I downloaded this campaign because I love neo-noir murder mysteries, and I thought this one would be like the good parts of Dead Man's Switch. Boy, was I ever wrong.
I'm going to give you a brief summary of the campaign: Load map. Run across it to talk to an NPC. Leave the map once that's done. That's it. Sounds fun to you? There are two fights in the whole thing, both against a myriad of guys with too much health. You can only purchase basic gear for yourself, so don't bother putting any Karma points in advanced equipment. You also can't purchase armour nor cyberware, so you have to rely on your base stats to survive this one. Deckers are completely useless; there is nothing to hack and dialogue is entirely linear, so Charisma is only useful to a Shaman (I'll talk about classes in a bit).
The gist of the campaign is: Either spec for direct combat or don't bother playing. Playing a Rigger was a nightmare. I put enough points in drones to be able to use the Class-S drones, but you can only purchase a Class-C attack drone, and getting the ability to control two drones is also worthless as you can never buy more than one. Fights took ages to complete as I had to rely on my crappy Ares Predator pistol (they always focus fired on the drone and put out of commission during their first turn). It did not help that you are supposed to solo the first fight. For a moment I thought it was a classic "supposed to lose" fight, but no. It's just terribly balanced. The only saving grace is that the AI seemed to crap out and make some enemies waste their turns. Otherwise my dwarf would have ended as paste after the third round.
The campaign seems to have been made with the Street Samurai and Physical Adept classes in mind, disregarding all others. A Mage can work as long as one puts a lot of points in Body and Evasion, but a Shaman gets basic summoning fetishes and no summoning points in any map, so it isn't recommended.
The good thing is that the campaign is mercifully short; it took me about 40 minutes to complete, and I'm certain somebody playing a Street Samurai would finish it quicker. A final annoying fact is that there is no music at any point of the campaign. While there isn't much to work with, pure silence all the time is inexcusable.
Final word: Do not download this campaign. It's linear, boring, and the fights are tedious.
Extremely linear to the point that I didn't even have the illusion of choice; not so much as being able to select which details I fed to the Johnson and how. Characters are all bland and purely utilitarian with no characterization. Character dialogues requiring use of a scroll bar completely defeated the purpose of the ellipses continue icon, making dialogue a chore to read. First combat in the module is ridiculously unbalanced against newly created characters, particularly if that character is a decker, and upon death the game would hang instead of activating the Doc Wagon kit I had with me for just such an occasion. Overwhelming portion of the module has no music; I know that there aren't that many bits of music to work with, but awkward silence does nothing for the atmosphere.
I haven't read the original module, so I can't tell how much of this is due to the source material (although if it's anything like other modules I have read, I'm pretty sure that the dialogue isn't supplied by the module and is meant to be written by the GM); however, a direct translation might not be the best approach, as the module seems to have been written for a party of more than one from the word go (the game early on mentions how the Johnson "greets the shadowrunners" in the plural, that woefully unbalanced first combat, etc.).
Hi, i just finish to play the copycat killer, i think it was nice but there wasn't any surprise. I mean that everything went without anything special, quite railroady as a previous comment said. I didn't play the rpg pen and paper story, was it so linear?
Two small mistakes that i saw and that you could correct quickly : - when we chat with the troll in the mall (if you shoot the security at the door) he says "i can be seen with you", it should be "i can't be seen with you" - when we chat with Alma Jordan she says "...scopolamine in here system", it should be "...scopolamine in her system"
Outside of this thanks for making it, i was happy to play it!
Very interesting. Love the concept and the writing, but over all this comes off more like an interactive novel where you're just taking the character from point to point in the plot, and everything's already scripted. Dead Man's Switch was pretty linear as well, but at least it gave you different paths to reach the next plot point.
A few suggestions:
Give more dialogue options so the player feels like they can actually roleplay their character's personality, instead of just the occasional [Polite Response], [Impolite Response] choice. You seem to be pretty good at creating different characters and writing dialogue for them, so maybe try coming up with three or four general personality archetypes and write a response from each one's perspective. Something like [Cold Professional], [Rude Gutterpunk], and [Compassionate Face].
Also, try breaking the dialogue up into smaller chunks, giving the player "prompt" responses in between like "Okay" or "And then What?" This makes the player feel more like they're an active part of the conversation, rather than just sitting there being talked at.
Finally, as much as I love the little story blurb on the description page, an actual description would be helpful. At least give people an idea of the general difficulty level and recommended archetypes.
