Not having bought it, and noticing the curious absence of a discussion thread, what good is it?

Get it at Drivethru for $8.
Wr iting : Aaron Pavao, Mark Dynna

Merged the two threads.

Heh. Okay. Did I overlook it?

Hmmm interesting... Anybody buy this yet?

Planning to in a week or so. Gotta check with The Compleat Strategist, find out of it's in. With the delays caused by Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene in my area, it may not be there yet.

I have it, an I am not pleased with it. The first three books are okay for me, but the last book is the worst I have read in a long time. Since I am the one to GM this mess, I think I have to re-write it in most parts, so the players will have fun with it and do not die on the way to the first meeting with the Johnson. And that is only the beginning of the problems with this book.

Anyway you can elaborate without too many spoilers? Is it a Mary Sue issue as in previous parts or something different?

Or a spoiler tl;dr version for those of us who don't care? (Spoiler tagged of course)

I bought it, as it's something I've been looking forward to. Here are my impressions. Beware of spoilers, there are plenty.

The good parts:


The bad parts:

Even with the bad parts, it's still well worth the $8 price tag. It's a good adventure, just not a very good finale. In fact, if you haven't run any of the previous installments yet, I'd recommend reworking this one a bit and using it as the first one.

Thanks for the review, some of the things you noted as negatives were actually my problems with the previous ones, I'll have to pick it up.

The "sedate pacing" thing was only in the negatives because this is supposed to be the finale. It would be perfect for a first installment, though, which is why I recommended running this one first if you haven't run the series yet. I think the most frantic adventure is actually the second one, Midnight, which ends in a pretty thrilling fight against Azzies.

And who doesn't like fighting Azzies?

...

Other than the people of Bogota?

...

And the Yucatan Rebels?

...

And Californians...

OK, I'll shut up now. And seriously think about getting these on PDF.

How experienced should the runners be in order to participate? 750 Karma with old karmagen (x3) rules? 400BP + X Karma?

You must be this tall to ride the adventure. *Holds hand at approximately 40cm off the ground*

Yay, my pixie Myst-Ad qualifies!

I'm not the best judge of power levels in SR, but from glancing at the enemy stats I'd say you see a lot of opponents more or less on the level of the Red Samurai squads from the corebook. So you should be able to take those on regularly.

Hey, anyone know if this is out in print??

Haven't seen anything but pdf so far.

Curses, foiled again!

Can anyone confirm that the actual physical copy is available?

Dead tree version will be out on September 28. (So says amazon)

I've got book 1 and I plan on picking up 2-4 all together on Amazon around the end of the month. (Can't wait!)
Now all I have to do is talk a group of player in my area into sitting around for the many game sessions.

Just got the PDF. Pretty much sticks to the outline that was floating around awhile back. Not as scary looking as some other folks have made it out to be. An experienced team should be fine. If anything I think the security is a little light for the museum scene considering the guest list. Plenty of chances to burn through that ammo surplus. Just started my players through 1st dota and Lagos has been a blast so far. Think the team brought as much water purification gear as bullets.

It seems to be that people often underestimate how badass "an experienced team" should look to other NPCs in the setting . If you're experienced enough to go through Dawn of the Artifacts, you're badass enough to impress Ehran and company, who, in my opinion, should not be that far above the runners in terms of numbers when you actually stat them up.

One thing that did annoy me a bit is the tendency of these published adventures to seriously lowball your payment. I mean, you're tasked with saving the world and only get offered 25K nuyen? It's no wonder a lot of GMs complain their PCs prefer to be lowly car thieves or orichalcum makers instead, it pays a lot better.

Yeah, usually when running an adventure like this I find other incentives work well. Like giving them not only money (100K nuyen to me is the going rate for a high risk adventure), as well as access to hard to get equipment, clinics, a focus or other reward.

Conversely there is always the threat for not doing a job, but this should be used sparingly.

Did anyone else nearly shit themselves laughing at the scene where Frosty has the catwalk blasted from under her? I can't wait to run this, just for that scene.

