I don't see why you can't mix formats.

I liked System Failure but felt the book could have benefitted more from a strict adventure module format (like SotF).

As I get older I have less and less time to be faffing about with statting out NPCs, or writing up page references to books, etc. If I spend my time writing up stuff, I'd rather be stating out NPCs, designing locations, etc, to flesh out an existing setting used to run a module. This is purely a personal preference from an experienced player/GM (in his 30s and about to become a parent with even less time on his hands).

I think Synner is saying this is intended to be a very ambitious project and from the sounds of it, it might be asking a lot to deliver a campaign book/metaplot/ location book all in one. I look forward to reviewing it and may write one up myself.

I haven't read Ghost Cartels (but I will be buying it) but I personally would suggest a campaign book should have a series of well defined modules (like SotF) as well as enough detail and suggestions for additional side runs (subplots). First thing I learned studying Literature was that each book should have a well defined scope + target audience in mind. Saying "shadowrun fans" may be a bit generic. Personally, I look forward to reading it.

Back to the topic at hand, I bought On The Run and upon initial reading I was thoroughly impressed and plan on running it within the month. I have to say of all the modules I've read recently SotF is the best I've read (especially with PCs being directly able to affect the ending - there's a lesson to be learned there).

- J.

There's a saying that applies: "Never bite off more than you can chew."

Shadowrun has some talented writers working for it these days. Unfortunately, a lot of it goes wasted, because the end result generally misses the point. On the Run is a good example. It's a very good GM aid masquerading as a mediocre adventure. They would have done better to focus on one aspect and make it good, than to do a mediocre job in all those aspects.

But what ever happened to having a little bit of bad with your good? Who ever said that experiencing bad things was itself a bad thing? Experiencing bad things and being miserable build character and make a person a more rounded and interesting (and well versed and knowledgeable) individual. I'd much rather listen to the opinions of someone who disliked something they thought they'd like and bought it than the opinions of someone who bought or didn't buy a book because Critic X told them to buy or not buy it. They'll be much more aware of what it was they didn't like about it, and probably have a good something to say about what it is they like, why this appealed to them in the first place, and how this turned out to fall short in their eyes. .

I mean, you paint a pretty grim scenario there, one that could possibly cost several thousand (15,000 about...) dollars. It is a horrible mistake to buy a car that really stinks and that one won't end up liking. But we aren't talking about anything as large in scope as a new car, we are talking about a campaign book for an RPG. One doesn't need to exercise the same levels of caution when spending small amounts of money on entertainment as they would when buying an automobile they'll be putting up with for the next 200,000 miles.

In this economy, we cannot afford to have a little bad with our good. There's literally hundreds of good RPG's out there. If one is a piece of trash, I'd like to know, so I can spend my money on a different product. It doesn't need to be Synnabar or FATAL bad, it just needs to be worse than another product I want.

I play a lot more than just Shadowrun, and I have in storage close to fifty game systems. I used to have more, except I had to sell a lot of them. Shadowrun is one of my favorites, but even so, I only have so much money and a lot of things I want. I'd rather buy a good product from another line than a bad Shadowrun product.

I agree that there's no room for crap of any sort in today's market and taking the bad with the good doesn't hold much water with me.

But by the same token if anyone approaches a product with a negative mindset from the get-go, rather than a neutral, objective, semi-scientific one, all he's going to see is the bad.

Yes, Dumpshock members are going to buy more Shadowrun products than the average RPG'er and are going to have a positive-bias towards the game. This is a Shadowrun board. It comes with the territory.

I'm trying to, I'm trying. It's just that the more I hear, the less I like.

However, that doesn't mean I won't try when I lay hands on the product. I was blown away by the Hong Kong section of Runner Havens, and said as much in my review. Problem is, I also pointed out that the Seattle section was one bottle of white-out away from being Bangor, Maine. The negative aspect was the one that caught all the attention here, and so a lot of people thought I was just slamming the whole book.

