Anyone know what this three-parter is like? I've been thinking of running Ghost Cartels, but DotA is an option as well.

I will, soon as the whole cycle is published. I might change the ending depending on the stupidness of Artifacts Unleashed. Won't have Dragonballs.

I have ran Dusk so far. Tabletop team liked it. Ran it over three nights. After Gen Con they will be getting Midnight.

Ran first part, as a player.

its quite fun, expect the scene with the ghouls, ...

Am I the only one who saw DotA and was confused why he was referencing Defense of the Ancients?

Male Dragons likely do.

*Bah-dum, ching*

Thank you, I'm here all week, try the veal!

Maybe. As far as I know the dragon genders are difficult to determine, and many of the greats keep it a closely guarded secret (but, what don't they keep a closely guarded secret). I recall a few things (Possibly in Running Wild) about fluff debates specualting if the dragon's choose genders of their Human form ability based on their gender.

Well, I was thinking it was a three part adventure, but someone over at the CGL boards pointed out it was 4. I'll be waiting until the last part is out before I think about running it.

Gave a quick look over. Saw the pay off in initial negotiation, almost choked on my Dr. Pepper.

That's either a lot of money or nowhere near enough, depending on how many people have to burn Edge to survive.

It's a lot of money, and worth the risk if your team knows what they are doing. The Dawn of the Artifacts series can mop the floor with characters that jump in half-cocked and don't have the experience to back that up. With skilled players, many of the difficulties can be overcome without terrible effort.

That said, my preference is to give all of the NPCs stats. HERE is the post where I put the stats when I ran the game for my group and a few comments about the events in the first adventure later in the same thread.

Before running it, I'd make sure that the characters are the right fit for the arc--if they are street trash, adverse to travel, or highly dependent on gear/resources that cannot move, this probably isn't the right adventure arc for them.

Thanks! They should be ok with moving around, and they've got around 70 karma each. And they'll have more by the time I run it, depending on when part 4 is released.

The only gear that might not move well is the rigger's drones (and definitely his heavily modified SRT). But if there's access to vehicles where they're sent it shouldn't be a big deal. Though I'm sure he'd miss his vehicle-mounted minigun.

That. It is a fun campaign if your chars fit the bill. Take your time fleshing out the different locations, and award player creativity.

All about good negotiation and how much can be stripped down and flown as transport, then re-assembled.

I try not to just come in and threaddrek but honestly I can't recommend the dawn of the artifacts series without some serious rewrites. The first one is bad, they get better though (although I have yet to finish fully reading the third admittedly). The missions are extremely rail-roady, the first one especially puts many stipulations ont he runners purely so they'll be in a position where they have to be saved by the GM NPC midway through. No grenades, no explosive, no illegal gear, that's a lot of stipulations for flying into lagos a country supposedly without the benefit of law.

The pay while damn good for bodyguard work starts to be a lot less so when your also asked to do other tasks along the way with the above stupid restrictions on gear and tactics.

All in all the Dawn missions are only really good if your players and characters are cool with being trotted along as "Frosy's motly band of sidekicks" otherwise, I'd say pass on go with ghost cartels. Their less fleshed out but also less idiot ball inducing.