When I saw that you had an option for starting with a new character, I assumed it would be playable with a typical 35-40 karma starting character and imported a 58 karma Cat shaman than I done a couple of short fan-made runs with. The first fight put me up against ten or twelve mid-level gangers with no ley lines or summoning points and precious little cover. Honestly, no one's surviving that fight without lots of HP and/or area effect attacks. A streetsam with grenades and a shotgun could probably handle it, but even then you're going to want more than 58 karma.
I'll try it again with Shotgun Suzie, my 241 karma post DMS character, and see how that goes.
Railroady, which I don't normally care about, but each map was pretty much the same - small map with only one person to talk to, and the dialogues were crammed with information. I would have preferred a little less loading time, where the maps warped the character to a new map, like in Dead Man's Switch, instead of transit with a loading bar. The orc underground was a nice touch. The fights were really tough (on very hard difficulty), which I enjoyed.
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I'm going to give you a brief summary of the campaign: Load map. Run across it to talk to an NPC. Leave the map once that's done. That's it. Sounds fun to you? There are two fights in the whole thing, both against a myriad of guys with too much health. You can only purchase basic gear for yourself, so don't bother putting any Karma points in advanced equipment. You also can't purchase armour nor cyberware, so you have to rely on your base stats to survive this one. Deckers are completely useless; there is nothing to hack and dialogue is entirely linear, so Charisma is only useful to a Shaman (I'll talk about classes in a bit).
The gist of the campaign is: Either spec for direct combat or don't bother playing. Playing a Rigger was a nightmare. I put enough points in drones to be able to use the Class-S drones, but you can only purchase a Class-C attack drone, and getting the ability to control two drones is also worthless as you can never buy more than one. Fights took ages to complete as I had to rely on my crappy Ares Predator pistol (they always focus fired on the drone and put out of commission during their first turn). It did not help that you are supposed to solo the first fight. For a moment I thought it was a classic "supposed to lose" fight, but no. It's just terribly balanced. The only saving grace is that the AI seemed to crap out and make some enemies waste their turns. Otherwise my dwarf would have ended as paste after the third round.
The campaign seems to have been made with the Street Samurai and Physical Adept classes in mind, disregarding all others. A Mage can work as long as one puts a lot of points in Body and Evasion, but a Shaman gets basic summoning fetishes and no summoning points in any map, so it isn't recommended.
The good thing is that the campaign is mercifully short; it took me about 40 minutes to complete, and I'm certain somebody playing a Street Samurai would finish it quicker. A final annoying fact is that there is no music at any point of the campaign. While there isn't much to work with, pure silence all the time is inexcusable.
Final word: Do not download this campaign. It's linear, boring, and the fights are tedious.
And maps are too little, it's almost 1 dialogue - 1 loading another map screen...
I haven't read the original module, so I can't tell how much of this is due to the source material (although if it's anything like other modules I have read, I'm pretty sure that the dialogue isn't supplied by the module and is meant to be written by the GM); however, a direct translation might not be the best approach, as the module seems to have been written for a party of more than one from the word go (the game early on mentions how the Johnson "greets the shadowrunners" in the plural, that woefully unbalanced first combat, etc.).
Two small mistakes that i saw and that you could correct quickly :
- when we chat with the troll in the mall (if you shoot the security at the door) he says "i can be seen with you", it should be "i can't be seen with you"
- when we chat with Alma Jordan she says "...scopolamine in here system", it should be "...scopolamine in her system"
Outside of this thanks for making it, i was happy to play it!
1. Can you give me a logical estimate for the average length of this mod?
2. Is the description intentionally vague?
A few suggestions:
Give more dialogue options so the player feels like they can actually roleplay their character's personality, instead of just the occasional [Polite Response], [Impolite Response] choice. You seem to be pretty good at creating different characters and writing dialogue for them, so maybe try coming up with three or four general personality archetypes and write a response from each one's perspective. Something like [Cold Professional], [Rude Gutterpunk], and [Compassionate Face].
Also, try breaking the dialogue up into smaller chunks, giving the player "prompt" responses in between like "Okay" or "And then What?" This makes the player feel more like they're an active part of the conversation, rather than just sitting there being talked at.
Finally, as much as I love the little story blurb on the description page, an actual description would be helpful. At least give people an idea of the general difficulty level and recommended archetypes.
When I saw that you had an option for starting with a new character, I assumed it would be playable with a typical 35-40 karma starting character and imported a 58 karma Cat shaman than I done a couple of short fan-made runs with. The first fight put me up against ten or twelve mid-level gangers with no ley lines or summoning points and precious little cover. Honestly, no one's surviving that fight without lots of HP and/or area effect attacks. A streetsam with grenades and a shotgun could probably handle it, but even then you're going to want more than 58 karma.
I'll try it again with Shotgun Suzie, my 241 karma post DMS character, and see how that goes.