i didn't explain what i meant very well. published SR modules aren't intended to be video games, where you plug the players in and run them through with no considerations made for the PCs' abilities and style of operation. at the very least, adjustments should be made to the NPC stats, because it's impossible for the writer to know who's going to be playing.

i'm not going to send a bunch of fresh-out-of-chargen runners through Double Take (the first run in Corporate Punishment) without largely rewriting the last section. this is because if i don't, the runners are all going to die in the first round. the Ghosts are way too badass for any group of starting runners to survive a head-on encounter with. does that make Pistons a poor writer? no. she statted the Ghosts the way they should be statted, and she's trusting the GMs who run it to adjust the scenario to fit their group.

similarly, i'm not going to out any runner group, especially one with any amount of karma under their belts, through Hunting (the fifth run in Survival of the Fittest) without seriously amping up the hunting party they face off against. most of the characters i run--a large number of whom are pretty much fresh out of chargen--could take out at least half that team by themselves. they're almost all unmodified critters; and critters, as everyone knows, are finger foods for runners.

other published runs are the same. you can't run them out of the box for every group and expect them to work well, because SR has no good way to define the capabilities of runners. that's one of the reasons we like SR, remember? no character levels? well, the downside to not having character levels is, you lose an easy-to-reference tool that tells you how badass a given bunch of runners are, which in turn means that you can't lay out a 'run geared towards runners of Badassocity Index 3, or whatever.

A single PC against Volk or Branwen? Let's see 120-125 BPs... I can't seem to recreate Volk or Branwen. OK, with 60 more Karma, yes. So your guys are experienced runners with 60 Karma under their belts.

That's bullshit. A soda factory would have a lot of equipment that would be very expensive to replace, and every minute that the machines are out of operation is money lost. I'd expect CCSS just based on the benefits with regard to monitoring the machines themselves, let alone security.

~J

Edit: incidentally, this'd be a perfect example of why the "that's bullshit" system is bullshit itself.

When a cheaper Matrix based system can do the same? That's bullshit.

mfb, the naga, centaur, gargoyle and kludde are no pushovers either.

You don't think massacaring half a dozen people counts as a stuffup? Shadowrunners should aim to keep everything as low-key and clean as possible. If they start piling up the body-count they're going to get a lot more attention than they want.

When those extra nines of uptime represent at least the cost of the CCSS system? That's bullshit.

~J

A 500 run should feature ninja troll gangers if the party mixes it up in the wrong circles. There is no rule to say that your payoff (monetary or karmic) equals the difficulty level of the run.

I don't bow to my players' whims (ie "That's Bullshit!") when I'm running. Nor do I let them punish me as GM (ie awarding karma for their disapproval). I put whatever I feel like in a run so that my players don't have a scale to call something bullshit or not. They don't know what to expect and I like it that way.

If the world were real, the person coming up with jobs where the pay was in no way linked to the risk or difficulty would find his rep shot. The ones where the pay was too high would get completed. The ones where the difficulty was too high would get the runners killed or they would bail because everyone knows that fixer is crazy, so it isn't going to hurt their rep.

Or because it makes sense for there to be CCSS…

~J

There might be performance issues that may justify the cost of CCSS over localized matrix connection, especially if it is connected to the machinery.

Depending on the scale of operation of a soda factory, the land cost, the building cost, the equipment cost (the water, the carbonization machines, the syrup and the various other ingredients that are needed, the actual machinery for the making the soda and the extensive tubing for the liquids. Is the plant also doing bottling? That's alot more items needed there. The machines for process control aren't cheap. Plus, the costs for hiring shifts of controller, maintenance, and also the quality control folks. There's also costs for insurance and electricity.) All of this could adds up into the millions, for a mid sized operation, I'm not sure if the corp will skimp on the security, especially if it's a large revenue production with rival soda brands out there on the market.

Plus, don't forget, if the corporation that owns the soda factory is also a producer of CCSS, they might decide to install it for testing purposes. The whole synergistic utilization resources by having your own facilities use a system that you can get at a base cost and it'll give you free testing of that system. The other way can also be said, the CCSS system produced by your company is a known quantity, you know it's capabilities.

edit: and what mfb said, many of the machinery will probably not be far off from being a drone even if it just stands in one place and shifts around injecting syrup into the bottle and the drones for loading the bottles into the boxes. It's basically a robotic drone which will need a controller (yes it can be automated via a computer, but that computer can be monitored and its program can be changed by a user, in this case a CCSS). Plus, there's the loaders for all the supplies and bottles from the supply trucks to the storage areas and from there to the production line, then from the finished product line back to the storage point before loading back on the trucks for distribution.

addendum: I'm not saying what's stupid or not, but I don't believe it's correct just to say that using a CCSS is stupid and that a matrix system is better and to just leave it at that. There needs to be a more detailed breakdown.

Not as of yet, but I've been thinking about it. It can't be done cause you need Delta grade cyber and cultured bioware, ass-loads of karma to get the skills. I'll try and run him through BECKS and let you know.

Or it has CCSS because the runners don't have a decker, but a rigger who rarely gets the spotlight in the low power champaign. Again, more people drink soda than install SotA, and a few batches of contaminated Pepsi will have just as much financial ruin as a single stolen prototype from TransSys.

Is that what the whole "New Coke" thing was about? *grin*

I really like this response. While it doesn't mean every run will be against a CCSS stup (especially since I run 3 years before they became commercially available) it does mena that sometimes the rigger will have to come out of the safety of his van and put his butt where his drones usually go.

I can see this becoming a fun little plot in some campaign. The Cola Wars of 2065...
Plus, you have to do the aftermath of it. With only one brand surviving from it so you can do the lame reference to 'Demolition Man'. Now all Colas are Coca-Cola*.

* yes, I'm a Coke fan, guess it stems from being originally Atlanta, the headquarters of Coke.

Aside from, say, that ring of his?

~J

Meh. The rules allow for Foci with unique enchantments. This is just one example of such. This kind of thing might be out of the range of most normal PCs though.

If anything, Teachdaire is short a few Metamagic techniques, some of which could come in quite handy, like Attunement (Item).