[frederick.johansen]

Yes, yes, I know.  He needs help with Sprawl Wilds?  Really?  Isn't this the guy with the players with Life Modules characters that keep dying? 

Yes, that's me.  We're doing better, but I want to be better equipped to run the farm battle that we'll be doing this coming weekend.  I've read over the Mission Pack's Manhunt section a couple of times and still have some questions I still can't come up with answers for.  So I come to the place where folks seem to know what they are doing (here) and ask for your help!

What worked -

a) the players had a great time RPing the convoy (the troll player character kept trying to make the moves on Arona, and getting nowhere), helping out at the farm, and the investigation of the two "crime scenes".  The mage helped out the wounded, the troll helped fix the wind turbine, and the aspect mage (who has a sniping background) helped build some defensive points. 

b) I felt like the investigation of the ganger camp went well, with the party using character abilities and skills, including knowledge skills, along with RP to figure out what all went down.  I was able to present the camp in a way that the players felt engaged.

My difficulties -

1) the map given of the farm doesn't really seem to be for the farm described.  At a minimum the description says the farm has entrances at the north and south ends, and the map shows one to the south only.  I've noticed that the graphics throughout the module seem to have little / no bearing on the content, so I'm wondering if the map is not accurate at all.  Is there an alternative that anyone can suggest?  And are there any scale suggestions?

2) the attack on the farm has me a bit confused, and not only because of the strange map.  How do the animals get through / over / under the fence and perimeter barriers?  If there were metahumans I'd probably be able to figure it out, but how do dogs get over a barbed wire topped chain link fence?  If I just hand wave it, then what is the point of saying that the fence is there in the first place?  I don't want to get overly caught up in the details, but I don't to have to say that the animals were not hindered by the fence.  It either irritate the player (since it makes no sense) or convince them that the animals are spirits (which is not the point at all).  On top of the fence, it appears that there are other barriers as well, but this isn't clear.

3) This one isn't super important, but so I can become a better Shadowrun GM: any recommendations on how I should have presented the abandoned squatters camp?  I really struggled to paint the scene and wish I could have done a better job of it.  The layout of the ganger camp was easy, and figuring out the various missing details for that location wasn't too hard.  I just had no idea with the squatters camp.

Sorry about being a pest, but I really value the feedback I've gotten here.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

I ran that a couple months ago, so it's pretty fresh in my mind still.

1) I decided to arbitrarily make the campus 100m long on a side.  Nice round number which left room for numerous buildings... I had less open area than the map did (important for the animal attack later, as broken LOS is the only thing stopping the Runners from mopping the animals up with impunity at range)

2) I described the fence as being in tatters.  I allowed the runners to spend time during the day to work on defenses.  So many hits got the generators working.  So many hits got the lights working.  So many hits allowed the team to patch so many hexes of the fence.  The key was making it so that no matter what they did they can't fix everything.  Naturally they prioritized the generators and floodlights, which left plenty of gaps everywhere.  Suited me- made it easy for critters to file in.  Suited the players: they had floodlights to SEE the critters coming, as well as redundancy to keep the critical farm going should a generator get taken out in the attack.

3) I didn't bother mapping that location- just describing it.  It helped to get an idea of the narrative reason for that scene:  A) to provide a distinction from the attack at the gangers' location and to B) provide foreshadowing as to what's gonna happen at the farm as this is the same group as opposed to the gastalt "wild child" that was defending the farm being behind the ganger massacre.  It was important to give the runners the clue that there's gonna be more than just bizarrely behaving animals.. there's gonna be gun toting cannibal hippies as well!  (not that they know about the cannibal hippy angle, unless they go check out the plastic jungle).  So imagine a worst case scenario for the farm, and describe the aftermath.   The runners should realize their mission is to prevent exactly this from occuring at the farm.


When I ran this: Between fortifying the farm and checking out both sites they had pretty much run out of time before nightfall.  After their employer finally succumbed to the inevitable Long Haul crash, they set upon his commlink like a bunch of criminals and started hacking it to find out more about what's been going on.  I had to think on the fly... I decided that he had made himself a very detailed report about how the "nice people" at the plastic jungle couldn't possibly be behind anything despite his GPS data showing he'd only been there for about a minute or so.  The players immediately and rightly assumed that mind control magic is at play and that same magic is probably also behind the animal attacks, but with the sun going down and all they resolved to defend the farm and go knock heads at the jungle "tomorrow"... of course they rendered that moot by winning the siege rather ruthlessly.

[Overbyte]

Sorry about being a pest, but I really value the feedback I've gotten here.

You never have to worry about being a "pest" on these boards for asking questions.
That is what they are for, and there are lots of "holes" everywhere in Shadowrun (and every other game system ever).
Even the most experienced folks come here for input on all sorts of things.

My difficulties -
1) the map given of the farm doesn't really seem to be for the farm described.  At a minimum the description says the farm has entrances at the north and south ends, and the map shows one to the south only.  I've noticed that the graphics throughout the module seem to have little / no bearing on the content, so I'm wondering if the map is not accurate at all.  Is there an alternative that anyone can suggest?  And are there any scale suggestions?

2) the attack on the farm has me a bit confused, and not only because of the strange map.  How do the animals get through / over / under the fence and perimeter barriers?  If there were metahumans I'd probably be able to figure it out, but how do dogs get over a barbed wire topped chain link fence?  If I just hand wave it, then what is the point of saying that the fence is there in the first place?  I don't want to get overly caught up in the details, but I don't to have to say that the animals were not hindered by the fence.  It either irritate the player (since it makes no sense) or convince them that the animals are spirits (which is not the point at all).  On top of the fence, it appears that there are other barriers as well, but this isn't clear.

So I decided to use this mission and ran into the exact same problem. No matter how many times I stared at the map and turned it this way and that it made no sense when compared to the description. There are a few solutions:
1) Change the map to fit the description.
2) Change the description to fit the map.
3) Both.

I was running this for a solo player who brought along an NPC friend.
I just decided that the fence protected the interior buildings (as shown) and the hydroponics buildings were all outside of the fence. Often I try not to get bogged down in the exact details of the area and just kinda "wing it" to keep things moving. The PC was an expert with longarms so he stationed himself on the tower, sniped a few shots then jumped down the ladder with his shotgun to get the animals that gotten in the fence. I just had the paranormal animals jump the fence and tear into some NPC farmers. The NPC mage stopped a bunch of the animals with a Calm Pack spell (I usually try to keep the NPC actions in the background so the PC's can be the heroes).

3) This one isn't super important, but so I can become a better Shadowrun GM: any recommendations on how I should have presented the abandoned squatters camp?  I really struggled to paint the scene and wish I could have done a better job of it.  The layout of the ganger camp was easy, and figuring out the various missing details for that location wasn't too hard.  I just had no idea with the squatters camp.

First of all, don't worry about every little detail. No reason you have to get bogged down in parts of a pre-packaged adventure that you don't like or don't suit you. You can always change it to your liking or just brush past it with a "nothing really to see here".