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MaxMahem
For those of you who may have missed my groups regular podcast last week, you didn't miss it, it didn't happen. I made a trip to Florida instead.

But this week our run DID happen, and the first half of it is up right now. This is what would traditionally be the 'meet' part of the run. This run broke a string of failures my team had and ended up pretty successfully. Not our most memorable run of all time, but a good one none the less. This is one of those 'screw-over runs' that every GM throws at his players once in a while. Specifically its based on the SRM Missions 02-22 'Backlash' (heavily adapted). As the players face a minor backlash for their continued clashes with the powers that be.

We do this, for your entertainment, posterity (heh), and to try and improve the quality of our sessions. With that in mind, a couple of questions to put to you our (hopeful) listeners:

How often do you run one of those double-cross type missions on the players. As I mentioned during the run I like to average every 1/4 or 1/5 or so, what do you guys think?

Should I have turned up the opposition on the PCs? Or was a City Master and a Wasp overkill? (I did cut back from my initial plan for number of threats).

Did I go to easy or hard on the PCs? Should I have played the SWAT team a bit more intelligently?

And as always, any comments and criticisms that you think could help our play style are welcome. Check out This is Shadowrun.
DTFarstar
Can you give us some idea of your teams dice pools and the dice pools you gave the opposition? That is the easiest way to gauge such things. That said, I usually try to have at least a small part of every run be a "screw the runners" portion. Nobody in my world deals completely square.

Chris
MaxMahem
Well the characters sheets are slowly going up. Bubba's was up, but now he's dead and Wolf's is now up (Under Trevors page). My plan interweave a non-audio update with the audio updates every other day.

In any case most of my players throw about 12-14 dice for their specialties (excpet Wolf who throws a silly 18 or so with automatics). The opposition in this case (first half of the run) was pretty much the Tir Ghosts from the SR4 sourcebook, so about 12 dice each for them as well. The pilots of the vehicles only rolled about 9 though (professionals, but not hard core).

Should have been tougher I thought, but then again my players did spend edge heavily and maybe got a little lucky. My orginal plan was to throw in a Combat Mage as well and another 'Lieutenat' type guy, but I didn't do that.
MaxMahem
The third 'half' of the podcast is up. This covers the throw-down or the climax and resolution of the run. Things went fairly smoothly though we did have a serious injury (into the overflow) for one of the characters. I am also going to have to take steps to ensure the use of Wolf's assault rifle is restricted (as it should be) in the City, as it is entirely to lethal. All in all I am fairly satisfied with the outcome of this run, I shook up most of the players, which was my objective. Hopefully they will be a little bit more discrete in the acts of violence around town. I do need to take some wind out of Wolf's sails though it seems, he is getting entirely to cocky. And I have just the plan for that, Magic, it solves everything.

I also have some good plans for the next run, which should be a fairly big shakeup in our shadow community, and I'm putting it all in the players hands! Expect that NPC page to become important/outdated.
Zormal
Great stuff! Thanks for taking the time to make this podcast.
I don't have any helpful tips for you - I just really enjoy listening in :)
MaxMahem
QUOTE (Zormal @ Feb 10 2008, 04:52 AM) *
Great stuff! Thanks for taking the time to make this podcast.
I don't have any helpful tips for you - I just really enjoy listening in smile.gif

No problem, its not actually as much work as you might think. I set a recorder on the table, take some notes on good cutting positions, then do a quick edit of it later. Maybe a couple hours all told a week. The whole reasons we started was because I knew I enjoyed listening/reading this kind of stuff and I thought other people might as well. The fact that I actually have people in Finland tuning in to my pod-cast is reward enough for me!
MaxMahem
Sorry the latest episode was a bit late, real life intervened. Its up now, and I've added a spiffy new intro song edited from the Sarcastic Gamers 'Shadowrun' song. Let me know what you think.

This mission went well but I felt I may have railroaded the PCs a bit. I discussed it with the players and the felt this a bit as well, but didn't think it was over much. Your thoughts would be welcome however. I also should have upped the difficulty, and thrown in some more roadblocks, but I'm happy enough with how it went. It was a fun run for all involved to be sure. The rest of it should be up on schedule the rest of this week.
DTFarstar
Any chance you have the first files on hand and would be willing to send me the december session, I downloaded it awhile back and was trying to listen my way through them and the Dec31 part 1 and 2 don't work for some reason, so I would love it if you could e-mail them to me. Also, I am shocked...SHOCKED! That a gamer from somewhere in the US doesn't know who Bruce Campbell is.

