Exactly, but sometimes people don't really have that kind of perspective. The short-sighted would say something like, "This module is terrible! My players were able to capture this guy and kill him but now he has to appear later. I have to railroad them to make it work!"

No generic, pre-written adventure will ever be able to accommodate every possible action PC's can take; that's why it's run by a real-live GM. Books that are a series of interconnected adventures like Ghost Cartels are especially prone to player actions forcing the GM to diverge from the written plot. That's why (IMO) the loose, "framework" structure of Ghost Cartels adventures is ideal as it allows the GM to make changes on the fly without having to throw out a whole bunch of material.

Agreed. I didn't anticipate how much my players would diverge from the literal plot but I'm definitely more appreciative of the format now. I really liked it when I first read it, but I truly love it now. I hope more of the game modules are in this format.

- J.

Ok there has been a bit more progress in my campaign.




I'll see how it plays out next week - we were strapped for time and only had three hours to really game this time.

- J.

Finished 'Dirty Pretty Money':



Honestly -- as a GM I felt this section quite hard. Several observations:
1) I felt I was significantly railroading the encounter into the parking garage (Chikao burning Edge to survive is a classic example). My PCs had owned Goldman's car, his commlink LONG before they turned him over to Dae.
2) Magic REALLY unbalances this encounter in favor of the PCs given none of the Yaks have don't have a mage.
3) It's very easy for the PCs to screw up in this scenario.
4) With a gunbattle of this size, in Downtown, with Feds on the scene, I think it is exceptionally difficult for the PCs to walk away unscathed and/or without negative media coverage. YMMV however.

- J.

What are you wanting a link to? Most of what has been said can be found in the News thread on the Ghost Rider Board.

I'm running Dirty Pretty Money on Wednesday. I've read this over a few times, and what I've come up with is, if they get Goldman's car, then they will never deal with the mess in the parking garage. Since the other hacker is out of the picture, the Yak's won't have a clue where he is. I don't recall off the top of my head, but if the runners have control of the commlink too, the Fed's won't have any idea where he is, unless they are following in a helicopter.

So, as far as railraoding them, I don't think I'll be taking this approach. If they nab his commlink and his car, the Yak's and the Fed's are going to have a hard time finding him.

I maybe off here....what do others think of this approach?

I agree. I regretted my choices almost instantly and this is the first time I tried to do it "by the book". Oh well, my fault for not using it more as a guide (that won't happen again).

If your PCs are proactive and hack Goldman's car AND his personal commlink, I would agree the entire scenario can be bypassed. I'd also give the PCs a big karma bonus too.

- J.

Wrong thread...?

- J.

I would love to go by the book (makes things a big easier for us GM's), but (my) PC's always find ways of breaking that. Back in A STRANGER IN OUR HOUSE, PART I, they were so good on their surveillance of Littletree, the was no possible way I could fit the encounter with Caine in. I guess I'll see how they do on Wednesday with Dirty Pretty Money. If they don't hack the car/commlink, it's going to be an interesting battle.

The team was quite effective for me too. I decided to run the old "bumbling other group" scenario to compensate a little. I had the meet be at an old warehouse in Tacoma, and had the yaks try and spy on the party. What ensued was a Benny Hill chase scene with three Yaks running down the side streets of Tacoma to their get away car being chased by about a dozen Orks and Trolls. In the end I made the meet very pieceful, and a simple trace and review of surveillance easily explained how they would have been found out. They didn't call attention to the situation, but once it was called and the evidence reviewed, they would have been seen and needed to be talked to.

