Shadowrun
Shadowrun Missions Living Campaign => Living Campaign Discussion => Topic started by: Bull on <08-28-13/1726:46>
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http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/118469/Shadowrun-Firing-Line?src=s_pi
Danger Zones!
Shadowrunning can take you all sorts of different places and give you the chance to have all sorts of different guns pointed at you. Whether you’re exploring mysterious islands off the coast of Seattle, collecting bounties on the tightly guarded streets of Manhattan, or trying to survive the chaos and conflict in Bogotá, you’re likely to find yourself in trouble and in the line of fire. Because that’s where you’re paid to be.
Firing Line collects four Shadowrun Missions developed especially for the large summer gaming conventions, making them available for the first time to the gaming public. The adventures have all the statistics and game information needed for both Shadowrun, Fourth Edition and Shadowrun, Fifth Edition, meaning that a wide range of shadowrunners will have everything they need to dive into the adventures and get themselves in some high-paying trouble!
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Woohoo! ;D
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Awesome. Any idea when it'll be on the cdt agent site for us to spend our run credits on?
Cordially,
Eric
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If I'm going to start a group new to Shadowrun on Season 5 missions, should I begin with Firing Line, Sprawl Wilds, or the first SM5 adventure (Chasin' the Wind)?
-Fedifensor
P.S. I posted some questions about Missions on the Dumpshock forums (at http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=39372&view=findpost&p=1258663). Is it better to ask those questions here?
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Manhunt and Ashes seem rather doable for newbies. Well, Ashes does kinda require a decker for a good ending. Haven't been able to check out Chasin' the Wind yet myself, nor Firing Line.
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Chasin' the Wind is only viable if you don't have a group full of poorly constructed meat heads that don't want to do anything but fight. If you have a group that's willing to use social skills as well as combat skills you'll be fine.
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Chasin' the Wind is only viable if you don't have a group full of poorly constructed meat heads that don't want to do anything but fight. If you have a group that's willing to use social skills as well as combat skills you'll be fine.
I would disagree with that statement. We had a dedicated face, skipped an entire combat...and that didn't prevent our Street Samurai from being brought to 1 overflow box away from death at the start of the other combat (before anyone else could act).
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I did say 'poorly' constructed. ;)
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The Street Samurai was played by my wife, and I did the grunt work in designing her character - it wasn't a pregen. Unless you're expecting characters to have 15+ dice in Perception and 30+ dice for the damage resistance test, the character was designed about well as can be expected for the first time with a new version of the game.
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What kind of attack did you get hit by?
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Well, I'll use a Spoiler tag...
Despite my character rolling 5 hits on the Perception roll, the bad guy rolled 7 hits on Stealth and then fired a sniper rifle at my wife's character. I don't remember the damage before the damage resistance test, but after rolling (and rerolling failures with Edge) she was one overflow point away from death. Without her cyberarm giving an extra damage box, the character would have died in her first adventure, and I guarantee that would have caused her to quit the Living Campaign. Shots from out of the blue that you can't defend against aren't a good choice for a "newbie" adventure.
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This is in 5A-01 Chasin' the Wind? hrmm...
Do you remember where at in the adventure this happened? Because I don't recall this being hard-coded into the adventure. So it's entirely possible it's something the GM did, figuring your team was tough enough that he needed to get the drop on you to challenge you.
(And to be fair, I've seen PCs do the exact same thing. Sniper Rifles are brutal in the new edition. During the final fight of the Dragon's Song CMP's at Origins, someone took out the "big bad" of the fight with one in the first round of combat. Now, granted, I'd have never let that fly because I run my big bads smarter and trickier than this, especially because this particular enemy has a few tricks up his sleeve, but still. :))
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This is in 5A-01 Chasin' the Wind? hrmm...
Do you remember where at in the adventure this happened? Because I don't recall this being hard-coded into the adventure. So it's entirely possible it's something the GM did, figuring your team was tough enough that he needed to get the drop on you to challenge you.
Spoiler tag again, just in case...
If memory serves, our face had just started putting the new chip in one of the Matrix nodes we were sent to upgrade (which was hidden in a fake tree), and we had been warned about some sort of werewolf in the area - which turned out to be a demented Grizzly Adams with a sniper rifle.
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I think I know what he's talking about, Bull.
It's a "Pushing the Envelope" item from Scene 2 (Garfield Park section). Pages 11-12 of the v3.2 draft Chasin' The Wind. Quaid has Sneaking 6 and an Agility rating of 7, so 7 hits is above average but not insanely so. He also is positioned 750 meters from the runner's location, per the text..
