Ok finally finished up all my reading and starting to write out my framework for keeping it all together.

Thought about doing a review but seen a few already that sum up what I'd probably repeat so I'll try and just hit a few topics pro and con.

Pro:
1. Great story that doesn't disappoint or skimp on the action. Travel to exotic locals and display your prowess.
2. Succeeds in being a street level campaign but still having the feel of old school epic storyline.
3. Well fleshed out colorful antagonists and supporting cast.
4. Ton of fluff including material for folks to who don't have the location books and plenty of side job hooks.
5. The maps are nice, hoping get a chance to print the color versions for the table top.
6. STATS on npc's and vehicles and not just cookie cutter or modified existing stats. A GM's best friend and the biggest time saver of any adventure. Great to see alot of gear from outside the BBB included.

Cons
1. I'm still not sure about all the fluff in the first half of the book and then the frameworks in the second, like Knasser I have to agree alot of the fiction/shadowtalk will never make to the table. I would love shadowtalk handouts I could pass out at the table. Make the players feel like they were really interacting with the local shadow community during the adventure.
2. This is just a personal feeling but I would have liked all the info for each chapter together. Such as corresponding fiction matched with its framework.
3. Some editing errors, stat block errors (which can easily be extrapolated without much effort) and RAMhounds missing.



For me personally a solid **** 4 out of 5 stars and a fine edition to the SR storyline.

Something I've come across now that I'm going back over stuff to make sure I have it down for our game. Caines apt has 4 floors on map and 3 in the description.

4 out of 5 for a storyline addition, or you have run it and its a 4 out of 5 overall considering how it played?

This definitely not a book that can be run in one session, so you'll have to wait a while to see actual playthrough reviews.

Now that sounds like a challenge...

Marathon 52 hour Shadowrun session at AH's house!

The words. They have been spoken.

I think it could be played in one sitting, if ya had a couple of days and a short nap.

First night running Ghost Cartels:

1. Players had a blast! Can always tell when how well the players are enjoying a session.
a. Our smokers take less smoke breaks.
b. Snack times were on the run as opposed to a solid break.
2. Everyone got involved. The paranoid hacker even got wounded in the meat for the first time as he tried to hang down from a 14th story balcony with a 2 str while the Ragers tore through his apt.
a. Teams did some splitting up to accomplish tasks, something they rarely do. This kept encounters very challenging.
3. Laughter there was a point during the Doc Wagon morgue run were the plan became so convoluted and a phone call went something like this.

Richard: Peter
Peter: Dick
Ricard: Yea
Peter: Snickers....guffaws......gasping....."Dick".....crying....bursts of laughter....more crying....
Richard: yes it's me Dick, Peter whats up?
Peter:Wheezing and crying...yea just a sec......head down trying to get a breath.

Few snags I ran into.

1. Had stats for Ragers at Sinns place but not First Nations. Fixed easy enough with generic ganger stats.
2. No matrix stats for Doc Wagon clinic, well detailed place but didn't see its node anywhere?

Up to the Goldman job now and the team is working smarter and more inspired then they have in awhile. Looking forward to our next session.

Very interested in hearing how they fare in the Goldman run. One of the groups I was running this for made the mistake of trying to stand up to the FBI.

I was flipping through this book at a local gaming store Saturday night while waiting for my event to start. I did not get to conduct much reading, but I did manage to thumb through the pictures and stats of the major NPCs in the game. If those characters are a sign of what is to come in the SR universe through the Catalyst banner, then I am glad that my group and I have decided to resume playing Shadowrun once again!

I loved the full body pictures of the NPCs, and after viewing some of their stats I have to say From what I have seen of the NPC's and from what I have read of their bios, I don't care what type of plot the book entails...the RPG experience should be freaking awesome!!!

Our group ran part of this, before we sidetracked into that "quantum tunneler" crap.

Gotta' say, the blackmail/money-laundering bit felt a little unbalanced. Actually, really unbalanced. This was supposedly designed for starting characters? How the hell were they supposed to contend with that uber-wared yakuza sam? We had to bring in our friggin' skytrain to blast him with narrow bursts from a couple of autocannons to stop the guy. Or was this meant to be one of the railroading "you fail your mission because the plot demands it" kind of things?