Well, from what I've read, you didn't like the "event" books because they were just things that "happen" and the players don't have any control over them. Fine, that's a valid complaint. The counter-argument would be that Shadowrun is a huge world with big power players and not every key event in the world is going to happen because some Shadowrunners did it. You also site Brainscan and Survival of the Fittest as two other examples. In both campaign books the players are right at the center of things at the eventual climax of all events. You said you didn't like the end of Brainscan because the end is not in the player's control. I don't necessarily see it exactly that way... to me the PC's are instrumental in bringing about the final events of Brainscan, the later fluff just assumes that they "succeeded."

So, here's the important question: are you upset when the "fluff" or follow-up in books assumes the players accomplished what they set out to do and continues on from there? Eg. the PC's are hired to accomplish "task X" then the next chapter/section of the books launches from an "after the players complete task X, this is the fallout?" A good example of this is the beginning of Brainscan. The "Light Meets Night" interlude assumes that the players succeeded in sabotaging the power station and details events afterward. A few of those kind of things happen during Ghost Cartels.

Also, the climax of the campaign has the players go and retrieve item X for their boss. The end of the campaign assumes that they get it and give it back to their boss, who then goes and does Y with it. There is no "real" provision for the players making a different choice (not like Survival of the Fittest anyway). There are some stats given for NPC's in case the PC's want to stop Y from happening, and those stats make it quite clear that such an action would be suicidal. So, if you want to call that campaign "railroading" and "no real player choice" then whatever.

For the record, the end of Survival of the Fittest is much the same, for the same reasons, the end fiction piece makes it clear that regardless of the player's decision during the Council, the "official" outcome is that Lofwyr gets the crystal and becomes Loremaster (either he bribes them to turn on Hestaby or Hestaby gives him the crystal). There is no provision in the canon setting for the players chosing to destroy the crystal. That is the nature of canned adventures with epic ramifications - the outcome cannot be left in the hands of players for the setting to remain consistent. The better ones create the illusion that the players made the difference, but inevitably one outcome has to be set for there to be continuity. I like to think Ghost Cartels acomplishes this, since the final outcome and many critical junctions are entirely contingent on the players succeeding.

That's the distinction between a sourcebook and an adventure. For example, Portfolio of a Dragon is a sourcebook, loaded with ideas for adventures and campaigns. Shadowrunners have no say in what happened-- there's no way of saving Dunkelzahn-- but there's lots of rich material in the fallout. On the other hand, SotF is an adventure. It's got defined sections, specific rewards, and engages the characters on a more personal level. A good adventure should be "cool things you can do", whereas a sourcebook is: "Cool things that have happened."


I'm not passing judgment on Ghost Cartels until I read it. However, if there's any criticism that I think holds for all of SR4, it's "Missing the point". OtR is a excellent GM aid masquerading as an adventure, Runner Havens really deserves to be called New Hong Kong for the strength of the Hong Kong chapter and the weakness of everything else. Emergence, well, I don't know what to call it. It's not a sourcebook, it's not an adventure book, it's just plain old nothing.

then...



...

yeah, I'm sure you will do a bang up job on an objective review...

*shrug* I stand by my reviews. People comment on them all the time. Only on Dumpshock do I get charges of bias, and even then, they're rare.

Really? Cause I could have sworn I read oh, at least a dozen or so people express the same sentiment. And not just on Dumpshock mind you. I mean it quite a feat for the tale of some random posters bias on a (relatively) small form like this to spread as yours has. I've come across tale of your bias several times on my wanderings through the information superhighway. Including this, and this, and this. Lets face it Cain, in the small world of online SR commentators, your bias is infact rather famous. Or infamous if you like.

I'm amused that you can even pretend to proclaim your bias doesn't exist. As it immediately evident to anyone who reads only a very little bit of what you write.

And two of the three comments were made by Dumpshockers. And the third one said nothing except that I was biased towards my own opinions, which should be bloody obvious-- why have an opinion if you don't think it's right?

So, nope, despite the smear tactics, it's only on Dumpshock that I draw fire for daring to criticize holy canon.

My copy of On The Run is missing the last part of the book (the pages just aren't there), so I've never been able to run it.

Printing/binding error, Jonathan? As in, is it missing X number of pages but contains other pages repeated, or what?

Sock me a mail at adamjury@catalystgamelabs.com telling me what you're missing.

See, that's one of the things I mentioned in my review. Adam responds quickly and personally to every error reported. That's *real* style.

