Since Jason hasn't gotten around to posting it officially to the boards...

Artifacts Unbound

Four artifacts have been found. Some of the most powerful people in the Sixth World have been after them, and many people have died in the globetrotting hunt to bring these objects together. Now that they have been recovered, their powers can be unleashed—or the artifacts can be scattered, lost again until another generation summons the courage and the knowledge to dredge them up.

Artifacts Unbound concludes the Dawn of the Artifacts campaign in a way that makes gamemasters and players free to determine many events of their campaign. Filled with plot details, adventure seeds, basic setting information, and NPC statistics, Artifacts Unbound lets gamemasters select the elements that would work best in their campaign and design a thrilling story for their game. Easy to use and flexible, this book can be used with players who have gone through the entire Dawn of the Artifacts campaign, or with players just learning about the artifacts and their effect on the Sixth World.

Artifacts Unbound (Buy From BattleShop)

Artifacts Unbound (Buy From DriveThruRPG)

Or Pre-order Print Book/PDF Combo here.

To move the discussion about the book's content to the right thread.

Haven't had a chance to read it in detail, but at a glance:

I have to say I really like the format. Kind of a cross between the old Threats books and the Missions alternate campaign source book (plus a bunch of stat'd NPCs, which is sweet). Hopefully we will see more campaign books following this format.

Can't say I'm a fan of the subject material (a whole book of adventures that basically redefine the super-secret magic items we already have 4 published adventures about? Seriously?)

The premise behind the The Phaistos Killer chapter is kick ass. I'll probably cannibalize that so that it has nothing to do with DotA. Any of the freelancers care to claim it?

I like the cover art more after seeing it full size with the title formatting. Finally a hot runner chick that's well drawn and not a metahuman. If only she didn't have that stupid tail... Art throughout is hit or miss. Page 44: cool. Page 22: WTF? [Edit: just noticed the dwarf sniper artwork on the Missions ad at the back of the book: awesome! Best piece in the book.]

I'll definitely have to spend some more time reading this weekend.

What's wrong with the balance tail and the cyberleg?

I've gone over it a bit myself, not much, as it's going to be a type of book I'm currently having a hard time reading (I go through phases when it comes to my reading style. No idea why.). But, were I running a campaign, I would be squeeing like a teenaged girl just handed a Hello Kitty AR-15 during the Zombiepocalypse right now.

Not all of it is directly tied to the Dawn adventure series. None of the three chapters I wrote directly ties to that. (For the record, I did The Great Seattle Artifact Rush, Little Dogs, and Already Here). While a bunch of the book does deal with the Dawn stuff, others are either fallout because of the events in those adventures, or simply related stories that tie to the idea of "magical artifacts".



The cover is excellent. And I dunno, I kinda like the tail myself.

As for the art piece you mention... That's actually the cover art from SRM 04-02: Extraction by Ian King, who's done several awesome covers for me for Missions. Here's the full image, in color. http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y156/bull...FINAL-PROOF.jpg

(Which reminds me, I should poke Matt and see about getting more of the SRM covers put up as Wallpapers )

Bull

Heh, given various postings people had made on this forum about balance tails, or tails in general (miao ), my first thought when seeing the cover was "this will be controversial".

This thing is enormous for an adventure book. Clocking in at over 140 pages, this thing is the biggest adventure book since Ghost Cartels. The last several adventure releases have been more like extended Missions documents in terms of length, but this thing values at about 13/14 cents a page. Can't speak to the content yet, but I'm glad to see some of the bigger, globe spanning adventure books making a break for it.

Bull, can you speak to how Artifacts Unbound will intertwine with and relate to the treasure hunting factions in SRM4 and what you hoped to accomplish with both?

I want to see the Shortcake character put on the cover of a book and see what reactions that gets.

I'm good with the cover, eager to read the hard copy and see how the DoTA story has changed and if its still as epic as the original concepts that grabbed my attention and imagination. (Starting DoTA2 this weekend good times so far.)

Oh and I've added a contender for quote of the year to my list.
"I would be squeeing like a teenaged girl just handed a Hello Kitty AR-15 during the Zombiepocalypse right now."

The cover art is very shadowrun, like it a lot. Really hope they kept the epic ideas they were hinting at rather than saying after the adventure is over it is back to normal.

