i am really interested to know (from you freelance guys mainly) what fanpros position on publishing adventures is. They have published a couple, and i emailed them and they said they plan to do adventure set books a la arcology shutdown, but what about run of the mill-easy on the gm adventure books, like divided assets?

i ask because i am gming this time around and try to put as much effort into my runs as those books did/do, and its damn hard to get even 1/2 way there, too much time. So i have resorted to buying old adventures and updating them for those weeks during which i dont have the time/ideas for a run of my own design.

I am especially interested in the non save-the-world type adventures, the ones that are like a normal run but where something goes wrong, a minor threat/group/enemy is involved, which threatens the players lives (or their neighborhoods or family or whatever) but not the world. Or those which give the Seattle centric crowd a good reason to go abroad, like to cali or hong kong or something.

anyone know if these type of 'classic' adventures (with the maps, handouts, npcs, debugging, etc) are still one of the product types Shadowrun will have? i understand they are not the most profitable, but do they generate red marks?

Sorry, I voted a "Definitely not". I don't do pre-made adventures, ever. If I'm not creative enough to run a game without reading verbatem, I'm not gonna run a game. Especially since these pre-gen'd adventures don't cater to the specific characters a group may have.

However, were I, for some strange reason, apt to buy pre-gen'd adventures, then yes, I MUCH prefer simple games to these world-saving ones. I'd prefer though to see non-shadowrun types of adventures, like Merc work, Toxic and Environmentalist adventures, etc. I got bored out of my ass with building-raiding back about 6 years ago, but I suppose for new players, a nicely designed building run would be nice. Personally, when I run city games, I pull out my Marvel game (the 1989 version) that had huge street maps and buildings as part of the box set. I miss some of those necessities that the gaming companies just don't do anymore. I'd buy any pre-fab set that had nice maps in them, from any game at all (assuming they sold theme where I live in Europe).

Sphynx

I'm a 'don't think so' as I don't buy prefab adventures as a general rule. If I was told they were good and I had an impending roleplaying session I hadn't prepared for (and had no time to prepare for), I'd consider buying them rather than cancelling the session.

I normally don't buy any pre-made adventures.
To me they're just too expensive for a product you can use only once (unless you exchange players often) and have to tweak massively to make it fit to your group...

I like reading through them for inspiration, though.


(And then there are these adventure books you have to buy even if you don't want to run them - just for the background info they provide. E.g. the new German Schockwellen that is half campaign half Proteus-sourcebook...)

yes.
im bored in these save-the-world-or-die adventures.

IMO the best ones are thoses where something MIGHT go wroong but the starting scene is not that every thing is already screwd up.

and i have _never_ seen a pre-made adventure with holdouts.
those would be nice.

In my not-very-humble-opinion one of the greatest failings of 3rd Edition is the total lack of published adventures that are not mega-huge metaplot world changing events.

What the hell ever happened to the gritty street stuff and the gritty corporate break-in shadowruns? THAT is what Shadowrun is all about!

While I generally do not actually run pre-published adventures (every once in a while I do), I do tend to buy and read them to keep up on what's going on and to GET IDEAS. I make use of the NPCs, the locations, sometimes bits and peices of the plotline (especially if I'm in a hurry).

Pre-published adventures also set the tone for a lot of GMs. Rookie GMs tend to read them to get a feel for how to write-up their own adventures. With FanPro putting out these massive save-the-universe-every-adventure runs and nothing else, Shadowrun is rapidly losing it's roots, it's personality, it's feel. And I REALLY don't like that.

Shadowrun 3rd Ed. feels more like a saturday morning cartoon than the gritty Shadowrun I used to know and love. I want the gritty stuff back, damnit!

I answered definitely yes because I want to keep my collection up to date. However they could be useful as well. I don't have much time to prep games and therefore a few ready to run would be good.

Mind you, with Shadowrun: Missions coming up I will likley be using those scenarios instead.

I'm also a "Definately Yes" but maybe for slightly different reasons...

