Nice mod! I really enjoy the atmosphere, the storyline, the location setups and combat scenes but unfortunately the dialogs and the storyline overall seem to get mixed up. I see that someone posted quote a few examples of the mixed up dialog options so I won't bother. The confusion about the overall storyline may stem from the same problem, in that the dialogs make options and information available that I have not discovered yet. The latest example is that I just happen to speak to the police officer on the street at Sunnyside and he mentions the Taetzel building for no obvious reason to me and then when I make it back to Maria's penthouse talking to Sam, there's the options to go to the Taetzel building. Seems like a made a huge jump in the progress of the story without actually picking up the pieces that lead there.
BTW I cannot seem to find a way forward from the Taetzel first floor - no stairs or exit to other scene. Also, I login to the matrix and de-activate the weaponry but they are still active and see me as enemy. I click on recall the drones and nothing happens.
Pity, because otherwise this seems like a 'rich' mod that would be highly enjoyable, would it not for the tangled story and dialogs. I might give it another go.
The original pen and paper module was a split personality too... Written by two different writers who didn't seem to agree on anything. The writer on this wasn't super consistent with variable control which branches those conversations into the zillionty different branches. With all the options, it made troubleshooting conversation files an absolute nightmare, and was always a bit of a sore spot. Those are very fair observations.
The "bit store" thing was confusing. A couple of back and forth steps as I recall. Money is pretty plentiful, so I wouldn't get hung up on it and just buy one from the store if you need to.
As I recall, Taetzel you have to go through the elevator first, but it sounds like something glitched out with the turrets. I haven't skimmed the big reports in quite a while, but that's not one I recall seeing.
Good story so far, but right now I'm more than just a little pissed. I'm currently on the matrix run and trying to figure out how to create a "bit". The "tutorial" is so vage that it is practically useless, and even after looking the functions involved up in the editor I'm still completely clueless. And certainly not willing to pay 500 Nuyen when according to the tutorial, building one costs less than 10! Btw, is there a reason why Big Jim doesn't sell a Steel Lynx drone?
After a quite long pause I returned to Shadowrun. Turns out this bit puzzle is actually quite straitforward, just the "tutorial" is rather confusing. :(
But there are still a few things I don't understand: -why is there no steel lynx drone? -when you talk to Nebel she tells you about her custom deck which is Kraftwerk with some prototype parts; but if you hire her, she turns up with a crappy Sony junkdeck :( -why does Blight turn up in the doghouse fight when I never hired him and didn't even talk to him in the stuffer shack?
Blight sided with them... So he shows up to fight with his chosen team. That's why he's there. There are clues to it in his limited dialogue options... That you skipped by never speaking with him.
I believe Big Jim only sells tier 1 gear. You might be able to find the drone at the higher end tech vendor in Sunnyside slums. As I recall, that's a tier 2 vendor... It's been a really long time, and I don't remember the inventory lists off-hand... But I'm relatively certain they were lifted straight out of DFDC. Probably means that the steel lynx is a tier 3 drone.
Nebel's customized gear really only made sense if we had fleshed out the characters further. Instead we opted to actually build the project and get it out. To be perfectly honest, I wasn't even aware she had lines about a customized cyberdeck. ? Having NPC deckers that outshined any main character possible Decker was a design point we tried hard to avoid. Didn't want "worthless" main character and his/her super friends who are better than him/her in every conceivable way.
This was a early project for us, and it has some rough edges for sure.
The funny thing about Big Jim's gear is that he sells all the drones except for the Steel Lynx. I have looked it up in the editor, you made special versions of all the drones and gave them to Jim, but not the lynx. Concerning the deckers, I don't really see your point. If I don't play a decker myself I need a capable npc decker, and if I do, giving Nebel and Arrow a decent deck from the start doesn't make them stronger than my character. Anyway I like the story and currently I do a bit of editing, like making the tiers of the hirable characters consistent, so I can enjoy it even more.
Lemme start off with that I enjoyed this mod a lot,I liked the story but there were some things that I personally didn't like and it's just me nitpicking ^^.But idk,the fact that the companions basically only spoke once after recruitment (when you enter the hotel that you get asked to clear of the Cutter's),they were kinda forgottable because of this,when I talked to them they seemed like characters full of life that would interact with others and have some comments on what happens,but sadly nothing really like that happened.The other things I didn't like were the bugs,random T-poses,characters names getting changed from eg.:Sunnyside resident to a random number and other bit and pieces.But all in all I recommend this to everyone,even with the plot holes and character writings that have been mentioned below.Gonna replay it tomorrow :))
The crew all have stories to tell... But my primary writer was largely only able to work on the core story. As we were building this, originally we had a large team, which dwindled to two during the majority of development. It picked back up and we ended with a half a dozen or so at the end.
The only reason they talk during the hotel raid is because one other scripter told me that it couldn't be done... That particular nerd-musk catnip is hard for me to pass up.
That middle section cost us a lot of the planned extras, and nearly killed us just to get this released.
The T-poses is actually engine related, and occurs when an actor is changing clothes. Sometimes they get stuck that way. Restarting the scene usually fixes the hiccup if curious.
Sunny Side Slums actually uses a randomize population script, so the interaction, the location, and which contact you need to talk to is actually randomized. That's why they have numbered names. That was replaced in a later patch, so I'm kind of surprised you saw it this long after release.
Really enjoyed the narrative / story arc and the game was playable until the last scene where enemy turn followed enemy turn. I tried reloading from earlier saves but same problem. All the same thanks!
I want to like this game, but it's too much of a buggy mess to sit through. I got to the attack on the penthouse before I decided enough is enough. Judging by the fact that this hasn't been updated since 2015, I'm just going to leave this here for anyone that comes after.
My overall impression of the game is that it's visibly unpolished and that development seemed to have prioritized quantity over quality. Story-wise, it wasn't too bad. For the most part, I liked the dialogue and characterization of the NPCs. There was a minor plot hole, however, involving the Ripper case. Sam Watts should be dead, being a victim in the Ripper case, should be dead by the time the killer was caught. What did bother me was the dialogue interface. A lot of the dialogue options aren't properly strung together. You'll often see that the next few dialogue choices have assumed that you've read the ones before it. Sometimes a conversation will abruptly end instead of going back to the topic menu. There's also a lot of redundancy in the topics, especially when talking to Maria the first time. I don't see the point in asking her about her BTL addiction, cyberware, or memories several times if she's going to respond more or less the same way each time. Or like it's strange that you can point out the Welsh guy's accent (with an ability check), but is a topic on the next screen anyways. In some cases, the game assumes that I performed a dialogue action when in reality, I purposely chose not to. For example, I purposely avoided telling Silver Arrow to clean up the Doghouse, but he still act as if I hounded him to. When I first bring Maria to the Doghouse, I noticed that the mission info was bugged. All it displayed was a "0." I ignored it and I chose to investigate Hernandez when speaking to Maria. But after calling the fake number that Foley provided, the mission suddenly cancels. I can no longer take the van to his house. Talking to Maria gave me his real number, but I couldn't do anything past that. Great. So I reload my save and see that the mission info is still just '0" and instead choose to hack Foley's bank account. At the start of the Yakuza fight, the dialogue choices claim that I've seen Honoda before, identifying her as the fake secretary, even though I never got the fake number from Foley. For everyone that did not choose to call Hernandez, that was probably confusing. I also found it strange how "a certain runner" ran after Honoda, even though I killed him/her. My other big complaint is that the levels themselves are sometimes wonky:
Even though I bypassed the weapons check at the concert venue, none of my hired runners had their weapons. While that kind of makes sense, I wish I gotten a heads up before trying to fight off 7 dudes with bare hands and a single pistol.
You can kill Foley's white IC instead of trying to guess his password, but you cannot target it with anything but AOE attacks. The password itself doesn't seem to be humanly possible to guess (mariayum). I felt like a simple decking skill check is more than appropriate if aggressive IC aren't involved.
The Bit Store puzzle had a glitch that prevented me from interacting with the last node.
My Deck slot somehow occupies the same space as a third weapon, and I can't examine the third weapon unless I'm in the Send to Stash menu.
Me picking up a basic deck in the hotel mission automatically replaced my upgraded deck without asking.