All I can say is that I like a bit of tail.

...

*Sighs* That's going to get me hit repeatedly and sent to The Special Hell, I know, I know...

I'm not really sure at this point, but probably not a ton. We deliberately separated Seattle and the artifact rush going on there from the main plotline so that we were free to do what we wanted. We wanted to show the impact that the Dawn series was having, but most of Season 4 was actually plotted out before Dawn or AU was finished being plotted. It's early enough we can still change things, but... Whether we do or not depends on what the Missions writers want to do, and honestly how AU is received.

(My own personal timeline for how I plot Missions is that each adventure is set roughly and very loosely one month apart. 04-00 took place in December, and 04-04 takes place in April. So Missions is currently "early" in the AU plot line.)

It's also why we included the Great Artifact Rush as a chapter in AU. Well, one of several reasons. those reasons were:

1) Missions Promotion. Pure and simple, I had selfish reasons for writing it up, and that was to cross promote Missions in a print book to the wider print reading audience (Which is MUCH larger than the online fanbase. The PDFs are still largely an unknown factor among a lot of players out there becuase they don't get online much and we hadn't been promoting the eBook stuff much in print until recently).

2) To present the material in a way that let home groups use the basics without getting Missions. Yes, we want Missions sales, but there are some cool characters and I think the idea of a shadow war between the two foundations in Seattle is a fun one, and could make a good campaign (or good material to drop into a campaign).

3) To show where the Artifact Rush plot in Missions fits into the larger Artifact Hunt (And more importantly, why it's a little bit separate).

Bull

Yes please!!

My desktop could use a new wallpaper. (I have a widescreen, BTW!)

I'm only 40% of the way through this, but I mostly like it. But as usual, the character stats too often make me ask WTF.

For a magic heavy book I have to wonder if Centering metamagic somehow is a fantasy of mine and doesn't actually exist in the rules. Certainly none of the mid-to-high level initiates I've seen (including the Character Trove in the back) have it. Sure, Geomancy makes much more sense for a Grade 11 Frosty, because shadowrunners spend months attuning power sites, not throwing mana fast and furious where they could use an extra 11 dice of drain soak...

The Phaistos Killer section, while a perfectly good adventure framework, wins the character stats booby prize with an MIT&T professor (p. 42) with no mental stat over 5 and only one knowledge skill as high as 4. That skill? Radical groups. I can see how that got him hired as a department chair of Requilary Studies at one of the world's premier universities. And our killer (p. 41), who was supposedly on a fast track as a professor at the same university has straight 4's for mental stats and no skills over 4.

Picador (p. 49), supposed prime runner, has 1.1 essence, 1 IP, and two cyberarms that provide almost no benefit over flesh. Wow. Surprisingly, Black Mamba on the same page is actually quite reasonable.

I'm glad the bodyguard walking around the streets and highly secure train stations and casinos of Cairo thought to bring his MMG (p. 55).

I could go on (and may, if I see anything similarly egregious as I finish it). These sorts of things aren't hard for a GM to fix, and the MIT&T profs stats are very unlikely to matter to the game, but this sort of incompetence really pulls me out of my enjoyment of the rest of the book.

Considering the places Picador goes, the Essence drain might not be from Cybernetics. And the cyberlimbs might be replacements for limbs lost in battle before cloned replacements became common, and she hasn't had time to get them swapped out. Just sayin'.

For some reason I thought we were going to get some new magics available to players because of the big ruckus with the artifiacts? It sounds like that is not what Artifacts Unbound is but that it is rather another campaign book. Nothing wrong with that (and I will be getting it) but was hopeing for something more.

I'm saying she has cyber eyes, rating 3 reaction enhancers, and nothing else that provides any real benefit. There's no way she survives long enough doing the sort of things to get the rep she has with those "augmentations."

Gaaaah! Goat Foot (p. 66) has Ally Conjuration as a metamagic but no conjuration skills (not reasonable for a mystic adept with 6 points in magic power) and no ally listed.

Helpfully, the stock Templar Combat Mage (p. 145) meant to be a base for 25(!) of them, is a troll armed with only a claymore and an HMG. You'll encounter 25 of these guys in a hotel conference room in Quebec, apparently.