Sure, I like to have an adventure handy for any genre just incase someone asks me to do something for which I am unprepared - if caught in this situation I will normally "create on teh fly" but sometimes I just have a "can't be arsed" day...

Mostly though, I buy adventures for inspiration. I'll read them cover to cover and disect the storyline for my own use.

Plus, I like the pretty pictures...

Some of the best adventures published had nothing to do with any metaplot- things like Queen Euphoria, Mercurial, Dream Chipper, One Stage Before.Ivy and Chrome were, I think some of the best written adventures with lots of ideas and potential for other leads.
(After we did 'Euphoria, the ant shaman escaped and later set up a new nest at the school in Ivy and Chrome.

Snow Fox, most of those you just mentioned were involved with metaplots.

I'm a completist, so I'd likely buy anything.

Don't most of us here pretty much buy every Shadowrun book they put out? So I guess I have no choice but click yes definately.

Hmmm, interesting comments people.

I said Yea, because like Ancient I'm a completist and because I can't not buy something new now when my bookshelves have everything else since Day One. They'd get upset and fall on my heretical arse. Plus, it's darn hard to shake the addiction and I don't want to.

As for the adventures themselves, well I'm going to agree on several fronts from many of you guys out there. I prefer to generate my own scenarios and tailor them to my group, but then these books do give you inspiration to form your own runs. I was originally like Sphynx in my view until i got my mits on Mercurial. It blew me away completely. Never before had I even considered the complexity of such plotlines, using so many adversaries and incorporating so many things behind the scenes that the runner will never get to know about. Plus, it had a lot of stuff that enhanced the Sixth World for me. (Remember that this was when SR consisted of about 3-4 books only and not much else in the game setting was developed as far as it is today - 15+ years later on! Gee - now that makes me feel old. How 'bout you Snow Fox? ;D )

Regarding the Metaplots - well, its nice and interesting to read about and keep up with things, but not often practical for the new groups of runners or those who have their own street-level campaigns. Personally, I prefer it down dirty and gritty too Squire. As a GM I like to know what's going on elsewhere in the world, but my main focus has to be the group and their campaign. I like to tie in elements of the former, but overall its the immediate surroundings that are more relevant to them.

In fact the best idea for scenarios was released a long time back with Sprawl Sites - the Random Run Generator. They even tied in the various type of encounters (Corp, Gang, Metahuman, Police, etc) with the Lone Star neighbourhood Security Code grades too. Maybe a little too simple and remeniscent of the good old AD&D Wandering Monster tables, but they worked well enough if you got caught on the fly and could easily be converted by the GM to suit his players. A pity that FASA didn't release "Running Short" which I think was a revamped and updated version of this concept. Still, Mr Johnson's Little Black Book is due out soon, so perhaps that'll be more up people's alleys.

As for the scenario formats, well I really liked the depth they gave the Sixth World overall and the way that they were plug in and play without needing to know a complete backhistory of the metaplot. They were jobs pure and simple. Do it, get paid, go home. And although the metaplot stuff is great I do miss them keenly. Especially the Tim Bradstreet artwork. Nevermind, that the world of printing for you: Low sales = no profit = no product line. Still, there are several magazines and conventions out there, so all of you creative scenario writers have a chance to air your skills. Well, whattaya waiting for... write me a run chummer, I wanna PLAY!

Snow Fox: well, you're right in that they're the beginnings of the metaplots. Metaplots grew out of them, example:

Queen Euphoria (Insect spirits, Euphoria)

Mercurial (Maria Mercurial, Kyle Morgan and Peri)

Dream Chipper (the Jack-the-Ripper BTL, personafix chips, Global Technologies)

One Stage Before (Jetblack.)

Ivy and Chrome (Blood Magic/AZT)

Adventures typically don't sell as well as sourcebooks and aren't as profitable, which is why FanPro has moved to bundling three or so adventures that are somewhat related in theme in the same book; it keeps costs down and provides gamers with more bang for their buck.

and Predator and Prey was fine. If that's the compromise, great, lets get cracking!