Well, in my mind Shadowrun has always had 3 categories of books: source (or core) rulebooks, adventures, and plot (or "event") books. In my definitions, the books that are rule and gear supplements are the source/core books (Augmentation, Street Magic, etc), adventures are adventures like On the Run, and then there are the plot books which describe something that happens in the shadowrun world which may or may not affect the players. Ghost Cartels is a "plot" book, in very much the same style as Mob War and Blood in the Boardroom. It details a series of events that happen in the SR world and describes how the various power-players react. In addition to simply describing the events, there are a series of "adventure frameworks" that a GM can use as a basis for a full run (they are not a full adventure in and of themselves), many of which put the players right in the thick of major plot events.

Really the best comparison to Ghost Cartels is Blood in the Boardroom or Mob War, with some added goodies like detailed maps and NPC stats. However, to a critical person looking for something to blast, it might bear too much a resemblance to Emergence in form to survive. But I'm not really sure what would please you in a "plot" book anyway.

Your specific point was that you only get accused of bias here. Blatantly not true. Anywhere your name goes accusations of bias follow. And not just from the posters here, but other impartial observers who look in on the stuff you have written. I have no time to search the internet for hidden cashes of Cain posts. But given the small sampling I have found, I see no reason to suspect it would be any different.

The idea that accusations of bias towards you here (where your post are most prolific) is either a product of your (wishful) imagination, or willful ignorance. If I was so inclined I am sure I could dig up a score of relevant quotes. As, frankly, hardly a debate goes by without some new rube (myself I guess in this case) realizing how your view on things taints your positions and points it out to you. And given your lengthy post history, the occurrences are no doubt legion. I believe you literally cannot help but reveal your bias in what you write, try as you might to conceal it.



It's no smear tactic to point out an obvious bias in a so called 'reviewer.' In your case, though it almost unnecessary, as it is so self evident. But I like to point it out, just for the sake of completeness. And because, frankly, it amuses me to see you continually deny it. I mean seriously, on multiple occasions I have seen you follow a "I have no bias" statement with some sort of biased statement, not in a later post, or paragraph, but the very next sentence. I am not sure which scenario is more amusing, that you are aware of your bias, yet deny it because posing as a 'impartial observer' of SR suits your anti-SR4 agenda. Or if you truly believe in your impartiality, despite all the voices screaming differently. Frankly I think the former is more likely, but I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.

But hey a chorus of angles proclaiming the obvious to you probably couldn't get you to change your tune. Even if the words they say "I think the reviewer's biases come out too much in the review" or "Cain is a diehard fan of previous editions who utterly hates SR4" proclaim my position virtually verbatim. Whom am I think that I could do any different.

You raise a good point, but Ghost Cartels is presented to us as an adventure/campaign book, a la Harlequin and Survival of the Fittest. If that's what it's presented as, that's what I'm going to review it as. Emergence, and to a slightly lesser degree, System Failure, are both more sourcebooks than anything else. (Actually, Emergence is none of the above. I honestly can't figure out what it's supposed to be.)

Believe it or not, I'm not looking to blast anything. If I were, I would have trashed the Hong Kong section of Runner Havens. I didn't do it, because it's a good section with a lot of good material. But even so, I will be comparing Ghost Cartels to other sourcebooks (what you call "plot books"), such as PoaD or the two you listed, at your suggestion. Better?

Emergence is a plot book. It describes the major events of 2070 using a fictional message board format along with Behind the Scenes bits and offers a few adventure seeds/scenarios to involve PCs in said events. Speaking as a GM it's difficult (though not impossible) to use without a lot of prep-work, which is my biggest gripe with it (my second biggest is marking it as a "campaign book" because it certainly isn't), but it is a plot book.

A very experienced GM or a GM who can work on the fly (not me, I'm a planner) could take Ghost Cartels and run an adventure from it as it provides locations, maps and NPC stats. That would be impossible with Emergence as it provides none of those.

EDIT

Yikes, I'm glad I averted you from starting off on a negative foot simply because the book may be mis-categorized in your mind. Incidentally in all the lead up and promotional material I read leading up to Ghost Cartel's release, I never got the impression that it was a "full" adventure book like Harlequin. I have always heard the term "adventure framework" used when describing the runs in the book.