That sounds about right for Montreal, from what I understand.

And god help you if you speak English from what I understand

Montreal is supposedly not so bad.

Try getting cloned arms provided while your stationed in one hell hole or another

And i suspect with cyberlimbs the recuperation time is one of days, meaning you can be back in the field quickly. Even more so if the MASH unit can have a stash of them on hand that can be adjusted in the field with a toolkit or something. I suspect that by now the process is more or less plug and play, with things like lower arms or hands being able to plug either into a upper cyber part or a surgically attached socket with equal ease.

These days i think she is more a commanding officer then a ground pounder.

Which doesn't negate the statement. Unless we are supposed to infer she removed cyber just because.

What the hell is happening in Canada‽

Nothing out of the ordinary.

What, you thought we were all friendly and nice up here?

Those are only the Tourists we send to get your guard down. The rest of the time, we are in constant faction fighting training (see "Gangs of New York") for when the yankees eventually come for our fresh water.

Edit: That's the civilians. The military has much harder stuff.

Having finished it this is a decent product for GMs who want lots of mission ideas but like to flesh out the details themselves. The sections are uneven (why is "Already Here" even there? Cut it or expand it, for the love of god), but generally get better towards the end.

One area I think it is weak is in tying the overall plot together and the way the metagame plot changes are dropped at the end. We know from Street Legends that Aina Dupree is dead, and we know from this how, but we don't actually know that she's dead from this. What's the deal with Ghostwalker and Denver now? Is he coming back? Was he trying to kill half a dozen IEs and GDs as a lucky secondary effect or was that just an oversight?

You don't need so much of augmentation to be a bad ass in military combat, but you do need luck. If Picador has a high Edge (5+) I can deal with that.

Broke down and got the PDF, only glanced through it so far. I have a habit of reading last part first. The fiction was alittle confusing and I guess it would help to read from beginning. It might clear up some of my confusion. It really doesn't say Aina is killed and what exactly was happening? Just too vague to understand well. Does the overall plot clear this up? Ghostwalker going to the "bridge"? I'm gonna try and sit down tonight read through it, maybe I'll answer my own questions.

The events of the closing fiction are partially and somewhat confusingly described in the last two missions, especially the last one. I have no idea why Hestaby or Aden showed up, nor who the immortal(?) human with Aina is supposed to be. Aina is dead not per anything in this book, but in the Nadja Daviar section in Street Legends, which references here being blown up in the Watergate bunker.

There were some issues with Already Here, turns out. There was supposed to be more, but the file was incomplete or corrupt when it got sent out, and no one realized it until it was about to go to the printers. There should have been a OOC section discussing other artifacts that have shown up since the Awakening as well as naturally occurring artifacts, aka the stuff talked about in the fiction outside of the Maltese Falcon story.

Also, the Falcon story was actually a double tournament adventure we ran at Origins and Gen Con, so we figured it would be a fun nod to anyone who played in those to see the events in print finally. At Origins the runners played normal Shadowrunners hired to break into the Smithsonian and steal the Falcon in DeeCee. At Gen Con, they played FBI agents tracking the Falcon from DeeCee to Denver. One of the players did try to arrest Ghostwalker, and did get eaten at the end of the GC tourney.

As for the Aina story... I think that was mostly James. And unfortunately, he can't post here. I suggest heading over to the official SR forums and posting in the AU thread there, and I'm sure he'll be happy to chat with you about his sections.

We ever going to see the non-incomplete/corrupted version of the file? Perhaps like "Cost Of Doing Business" is on the website?

Yea I second the wish for seeing the complete file.

I just have no faith in CGL's NPCs. Ever since an HRT lacked thermal scopes I've just started slapping boosts on everyone it makes sense for. In a world where people with cloaking devices use silenced sniper rifles why doesn't the sniper use the only tech that gives you a chance against that?

Their mages are ridiculous. My Mages take Masking, Shielding, Centering, in that order. Then they start branching out. Those seems like the first things any mercenary mage would take, with Centering being the first for people who aren't likely to get shot at. It gives you protection from killing yourself to death. Who wouldn't take it?