One of Cutter's mages (the one yelling "Who are you gonna call?") ran into the toxic spirit room, summoned an aggressive fire spirit and a non-aggressive earth spirit, and didn't do anything else. He and the earth spirit did not count as valid targets, so combat ended when the fire spirit died.
In the same mission, it's impossible to save one of the NPCs without getting the suturing kit before talking to them. He dies after 2 rounds of combat and you can't take the kit off the wall when the fight starts.
I couldn't report to the hotel owner about the manager's betrayal, even though I found evidence of it.
Officer Matthews gave me a taser and implied that I need it to make arrests, even though it doesn't actually allow me to and killing the gang members accomplishes the same goal.
But the part that made me quit was the return trip to the penthouse. I couldn't switch out my runners beforehand, and I realized too late that the runners didn't scale properly. Luna has 3 Str, 40 hp, and 2 armor. Gunner has 50 hp, 2 armor, and 5 quickness. El Jefe has 70 hp, 2 armor, 3 ranged combat, and two class B Drones. You have to fight at least 7 dudes, between 2-5 armor each, with 40+ hp, two of which can summon spirits, and half of them can hit upwards of 28 to 42 damage. Not only was the fight poorly scaled, you were more or less in an open space. The limo that you arrive in counts breaks line of sight and the closest objects to hide behind will require 3 or more AP to run to. In short, you are outnumbered and outgunned with nowhere to run or hide. With Luna on my team, I basically have to do this with only 3 people. How the hell did this make it through early testing?
And while we're talking about your runners.... Half of them are obnoxiously edgy or perverted. You know it's bad when even the other runners explicitly tell you they're dangerous and shouldn't be trusted. And after an attempted assassination with one of them turning coat? Hell no, I'm not hiring them. If you want me to play your characters, give me a good to want to, too! Nebel is the most unlikeable to me. She's the kind of character dudes pretend to be to catfish other dudes for attention and free stuff. She's what a sexually frustrated man thinks a sassy, sexually liberated woman acts like, down to her being into "weird stuff," rating dudes on their looks, flashing her tits, making fun of other women, and hating on the only religious figure. Devs, if you were going for boomer humor, you were so spot on it was too uncanny. Please, never do that again. I also need to point out that the creepiness also extends to how female characters are described as "[crossing] her arms under her breast" or "attractive, even though..." she's frowning, scowling, etc. Like damn dude, I came here to kick ass and solve mysteries. Why the hell is my guy checking out every chick with a portrait?
DEV team member here... Actually agree on some of your points. Mercurial was the first UGC I had a hand in creating, and it has not aged particularly well. The disjointed story is actually pretty close to what the original module was, since it was apparently written by two different authors who had very different takes on what they thought it should be like.
We also had a lot of internal team problems that I won't elaborate on... But more than anything else... That's the likely reason behind most of your points.
I wasn't a fan of most of the npc dialogues, and even less so with their wildly unbalanced implementation. Most of them were put in a placeholders originally, and never were updated. When this project started, it had a dev team of 15 people, which dwindled to 2 in less than a month. The two of us carried on, building the majority of this in off hours. I built the scripting side, and my co-author did the writing. Lots of the potential layers he wanted to include got overshadowed by building the actual story instead. This lead to a lot of the early (and crappy) interactions staying in place. (Shrug). I suspect this would've been evened out at some point, but we were racing to release this before HK... And completing the story was a higher priority goal. Agree though, most of this... (If not all of it) needed a major rework that it hasn't and likely never will receive.
A couple of the comments in your post however are not actually correct.
The bouncer tells you that the bypass is for you alone... (and you all get your gear back a few rounds into combat.). That's actually right out of the module this is based on.
Sgt Matthews "rewards" is not the same for capture/killing the gang leaders. She actually allows you to bypass a the taetzel building exterior (a scene you quit before reaching) through the sewers. That scene is actually pretty complicated behind the scenes, and potential for script failure certainly exists. That's one of the few scenes built that is a combat map and a social hub-style revisitable location on the same scene. ( DragonFalls hub scene and the raid on it are actually two separate scenes...)
Bit store puzzle was confusing, but functional. I dunno what *glitch* you encountered, but as far as I know, this scene was/is still functional. Could you expand on the glitch?