Hmmm, LRG's Digital Burn page huh. Generally been browsing the Earthdawn stuff there - I'll keep an eye on that one though. Cheers Mystic.

yeah i have to agree with squire and beestie, thats my line of thinking when it comes to sr, keep it gritty, with the metaplot as world events/background/ high karma groups.

like i said, i dont lack creativity (i dont think...) its just these adventures were always so high quality that having one around didnt make you feel like you were jerking your players those times when you didnt have time to make your own.

the bottom line though, the point as it were, and what i emailed mr. boyle about some time ago, was that these adventures seemed so integral to making the sixth world live, and make it feel the way it did. gritty. I look back and see what tthey make now (and some of the art, like 3rd ed. cover) and it makes me sad to think that this game that introduced me to cyberpunk, and a whole socio-political philosophy about what our real future is looking like is becoming a saturday morning cartoon, as someone else put it.

these books did show people what the setting was like, really well too (with that great art they all had) and it showed gms how to do it, i.e. legwork is important to shadowrun. This new edition doesnt ship with the advendures 1sr ed. did, and seems to rely on 12 year old kids to just know that you whould have legwork, etc. The game isnt tailored to first time roleplayers like i was, nor is it tailored to make itself a part of these new kids lives the way it became a part of our lives. You make it feel like a saturday morning cartoon and people are going to drop it as they grow up, like saturday morning cartoons. Make it about the social and political nightmares/warning/realities/whatever that cyberpunk is all about, then you make a generation of thinkers who revere shadowrun and buy/will buy the toys books, movies whatever, even if they dont roleplay, just because they love the world, and because outside of the sprawl trilogy there is very little inspired cyberpunk fiction that seems real (even with the elves and all ).

i dont know, im tired, but i think the cyberpunk atmosphere the game had (thanks to the adventures more than anything else, arguably) built the brand, and if they want to expand it, make it the cult phenomonon that will sell the liscenced products they should bring it back.

I'll buy 'em and read 'em, and I'll run the good ones after tearing them up and rebuilding them for my players. I loved Euphoria, UB, bits of Harlequin and HB...but FASA/FanPro/Wizkids' idea of where the game should go doesn't usually fit with mine.

That, and my game's still back in 2057.

I think slamm-o's on the money here. I've never had a chance to actually play the game, and even after reading the basic rules and the third edition basic adventures, I felt...

Well, Shadowrun needs fewer epic adventures and more "dungeon crawls". I know I'm probably the only person willing to come out and say this, but there need to be more gritty, low-level, generally inconsequential adventures out there. Unless you play a D&D style group of adventurers, sometimes you're just going to be sent to deal with something that's not brand-spanking-new or of great global importance. So give us newbies some idea what basic run complications and rewards are (emphasis on basic), and I'm sure expert GM's out there can mine for personal ideas.

I would like to see more "first runs". I would buy a book with a collection of 10 to 20 of these quick, easy, and fun runs. They don't have to be challenging or in-depth, they just have to include the environment details. Let it be a base for the GM to use when he needs to GM on the fly.

great idea buzzed, maybe the mr. johnsons black book will have those things. Just things with area/npc descriptions, which archetypes to use for encounters, what map archetypes to use for the locations etc.

Although I would buy pretty much anything Shadowrun-related, I am going to have to disagree with the majority of posters in this thread in regards to needing more street-level/gritty pre-made adventures.

I have absolutely no problems developing my own non-world-changing plot lines and adventures for my group. I don't think many people here have much of a problem doing the same. The same really can't be said for the other end of the spectrum, as I am not privy to the direction the various metaplots are going to take in the future of the Sixth World. I like to have releases that encompass these, as they tend to move the world forward, making it 'come alive' for me.

I hope that made some kind of sense.

I answered "Not Sure". I think I would buy one if someone said it was really good. Right now I do all my campaings myself, and I don't own any adventure books, but I must admit sometimes I wish I could just pull out one and not have to worry about coming up with a plot, NPCs, maps, etc...

