I was surprised by Ghostfire's experiences at this year's Tourney.

Well, here's my experience. If you comment, as per Bull's request, please keep it civil.

While my groups (I was a player, not a GM) did run into enough railroading blocks that on night one someone eventually started saying, "If it's something we're not supposed to do, just let us know." However, that sounds worse than it was. I think he was expecting roadblocks.

As to the Frenchman, he was, I hear, indeed inspired by the French guy in Ocean's 12.

So, Night one

We sit down and our GM for the night stands up on the chair and gives his spiel. I'm playing the Mystic Adept. Somehow I always play adepts. Actually, the last FBI game, I won best death or near death experience with my Adept. Woot! But, I digress...

We must track down the group who took the box. We head out to the crime scene and don't find much there. We did not think of checking the Ork Underground. We instead use the SINs of Thud-T to find his address. We arrive and he's dead. We search the area but come up dry.

We head over to Graveyard's place as she too has a SIN on file. She's cowering in the dark and taks some pot shots before I convince her we're trying to help her. (Mmm... social adepts rule.) We take her into protective custody and she tells us who (Mr Winter) can tell us where to find Thunk.

So, we roll up to Mr Winter's establishment and manage to speak to him by vid phone. He arranges for us to speak to Thunk in exchange for a clean slate. He tells us who sold the box to and even where it's held.

Next, we head over to the place that has the box (I forgot the name) and we encouter a KE team. I immediately flip out my badge and say we're the FBI and Friends. 7 hits (I should've used edge) on my Negotiation roll and we've got a firefight on our hands. ... uhm. I found out later that the runners inside fired one of the building's security drones on us and the security team with miniguns, trumping my roll. Well, I take some potshots, but most of the combat was settled by the guy with the panther cannon (government issued, apparently) and the hacker. Whoa. The hacker? Yup. He took over the building drones and let them go nuts.

So we head in get to the box and frenchy is already there. He waves and heads out the door. we follow but run into a KE team that frenchy apparently slipped past. after we deal with them, we run out the door and are swamped by reporters. Lone Star and and KE was there and I think I spotted Auntie Em in the crowd too.

We No Comment past and head to base, get chewed out and after mentioning him, get the profile for mr Frenchman.

End Night One.

Night Two

Half the group is a no show, so the remaining players get reassigned to various empty seats.

I wind up filling the role of the NSA gnome hacker. (Which is funny being 6'5" playing a 3'0" runt) Last night was just a dream :hand wave:, you are a hacker, not a mystic adept.

So I wake up drasticly shorter and things went mostly the same the previous night except "we" requisitioned swat-esque body armor and did the visors down thing on our way out.

So now we need to track down frenchie.

We split up. (Yay, GM nightmare) One group heads to call in a favor with a mob boss while the other half (including me) follow up a net journalist whose name escapes me at the moment. (I've heard other groups had him described as a sleazy tabloid reporter) We meet up and he tells us that the box holds an AI named Patches. That's primarily the most useful bit of information he provides and we head over to meet the rest of the team.

Then we hear reports of "Save Me! -- Patches" being hacked into displays along a highway. We head over call the other team and plan an intercept course. It's pretty easy to track and I got Matrixy and track down the specific car giving off the signal and even jump into Patches. We tallk, sip tea, etc. Then we noticed we're being followed. Grey Car? Noooooo. A Media stampede, Troll Mercs, Yaks on bikes, Mafia sedans, Lone Star, Knight Errant. The works. They're all tracking Patches.

Okay, we hope they haven't figured out which car has Patches, I convice Patches to keep quiet and whip up a sprite to broadcast the same messages from a nearby car. We pull over that car. And it gets the Media and Lone Star. We get Lone Star to handle the crowds and the arrest of the "perps" (one Lone Star officer planted some sort of evidence) When fanboy hackers start getting antsy about freeing patches, I tell my sprite to change the message to "Thank you for your help, I'm Free"

Meanwhile the other team follows the real car to Frenchie's drop deep in the matrix deadzone of the Barrens and sees him meet with Red Ronin. Oi. Anybody not here? then all the mercs and what not pull up. They observe them setting up as we pull up. While the Mystic Adept Influences a yak to stall his buddies (which then gets them wiped out by the Ronin). Meanwhile I patch one of ours into the Troll mercs and we manage to hire them to nab the Frenchman for us ... preferably alive.

Then KE shows up as well as an Amalgamated Something, Inc (the original patches owners) The KE goons rush up and Mr Charm starts influencing them to taser each other. I hack the Amalgamated Van and take over their security system, arming it so we have an alarm when they leave the van. The Trolls move up and clobber the Ronin.

Then we get out of our SUVs. We take Custody of Frenchie and Patches and take them our two SUVs. Amalgamated tries to insist on taking Patches but we convince them to take it up with the office.

End Night Two.

Night Three.

Yay! Everyone shows up.