Well, you don't really need Centering if you rarely (or never) actually take any drain (through judicious casting of spells, and only occasionally ever needing to overcast). As for Shielding, it is nice, but I often have other things that I want to do rather than improve my Counterspelling. It all depends upon the character. My current one has Masking, Extended Masking and Flexible Signature. MUCH more useful than either Shielding or Centering would be.

All characters are different. They would get very boring if they all had the exact same things, now wouldn't they? At that point they are interchangeable. How boring...

I don't get why someone who gets in fights with 10 magic would not want to be able to cast to full potential. Shielding is for the same reason, you wear armor if getting shot at, why not prevent getting stunballed too? Extended Masking and Flexible Signature are also good, and are also a common two and three for my characters. They do tend to be more useful than shielding or centering for low level initiates. The guys that have seven initiations under their belt and magics over 7 probably should take those, especially if they get in fits.

That player is now my hero.

Are characters with Magic 10 and 7 Initiate Grades Common in your games? They are not in our games. Full potential is generally rated at your Magic Rating. Anything else has the potential to kill you. I call that playing Russian Roulette. Can it be done? Sure. Would it be common? Not likely (and generally only when you have absolutely no other choice in the matter). Any one saying differently is just playing the numbers game and not looking at the "realities" of what is happening.

What is enough Shielding/Counterspelling? I find that 4-6 points is more than enough in most of the circumstances that would occur in the "world" of Shadowrun. Could you NEED more on occasion? Sure, but it would not be a common occurrence. Better safe than sorry works as an argument, but I often find it a false argument.

By the same token, How many characters in your game wear the absolute maximum amount of armor, all the time? Or will they, like most people in the world, be happy with "enough" to survive. 6-10 points of armor is "Enough," anything else is often overkill, and not very "realistic" in the world as described. Again, any one that argues that is playing numbers games. And yes, you can have insane amounts of armor. Does not mean that the game world encourages that.

So, now comes the usual caveat... Every table is different. If, at your table, Magic 10 Characters with Initate Grade 7 are common, well, then you may need that Shielding. If by Full Potential you mean that you must be able to maximally overcast and take no deleterious effect, then you may need Centering. And if you are required to have the maximum amount of armor at all times, just to survive, well, then okay. Fortunately for me, my table is not that over the top.

Theres a reason why out of 12 teams that played that tourney, this is the one "event" that stood out. It was fantastic. And the player wasn't even upset about what happened (The characters were pregens, it was at the end of Round 3, of a 3-round tournament, and he was expecting it ).

Anyway, I was in a rush earlier to get to work and forgot to note that we did catch the fact that the material was missing, but Jason had cleaned up the remaining file so that it felt "complete" (If a bit short), since it has the Falcon IC story and then the adventure hooks still. Adding it back in would have meant rearranging things to squeeze in another 1-2 pages of material, sending the new material through proofing and editing, and delaying sending the files out to the printers and releasing on PDF. Since it wasn't critical stuff, we figured it wasn't a problem.

I'm going to toy around with the material and maybe use it down the line. Or released on the website, or material for SOTA. I don't really know. Without the IC fiction to go with it, I'd want to play with it a bit more, maybe do some more with it.

Bull

I ran the Dawn of the Artifacts campaign most recently, and that skews heavy at magic. Nearly every 'end boss' is big time magic and some NPCs my players pissed off are very powerful mages according to the books, many of them have higher than normal magic, none of the statted mages have centering. The Magic 12 Blood Mage didn't take centering. He did take shielding, which combined with his focus, made him pretty much magic immune, but he didn't take centering. They may not be common for players, but they turned out to be pretty common for the campaign. Not a one had centering.

I guess my earlier comment was exaggerated. I'd probably not take Centering so early as a player, but if you know you're making a magic monster, why hamstring it? I stand by shielding, though. Especially since my group seems to think Willpower is a dumpstat.

Hey TJ (again) and ggodo: get over it.

I struggle a bit with the great difference in power levels between the current missions series and the DoA/AU material. While the first one is very much "street level", in DoA/AU you struggle to find a NPC who is not x-th grade initiate or something similar.

I am not saying that the power level in DoA/AU doesn't make sense, since the worlds movers and shakers are (in)directly involved. But how on earth can one combine both plot lines to play with the same PC?

