I have been thinking about some ways to improve the content of missions as well as address some of the balance issues involved in missions themselves

I'll start on Content

I was a huge fan of RPGA's 3.5 model of Living Greyhawk, now while missions has already taken a page from them with the Debriefing logs (See AR's) has there been any thought to adaptables ?
Modifying Print modules into a format that can be worked into a missions campaign
Titles such as
On the Run
Dawn of the artifact series and a few others ....
and maybe even Ghost Cartels

IMHO I think it would add a more "Global Feel" to missions in general

2nd is balance .... I look at the more recent downtime aspects that have been discussed and look again at the Living Greyhawk model

The model they had was a thing called "Time Units" each Character had 52 Time units per fiscle year (Jan 1 - Dec 31) once you were out of TU's you could no longer play that Character for the rest of the year
Shadowrun already has "Sort of" a Time Unit Mechanic ... and thats downtime activities as in SR4A are broken into Hours / days / weeks/ Months

I know that Bull has weighed in on Crafting ...and I know that with every ruling that comes down there are people that are unhappy ( I am not one of them)

now with the TU Model I realise the difference here is Quantity of mods ... LG had a Virtual ARMY of modules that could sustain 2 to 3 Characters maxing out their TU's during a fiscle year, but I believe in Learning from your predicessors (even if it is a different game system/world) and Taking a long hard Look at what Worked ... and what failed

in conclusion I believe that the Adapting of modules would be an Easier Task ... and something that could Theoretically be implemented within a 1 - 3 months (and something Id even consider doing for the missions Campaign)

the balance issue would unfortunatly take a much longer time to fine tune ....

Debriefing logs have been around for a long time. I honestly can't remember what we did in the Virtual Seattle/RPGA days, but SRM00 campaign didn't take them from LG. They were a standard that every RPGA campaign used: Living City, Living Arcanis, Living blah-blah. SRM was the first that modified future module releases based on what the majority of players did in mods. If 60% of tables killed off an NPC in the first X months of the module, that NPC was removed from the campaign (assuming it had a purpose in the story, of course). BTW, I used to game with a LG Triad.



Interesting, b/c in the VS days the complaint by many (including me) was that the campaign was too global. It didn't jive with the fiction. We only did about 50% of our missions in our base city, the rest was the Carribean, Canada, California Free state, and one for the CAS somewhere. In SRM01 they introduced core story arc and "side missions" (so to speak) into the naming convention to make the campaign more organic.



Yeah, LG seemed to have borrowed the lifestyle upkeep and time units from ShadowRun

I know that Bull has weighed in on Crafting ...and I know that with every ruling that comes down there are people that are unhappy ( I am not one of them)



I honestly don't know what you are suggesting-- adepting for what? And what balance are you referring to, we have many balance issues in ShadowRun.

Shadowrun is impossible to balance. At least not in the way that you can with, say, a D&D game, where you levels play a big part. You can make a module for 3rd level characters, and have a reasonable expectation of powers, stats, gear, etc.

With Shadowrun, even starting characters are all over the board. And they just get more disparate as they gain Karma. It's not reasonable to say "This adventure is for 100 to 150 karma characters", because that doesn't actually MEAN anything in Shadowrun.

I do use the term Balance a lot. But to me, it simply means that every player has the same reasonable amount of karma, nuyen, and gear available to them. That's one of the reasons we put in the Promotion system. The previous seasons of Missions were kind of all over the place in terms of risk and reward, especially Season 3. Between Table Rating differences in money and the really, really odd and random Affiliate awards, two players who played the same set of Missions could have very different rewards. Table Rating sometimes VASTLY impacting what you got. I know playing at TR6, I was rolling in cash, and was looking at having 150K after like 6 games, while players who played at TR 2-3 sometimes had problems making their monthly rent payments. And if you had enough affiliates, you could get an arsenal of random vehicles, drones, and weapons... Or sometimes just a collection of really strange and nearly useless junk (Depending on the character).