Chris
Fortune
I'm shocked that a gamer from anywhere doesn't know who Bruce Campbell is. biggrin.gif
MaxMahem
QUOTE (DTFarstar @ Feb 14 2008, 11:04 PM) *
Any chance you have the first files on hand and would be willing to send me the december session, I downloaded it awhile back and was trying to listen my way through them and the Dec31 part 1 and 2 don't work for some reason, so I would love it if you could e-mail them to me. Also, I am shocked...SHOCKED! That a gamer from somewhere in the US doesn't know who Bruce Campbell is.

Chris

Hmm... how long ago was this? I recently (maybe a month ago) re-halled the site a bit and all the old files went back up. I was able to listen and download it online myself just a minute ago. If that doesn't work I would be happy to mail them to you, though even compressed as they are they are signifigant in size (~15-25MB), not sure if that will be an issue. Hit me back with a PM or e-mail.

Not sure what you are referring to in terms of Bruce Campbell though... you've totally lost me? Though I am terribly bad at rembering actors names/roles if he's not Harrison Ford or maybe Bruce Willis, I'm going to draw a blank.

In other news part two of our Feb 11 session is up, at This is Shadowrun. Enjoy!
DTFarstar
In the Jan 7 session where they go to the movie/TV studio and you mention seeing B star actors, someone else said "Like Bruce Campbell?" and someone(I think it was you, actually) said "Who?" and then there was a thing for a moment about how do you not know who he is. Was just a couple of seconds, but I'm staggered you didn't know. I don't think I have ever met a gamer who hasn't seen Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, or at least Army of Darkness. Hell, ever watched Burn Notice(TV)? I thought he was one of those oddly famous people in the gamer community, but apparently just around here. Also, it was probably more than a month ago. I'll download again.

Chris
MaxMahem
QUOTE (DTFarstar @ Feb 16 2008, 03:11 PM) *
In the Jan 7 session where they go to the movie/TV studio and you mention seeing B star actors, someone else said "Like Bruce Campbell?" and someone(I think it was you, actually) said "Who?" and then there was a thing for a moment about how do you not know who he is. Was just a couple of seconds, but I'm staggered you didn't know. I don't think I have ever met a gamer who hasn't seen Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, or at least Army of Darkness. Hell, ever watched Burn Notice(TV)? I thought he was one of those oddly famous people in the gamer community, but apparently just around here. Also, it was probably more than a month ago. I'll download again.

Chris


Heh that was quite a while ago, but it was probably me. While I've seen Evil Dead and all that, I'm terrible when it comes to putting actors names to faces. So when somebody says to me 'Bruce Campbell' I'm likely to go 'huh?' This brings up something I've been wondering, is it easy enough to follow along online or do we need to identify ourselves more? Its easy for me to pick out who is saying what, but then again I was actually there (where I could see them) and I've been playing with these guys for years.

Whatever the case may be, the last part of this run is up now at This is Shadowrun. I think I'm going to start giving our runs descriptive names and possibly a episode number in addition to the date, which will make things easier to keep track of. Next Mondays run appears to be on schedule, so look for it next Tuesday!
Lionhearted
Keep them coming smile.gif
Great listening while my entire group is outta town ^^
DTFarstar
I started to be able to reliably pick out voices after 30 minutes or an hour or so. Not a problem, really.

Chris
MaxMahem
This is Shadowrun is still not dead, though I missed posting our last session due to recorder failure. Its okay because we didn't play Shadowrun after all, instead trying out Dark Heresy, which was fun for a change.

We met again this week, and the first part is already up. This session went well, though as always it had its share of problems due to an odd combination of overthinking some parts of the run and under thinking others. More updates about my NYC campaign setting are slowly going up, if you have a chance please stop by and tell me what you think about it. Also, I've changed the theme to something less cool, but hopefully more readable. Let me know if it doesn't render right on your browser.

Also we have a theme song intro now, not sure if I've pointed that out before, just something silly I found on the net. Though we have a secret project in the works for our own. As always, check out This is Shadowrun, listen to some episodes, and tell me what you think!
MaxMahem
Sorry this weeks is late. Real life continues to interfere with my podcast. But I've managed to put the first half of this weeks run up (before it became last weeks even!). First half runs long and so the second half is short. A good run this time, if I do say so myself. The rest of the site continues to be (slowly) updated in the background. John's new character sheet will go up tomorrow sometime probably.

Anyways tune in to This is Shadowrun and check it out.

Also a couple questions for any listeners I've got here. We don't listen to music during our games, mainly because some of my players (including myself) are easily distracted and we would never get anything done. But I could add it in to the podcast if you guys would like. Thoughts?
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