Finished reading it today. Just like
Artifacts Unbound, I have a far too strong habit of writing my own adventures to find it really useful to me. It still keeps me updated on some plot.
Like
Artifacts Unbound, I'm still not too sure about the format, as each authors ios using it in a different way. Two chapters start with a short story instead of Jackpoint material. Sometimes a "Plot Point" is a scene, sometimes it's a separate adventure or job, and sometimes it seems to be just some random time frame. Some NPC get full stats. Sometimes active and knowledge skills are listed separately, sometimes not. Sometimes you just get a page reference ("For Team B’s leader, use the Hacker (p.105, SR4A) but change the metatype to human (no changes to the Attributes), add a Rating 1 synaptic booster, and replace the ammunition for the Hammerli 620S with stick-n-shock rounds (DV 6S(e), AP –half Impact armor)."). Sometimes you're no told anything ("Sand Chameleon"? "Feyware"?). I understand different authors have different styles, but keeping on using the same template makes it looking wrong.
While
Artifacts Unbound's premise made its adventures very similars ("retrieve artifact X while 1D6 other teams trying to do the same"),
Corporate Intrigue is far more diverse. It's back to basics, corporate black ops. Except maybe for Dreaded Palace, it is a lot less epic, though there nonetheless are some high-level parts (getting on Zurich-Orbital, breaking in Knight Plaza in Detroit, seducing Samantha Villiers...).
For some more comments:
Nothing Personal, page 16
heavy crossbows (loaded with narcoject injection bolts)
I can't help thinking this is the kind of silly idea that you can only have when you're playing a RPG knowing the rules maths. So yes, rulewise, it's better to fill two Condition Monitor that just one because it gives more negative modifiers. From a more practical point of view, the bolt would have such a high chance of outright killing or neutralizing the target in the first place, that the narcoject wouldn't be needed (not to mention that if the narcoject failed to make an effect, the second bolt will kill the target anyway).
Project Imago, page 25
Additionally, the physical presence of the crowd imposes a –2 dice pool penalty to all Perception tests, Combat, and most Physical Active Skill tests. On the plus side, the crowds make it easier for Palming and Shadowing
Tests, providing a +2 dice pool bonus.
In the event that shots are fired, the shooting character can choose not to take the –2 dice pool penalty to their attacks; instead, whenever the character fires a weapon and misses, they make an Edge (1) Test, applying penalties matching the uncompensated recoil on the shot that missed. If the character succeeds, nothing happens (the bullet flies off, hitting no one); if there are no successes, an innocent bystander is hit for normal damage; if the player character glitches, then an innocent woman, child, or elderly bystander is hit for normal damage; and if the character rolls a critical glitch, then an innocent woman, child, or elderly bystander is hit and killed even if nonlethal weapons are being used. The shooting character gains a point of Notoriety. Due to the possibility of over-penetration, if any character is using APDS ammo, that character must make this Edge test every time they fire, whether they hit the target or not.
Shadowrun have always been lacking rules for random hit. But, making no difference between lethal and non-lethal weapon on a glitche is... odd, and quite unfair, to say the least. It's just calling to cause an heated argument between GM and players.
Project Imago, page 27
He is a mundane Japanese human, and he looks like the kind of person who would cry while singing the company anthem. The only question for the runners to puzzle over is: which company? Obviously it’s a Japanacorp, but that only narrows it down to three, and that’s only counting AAAs.
The guy is Japanese, so he must be working for a Japanese corporation. Hello, Evo? S-K subsidiaries Messerschmidt-Kawasaki and Nippon Credit & Trust? Horizon's Cantor-Kurowasa Productions and Hisato-Turner Broadcasting? Aztechnology board member Tsuruga Shinoyama? Ares former Corporate Court judge Akae Ono? Neonet executive Yoshio Higuchi (just from
Corporate Intrigue)? Yeah, and Lofwyr agents are the only ones using German-made sniper rifles.
Runaway Train, page 32
Since this AresSpace depot disaster is small potatoes compared to, say, an IED on the floor of the ASE [African Stock Exchange]"
Nowadays, there really are few stock exchanges where people still gather on the floor. So by 2070, it seems quite unlikely.
Runaway Train, page 33
The Kenyan shilling is currently worth about the same as the naira, meaning that one nuyen is worth twenty shillings.
Bad writing here. I know naira is the currency used in Lagos only because I read
Feral Cities and
Dawn of the Artifacts: Dawn. But what's the point here? It's like writing an adventure set in Québec and saying "The Quebec nouveau franc is currently worth about the same as the Aztlaner pesos, meaning that one nuyen is worth twenty francs."
Runaway Train, page 33
The runners won’t be able to find this route a second time—they will be lucky to find their way out again.
Again, this is just calling for heated arguments between GM and players ("But I have an Orientation System !").
Runaway Train, page 33
they will get caught in the crossfire as an AlphaPack of Ares hunter-seeker biodrones canvases the area for rebels
Runaway Train, page 35
an Ares AlphaPack (prototype pack hunter biodrones, see p. 37) attack
Runaway Train, page 37
AlphaPack is a new biodrone technology being field tested by Ares forces that are hunting for insurgents in and around the Kibera slums of Nairobi. The idea is that AlphaPack enables biodrones to mimic the cooperative task-sharing capabilities of pack hunters. In sending AlphaPack after Laibon, who Ares believes responsible for the most recent train disaster (and who actually was responsible for the sabotaging of several trains in the past two years), Ares is killing two birds with one stone. They are field-testing a promising new prototype while also hunting down a terrorist. Although composed of animalistic biodrones, AlphaPack fights with the precise coordination of an elite military unit linked together by tactical software.
