Just got it, starting to read it.
Gotta say, it sounds interesting.
Complete feedback after reading it and playing it (only by the end of the month).
Full Version: SRM04-02 Extraction has been released
Hehe, I was beaten to the punch earlier (I was posting and then running out the door for work, so didn;t get to reply earlier).
Looking forward to your thoughts. This is Mesh's third Missions adventure, but his first "publicly published" one (He also wrote Appetite for Vengeance, the Harvest for Hunger charity event, and CMP 2011-02 "The Prize of Failure", which have been given out to GMs for cons and for the special event last fall, but not published publicly yet). It's a fun adventure, but a little complex, with a lot of avenues the players can take. He really took advantage of the Faction Reputation system.
Bull
Looking forward to your thoughts. This is Mesh's third Missions adventure, but his first "publicly published" one (He also wrote Appetite for Vengeance, the Harvest for Hunger charity event, and CMP 2011-02 "The Prize of Failure", which have been given out to GMs for cons and for the special event last fall, but not published publicly yet). It's a fun adventure, but a little complex, with a lot of avenues the players can take. He really took advantage of the Faction Reputation system.
Bull
QUOTE (Bull @ May 12 2011, 05:09 PM) 
Hehe, I was beaten to the punch earlier (I was posting and then running out the door for work, so didn;t get to reply earlier).
Looking forward to your thoughts. This is Mesh's third Missions adventure, but his first "publicly published" one (He also wrote Appetite for Vengeance, the Harvest for Hunger charity event, and CMP 2011-02 "The Prize of Failure", which have been given out to GMs for cons and for the special event last fall, but not published publicly yet). It's a fun adventure, but a little complex, with a lot of avenues the players can take. He really took advantage of the Faction Reputation system.
Bull
Looking forward to your thoughts. This is Mesh's third Missions adventure, but his first "publicly published" one (He also wrote Appetite for Vengeance, the Harvest for Hunger charity event, and CMP 2011-02 "The Prize of Failure", which have been given out to GMs for cons and for the special event last fall, but not published publicly yet). It's a fun adventure, but a little complex, with a lot of avenues the players can take. He really took advantage of the Faction Reputation system.
Bull
Encouraging. I enjoyed Prize of Failure in a weird way, though I'm bummed that (like all the S4 modules except SRM4-00) there are exactly TWO slots of Extraction offered at Gencon which both sold out within a few hours of registration opening, so I'm going to have to find someplace local to pick it up.
Yeah. We expanded our Missions events this year at Gen Con because Non-Missions players didn;t really understand the difference anyway, so we were regularly getting Non-Missions Players signing up for Missions just to play an SR event... So figured, why not expand things a bit and make it easier for our Missions PLayers to get into events...
However, that said, we opted to increase the number of CMPs, but keep the number of SRM events limited. It's unfortunate for some players that it worked out this way, but we did it for a couple reasons...
1) Season 4 is a somewhat linear storyline. We want to avoid situations where players end up playing them out of order. This still happened in Season 2 and 3 occasionally, as sometimes a writer would write "sequel" adventure (Season 3 had a couple of these), but it was less likely to happen because the Missions were all fairly self-contained.Most missions didn't impact any of the others in any meaningful way, usually. While with Season 4, each Mission builds on the earlier ones, storywise.
I still wanted to run some Season 4 stuff. Hence why we're running most of them 2-3 times. But they're scheduled more or less in linear order. It would be difficult to play them out of order... But it also means that players showing up later in the weekend will miss out on the earlier adventures. :/
2) The CMPs, Convention Mission Pack adventures, are exclusive to the conventions for at least a year, These adventures are designed for Convention Play, as they don;t tied into specific plots (More or less... We built Season 4 off some basic blocks of the 2010 CMPS , Ashes and Copycat Killer?). Makes it easy to play them in any order. We're putting the 2010 ones in for a second pass, plus running the 2011 ones a lot.
