Hi-ho, tormenting players and since I've got 2nd edition adventures I've not run, was wondering you opinions on them.
Note: Some I was thinking of sticking up there, but they're more "combined adventures", listed below for your delight.

Also-rans:
Super Tuesday (God, did anyone do this in one go?) & Shadows of the Underworld. Two books that could be rolled into one pile of icky ow.
Harlequin & Harlequin's Back - Basically one monster rollercoaster of hurt.
Renraku Shutdown & Brainscan - Time to print out new character sheets. Should be known as SR-TPK.

And for the trigger-happy of us:
DNA/DOA - uh, yeah, we shot your kids, sorry about that...can we hang out with you guys for a while?


I've not listed a few others, never played them but would like to and like to know your thoughts on them.

Ta,
-Tir

The most hurting adventure I've ever played is Universal Brotherhood. Force 10 Bugs and Gangers with APDS ammo were almost a death sentence for our 200+ karma characters.

Well, my players complained most about Super Nova (in the First Run collection of 3rd Ed), due to the Cyberzombi+Red Sam opposition, though they had fairly strong characters and handled them ok.

From the GM perspective I think That one in Tir T. from Corporate Punishment was the toughest with the hardcore ghosts hit team was worst among those I ran.

Euphoria was very memorable, as the PCs waded through hords of helpless worker ants just standing in the way and getting shot, so the ant warriors could repetetively ambush them

There are probably some harder adventures I read, but have not run them, so ..

Hmm, I should start reading some of those old adventures again *nostalgia*

I'd vote for Imago, which is set in Scotland not England btw. Some of us are very touchy about such things and have itchy trigger fingers.

I'd played just about all of these, so I voted for Queen Euphoria and Bottled Demon.

Euphoria was our first exposure to bug spirits. Bottled Demon can be instant death if you do something you shouldn't with the idol.

As a player, UB was insane, but there is another story, i cant remember it's name, that was completely nuts, nothing special about the story, but the goons where all super powered, like a street shaman part of a small low level gang that was initiate grade 5 with a level 6 power focus ...
Most early stories published for SR was technicaly flawed with no sense of balance and logics when it camed to rules and statistics.

Notsoevildm - quite right, but I had to use a lot of the English Sourcebook to get the adventure running. And since we were mage-heavy, well, it wasn't kind. Aspected sites. God damned inbred scottish lairds....

Yeah. Bottled Demon - don't even THINK of using that Ju-Ju. Force 10, without karma bonding. Oh, no, nothing good can come of this....

Corperate Punishment, was that the "doublecrossed in Tir with the Ghosts and that uber delta-grade assassin because the princes liked being raging d#$kholes"??
Seriously, we know they're not nice people, but, god, could they be made any less likeable? Old Golden-snout had more empathy.
Yeah, didn't run that one. If the group decides to go into the Archology and take out a big chunk of Seattle, it's their decision, fair enough...but that adventure was punishment for punishment's sake.

(Unlike the "Golden Key" foci one. That turned out surprisingly well. "You wake up with no recollection how you came to be in what looks like the dense forest of the Pacific Northwest. You're all dressed to the nines and a key made entirely of gold is nearby." "......Seriously? Ok, next time, we don't eat the salmon.")


God. The brazilian kiwifruit monster one in "Predator and Prey". My group would have beaten me to death with the sourcebooks if I pulled the "Goddamned spiders on a plane" drek they railroaded you into.

-Tir
(nice to see that it's not my imagination, but the entire-book adventures ARE designed to make players cry.)

As a gm it was Queen Euphoria for me. Mowing through the hordes of scrub spirits left my players feeling pretty cocky till the heavies showed up and started the PC mulch farm. 3 out of 5 PC's bit it and I had to get new glasses from a related dice hurling incident.

Just being curious, where did u get those adventures? I never heard of them. Are they oficial compaign books or free online.adventures?

The listed adventures are official and really old. e.g. Dreamchipper was published in 1989.

I can't speak for which titles as I already have most of them but Chimera Hobby in Appleton, WI has a bunch of old SR adventures, as many as 6+ copies on some of them.

So in a positive light we can say that adventures have generally improved in that there is a bit less rail roading.

Anyone remember the adventure from the SR1 GM screen?

I never ran it, but it sits in the bathroom at my mom's house and provides well, minutes of entertainment for me each time I'm visiting.

You can find some of them for sale in PDF format on DTRPG.

