I absolutely agree. Just because she doesn't have stat's doesn't mean she can act like a dick and then expect to hire the same group the next time she needs some 'meat-shields'.

She doesn't act like a dick, it just doesn't make sense for her not to help the runners in the final (and most important) fight. If she can walk and talk she can cast well enough to be more useful than any starting mage and beyond thanks to her initiate grade of 8.

I'd call standing around painting your nails while the team gets shot at acting like a dick, particularly when you are a powerful mage.

I don't mind so much when there are good plot reasons, although I'm sure you will. Harlequin never stepped in to help you because the rules of Chal-han forbade direct action but I suspect that sort of thing is also likely to raise your hackles. I don't mind it but different strokes and all that.

I can understand H and E working through pawns in their feud, since that's the rule for their ame (I and my characters would consider both stupid idiots for playing their game, but tht's different). But I would not understand H coming with the team to get an important item, and then H saying "ok, you go and fight and get the item, I'll fetch the getaway car/rigger". There's no reason for F to be wasted on such a trivial task. It just screams "ok, let's make the runners go at it alone so they feel good."

Precisely.

In fact the PC's ought to be the ones sent to get the transport while the DMNPC does the hard thing. Plenty of opportunity to give the PC's a meaningful encounter while they are doing that.

Only problem is the PC's own egos. They may not want to play the role of Henchbeings. Tough, somebody has to do it and if the pay is good enough what is the problem?

Whether or not she's killable, it's the almost irresistible urge to do so that's hard to deal with.

I'd have other urges with Frosty...
Just think who cool it'd be to walk around with a "My girlfriend is an immortal elf (and she's great in bed too)" ARO.

I believe this is the intention of the run. Don't you ever design runs to get players out of their comfort zone a little? In my mind "railroad" has always meant forcing players to make a decision rather than letting them make it themselves. "The job is in Lagos" is not railroading, it's just where the job is. If you players say, "Nope, we can't get all of our cool stuff there" then fine, let them do it. Their rep in the shadows might start to develop a flavour of "backs out when things get difficult" however. OTOH, if the players have the connections to get stuff over to Lagos and all that: good on them. Let them bring their gear, crank up the opposition later (if necessary) and go from there.

I don't think it ought to be a problem to give Frosty stat's. She would still be effectively unkillable but perhaps a bit less obnoxious. The only real problem with it would be detailing a tradition and abilities for Immortal Elves but you could gloss over that to some extent.

While detailing a Grade 8+ Initiate might seem like a lot of effort it's little more than has gone into some of the other NPC's. Dawn of the Artifacts and Ghost Cartels contain a number of NPC's that massively outclass even experienced PC's.

Frosty just isn't in the same league as Harlequin and Ehran, yet. She ought to be well out of the PC's league but still within the capability of SR4 to describe mechanically.

Malachi

If this were an isolated circumstance I would agree with you. I certainly wouldn't penalize rep for turning down a stupid job from an out of towner, I might even award rep for being willing to recognize ones own limitations and not being willing to accept work you aren't qualified to do.

However, as far as I can tell every SR4 scenario relies on this tiresome mechanic to handicap the players and ensure that they can be kept on the tracks.

Isn't she shacked up with Harlequin?

- J.

I HIGHLY dispute that, at least in the case of Ghost Cartels. Sacristan, Rhys, Uribe, and Kaz are pretty run-of-the-mill. Ramos and Riveros are totally capable of being handled by sneaky PCs that might want them dead or their plans foiled. And Yage? Let me tell you about Yage.

In one part - without getting spoilery - Yage posesses a guy. Being freaked out by possessed guy's obviously not-normal strenth and resistance to lead, one PC shot at Yage with his rifle. Damn near killed her in one shot. One box of health left.

So I'm gonna call shenanigans on Ghost Cartels having NPCs that "massively" outclass PCs.

Additionally:


A thousand times, yes. This is why I refuse to acknowledge any novels as canon.

I am still scratching my head how "At least Initiate grade 8" and "balanced with the team" are meant to go together. Not to mention all the "magic beyond the runner's understanding" stuff.

That would depend entirely on the PCs, don't you think?

The run is meant to be played with people that have at least raised their magic to 8, too.

That's pretty easy, though: No-one really understands magic. Even Frosty doesn't. If it works, you can use it.

On the contrary both Yaje and Chin You are on the verge of being untouchable. Two or Three more points of Force and they might have been beyond the capability of even your Sniper with the Barrett and APDS. Which is exactly the sort of weapon the adventure structure is designed to keep out of play.

Yaje has regen, if she wasn't unable to possess your Sniper you would have been looking at a TPK there.

Ding might not be a combat monster but add up the cost of his gear and he clearly outclasses the players. Imagine if he had spent all that cash on proper implants. His 'bodyguards' are pretty amusing.

That's the point where the Thunderstruck comes in.

I'll see if I can find my notes for Frosty and post how I did it for my team. This is obviously not the official stance but one GM to another.

Again, exactly the sort of weapon that a globe-trotting scenario makes it extremely difficult to bring along.

