Splitting this off of the 2011 Sell Sheet thread since it was a bit of a tangent. There be Spoilers below, you've been warned.

Also... *sigh* Some days, the fact that it won't requote a quote is annoying.



I've ALWAYS had issues with Firefox and PDFs, any and all PDFs. To the point where I refuse to even try loading them up in it anymore, and always simply download and open them up in Acrobat separately. I think in this case it's just Firefox's plugins that are crappy.

As for opening it in Acrobat, I'm using Adobe Acrobat Reader 9 myself and it loads up fine. Is anyone else using Acrobat 10 and having problems?



The opening fiction page was something new Matt was playing with. I'll point this out to him, see if we can get it fixed here, or at the very least it's something to keep an eye on going into future PDFs.



Yeah. We currently don't have a dedicated web guy, and the SRM section of the page is badly, badly out of date. I submitted a text document with a full list of changes, edits, and reorganization a while back. Hopefully we can get someone on this soon, as I'd really like to at least have the correct FAQ, Missions Calender,Karma Rollover Log, etc all on the SRM page for download.



Both the DF and the DIMR are really two sides of the same coin. Originally they had separate purposes... the DIMR has now become more of a standard school, a contemporary of MIT&T, really. The Draco Foundation has been involved with the Artifact plotline in DotA though.



Honestly, the DIMR probably should have been the primary for all of this, but... the DF has been set up like this for a while now.




This one's debatable. It could go either way. In this case though, I decided against it because this is referring to a semi-new game mechanic for Missions, the Faction Reputation system (Or at least a new iteration of the Faction system used in Denver). And specific game mechanic names are supposed to be capitalized. (I am guilty of capping things that are "Important", even when they shouldn't be, though. It's something my proofers yell at me about all the time. I also use a double space after a period out of 20+ years od typing habit, and I'm terrible at hyphenating certain word combos that should be. Things I'm working to improve on as w writer)

(To be continued, too many quite blocks)

Part Two:



Normally when you have a word with a double letter in it, the split as at that double letter. So Committed would be between the m's or the t's. In this case though, it likely shouldn't be, since it's technically two words... Comm and Link. I'll be pointing the Layout guy to the thread though so he can weigh in if he likes, or at least so that he's aware of this.



See above, but eventually there will be a web form up for feedback (Basically something that'll just generate an email). It probably won't come up till the end of Season 4.0 (Missions 04-11 and 04-12) though, since that's where our decision points will come in (Who ends up with the artifacts, and what happens with the Ork Underground and the pending vote on "Project: Freedom").



See above





In this case, doesn't matter. The list is a listing of big names that have played at the club in the past. And since it's been around since at least 2050...





Technically, this works, but it's clumsy. I likely should have used a colon instead of the period after crowd...

"An ARO in front of the building explains the crowd: Mercurial is doing an unannounced concert at Underworld 93 tonight at 7:30."



THanks for the compliments. My team has been working their butts off to make sure that Season 4 kicks ass and is as error free as possible. It's tough to make it 100% perfect, but we're trying to get as close as possible.

And yeah, MacCallister is a bit of Self-Insertion. He's been kicking around the SR-verse officially for years anyways (THanks to me winning a "contest" of sorts on the ShadowRN mailing list a millions years ago, and Mike Mulvihill using him as a ShadowTalker as a prize, and other writers using him over the years), and we needed a fixer to be the "Face" of the O.R.C. and Underground, so... I figured why not? And having a grumpy old-school fixer who still uses old street-slang and lingo makes a nice change of pace and a nice counter-point to the younger crowd.

We actually have a really nice mix of characters for the major NPCs in Season 4... A couple old school types (MacCallister and Moreau), some newer, younger players (Dana Oaks, Fiona Craig), an Anarchist Changling (Simon Andrews), a silent, badass Elf Ninja (Lin Yao Chang), a slightly dirty cop (Tosh Athack), the cultured head of a magical organization (Laurent Nazaire), a pretty boy news reporter (Joe Martin), and a reclusive, Oracle-like editor-in-chief of KSAF (Athena Tatopoulos).

Bull

Never open complex PDFs inside a browser via plugin. It always sucks. Save and open from your hard drive.

@Adam: Fair enough, that makes sense.

So, I bought the thing, might follow through with the other missions too since the story might be worth tracking. The file now opens at normal speed. However, the weird copypaste bug continues in the pay pdf as well. It's not that bad with six pages in total affected, and not all are in fluff sections, but still, an irritation and a matter that might want to be looked into. I made some screenies for documentation: bugged page 1, bugged page 2, bugged page 3, bugged page 4, bugged page 5, bugged page 6.

There'll be a more in-depth review later (the ork underground map looks pretty neat, and the art is top notch, more on a more detailed read up).