Fortune, the issue isn't plotlines. It's the adventures themselves. Ignoring for a moment all the different levels of player taste and metaplot, aiming high leaves newcomers in the lurch, and doing so is a rather risky thing for a company to do. Many old hats can use the inspiration for little things, and expecting total newbies to do things right is an exercise in futility. Attempting to do so limits the player base, and as the player base and the audience base are more or less the same, it's an iffy economic decision too.

Of course, I'd also like to see a few free introductory adventures on the website, in the "first hit's free" spirit of advertising. Give starting players some way to start off without invoking the mighty metaplot. If you want high-powered, highly involved characters, good for you. One of the great things about Shadowrun is the gamut of play styles it accepts, I'd just prefer it if they supported different levels (especially if they were open about which product aimed where. That way, low-powered fans could ignore lots of the silly new races out and high-powered fans could ignore all the street level grit.)

I'd be at least ten times as likely to buy a non-metaplot adventure as a metaplot adventure.

However, since my likelihood of buying a metaplot adventure is exactly zero, that's not really saying much.

I'm really Not Fond of the metaplot, and I'd like to see a lot more street-level material and a lot less immortal elf and great dragon crap. However, I haven't bought or run a published adventure since I was DMing 1st edition AD&D, and I'm not likely to start now.

Anymage: I never stated that my games involved 'high powered characters'. Nor do I think I implied that there shouldn't be lower-level releases.

I think there are quite a few already published adventures for newcomers and lower-powered characters, for example the ones in First Run, Predator and Prey, and some of the Wake of the Comet plot lines. Not to mention a lot of the adventures from the previous editions. After going through some, or even all of those, most GMs tend to develop their games along their own lines, either keeping it 'gritty' or raising the power level at their own pace.

One of the things I really like about Shadowrun is the metaplot(s), and the way the whole world is developed. I'd hate to see that set aside in favor of just another dungeon crawl. As I said though, I'd still buy the product.

Wake of the Comet was pretty good and had some runs you could do without delving too much into the metaplot. That's a good thing- but they were very high level runs (or should have been).

Breaking into a megacorp Arcoblock is a huge challenge and only very experienced and successful shadowrun teams should be offered that kind of job.

In the old days the published adventures were often hooks to the metaplot. Queen Euphoria is a great example of this- you learn about the metaplot- it reveals some secret about the shadowrun world, but all-in-all it's a shadowrun that any medium grade runner team could get the job for and handle.

[rant]

In SR3, all the runs are meta-plot related, and they don't hint at the metaplot, leaving room to explorer- they hand everything out on a silver platter and let PCs have a really easy time changing the course of world events in a single run.

I got so frustrated reading Survival of the Fittests, that I didn't bother to read past the first adventure in it. I mean come-on: you're breaking into THE PRIMARY LAIR OF A GREAT DRAGON for heaven sakes! And as written, it is rediculously easy. I just couldn't bring myself to read any further.

Wake of the Comet was better, but still it's all high-level stuff. High-level stuff is fine, but you've got to have a mix. A lot of gamers like to start out as minor players and work their way up. They've got to do a lot of lower level runs before they should be delving into stuff like breaking into a megacorp's arcoblock.

What ever happened to working your way up?

Shadowrun has become a munchkin game. That's fine if that's your style of play. But there are a hell of a lot of us out here who don't like that style of play and who feel we are not being supported by WizKids.

If I wanted to play munchkin games, I'd play the game Munchkin.

Gaming is difficult for many of us- it's hard to get a group together and GMing is a lot of work. If I didn't have the vast resources of prior editions and FASA publication to draw on (many of which are no longer in print), I would have given up Shadowrun a long time ago. Hell, I've been tempted to hang up my Shadowrun dice from time to time anyway. Why- because WizKids isn't supporting anything close to my style of gameplay (and I don't think my style is unusual).

Some of the sourcebook stuff is great- Threats 2 had things that can be adapted for all styles of play. But the adventures are becoming more and more cartoonish and munchkinized. It didn't start with WizKids, it started with 3rd Edition (still under FASA). The 3rd edition sourcebook is cartoonish and munchkinized- the art (the art has improved since the inception of SR3 BTW) got cartoonish and bigger and badder and out of proportion, so did the writing.