Actually, if they turn it down from the start, they might get a reputation for "doesn't take jobs on other continents (or just in Africa)" - which is probably to the PCs' liking, since they won't be offered such craptastic jobs in the future (which they'd be likely to just turn down again).

"The job is in Lagos. We have arranged travel there, no questions asked. Get your gear and meet the pilot at those coordinates. Don't worry about customs, Africa has no such stuff." Would work as well, without forcing people to travel "light" into a corrupt and frankly unorganized hellhole.

Then take an ares alpha, modded with high velocity, electronic firing, folding stock and sling. Add a foregrip and a gas vent 3 and now those nasty NPCs are no bother anymore. Load up on ex-ex/ stick-and-shock if needed.

Shadowkids, it is fairly explicit that these are going to be rather globe-trotting adventures, with all the difficulties and excitement that entails. If your players never want to leave Seattle (or Hong Kong, or Seacouver, or Gary, Indiana) then this is probably not the adventure series for them.

That said, if you do buy the book you're not allowed to bitch about globetrotting. If you buy a chocolate cake you can't complain that it's chocolate. You can argue over the quality of the cake, whether it has as much chocolate as you like and the kind of chocolate you like, but when you get right down to it you bought a chocolate cake, and it was advertised as such, so there are no grounds to complain about it.

On an entirely unrelated note, I'm starving and going to go bake a chocolate cake.

Fair.

Although it would be amusing to see the look on a GM's face when you tell Frosty to take a hike.

Of cours,e the idea that you can't travel with your gear is also a bit... special. I thought smugglers had their uses - it's an archetype in the book even.

i still don't see why runners would be transported any other way myself . . no ties is the whole reason behind them right?
so do your job right and make it so that they have no ties to you and you can still have them caught by local militia for smuggeling weapons.

Depends on the gear or the timing.

A tricked out Everglades or Vista is too big to move in a hurry. A suborbital can put you half way around the world in 2 hours but smuggled gear might take days to catch you up.

The Merc campaign I'm playing in just hopped from London to Cape Town and then on to Antarctica in a hurry. The first leg was by suborbital and took a third of the time that the much shorter second leg did. It might be weeks before we see some of our heavy gear.

If Johnson is in a hurry, he should not try and get people from the other side of the world to do something for him.
That's what local talent is there for after all. If johnson is not in a hurry? Johnson can wait for the shipment of High quality Gear with some meat to use it.

It strikes me as awfully harsh to dismiss an adventure based on a "boxed text" cut scene and an NPC. I've yet to see an adventure that I haven't needed to edit heavily to make it work in my games, and this one appears to be no different. What a surprise.

This does remind me of my favorite high-powered NPC stat block ever. I think it was a White Wolf Vampire book that for whatever reason had the Archangel Gabriel showing up at some point. The stat block was very simple: "You cannot conceive of harming this being."

There are a variety of places in Lagos where runners can buy practically anything they want. Yes, one group even bought a (slightly used) tank--and had much amusement driving it around. Frosty even gives them nuyen to buy stuff, and the team can negotiate for more nuyen to buy more stuff. Think 'shopping spree' at one of the world's largest arms black market...

But by all means, if the team has the contacts or a team member who can get them all to Lagos (taking into account the difficulties of traveling there), then the GM should adapt the adventure to do so if she or he wants. That's pretty much spelled out in the beginning of the adventure.





If you had an international team, it would be logical to switch out the smuggler NPC suggested in the adventure with their own contact. If one of the PCs was a pilot, have them fly the team over.

If they don't, then why deprive them of the fun of exploring a new, exotic city, meeting new contacts (really, the arms dealer from the arms market is an excellent contact for runners after this adventure), and having the entertaining roleplaying opportunities?

Jane even tells the runners that they can pick up gear in Lagos:

Nah. International smuggeling has larger volumes than that - Lord of War is even more true in Shadowrun.

And if you disassemble the Thunderstruck, you can officially ship that in different priority packages as research euqipment (the tech parts mixed with other tech stuff) and toys (the casing, vice versa).

Short: Depends on the money.

Having done a lot of that sort of Running lately I would put Easy Breakdown on any weapon I wanted along. But that is the sort of thing that you can't do in a hurry when you weren't expecting to need to.

In fact, just as a teaser from the adventure of the types of contacts and gear you can get in Lagos... of course GMs can rein in their players, but this is an opportunity to let them get that special something they've been hankering for...





... and Lagos is the type of place you can drive a tank down the street, or walk into a bar in full milspec armor without any police bothering you...

Why? Do you really need to be able to re-assemble a weapon in 9 seconds max? Or will the 'normal' 90 seconds do just fine? How about 9 minutes?

Easy Beakdown is a very specialized modification that allows for insane speed, enabling the assembly of a weapon in mid-combat.

No it permits a weapon to be broken down into pieces that can be easily hidden.

The Rifle from The Day of the Jackal would be an excellent example.

OK, now THIS is usefull information . . is that printed SOMEHWERE in the book so the GM does NOT go:"YOU CAN'T DO THAT! The Whole Police and military force are coming after you!"

