NEWS

Lockdown discussion (spoilers)

  • 7 Replies
  • 3618 Views

brasso

  • *
  • Omae
  • ***
  • Posts: 274
« on: <09-04-16/1710:03> »
After reading lockdown, I have mixed feelings about taking my runner team thru the campaign, and also about the campaign itself.

#/ Not much matrix to do, the decker could be redundant

#/ If the intro wasn't massaged carefully, the rigger might end up going to Boston without any vehicles or drones!

#/ The payout at the end is insane! (They're still living off Splintered State!!)

#/ Alot of the setting felt only skin deep. After reading Feral Cities, I would have thought Lockdown would have more to do with issues like food, water, fuel, etc. It should basically be a CFD version of Walking Dead, but instead it actually feels more like a giant barrens.

#/ I'd probably have to do a lot of work to make this click for my group

Has anyone else taken their group through this campaign? I like it on first look, as it's quite epic, and would really be something for my players to experience given its huge canon impact. But for the reasons above, I think it may end up being a 3-adventure mini-campaign (just before the lockdown) just so that they don't miss out.

Any thoughts?
The system we learn says we're equal under law
But the streets are reality, the weak and poor will fall

Beta

  • *
  • Ace Runner
  • ****
  • Posts: 1946
  • SR1 player, SR5 GM@FtF & player@PbP
« Reply #1 on: <09-05-16/0908:02> »
Iran Lockdown, but not strictly by the book.  First of all iwas running it for a single player (a shaman), so naturally that requires tweaking some things (he was working with some less capable NPC, but I tended to handwave most of the matrix stuff, for example).  And iruled that five hits on assessing was enough to tell if someone had substantial Nantes in their system (wouldn't  confirm CFD, but given the environment...)

For food, survival, security I tended to run one scene to establish a reasonable solution, then just role played it from there as things got tenser,.  I.e. early on he made good relations with Four Corners, such that they would trade him food for goods or favours, only played the first scene out in detail, after that just talked through what had changed when he went back every couple of days).  Once they had worked out their travel solution of an electric van running just a bit above running speed (for quietness and charge efficiency) I didn't  make most travel too hard, just the occasional unusual event (new checkpoint, seeing an incident, etc),  that allowed us to mostly play the plot while still showing a bit of how things were valving in the city.

I deviated more towards the ending.  I made the rumoured  dragon Ash a dragon th PC had interacted with in Seattle, and he ended up Mr. Johnson - ing a couple of the later runs.  Around the time all the offers came in a mad Evo scientist launched an assault on their safe house, and they got hints of others trying to scoop them up, and they were attacked while trying to move to a new location.

Then Ash found them and said he was planning to leave the city, and if they would give him all the info they had gathered,  with a 45 day exclusive use period, he'd  take them out with him.  So the choice was between all the money, promises of investigations ... or a escape from he'll.  was a pretty easy choice.

PC and friends protected Ash while it prepared some magics, then it used the dragon let line to achieve a sufficient mix of invisibility, speed, and altitude to make a run for it.  (Runners barely survived as they didn't  realize that scuba gear doesn't  help you breathe at high altitudes much, but were still clinging to life when they were dumped in the middle of feuding families in the Adirondacks).

Lots of ways to use what is in that book, that was my solution.

brasso

  • *
  • Omae
  • ***
  • Posts: 274
« Reply #2 on: <09-05-16/1550:33> »
Thanks Beta, really appreciate that. I'll see if there's a way I can make use of the material for my group  :)
The system we learn says we're equal under law
But the streets are reality, the weak and poor will fall

Beta

  • *
  • Ace Runner
  • ****
  • Posts: 1946
  • SR1 player, SR5 GM@FtF & player@PbP
« Reply #3 on: <09-05-16/2128:36> »
I was bashing that out on my phone earlier today, so apologies on the typos and auto-corrects.

One thing I forgot to mention is that for your decker types, in theory the head cases are hackable (it is in there somewhere ....), and most of the lower functioning head cases are probably viewable in the matrix since they wouldn't know to run quiet.  So deckers could be huge for scanning.

Lorebane24

  • *
  • Omae
  • ***
  • Posts: 461
« Reply #4 on: <09-15-16/2227:30> »
I also deviated pretty thoroughly from the book in my Lockdown campaign (which, sadly, I burnt out on and didn't finish).  We had a few nods towards survival, but early by the time the party had to go into the MIT&T cordon, I realized that the gritty survival element was just wearing on my players more than anything else, and we focused on the cyberhorror angle from their on out, as well as how people were using the chaos of the lockdown to get a leg up on the corps and otherwise advance their positions in the city (Damon playing crime syndicates against one another to try and take full control of Boston's underworld was one of my two major subplots).

This also felt like a big enough event that it was the opportunity to give some of my players some nostalgic satisfaction by putting some of the world's big names and players in the campaign.  I ran a little wild with the whole Deus thing, since it was something my party had always found really cool but never played, because we were all in middle school back then, so he really came back in full force (almost) in my game, and the party got to work with Puck to hunt down Pax and ended up having a meet with Hans Braukhauss shortly before we cut the game short.
The power of the Tri-Horse!

GeLrIrToCrH

  • *
  • Newb
  • *
  • Posts: 52
« Reply #5 on: <01-18-18/2056:29> »
My group has just finished the Denver trilogy and wants to go to Boston next. According to the timeline, the Denver series wraps up about 2 years after the lockdown begins. Is it still in lockdown? Any new/current info would be appreciated.

Beta

  • *
  • Ace Runner
  • ****
  • Posts: 1946
  • SR1 player, SR5 GM@FtF & player@PbP
« Reply #6 on: <01-18-18/2202:01> »
In the horrors book it is mentioned that the lock down is ending (I forget if it has at that point or shortly will be). I think that is 2080?


Although if it hasn't come up in campaign you could just delay the start of it in your game world?

cyclopean

  • *
  • Chummer
  • **
  • Posts: 130
« Reply #7 on: <01-20-18/2321:51> »
I ran a 6 month-ish long (irl) Lockdown arc, I added a bunch of side missions and stuff from the Shadowrun Chronicles game but mostly used NPC's and locations from the book. There's a ton of good material in there, especially in the first-person fiction chapter of that journal (i can't remember the character's name). We definitely focused more on the cyberhorror aspect than survival (but this team had done a lot of Chicago missions so they kinda knew how to get situated in that kind of environment). It was super fun and had a ton of really memorable moments. They ended up escaping through the MIT+T "Gateway" project and getting sent on a deep metaplanes journey, which was a blast. For prep I made a master list of NPC's + locations + gangs/factions/etc, and then plotted all that stuff out on a map of modern Boston and surrounding area based on rough descriptions from the book.