I am getting ready to run GC, and I wanted to use the first chapter as handouts. That's when I discovered a HUGE problem with the timeline and the handouts.
On p.50, the timeline given CONTRADICTS ITSELF!!! Likewise, it is such a mess that the "handouts" don't match up, either. Do none of the writers use Word's nifty Calendar Wizard???
Examples:
"Early April (Weeks 11-13)": Early April should be Weeks 9, 10, arguably 11 at the latest.
"April-June (Weeks 14-20)": Weeks 14-20 is actually May to Mid June.
"Early May (Weeks 15-17)": Weeks 15-17 are Mid to Late May, not Early.
"May-June (Weeks 18-22)": Technically, one could say that Week 18 is May, since it begins with May 31st, but...
"Mid June (Weeks 22-26)": Week 22 is the LAST week in June, and the rest of Week 22 and 23-26 are ALL of July!
"June-August (Weeks 24-32)": ???? Week 24 is MID JULY! Week 32 is EARY SEPTEMBER!!!
"August-September (Weeks 32-38)": Week 32 is early September, Week 38 is late October.
"Early September (Week 36)": Week 36 is early October.
"September-November (Weeks 38-46)": Week 38 is late October, 46 is mid December.
"November (Weeks 46-48)": End of December.

The handouts section is well nigh useless because there are no dates on several posts, or in some cases too many dates (original posts, re-posts, and archive dates). All of this makes it really hard for a GM to do as suggested and use the shadowtalk as player handouts.
When exactly does the Kowloon Massacre happen? Going by New High, it was sometime before August 6, 2071, as that is when Ma'Fan posted the attachments. The dates internal to the posts show June 14th to 16th, which makes the Ma'Fan's post WAY old, in my opinion, but most confusingly, the thread is archived with a European date layout of 21/9/2071 (September 21st), which then makes the data so old it is worthless. According to Notes and Rests, the Massacre will be sometime in Early May, or Weeks 15-17 (which is Mid to Late May)! On p.19 Murder In The Garden Of Eden, it is May 16 that Shotozumi is killed by the players in Seattle, so that means Kowloon has to happen sometime around the last week of May, which gives very little time for the players to get to HK and get settled in to the new locale before the Massacre. There are other examples of the mental gymnastics required to lay out a timeline in this campaign, but it isn't worth my time. I bought this book to SAVE time!
Now, compound that with the issue of the complete mess of the Notes and Rests: Timeline, and how in the hell am I to reconcile all these different dates and establish a manageable real world? Am I to ignore timelines completely, give up on player handouts thus negating any campaign usefulness of the first chapter, and track it all myself? It is easier for me to go back to self-written campaigns!

Is there at least going to be Errata for the Notes and Rests: Timeline? It would at least clear up which part is correct, the month names or Campaign Week numbers!

I was very happy with the book as a read, but now that I am planning to use it as a game resource, I find it far less useful. What is wrong with Missions style player handouts, instead of a mass data dump? It might be kewler and more characterful as written, but it was difficult to read and impossible to use, therefore a huge waste of time and money by the developers. I LOVE Shadowtalk, always have, but this was excessive and wasteful, ESPECIALLY since the target audience (GMs) cannot reasonably use it due to lack of coherent dates on the Timeline, disorganized placement in the chapter (there should not have been ANY sidebars, as they are indistinguishable from the other material), and inconsistent datestamping.

HELP!

Hey first post!

I asked the devs about that around the time the book came out: the weeks in Notes and Rests are numbered from the beginning of the overall plot/story rather than the beginning of the year - hence why they appear "off". It was apparently done this way so that someone who wants to adjust the dates the events take place to fit an ongoing campaign can do so; meaning the events in the campaign could kick off in August 1st in someone's campaign, that week would become Week 1, and all subsequent events follow in the same order and at the appropriate distance in time/weeks starting from that point.

All that said the the dates on the actual documents and posts in the pbook lined up pretty much with the baseline timeline considering what I posted above and allowing a little latitude for the fact that some of the e-docs were posted "after the fact" on Jackpoint. As for those documents that don't have dates, well, you can drop them in at any point you want. I actually found I could use a lot of them in my Seattle-based campaign (one character even has Jackpoints as a contact).

I am just adhering to the base timeline as much as possible, with minimal adjustment as needed. My PCs are all over the shop anyway.

- J.