Poorly written or poorly balanced, either way--like the part where the dealer you're hired to interrogate gets possessed by a force 9 plant spirit and starts going nuts. Luckily, our team has gotten ridiculously uber, and we managed to succeed both times by the skin of our teeth.

Loved the storyline, plot, and character descriptions, especially Kaz--but those Plot Decides The Outcome: You're Just Along For The Ride moments really brought it down in my opinion.

I know the devs have said that it can be played with starting characters, but I would warn that it would have to be pretty well balanced stating characters. Perhaps the devs were thinking of the uber builds that get posted on Dumpshock when they were thinking "starting characters."

I guess they didn't learn anything from the Ruby Ridge incident, huh?

Actually the scenario assumes that you manage to grab Goldman from Chikao and co somehow. This means getting creative not trying to win a straight fight. The characters are not intended to "win" this encounter as a standing firefight with Yakuza hitmen and an FBI ERTeam. In fact, they could very well end up dead if they try.

Most of the enemies in Ghost Cartels were designed with specific weak points and vulnerabilities that could be exploited. Chikao's unit is weak on magic, for instance, with only the cover in the car park helping balance that. They're not meant to be pushovers that the gamemaster can "upgrade" to provide the appropriate level of opposition though. As a developer, I'm very much of the school of thought that the published stats should be faithful to the character or group's place/role in the setting and his/it's threat level should be consistent with the established background rather than the game as played at any specific table. That means the ERT are an elite team with tactical awareness and coordination, and that the Yakuza is fielding some of their heavy hitters to resolve the tempo issue.

Both groups that I ran this for managed to pin down the Yaks just long enough for the FBI to come in, taking different routes when those two groups duke it out over Goldman. One group focused on snagging Goldman in the confusion and getting the hell out of dodge before the FBI worked their way to them. The other group decided to take on the law, bad mistake. Overconfident players will find their runners in to serious trouble, but ultimately this encounter should only be lethal problem if the players assume their characters can be the last men standing. A tactical FBI ERT with magical overwatch should walk all over the characters if they decided to make a stand.

I'm actually sorry that I edited out a line which said "This is the "run" part of Shadowrun."

Also note that it's very easy for the gamemaster to adjust the number of Yakuza present to balance the difficulty. And if the team makes appropriate use of cover, it should make for a memorable battle... like most of the confrontations in Ghost Cartels, the vibrant characters and the tough opposition should make for interesting roleplaying experiences.


Again this is only a problem if the characters assume they can "win" a fight. If they leave the spirit to do its thing the dealer will commit suicide. Fighting the spirit one on one is going to be tough - though not as tough as trying to face down one of the Yama Kings later on. Shadowrunners are tough, but there willa always be something meaner and tougher in the world - so runners need to be creative and think out of the box. One of my groups let the dealer get shot up and abandonned by the spirit, then Healed him (which made the magician who took the heavy Drain seriously pissed when the Olaya later tied off loose ends in front of him).

All this makes me wonder how the groups are going to navigate the Kowloon scene. No line of sight to speak of for magic, very short distances to enemies, lots of hand to hand, threats around every corner.

Note that we've never said that this campaign was designed for starting characters, just that it could be played by starting characters - notably the first story arc. The opposition only gets steeper in the later arcs. I had a lot of fun with Tenoch.

To echo Synner's post, this isn't DnD. There is no experience for killing the monster and just because it fights you doesn't mean you should be able to kill it.

I managed to run some First Taste for my play group.

Stranger in Our House Part 1 Climax - Why would a very discrete team of runners receive a visit from the Ragers? It is almost assumed that the Ragers will be able to spot the runners.

Dirty Pretty Money - Runners should have been able to snatch Goldman without his being able to contact Lone Star and/or FBI and intercept and fake his comms with them in the first place - I had a metasapient AI and a technomancer in the group. However, I did managed to run the fight with the Yakuza and the FBI. It was TPK.