Update: Lots of nostalgia here. A MacDougal's, Hotel Mulvihill, the shirt 'Mercurial - live in concert' ... though I am decidedly unimpressed at the quality of the Mercurial pdf, co-releasing it here makes good sense. Sons of Kham, heh.

Also, a passage in scene 3: "four Force 6 Abominations (Toxic Spirits of Beasts, p.144, Street Magic) will manifest and start wrecking havoc. The spirits all resemble twisted, bipedal cartoonish coyotes, thin and starving with a crazed look in their eyes." makes me think this is an appropriate flavor image.

So far, peoples'commlink stats have been odd, but it's SR4, they never made sense to begin with. I take it this wasn't written with War! in mind?

Also, what's a nail club's stats? Since it appears in the Skraachas' inventory as their weapon, it should have at least a mention of that.


Shouldn't that be "The Blackberry Cat has a trained Fiona"?


That is supposed to mean what? It looks like something got eaten in layout.

"Black IC" is a bit generic, is that on purpose, or is there to be a bunch of default Agent setups in the Toolkit?

Overall impression: short, but it's to be run in an evening, so that's okay. Lays interesting groundwork. Is this season to end with another playable race added? Because thatMorelstone ...well.

All in all does make a good impression. No carniverous trees fighten rebel sells in the lush, flat basin of Bogotà, at least, so to speak. It gives nice detail on some of Seattle's old and beloved sites, like the Underground and U93, has interesting old NPC show up (Mercurial ...!!!) and generally has a lot nostalgia value. The story is nice, if feeling like there should be more (I guess that'S the next missions?), some players mentioned in the entry haven'T done anything yet, but hey, campaign and all. Apart from the weird text marking troubles layout is fairly robust too, artwork's great, and the overall impression is pretty positive.

I tested it, you can select/highlight the whole text, but the order of the lines is off. When I select the last paragraph of page 2 (from "I got up (..)" to "It was going to be a long day."), the "missing" lines in Hermit's 1st screenshot highlights, and if I copy it and paste it in a text editor, I get the following :

when I should get

Which PDF reader is this under, and what OS are you using? (We're trying to nail down the problem here. I'm able to recreate these myself on Acrobat Reader 9.4.1 on Windows 7, so obviously it's not just you as far as the highlight issue goes).



I'm really, really lucky to have AAS, Squinky, and Ian King working on Missions (Ian didn't contribute on this one, but he did the last couple Missions covers, and he's got a great cover coming up for 04-01).



I'm an old grouch, and I love me some Easter Eggs. Anytime I can throw that sort of thing in, I will. (Almost every name and number in the book is a reference to something, but some are more subtle than others, and not all are SR )



Nice, I like. I was actually thinking of Wile E. Coyote myself (though a twisted, toxic version). But whatever works



Commlinks are tough to do. To do them right, they end up "Stat heavy", which is really space consuming (Not to mention a pain in the arse to stat one out for every NPC). So when they're not important and they're not in the hands of a decker or a major NPC, we just give them a simple Device Rating (if they don't have one listed, they're assumed to have a simply DR 3 Commlink, per the boilerplate text at the beginning). For everyone else, I either give them an off the shelf Commlink and OS (if I don't think they'd bother to upgrade), or give them decent stats (Firewall, primarily, at 5 or 6) so Hackers have to at least try a little to hack their commlink.

I avoided using War for the most part, since it's technically not out yet (we don't sweat it, but the unofficial guidelines for new books is that they become "legal" once they're in print and the majority of players can get them, since the bulk of CGL's sales are still hardcopy. Much as I like the PDF revolution, the fact is a LOT of gamers don't even know about the PDF lines, let alone keep an eye on and buy them.)

I did slip in a few things. MacCallister has a Firewall 8, for example, and I slipped High Power ammo onto Mercurial's body guards.



Page 15, in the Skraacha Stat Block. nail bat [clubs, (Str/2+2)P, 0 AP, 1 Reach]. They're a Baseball Bat with an additional +1 power for spikiness. Cost is basically the same as a Baseball bat, plus the cost of a few nails. Availablity is --, since you can get bats at any sporting goods store, and nails at Kong Wal-Mart.



Hehe, well, yeah. Fiona shows up again in 04-04, so I figure we may see her cat then. Dunno, Caine_Hazen is writing that adventure.



Slightly. Though probably a typo in the text I sent. I can't fault Matt if I goof the text up in the first place. He just lays down what I send him.