Well...they're sitting on my shelf - an rpg shop had a "bag of SR stuff for $50" so I bought a few...(Missed out on the bag which had Rigger 3, Cannon Companion & Magic! God damn. Got a ton of Matrix-related stuff and a pile of adventures instead.)

If you read the start of the poll, you'd notice the "Single-book adventures" limitation, so no "Predator and Prey" or Mob War sourcebook/adventure combos.

Also, so what if they're 1-3rd ed? Like it or not, some of the "old" adventures had wild and horrible ideas. There's a reason why people go back to them, they're still good. And it's nice to watch old-time players go pale when they see the cover of Euphoria. Yes, they know what it's about and STILL play it and play it hard*.


-Tir

*Bonus Karma for correct use of quotes from Aliens.

My character for that one had Phobia: Spiders on his sheet. EVIL GM, he ran that just because I had that disad.

So many things I missed out on.

I feel your pain, CanRay. I feel left out.

Senility is setting in. What was the one set in Hawai'i? The one where you end up facing down a dragon? That one was pretty tough, IIRC.

Paradise Lost, and I've run it three times... It can be harsh or fine depending on how players do it, and boy can they fuck that run up.

The first time I ran it, one of my players had an otaku that was a royal PITA. They got through the office building and to the employee that was the ALOHA member and very major to move the plot forward. I RPed him pretty well, being resistant at first but the otaku apparently didn't want any of that so he blew the guy's head off. I had a heart attack and had to scramble to get it back on track.

My favorite time was the third one. The players were fairly new but still went through it well, though one player running a troll samurai when we got to the same office part got his cyberleg disabled by laser security (he let us know later that he had grenades in it so a little higher and there'd be paste) and then the nerve agent that one of the VPs had on her computer liquified his lungs. A little later was a great scene where a different player who had a dwarf rigger who was afraid of water ended up becoming the major target of the kraken that the players encounter when they go to M3's R&D department.

Good times.

Yeah, I've had good times with Paradise Lost. The kraken and Naheka are tailor-made for memorable moments.
Visit Hawai'i. See the sights - taste the fish - fight the dragon.

The adventure also features the La Maison d'Indochine which I have often revisited in my games over the years. Nothing beats French-Asian colonial cuisine when you need to go posh and exotic at the same time.

Btw, the adventure was written by Nigel D. Findley who also published the novel House of the Sun (part 2 of the Dirk Montogmery series) at roughly the same time, which is also set in Hawai'i. The setting must have meant a lot to him and I think it really shows in the wonderful cultural details sprinkled in. E make loa Haole indeed.

I just got done reading 2XS and House of the Sun... good books both. It is a fragging shame that Nigel had a heart attack. I would have loved reading another of Dirk's adventures.

I think I would vote for DNA/DOA from the old adventures... but from the newer stuff SRM02-03: The Grab. I have never killed so many players in a 4th ed adventure before. I think out of 5 or 6 PCs at the time I KILLED 2, had 2 more in overflow. Also during the "chase scene" they lost 1 fully loaded Van that belonged to the rigger. All in all by the time it was done the players told me they refused to play in Denver any longer. LOL.... not quite a SR Tomb of Horrors, but still a lot more fun for the GM than it ever could of been for the players.

After this I had to run some "easy-mode" stuff to build their confidence back up and keep them playing.

As a GM and a player I really enjoyed Dreamchipper. It's got a posh party, infiltrating a huge ganger meet/riot, and hunting Red Jack. My character Car, who has since retired to become a very respected international fixer, cut his teeth on Dreamchipper. I even ran it for SR4 once.

Pretty much my only gripe with Queen Euphoria is that I really hate that. Though I got a kick out of Against the Hive Masters in Sprawl Survival Guide.

I liked Imago when I ran it and when I played it. It gave me an excuse to use my Scottish accent. When I played it we were waiting for info in Edinburgh and got bored. We decided to steal the Gundestrup Cauldron from the museum. Unfortunately we got sidetracked before we could do that. Though, my thief/decker/face/jack-of-all-trades Car did manage to divert a shipment of encephalon II's that we sold for a decent profit.

I never will forget the description for the Pink Pitbull from Total Eclipse. "Late neo-tacky." I love that. Though being an arachnophobe the fight against aa bigass spider-spirit-thing wasn't fun.