I had assumed (correctly, it turns out) that the week numbers were for campaign weeks, so that is not my issue. They are "off" because THEY DO NOT MATCH. I explicitly listed every single error between the month and the week number. If it was meant to be more free-form, then it should have listed only week numbers. Also, the shadowtalk bits would have benefited greatly if each bit would have had a Week number reference, if only in the Bookmarks or page gutters.
At this point, I have to toss most of the shadowtalk, since a lot of their dates will not match up to the overall campaign timeline.
What this book needed was a true "Stardate Dude" like the ST:TNG had, who was a central repository for all the writers of the series, and who coordinated the time/date. This book was close, but still managed to drop the ball at the goal line.
I know I am not alone as a GM who runs his game from a calendar, it just makes things easier for Lifestyle payments, gear availability windows, etc. which are a big part of Shadowrun. I LOVE the idea of a week-based campaign, as it is easier to work into my calendar. Unfortunately, they tried to both week and hard dates, which is an epic fail on both.
I could have handled hard dates as well, since my campaign is in November 2070 right now, but I can't make that work either. I have gone through and listed all the posts in the shadowtalk by date (if known), and it does not work out. I either end up cramming adventure frameworks up so tight I have no wiggle room, or there are huge gaps like the entire month of July.
Random posts are fine for background and sidebars, but for real PC handouts, it needs to be better organized, or it isn't worth my money. Emergence gave me nothing at all other than ideas, which I can get from books, movies, TV, song lyrics, etc. What I need are GM resources that save me time. GC in so many ways does that with statted out NPCs, maps (although there is GM-spoiler info on them), and well-laid out frameworks, but drops the ball on the player info part. I can use some of the bits like the Lone Star report, maybe, but it won't save me time. I have to figure out where it needs to go, and where it will fit into the overall story, which should not be my responsibility.
So, I dump all the flavor of the New High chapter, ignore the listed months on the Timeline, and fake it. The book just got a little over-priced for me.

So long as your campaign is within ballpark ranges of the book, its highly unlikely any canonical discrepancies will ever become an issue. Even Dawn of the Ancients is dated well after the events of Ghost Cartels...

- J.

I have to agree about the dates/week issues. I tried to make it work exactly with my in-game calendar. After spending a good amount of time, it occurred to me: I'm the GM and I know what's going on. The players do not know the story, therefore they won't know when I changed one of the Adventure Frameworks by a week or more (making it earlier or later). It made things a lot easier to me, and the players don't really know any difference. I try to stick to the timeline as close as possible, but it won't be exact.

If I discard the jackpoint posts for the most part, yes, it gives much more flexibility. It looks like that is what I will have to do.
The weeks timelines do not match the jackpoints, either. Shotozumi is assassinated by the PC's on 5/16/2071 (p.19), but according to timeline Uribe makes the deal after Shotozumi's hit at the latest on Week 13 (5/2/2071).
???

The Jake, or anyone else, have you ran "THE TROUBLE WITH TEMPO" adventure framework yet? I'm just curious how things went. I was looking over CHIKAO INOUE's stats...Wow! That's a lot of edge (and other big stats). With 8 edge how do GM's handle NPC's like that. I have 3-4 PC's. If (big IF) I use edge on each of his shots, they'll be a hurting bunch (or a dead bunch), especially with the -5 AP. And then there are the other assassins with him. I'll be running this on the 18th, so any help would be appreciated. Or at least how things went down with your group(s).

I believe there is some errata for that character's stats as well.

Where can I find the errata?

My Dawn of the Artifacts:Dusk went off track from the get go. The group was already in Lagos (dumped by there by a former target/now johnson), and I had to revise a few things (replaced the Ms Johnson with a NPC the PC's already had dealings with. But the group did get the job done. I think about half of it went by the book (to a degree), the other half "loosely based".

Remember the #1 thing is to have fun! All else is secondary.

It was only post on the forum somewhere, unfortunately. Trying doing a search for a post with the NPC's name in it made by Synner.

