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The Question Man
I successfully ran the Shadowrun Missions Adventure "FORCEd Recon" with my gaming group.

The PC's Team are experience runners with over 50 Karma in experience.

The Kight Errant NPC's overwhelmed them easily when they got into a fire fight. They were faster, stronger, and better prepared than the PC's.

Fortunately they were owed a big Favor by Knight Errant for an earlier run and no KE's died. They were released from custody and later picked up some of their gear.

I love this run, but think the players should read it afterwords for ideas in the future. On scouting out targets . It was awesome.

The opposition was lethal. Those KE's Threat Rating was Professional/Superior.

I would have "Nuke'em from orbit, It's the only way to be sure".

Cheers

QM

What was your review???
grendel
This would be more appropriately placed in the Welcome to the Shadows -> Shadowrun Missions -> Mission Spoilers thread.
Backgammon
There's a whole forum for Shadowrun Missions right here
bitrunner
Yep, wrong forum...

but that's ok....i will say, however, that it is fairly clear that the run emphasizes legwork and stealth - not head-on combat...
Club
My 2 cents

[ Spoiler ]
bitrunner
Club - you are exactly 100% correct on everything you said...

encouragement - yes
primer on legwork - yes

remember - this is a demo run.

as i've said before (and this is no secret), the five demo events showcase various aspects of the game.

the first really shows what to do in broad daylight, downtown, in a heavy security area - most of the encounters are designed around negotiation.

the second is quite the opposite, and shows you what you can do in a more isolated area. it also focuses on a little legwork, but primarily with executing a plan.

the third is definitely legwork, and how to go about things - those that are greedy tend to get their hands bit, as you pointed out.

the fourth mission is really about moral choices - for good or bad, there are some hidden lessons in the adventure, no matter which 'fork' you take...

the fifth is about stealth and the process of quickly getting in and out of a facility. your job is not to explore or scrag every office and guard, but to get in and out and achieve the mission.
toturi
A group of PCs I ran the module for took the amount of cyber in those guards as a challenge. They knew from legwork from their decker that KE was contracted and paid for maximum security. They went in the first time using stealth and broke into the computer systems from the inside. After sabotaging the security system the first time since they did not get the 100%, they did the direct assault and using the info they accumulated, took down the guard force and ambushed the response team and astral mage.

I told them that Karma would be deducted for their unprofessional behaviour but their argument was that the job was to find out as much as they could about the security of the facility as possible and the second run was a live fire demonstration of the efficacy of the information. So they got the full Karma and pay.
RedmondLarry
Toturi, how long did it take to play when they did it that way?
toturi
Game time? or actual RL?

IIRC, there was no actual time limit for this run, so I allowed them to take their time. They took about 2 weeks.

RL, they took the whole day, about 9 hours.
bitrunner
yeah, keep that fact in mind - at a convention, you would have been limited to 4 or 5 hours, meaning after the initial probing, your team would have been done and not allowed to go back in...

a home game has no such time restriction - but the intent is to allow for more role playing and interaction with the characters, and not an opportunity to throw a drag net through the whole adventure and get more 'goodies', etc.

don't get me wrong - i'm not saying that is what you did - i'm just making it clear that a home campaign gains a benefit from having more flexible time limits, but the intent of allowing that is for the reasons mentioned above. during a convention, the fixed time limit forces the group (normally) to curtail a lot of roleplaying and side encounters that may want to go further but can't because the GM and the players want to finish in the time alloted and not have to resort to "story time" at the end of the adventure (which even i'm guilty of from time to time)...

getting the karma and extra pay is fine - i just hope they didn't scarf up a bunch of the KE equipment. as has been pointed out, these crack guards were there as a deterrant - to send a signal out that the center is well guarded and the guards are heavily equipped and well trained.

i'll only say that from a story standpoint, this corporation is not going to be able to afford this level of protection forever - it simply costs too much. at some point, they will have to scale back on much of the manpower here and trust more to the technological security as it is brought on line. more standard guard forces would then be used to augment this security and monitor the systems and the employees and guests. only during this vulnerable stage in the building's construction and initial occupation would security forces be of this caliber.
toturi
They did 3 runs in that 9 hours, including lunch and dinner and assorted disruptions. Once for the construction company, the second run specifically against the on-site computer(including the research paydata) and security systems, the third one was an ambush specifically designed to look like a firefight and to look like a inside job.
RedmondLarry
Thanks Toturi. I've only run FORCEd RECON in 4 hour time blocks, and had no experience with what people did in a longer setting. Your feedback is helpful.
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