So for me, balance means bringing awards under control and balancing them across the season of Missions. I have a set of guidelines in place for Missions, setting down what the average difficulty Mission should pay (about 10K, give or take), what a "cakewalk" would pay (5K or so), and what a really difficult mission should pay (20K max). And because everyone gets the same payout, it means that we can have more reasonable expectations of what resources our characters have available to them throughout the campaign.

Of course, how the players spend it is totally up to them. Someone playing a Playboy living a Luxury Lifestyle is going to sink most of his cash into an area that won't really effect gameplay or character advancement at all, while someone who invests it all in cyber or foci or drones will have a better "Combat rating", while another who is constantly lavishing gifts and bribes and payouts to contacts may be earning extra contacts, bumping his non-Missions contacts loyalties up, and will be a better "Contact Man" because of it, making him all that more effective at legwork.

Bull

Also, a couple other points to directly address...

"Global Feel": That's what the CMPs are for. I wouldn't rule out a more globetrotting campaign down the line, but the problem is that the larger the "play area", the more you dilute things... You water down your location, you dilute your contact pool, you start requiring a lot more area knowledge skills and languages, etc. Having a set location lets us really focus on building up the little "Sub-universe" that the players are interacting with. WIth Season 2 and 3, it means building up Denver (Which hadn;t really been touched in years) and Manhattan (Which had barely been touched to begin with). ANd with Seattle, it's letting us revisit classic old haunts, as well as really start defining a very important, but very overlooked portion of Seattle: The Ork Underground.

"Time Units": This is tricky. I've considered imposing some sort of limit, but... SHadowrun has some really whacky rules to it for downtime stuff. Primarily the time tables for getting Black Market items and training times. I did what I could to give a simple rule to "circumvent" these a bit, allowing players to "get on with the game", but still... The fact remains that players can easily spend weeks trying to raise one skill, or months buying a single piece of gear. I don't want to penalize these players for some of the time tables that SR4A uses by default. There are loopholes, but I feel that most players will play in the spirit of the game, realizing that this is a roleplaying game, and won't buy crap street lifestyles for their characters just so they can avoid paying monthly upkeep.

Plus, hey, everyone needs someplace to keep their stuff. ANd who knows when a future adventure may include a scene where the bad guys try to ransack the players cribs? Gonne really suck for those players who took the cheap way out, because cheap lifestyles don't have much in the way of security.

Bull

I am talking about taking Printed modules such as Dawn of the artifacts, On the Run ect and adapting them to Shadowrun missions ... complete with debriefing logs(and maybe contacts/ rewards ect)
Like Living Greyhawk adapted Red Hand of Doom for instance

one reason for the Idea of Adaptables is (note I have not made it to Seattle yet) when I played Ghost Cartels I noticed a distinct difference in the difficulty level of that campaign vs. the entirety of Denver and what I have played in NYC So far ... Ghost Cartels was a VERY Rough Ride most of the time .... I can only think of a handful of instances where I can honestly say that I saw challenges like this in the SRM's

the balance issue refers to a way to allow players to spend time crafting Items within the rules of a missions campaign and not destroy the core ideals of the campaign as well as keeping a timeline SOMEWHAT intact (hackers programming.... Mages making foci, Ect)

Adepting written mods for SRM-- thus far, this has never been desired by Catalyst or SRM staff. The printed mods are meant for home campaigns, and if a SRM player plays it as a SRM mod, it's then worthless for his home GM. This could be very upsetting if the GM just paid for it just to run it for his home players.

Degree of difficulty-- first, not every game should be truely hard. What the point of getting better skills, stats, and equipment if the world around you is moving at the same pace. If that's the case, then you truely gained nothing. That being said, not every game should make you feel like the Leroy Brown either. Also remember that a campaign book can put down an extremely challenging run and force the GM to adjust to his players-- SRM can't. The Con GM doesn't know the players or the characters as well as a home GM, and currently the Con GM is restricted in his freedoms.

IMO the problem is two-fold: first, not every adventure scales right; blowing up the Broklyn Bridge can't be a feat that Green level characters can accomplish or it feels contribed. Nor would elite runners even get a call to just be body-guard/babysitter for a Johnson's niece. The second issue is that ShadowRun is very difficult to write something that scale well for green and veteran players, when you have no idea what 5-6 random 100 career karma characters maybe sitting down at the tabel with. And these mods need to be play tested at both levels 1 and 5, but I doubt this is being done.