Read Plus-ca-Change in SR2- that's what Shadowrun is all about. Gritty, edge of your seat kinda stuff.

I read The More They Run in SR3 and almost put the book down. It read like a cartoon on Saturday morning TV. Amazing feats, characters with no depth, no tension no matter how the odds were stacked against the characters. I felt like I was reading the transcript of a game played entirely by 12 year old cartoon junkies. I hated it.

Don't for a second underestimate the importance of that one peice of fiction in the core rule book. It's purpose if so that newbies will read it and get an understanding of how the game (and the game world) works. It's critical to setting up the shadowrun universe.

Don't underestimate the importance of the artwork in setting the tone of the game (especially to newbies).

One of Shadowrun's streingths is that it can be played at any level. You can play uberpowerful or you can play just barely able to survive on the streets. You can play comical, you can play dramatic, you can play tension or walk-in-the-park, you can play any combination you like.

But I keep seeing way too many publications that suggest to me that SR is only supporting cartoonish munchkinized gameplay and too few publications supporting the other styles so many of us know and love.

Even if we don't personally run the published adventures- they set the tone for game play. Those adventure keep us up-to-date on SR world events, give us ideas for our home-spun adventures and most importatnly- they teach newbies what shadowrun is about (not to mention people checking out the game to decide if they want to get into it).

Currently, we've limited the player base. Back in SR2, I had a much easier time finding players that had a game style I enjoyed working with. The further into SR3 we get, the harder it is to find shadowrun players who are not powergamers and munchkins. It's frustrating enough to give me serious consideration to giving up on the game.

It's not just the published adventures, but also the tone of many of the other books (especially the core rulebook SR3).

We don't need another edition- we just need some damage control in what's being written now. WizKids is allowing Shadowrun to continue on a definate course that FASA set for it with the publication of SR3.

And I do not like the course they're setting. I don't like it at all.

Lets get back to our roots- to what Shadowrun is supposed to be about- gritty street-level struggles, corporate intreague- not changing the world every second Tuesday.

[/rant]

That said, games like Harlequin and harlequin's Back werejust farkin' cool.

Game sessions where the GM starts with "You are all together at your apartment. What do you want to do?" are very common, and therefore require non-metaplot runs. It is also a good idea to have tidbit encounters to throw in as unexpected suprises or breaks from a currently long run. Giving the players control on what they do is what it is all about - fun.

I like metaplot adventures now and then.
I sure as bloody hell don't like them all the time.
I think perhaps what I loved most about Harlequin's Back was the definite impression that the runners were chosen by some random and impartial arbiter of fate; that if Harlequin had the choice he'd be running with some people who actually knew what they were doing rather than these streetscum. If they're successful, they become vastly more powerful streetscum— I believe the award for doing everything perfectly, not counting individual awards, is close to 100 karma— but they are still, in Harlequin's eyes, streetscum. Maybe vaguely respectable streetscum, but streetscum.
Brainscan, Survival of the Fittest... meh, not too bad, but if you run both of them for the same group... eventually you have it so that your team of PCs has had its hands in a huge number of earthshaking events. I sometimes like to use published adventures to give myself a break and to go in directions that I don't typically go, but I really don't want characters to become too pivotal. I will often use Great Dragon/large megacorp/Immortal Elf plots to base runs off of. Oh, I've got my own personal metaplot up the wazoo. Thing is, when a runner in my game does something the equivalent of SotF, he or she doesn't ever actually find out what was going on unless he or she did some serious digging for that sole purpose. I'm perfectly capable of constructing huge behind-the-scenes plots that the players will never know about, and I wish FanPro would do more of the same. Part of the magic of SR to me is that there are things that will never actually become known to any actual player character unless they sign up to become Lofwyr's personal bitch or somesuch. Nowadays it seems like eventually players will discover more or less everything, though that may just an unfair impression I've gotten from parts of SotF and from listening to the rest of this thread.
Besides, behind-the-scenes stuff just makes for more stories to tell my girlfriend at 2:00 in the morning.