We much more like the street level vibe of missions (as oposed to acomponing Frosty "the goddess of munchking wet dreams" on a run, always wondering why the runners are tagging along when Frosty could just solve everything they are capable of withminimum effort). So here is the challenge to you: is there any way to play DoA/AU without having to include all the UEBERpowers included?

Thanks, Pat

Makes Sense, I guess... We have yet to start this campaign. I think it is in the wings for after Ghost Cartels.

As for the Magic 12 Blood Mage, he has other ways to abrogate Drain other than Centering. I hate Blood mages.

Shileding IS nice, no doubt. I just think it is not as necessary as some other metamagics, assuming you have decent capabilities in Counterspelling, of course.

Willpower as a Dumpstat? Really? That is just Wow. Have they learned their lesson yet?

We're keeping it civil Grinder. No worries.

It's really funny that they're playing such a high magic campaign with no willpower. The mage really started looking for ways to keep his party standing. Heck, on some level I think the PCs still see this as D&D where you only need two stats and screw the rest. Yeah, Blood Mages have Sacrifce to mitigate Drain, but they need to have something to sacrifice. "This may be a bit spoilery, but in the situation you fight the mage he's got a combat round 'timer' of events happening around him that prevent him from blood magic-ing others, and has a couple blood fetishes already putting gaps in his health. It just seems like that'd be something you'd put on an NPC who's primary function is epic boss fight. And Grinder, I thought we were ok.

Missions is deliberately aimed to be "Lower power" due to it's nature as a living game and as a the fact it gets run at gaming conventions so much. You geta lot of new characters and new players, so you don't want to make the games too high powered or too difficult, because then you risk those lower powered, newer characters not having any fun.

Anyway, that said, Shadowrun does scale pretty well. It's not too hard to ramp up the difficulty when needed. Add extra bad guys, give them a bit more cyber, throw in a few initiate levels, jack up the ratings of matrix security, etc. Most GMs can take the Missions games as written and make them challenging for experienced players without too much difficulty, IMO.

Now, with regards to Artifacts Unbound, the idea was to present the concepts and plots from Missions in a loose and freeform manner, so that higher power players who don't utilize pre-written adventures (Or Missions specifically) could still play with the idea of the Artifact RUsh Missions plotline, if they wanted. And it was there to encourage GMs to check out Missions for their home game. As I said, they can be scaled pretty easily without too much work, or simply used as the foundation of a GMs own adventure (I've cannibilized the core ideas from as many old FASA adventures as I ran straight back in the day).

I'll also note that even with the crazy multi-level initiates and Munchkin Frosty, DOTA is playable at "lower levels". We played through the first adventure at around 100 karma, for example.

The key to everything is a GM that knows the group he's running for and is flexible enough to adjust things to suit the group. You want to challenge them while still giving them the chance of success. Too easy and the players get bored. Too hard and they get frustrated.

(Also, as I think I mentioned above... It was a marketing strategy as well. A chance to pimp the Missions adventures and concept to a larger audience than we normally get, since the vast majority of Shadowrun players don't hang around the forums, follow us on Facebook, or even check the SR4 website)

Bull

My party got through the first one on 16 karma. Midnight is scary. That last fight would've been a party wipe if I hadn't given the medic's player control of an NPC that they'd allied with earlier. One thing that's been pretty constant throughout the DOTA line is Frosty being incapacitated or not around. SHe spend the first adventure mundane due to a magical ritual that I'm not sure is possible with SR Magic, The second one she does a lot of waiting in the van with the loot, or getting captured. The third one you cross paths a couple times and she's wearing a mana void, and the fourth one her only real purpose is to fail at intimidate.

Thanks for your answer, Bull. I agree that it is relatively easy to upscale opposition for mission. I struggle more with downscaling opposition for DotA material. Techically/Stat-wise this is easy, but then it is less plausible given the players involved. (Why should IEs and dragons send in goons if those artifacts are so important ...)?

But ggodo has given me hopes that one can navigate this even with a less experienced group.

Thanks for now,
Pat

One of my players has an immunity to Neuro-Stun and a collection of gas delivery systems. High & Low powered DoTA foes all drop at about the same rate when facing off against him.