed to be a little easier than the standard run - it is more important to teach the newbs the importance of legwork and preparation and how that makes the run go smoother...

as for "missing" anything, you didn't - File H is there as a "bone" for decker characters and will be used in one of the story arc adventures coming up. For those that have already started along the path, File H belongs to Walter Broward...he'll be needing that back later... ;)

stealing the work drone would have only gotten you a) more money or b) a work drone the size of a forklift...

[Donner]

Corporate Raider, if you don't mind, which was your character? As my handle implies, I played Donner. ;)

I had great fun at both of the_dunner's sessions.

[Donner]

BTW, how do you add the

[ Spoiler ]

links, so that people can read the baseline text without seeing a spoiler?

[Donner]

Oh. ROTFLMAO. :D

[Corporate Raider]

Donner, I played Jesus Benitez, aka "Benny". I was the ork that hired my decker contact for matrix overwatch.

[Donner]

[bitrunner]

obviously, you figured out that "spoiler" is another tag...if you need to add something after the spoiler, you need to use "/spoiler" to end the spoiler. both of course require the [ ] around them...

[Backgammon]

Dark and Stormy Night

[ Spoiler ]

We just played this one. Whew. I'd say my combat monster performed very well. Took only a Light, nicely resisting a 6D fireball due to nuyen wisely invested in Fire Proof armour mods, although a Lower Charisma spell almost did me in. My shiney new SPAS-22 did a nice job on the troll vampire, with hits ranging from 11D to 16D.

That mission was just awesome. The best moment was when our shaman was interrogation the insect dude. He let slip "you'll be stuck in this body forever if you don't help us" right before leveling his shotgun at his head, and at that very moment I discovered the ELD-AR had insecticide rounds and put 2 and 2 together. It was *perfect* timing, such a cool moment.

It's too bad I have NO FRAGGIN CLUE what a vampire was doing there... An Ares Arms Insect spirit weapons research lab I can understand, but a freakin vampire complete with theatrical coffin? I'm never gonna wrap my sammy head around that one.

Anyway, I loooved that mission, kudos to the writer (though maps would have been very, very, very nice)

[linei]

[Backgammon]

Oh, forgot to add also (still Dark & Stormy Night)

[ Spoiler ]

When we heard the Ares megaphone saying the building was surrounded, I really wasn't sure what to do. In my mind it was pretty clear we couldn't fight our way past heavily armed Ares soldiers, and I couldn't see how to sneak past an Ares military cordon. I suggested to the team we should surrender and negociate, but I was still internally debating what move to take, since it crossed my mind we had no negociating leverage so they'd probably just kill us cause we saw too much rather than cut a deal.

It was sort of a "uhm, ok.." moment when our hardly hidden at all team managed to not get seen by the squad coming out of the elevator, and then we easily ran away using the back door. I feel our GM handled the situation well (I got the hint we shouldn't surrender when we called Manny for support), but it stays in my mind that there's NO WAY we should have been able to escape. I simply can't believe Ares would be so sloppy as to leave the back door unguarded.

I think maybe the scenario should allow the team to escape moments *before* Ares cordons off the area, or give the team negociating leverage so they do get captured, but let go in a mutual "we didn't see nothing if you didn't see nothing" kind of way.

I'm a player, so I don't know the full story, but maybe Manny, or more precisely Manny's employer who seemed to know Kat pretty well, could have talked to the commanding officer of the strike force and bluffed some excuse for us to escape.

I don't know, I just don't like how sloppy Ares got at the end.

[bitrunner]

Dark & Stormy

[ Spoiler ]

ok, first....there is no vampire...he's a poser - like the dudes that dress up and cross their hands over their chest to be invisible...you know, LARPers! this troll is just heavily into the whole Vampire/Goth scene. But he's still a mage, and so Ares puts up with his eccentricities....he has all spells to replicate the powers of a vampire, and cosmetic mods for the rest. i'm sure he's a big hit at the local goth club on friday nights!

maps - yep - we took them out...as well as all the security guards that used to be on random patrols. we found that having them caused the players to over plan things and it really wasn't giving the scary Resident Evil feel we were looking for. Matt ran it at Gencon without the maps, and the rest is history...

Ares - the Containment Team is on its way when the runners start. It is supposed to be announced when they are 10 minutes away. This is to warn the players that it is time to get the hell out of Dodge...to prevent them from Carmen-searching all the rooms of the facility for stuff to scrag as "treasure"...even if you wait around for the team to show up, you are meant to escape out the back door - which should have been described as full of cobwebs and debris and litter - it has largely been forgotten about. An oversight and a hole in Ares otherwise normal strict security...

Glad you liked it...#2 and #3 of the story arc are along similar "veins" muhahahaha!

[Dark father]

No Bitrunner! You shouldn't have told him what he really was! I liked to know that the runners were pretty uncertain about him... Well that mean I described him good enough to keep the paranoia on!

[Whizbang]

Argh...and yet again I'm regretting those idiots who spoiled Dark & Stormy Night for me. As said in my version of it...we never got past the ward.

[Backgammon]

[bitrunner]

just remember that this *IS* the spoiler thread...

also, you need to be able to separate character and player knowledge...

he's played the adventure - his character is damn sure still scared...just giving him a little piece of mind....

now - what one of you SHOULD do (probably Backgammon) is go over to the Bit Bucket and start posting about how one company has hired someone - that way, when players that haven't played this adventure see him/her, they'll be even MORE scared! "Hey!! I read about this on the matrix!! HOLY CRAP!!" :eek: