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Message no. 1
From: TopCat <topcat@******.net>
Subject: Bug City should've been a module?!
Date: Fri, 12 Apr 1996 17:44:28 -0500
>[snipped the blasphemous "Bug City shoulda been a module"]
>Okay, okay--a module *and* a sourcebook, then. What I didn't like was
>that they took a perfectly good story and wasted it on "Burning Bright"--
>not that I didn't like the novel (I did--it was one of my favorites)
>but I wanted *our* team to be the ones who went through it, not some
>bunch of fiction characters. I'm trying to get my GM to adapt the
>story into a module, but he has so little free time that he won't do it.

So get a li'l creative and alter the stuff. Run it like you want to run it,
or make the GM do so. I hate modules because even the best of them are far
too linear. Also, there is the constant flipping of pages to find out what
plot points are hit and which ones still need to be, not to mention the
utter boredom that it sucks gm's into. Bug City is an outstanding campaign
setting that doesn't need any modules to work...

"You are resting comfortably in your hotel when you hear a loud, low rumble
followed by a blast unlike any you've ever heard. The windows of your room
shatter instantly and the wild howling of rushing air threatens to claim
your sanity if not your hearing. After a few moments it all dies down and
screams begin to echo throughout the hotel and streets...what do you do?"

I would all but kill for a chance to play/gm a group that would take this
on. That's what roleplaying's about. Every run I've ever GM'd has been
strictly on-the-fly. I have literally dozens of NPC's with stats and dozens
more ideas for more NPC's. If I need someone I just reach back in the
folder (or my mind or my hard drive) and pull one out. Whatever the players
do, I can work with it. I'm not restrained by the hideously linear modules.
If you haven't played in or gm'd a campaign in this manner, try it just for
a night. If your imagination's working it'll be the best run ever.


------------------------------------------------------------
* Bob Ooton -- <topcat@******.net> *
* Golden Tiger Association -- Submission Fighting Team *
------------------------------------------------------------
* With the speed of a striking cobra he pulled his machine *
* pistol and jammed the muzzle against Mozart's nose. "I *
* put my gun on rock and roll, there nothing left of you *
* but ears, man." -- "Mozart in Mirrorshades" *
------------------------------------------------------------
Message no. 2
From: Larry <lomion@********.net>
Subject: Re: Bug City should've been a module?!
Date: Sat, 13 Apr 1996 15:50:58 -0400
At 17:44 04/12/96 -0500, TopCat wrote:
<SNIP>
>So get a li'l creative and alter the stuff. Run it like you want to run it,
>or make the GM do so. I hate modules because even the best of them are far
>too linear. Also, there is the constant flipping of pages to find out what
>plot points are hit and which ones still need to be, not to mention the
>utter boredom that it sucks gm's into. Bug City is an outstanding campaign
>setting that doesn't need any modules to work...
<Big Snip>

I agree with you on this, Bug City is perfect as a sourcebook, when reading
it all sorts of nasty and evil ides entered my mind, I was starting up a new
campaign and ended it beginning one month before the Bug bomb and all
happened. My players faces after all this happened was great, the look of
horror was priceless. Only of the the group was an experienced SR player
(he went through the UB thing with a different character) understood what
was happening as it did. A module would have just taken up space in the
book.
Larry Sica
lomion@**.cybernex.net
http://www2.cybernex.net/~lomion
-----------------------------------------------
"I see the eyes but not the tears
This is my affliction"
>From "Eyes that last I saw in tears", T.S. Eliot
-----------------------------------------------
Message no. 3
From: Robyn King-Nitschke <rking@********.COM>
Subject: Re: Bug City should've been a module?!
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 1996 09:32:49 -0700
Topcat writes:

>
> I would all but kill for a chance to play/gm a group that would take this
> on. That's what roleplaying's about. Every run I've ever GM'd has been
> strictly on-the-fly. I have literally dozens of NPC's with stats and dozens
> more ideas for more NPC's. If I need someone I just reach back in the
> folder (or my mind or my hard drive) and pull one out. Whatever the players
> do, I can work with it. I'm not restrained by the hideously linear modules.
> If you haven't played in or gm'd a campaign in this manner, try it just for
> a night. If your imagination's working it'll be the best run ever.
>