The really terrible part of this adventure is the idea that Ehran would expect you to go to an entire new location looking for the gizmo because his intel was wrong without any additional payment. Yeah, I agreed to recover the gizmo - from the museum, not wherever in the world it might be.

Then walk away from the job and take a hit to your reputation. Or re-negotiate.

Let's see now, how many years has Ehran worked on the table of a government? Arranged things to create the NAN? Let's see... He has... Three times the dice pool you do. That'll work.

He actually has a dice pool of 19, it's on the adventure text. So, a bit hard, but I imagine PC faces could match it at the experience level the adventure expects. Stop lowballing your PC's skills too !

Re-negotiating is described as a possibility, but the additional payment is still way too low. This is a design flaw that has nothing to do with who Mr. Johnson is.

Dunno about jacking cars, tho they are both second hand and stolen (going to result in some serious percentages), but making orichalcum in any significant amount and one will get the interest of some very powerful entities in the world very quickly. That stuff is worth a great deal for a very good reason...

In the end it comes down to weighing long term and short term risks. Jacking a car in the short term may be less risky, but doing it over time in the same area and the rent-a-cops will come knocking, either for a cut or to remove a stain from their image (unless the various organized crime gets there first for their cut). Runners may have higher short term risk, but i think their very description implies that they are basically hired help. As such, unless one make a really big mess of things, the powers that be will rather go after the employer then the employed. On the great chessboard of things, runners are basically hired pawns.

" It wasn't in the museum you say? Oh, my bad, sorry. But I got new intel and I'm now sure it is in Ghostwalker stomach. Go check. No, same amount, I'll pay you later. The museum insurer has yet to send me the money. "

And I thought the whole "It's a fake disk, go for the real one" in the Third installment already was a bit awkward, contract-wise. The piece they recover in Germany is the actual Phaistos Disk, found in the city of Phaistos and stolen in the Heraklion museum, and is a magical item, even if less powerful than the one Ehran wants.

To be fair their just keeping the spirit of the first one, where you are originally paid for escort and recovery of a stolen artifact and mdiway through told to steal a completely different artifact from some powerful factions potentially making enemies for life.

At least the PC don't have to ask for Frosty to offer them a new deal in Lagos, for 10% of the object value at the auction (which she thinks will be doubling their pay).

This here is part of the problem, too. The first reaction for a lot of GMs is to "throw the setting" at any PCs who decide to "mundane" stuff that's more profitable than shadowrunning, rather than make shadowrunning pay more. It may look more realistic, but it really isn't.

Sure a lot of people would be interested in the guys making orichalcum. They'd want to buy it. That's fine! Sure, some bozos might get the bright idea of robbing them instead, but hey, that's an adventure hook, not player punishment. That's what makes an orichalcum making campaign more interesting than run of the mill shadowrunning: you're defending your own interests, not someone else's.

As for the carjacking thing, there is no way you're going to make me believe that a group of shadowrunners who spends years getting away with high-stakes industrial espionage will get these incredible amounts of heat for stealing a few cars per month and selling the parts. Given that most runs I've seen paid less than the price of an Americar for each runner, they could probably steal enough cars to make a living while still staying under the radar. And if someone does notice them, hey, more adventure hooks.

There shouldn't be a hit to your reputation. No one would reasonably expect the first negotiation to make you slaves until the thing is found. You contracted for 25k to get it from the museum, where the client told you it would be. He was wrong. How does this commit me to do anything else? If he had no idea or any other leads must I search every building and dig up every field all over the entire planet until I die or take a hit to my rep? Nonsense.

Be a good little joytoy, I mean Shadowrunner, or else Mr. Johnson will get angry and might forget to take the rings off before he pimp slaps your reputation into submission.

Heh, i did not say one way of play was the right way. Finding motivations and such for why people are doing what they are what that often overlooked entry called backstory is all about. Btw, making high grade oricalcum at a solid amount involves digging up various precious metals by the magicans own hands iirc. Just getting to such a source is an adventure all its own.



I guess it depends on the kind of outlook the movers and shakers of SR has regarding runners. If they work for the same Johnson for long they may be seen as retained assets by his enemies. Or if they do repeated runs against the same target, or group of targets (like a big organization of some kind, corporations included), that target may see them as personal enemies. But SR is big enough that runners can hit one target one month, another the next, and in the end never be seen as more then hired help with little to no important agenda of their own. Perhaps one of their targets may try to shake them down for info about who hired them, but going after blood for a single run, unless it was wetwork (a reason why veteran runners may frown on such activity), seems overly cruel. Then again, perhaps the target was hit by a series of runs in short order and picked this team as the means for sending a message.

In the end, runners are basically disposable spies. They work by way of middle men and common handles like "johnson" simply because knowing too much becomes a liability.

In the end tho, the issue seems more a case of disagreement between GM and players about what the game should be about. And this is why i claim that the story in roleplaying games comes not from some plot the GM have layed out, or form some cooperation on the same between players around the table, but takes shape after the session is over and the players and GM looks back at the events of the evening. The players act and react via their characters, and the GM do the same for the world, and the story emerges from that. Trying to get some kind of coherent narrative to take shape at the table either means railroading or throwing out the characters and just doing tag-team GM-ing.

I think looking at these things as adventure hooks is the best way to do it, so I agree with you. I guess I overreacted a bit, because I often see these same examples used as arguments as to why PCs should never do anything but what the GM puts in front of them.




I have a bit of a hard time believing some corp would look at the runners and just go "they're just errand boys, leave them alone". Killing the messenger is a time-honored tradition among power-crazed tyrants everywhere, and that's a very apt description of your typical "mover and shaker". Plus, there's plenty of organizations out there who'd be happy to grab the runners regardless of why they did the run. Corps such as Knight Errant and Lone Star are very large, very powerful organizations entirely dedicated to finding and catching criminals, and you still have state-owned law enforcement agencies who are just as good and not clouded by an ulterior profit motive.

If any of those could just find the runners whenever they wanted, there would be no shadowrunners! So it stands to reason that a runner's vital job skills include avoiding this heat. And if they can get away with high-profile art theft in a corp museum or blowing up the Brooklin bridge (both runs part of the New York Missions season), making a living stealing cars is child's play. So, if you want to keep then running, you should pay them accordingly .

Well, applying current American car theft rates (a little over 3.8 per 1000) to a Seattle population of 3 million means that every day 31.25 cars are stolen. If runners are stealing 1 per week that is probably small enough that the gangs and syndicates won't even care enough to cause them grief.

I fully agree that 25K is bullshit and my team would likely walk away from that. Also, changing the bargain part way through is not a reputation hit for refusing. It's a reputation hit for the Johnson.

Bought it. And on page 8 it dsays: "The man in the makeup is Harlequin (see Cast of Shadows), an immortal elf and friend of Ehran. "

This is really all needed to quote to show the extent of research Aaron, Hardy and this other guy put into writing this.

Ha! Fragging ha!

Just because they are enemies does not mean that they cannot be friends. I have seen stranger things in my life.
Okay, maybe Grudging Respect is more in line than friendship... *shrug*

They might as well be friends, given that no one's died after millenia of "feuding". At this point, I guess they just mess with each other for the lulz.

Actually, no, the immortals all grow rather single-minded with age. And it was very clearly stated in all sources they were far from friends. And remain so. But this apparently saw the same level of editing and editorial control as War! did.

Nah, given the other sources on IEs and their relationship, that's really really unlikely.

Yeah... probably. But if they really wanted each other dead, it likely would have already happened, one way or the other.

No, I don't think. They could have chosen to ignore each other.

Which speaks, to me at least, of a Love/Hate relationship. *shrug*
They go at each other from time to time, but neither is invested enough in the rivalry to actually try to put a stop to it. Afterall, when you only have a very few Peers, why get rid of them? They are the only ones who are up to the challenge, after all.

You have an odd definition of friendship.

Harlequin is an odd guy.