[ismilealot]

Hello, I'm new to Shadowrun, and a friend suggested running Missions at my local game store as a way to run with more support and less focus on the toys. Right now I've got a 50-50 split as to whether I want to run Missions for SR, or Encounters for D&D. I would like some community input from people who've run Missions as to the benefits and drawbacks of running open games at a game store.

[Timothy M. Patrick]

Continuity
With the Shadowrun Missions line you get a persistent universe that a character can be played in at multiple venues.  So you can continue the story of your character from shop to shop, con to con, and even home games as long as you stay within the boundaries of the Missions rules.

Attendance
The down side to this is you never know what will be at your table until go time; you can end up with a party of all faces. That being said as an an experienced GM at multiple game stores I usually have a solid core crew and always new folks float in and out.

Impact
The results of the players from the games are taken into consideration when major plot points happen. In season 4 there was a vote to determine including the Ork Underground as a recognized ward in Seattle the actions of the players during the season and their votes factored in the development of the Meta plot.

Easy of Time
The Missions are designed to be completed in a 4 hour block this includes paper work; this is great to be able to set a scheduled time limit. There is also a good bit of Pushing the Envelope if you want to use them as the basis for a home campaign and just build upon them.

Venue
You can run the Missions line at home and the characters are valid to travel as long as the basic Missions guidelines are followed.

The people
It has been a great experience to get to know so many new people as well as expose new folks to the game.

These are just my experiences your millage may vary.

[ismilealot]

Ty for a succinct view of the Pro's. Can anyone give me the Con's?

[Valkyrie]

I've not run a lot of missions, but I can tell you the cons of org play in general (I've run something like 180 Pathfinder Society games):

1) Rules Flexibility: A new splat book comes out with terrible balance?  If it's allowed in missions, it's allowed at your table.  If some archetype gets hit by the nerf bat in a way you consider too harsh, you have to go by the new ruling.  If you really liked the way 4e or even 3e and earlier handled something, but there is a new rule you think is worse, you're stuck with the new rule.
This inflexibility is necessary in order to provide somewhat consistent play across tables (since, especially at a con, I could have 6+ GMs for one character), but it can be stifling to someone used to the freedom of tabletop home games.

2) Time constraints: yes, adventures are designed to fit their time blocks, but players often don't care about your silly pacing concerns.  You might have to rush certain points, or move along past what was becoming an interesting roleplaying encounter. This is most apparent at conventions, where the time limits are often much less flexible (someone else will need that table in half an hour, you really can't go over time).  At a store, depending on scheduling, you have more freedom to exceed the time limit, but convention GMing is an art with a skillset all its own.

3) You cannot tailor your story to the players, they have to tailor their characters to the story.  Some players, especially newbies, might want more.  Especially if they're used to GMs tailoring their home games to character backstories. There are missions contacts and hints as to where things might be going, but if the player's are to get the benefit of these story connections, they will have to be the ones to grab those.

All that being said, I love convention GMing and org play GMing in general.  I'm one heck of a better GM than I was before I started doing PFS (my first org play experience).  You'll see how other tables deal with corner case rules, how to keep the action moving without getting bogged down in a rules debate, and you'll meet a heck of a lot of awesome people.  True, not all convention-goers and store walk-ins are wonderful human beings, but I've had far, far more positive tables than negative.  It can also take the pressure off you, once some of your regulars are willing to step up and try their hand at GMing (though that can take awhile). Org play means you don't have to do all the work, and can even get a chance to be a player now and then.

[biotech66]

Missions, PFS, and DnD Encounter are all great.  Do you want high fantasy or Sci-Fi?  That's choice one.  Choice 2 is the sadder of the bunch-Do you have an agent GM?  Agents get the missions quicker than the general public.  There are not as many open events right now for Missions, so you might hit a wall quickly.

[ismilealot]

Ty all. I'm actually a veteran DM who's run D&D Encounters at my FLGS for 2 yrs. But, I fell in love with the SR concept and wanted to run it. However, in love with the concept has hit a bit of culture shock with the players. The focus is very different, namely it''s more on the toys than the game. A friend suggested Missions as a way of easing my difficulties and player focus as the toys are limited to what's given in the mod. My very real concern for my lack of SR rules knowledge he completely glosses over and hand-waves. "Oh, the rules are in the mod, it's fine". Like I said, veteran of open games, it's not quite fine. But, I will be forced to learn very, very fast, and as you said, become a much stronger GM for it. So, I'm going to talk it over with my FLGS and bottom line, "Let's do this.".

[biotech66]

Don't think so much its toys focused, but lack of combat focused.  In a standard DnD Game, if the players go crazy in the in, they might get 10-20 minutes before a guard shows up to check things out the carnage.

If you went crazy in a bar today or in the future of Shadowrun, you might get less then five minutes before the cops show up shooting.

Also, combat is MUCH more deadly in the sixth world than DnD.  In DnD, you get hit with a crossbow, take you d8/d10 and go about your day.  But, you take a good hit in Shadowrun, and fail your defense rolls hard?  You might drop a character in one hit.  There is NO resurrection or teleportation by choice.  When the players play, make sure the stress that this world is much more realistic then their standard DnD.

Don't consider this harping on a system.  I too run a crap load of DnD encounters at my FLGS, but many of my DnD players have problems with the change in tone.

[Tacitus05]

Just one point? Yeah Shadowrun in general is more deadly, and can be in SRMs, BUT you can always burn an edge. Which means your character cant die as long as you have five karma to spend. Whenever someone dies in SRMs the question becomes is it worth keeping the character? You always have a choice.

That said, SRMs involve alot of thinking outside the box to get around problems, which is a different pace than say PFS. I find PFS more tactical, SRMs more strategic.

As for you never know who you are going to be sitting at a table with, reccomend all SRM characters have a good "back up" ability. Your a Face? dabble a bit in B&E. Your a Technomancer? Throw some drones in to help with surveillance. You get the idea.

[Pollution]

Pros:

• Continuous story, and they're pretty engaging.
• Decent Karma and NuYen rewards (as opposed to some GMs who are really tight fisted in that department)
• You know that you're accessing the same resources as other players so you don't end up against some CRAZY OP character every game (you'll see em, but it's pretty rare).
• You can play anywhere you want with your character, as long as you're not redoing missions (you can redo them,  but there's no reward for it).
• Karma for Cash or Cash for Karma is AMAZING.  Y2,000 per Karma is a steal, and if you're Karma expensive, it's great, if you're a Sam, and need more cash than Karma, it's awesome.

Cons:

• Not a lot of missions available as of yet.  They're on 3... after a year....  There are 8 others that are available in Firing Lines and Sprawls Wild.  But anything else you're looking at going to cons, hoping for a spot at a table.  There are reasons for only have 3 out, but still...there's only 3, so at most, 11 without cons.  If you play once a month, you're out of games unless you go to a Con.
• IMO, insane system for gear.  Purchasing gear is nigh on impossible at anything above 12 availability.  I have a face with 18 dice on a negotiation test and I can buy pretty much whatever I want, but most people play non-faces and have at most Availability 8 available to them for purchase.
• The Calendar is a pain in the butt sometimes.  I much preferred Season 4, where if you had the karma, you bought it.  No training time on your calendar.  it was assumed you were working on getting your Str to 3 for a while, and the Karma finished it off.  In Season 5....  Not so much.  As a mundane it's a royal pain to juggle Buying gear, Spending Karma, and paying for lifestyle all while keeping the standard one game per calendar month going.  you REALLY end up juggling for hours trying to get things to line up right.
• Since it takes so long to train some things, it FILLS your calendar with training.  Going from 4 to 5 in a skill is a royal pain in the butt.  I feel bad for Technomancers and Mages.  Initiation + Magic/Res costs and training are brutal.  You'll have 2 months dedicated to 1 training sesson some times, and you have to have a week there where you go on a run.  A friend of mine has filled 2 years on his calendar already and is only Initiate Grade 3, Magic 8.  It's funny to look at his sheet (M2W1 - Magic Training, M2W2 - Magic Training, M2W3 - Magic Training, M2W4 - Magic Training, M3W1 - Game, Lifestyle, M3W2 - Man of the People, M3W3 - Magic Training)  It's hilarious.

[ZeConster]

• IMO, insane system for gear.  Purchasing gear is nigh on impossible at anything above 12 availability.  I have a face with 18 dice on a negotiation test and I can buy pretty much whatever I want, but most people play non-faces and have at most Availability 8 available to them for purchase.

Having a Connection-5 contact at Loyalty 2 gives them 12 dice, meaning they can get anything up to 15 Availability (although 12-15 will take twice as long).

[Kincaid]

I play a lot of Missions and I'm really enjoying this season.  However, I'll add to the Cons list that it's harder to develop your character in SRM than it would be in a normal game.  You have different GMs and different players all the time, so whatever small seeds to character development you planted in the last session are completely unknown.  If you're like me (which is to say, weirdly committed to this stuff), you'll end up creating an entire character arc for your guy/gal that just about nobody will ever know the slightest thing about.

[Namikaze]

Yeah, Missions are very self-contained by their very nature.  But, if you're fortunate enough to get a chance to play at some of the really big cons, let those freak flags fly.  Your character might end up getting mentioned in a future book.  Or at least, that's my theory on some of the NPCs that end up in the books, anyway.

[Pollution]

• IMO, insane system for gear.  Purchasing gear is nigh on impossible at anything above 12 availability.  I have a face with 18 dice on a negotiation test and I can buy pretty much whatever I want, but most people play non-faces and have at most Availability 8 available to them for purchase.

Having a Connection-5 contact at Loyalty 2 gives them 12 dice, meaning they can get anything up to 15 Availability (although 12-15 will take twice as long).

Fair enough.  I don't suffer from this at all, as I'm a Face,and can buy anything up to Avail 19 in standard delivery time and  Avail 35 in 2x the time.  I'm also rockin' an 18 dice pool for Negotiation though.  If I could just get TWO more dice, I could buy a frickin Stealth Bomber from MilSpec Tech 2...  Lol.

But, my point still stands on this.  Your average runner is going to say, "Ohhhh, my Troll needs a Krime Kannon!"  Avail 20....  DREK!!!! 

(For the record, you can have a Face buy it for you, but it eats at their calendar, so you'll pay extra for it.  I bought the above mentioned boom stick for a player at my table and I charged him an extra 5k since I run Mid Lifestyle and it sent me over to the next month before I could do my "Workin' for the Man" action that month. As a Face, I offer that service to anyone at my table at a standard 5k + 15% markup for anything that takes more than a week and 10k + 25% for a month (never had anyone wanna pay me 25k for a delivery yet so haven't determined what the cost for a 35 availability item is yet).

[Kincaid]

If someone is playing a low-Charisma character and s/he doesn't spend any karma in chargen on contacts, I assume that it's somehow relevant to the character (and those characters shouldn't be dreaming of stockings filled with Raidens).  Even a Cha 1 misanthrope only needs to spend 4 karma to get Juan or Simon at Loyalty 2.  It's essentially impossible to run three or four Missions and not have a workable base of contacts.  The Krime Kannon should be something a character works towards, not something you casually pick up after run #3.

[Pollution]

If someone is playing a low-Charisma character and s/he doesn't spend any karma in chargen on contacts, I assume that it's somehow relevant to the character (and those characters shouldn't be dreaming of stockings filled with Raidens).  Even a Cha 1 misanthrope only needs to spend 4 karma to get Juan or Simon at Loyalty 2.  It's essentially impossible to run three or four Missions and not have a workable base of contacts.  The Krime Kannon should be something a character works towards, not something you casually pick up after run #3.

Again, fair point, but your average Tank or Troll Boom-Stick wielder isn't gonna be putting points into anything not BANG related at chargen (usually).  I agree though, that getting Simon would be beneficial at the least.  But the idea that they're "working towards" an item that costs less than they make in 2 runs and is arguably needed for some runs (I'm looking at you, Mr. Toxic Wave Shaman BBEG) is unfortunate.  I still say that 30 min of gametime (if available) could be used for negotiation tests to buy gear.  Dedicated post game Purchasing time would be fine IMHO.  You could even use Edge, if you have any left.

Mages and Technomancers get to summon Sprites and Spirits pre game if they want, why not let the Street Sammie buy stuff post game?  It's not like there isn't a slot on the Mission Report for doing something like that, AND there's a GM signature on the thing that says, "Yup, he rolled good for it."  The downtime stuff annoys me is all.  My real complaint with Missions is that there are only 11 available for play as of now, unless you spend tons of money going to cons.