[biotech66]

I'm the one whining in the house rules section and on my blog that I don't get enough story.  My favorite co-op card game is the LotR card game and the big advantage that game has over this one is story.  Crossfire beats it straight up for speed of character/deck generation.

Close the portal has some real focus to what events and obstacles can occur during play.  By limiting the deck size, I only get events the make sense in the story of the scenario.  I'll even keep my cards in order if you promise me some focus to the game.  Heck, Ill even enjoy the kick in the teeth difficulty of this game, so I get a better Shadowrun story!

Even better,  make some Origins/GenCon specific scenarios with custom obstacle and crossfire decks.  Just saying....

[Lickintoad]

I could see this happen in expansions.  Adding more cards is cool and all, but at some point, decks will get unwieldy.  Choosing which cards from the base set and which from expansions go into certain decks can help focus the narrative of new scenarios and keep decks under control.  They'd also allow for some more specific Crossfire cards like Harlequin's Shadow, which is apparently just for the Portal mission.

We could, of course, create our own scenarios with random cards in our Crossfire, black market and Obstacle decks, but I'd like to see some more story focus on some CGL-drafted scenarios.

[Jamelfr]

I add my voice for story-driven expansions.

[DeathStrobe]

I was actually thinking we (the community) should try to make some runs doing that.

I was thinking of how to simulate a data steal. We'll want 3 scenarios.

Maybe Leg Work, where we fight Street threats, showing we're helping contacts and solving their problems for intel. And doing work here should possibly lower the difficulty for the next scenarios, or increase the difficulty, showing contacts that are helping or have sold the runners out. Not sure how this would work yet.

Then the data steal. The Host would be like the dragon. Maybe needs 12 colorless damage, and then 8 hacker damage. Or maybe you could pick between fighting 3 obstacles and need to do 6 face 6 magic and 6 weapons, or 1 obstacle and need to do 10 hacking.

After that is getting out of dodge. Where you'll need to fight of the corporate HTR team and just survive.

I'm not sold of the leg work phase, because I can't think how it'd work just yet.

[Jamelfr]

Community can certaintly offer homemade missions : your idea has really great potential, DeathStrobe. I was thinking about taking a short story from the book Spell and Chrome and make a mission out of it... But free time is not a common ressource recently... 

That beind said, I hope that the game developers have future plan for expansions. There is a lot of unused space in the box, so I can only imagine this space is for future cards to be bought. It would be a good thing if the developers give some info about this (if they can of course)...

[Namikaze]

DeathStrobe, I like your idea.  Here's my take:

Data Steal

Setup

• If a runner goes Critical in scenes 1 or 2, then the mission is a failure
• Reduce number of obstacles to only cover those obstacles with a corporate affiliation

Scene 1: Gathering intel

• Only normal obstacles, until everyone has an obstacle
• Clearing all obstacles ends the scene
• End of scene, everyone gets healed 1 HP, gets to buy an item from the Black Market with a discount equal to the Crossfire level - 2

Scene 2: Breaking in

• Hard obstacles equal to Crossfire level, then Normal obstacles until everyone has 1 obstacle
• Clearing all obstacles ends the scene
• End of scene, players can choose between everyone getting 2HP or moving on
• If the players forgo healing, then Scene 3 gets only Normal obstacles
• If the players choose to rest up, then Scene 3 gets only Hard obstacles

Scene 3: Getting out

• Obstacles as determined by player consensus at end of Scene 2
• Clear all obstacles to end scene
• End of scene, mission successful

Rewards

• Mission successful: 3 Karma
• Mission abort: 1 Karma
• Mission fail: 0 Karma

Thoughts?

[DeathStrobe]

I actually just put a little bit of thought behind it just now. Let me know what you think.

Data Steal
A milk run, the Johnson says. We’ll see about that. Time for a good ol’ fashion data steal. That corp server won’t know what hit them.

Difficulty: Hard? Untested yet
Runners: 4? Untested

Mission Goal: Your team will break into a corporate facility to get the pay data for Mr. Johnson in 3 scenes.

First Scene is leg work, where you’ll probe the facility for weaknesses or help your contacts resolve problems. Be warned, you might alert the corporation or your contacts might sell you out if you don’t help them.

Second scene is breaking in to the facility and stealing the data. Its possible to brute force your way in  and just steal the hardware on the host. Or you can have your decker try to break the Host’s security and steal the data that way.

Third scene is getting out of dodge. Fight off the HTR team or people looking for the bounty the corp just put on your heads.

Obstacles and Crossfire: Look into culling the deck for each scene. (will figure this out later)

The same rules as Crossfire.

Ending a Scene:

To end a scene depends on conditions of the scene.

Ending a scene, heal 1 point of damage. Everyone can buy a card from the black market. Crossfire card goes to the bottom of the deck.

Playing with Fewer than Four Runners & Karma Awards & Karma Scaling:

The same rules as Crossfire.