I have a problem with NPCs using Edge as a general rule but its only on key NPCs so I guess its not so bad.

I hated Chikao chiefly because a) his stats were fundamentally wrong (e.g. physicals off the chart, no essence calculated, etc) and b) an NPC that is built on burning Edge to survive is just annoying to the PCs and smacks of railroading (unless its a key villain - which I didn't think Inoue was) and c) the Yaks had ZERO magical defence making it a cakewalk for a mage heavy party. I did have problems with that section in general - I think I wrote enough throughout this thread though (go back a page or two).

I haven't written up my last session or two yet - we're up to the last mission in the First Taste (Tokyo Fireworks) and I have had to tweak the framework a bit to make the plot work. The crux is still the same however - the PCs are working for Sacristan and Kaz, they've made enough enemies already and know that they need to get out of town sooner rather than later anyway making the rest relatively easy.

I had major problems with Caine being captured and killed way in advance and I regrettably railroaded a bit (mostly Edge burning) for Chikao to survive the carpark gunbattle in particular. In hindsight, I should have focused on the core plot elements and tailored the stories and adventure to better suit - which is what I have started to do. I've had a former low level ganger under Caine (Abel) assume his spot and wrestle for a senior leadership position within the Ragers. Abel was the one behind the theft of tempo.

Overall I do like the adventure but I also found some significant errors. E.g. In Tokyo Fireworks it indicates that the PCs may recallt he Shangril-La Casino as if they've been there. What the module is referring to is the bodyguarding work for Dae in the previous adventure - only they never specifically mention the name of the venue used in that chapter. It assumes a familiarity that simply doesn't exist, and I've read the book cover to cover close to 20 times already, not counting the bits I've re-read over and over. You just have to be flexible, know the characters and the core plot well enough to be able to make the necessary adjustments to make it suit your table.

- J.

I recently ran two sessions for my group.

After the carpark incident, the PCs had to lie low, drop all their fake IDs, get some plastic surgery before they could work again. We then kicked off the first job in the second track, where they have to track down Smalls and find the tempo. The troll merc managed to pose as an unemployed soldier looking for work and managed to persuade the owner to let him work the night for no pay just as a trial. He agrees. The troll happens to find the Stand Over Men and Smalls in the bathroom and begins a massive pitched gunbattle. The other PCs managed to slip into the club (looking as elves) in an effort to help the troll. The troll in a glorious display, manages to kill most of the guards (with help from the PCs) by grabbing one of the Stand Over Men, uses him as a human shield, shoots one of them and finally charges the last one standing against the wall with enough force to smash the barrier rating and crush him into red paste. Needless to say, it didn't take much persuasion at this point to get Smalls to cough up his source.

The PCs then do some astral recon on Villamoura's apartment, at which point they see Yaje possess him. One player rolled six successes on an Assensing test and knew just about everything about Yaje (Force 8 Great Form Plant Spirit) and decidedly shat themselves. Yaje took one look at their astral forms and said "Get out!" - so they did. While the PCs are communing about what the hell they're going to do next , the apartment block blows up. The PCs watch the Kenrankai flee the building and before the cops arrive, recover Villamoura's body and turn the body over to the Olaya and Ko'mungo and get paid.

Their next gig (jumping back to the first track) is Kaz. Due to the way my campaign has played out, the PCs were asked to do a few more jobs before they leave down and Kaz has promised to help set them up. Basically he assures them that this is his master stroke at ensuring the Ko'mungo are the sole tempo distributors in Seattle. He also got the PCs to relocate him and Dae to one of their safe houses until he can be sure about who to trust. Note, I skipped the bodyguard session between Kaz and Chooson Grey Wolf. I just assumed the meeting had already taken place and Kaz explained to the PCs what has happened. It seemed simpler and I'm keen to get the campaign to the second track at this point. The PCs already trust Kaz enough to take him at his word and they know he pays well.

