[Wakshaani]

SRM season 5 mission 6 I *think* it is.

I was curious who's played it, how it went, and general thoughts. I've never *done* an adventure before, and I'm not at all sure if it came together right or not. Anyone have thoughts/feedback on it? I'd be much obliged!

[Raven2049]

no Take a Chance is SRM 05-06 (sixth mission in season 5)

the few times ive played it it was interesting, and the few times ive ran it its been interesting as well.

ive never had a group not rescue the guy at the end, infact ive even had one player offer to take him back to Japan himself (or at least accompany him on his trip)

The negotiation at the beginning is a very very interesting way to do that. it makes a real face sit back and be useless however.... I like it tho, very cool.

I have had runners consider killing the sub driver in order to sell the sub (they didn't have Pilot Watercraft)

i almost always use the sea dragon/serpent/whatever it was, actually adds to the run. either that or i have the one Trid star runner group waiting for an ambush surface-side. either one usually lasts only 1-2 IP's and its gone. thought about using a SK strike team while the runners are down there, finding the location via a stealth tag placed on them by Slymon Andrews (i know its Simon but hes a Slimy bastard and we call him Slymon for that reason)

the new artwork for the modules/areas will go a long way to set the ambiance and tone for the mission, AKA creepy (broken down research station) yet errily calming and soothing (glowing plants and underwater life).

will see if i can post any of my mission debriefing logs from the CDT site....

[Raven2049]

Spoiler tag used for people who dont want to know what the mission is about before playing it.
Mission log:

[spoiler]The runners started off the evening like any other, cold beer in one hand and a pizza in the other. That changed quickly when the 'link rang. after meeting up at the purple pig they decided to look around, who do they see? Simon Anderws slimy mug was front and center as he invited himself to the table and started eating their chips and salsa.

 

All the runners were quick to agree to sending simon some intel about the job Sarah was offering. how much was to be decided later, but then a large troll sauntered up and immediately started antagonizing the runners. after a bit of tussling he backed off seeing that he was outnumbered and outgunned (our sam smuggled in a pair of Ares Predators) after that the runners got called in to the meeting. After some extremely bad manners from 3 of the group and quite a few good answers to Sarah's questions the meeting ended with the runners putting forward a very good bid for employment.

 

Returning to the restaurant our second sam, deciding that she did a good job decided to get liquored up and with a moderate addiction to alcohol he succeeded at inebriating himself something he would regret later. the rest of the group starts doing some recon on the other parties and after seeing the Silver Vixens our primary sam walks up to Vix and starts to put the moves on her. Well he manages to impress her enough that she agrees to go back to the table with him and they proceed to act like 2 giddy schoolchildren and cant keep their hands off of each other (she critically glitched at intimidating him away and he rolled really really well on his Con-seduction roll). After that the group was recalled into the conference room.

 

Sarah, wasting no time informs the runners of the mission and offers them a cool 7500, which they accept without negotiating. when the subject of transportation comes up they are surprised to find that they are going underwater, so much so that one of the mages in the group blurts out "Water spirits HATE me i really don't like this guys."

 

An uneventful trip later, aside from a Sea Serpent confusing the submarine for food and getting some low power depth charges for lunch that gave it a nasty case of indigestion, fast forward to the lab. As soon as they surface in the control module everyone is surprised to see that they can see! there are glowing plants everywhere, our mages all astrally percieve and, with a consult with the teams former docwagon chemist, immediately notice all of the plant life around glowing and determine there is some sort of biochemistry and magic at work here. Everyone is thinking "how can there be plant life with no sunlight?" they also notice the barrier on the far room. as the rest of the team search the rest of the module and take samples of the plants the barrier drops and out walks a little girl with a 'link n her hand. At this point i thought our inebriated sam would pull the trigger (is it bad to say i was hoping for that?) A short stunned silence passes and Otoko notices that the teams decker is playing with some electronics and beelines for straight for her and starts asking questions and trying to play with and touch her gear. the runners jumping into action surround Otoko, the face and drunk sam start chatting to Otoko asking her who she is etc. eventually getting the info that there are others down here with her in the other part of the facility.

 

After convincing her to take the team to the rest of the tribe, the mages assence her and inform the team of what she really is. the trip to the manufacturing module was quick except for one of the mages summoned a water spirit to carry her. the other mage with the spirit bane almost got attacked when the water elemental materialized, but quick thinking and a service later the elemental was back under control.

 

In the manufacturing module the tribe members were nowhere to be seen aside from Riujin, and Big Fish who were both surprised and on edge with Otokos return and the strangers in tow. after quick negotiations the team is shown to Dr Urashima. who greets them and hands over the data core in return for transport to the surface, which the runners agree to do. After returning to shore they call Simon up and ask to meet him, the runners turn over a copy of the datacore and some of the pant samples. Then meet with Sarah and turn over the datacore the remaining plant samples and Dr. Urashima.[/spoiler]

[Wakshaani]

I wasn't sure about the timing to fit into a con's window, and the transition from the upper deck, where you can dock, and the lower deck, where you have to swim (!), is one that I figured would really hang a lot of players up. Not many people take swimming, and far, far fewer are trained at diving.

Amusingly, the whole plot is based off of me remembering the name of teh adventure wrong. For some reason, I could have sworn it was "Dive in", based off my remembering I'd made a bad joke (My first time writing a mission, so I figured I should "dive in" to it. hah hah! Only it was actually me saying I guess that I should "take a chance" on it. Same lame joke, but getting the words wrong resulted in me making the whole underwater thing. D'oh! Still, getting 'runners out of their comfort zone is nice, and I'm hoping that the many teams all trying for one job angle worked out for GMs. Giving the PCs time to scuttle the competition, or be scuttled themselves, is an aspect of the meeting for work that most GMs don't use, I think. MOst just go, "Here's a guy, here's a job, work out the deal" ... by showing that several teams are hungry for work, it makes the runners more willing to undercut themselves and gives Johnson more negotiating leverage.

At least, that's the theory. No idea if it worked!

I'm looking forward to it being published, just so I can compare the final version (Bull had to do some rewrites, such as replacing the several of the NPC cast with Missions people, to get it to line up with the general arc.) but also because, after seeing the cover art, I *really* fell in love with it.

[jim1701]

That's because there are far too many skills and not enough skill points at char gen to spread around for secondary skills such as swimming and diving, generally speaking.  I have occasionally toyed with the idea of creating a Menehune character as a sort of dwarf from Atlantis kind of thing but swimming is so niche it's hard to spend point (or karma) on it and diving is even more so.

Edit:  To be fair both swimming and diving are defaultable skills so physical characters shouldn't have too hard a time if necessary.  Ironically orks dwarves and trolls would be the best native swimmers and divers due to high strength and body.  

[Kincaid]

The swimming part gave us pause.  I play a Strength 3, Athletics Group 1 character and I was probably middle of the pack when it came to odds.  We ended up summoning a water spirit (who totally destroyed the mage on his drain roll--ouch!) to ferry the weaker members of the group.  We were prepared for a haunted house/Aliens type of run, so it took us a bit to change gears.  I think we spent 20 minutes slicing the pie on all the doors on the first level.