We're driving from the Barrens and a Heliocopter chews apart our SUVs before the Panther Cannon drops it. I believe right before it appears an EMP blast rips apart our Comlinks and thus, my cover (Technomancer pretending to be a regular hacker). So from now on, I hack one Combat Turn and spend the next in the meat world.

So we have to hoof it. (Yeah, no cars anywhere...) We tangle with a KE in a Citymaster (Which I hacked most severely just as the Panther Cannon took it out) We heal up as best as we can, two guys had dropped into overflow. I detect another Citymaster and manage to get myself an Admin password. But then we evaded it. Doh. We snag the comlinks from KE goons.

We run into the net reporter and he tells us that the Barrens is crawling with goons. He gives us a relatively safe path out. Mr Magic summons a Force 6 or 7 spirit and has it Conceal us as well grant movement. We run into an ambush ... what the? One guy exclaims "railroading", I exclaim "search Frenchie". I do a sweep but can't find any signals. After dealing with the ambush, we're on the move again, right into another ambush. Rinse repat. Third Ambush we manage to find the tracer on Frenchie and destroy it. From there we sail out of the barrens without further complications.

The we meet up with mr reporter again. I really wish I could remember his name. He rolls up and asks for patches. One of our team (the Federal Marshal, I think) said he'd free Patches in exchange for help. Because he thought our trouble was his fault, he refused. I sat down while things were discussed. I insisted that Patches be retrieved via proper channels and he acquiesced. We called for a ride and headed home to find out we were turning in an empty box. We get chewed out all around, but in particular, the one who agreed to release Patches.

Meanwhile, what the rest of the team didn't know was that while sitting down, I used my technomancer ability to release the patches through me.

End Night Three.

We had a lot of fun. This was actually a game with a lot of firsts.
First SR game since last year's tourney.
First SR4 game.
First time playing a hacker. (I made up many but never got to play any)

I really liked it a lot. Not just the Tourney as a whole, but SR4. I had been reserving jusgement until I played as the changes made me wary, but I am now officially on the SR4 band wagon.

Do anyone know if the adventure used in the tourney be released on the intartubes in some way?

I've never heard of them ever being released before

You could pretty much write up the tourney run based on the posts made here, anyway. But tourney runs aren't really intended, as far as I can tell, to be home games, so there's little chance they'll be posted as such.

It'd be nice if they were though. I'd love it if FanPro did it like the RPGA does, where you get the tournament module and the scoring standards for it at the end of the tourney season. Scoring standards are a lot different for SR, but some could still be applied to a home game.

Cabral!

Were you in WHISKY TANGO FOXTROT? 'Cause your recount sounds about 98% what we did (The ending isn't precisely what I remember, but then you were doing some things away from the group partially... and you left out Vic's marvelous takedown of the helicopter in the Barrens with that cannon.) But I am sure we were the only ones that tripled the troll's bounty via Homeland Security to get them to bum rush the apartment for Frenchie or pulled over the "wrong" car during the highway chase for a diversion.

If it is you, I played Federal Marshall Nelson and the only major point of disagreement to your tale is that I never agreed to let Patches go. *Thinks back* Tho', it is possible that I said some "agreeable" things that weren't binding to get that fraggin' reporter to assist us. Or, you know, so I wouldn't feel compelled to blow off his head. At that point, after my near-death experience, I was pretty much ready to say:

"You know what, I am not a field agent. I'm retiring." Then !BLAM! into his brainpan with my stolen appropriated commandeered Knight Errant SuperWarhawk before limping off into the Shadows on my cane to do more "honest" work.

It was only responsibility to the group and the notion that we had actually done pretty well that kept most of us from that course of action. *L*

Oh, and I was the one that "officially" arrested Frenchie. Along with a good knee in the back of his neck and at least 3 good whacks to the back of his head with my cane for resisting arrest. What? I saw his blood trying to get away! He was a tricky one, that Frenchman.

I have the group pics from the awards and will be sending them out to the group soon. The only contact I don't have is our CIA guy as he had to leave early that day to "catch his flight home." Those CIA guys... you know how they hate to have their picture taken.


Vlad,
AKA Federal Marshall Nelson: Your worst nightmare: a gimpy, surly adept with a cane and a badge.

One thing that did suck was that this year they didn't let us keep our character sheets. We always were able to do that before. The officials mumbled something to the effect : "There's some stuff in there we don't want getting out yet concerning pending un-released books." I imagine it must have been some technomancer stuff. Don't really know as I never saw that character sheet. I only saw mine and the one that was ATF "Vic Macky" (handed to me erroneously early by our original GM before tables were re-arranged.)

I do know that, following long standing tradition, Marshall Nelson (reconstituted from memory) will be resurrected in my home game as an NPC. Every year I fall in love with my character and jsut can't let him (or her) go. Marshall Nelson will fit in nicely to my fledgling SR4 campaign, where all the characters are coincidentally Lonestar detectives in Seattle.