Ummm... No? Ghost Cartels "is presented" as no such thing.

In fact in this very thread I've reiterated a couple of times what I've said in pretty much every presentation of the book, that Ghost Cartels represents a new format. For the record :


You will note I made no mention of Harlequin or Survival of the Fittest (though those would fit in the Brainscan category of campaign books).

To further clarify and correct Max's summary of the Shadowrun formats, we in fact boast (and have had for decades) several distinct types of books and a few hybrid formats (this is actually something I'm planning on making a webblog post about and to bring up for free discussion in an upcoming SR Fan chat).

First, we do indeed have Rule Books (in the current edition the advanced core books such as Street Magic and Augmentation would qualify).

Next, we have Setting Books, these can be subdivided into either location books (such as Runner Havens and Corporate Enclaves but also the Shadows of..., Target:... series and books like New Seattle and Bug City) or event/metaplot books (such as Year of the Comet, Renraku Arcology: Shutdown, and Portfolio of a Dragon). These are not campaign books because they are describe events that impact and cascade into a number of aspects of the core setting rather than presenting them in a "playable" format. They do not in fact present a story—though they may suggest plot seeds for any number of stories and adventures. They emphasize fiction that contextualizes events in the setting over game information and narrative structure.
(On a side note, with SR4, we made the editorial decision to keep rules out of the setting books entirely, to avoid the rules dispersion that was common in SR3.)

Finally, and returning to the topic of this thread, Shadowrun has Adventures and Campaigns. Through the years these have boiled down to 4 standard formats. These are:

• the stand alone adventures (like On the Run, Maria Mercurial, Elven Fire, the SR:Ms and the upcoming Dawn of the Artifacts adventures). These are usually mapped out scene by scene and feature fully stated Cast of Shadows and location and legwork information as necessary. These are ready to play and easy to bring to the table and surprisingly enough anecdotal evidence indicates they sell less than the other formats.
• the adventure packs which essentially consist of 3 or 4 short canned adventures packaged around a common theme (these are exemplified by the Predator and Prey, Missions, First Run and Wake of the Comet). They have the advantages of the stand alone adventures but tend to have shorter stories and the themes have tended to make them hit and miss with different groups.
• the episodic campaigns (represented by Harlequin, Harlequin's Back, Survival of the Fittest, and Brainscan), a format which presents a series of (short) sequential and interlinked canned adventures/episodes that move a central plot forward and tell a specific story placing the players in the heart of the action. They usually boast simplified stated NPCs and abbreviated location descriptions typically designed t tell a metaplot-related stories that put PCs in the thick of the action—but ultimately either railroad the story (to a greater or lesser extent) towards a canon-acceptable resolution or make the PCs actions largely incidental to the final outcome (ie. Super Tuesday). The good ones provide the illusion that character decisions mattered (ie. Survival of the Fittest) but this is still an illusion.
• track campaigns (sometimes called framework campaigns) describe major events of varying scopes (though usually with significant setting wide events ramifications) from multiple interlocking but independent perspectives/event "tracks" (typically three, sometimes 4). Unlike event/metaplot books, this campaign format is devised to assist GMs in bringing these events and their related story potential to the table by providing game information of the agendas, individuals and organizations involved, their relations to one another, a general timeline of events, specific adventure seeds and freeform "adventure frameworks" which simplify an adventure to its key scenes and events, but allows easier adaptation (though a lot more work on the GM) to a wide variety of power levels and gaming/storytelling styles. This format is represented by MobWar, Blood in the Boardroom, System Failure and Emergence. Rather than map out adventures scene-by-scene these describe the campaign framework and provide the GMs with the information, tools, and adventure outlines to develop his own adventures from. This makes them harder to bring to the table, but makes them far more flexible and adaptable to different games and styles of play.

Each of these formats has advantages and disadvantages, but that generally the track and episodic campaigns sell better than the stand alones by an order of magnitude, with the track campaigns selling slightly better.

Going into Ghost Cartels, I decided to attempt to combine what I thought were the best features of all these formats and come up with a new format - which makes comparing it with Harlequin and Survival of the Fittest as misleading as comparing it to Emergence and System Failure.