I think if you begin the campaign with 400 bp characters, your GM may want to consider awarding karma (lots of karma) as you go through it. Because if you can get a 400 bp character through the final runs, then either it was a very well built character in a very balanced team, a very very well played character, or you bribed your GM with homemade butter toffee (my prefered method of ensuring survival, feel free to copy).

I shows. I made note of him in my review as an undoubtedly "memorable" villain. The only mistake I see is that the later adventure frameworks don't mention him enough so less experienced GM's won't necessarily pick up on the fact that Tenoch should be dogging the characters at every turn in that last arc. As a compliment to you, I loved the idea of the "shorn ones" villains that I couldn't wait to implement them, so I'm stealing Tenoch and his buddy and putting them in my present campaign starting next adventure. It should be good times...

Just got Ghost Cartels yesterday, along with Rifter #44 & the new Wild Cards RPG book. Gotta lot of reading to do.

This surprisingly fell into place without me doing anything. Our teams Prime Hacker had his agent/slash evil doll hack Caines comm during the Littletree meet and got traced due some lucky rolls on Caines comms part. Ragers were able to catch him home alone multitasking on other jobs. Catching him completely by surprise.

Gangers catching a Matrix specialist by surprise? Was that when he started hanging from the balcony?

Hahaha yea a little over confidence in the buildings on site security. He checks camera feed for the door cam and sees 3 ganger's standing in hall banging on door. Quickly gathers up his stuff and in a panic runs to balcony and proceeds too hang off of it not having the confidence in his physical skills to climb to any of other nearby landings.

A failed Str check and permanently burned edge point later and he painfully impacts with a balcony 4 stories below much to the surprise of a 4 yr old girl looking out the sliding glass doors.

"Daddy she squeals." "Theres a clown outside!" (The hacker Bozo not only looks the part in the matrix but the meat as well.) A battered and beaten clown gingerly knocks on the window and asks. "Could you please get your daddy I need to get out of here." (His bright red fiber optic hair flickering)

Ah, that's how great Shadowrun memories get created.

Except that the team hackers didn't get traced, and unless I handwave it, none of the PCs physically monitoring the meet got spotted either.

Tenoch--as well as César da Silva and Yajé--came out of one of my late-night, over-caffeinated brainstorming evenings about a year ago (wow, time flies). He goes back to my Shadows of Latin America writing on the Aztech warrior orders, which was put into one of the sidebars in Ghost Cartels. I wanted to try to put a face to the badassery of the AZT guerreros. Peter and Jen took him from there and really did a great job!

To be honest, while as GM I loved Tenoch and Chikao as recurring foes, I think my players really got a kick out of dealing with Huk. One of them keeps asking me to go back to H-K and I'm pretty sure its because he wants to find out what happened to the Triad bad ass after the events in the Kowloon Walled City.

As for César... I suggest everyone keep their eyes on the website for a Christmas present.

Synner Claus is going to town?!?!

Egads, Fortune! I keep having the mental image of Synner as a Bubba the Love Troll in red milspec armor going, "Ho! Ho! HO!"

His sled is moved about by possessed reindeer (The spirits in question know the Levitate spell). A group of green-clad pixies is along for the ride, distributing presents (instead of coal you get C4, complete with detonator).

Dirty Pretty Money - I went through this scenario's climax battle again. Further note: Although I improvised using Unwired's Risk Management Engineer(Pro Rating 5), why is there no statted pilot for the FBI helicopter? By RAW, a hacker could very easily seize control of the air support. Or is this the archilles heel that was built in?

Edit: Moved to its own post.

Hmm, maybe that was the run where our magical support couldn't make it to the table. Might explain a few things.

Still, pitting the team against an enemy force that only the mage can hope to defeat is bad game design. You make the rest of the group superfluous redshirts, and I doubt that's what they came to the table to play. I agree that NPC stats should match their position in the game world, that doesn't mean you should put the PC's up against someone they can't hope to defeat.

Note that I don't necessarily mean "defeat in combat" here. That wasn't even our first resort, but apparently the guys we were up against also had a super-badass hacker that put ours to shame--and one of our hackers is an AI that currently has admin control of the giant maser in geosync over Tokyo.