Oh, I agree with you. If you have time to do it, homemade adventures
are the best. I'm GMing for another group of players, and I make up all
the adventures because one of the players is my GM and he knows all the
modules. But thinking up good adventures takes *a lot* of time. We only
play once a month. The modules are nice because someone's gone through the
trouble to come up with a good story (usually they're good--I haven't been
completely disappointed by any of them yet) with all the twists and turns
that our group likes. We're roleplayers--the bang-bang and tech and all
that are secondary to exploring the characters, and our GM is great at
improvising good NPCs on the fly.

I've played in basic "go into the corp, get/blow up/destroy the stuff/person/
creature" games, and I hate 'em. If there isn't some twist to the story
it's not as much fun. The other problem in my campaign is that all my
players are engineers, and I'm a writer. I tend to gloss over the "boring
techie details" to make a good story, and they want every last detail or
they're not happy. And when I try to provide these details, they often
call me on them. Sigh. :) They're not rules lawyers, they're physics lawyers!
("Ye canna change the laws of physics!")

So the point to all this rambling is, I'd like to see a Bug City module
because I don't have time to make one up, and neither does my GM. I really
don't like it when FASA takes major plot points like the Chicago situation
and makes them novels, the same way that I get tired of hearing about "Bigby
this" and "Mordenkainen that" and "Elminster whatever" in the
various TSR
games. I don't want to vicariously experience the lives of someone else's
characters. It would be like making Harlequin's Back into a novel instead
of a module. Where's the fun in that?

--o'Rat
Message no. 4
From: mbroadwa@*******.glenayre.com (Mike Broadwater)
Subject: Re: Bug City should've been a module?!
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 1996 11:46:02 -0500
>So the point to all this rambling is, I'd like to see a Bug City module
>because I don't have time to make one up, and neither does my GM. I really
>don't like it when FASA takes major plot points like the Chicago situation
>and makes them novels, the same way that I get tired of hearing about "Bigby
>this" and "Mordenkainen that" and "Elminster whatever" in the
various TSR
>games. I don't want to vicariously experience the lives of someone else's
>characters. It would be like making Harlequin's Back into a novel instead
>of a module. Where's the fun in that?
>
>--o'Rat

Hold on. First you complain that SR modules are too linear, and now you're
calling for one that has to be linear because certain things have to happen?
That's why it was a novel and not a module leading to the sourcebook. What
if your characters had gotten the nuke blast off? What if they had been
completely successful? The kind of module needed to make Bug City happen
(which FASA obviously wanted, otherwise they wouldn't keep mentioning it in
sourcebooks) would have either led the players around by the nose and
stunted what they could do, or let them do whatever they wanted, but no
matter what they did, things would always turn out the same. What fun is
that? If you _really_ want to run a bug city intro, then read
_Burning_Bright_, find out what happens in there, make a couple of notes,
and run it.

IMHO, if you have more than one side of a piece of paper with running notes,
your over prepared.

Mike Broadwater
http://www.olemiss.edu/~neon
"You only need two things in this world. WD40 to make things go, and duct
tape to make them stop."
Message no. 5
From: Robyn King-Nitschke <rking@********.COM>
Subject: Re: Bug City should've been a module?!
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 1996 10:19:01 -0700
Mike Broadwater writes:

>
> Hold on. First you complain that SR modules are too linear, and now you're
> calling for one that has to be linear because certain things have to happen?

Wait a sec. I never complained that SR modules are too linear. I don't mind
linear modules as long as the characters aren't *forced* to do *only* what
the module says (in other words, if they can go off on tangents but have
to eventually get back to the structure of the module, that's OK--IMHO,
"Harlequin's Back" was the worst linear offender because the characters
really didn't have room to do anything extraneous. The same things happened
regardless of the characters' actions.)


> That's why it was a novel and not a module leading to the sourcebook. What
> if your characters had gotten the nuke blast off? What if they had been
> completely successful?