The result is a book that I believe has the event-relevant and atmosphere-setting fiction of an event book, the narrative continuity and story driven plot of an episodic campaign (over three separate but interconnected story arcs revolving around the PCs actions), the contextualizing setting information of a track campaign, literally dozens of side plots and adventure seeds, as well as the flexibility of a track campaign's "adventure framework" outlines combined this time round with the useful and practical full Cast of Shadows stats blocks, lists of grunts and unique vehicles with stat blocks, location descriptions, and maps normally found in canned adventures.

If you're looking for a full scene-by-scene walk-through canned adventure/campaign with all the prep work laid out for the gamemaster with every little bit of legwork and contingency worked out in advance, this is not it. It was never billed as such. It expects more work from the GM, but (having learned from constructive feedback) it provides all the tools that a GM might need to make the story his own and that we could possibly cram in.

All that and the central story itself is dark, gritty, violent, very much street-level and yet international in scope. And not only that, there's a built-in mystery unfolding and a punch line that should leave you wondering what comes next.

I'm pretty sure everyone who has read the book, whether they like it or dislike it, will vouch that what I have said above is true.


Both are, in fact, hybrids of the track campaign books and event/metaplot books and have the advantages and disadvantages of both. Like them or hate them, the fact remains that both have sold and continue to sell well and we have no intention of writing off the format at this point.

Synner, the above info should be placed on the Shadowrun4 website somewhere. This is excellent in tailoring expectations of the nature of a particular product. With proper context and expectations, the chances that someone will purchase something and say, "This isn't what I paid for/expected!" should be greatly reduced.

IMO, adventure "frameworks" carry more adventure material, they just offer the idea for an adventure, not the whole thing. Ghost Cartels is being presented to us as a sourcebook plus half-completed adventures, which I don't have a good feeling about. I've been wrong before, though.

Synner, Malachi is right. The die-hard Shadowrun fans notwithstanding, there's a large part of the RPG market who won't buy something they don't understand. If you can condense that down to a sound bite or two, quickly explaining what Ghost Cartels is, instead of what it isn't, that might go a long way.

I've never found the stand alone adventures put out by FASA all that great. The problem was they would need so much modification for the group that I'd spend as much time doing that as making the adventure from scratch. Also, the groups I played with have been pretty creative, so going off map was a constant problem. That, and I hated railroading them for comming up with a plan the adventure didn't count on.

PS:I tend to run the game seat of my pants anyway. So one thing I would like is an updated paracritters book, and a book devoted to standard NPCs (Sec gaurds, gnagers, wage slaves and the like). So I can focus on the prime movers and shakers. For example giving example stats of the standard lone star cop, mage, swat, Lt, homicide detective, and precinct captain. Then do something similar for KE, aztechnology, and others.

Well, if you own or have read Mob War or Blood in the Boardroom the style should be immediately familiar, only Ghost Cartels has more detail (maps, NPC stats). However, if you absolutely hated the whole concept of the Adventure Frameworks that were presented in Emergence then you'll probably hate these too.


Which is exactly why adventure frameworks are better! They present the "core" ideas of the adventure but leave all the details open enough that a GM can adapt them to his group. Little details like, I don't know, not assuming that the group has a Hacker in order to run a Trace on some electronic data (right Cain?). The upside of "full" adventures is that they're ready to go, but are (relatively) inflexible. Previous adventure frameworks were flexible but still required a lot of work for the GM to detail locations and NPCs. Ghost Cartels does a good job (IMO) of getting the best of both worlds in that respect.

I'm done my review. It's long. I'm going to post it now.

I ran the second part of this story last night, and I couldn't have asked for a better group to conduct the supplement for. In the end they were able to discover most of the important aspects of the plot and decipher a lot of the necessary legwork. They were friendly towards Marli Brementon and her story threw that pandora's box of morality into the run. The team is currently on the first combat phase for the final battle. The team ended up arriving early and set up 2 snipers outside of the cemetery and with the mage sitting nicely around Jet Black's memorial marker with a very strong invisibility spell. When JB's people arrived (minus Risa) they were greeted by Chicago, the team leader (Ork enforcer with little cyberware and a 5.1 essence rating), and the team's rigger who was waiting in a giant vehicle in the parking lot. After a few tense moments, Chicago decided to meet with the elf privately in the church which is located in the center of the graveyard. The elf surprised Chicago though, by not going into the church and having Chicago enter on his own only to find Risa who slowly emerged from her mist form to greet him.