I've ran all 3 that are out so far for my group in KY, and my players did fine. They each had around 60ish karma on their characters and did well in all 3 adventures. As to Lurkers comments about rail roadiness, the use of Frosty in the 1st adventure is a bit much but in 2 and 3 they use her better and leave her in the background. As to restrictions on Gear I didn't have a trouble with it, SPOILER ALERT, in the 1st run you travel to Lagos Nigeria a Feral city, yes the gear you can take is restricted, but on size not legality, apparently you can only take a backpacks/small duffle bags worth of stuff, but, and I stress but, your in Lagos a Feral city with what the book adventure describes as the biggest weapons/illigeal gear bizzare in Africa, so I let my players buy what they wanted or needed, if the cash is there I didn't care. So the adventures do give you ways to get around things. Be ready to think outside the box though, I had a lot of fun running the adventures and everyone enjoyed playing. For what your doing and where your going, pay is more than fair. As to the 4th adventure cross your fingers for Gencon or early fall. As to the Artifacts Unleashed adventures will hold judgement till they're out and I've read them before I say yeah or neh. All in all though the 3 published modules are not bad, you get to go to Lagos in the first one. Take the Red Eye from Chicago to L.A. And fight blood mages in the Deep Lacuna in the 2nd one, and in number 3 travel to western Europe and end up fighting Azzies near Sarajevo. Yes, you travel to several Feral cities, travel is a must, so have Gun will travel attitudes are needed in characters. Number 4 has character travel to Asia, so after you've played all four characters should have a ton of street cred and worldly experience. If your playing a more street level type game, yeah go with Ghost Cartels. If your players are looking for a global adventure play DotA. Since the 4th adventure isn't out yet if ya wanted to wait till it's out before you start go ahead. One last thing if your into the Cannon/cronology of the SR world play Ghost Cartels first then DotA, as GC takes place in 2071 and DotA. Is set after that in 2072. All in all I would give the published adventures a B, they need some tweeking and the first one tends to get rail roady, but my players had fun playing them and I had fun running them.

As far as being rail-roaded I don't think it is that bad. But that may be because my experience with GM usually has the first sentence being "The King/Prince/Alpha/Fixer/Mayor/President/Computer/Trans-Dimensional-Pan-Temporal-High-Inquisitor calls you all together....." It's getting the ball rolling, both for the players and the GM. Now, if the GM read the entire thing through and started to shape it to his/her story, then it's creative plot hooks that don't have to be followed.

Personally i thought Ghost Cartels had plenty of world class hooks, ymmv, then again I incorporated Tempo smuggling using the Japanese Consulate as a base operations while the Empress is in town, so i might have amped that up a notch.


Also it is helpful to remind people that the module, as written does restrict the runners gear/tactics selection at more then a few points.





Remember kids, super powered GM PC is super powerful and super connected, but she manages to rely on the one bush pilot in the area who's a pacifist and doesn't like grenades. Her backers can arrange a private jet to get the runners 99% of the way around the world, but are stuck with this one guy for flying into the last leg. That's railroading and gear stripping. We certainly wouldn't want the runners to be able to actually do anything about the ghoul ambush we've got to have them get hit by later so Frosty can prove how amazing and cool she is.

The railroading is about as bad as in old adventures. The presumptions aren't as ridiculous as with the Horizon adventure. And all in all, if your modify the Frosty scenes a bit in case your runners can't cope with someone having a longer one as themselves, those adventures can be fun enough. Just, I'm dreading the conclusion.

That's why I had a scene in the weapons market where my players could buy whatever they wanted as long as they had the cash, including the broken things from WAR. The module does say that everything is available. I give my players credit to they really didn't try to power creep on me, they made sensible purchases. Cause I dangled plenty of Forbidden items in front of them. Even made up a Gauss Pistol for the flavor of SoTA. By the time I ran the module they had access to a Skytrain so they took their own transpo. Thereby skipping Innocent and that train station. They did well during the Ghoul attack, a few got a bit worried, but that's when I dropped the Frosty plot bomb on them. I did like that scene as it shows how powerful Frosty is and gives the PCs the idea not to mess with her during later adventures. The writing does improve so she's not always in the way or there as a GM plot device. I don't like my NPCs out shinning the PCs had a bad experience with that and it almost ended my game. The later adventures do a nice job of shifting the importance off Frosty and onto the players.

I don't have a problem with a scene where the opposition is completely overwhelming by intent, nor with the power of Frosty in one scene; I agree it set a tone for her level. The scene was great for us as we used miniatures. The team had that overwhelming sense of dread pretty quickly (& visually) when the ambush came from everywhere and overwhelmed the team.

You do realize that the group is flying into Lagos, right? Arms trade capital of the Sixth World? It'd take even an unconnected shadowrunner 20 minutes and a hundred nuyen to get all the grenades and AK-47's they could ever need for their stay. A little more money if they want rocket launchers, but not more time. Leaving your "usual" heavy weaponry behind should be no problem at all. If your PCs didn't even have the presence of mind to do that, then they deserve to get overwhelmed .