Not that I think that playing BIG is a bad idea, on the contrary I think everyone should play BIG, but you may not want to print the information. So that some player does NOT go "YOU CAN'T STOP ME!!!! muahahahhahahahhaha the gamebook says I can drive my tank into town without concern".

Everything has some degree of situational dependence.

BlueMax
/go BIG, or stop playing.

Not in the adventure, but if the GM reads the detailed writeup in Feral Cities it should be pretty clear.

There's a HUGE difference in just driving a tank into town and OPENING FIRE with Tank/Anti Tank Weaponry.
There's a crazy brit(yes, i know, that's kinda redundant) driving around in a yellow tank in frigging london.
All he had to do was seal the frigging cannon and dismantle the machine gun. put some rubber blocks on tracks.
If you are only rolling around like in Full Metal Jacket, especially in THAT part of Africa, why should ANYBODY care?
And if you are dumb enough to open fire . . well, guess what . . there's several hundred tank killer weapons too.
If you go OUTSIDE the city? All rules are out of the window anyway . . In one of the Novels it stated something
about the african weapons laws . . you were more likely to get into trouble for owning a hunting rifle than a LAW.
Because with the hunting rifle it's likely you're a wilderer and with the LAW you're not likely to shoot the animals.

I don't like "pretty clear", I prefer clear. However, ZZZ zone should be abundantly clear enough. Does Feral Cities give zone security codes? no copy here at work.

Also Feral Cities is a story/fluff book. One which oddly contains no help whatsoever on making your cities Feral. I can't wait to get Running Wild.

BlueMax

Sometimes I think people want bullet point lists or requirement manuals rather than books as supplements.

Not "rather than" just "in addition to."

But that does neither mean that you can't break normal weapons down (that's standard issue) or hide the parts without it.

In fact, you can and will break pretty much anything down to better hide it. The real benefit is that reassembling is is a matter of three actions.

Which is a level completely unnecessary for shipment.

My notes on Jane, you will see that I added a few random changes to make dealing with her unique. Namely her approach to magic. These are by no means canon, but provided a fleshed out version for me to use. That way when the runners negotiate with Jane, I know how many dice to pickup. When she needs to do something with magic, that would be feasible, but she doesn't know the exact spell that would be perfect, she's flexible. (There are costs associated with the flexibility, but when she needs to grab a hammer, it can range from a ballpeen hammer to a jackhammer.)

That is almost identical to how my GM ran her... what is it now, 11 years ago? 12? for Harlequin's Back. Are the Wheels an Earthdawn thing I'm not aware of...?

lol, I think if you need to struggle against the confines of the adventure to break out and offer flexibility then it is the definition of railroady.



This isn't particularly true. This works in places with weak and uncordinated governments (it used to work in Australia) where different governments control different gun parts as 'the gun' and don't control other parts.

However if there is a strong government, they'll control a selection of parts and explaining to customs why you've got a gun barrel might be extremely difficult. That said there is a frikken arms market in lagos that explicity has mil spec gear that black ops team would buy. So a 50 cal sniper rifle and prototype weapons are going to be right there.

The reason lord of war works is the gear doesn't go through anywhere with a really functional government that has any intrest in preventing the behaviour.

Nice stats Bishop. Would she be willing to teach Wheel 1 and Wheel 2 to an enterprising PC druid in your game?

(I´d likely add Filtering(+Cleansing), but I´m partial to buying additional metamagics.)

Adarael--I've never played ED, so I doubt it. The magic tradition for Tir na nOg is called the Path of the Wheel, so I figured that whatever tradition Harley taught Jane would be based on the original Path. I called them Wheels...

Ryu--Possibly, though it would probably be a major favor that was called in. Filtering and Cleansing would be good ones, but I left them off to keep Jane on the same footing as the runners when they get to writhing cesspools like Lagos.

My players are arms dealers already, working on establishing a pipeline from Vladivostok, across North America, to New Orleans. Contacts in N.O. wil then supply to Carrib League and South America. I'm sure they'd love to become truly global and find friends over in Africa they can supply arms to.

- J.

While true, this is exceptional. Most scenarios that follow this format will run you through half a dozen cities with real border controls and little or no opportunity to acquire Mil-spec gear in under a month.

Bear in mind also that anything you can pick-up weapon or vehicle-wise on such trips will be vanilla and much more expensive the gear you bought in char-gen.

Riggers beware.

Why, i would expect to find all kinds of modified weapons in the largest black arms market in the world and for the most part i would also expect them to cheaper then book prices, thanks to various street price modifiers.

Actually, I do not see it so much as "this is a scripted adventure" as more "This is the default you have, if the players don't do anything.....interesting."

If I were running it, and we had experienced runners who were geared and contacted out as international runners? Things could get interesting. When you are international Runners, I would imagine your reputation gets around the world, not just one or two towns. So, you show up in Lagos...and SOMEONE knows who are you. Heck, you might show up, and within an hour be getting contacted by your Fixer there asking if you can do something for him..Or, hey, the King tries to do his whole "Well, you need to do something for me to get an invitation" and the runners just say "Hey...remember when we did this for your man? How about when we did this other thing? You know, we did those at HALF our regular price, right? We could always start charging full price...."