[Ricochet]

Sprawl Wilds 01 Manhunt

I'm very glad we started out our season 5 with Spawl Wilds.  Not only did it let us get started already (with our first session last night), but it let us start in Seattle (which I still feel is the center of the universe for Shadowrun), and the first mission was a good one.  I'm going to try and not spoil this while giving a quick review (and the recommendation that others start here as well if they weren't lucky enough to start at Origins.)

What I liked:
1) This mission used a good variety of skills.  We had an elf mage, a rigger, two fighter types (an orc ganger and a former corp bodyguard), and a security expert.  Every character had at least one moment where they shined, and sometimes it was using skills that were somewhat unexpected to play a role in your typical shadowrun.

2) The plot involves mystery solving, and included a couple of surprises that once resolved made things make sense in the bigger picture.  So although the story is fairly simple overall (due to time constraints on mission formats) it had a couple layers.

3) The vehicle/travel parts of the adventure were great for really establishing the setting of the module.  It had been a long time since I'd played in the Redmond Barrens, but it was immediately recognizable from these scenes.  (My original campaign I played in during the early 90's centered on the Barrens, so playing in the Barrens felt like home when it comes to Shadowrun.)

4) The antagonists had a nice variety providing a fight unlike any I'd played to my memory.  And the fact that a number of actions from earlier factored into the fight heavily was nice too.

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1) I wish there was more.  Knowing that no only is this mission format, but we will be heading to Chicago, it is a shame leaving the interesting characters and locations behind.  I'm guessing we won't see them again (although maybe a couple will show up in later sprawl wilds missions over the next few weeks?)

2) It was costly.  Not sure it had to be, but this mission (and the fight in particular) ended up costing a lot.  It was cheap for me, who was burning standard ammo single shot, but our heavy hitters spent quite a bit, and a lost drone hurt most of all cash wise.  I'm sure other groups likely got through cheaper.

3) The adventure includes background count, in spite of no SR5 rules for background count yet.  (We reverted to SR4 rules to cover it.
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Great start in for the new season.  Hope the SRM5 stuff starts coming out by the time we finish off the wilds.

[Ricochet]

Sprawl Wilds 02 - Carbon Copy

I'll admit, I don't have a ton of mission experience, but I will say this is the most loot I've ever seen in a mission.  Some orc fixer named McCallister was trying to hire us.  He seemed well equipped, well liquored up, and desperate do to some killer on the loose.  Seeing that he was drunk, it made it easier for our face to convince him to move the meeting somewhere more private, where a few rounds of ammo made for a big payday.

He was evidently a retired shadowrunner, and had a great deck, which we hope to crack and get transferred over in time.  With some legwork, we found out his kids are currently runners, which could be a problem, so we decided to track down this killer he was so afraid of, eventually finding him, and cutting a deal with him to work together and track down McCallister's family before they could come after us.

The press and police when into a panic when a famous killer not only made another kill, but made multiple kills in different locations at the same time.

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What I liked:
1) We are rich!  Between the fixer's gear he had on him, the gear we got out of his safehouse we tracked down, and the gear off his kids, that is an awful lot of loot.  (Now if we can get the FAQ to know how much we can keep.

2) Getting to be a true psychopathic killer team isnt' something I've seen teams be able to do.  And I'd never heard of these murders before (not a 4th ed player), but after doing a quick google after the game, this killer is evidently a big deal, and should make a good contact in the future.

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What I didn't like:
1) None of this really happened.  Hi Bull.  I'll get the real session notes up from this afternoon up later...but this was from the post-game discussion.

[Bull]

<laugh>  Nice.

[Ricochet]

Sprawl Wilds 02 - Carbon Copy (For Real This Time)

Wait a minute?  2 mystery/investigation/puzzle missions in a row?  I love this book.  One of the true things I said in the fake results was that I really knew nothing of the serial killer in this one, so although we learned a lot during the legwork and investigation phase, it wasn't until googling after the game that we really knew that this mission was a bigger deal in the metaplot.  However, without having that metagame knoweledge, we found it to be a fun mission.  Once again, I don't want to spoil things, especially since this is a new mission altogether (if I understand it right), but it is heavy on the social and investigating stuff up front, with a big finale fight.  Although the mix of skills in it wasn't quite up to what was needed in the first mission of the book, it still let a number of characters play a big part, and this gives much more opportunity to make the most of contacts, matrix searches, and face skills to really dig in on the info.

I didn't get the impact of the other NPC's either until after the session.  I didn't know it was Bull in or out of character until the GM told us out of character while people were karma shopping.  (Evidently we were just short of finding that info in game while doing some legwork on him.)

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What I liked:
1) I love investigations, puzzle solving, and mysteries, so this was right up my alley. Although it was a little weird working WITH the cops, it was actually a bit refreshing.

2) We got Redmond Barrons in mission 1, and now we get another iconic Seattle location playing a major role, the Ork Underground.  This is another great location unique to Seattle, so it brings back a lot of good gaming memories.

3) There were a number of interesting characters in this one, and you see some believable depth behind them as things unfold.

What I didn't like
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1) The big fight was decent.  It didn't seem as epic as the fights in mission 1 though.  Maybe we overplanned it or something, but it seemed over before it started in spite of the main antagonist being far stronger than anyone in our group and even the goons with him totally outclassing us.  We did lose two more drones in this one though, including a Lynx.  (Or rigger is pretty depressed being down 4 drones in 2 sessions.)

2) I was a little mixed about how the final scene played out.  I understand it, but if I didn't think that it would ruin future missions for us, or possibly get us killed, I was ready to start another fight over the last scene.  I would likely prefer not to do runs for this particular fixer again, although when its a choice of "ok, then you don't play tonight", I'll give in for OOC reasons.

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I have a comlink upgrade now sitting in the box of "may I use it?" gear.  Not to mention more nice guns.

[Ricochet]

Sprawl Wilds Mission 3: Ashes

RIP Kit.  Yes, that's right, our first player death in a mission.  She had nobody to blame, but herself.  Was it a big firefight with a dragon, or even a corporate strike team that caused her death.  It was greed.  Let me explain, a bit.  We were in the goblin market, which is a mix of tourist retailers and black market shops in the orc underground.  The whole place was on fire.  While most of us decided to do our best to either evacuate people or fight the fire, our orc ex-ganger and current professional looter had his eyes go huge at the sight of evacuated shops.  It was all going to burn anyway, wasn't it?  He convinced the rigger/decker (Kit) that one of the shops would probably have a significant deck upgrade.  Despite fire closing in, she waited just a bit too long with her eyes on a Farilight Excalibur, the holy grail of decks.  At least she helped Knight Errant get access to systems before she went on her looting run.  The team has also added her remaining gear to the "box of stuff" we don't know if it's legal to use.  (On a side note, the orc not only survived, but he looted up a storm while doing so...also adding to the box of gear.  Another note, the box of gear now will be a garage of gear since it includes both a van and a number of drones, so we needed a bigger box.)

You might also note this is way early.  A couple players will be out of town next weekend, so we decided to do a Sunday afternoon bonus session to stay on schedule and finish all 4 and hopefully an SRM (if it comes out) by GenCon.

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What I liked:

1) Having played all of season 1 SRMs (3rd edition) and the first two Sprawl Wilds, I think that this module contained the best action scene I've seen in any mission related content I've played.  Even better, it's not a combat.  The orc underground fire mentioned above had so much going on, and so many ways to contribute in a short period of time, I really have to tip the hat to whoever was the author on this one.  Even the player who died (knowing it was their fault) thought it was an awesome scene.

2) Follow up the great action scene...with a great social scene with the potential to be a huge combat/action at any moment.  This made for another great intense scene, without anyone having to fire a shot.

3) It probably is due to the loss of our rigger before the fight, but this fight proved to be the hardest one we have had.  Although it didn't feel as epic as the critters from the first mission, this was rough.  The ambush on the first wave made this look like a fight about as easy as mission 2 at the end, but the second wave caught us off guard, and almost resulted in 2 deaths.  If it weren't for scavenging a couple smartgun platforms and assault rifles before the fight, we'd have been toast.

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1) There isn't much to add here on this one.  For the mission format, this one was awesome coming after the other two. I love mysteries and this definitely wasn't one, but since the first two fit that style, the fact this one was all action really wasn't a downside.

2) Two missions in a row in the orc underground (although the other one was only partially there.)  Lots of cool places in Seattle.  If I only get 4 missions in the city, I hope to see more locations used.  That's a pretty minor complaint though, the Orc Underground is pretty awesome and was tailor made for this mission.

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I don't know if convention missions are designed to be better than normal missions, or if things just improved that much from season 1 to season 4 (I'm betting on the latter), but the first three definitely seemed to be a step up from the early stuff.

[Bull]

Initially those two adventures were a "preview" of the Ork (with a "k", not a "c" Underground because they debuted before Season 4 started up, and the Ork UNderground was a big focus for Season 4.  Plus up till that point it hadn't been fleshed out much, so it was a big goal of ours to flesh out and define the OU a bit.

[Ricochet]

I know better on Ork.  Spellcheck thinks it's smarter though.

I hope the 4th mission lives up to the other 3.  I was very happy with them and they fit Seattle well.  I also hope the Chicago missions do as good of a job bringing out the feel of Chicago. 

Side story from this mission:
Drek, the team's ork ex-ganger, really was built playing up a troublemaker.  I wanted to throw a few facts about Drek out there:
1) Drek considered himself a "professional looter", priding himself on "getting the good stuff" when riots occurred.  (He even spent knowledge skills on "looting" at 6, to prove he was a professional.)
2) Drek fireproofed his jacket because "during a riot, the fires have the best loot...nobody even knows it's gone."

Although Drek has tried to take just about anything not nailed down in previous sessions, the great fire of the ork underground resulted in Drek being the funny out of character to break the tension of the intense scene just a little bit.  If the GM didn't put a lot of limits on what he could physically carry, he'd have tried to drag whole kiosks out of there.  His biggest regret wasn't that the rigger died during the fire, it was that the rigger didn't find a way to drive the van down to the market so they could load it up.

[PittsburghRPGA]

His biggest regret wasn't that the rigger died during the fire, it was that the rigger didn't find a way to drive the van down to the market so they could load it up.

Nice. Very nice indeed.  If you folks were still doing Season 4, he's exactly the sort my go ganger Road Rash Doll would have tried to recruit into the 405 Hellhounds.

Eric

[Tacitus05]

Just finished playing the first Sprawl Wilds this weekend, and it was a Blast! We did "Manhunt" and it was well written and loads of fun. The story was pretty good, and we did it with:
1. Technomancer (btw..wife says these are alot of fun to play in fifth)
2. Combat Shaman
3. Gun fu Adept
4. Troll Sammy
5. Non cybered/ non magic Face (kudos to my friend larry for his character "Fat Vito"
6. Mystic Adept B&E expert.

The mission really got us pumped up for Gencon

[Ricochet]

Sprawl Wilds Mission 4: Humanitarian Aid

Our former decker/rigger decided to go with an adept the second time around, after being greatly disappointed with current rigger rules/content.  The complaints:
1) Drones are very easy to blow up.  So we had a high attrition rate on drones.  The rigger's costs for replacement were actually more than income from the missions.  (Fortunately, they had bought extra drones to warehouse, so they didn't have to buy replacements, but they still were watching the warehouse stocks shrink.
2) Lack of costs for autosofts made combat drones far less useful.  They hardly could hit anything.

Decking was fun, but there were limited decking opportunities in most missions so far other than legwork or trying to brick stuff.  (Mission 3 actually had the most interesting decking opportunities that we saw, and that was right before the character died.)

So, on to the mission.  This was my least favorite mission of the set, for various reasons below.  It wasn't a bad mission, but after the first 3, I felt a little let down by it.

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What I liked:

1) Background Count.  This came up a couple of times during previous missions, but it was a big thing in this mission.  I don't really want to see background count all the time every mission, but I do like it being involved in missions since it makes teams depend on non-magical solutions more during the investigations and even more in the final battle.