The hackers couldn't do anything, the combat characters couldn't do anything, the faces couldn't do anything since the Yak's weren't feeling much like negotiating. As for Chiako, his stats actually broke the rules of the game--our GM had to change some of his ware because as written, he would have had negative essence.



Sounds very much like what we did. We barricaded the lower entrances of the parking garage the Yaks holed up in, and snuck up to the top floor, keeping behind parked cars for cover. Then we had the fastest member of the team run and grab the target while the rest of us laid down covering fire. Our guy pulled a Marty McFly, leaping off the parking structure with our mark, and into the waiting palm of one of our Skytrain's full mechanical arms. Then the Skytrain rose up and hosed down the Yakuza while the rest of us bailed.

Still, we barely got away with it because even our fastest runner couldn't run in, grab the guy, and run away in one pass. Thanks to the way the rules work, he was stuck in the middle of the Yakuza for a full pass, and barely made it out alive. As for adjusting the number of Yakuza, Chiako was badass enough to take on our entire group alone--none of us could even damage him, and we killed a fragging dragon.

(Well, feathered serpent, but who's counting? )



Sounds like bad game design to me. We're talking about a scenario where completing your job requires either subduing a guy possessed by a great-form plant spirit--or using out of character knowledge about what will happen if you leave him alone for a while. I don't recall for certain what we did here, I think we used his link to track his position and hung back, waiting to see what happened.

As for him getting shot up, how exactly did that happen? Nobody was able to touch this guy when we ran it--the spirit's immunity to normal weapons power made him nigh-invulnerable to bullets.

When the FBI showed up later, we bailed. Fortunately we had used a spirit to posses a mob hitman, and have him set charges on the place where the Yakuza and Mafia were playing cards--we bailed as soon as the FBI showed up and let him finish the job alone.



Wasn't there for that one, but our team killed the Yamma king--even being one man short.



I'll say. We just ran the part last night where the friggin' Azzie army shows up at that drug-dealer's compound. Now that was the pinnacle of bad game design:

Strip the players of all their weapons and vehicles, then position them out in the open well outside of running distance to any cover and send about forty guys with millspec gear after them. Oh, and have them lob a fragging mortar at the team before they get to act.

Our only option was to run, and the way the rules work, even that was nearly impossible. Hell, if we hadn't rolled well, we would have had a TPK in the first pass before any of the players got an action. The background characters are the ones who are supposed to be completely helpless, running for their lives--not the players. The point of the game is to have fun, being totally out-classed and reduced to window-dressing for an entire scene is not fun by most people's understanding of the term.

Don't get me wrong, some parts of Ghost Cartels were very good--most of it in fact. But these moments that read out like a bad GM power fantasy really bring it down.

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[Edit] We just finished running Ghost Cartels, and I have to say, the end really made me change my opinion of this thing.

It was great: Lots of opposition, high-end craziness with spirits and double-crosses that had our team constantly looking over their shoulders and made it very clear we were embroiled in something much bigger than ourselves. There was a lot of challenge and tension, but it never reached that point where it was too much to throw at us.

Of course, the pinnacle of the night for me was probably when a free spirit possessed our team's uber-fighting adept (He's been playing the same character for over a decade, and has ridiculous amounts of karma.) The spirit possessing him attacked my character, and in a flash of insane luck I nearly killed him with a riposte. If I'd followed up with my finishing maneuver, they'd be finding his corpse on the jungle floor.

It was a great cap to the run and settled a long-standing rivalry that's been building since we started Ghost Cartels, as I somehow kept finding myself up against the uber-opponents our GM intended him to face. Or maybe not, since he's been threatening to kill me in my sleep since I hit him with 20 successes and left him unconscious and bleeding out with a set of broken ribs.

The payoff was also amazing, and made all those situations with ridiculously impossible odds seem almost worth it. Taken as a whole, Ghost Cartels was really good, but it does better as an isolated one-shot than something you'd plug into an existing campaign because a few of those scenarios have a *very* good chance of killing some PC's no matter how good they are. Blatantly unfair situations and tragic, untimely deaths make for good storytelling, but it's not as fun when it's your regular character that you have a lot invested in on the line.