Kaz said his master stroke was to perform three actions in short succession that will enable him to put Grey Wolf into a corner, disable the Yakuza and ensure his position within the Ko'mungo-

1) Take out the Kenrankai
The PCs were itching for this especially after the carpark battle - they hated Chikao in particular (who could blame them!). They tracked the Kenrankai down to the Westin and basically had a massive pitched gunbattle on the penthouse. The whole battle was over in less than a minute, thanks to astrally projecting mages with spirits, stun spells and heavy shock and awe tactics. They got in and out undetected but the destruction of the Westin definitely made the news. Lone Star are now all over the PCs and will be hunting them down soon. This also sends the message to the Yakuza they are not to be trifled with.

2) Annihilate the Ragers.
The Ragers have stolen a tempo shipment and he wanted it back. Find where the Ragers are holding it and wipe out their core leadership. Put enough of a dent in the gang that they are either blown off the map, or the leadership is gone and tempo recovered (whichever comes first). The PCs tracked it down to a nearby warehouse in Tacoma which wasn't the Ragers main base but a safehouse that the leaders were using to store the tempo and lay low after Abel assumes leadership of the Ragers (after Caine's demise and after he took out the gang's former leader). Using invisibility and high perception, the PCs took out the spotters, wired up the makeshift bridges and walkways with white phosphorous and C12 to make sure no one could getaway. They then went in with autocannons and miniguns to take out the entire building, with their hacker contacts monitoring Lone Star communications in the area. The PCs wiped out the entire building, killed the gangs central leadership and looted the building and got away in under 5 minutes. Bit of a cakewalk when the gang has no magicians and the PCs have 2 mages minimum at all times. This sends a message to other gangs that no-one else will be distributing the tempo.

3) Bomb the Shangril-La Casino (next session). They know the particulars of the job and are in the process of working out how they will get in and out. But they know that the idea of this action is to provoke a fully fledged mob war in order to divert the Yakuza's focus from the Ko'mungo and instead split their resources and focus.

- J.

Thanks for the update! My PC's haven't really had a chance to meet Chikao yet. I think I mentioned this before but in Dirty Pretty Money Goldman never made it to the parking ramp since our hacker blew their hacker out of the water. I had Chikao's men tailing Goldman's car, so there was a fight, but Chikao wasn't present. I think I'll lead the PC's to the hotel room, since another car chase scene isn't on the top of my list. It gets a little more complicated then a fight on your feet.

As mentioned, they are weak on magical support, so I might save his 8 edge to use against our pixie mage. It will probably annoy him, but it would make the battle last a bit longer.

Out of curiosity, how did your PC's track him down to the hotel?

Summoned spirits and watchers (basically) - they followed the Yaks from Villamoura's apartment. The entire first track is a cakewalk in a magic heavy party. And yes, he burned all his Edge against the main mage at my table too.

- J.

I run a GC game since Dec and I found your session write-ups quite helpfull, so I am going to give a little review on my gaming sessions.

I have 3 SCs:
a male drone rigger (dwarf), has a couple of drones and some ware that makes him a competent shooter (cyberarm, wired reflexes 1)
a male oak druide (troll), focussing on spirits but with support spells and good in Melee Combat with his staff.
a female technomancer (human), as networker also the face of the group, but cannot do much else than matrix stuff and face.

We started with Strangers in our House:



Body Snatchers:



Between the runs the Technomancer tried Tempo, because of the great high, but was disappointed because there were no great colors as she was told.
Lucky for the player no addiction so far.

next up was Dirty Pretty Money



The Trouble with Tempo



I would like to make some more runs before Tokyo Fireworks, because my SCs are not that good in combat and they need some more karma to advance, if they gonna to survive HK and Tokyo, not to mention the 3rd arc. So if anybody has an idea I am open for suggestions.

cya
Tycho

My group had a lot of fun with Dirty Pretty Money. Our mage used control mind, or control actions (don’t recall off the top of my head) on Mr. Goldman. The hacker drove the car around, and the mage had him snort some novacoke, find a prostitute, snort some novacoke off her butt crack, then do it with her right there on her car and then said, “You are much better than my wife.” All of this was being recorded. Just as they were parking him in his driveway the mage used Alter Mind to make the whole thing seem like it was Mr. Goldman’s own idea. For kicks and giggles, I rolled out the results of Alter Mind…in 2 years he will finally realize that it was not his idea.

