Primal Forces
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INTRODUCTION ........................3 PROOFREADERS Preparing the Adventure ......................3 Stephen McQuillan, Adam Large, Adventure Structure..............................3 Aaron Pavao, Bruce Ford Running the Adventure ........................3 General Adventure Rules .....................4 CHARACTER AND INTERIOR ART Non-Player Characters..........................4 Patrick Sullivan Table Rating............................................4 [email protected] A Note on Commlinks ...........................4 Crossing Borders ..................................4 COVER DESIGN AND MISSIONS LOGO Contacts ..................................................5 Andy Coen and Cullen Erbacher Tracking Faction ....................................5 http://www.broomstickfighters.com Paperwork ...............................................5 ADVENTURE BACKGROUND ..6 MAPS Stephen McQuillan, Andy Coen PLOT SYNOPSIS.......................6 MIGUEL’S PACKAGE................7 Copyright© 2007 by WizKids, Inc. DRIVE-IN ....................................8 Shadowrun and WK Games are trademarks MEET THE MENAGERIE .........10 and/or registered trademarks of WizKids, NATURE’S KEEPERS .............11 Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Shadowrun Missions and FAKE DELIVERY .....................13 tournament details are part of the campaign MOB ALLIANCE ......................14 setting sponsored by Catalyst Game Labs. PICKING UP THE PIECES.......16 All Rights Reserved. CAST OF SHADOWS ..............17 Miguel Sanchez ....................................17 This adventure may not be reproduced, Dean Costello .......................................17 repackaged, or redistributed without prior Tai Lun...................................................18 approval of Catalyst Game Labs. Vaylo ......................................................19 Zhao Cheng ..........................................19 Published by: Catalyst Game Labs Setto Karemaru ....................................20 PMB 202 Dahlgren................................................20 303 91st Ave NE, G-701 Lin Yao...................................................21 Lake Stevens, WA 98258 Mikael Petrov........................................21 Find us online: PRIMAL FORCES CREDITS [email protected] WRITER (Shadowrun questions) Eric Boivin http://www.shadowrunrpg.com SHADOWRUN LINE DEVELOPER (official Shadowrun website) Rob Boyle http://www.catalystgamelabs.com SHADOWRUN MISSIONS COORDINATOR (Catalyst Game Labs website) John Dunn http://www.catalystdemos.com (Demo Team website) http://www.wizkidsgames.com (WizKids website) Shadowrun Missions Primal Forces 2 Pushing the envelope looks at ways to INTRODUCTION make the encounter more challenging for experienced or powerful characters and Primal Forces is a Shadowrun Missions other ways you can add some “extra spice” campaign adventure. This is only the to the scene. adventure portion of Primal Forces – the Debugging offers solutions to potential maps, player handouts, sample characters, problems that may crop up during the and other playing aids are included in encounter. While it’s impossible to foresee SRM02-16B, Primal Forces, Playing Aids. everything that a group of player characters might do, this section tries to anticipate Preparing the Adventure common problems and offer suggestions for Primal Forces is intended for use with dealing with them. Shadowrun, Fourth Edition, and all character and rules information refers to the fourth Running the Adventure edition of the Shadowrun rules. Gamemastering is more of an art than a science, and every gamemaster does things Adventure Structure a bit differently. Use your own style when it Primal Forces consists of several comes to preparing and running the scenes. These scenes form the basis of the adventure and do whatever you feel is best adventure, which should be completed in to provide the best Shadowrun game you approximately four hours. If you are running can for your players. Shadowrun Missions short on time, you should streamline each adventures are designed to run in a and be a little more generous with clues, standard four-hour convention time slot. target numbers, and other requirements to Please keep this in mind when running aid in guiding the players through the the adventure. You should leave at least 15- adventure. 