The hotel scene was a very late addon. I included the original addition, and part of the rooftop fight... But a returning team mate about two weeks before completion came through a ND attempted to populate the map with mini encounters. Same teammate did the Foley node in U93, (oringally, there was no matrix option there) thats why it doesn't fit very well with the rest of the "flow". That team mate has a much darker view of what he thinks SR should look like. (The suture kit requirement can be bypassed by a high enough biotech skill, but he was a big fan of "unwinnable" events.) The "mariayum" was part of his creepy max vibe that didn't really fit anything else we had done with him. Again, probably would've been smoothed over, time permitting. This ones rough integration is also on me. I didn't smooth over any of it like I should have. Sorry about that. (Shrug). Was so happy to have someone assisting with script writing that I never really went back over it.
The dragon knight encounter is entirely my fault. It's a horrifically failed experiment in randomized team composition. Some players experiance a flock of pushover minions, while others seem to get hammered by unbeatable super soldiers. Rewinding and restarting the scene would likely demonstrate this flawed setup. Each knight is randomly generated at scene start. You can end up with 12 "bosses" or "12" minions... Or anywhere in-between. Should've had randomized loadouts for the bosses, support, and sokdiers teams instead. Bad design choice... 100% agree.
The taetzel building (which you didn't make it to) uses the same randomization... But in far fewer numbers so it's less obvious. 4 super soldiers at a time is much more manageable than 12 with superior starting positions. It's also criticized as "empty"... But it's described as an abandoned highrise in the module. Again.. time crunch meant that it was never really built up like it could've/should've been. You didn't get to this scene but those would likely have been your observations.
NPC progression was never balanced either. There are three tiers for the npcs, rather than DFDC/HKs 6 points. (Starting, post ambush, pre taetzel) and The UI wouldn't support the team size, and the crew advancement feature was reported to be problematic when we attempted this. mostly though, the characters themselves were never really fully fleshed out. Again, this is more on me than anybody else.
Sorry you didn't enjoy yourself, but thanks for the feedback. As stated, this hasn't been updated in quite some time, and I don't know that this will change that... But it's always interesting to hear the negatives that people see.
This was wonderful and memorable. The latter is harder to find than you'd think. Definitely more coherent than the original book it's based on, and the writing is good. I found myself actually caring about the well-being of Maria and her poor manager.
Question for anyone: Is there a way to let it import an existing character? I looked at it in the editor to try and edit the opening scene and it's greyed-out. I don't want to touch anything else except tick that one little box that allows import, so a patch would be welcome.
Glad that you enjoyed it, first off! Been a while since I've seen a new comment on Mercurial!
The option of importing characters was intentionally removed during the design of the campaign. In order to re-enable it you'd have to open the campaign in the editor, and run it through the editor with that switch re-enabled, or publish a local copy. Having a local copy and a subscribed copy causes quite a few headaches... Game seems to jump back and forth without warning between the two different versions.
There's probably a DLL core files hack/patch out there someplace, but since those mod your core game files... exercise caution, and use at your own risk.
Probably much easier would be to use the in-game debugger tools and just add karma and resources. The shop inventories would still be controlled by game progression though.
Thank you for the quick reply. And yeah, i've actually played through Mercurial a couple of times (hence wanting to try it with an upgraded character) but never thought to comment. I'll see what I can do with a local copy, since I mostly just want to start with top gear, but i'm def not competent enough to go messing with the core files.
The story is great and made me want to read the original module. I DM a long-running superhero campaign with d&d rules and I'm always looking for "street style" stories that I can incorporate so the PCs can get a feel for the cities they're always flying over. I loved this so much I thought about melding in the Mercurial story as a side adventure, replacing guns, shadowrunners and the final boss with superhumans and rayguns. One flip through the book and all i can say is: shadowrun adventure books are rough to translate. Not as much as cyberpunk 2020 books, which are borderline incomprehensible, but no wonder there aren't more adaptations.
I know it's partly my fault because i come from a d&d 5e base where everything holds your hand, but you should definitely be proud of this. Without giving anything away, pretty much all the highlights and the cohesive dialogue is original content.
Neverwinter Nights! I literally found SR:R after exhausting Neverwinter Nights 2. The first one still has an active community and had an "Enhanced" version released in the last few months. Personally I prefer NW2 because its the only one that lets you make your own party, but there isn't nearly as much user content. The provided editor is ridiculously difficult to figure for NW2 by comparison, so most people stuck with NW1.
If you want something less dated, Balder's Gate 3 is going to have a creation kit whenever it's finished. Also, Solasta; its set in its own "world" but uses the d&d 5e rules and is custom party centered. The highlight for me is you can give your pcs specific personality traits and that affects the dialogue choices available, so each character always has something unique to say. It was just released a week or two ago, but the included creator is still in beta. All of them are on the Nexus.
I'm trying to install this, but it says that it needs a preview image to install, but when I go to add one in the properties, it doesnt let me. What should i do? Also, I'm trying to add it locally through the Shadowrun editor!
Just started the campaign and all looks most promising, sophisticated, thrilling and entertaining … As mentioned, just started this. Looking forward to continuing the campaign and to see more … I wonder how I could overlook this …. Endorsed, of course …
Great campaign! Really top notch - I hated pretty much all the runners for hire, constantly low on cash and supplies and out gunned like crazy - it was awesome hehe
One of the only adventures I actually had to dial down the difficulty because I couldn't survive. They really put the 'RUN!" in Shadowrun!
The storyline and the writing was cool, gorgeous maps and can we mention the Van drop off?! Yeahhh!
Great work - looking forward to seeing more from these guys
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JumpI see that someone posted quote a few examples of the mixed up dialog options so I won't bother.
The confusion about the overall storyline may stem from the same problem, in that the dialogs make options and information available that I have not discovered yet.
The latest example is that I just happen to speak to the police officer on the street at Sunnyside and he mentions the Taetzel building for no obvious reason to me and then when I make it back to Maria's penthouse talking to Sam, there's the options to go to the Taetzel building. Seems like a made a huge jump in the progress of the story without actually picking up the pieces that lead there.
BTW I cannot seem to find a way forward from the Taetzel first floor - no stairs or exit to other scene.
Also, I login to the matrix and de-activate the weaponry but they are still active and see me as enemy.
I click on recall the drones and nothing happens.
Pity, because otherwise this seems like a 'rich' mod that would be highly enjoyable, would it not for the tangled story and dialogs.
I might give it another go.
The "bit store" thing was confusing. A couple of back and forth steps as I recall. Money is pretty plentiful, so I wouldn't get hung up on it and just buy one from the store if you need to.
As I recall, Taetzel you have to go through the elevator first, but it sounds like something glitched out with the turrets. I haven't skimmed the big reports in quite a while, but that's not one I recall seeing.
I'm currently on the matrix run and trying to figure out how to create a "bit". The "tutorial" is so vage that it is practically useless, and even after looking the functions involved up in the editor I'm still completely clueless. And certainly not willing to pay 500 Nuyen when according to the tutorial, building one costs less than 10!
Btw, is there a reason why Big Jim doesn't sell a Steel Lynx drone?
I'll see if I can spend a few minutes and dig into it and find you a solution. I vaguely recall it being a couple of back and forth steps...
If the "bit" puzzle bothers you, you're really gonna hate the electric gate in the sewers.
Turns out this bit puzzle is actually quite straitforward, just the "tutorial" is rather confusing. :(
But there are still a few things I don't understand:
-why is there no steel lynx drone?
-when you talk to Nebel she tells you about her custom deck which is Kraftwerk with some prototype parts; but if you hire her, she turns up with a crappy Sony junkdeck :(
-why does Blight turn up in the doghouse fight when I never hired him and didn't even talk to him in the stuffer shack?
I believe Big Jim only sells tier 1 gear. You might be able to find the drone at the higher end tech vendor in Sunnyside slums. As I recall, that's a tier 2 vendor... It's been a really long time, and I don't remember the inventory lists off-hand... But I'm relatively certain they were lifted straight out of DFDC. Probably means that the steel lynx is a tier 3 drone.
Nebel's customized gear really only made sense if we had fleshed out the characters further. Instead we opted to actually build the project and get it out. To be perfectly honest, I wasn't even aware she had lines about a customized cyberdeck. ? Having NPC deckers that outshined any main character possible Decker was a design point we tried hard to avoid. Didn't want "worthless" main character and his/her super friends who are better than him/her in every conceivable way.