As for the karma, just do a few runs and be a little more generous with it. I gave a bunch for Dirty Pretty Money for great role playing, creative thinking, and for achieving their goals in a great way.

Jimson, its interesting your group took an approach to Dirty Pretty Money not that different to ours. I have to say my players really liked that adventure (minus the gun battle due to the fallout).

One of my players is still struggling with his tempo addiction which has become an interesting element of comedy at our group. He has about 70 patches worth and is making lots of Composure tests and burning Edge to resist.

Tycho, I would consider using the side adventure runs provided prior to doing the final mission in the first track. There's enough there to net the players at least another 12-18 karma if you're using standard karma awards under SR4A.

- J.

I tried to entice my players with tempo, but none of them wanted to even try it. So I had my mages Talismonger get hooked. Being so close to leaving the states (if they take that route after Tokyo Fireworks), I won't be able to play this up more. Oh well.

I second Jake, Tycho. There are a lot of spin off adventures, but you can always throw your own stuff in between if you like. For instance, one of my players took Borrowed Tim quality, so in between Body Snatchers and Dirty Pretty Money, we ran a little run to get rid of it. Netted them some extra karma and got rid of his tumorous testicles. This was our Pixie mage who would constantly fly around because his nuts were too big and hurt to walk.

I would make something up, but i don't have any good idea.

Maybe if they are in Hongkong, as I understand I have to flesh things out there quite a bit and i find HK more interesting than seattle.

cya
Tycho

Here's a quick one with little set up at all. I got the idea from someone on the board a year or so ago. It's a beer run in the barrens. It didn't pay out much nuyen, but you can hand out whatever Karma you want. The names were the names of my PC's in the group




Tailor the encounters to suit your needs. These are just a few that came to me, or from other sources.

It was kind of funny for #6. I thought this was going to go down pretty good, but as the person (cop) ran out into the street (with people chasing him), the runners just drove around him. The next day in the news was a story about an undercover cop being killed in the line of duty.

Not sure if this helps.

The PC in question was disguised as Goldman and had cameras rolling on him. He wanted to make it look like Goldman was into drugs. He rummaged through his pockets (character sheet) and noticed he had all sorts of stuff from various runs - Jazz, Cram, Red Mescaline, Kamikaze even. He notices that he's also got some Tempo. He figures that he's got a part to play so he pops the lot (minus the Kamikaze of course).

Long story short - after a very twisted escapade with an underage, illegal immigrant Russian hooker and plying both herself and himself with drugs, he experiences an incredible high (the tempo feedback loop) and has the time of his life. He fails an Addiction test and winds up with an Addiction (Tempo, Mild) negative quality.

It has become a bit of a joke in our group atm - he goes out of his way to get his hands on tempo whenever he can. So far he's got around 70 doses of the stuff and he keeps stockpiling it. He's itching to use it but when the urge is really strong he actively fights the urge to take a hit. He keeps thinking about going back to that hooker with his stash for round 2 however...

- J.

I just read Seattle 72 and in the Underworld Section in the text about the Kenrai-kai:



Still in GC Oyabun Kosuke Tomizawa dies in Mai 71?

Something is wrong there.

cya
Tycho

OK, this is some necro, but did anybody else do the spinoff run where a killer is targeting tempo users, and it turns out to be some priest mage guy who's trying to exorcise them? How exactly did you have that play out? Is it the Yaje-type spirits burning people for some reason? Is it the dude? I'm a little confused, but my players jumped on that hook from Body Snatchers.