2) The most challenging combat we had in the set of 4 missions.
  A) Very nasty spirits with higher dice pools than anything else I recall facing.
  B) Background Count 4, which was pretty crippling with an adept, a full mage, and a mystic adept in our group of 5.  No astral scouting, reduced adept powers x2, greatly reduced spells, and greatly reduced spirit ability, and this adds up to major impact.
  C) No drones to bail us out.
If it wasn't for some automated targeting platfroms lifted from the goblin market during the fire in mission 3, I really don't think we'd have made it through this one.  As it was, we had 3 of 5 members unconcious or paralyzed by the end of the fight, and I really think the GM went easy on us holding back the biggest nastiest villain until the rest of the enemies were dispatched, and using our surprisingly useful babysitter to help us out.  Considering most of our party had advanced by about 35 karma and we still got our butts handed to us, this was one tough fight.  Although there were some really fun fights, I hadn't had a fight since the first mission that I ever felt we were in real danger.

3) Being on a timer.  Although there wasn't an exact timer on the mission, every minute wasted could result in more lives lost. More mercenary groups probably wouldn't care, but since we play a "good" group of shadowrunners this looming over us kept things moving well, and really drove home the frustration when we weren't getting much info out of legwork.  Although the 2nd mission kind of felt like a timer at times (you didn't want the killer to get another victim) this mission was the only one where we were in a real hurry at every moment from the negotiations to the final fight, and bringing vaccines back to the town.

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1) Karma Reward.  Altruistic mission.  Check.  Lower pay?  Check.  Higher karma - nope.  I think this mission should have been 8 karma  instead of the 6 karma.  I know it's a minor thing in the scheme of things, but I felt the karma reward went against the spirit of the mission.  Usually, I'm stingy as a GM with karma, and I don't complain much about low rewards, but this is just one of those instances.

2) Wasted boat ride.  A ferry gets used to cross boarders, then you transfer into an Ares Roadmaster.  Since the final location is a bay, I'd have preferred to see the boat used more, and possibly staging an optional action scene there, since the boat creates an interesting setting.

3) More spirits.  This one isn't a problem with the module itself, but I'm looking at this within the group of missions, so as the 4th of 4, this is the one that gets dinged.  In 4 missions, 3 of them centered around rare possessing spirit  types as a major portion of the plot.  By this mission, players were joking that "someone possessed by spirits did it", so when that actually was the finale of the mission, it was kind of a letdown.  I would actually say, this is the main flaw of Sprawl Wilds as a book.

[Ricochet]

Note: We played under the 4E background count rules, making this much nastier.  Under the 1.0 Hotpatch rules, we should have -4 dice pools for adept and magic use. 

Under the 4E rules we had the following penalties, which is what made this so deadly:
1) Adept was lowered from 6 magic to 2 magic, losing 4 power points in abilities, including improved reflexes.
2) Adept's 2 point focus was reduced to 0, removing 2 additional power points.
3) Magician Lowered from magic 6 to magic 2, making summoning and casting much less effective.  (She didn't even try to summon.)
4) Magician's 2 point power focus was reduced to 0 (making #3 more severe.
5) Magician's 3 point sustaining focus was reduced to 0.
6) Mystic Adept magic rating lowered to 1.  This removed 4 points in adept powers including improved reflexes.  This also made casting extremely difficult, so it wasn't used.

[Chrona]

1) Karma Reward.  Altruistic mission.  Check.  Lower pay?  Check.  Higher karma - nope.  I think this mission should have been 8 karma  instead of the 6 karma.  I know it's a minor thing in the scheme of things, but I felt the karma reward went against the spirit of the mission.  Usually, I'm stingy as a GM with karma, and I don't complain much about low rewards, but this is just one of those instances.

And that is just the Maximum available.

[doctaotsu]

Ricochet.

Your review brings me no small amount of joy since I wrote both Manhunt and Ashes. I'm actually a little shocked one of my missions had a kill count since I'm usually accused of being far too kind to players.

[wepv]

I loved Ashes. Easily my favorite mission I've played so far, but I also really like the Ork Underground so anything that has to do with it is awesome in my book. I'm going to be sad to not get to see it in The CZ.