Vlad

Hey Cabral, glad to hear you enjoyed it. Going through your post a bit and can hopefully answer some things that you were wondering about:

This year's Gencon tournament was rushed because I was getting married in June and that killed my free-time and schedule. So the GMs really had no time to prepare for the adventure and familiarize themself with everything... and even that wouldn't have fixed the problems since we had a few GMs cancel on us at the last minute.

We're fixing that for next year.

No more weddings for you!

Well, damn, he agreed too readily. Now what am I going to do with this cortex bomb?

Anyway, I'm thinking of attending Gencon next year to see how they improved over the reports this year. The fact they're willing to listen and improve says quite a bit.

Please do. I think you'll love the new and improved, three round Food Fight adaption we are planning that involves the hostile corporate takeover of the Stuffer Shack chain of stores.

vladski, I thought I recognized you from the other review thread but did not get to reply before it got closed. No mention of your character DYING? I thought you took it very calmly, probably better than I would. But then I was sitting behind you at the time.

I don't know if any real explanation would satisfy the "railroad" guy in your group.

On the last night, I realize the GM was trying to make you think you were doomed, but did his "RRing" actually make you not care because it was beyond your control? This would be interesting to hear from the guy who did die, and somehow got revived ("RRed"), and the one who was into overflow. Coincedently the guy with the biotech skill and the other with the heal spell, the only people in the group with that skill or spell btw.

I was pretty sure, both characters went to overflow, was one supposed to die and saved by GM ex machina?

*feels embarassed if he missed that*

I'm retty sure the marshall was supposed to die. There was mention of a trauma patch or something, so I'm not exactly sure.

IIRC, he was bleeding. I think Vic (with prompting from the GM after we searched our character sheets) grabbed a medkit from the Citymaster we destroyed. I don't know how far into overflow he was and how long it would take for him to bleed to death...

It really sucks that First Aid, while it can be defaulted to, is limited by the rating of the skill, mostly negating the ability to default...

yes, but that doesn't help much if the two healers (one with biotech other with spell) are both in overflow/unconcious.

The Marshall was into overflow, one box beyond his limit. The FBI mage was jsut down or one box into overflow. The GM obviously did a bit of work behind the scenes. (I don't know everything that was done because I did take that time after to step out for a quick cigarette and some fresh air...and so no one would see me cry. ) Thank you, Tizoz for commenting on my demeaner. I was very disappointed, but that's the way it goes and you don't argue with the GM. I wasn't going to stop the flow of the game because no matter the final decision, my character was "down" until someone did something after the firefight was over. I felt like my character had, to that point, done the best he could with the skills he had, to the point of being "heroic." If I should die, but allow the team to get the object to safety, then I would have died a good death. Regardless of my opinion of how the run was going, I was not going to ruin it for the rest of the agents by arguing with my GM. And really, as I kept saying all along "I am not a field agent!" By rights, my character was the most likely to die. He was a real physical wuss.

I think the GM gave me a break here for one reason and one reason only: he did not say the Citymaster had a turreted weapon on it when I laid down the suppressive fire to allow our party to cross the street. My character had different kinds of Perception out the wazoo (it was what I was built for, in fact), I asked for a "Perception" on the truck and he did not mention what should have been a very obvious turret. I was expecting small arms fire from portals or possibly the side door opening up with some troops... all of which I had an expectation of surviving for a phase. The fact that he opened that turret up and shot me in one single phase, putting me into overflow immediately... well, honestly, had I made that mistake (and I do think it was an honest mistake on the GM's part) I would not make the player pay so dearly for it. All he did was drop one box of damage which made me saveable, and then the character of Vic used a medkit on me saving my life, rolling VERY well. I thank the GM for doing that, but, did not expect it. I felt it was a balanced decision because my actions were risky, even without the turret there, but at the same time, I was doing some roleplaying. Here I was, for the first time in the adventure really laying it on the line for my group after refusing to all along ("I am not a field agent!") in one of those defining moments. As a GM, I would have probably done the same thing.

However, had the GM decided I was dead, or the rolling not gone in my favor, I was quite satisfied with the run. I had fun, I played my character, the others played theirs and we had done the best we could. A person can't get so emotionally invested in a character or wanting to win that if you don't win or you die, it really bothers you. It's jsut fiction, jsut a story. One where sometimes the "hero" doesn't survive. Movies have that guy that takes one for the team or stays behind to hold off the rampaging horde all the time. The fact that my grumpy, crotchity, gimpy Marshall might do that for these guys after all they had already been through... that would have been a good story as well.

Vlad

*edit* misread the above post.


Seems to me the GM was new to shadowrun or something, or else just not paying attention to what was going on, because the turret should be one of the first things you see on a citymaster. Most of the players around here have been playing Shadowrun since 2ed or earlier, so don't need to be told there's a turret, but if a player asked me for a perception test on a citymaster, I'd mention the turret even if he critically glitched.