This was a early project for us, and it has some rough edges for sure.
Concerning the deckers, I don't really see your point. If I don't play a decker myself I need a capable npc decker, and if I do, giving Nebel and Arrow a decent deck from the start doesn't make them stronger than my character.
Anyway I like the story and currently I do a bit of editing, like making the tiers of the hirable characters consistent, so I can enjoy it even more.
The crew all have stories to tell... But my primary writer was largely only able to work on the core story. As we were building this, originally we had a large team, which dwindled to two during the majority of development. It picked back up and we ended with a half a dozen or so at the end.
The only reason they talk during the hotel raid is because one other scripter told me that it couldn't be done... That particular nerd-musk catnip is hard for me to pass up.
That middle section cost us a lot of the planned extras, and nearly killed us just to get this released.
The T-poses is actually engine related, and occurs when an actor is changing clothes. Sometimes they get stuck that way. Restarting the scene usually fixes the hiccup if curious.
Sunny Side Slums actually uses a randomize population script, so the interaction, the location, and which contact you need to talk to is actually randomized. That's why they have numbered names. That was replaced in a later patch, so I'm kind of surprised you saw it this long after release.
My overall impression of the game is that it's visibly unpolished and that development seemed to have prioritized quantity over quality.
Story-wise, it wasn't too bad. For the most part, I liked the dialogue and characterization of the NPCs. There was a minor plot hole, however, involving the Ripper case. Sam Watts should be dead, being a victim in the Ripper case, should be dead by the time the killer was caught. What did bother me was the dialogue interface. A lot of the dialogue options aren't properly strung together. You'll often see that the next few dialogue choices have assumed that you've read the ones before it. Sometimes a conversation will abruptly end instead of going back to the topic menu. There's also a lot of redundancy in the topics, especially when talking to Maria the first time. I don't see the point in asking her about her BTL addiction, cyberware, or memories several times if she's going to respond more or less the same way each time. Or like it's strange that you can point out the Welsh guy's accent (with an ability check), but is a topic on the next screen anyways. In some cases, the game assumes that I performed a dialogue action when in reality, I purposely chose not to. For example, I purposely avoided telling Silver Arrow to clean up the Doghouse, but he still act as if I hounded him to. When I first bring Maria to the Doghouse, I noticed that the mission info was bugged. All it displayed was a "0." I ignored it and I chose to investigate Hernandez when speaking to Maria. But after calling the fake number that Foley provided, the mission suddenly cancels. I can no longer take the van to his house. Talking to Maria gave me his real number, but I couldn't do anything past that. Great. So I reload my save and see that the mission info is still just '0" and instead choose to hack Foley's bank account. At the start of the Yakuza fight, the dialogue choices claim that I've seen Honoda before, identifying her as the fake secretary, even though I never got the fake number from Foley. For everyone that did not choose to call Hernandez, that was probably confusing. I also found it strange how "a certain runner" ran after Honoda, even though I killed him/her.
My other big complaint is that the levels themselves are sometimes wonky:
- Even though I bypassed the weapons check at the concert venue, none of my hired runners had their weapons. While that kind of makes sense, I wish I gotten a heads up before trying to fight off 7 dudes with bare hands and a single pistol.
- You can kill Foley's white IC instead of trying to guess his password, but you cannot target it with anything but AOE attacks. The password itself doesn't seem to be humanly possible to guess (mariayum). I felt like a simple decking skill check is more than appropriate if aggressive IC aren't involved.
- The Bit Store puzzle had a glitch that prevented me from interacting with the last node.
- My Deck slot somehow occupies the same space as a third weapon, and I can't examine the third weapon unless I'm in the Send to Stash menu.
- Me picking up a basic deck in the hotel mission automatically replaced my upgraded deck without asking.
- One of Cutter's mages (the one yelling "Who are you gonna call?") ran into the toxic spirit room, summoned an aggressive fire spirit and a non-aggressive earth spirit, and didn't do anything else. He and the earth spirit did not count as valid targets, so combat ended when the fire spirit died.