Due to my humor-laden approach and the fact I could not help my self from making comments about the text, Eyewitness went from Night of the Living Dead/Nosferatu to Abbot and Costello meet Frankenstein. Ah, well.

No kidding. My eponymous character

The NAN runs aren't half bad either for stuff to carry over. I used to use the Blue Flame club as a carryover meet location for a while after that.

For me, as a GM, it was Ivy and Chrome.

The PCs have an initial fight where they're supposed to capture and interrogate someone which essentially starts off the investigation.

The players just offed them instead, without asking any questions.

I did a little to salvage the run and the session, but it pretty much took the PCs directly to the last chapter.

Sho'nuff. I ran the one with Jesse James at least 5 times. Gotta love toxic shamans.

So... Crash 2029. You ran Dreamchipper in 4e.

Would you... er... mind sharing some of your conversion notes? That run sounds like hilarious fun. (Especially since it'll actually be taking place in one of the Khan's old stomping grounds- yeah... I'm going to have to do some extensive re-skinning.)

Thinking of running Ivy & Chrome someday- Thankfully, my players will be investigators by trade, so hopefully we'll avoid that unfortunate problem with the info-dump getting a bullet between the eyes.

Only qualm I've got over any of this so far is that one of the players has been at Shadowrun since I was in Kindergarten. Not at all worried that he'll spoil anything- just don't want to see stuff get spoiled for him when he realises what we're playing. Hopefully the re-skinning will be sufficient to hide the truth until we're hitting the meat of the mission. Still kind of daunting, though.

Since you've all done so many of these... er... how was Divided Assets?

Divided Assets - this module shall not be spoken of. Ever. Again.

"Well, we could do Brainscan..."
"Oh hell no. The ammo and equipment costs alone run into the millions!"
"I agree!"
"I love losing essence for no good reason?"
"I love losing magic for a POS Datajack, seriously, I wish Deus would manifest in a physical form so I could nut-punch him into oblivion"
"..Ok then, sheesh. Uhlm, I've got Divided Assets?"
<group pause>
"We're bring lasers this time, suck on that, hardened drones!"
"Wait, no Divided...?"
"Roll the dice deus-boy. We're got a killing to get on"

-Tir

Celtic Double Cross... talk about walking into a blender.
Bottled Demon was a pain, so were the Harley adventures. Paradise Lost was a trickey one.
Didn't have many problems with Divided Assets it was just kinda heartbreaking.

What people think about Total Eclipse, Dragon Hunt, One Stage Before, A Killing Glare, and DArk Angel?

Elven Fire is my bane, solely because of Michael Dumont. The schizophrenic St. Samurai with Wired Relfexes lv3 smoked my buddy's character that he'd been playing for a year. My Phys Ad, that I'd been playing for three years, got his right arm ripped off by the guy. It was not kind.

For the conversion of Dreamchipper I mostly did it on the fly in my head. I don't think I made any notes. I had run it before in 3E, which made it easier to adjust as we went on. I'm sorry I cannot help more.

One stage before was very deadly. Total Eclipse was impossible to do without a certain Bonnie Tyler song going through my head distracting me. Kinda like I cannot play Mass Effect without Blue Oyster Cult song stuck in my head.

Yeah, I agree on One Stage Before, that's one of the adventure's that has really messed up my groups.

"Holding out for a Hero"?

We ran in Queen Euphoria, Bottled Demon and the run from NAN1, all at the same time.

Total Eclipse of the Heart

Huh, didn't know that Bonnie Tyler did a version of that song.

I just thought of another one I really didn't like, Super Tuesday, omg what a clusterfrag.

I've actually wanted to play Super Tuesday for awhile now.

I do not understand the poll question (my only answers would be write-ins anyway, no opinion on the oppositions listed). Is the question "Which published adventure is the worst written?" or "Which published adventure has the most stupidly overpowered opposition?".

I think it is more: What published adventure has the capability to kick your PC's asses into oblivion.

Harlequin's Back was my least favorite for EXTREME railroading.

By the way, I think Bottled Demon is the most ruthless. Let's see: Cursed Power foci that really gives some ultimate power if you use it and represents ultimate temptation in Shadowrun? Check. Dragon that you have to face off against? Check. Famous Tir Assassin that never dies and his team can probably kick teh PC's teams asses? Check? Dragon on Dragon action (Not that way you perverts!)? Check.

That adventure is fatal, for real!