Should read: Weapons: Ruger Super Warhawk [Heavy Pistol, 6P, -6 AP, 0 RC, 6(cy), APDS ammo, custom grip, biometric sensor]



No, I'm not (yet) using anything from the Toolkit. UNless it's mission specific (Such as the IC in the Mulvihill Node), I avoid getting too detailed. Players shouldn't be hacking the commlinks of major NPCs. Major Faux Pas, at the very least, since these become/are your contacts. PLayers that do are kind of going "off book", in which case I'll leave it up to the GM to decide what to do and how to proceed. "Black IC" is a stand in for any piece of Black IC the GM wants to throw in there. WHile we lay as much groundwork as possible, and give as many guidelines as possible, at the end of the day I'd like to trust in the GMs ability to use his own judgement, especially as things go off script.

(Continued)



Yeah, being partly designed for Convention play, the game needs to be runnable in under 4 hours. But, with the Pushing the nvelope stuff, and encouraging more roleplay from your players, this could potentially be a two night adventure for home groups.



Heh. No, don't expect to see any new races pop up. That was mainly another fun Easter Egg. And I loved that Diary Page that Brent Evans threw together for me!



There are 6 Missions that will tackle the Ork Underground and Project: Freedom, which is the O.R.C.'s big political push to see the OU gain full district status. Ando Muneno is working on an Ork Underground eBook to go with this as well. Every other mission will be tied to the "BUried Underground" plot, at least loosely, so all the Odd Number adventures (04-01 04-03, etc)

The other 6 Adventures in Season 4.0 tie into the Artifact Rush plotline, with the Foundations fighting over the artifacts coming into Seattle. They'll be part of the even numbered adventures (04-02, 04-04, etc).

Bull

Acrobat Reader X, WinXP Pro 32 bit


That comic also has a terrific rendition of what the Coyote totem is like, on a very unrelated side note.


Understandable. I upgraded my SR3 combat rigger to 4, and a full half of the char stats was the devices' Matrix rating. I then standardised, having Drone Type 1 and Type 2 setups and the like, but it's still quite the red tape.

What I meant is that stats, given that War has a rantings range up to 10, 3 is basically ... why install that firewall even. But in the 1 to 6 range, that makes sense. Wasn't really a criticism, anyway, and the named characters and runners have acceptable links (except they may want to hard encrypt, because that's THE way to keep out prying hackers, especially if you'Re old, grumpy and paranoid ). But enough smartassery.


True, though FW 8 is legal since Unwired (and was direly necessary). Missed the HP ammy. Shame on me.


Cool then.


Yeah, that's neat. And I kinda sympathise with her on Greek food. Delicious but ... heavy.

How many missions will there be in this season? Also, the Orc Underground did need more exposure, it's been a bit undeveloped ever since the first Seattle book.

Quince is surprised that Rush is an actually an Artifact.
But on the other hand, much stranger things are happening in the 2070s.

Hermit: What I've been referring to as Season 4.0 will have 13 missions total. There will be more to Season 4 after that for 2012, probably 12 more missions, making up Season 4.5. I'm borrowing Terminology from a trend in DVD releases lately to release half seasons of stuff like Battlestar Galactica and Stargate Universe. Don't really have more than a vague idea of where we're going yet. We'll probably carry over a few of the core contacts, introduce some new ones, and start a new storyline (and touch on the ramifications of the end of Season 4.0 once enough reports come in).

As for War! matrix stuff... Honestly, the prices generally keep most of that stuff at ratings above maybe 7 out of most players price range. Especially if they start wanting to buy multiple programs and stuff higher than that. Some of that stuff will likely filter into the NPCs a bit more, but... Honestly, tehre's little reason for most NPCs to have above a 3, by in game logic. 7+ stuff is supposed to be very tough to get (Even if the rules are a bit anemic for them).

Once again, this comes down to an issue with the rules themselves, especially the lackluster Hacking rules. Which is outside the scope of Missions to fix.

Quince: Of course, how did you think Rush got so badass?

I have the same behavior with Acrobat Reader X/Seven 64 bits and Acrobat 9 Pro/Seven 64 bits. I will test some other configurations tomorrow at work.

Since I'm having the same problem, Matt Heerdt, Layout Guy Extrordinaire, is working on a new process which will hopefully eliminate this. Looks like this might have been an issue with the way the text and art is layered.

Thanks all!

You're damn right it happened. You [cheap jab alert] should have seen it before.

Mesh

Yeah yeah, mock my lack of technical writing skills. I see how it it

(I'm very grateful for annoying, anal retentive proofers like Mesh there )

Bull

That was intended to be a compliment, but might have come across a little harsher than intended. Quality isn't as low as I have seen in some recent books. Maybe things are getting better. At last here it seems they are.

On a side note, any recommendations when running missions for advanced characters? There was a guide on that somewhere but I cannot find it.

Guilty as charged!

Mesh

Really liked the mission, and gotta say, whoever put so many easter eggs and puns in this should be arrested by the pun police
I couldn't read this mission without breaking a laugh every once in a while...

My work here is done.

Bull

Sorry, I only fix typos and grammar.

Mesh