What happened next was some of the best Shadowrun roleplaying that I have experienced in my brief time as a player of roleplaying games. The entire run the team has been debating the question of whether or not the original Johnson was telling the truth about the run, and continued to debate even then they find out about K-Spot and his son Kerwin Loomis from Marli. With the team split 50/50 about whether or not to betray their Johnson or give the disk to Risa and company..it came down to Chicago who decided that he did not want to turn his back on a Johnson. But it was fascinating to see the exchange between Risa and Chicago, as they debated between the professionalism and word of a Shadowrun team against the depreciation of true art and form of expression in the 2070 simsense sub-culture. The team was actually questioning the run as they began to think about how they would feel if someone was trying to profit off their hard work, ala what is going on with the archaic media file.

The session ended just at the beginning of the first action phase in the initial combat turn. As it stands, Chicago is squared off against Risa in the church. His lover Jackie O is trying to get through a mage and the elf in order to assist him in the battle. The rigger is surrounded by three thugs who are about to go medieval on them, and the two snipers positioned outside of the cemetery are about to receive a nasty surprise because they have just discovered the Shangra La's spy drone. Next session the team will have some backup with two players who were supposed to join us but were unable to. Can't wait to see this all plays out.

I'm glad you're having fun. In the end, that trumps all of those "gamey" arguments.

Quoted for the truth.

Wanted to bump this thread and illeteriate the fact that this adventure is an excellent guide/resource for new GMs to the Shadowrun universe. GMing Shadowrun (And even playing it) can be very stressful, especially for new game masters, because of all of the rules, modifiers, equipment, and overall complexity of the game and system.

The creative team did a good job breaking down the adventure event by event and section by section. They give you rules on how to accomplish all of the roles and tasks that a PC might try to perform to move the story along. Such as how to hack into a commlink, how to conduct large combat situations, basics on security systems, basics on magic, etc. The module also contains quick references to the Core Rule Book in case there is a in game question so you don't need to go and flip through the book to find a ruling for five minutes.

Believe one of the reasons why the story itself isn't on par with Ghost Cartels is that since the adventure is geared towards new players, the writers tried to keep the plot simple and the threats challenging yet not death con 1 for new players.

I still use this module for adventure seeds and a quick references on how to play the game/GM.

There have been a few threads about new players and new GM's whom are either returning to the game or playing it for the first time. If you're a new GM, you should read this adventure because it's a nice introduction to the game. And PCs don't read the negative reviews about the story, because it's not bad, and you'll have plenty of stuff to do.

By all means, read it; it *is* a good guide to the SR4.0 BBB. But as an adventure, it's mediocre. The amount of railroading required alone means this is a middling adventure at best.

While normally Id get a good laugh out of the resurrection of a plot piece from "One Stage Before"(FASA 7312), I had the misfortune of that being my first ever published adventure run by my first SR GM. I loath it with a passion that I cant begin to describe. 3 sharpshooters with rifles 8, and 5 street sams with wired reflexes 3, against a pistols adept, a van rigger, and an otaku, non of which had any .

But yes, I thumbed thru 'On the Run' at my FLGS and its.... not the greatest. If you want to play a real serious game, its not at all what you want to use. Any time that plot says that to advance the adventure as written you need to break a cardinal rule of running (Don't open the package, ever.), that's just not cool. I could not use this with my normal group.

It's a staple of fiction (and rpg's) that characters/players will do anything you tell them not to do,eventually.

Agreed it was an oversight by the author to not at least address the issue of the players wanting to stop the run after getting the disk, but its certainly not difficult to overcome from a GM standpoint. My player did exactly the same thing, I simply had the Johnson instruct them to verify the contents of the disk as genuine and offer them additional pay for the trouble.

That's a good idea, wish I'd thought of it. I ran this adventure last year when our Shadowrun group first started. My PCs missed the entire 2nd half of the adventure because they refused to be curious about the contents of the disk, and went straight to Mr. Johnson.