Calendar-- I wouldn't broad scope crafting and time tracking as "balance". To me balance is, "why can a 60 career karma mage summon a F7 bound spirit that by itself can most likely kick my 130 karma adepts butt,". I personally don't see anything that needs to be added: ShadowRun comes with all the rules you need. However, I think you are fighting a lost cause, somethings in SRM seem to be based on staff whim or bias.

Why don't you need a contact to get a weaponsmith to modify your illeagel weapon (or to fence something, contacts are dismissed a lot by SRM). Why is the optional dice cap rule in force, when it's only a hard rule for social skills? Why is Astral Hazing disallowed but ok for home games? Somethings just are.

the inclusion of a compromise on crafting was , I agree, a lost cause and I knew it going in .... this is the reason Ive paid it so little attention other than to mention it as an alternative for future seasons and the fact that anytime a ruling is handed down there are ALWAYS people who aren't happy with it

I see Time tracking and crafting as a balance issue because of several reasons
Lets break them down into 2 skills (mainly cause Im tired and cant think beyond these 2)

Enchanting - the skill has 1-3 use in missions ... and thats preparing vessels(as noted in the FAQ), MAYBE Creating Fetish's/Talismans and MAYBE Creating ritual materials since the last 2 fall under the Idea of Crafting thats why I say maybe

Software - this skill has 6 uses outside of programming 2 of them are Probably never going to be seen ,1 I personally have never seen a reason to utilize it, and 1 is Technomancer only

Threading
Locate hacked accounts or reusable exploits(not something runners need to worry about generally)
PFF Files
Deleting accounts during a DOS attack
Changing Cyberware information
Create Reusable Exploit

basically there is no reason to ever get enchanting unless your possession tradition, and even now I question its validity here because making inanimate vessels would fall under crafting and the magician summoning the spirit is considered to already be a prepared vessel

Software is a perk skill because its part of a core hackers skill group but ultimately has Massive reduced uses (unless your a techno)

I am by no means arguing whats been laid down I'm simply expanding on why I see this as a balance issue. again I knew this part was a loosing battle going in and Im sad I just spent as much time as I did on this to explain it

the adaptable thing is a bit different and much easier to address
-your right .... not every mission should be hard or a Cake walk, and again your right, an adaptable is not designed to be run at a con
-I dont know what its like other places ... but in my area Shadowrun is a INCREDIBLY hard game to locate and even then most of them are filled by the time they are located so SRM Groups (and theres only 1 that I know of and thats mine) is a fairly tight knit group that runs missions like a home game following missions rules in the event that we ever get lucky to go to a big con and play at a CMP or a scramble table and again I believe that adapted modules would give a feel of True RvR to missions characters
-the 2 modules you mentioned below ... I must admit I missed the babysit the niece, but the brooklyn bridge was not difficult AT ALL
-I have run all of Denver .... and played 1/2 of new york ... and have not felt any of them to be a challange .... most of them I could have nearly slept through while I played/ran them

the reasons to take print modules and adapt them for organized play is fairly simple,
- Give the players Challange in the face of what I have seen to be incrediblely easy mods
- Promote sales of the Print modules ... because now they are available for 2 markets ... pure home play ... and missions (not to mention most home games dont use a lot of print products)

Lots of players dont have the money to fly to GenCon or PAX or other big cons to be able to play the CMP's (I know I sure dont) so they by default miss out on the ability to experience some of the (Probably) more difficult mods for the campaign

TBH If the Powers that be came to me and told me I could only chase after one of these 2 Items (Regardless of success) I would choose the adaptables because yes ... SR is a beast for downtime and making it actually work would be a headache Id not wish on any living person

you said that neither catalyst nor SRM wants this ... well then I have wasted a lot of keystrokes, time, and energy on this ... but hopefully I have made enuf sense to cause some thought on renegotiating the Idea, if not ... meh opinions are like ***holes ... everyone has them ...