Are they wolves? Dogs? Hyenas? Lions? Chimpanzees? I ruled out dolphins and orcas myself only because they do not have a Swimming skill.
Freedom, Finally, page 39
the guy was lobotomized
Since the following adventure is about brains in jars, trepanning is more likely than lobotomy.
Also, the so-called cyborg in that adventure don't use
Augmentation rules for cyborgs, having Physical Attribute instead of a cyborg chassis.
Dreaded Palace, page 63
Rekkit has the ability, through directing some kind of ritual, to drive AIs insane.
Dreaded Palace, page 64
That is when the AI tells Puck that someone else was there to start the ritual
Quite inappropriate. Technomancers don't do "rituals".
Dreaded Palace, page 65
Hines offers to trade the location and a description of what he saw to the runners if they
secure safe passage for him out of Geneva. How the team secures safe passage for Hines is up to the gamemaster. It should involve some cost or difficulty, but should not be overly difficult as to derail the entire adventure. After this is done to his satisfaction (which could be the biggest challenge of this part of the adventure),
Hines leads the team to the location.
First, it took me some time to figure out that the PC weren't intended to rive Hines out of Geneva, but only to prepare his travel, and then have him accompagning them to the location. Besides, I would expect better from an adventure I bought than an entire part "should involve some cost or difficulty, but should not be overly difficult as to derail the entire adventure" with not slightest clue at what can make it costly or difficult.
Dreaded Palace, page 68
None of the NPC in that adventure has the Dodge skill (or Gymnastics for that matter), and a Reaction between 3 and 4. Easy targets...
Sucking Lemons, page 79
If the program already had a prototype six months ago, why did any rivals wait so long to start looking into a possible intellectual property lawsuit?
Because the rival didn't know there was a prototype? Because sometimes, a R&D project can get a name that will not be used commercially (like the Longhorn project who became Windows Vista)? Besides, Ares was also selling the Ares Excalibur self-propelled howitzer in 2062 (see
SOTA:2063), when the Fairlight Excalibur was still in production.
Colt filled a lawsuit against Bushmaster (and Heckler & Koch) over the use of the M4 brand in 2004, ten years after Bushmaster first released its "M4 Type" Carbine targeted by the lawsuit (but only a few months after HK offered to build the "HK M4" as the XM8 project was halted). To tell the full story, Colt lose, the "M4" designation being attributed by the US Department of Defense and not a commercial brand per se. HK nonetheless released its rifle as the HK416.
As a side note,
Corporate Intrigue insists less on he Ares Excalibur project being a catastrophic for the entire Ares Macrotechnology than
Conspiracy Theories did. Which I find a bit more realistic (consider that the entire M16 production weights about a tenth of a single combat aircraft program).
Sucking Lemons, page 79
Corporate parks such as these are often used for cutout research labs and off-site storage areas. The isolation can work to the corporate partners’ benefit here. If a research lab here is hit, it doesn’t bring collateral damage to other company departments. If the building is damaged in the course of a run, the damage is
paid for by the building’s owners, not the renters. The disadvantage is that the facilities here are treated as contractors, which means they don’t receive the benefits of extraterritoriality. If a facility is compromised, companies often have to go to the expense of sending a team of their own to make sure any messes are thoroughly cleaned up.
I find it strange, to say the least, to imagine corporate management thinking like "This building will be a good choice because, when our competitors will get wind of secret project and when our security service will fail to stop the runners they hired, there will be less chance of collateral damage on the other projects." Reinforcing security, regrouping their forces, and taking advantage of extraterritoriality to use otherwise illegal measures seem to make a bit more sense. Such sites undoubtedly exist, however, for a far more simple reason, the same than in real life: sometimes, you run out of place, and it's easier to install that brand new project team in a separate building rather than moving half your division to make some room.
Making Lemonade, age 85
Elegance Electronics Store
This place's name never shows up in the adventure. Maybe it's the unnammed the "out-of-the-way locale that isn't your typical runner hangout and is far from the corporate bars and hangouts"?
Lights Out, page 93
The strike team rigger goes on high overwatch with a blimp and provides close fire-support with two
rotodrones. He issues orders before the attack to the rotodrones to attack anyone leaving the building that is not transmitting the proper RFID. The rigger maintains line-of-sight with the blimp to use a microwave transmitter to keep communications up while activating an area jammer to send in with the assault team.
WORST PLAN EVER. If he jams signal, how exactly are his teammate RIFD tags signal supposed to reach the rotodrones? In real life, yoy could jam only a part of the spectrum so as to maintain some communications, but SR rules don't cover this.
Floating Secrets, pages 125-129
Nitpicking, but Helen Winters, David Griggs, Ellen Mercer... Are all Z-O personnel Anglo-saxons?
Hard Truths, page 132
if they are captured, they swallow cyanide capsules hidden on their teeth at the first opportunity.
If the runners ask around the shadows about the two, they discover that the runners were named Leo and the Hammer, and they were based out of St. Petersburg. They do not have a single major employer; they took jobs where they found them.
I find it somewhat odd that runners without a cause, who are working for anybody, are ready to commit suicide instead of just spilling the beans. My PC would sure not do that.