I have not run as many old school adventures as I'd like so I'd like to talk about 4E for a while.

I don't think that overpowered opposition that will massacre starting characters (combined with absolutely NO warning label about "Designed for PCs with '200-300 Karma' (or whatever) on the back) is new to 4E, but the second chapter of Dawn of the Artifacts (WHAT-THE-FUCK AZTECHNOLOGY JAGUAR GUARDS AND EAGLE SHAMANS PLUS TEN PROFESSIONAL RATING 4 GANGERS WITH AGILITY 6 AND YAMAHA (LOL 8S(e)) PULSAR TASERS) and pretty much ALL of Ghost Cartels (don't even get me started) have RIDICULOUSLY deadly opposition. There is also one-character that, according to my understanding of the rules, can turn himself into a super-jaguar on K-10. A SUPER JAGUAR ON K-10. Note that this is at the very end of three very difficult fights with the PCs worn down by all of the attrition the run has to offer. How do the writers expect players to cope with that? Can you say...

"I expect you to die, Mr. Bond."

Shadowrun adventures are DEFINITELY written with overpowered characters in mind, and without much thought given to characters who are just scraping by/are not especially well-built/are stuck in a "burn a point of edge to complete the run because it's the only way and then use all of the run's karma buying back your edge thus never advancing" loop. Then again, of course, I have an innate bias, and here it is: I can never find six or seven people to play Shadowrun with. Whether GMing or PCing I'm stuck with a part of THREE PCs which does make the opposition almost twice as hard as it's supposed to be. But I think even factoring that in, the opposition seems ludicrously overpowered. The GM's job becomes either buffing the PCs or nerfing the enemy to make sure that the run can be completed. Plus DotA sends you to nice places like AFRICA and and the freezing toxic bug winterhell of Chicago and DotA 2 specifically tells the GM to NOT REFRESH YOUR EDGE POOLS, EVER, UNTIL THE ENTIRE RIDICULOUS SUPER-ADVENTURE is completed.

Won't someone please think of the anti-munchkins?

Silver Angel if I remember right...I'm not sitting at home so I can't pull it out and check.

I had forgotten the name of it, until I checked...Double Exposure was one of the most dangerous my group had been through.

Imago ended up taking out only one of the group.

I've run them from 7301 through 7320 before jumping into Ghost Cartels, so they have plenty of stories and harrowing experiences...plus a few deaths here and there.

I have to say that queen euphoria was the worst for my crew. With the giant packet of information that the pc's get in one spot in the adventure. Here read this there are clues to be had. Then if they don't read it there will be some smackdown later.

Mmm, subby here. The question for the survey (I should have really put more choices up, but only had what was on the shelf behind me at the time) was, "Most Henious", that is, the one that didn't just make your eyes roll up and the players go "Choo-Choo, Everyone on Board!" but had the players swear, burn karma, burn contacts, burn long-standing RL friendships in order to get through.

You know the ones. They seem easy, but then you realise that it was a slippery slope and now the gravity well has got you and it's deep. Not the "Ok, just get your 4000k characters out, we're going to give Deus a wedgie" super-heroic (barf) runs, but the old-style book adventures that start smoothly and then smack the players (And often, the GM) right in the daddy-bags and then won't stop kicking until you grit your teeth and get through or before you whimper, curl into a ball and go to your happy place.

It seems that I'd missed a few favourites, but Bottled Demon (and yes, I whole-heartedly agree that it's a wrecking-ball) came up trumps with the sheer tempation->seduction->destruction path it follows and Queen Euphoria for the "Force what now" bugs.

Frankly, Euphoria is, at the end (unless you toss in a queen, then it gets really nasty) a knock-down slaughterfest, a real grindhouse that should be played like a survival horror cranked to 11. And without a happy ending. That adventure seemed, to the various players over time, the real "Evil underbelly of an awakened world" sort of adventure and hard to surpass.

And if you decide that your player are feeling manly, take out the helpful presence of the other dragon (I can never remember her name) and let them go mano-a-mano with that bugger, not forgetting that's it's boosting itself with that damn statue. Anyone who has done this, awesome rolls aside, you're nuts:)
Regarding Teldare (spelling?) yeah, not-so-tough with a few drones rigged to spray down an acre's worth of napalm. Dodge that you...ah, crap, he dodges....


-Tir.

PS: Reading the irritation of the SR4th adventure I'd say, "ouch". K10? That seems a trifle unkind.