I just finished DMing this adventure as a brand new SR GM with brand new SR players (though I have 15+ years experience playing RPG and the most inexperienced of my players has 10+). Each of them took one of the archetypes in the SR 5 book as their player character and we thought we would use this introductory adventure to get a feel for the setting and the rules before they would create their own characters and we would start a campaign.
They selected the following characters: Combat Mage (p 116), Brawling Adept (p 117), Decker (p 121), Drone Rigger (p 124).
I'm entering spoiler territory now:
[spoiler]
The story started well enough, no problem to get the first commlink back, the rigger sent his insect-type drone to inspect the motel, found the dead body, so the players took it easy by renting two rooms then sneaking into the room. I made the mistake of letting the decker direct-connect to the lock thinking that could override connecting to the overall lock system of the motel, but all in all, it went well.
They got the money, then decided to analyze the commlink. My first doubt, which is not dispelled by the scenario or the rule book: why does your OS increase when connecting to the commlink? Wouldn't you just turn its wireless off and direct connect with your cyberdeck? Anyway, the OS did not reach 40, so no big deal for the decker. They got the information, reached out to their contacts to find someone to sell it to. Since the brawling adept has a contact in the Triads, they got attacked by the Mitsuhama ninja squad.
Since this was a surprise attack, I decided that the decker would be unarmored (since he wouldn't keep his armor while at home), while the other players could be fully decked in their equipment since they had to travel to meet him at his place. The fight resulted in a TPK, with the decker actually lasting the longest (since he understood he had to stay away or he'd die too quickly)
They took the lieutenant out of the fight in the first turn, then managed to down 2 ninjas.
The mage made the mistake of casting an offensive spell with a too low force rating, being afraid of the drain, then got ganked out by most of the ninja squad (geek the mage!). He also did not have any spirit summoned, because we had not understood their importance to the mage.
The rigger was also without most of his drones since this was a surprise attack in an ally's place.
The decker had to hide most of the fight and has terrible combat stats anyway, so I'm not sure it would have made a huge difference.
The combat adept did well, but got overwhelmed.
I rolled back their deaths and we decided to keep on playing the scenario. All in all, this was quite deadly for brand new players, but we learned a lot about the characters and their abilities. The players were a bit down, but understood that it's the kind of pains you have to go through when learning new rules and a new setting.
They then got contacted by Dietrich and met him at the zoo. Being a public place with the entrance protected by UCAS military, they were inside once again with no drone (the players clearly feel that the rigger is in a bad spot) and no weapons. The chimera assassins hit Dietrich, freeing a basilisk.
The decker, once again, had nothing to do. He searched Dietrich's body and got the credsticks and the commlink.
The rigger got downed by a sniper's shot added to a wetworker's shot, but was useless anyway with no drone and no weapon.
The brawling adept closed with the assassin further away from the sniper, but was totally ineffective, even though he is an unarmed fighter. The 18 armor + 8 body of the wetworkers means that he was only able to inflict a single point of damage before being downed.
The mage did well: he summoned a Force 6 fire spirit that basically took care of the basilisk on its own, then was able to kill the adept's wetworker with a fire spell. He was then killed by the sniper and the second wetworker.
The players did better, but were saved only by the fact that the assassins are supposed to run after 1 turn (which makes no sense to me, with a turn being 3 seconds and the possibility to finish off a group of shadowrunners who were talking with their target). Anyway, the decker was able to attach a medkit to his allies to get them back up, they were interrogated by the UCAS military then got home.
We kept going, they decrypted the second commlink and got the various offers. They decided to sell to Mitsuhama despite their attack, because they wanted Brackhaven out (so selling to Zane was a no-no and Ares did not seem committed to ousting him), but wanted more money than Project Freedom were willing to offer. The exchange went ok, then they were offered the infiltration job.
The infiltration went terribly: either I missed something, or it is simply impossible for starting characters.
First of all, they did not scout the place astrally or in the matrix. That's a new player problem, so I allowed them a roll back so that they could (otherwise, they would have been attacked by the turret and seen by the cameras on the roof).
Then, the difficulty for any of the security hacking is much too high: you need to get 2 marks on the security host, which rolls 15 dice to defend (Firewall 10 + Device Rating 7 - 2 for running silent). The decker had taken the Psyche that was given by Mistuhama and was using the deck they offered for the job. That means he had 15 dice to roll too (Logic 5 (7) + Psyche 1 + Hacking 7 + Specialization 2 - 2 for running silent), though I might have needed to impose a further -2 for being on a different grid, but I wasn't sure if host were considered on a host or not. He rolled ok and I didn't, so he got the two marks, which means he was in the host. Now, he just needed to hack every device on their way: a Control Device action with 9 dice (Electronic Warfare 6 + Intuition 4 + Psyche 1 - 2 for running silent) vs the turret's 13 dice (Device Rating 5 + Host Firewall 10 - 2 for running silent), the 4 cameras' 11 dice (Device Rating 3 + Host Firewall 10 - 2 for running silent) and the doors' maglocks' 13 dice (Device Rating 3 or 5 + Host Firewall 10 - 2 for running silent) [I wasn't even sure how the anti-tampering system were supposed to be applied since he was trying to open it from the matrix]. All the while, a patrol IC is making Matrix Perception checks with 12 dice (Device Rating 7 - 2 for running silent) against the decker's 15 (Logic 7 + Psyche 1 + Sleaze 7) [I wasn't sure if running silent should impose the - 2 to this defense or not]. Obviously, the decker did not succeed all those checks at the first attempt, which means the device and the host got a mark on him, which alerted them to his presence.
Just the number of checks to do was overwhelming, but their difficulty means there is no way he would be able to get them all. Being detected, they decide to stop bothering about the cameras and just head for the elevators (the stairs would have taken much too long - 45 floors!). Obviously, in the matrix, the host was aware of the decker's presence, so started sending IC, which he had trouble fending off as he had to be in AR since he had to physically move at the same time. I was lenient, and they arrived on the 10th floor where they were welcomed by the floor's 3 security guards.
They found the server room with its motion sensors which the decker turned off (otherwise they're much too tough for him to fool them), before connecting to the data host. The difficulty of the search plus the time it takes to make it means that the patrol IC 12 dice against the decker's 15 means he was found out after 4 or 5 rounds and had to stay in for 20. He got fried by the Black IC.
Meanwhile, the rest of the players faced two other guard waves and finally went down. The mage could have done well, but the mana barrier means not all of his spirits could get in.
[/spoiler]
After 2 TPKs and a 3rd one that would have been if I hadn't stuck to the scenario to the letter and being outclassed in every challenge posed by the scenario, the players are clearly discouraged and really do not feel like starting a Shadowrun campaign.
The story of the scenario is good, the setup is great, but this clearly is not an introductory adventure. I had to do a lot of searching in the core rulebook to handle most of the situations, the players felt completely out of their depths, and my feeling is that even if
they were not new to the game, new
characters would have been as overwhelmed. I'm pretty sure I forgot a lot of things during the fights (I would have had to flip between the rule book and the scenario to get the descriptions of the augmentations and the cyber equipment of the adversaries, so I hand waved them away) and still, each one of them ended with the whole party down (though they probably would have won the first fight if they had known the game better).
If you and your players played SR 4 and are trying to get into SR 5, this is probably a good scenario for you. The challenge is high, but commensurate with the rewards. But if you're brand new to the game like us, this is clearly not want an introductory adventure should be like.