- In the same mission, it's impossible to save one of the NPCs without getting the suturing kit before talking to them. He dies after 2 rounds of combat and you can't take the kit off the wall when the fight starts.
- I couldn't report to the hotel owner about the manager's betrayal, even though I found evidence of it.
- Officer Matthews gave me a taser and implied that I need it to make arrests, even though it doesn't actually allow me to and killing the gang members accomplishes the same goal.
But the part that made me quit was the return trip to the penthouse. I couldn't switch out my runners beforehand, and I realized too late that the runners didn't scale properly. Luna has 3 Str, 40 hp, and 2 armor. Gunner has 50 hp, 2 armor, and 5 quickness. El Jefe has 70 hp, 2 armor, 3 ranged combat, and two class B Drones. You have to fight at least 7 dudes, between 2-5 armor each, with 40+ hp, two of which can summon spirits, and half of them can hit upwards of 28 to 42 damage. Not only was the fight poorly scaled, you were more or less in an open space. The limo that you arrive in counts breaks line of sight and the closest objects to hide behind will require 3 or more AP to run to. In short, you are outnumbered and outgunned with nowhere to run or hide. With Luna on my team, I basically have to do this with only 3 people. How the hell did this make it through early testing?And while we're talking about your runners.... Half of them are obnoxiously edgy or perverted. You know it's bad when even the other runners explicitly tell you they're dangerous and shouldn't be trusted. And after an attempted assassination with one of them turning coat? Hell no, I'm not hiring them. If you want me to play your characters, give me a good to want to, too! Nebel is the most unlikeable to me. She's the kind of character dudes pretend to be to catfish other dudes for attention and free stuff. She's what a sexually frustrated man thinks a sassy, sexually liberated woman acts like, down to her being into "weird stuff," rating dudes on their looks, flashing her tits, making fun of other women, and hating on the only religious figure. Devs, if you were going for boomer humor, you were so spot on it was too uncanny. Please, never do that again. I also need to point out that the creepiness also extends to how female characters are described as "[crossing] her arms under her breast" or "attractive, even though..." she's frowning, scowling, etc. Like damn dude, I came here to kick ass and solve mysteries. Why the hell is my guy checking out every chick with a portrait?
We also had a lot of internal team problems that I won't elaborate on... But more than anything else... That's the likely reason behind most of your points.
I wasn't a fan of most of the npc dialogues, and even less so with their wildly unbalanced implementation. Most of them were put in a placeholders originally, and never were updated. When this project started, it had a dev team of 15 people, which dwindled to 2 in less than a month. The two of us carried on, building the majority of this in off hours. I built the scripting side, and my co-author did the writing. Lots of the potential layers he wanted to include got overshadowed by building the actual story instead. This lead to a lot of the early (and crappy) interactions staying in place. (Shrug). I suspect this would've been evened out at some point, but we were racing to release this before HK... And completing the story was a higher priority goal. Agree though, most of this... (If not all of it) needed a major rework that it hasn't and likely never will receive.
A couple of the comments in your post however are not actually correct.
The bouncer tells you that the bypass is for you alone... (and you all get your gear back a few rounds into combat.). That's actually right out of the module this is based on.
Sgt Matthews "rewards" is not the same for capture/killing the gang leaders. She actually allows you to bypass a the taetzel building exterior (a scene you quit before reaching) through the sewers. That scene is actually pretty complicated behind the scenes, and potential for script failure certainly exists. That's one of the few scenes built that is a combat map and a social hub-style revisitable location on the same scene. ( DragonFalls hub scene and the raid on it are actually two separate scenes...)
Bit store puzzle was confusing, but functional. I dunno what *glitch* you encountered, but as far as I know, this scene was/is still functional. Could you expand on the glitch?
The hotel scene was a very late addon. I included the original addition, and part of the rooftop fight... But a returning team mate about two weeks before completion came through a ND attempted to populate the map with mini encounters. Same teammate did the Foley node in U93, (oringally, there was no matrix option there) thats why it doesn't fit very well with the rest of the "flow". That team mate has a much darker view of what he thinks SR should look like. (The suture kit requirement can be bypassed by a high enough biotech skill, but he was a big fan of "unwinnable" events.) The "mariayum" was part of his creepy max vibe that didn't really fit anything else we had done with him. Again, probably would've been smoothed over, time permitting. This ones rough integration is also on me. I didn't smooth over any of it like I should have. Sorry about that. (Shrug). Was so happy to have someone assisting with script writing that I never really went back over it.