~J, geekier than you

wow, i think squire hit on the feelings i have had about adventures lately, the ones that have made me so frustrated, maybe you should mail that to mr. boyle?

Kanada, Shadowrun stuff is our pillowtalk. Beat that.

~J

Personally I answered 'yes, definately', for a number of reasons:

1) I like owning every shadowrun product for the art and continuity
2) Even if the adventure turns out to be crappy, or not suited to my players, there's alot of information in an adventure that makes my gming job easier - npcs, locations, scenes, ideas, artwork
3) Sometimes I find myself with little to no time to make an adventure from scratch, and if I can just grab a suitable finished adventure, tweak it abit, and play - my players get what they want. And if the run happens to be a complete cakewalk for rtheir runners, that's okay - once in awhile that's quite enjoyable too - when everything actually works out perfectly.

I too would like to see some more gritty, street-level adventures. That doesn't mean that they can't involve metaplot though, in a subtle way (for instance: pawns of one of the great dragons hire the runner team for a minor part of a SoTF event; The runners are hired to smuggle gear and equipment through the ork underground to the entrance of the Renraku arcology while Deus runs it; something that remotely or loosely ties in to the metaplot but focuses on what ripples it makes on the streets)

That said, I like the big scale, save-the-world type runs too...but not 'just' those. I am in fact starting a secondary campaign to run in the wake of SoTF, because frankly - after that the runners who survive aren't really suited for just any runs. Though eventually they will probably slip back down into the cracks - no one can stay at the top for ever...

But the best combination might be adventures like the first Harlequin, where street level runners do street level things that eventually get out of their control and they get a glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes. Early adventures like Harlequin, Bottled Demon, Mercurial, Dragon Hunt, DNA/DOA, Imago and Ivy and Chrome all captured both the gritty streets and the otherwordly mystery and magic. If we could get more adventures along those lines, I think everyone would be happy.

Recent adventures I liked for similar reasons where the first few adventures of the Brainscan campaign, Catch a Falling Star from WoTC, Elements and Rest from SoTF.

Granted, a good GM can make his own plots without making it earth-shaking, but the pre-fab set the tone and mood for the world at large. When all three adventures in, say, Corperate Punishment take the players out of the city and they all distinctly lack grit. There can be others, but with these paving the way, what do you expect?

The GM can set his own tone and mood for the world. He or she doesn't have to stay attached to what the modules say. The only thing that matters is that the tone and mood the GM has chosen are fun for his or her group as a whole. If that happens to be a distinctly "un-gritty" style, it's their preference.

Yes, maybe because I am a completist and the only thing that would stop me is an unco-operative bank account.

As for the lack of gritty, street adventures: If you don't like the current stuff then why don't you submit a proposal for an adventure book? (The 3-in-1 format seems most appropriate.) They might bin it the moment it arrives but it's better than just complaining. Slightly more constructive, at least.

Pistons, I appreciate your response. Sorry about the corporation mix-up, I was under the impression that FanPro was the publisher, WizKids the developer- I guess I was wrong.

Anyway, I'm not ready to hang up my dice just yet, and some of the sourcebooks that have come out have been really great. I'd just like to see some plotlines that don't revolve around world-shattering events.

Don't get me wrong, I like the metaplots and the ubercharacters. But there's a place for them, and that place is in the background (with occasional appearances).

Some positive changes have been made since FanPro took over- especially the art has imporoved (getting away from the cartoon feel that early SR3 was drowning in).

Anyway, the subject came up so I took the opportunity to voice my thought in the hope they'd reach the right ears (er eyes).

I'm glad you took the time to let me know what is going on- that is much appreciated. I'm looking forward to these future products you've referred to.

The advantage of non-metaplot adventures is that they are down at the street, not meeting great dragon/vicepresident/Imortal Elkves. that is ok once in a while but unless your playing a game of the "A" list runners, how often does that happen?