I had to railroad the PC's a LOT on this adventure to get them into the scenes that were described. Even THEN they came up with completely odd-ball ways of resolving the scenes.

For example, the scene where the PC's steal the Commlink from the Orc rock star near the beginning. There's listed many many ways the PCs can get inside the concert venue and get backstage and hack/steal the Commlink.

The hardest part at this point was explaining to my new players why they couldn't simply hack the Commlink from the Matrix, why they needed to go get it.

ANYWAYS.

My players went and hired orc prostitutes to distract the bouncers at the entrance. Then the shaman of the group shapechanged into a raven, waited for someone to open the door to the dressing room where the Commlink was, flew in, and flew out with it.

But even with multiple attempts to railroad them into investigating the content of the disk, the players still wanted to just meet up with Johnson and get the payoff. They were too concerned with their Shadowrun reputation, and didn't want to do anything to piss off Mr. Johnson.

From a GM's perspective though, I learned a lot from reading through this run... ironically what TO do and what NOT to do as a GM.

Nice. Players should be rewarded for ingenuity. There's nothing wrong with the way your players accomplished that. However, considering it was supposed to be a run for new GM's, the adventure text should have clearly explained the reasons why the commlink couldn't be hacked from the world-wide Matrix (you don't know his Access ID, even if you did, the commlink is off).

Shouldn't that be: Never betray a Johnson until you have proof he intends to betray you.

And the addendum to that: Assume the Johnson is going to betray you, have the double-cross ready for when he does.

Imp

Oh...yes...I ran one stage before with my old group, as an opener to a campaign, because I had not had time to prep it, and, well, hey! Here is an adventure on my shelf! Yup..it is third edition..OK..yeah..that solved that...

It was hilarious when my players pretty much utterly destroyed everything by virtue of such things as: having a sea-copter for their rigger, having thermographic vision...and having an Oyabun as a Friend for Life, and having contacts with a go-gang already...However, it was also an absolute blast to run, because of how FUBARed it was!

I was wondering what all this "don't poke your nose into Mr. Johnson's business" stuff came from. I mean, "Buzzkill" from SR4 shows a team actively not trusting Mr. Johnson, and as a result getting out reasonably alive. I'm fairly certain that's not the only bit of fiction that holds finding out as much as possible about a job as an exemplar of how to be a shadowrunner.

It's interesting to me that the "be professional" sentiment runs counter to the "rage-against-the-machine" mentality of the runner subculture. If it was me I'd be cracking that bitch open even if I was told not to but that's just how I roll.

Apparently there are two terminal points on the shadowrunner sliding scale... the Company Man/Soldier vs. The Free-Thinking Anarchist. Neither extreme is the correct one and staying at one end will eventually get you burned (depending on your GM, naturally).

Any good group should have at least one character at each terminus. Not only does it provide different work methods, it provides odd couple style hilarity outside of work.


BlueMax
/"Who got their pink hair dye on my straight razor!?"

Quoted FTW.

Opposing viewpoints on professionalism makes for good roleplaying.

I agree with Malachi. There are flaws in the transitions from scene to scene in the adventure, but a GM can work around them. Initially my team was not going to accept the job presented to them because they felt as if it was to much of a needle in the hay stack story.

Two things.

1. The adventure was written during the initial days of the SR 4th Edition when FanPro was still trying to get a tone for the the 4th edition. "On the Run." was a guinea pig for the game at the time it might have been what the writers and developers of SR 4th had geared for the game. There is a good chance in the upcoming "Runner's Toolkit" package CGL is coming out with in conjunction with SR4.5 the editors will have cleaned up some of the transitional messes in the original incarnation of "On the Run."

2. The adventure is geared for new players, and new player characters in general. From the opening description and tell it as it is portion, the runners are brand new to the Seattle Shadows. Thus, this is their first adventure and job in the 6th world. The way I saw the run, is that heck runners have to pay their dues before being hired for the prestige jobs. "On the Run." is a "okay you get payed minimum wage for an incredibly taxing job" kind of run. If the mission is played out in it's entire version, there is a good chance that the runners can come out of the adventure with a boat load of new contacts, which is a benefit outside of the monetary rewards.