20 minutes at the end of the time slot to Each scene outlines the most likely complete any necessary paperwork and sequence of events, as well as how to pass out the players’ Debriefing Logs. handle unexpected twists and turns that (Make sure that you have enough copies inevitably crop up. Each one contains the of the Debriefing Log for this adventure following subsections, providing to give one copy to each player after gamemasters with all the information running the adventure.) This section offers necessary to run it. some guidelines you may find useful in What’s up, chummer? provides a quick preparing to run Primal Forces (or any synopsis of the scene’s action, allowing you Shadowrun Missions adventure). to get a feel for the encounter at a glance. Tell it to them straight is written to be Step 1: Read The Adventure read aloud to the players, describing what Carefully read the adventure from their characters experience upon entering beginning to end. Get a feel for the overall the scene. You should feel free to modify the plot and what happens in each scene. That narrative as much as desired to suit the way, if something different happens, you group and the situation, since the characters won’t be caught off guard and you can adapt may arrive at the scene by different means things smoothly. or under different circumstances than the text assumes. Step 2: Take Notes Behind the scenes covers the bulk of the scene, describing what’s happening, Take notes for yourself while reading what the non-player characters are doing, through the adventure that you can refer to how they will react to the player characters’ later on. Possible things to note include: actions and so forth. It also covers the major plot points (so you can see them all at setting of the encounter, going over a glance), the names of various non-player environmental conditions and other characters, possible problems you notice, properties of the location as well as situations where you think a particular providing any descriptions of important character can shine and other things you’ll items. want to keep in mind while running the adventure. Shadowrun Missions Primal Forces 3 Step 3: Know The Characters especially a more experienced and powerful Prior to the start of the adventure, group. The scenes and NPC descriptions examine the PCs’ record sheets and offer tips on adjusting the NPCs to suit the Debriefing Logs for your reference and have abilities of the characters in your group. To basic information about their important adjust the power level of an NPC, refer to abilities handy so you can refer to it during the Prime Runner Creation and play. Also go over the characters and keep Advancement Table (SR4 p.277). Take the their previous events listed on the Debriefing player characters’ abilities into consideration Logs in mind when determining non-player when assessing the NPCs in this adventure character actions in various scenes if such a and modify them accordingly. dynamic has been included. Table Rating Step 4: Don’t Panic! Table Rating (TR) is used to adjust the difficulty of an adventure so that it is Gamemastering involves juggling a lot appropriate to the characters playing it. The of different things. Sometimes you drop the TR value can be used to increase the ball and forget something or you just make a number or abilities of opponents, and the mistake. It happens, don’t worry about it. device ratings of equipment in the Nobody is perfect all of the time and adventure. Add up the Career Good Karma everybody makes mistakes. Just pick up of all PCs and divide by the number of PCs. from there and move on. Your players will Once that average is determined, consult understand and forget about it once you get the chart below to determine the class of the back into the action. table. General Adventure Rules Table Rating Class Karma Range Shadowrun Missions adventures use 1 Green 0-19 the rules presented in Shadowrun, Fourth 2 Streetwise 20-59 Edition (SR4). Standard rules such as 3 Professional 60-99 success tests, the Rules of One and Six, 4 Veteran 100-159 and other common mechanics are described 5 Elite 160-249 in SR4 and are not repeated in this 6 Prime 250+ adventure. Please keep in mind when preparing for the adventure, that the PCs will not A Note on Commlinks necessarily comprise a “balanced” party. It’s With the change to SR4, commlinks entirely possible that the party will be made have become a universal appliance. up entirely of Technomancers or back-to- Because just about every NPC is going to nature Shamans. If the characters run into a have one, they won't always be statted out brick wall because of such complications, in the adventure text. For NPCs who do not show flexibility and use your best judgment have a statted commlink, assume it has all in how you lead them back to the plot. necessary ratings at (TR/2) +1 (round-up). These commlinks will not contain any Non-Player Characters valuable paydata. Non-player characters (NPCs) are essential to any adventure. They are the allies, antagonists and background Crossing Borders characters in the adventure that interact with As a city of 4 nations, getting around the player characters. NPCs in this