The dragon knight encounter is entirely my fault. It's a horrifically failed experiment in randomized team composition. Some players experiance a flock of pushover minions, while others seem to get hammered by unbeatable super soldiers. Rewinding and restarting the scene would likely demonstrate this flawed setup. Each knight is randomly generated at scene start. You can end up with 12 "bosses" or "12" minions... Or anywhere in-between. Should've had randomized loadouts for the bosses, support, and sokdiers teams instead. Bad design choice... 100% agree.
The taetzel building (which you didn't make it to) uses the same randomization... But in far fewer numbers so it's less obvious. 4 super soldiers at a time is much more manageable than 12 with superior starting positions. It's also criticized as "empty"... But it's described as an abandoned highrise in the module. Again.. time crunch meant that it was never really built up like it could've/should've been. You didn't get to this scene but those would likely have been your observations.
NPC progression was never balanced either. There are three tiers for the npcs, rather than DFDC/HKs 6 points. (Starting, post ambush, pre taetzel) and The UI wouldn't support the team size, and the crew advancement feature was reported to be problematic when we attempted this. mostly though, the characters themselves were never really fully fleshed out. Again, this is more on me than anybody else.
Sorry you didn't enjoy yourself, but thanks for the feedback. As stated, this hasn't been updated in quite some time, and I don't know that this will change that... But it's always interesting to hear the negatives that people see.
Question for anyone: Is there a way to let it import an existing character? I looked at it in the editor to try and edit the opening scene and it's greyed-out. I don't want to touch anything else except tick that one little box that allows import, so a patch would be welcome.
The option of importing characters was intentionally removed during the design of the campaign. In order to re-enable it you'd have to open the campaign in the editor, and run it through the editor with that switch re-enabled, or publish a local copy. Having a local copy and a subscribed copy causes quite a few headaches... Game seems to jump back and forth without warning between the two different versions.
There's probably a DLL core files hack/patch out there someplace, but since those mod your core game files... exercise caution, and use at your own risk.
Probably much easier would be to use the in-game debugger tools and just add karma and resources. The shop inventories would still be controlled by game progression though.
The story is great and made me want to read the original module. I DM a long-running superhero campaign with d&d rules and I'm always looking for "street style" stories that I can incorporate so the PCs can get a feel for the cities they're always flying over. I loved this so much I thought about melding in the Mercurial story as a side adventure, replacing guns, shadowrunners and the final boss with superhumans and rayguns. One flip through the book and all i can say is: shadowrun adventure books are rough to translate. Not as much as cyberpunk 2020 books, which are borderline incomprehensible, but no wonder there aren't more adaptations.
I know it's partly my fault because i come from a d&d 5e base where everything holds your hand, but you should definitely be proud of this. Without giving anything away, pretty much all the highlights and the cohesive dialogue is original content.
Good luck with your modification!
If you want something less dated, Balder's Gate 3 is going to have a creation kit whenever it's finished. Also, Solasta; its set in its own "world" but uses the d&d 5e rules and is custom party centered. The highlight for me is you can give your pcs specific personality traits and that affects the dialogue choices available, so each character always has something unique to say. It was just released a week or two ago, but the included creator is still in beta. All of them are on the Nexus.
I got BG3, and even had to upgrade my PC to be able to run it... But never even played it after the hardware updates. :/
Not too common to get a new comment on these older UGCs... But I'm glad you did.
Simply copy and paste the entire file into your contentpack directory. You don't have to uncompress/unzip it or anything.
Just started the campaign and all looks most promising, sophisticated, thrilling and entertaining …
As mentioned, just started this. Looking forward to continuing the campaign and to see more …
I wonder how I could overlook this ….
Endorsed, of course …
One of the only adventures I actually had to dial down the difficulty because I couldn't survive. They really put the 'RUN!" in Shadowrun!
The storyline and the writing was cool, gorgeous maps and can we mention the Van drop off?! Yeahhh!
Great work - looking forward to seeing more from these guys
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