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Ok, yeah. Pushing the Envelope stuff is entirely optional material that is there to either make the scene more difficult if the GM feels the party is tougher/better than average, or just as extra filler material to broaden/lengthen the adventure should you either be running ahead of schedule (at, say, a convention time slot) or for when you're not confined by schedules (like a home game version).
So my guess is either your GM didn't accurately assess the threat level the sniper posed, or he assumed that you could handle the sniper easily enough.
And 7 hits is about 3 hits more than average. The target should have gotten 4 hits, with a chance at a 5th hit, for the average.
Bull
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Scoring half your dice in hits is about a 10% chance, so 1/10 times such a chance will screw you over. That can be rather unfortunate but alas, it happens occasionally.
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I did some digging earlier, but don't have the link handy still. But found a website that had broken down the percentages for getting X hits on Y dice. 7 hits on 13 dice had jsomething like a 5.6% chance of happening. So it's basically like rolling a natural 20 in D&D.
Anyway, I reiterate again that the adventures are written as they are written, generally designed to be tough but not horribly so. However, it is up to each Gamemaster to judge both the difficulty of the adventure as well as the capability of the players, and to modify the adventure as needed to provide a challenge to each group of PCs.
Frankly, in an ideal world, I could not put in stats at all into an adventure, just put in a list of NPCs you'll encounter (i.e. 3 Lone Star officers), and the adventure would run just the same as if I had provided balanced stats, completely "average" stats (3's across the board), or built them to be Street legend killers (5's and 6's with skills in the double digits). because the GM would take each encounter and adjust it to fit the group he's running for. Alas, it doesn't work that way, but that's the ideal outcome we'd get :) The stats we do give just provide a baseline to ballpark things from.
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Are there any plans for Firing Line to be released in print form?
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Bull, you noted Sprawl Wilds in SR5 is 6/6/8/6 max karma (from which I subtract any karma they wouldn't get in the SR4 karma list), which isn't a simple +3 on top of the SR4 amounts but a different calculation. What would you say are the Karma values for Firing Line?
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Ok, yeah. Pushing the Envelope stuff is entirely optional material that is there to either make the scene more difficult if the GM feels the party is tougher/better than average, or just as extra filler material to broaden/lengthen the adventure should you either be running ahead of schedule (at, say, a convention time slot) or for when you're not confined by schedules (like a home game version).
So my guess is either your GM didn't accurately assess the threat level the sniper posed, or he assumed that you could handle the sniper easily enough.
And 7 hits is about 3 hits more than average. The target should have gotten 4 hits, with a chance at a 5th hit, for the average.
Bull
The problem with this scene is that you have to push the envelope for there to even BE a scene. Otherwise it's "find the fake tree" (three options are given, none of them difficult) and complete an easy Hardware extended test. That's it. No opposition or true challenge.
So what's the alternative? Go from literal walk in the park to highly proficient well hidden sniper who kills everyone he sees hidden in overwatch. Great design!
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Except that Pushing The Envelope isn't just to make that specific scene harder, it's meant to make the adventure as a whole more challenging.
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Ok, yeah. Pushing the Envelope stuff is entirely optional material that is there to either make the scene more difficult if the GM feels the party is tougher/better than average, or just as extra filler material to broaden/lengthen the adventure should you either be running ahead of schedule (at, say, a convention time slot) or for when you're not confined by schedules (like a home game version).
So my guess is either your GM didn't accurately assess the threat level the sniper posed, or he assumed that you could handle the sniper easily enough.
And 7 hits is about 3 hits more than average. The target should have gotten 4 hits, with a chance at a 5th hit, for the average.
Bull
The problem with this scene is that you have to push the envelope for there to even BE a scene. Otherwise it's "find the fake tree" (three options are given, none of them difficult) and complete an easy Hardware extended test. That's it. No opposition or true challenge.
So what's the alternative? Go from literal walk in the park to highly proficient well hidden sniper who kills everyone he sees hidden in overwatch. Great design!
I assumed this scene was included in an introductory adventure because it introduced a basic game concept (extended tests) and utilized a few common skills.
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LALALALALALA *fingers in ears makes typing hard, guys*
Can we please put spoilers in the appropriate spoiler tags; I wanted to comment that I'm excited about the adventure and read what others had though, and was fortunate enough to recognize a spoiler when I see one. Guess I should know better, but come on, people (Slithery D, I'm looking at you specifically O.O), let's keep the spoilers where they belong...