Well, if they'd gotten the nuke, they'd be very unhappy now. :) If
they had been successful, then in our game, Chicago wouldn't be such a
bad place to visit. :)

> The kind of module needed to make Bug City happen
> (which FASA obviously wanted, otherwise they wouldn't keep mentioning it in
> sourcebooks) would have either led the players around by the nose and
> stunted what they could do, or let them do whatever they wanted, but no
> matter what they did, things would always turn out the same. What fun is
> that?

You have a point there. But they could have altered things a bit to
make this less true. What if the players had failed in Harlequin's Back?

> If you _really_ want to run a bug city intro, then read
> _Burning_Bright_, find out what happens in there, make a couple of notes,
> and run it.
>

I've been trying to get my GM to do just that. He said he might one of
these days, when he gets some free time.

> IMHO, if you have more than one side of a piece of paper with running notes,
> your over prepared.
>

Well, I disagree with you. Maybe if you know the game backward and forward,
and can call up obscure rules on a second's notice, and if you can keep
track of multiple threads generated by multiple catlike players in your
head, then you can get away with this. I can't. :) Seriously, I think one's
ability to do this is largely dependent on the group of players one has.
Mine would eat me alive if I tried this--they would pounce on every tiny
inconsistency in my narrative and pursue every irrelevant piece of information
to the point of frustration on my and their part. My players are great,
but they're *extremely* demanding on a new GM (and yes, this is my first
SR campaign--I've been running for 6 months now after playing for about 6 years).

o'Rat
Message no. 6
From: "Mark Steedman" <M.J.Steedman@***.rgu.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Bug City should've been a module?!
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 1996 08:42:35 GMT
> From: Robyn King-Nitschke <rking@********.COM>
>
> You have a point there. But they could have altered things a bit to
> make this less true. What if the players had failed in Harlequin's Back?
>
>
Well they all end up dead so you have to start a new campain. If HB
fails though the world probably gets a full scale Horror invasion
fairly soon, though what timescale 'fairly' is leaves a lot of
interpretaion but is bad enough you assume the new characters are in
a world where harlequin won unless you fancy being neck deep in
things against which you stand no chance and which unlike corps will
bother you regardless of the bottom line.

Mark
Message no. 7
From: Russ Myrick <rm91612@****.net>
Subject: Re: Bug City should've been a module?!
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 1996 01:40:56 -0700
TopCat wrote:
> So get a li'l creative and alter the stuff. Run it like you want to
> run it, or make the GM do so. I hate modules because even the best of
> them are far too linear. Also, there is the constant flipping of pages
> to find out what plot points are hit and which ones still need to be,
> not to mention the utter boredom that it sucks gm's into. Bug City is
> an outstanding campaign setting that doesn't need any modules to
> work...
> <Adventure Lead Off Snipped>
>
> I would all but kill for a chance to play/gm a group that would take
> this on. That's what roleplaying's about. Every run I've ever GM'd
> has been strictly on-the-fly. I have literally dozens of NPC's with
> stats and dozens more ideas for more NPC's. If I need someone I just
> reach back in the folder (or my mind or my hard drive) and pull one
> out. Whatever the players do, I can work with it. I'm not restrained
> by the hideously linear modules. If you haven't played in or gm'd a
> campaign in this manner, try it just for a night. If your
> imagination's working it'll be the best run ever.
> Amen to that. I can't say that I've ever run a campaign or play session
strictly by the module/book.
Message no. 8
From: Robyn King-Nitschke <rking@********.COM>
Subject: Re: Bug City should've been a module?!
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 1996 10:27:25 -0700
Russ Myrick writes:

> Amen to that. I can't say that I've ever run a campaign or play session
> strictly by the module/book.
>

My GM, who runs modules, has never done this either. He's always
grumbling about how much of the module he has to change in order
to be challenging or to keep it from leading us around by the
nose.

Case in point: (spoiler below for "Total Eclipse" module...)























The vampire assassin in that module was a JOKE as written. He was
basically an off-the-shelf starting combat mage with vampire powers
that he didn't want to reveal. Who ever heard of an assassin with
a skill of 3, an SMG, and normal rounds?? GM changed it to skill 6,
sniper rifle, and APDS rounds. My mage Winterhawk nearly bit the
big one when he sprouted a new hole in his head from that bugger.

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