Keep in mind that these are still full blown Missions adventures. You get the karma, you get the cash, and they're largely very well written adventures. So you're not losing out if you play these instead of the SRMs.
3) We really want to encourage more home and Firebase play with Missions, with the focus for those being the SRM adventures. We really want to break Missions out of the "Convention event" mold some, with Season 4 being designed as something that could easily be the focus of a home campaign. True, not everyone has a home group to play with, which is why we still want to run a few of them to try and help out those players, but... The CMPs are our core convention focus, the SRMs are a focus for local Firebase play (Catalyst Demo Team home-stores, where they run events at) and for home use.
That said... If there's something you really want to get into, show up with generics in hand. We frequently have no-shows. And manpower permitting, we'll try and have GMs on standby to handle overflow as well.
Good luck!
Bull
However, that said, we opted to increase the number of CMPs, but keep the number of SRM events limited. It's unfortunate for some players that it worked out this way, but we did it for a couple reasons...
1) Season 4 is a somewhat linear storyline. We want to avoid situations where players end up playing them out of order. This still happened in Season 2 and 3 occasionally, as sometimes a writer would write "sequel" adventure (Season 3 had a couple of these), but it was less likely to happen because the Missions were all fairly self-contained.Most missions didn't impact any of the others in any meaningful way, usually. While with Season 4, each Mission builds on the earlier ones, storywise.
I still wanted to run some Season 4 stuff. Hence why we're running most of them 2-3 times. But they're scheduled more or less in linear order. It would be difficult to play them out of order... But it also means that players showing up later in the weekend will miss out on the earlier adventures. :/
2) The CMPs, Convention Mission Pack adventures, are exclusive to the conventions for at least a year, These adventures are designed for Convention Play, as they don;t tied into specific plots (More or less... We built Season 4 off some basic blocks of the 2010 CMPS , Ashes and Copycat Killer?). Makes it easy to play them in any order. We're putting the 2010 ones in for a second pass, plus running the 2011 ones a lot.
Keep in mind that these are still full blown Missions adventures. You get the karma, you get the cash, and they're largely very well written adventures. So you're not losing out if you play these instead of the SRMs.
3) We really want to encourage more home and Firebase play with Missions, with the focus for those being the SRM adventures. We really want to break Missions out of the "Convention event" mold some, with Season 4 being designed as something that could easily be the focus of a home campaign. True, not everyone has a home group to play with, which is why we still want to run a few of them to try and help out those players, but... The CMPs are our core convention focus, the SRMs are a focus for local Firebase play (Catalyst Demo Team home-stores, where they run events at) and for home use.
That said... If there's something you really want to get into, show up with generics in hand. We frequently have no-shows. And manpower permitting, we'll try and have GMs on standby to handle overflow as well.
Good luck!
Bull
I've talked to Mesh about some doubts and suggestions.
I really liked the adventure. It's sandbox style is nice and avoids the feeling of railroading.
But something that I would add:
Make it very clear to the runners that they should arrive armed for bear for the meeting, otherwise they will have a lot of trouble completing the first part.
Also, I really liked the rules for high and low reputation among the groups. My players sure will love getting discount from Bull when using the Ork Underground reputation.
I really liked the adventure. It's sandbox style is nice and avoids the feeling of railroading.
But something that I would add:
Make it very clear to the runners that they should arrive armed for bear for the meeting, otherwise they will have a lot of trouble completing the first part.
Also, I really liked the rules for high and low reputation among the groups. My players sure will love getting discount from Bull when using the Ork Underground reputation.
One question I have after the mission, the faction benefit abilities, do they get those items for us without an availability check?
Since we beat down Lin Yao Chang and took his stuff I've got a question. Does his "commlink (Rating 6’s)" include any programs? I'm not expecting a full set of hacking programs, but I could see all common programs and maybe Stealth. Am I being greedy?
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