Scene 1

Set up the Obstacles.

You have 1 round to kill the Obstacles to help your contacts. Doing so will help you. Or hinder you if you can’t kill them in 1 round.

Rewards

• Face – One Less Obstacle during Scene 2
• Decker – Do not draw the Crossfire card for the first round of combat in Scene 2
• Street Sam – Everyone gets 2 nuyen
• Mage – All obstacles take 1 level of damage in Scene 2

Failure

• Face – Add 1 Obstacle to Scene 2
• Decker – Add one Crossfire card to the discard deck, do not resolve any of its abilities
• Street Sam – Reduce the size of the black market by 1 card by discarding the most expensive card. If there are 2 cards the same cost, the Street Sam decides which to discard.
• Mage – All Players receive 1 point of damage

Scene 2

Set up Obstacles (+1 if you didn’t defeat the mage’s Obstacle in Scene 1 or -1 if you did).

Draw the first Crossfire card (unless you defeated the decker’s Obstacle).

You need to get the pay data off the server. It is a 5th player, similar to the Client in the Extraction Run.

You can either physically steal the hardware running the Host, by doing 6 face damage, 6 magic damage, and 6 weapon damage in any order. Than lastly you’ll need to do 8 colorless damage.

Or

You can hack the host by dealing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 hacking damage in that order.

Once the server is defeated, survive for one round starting from the person that defeated the server (unless all obstacles are defeated, than just end scene) and than Scene 2 ends.

Scene 3

Set up Obstacles.

Draw Crossfire card.

Defeat all Obstacles.

Once all Obstacles are defeated, you win. You deliver the pay data and get the high score. Level up. High five.

Karma
1 million! - 999,997

[Namikaze]

It sounds brutal!  I would probably resolve the hacking as 8 points of Hacking damage at once - similar to the dragon boss.  The rest of it seems reasonable.  One round to defeat your obstacles in Scene 1 is painful - it should be fun though.  I like the variety as a result of success or failure.

[DeathStrobe]

Yeah, I'm not sure about those numbers yet. I'll need to play test to truly understand how hard I made scene two. But I wanted to make it a choice between just ripping the server out, which shouldn't be very easy, or just hacking the host, which would include cybercombat with IC, data search to find the file, disarm the data bomb, break protection, and copy the file. I figured the easier levels would be hit by the other players, while the last few turns would be the decker shuffling their non hacking cards until they get what they need to do massive amounts of hacking damage.

I also, like the idea of scene 1. You really have to prioritize what you kill. I also wanted to give them somewhat thematic rewards. Like the Face is able to use his contacts to get someone to be off duty for the night. The Decker subverts the security system, so the alarms take longer to set off. The Street Sam does a quick wetwork job or some other odd job to get everyone some extra cash. And the mage casts a powerful ritual magic to harm or slow down the corp sec.

The mage's reward is actually the only one I'm not super happy about, but I can't think of anything else very magic like.

[Lickintoad]

I'd swap the bonus and penalty for the Face and Street Sam.  It makes more sense to me that way.  The Street Sam would be taking out targets (and thus tied to the presence/absence of obstacles), and the Face would be making deals with people (and affecting the payout of the run and availability of certain items in the black market).

I like the idea of Scene 1, but it seems weird that there's a bonus if you succeed, but a penalty if you don't.  Maybe have it so that, should you remove the obstacles in a single round, you get the bonuses.  If you can't remove them in two, then you get the penalties.  Just from the list, I know I'd prioritize the Mage obstacle.  Health is a precious commodity.

[DeathStrobe]

I'd swap the bonus and penalty for the Face and Street Sam.  It makes more sense to me that way.  The Street Sam would be taking out targets (and thus tied to the presence/absence of obstacles), and the Face would be making deals with people (and affecting the payout of the run and availability of certain items in the black market).

I like the idea of Scene 1, but it seems weird that there's a bonus if you succeed, but a penalty if you don't.  Maybe have it so that, should you remove the obstacles in a single round, you get the bonuses.  If you can't remove them in two, then you get the penalties.  Just from the list, I know I'd prioritize the Mage obstacle.  Health is a precious commodity.

I think that makes sense to swap the Street Sam and Face's rewards.

The penalty is for showing that your contacts have either burned you or that since you failed to do your legwork you accidently notify the corp. I don't want to make it 2 rounds long, since it'll be very possible to kill everything in 2 rounds. I wanted to make the decision on what to kill more meaningful, so restricting it to one round will will do just that.

I also agree that the Mage's target should be a high priority, but as I had play tested last night, I had to choose between killing the Face and Decker's Obstacles, or taking out the Street Sam's or Mage's. I figured 2 was better than 1, so I went with the two I could kill. But I'll need to do more play testing to see how this works out.

[JustLogan]

7 hacking in one can be an impossible goal. As max hand size without draw aid is 5 and to hit 5 one color you would have to draw 2 hacking in one draw.