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Shadowrun: Sprawl Wilds $12.00
Average Rating:3.9 / 5
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Shadowrun: Sprawl Wilds
Publisher: Catalyst Game Labs
by Eric T. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 02/28/2015 10:48:08

Good resource for a starting GM, and has a few ideas for an old cagey one. Well worth the price point for the PDF.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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Shadowrun: Sprawl Wilds
Publisher: Catalyst Game Labs
by Megan R. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 02/18/2015 08:44:19

Sprawl Wilds is a collection of adventures gathered with the purpose of introducing your group to some of the interesting and exciting places that are to be found in the underbelly of Chicago. Originally written for convention use, they ought to slot in neatly to any campaign.

Each adventure is structured in the same way as the Shadowrun Missions series, which provides a clear framework with plenty of scope to let the adventure develop fairly organically as you and your players wish, yet with enough signposting to help you keep it on track. There are several 'scenes' which come with an overview, some read-aloud text to set the scene and more detailed information to enable you to run it effectively... and not forgetting a section on what could go wrong and how to deal with unexpected player actions. Ruleswise, you can use these with Shadowrun 4e or Shadowrun 5e as you prefer.

OK, what if your campaign isn't set in Seattle? No worries, there's a one-page mini-scenario designed to give your party a reason to be in Seattle even if it is not their regular haunt. They might like it and stay, or after sampling one or two of the adventures herein, they may prefer to go elsewhere. Neat.

There are a full four adventures here - Manhunt, Carbon Copy, Ashes and Humanitarian Aid. Each could be run in a single session (they were, after all, built around standard four-hour convention slots) but you can take longer if you prefer.

Manhunt begins with a request to help someone who's investigating mysterious animal attacks and killings out in the Barrens. Naturally, there's more than meets the eye... and there's the added complication that you are out in the country with things like weather, not 'safe' on the city streets. The first problem is actually getting out there, and once there the action comes thick and fast in this alien environment.

Carbon Copy, back on the city streets but no safer, involves a hunt for a serial killer. There's just one thing. That killer's been dead for years, and even the copycat killer who operated for a while over a year ago has not been heard from in ages... another edge-of-the-seat ride for the party including a visit to the Ork Underground and dealings with Knight Errant.

Ashes again involves the Ork Underground, putting the characters at a pivotal event, a moment in history from which hangs the future of an entire society - yet it all begins with a 'short courier job'. This soon develops into an intense and time-critical series of events. And a major fire.

Finally, Humanitarian Aid sends the characters to the aid of a township in Salish territory who have fallen prey to a rather nasty virus. Supplies of vaccine have been stolen from the local clinic, and it's the party's job to retrieve them so that the ill can be treated.

All serve as stand-alone adventures that can be played as one-offs or slotted into an ongoing campaign. Each presents an interesting take on the world of the shadowrunner, broadening the scope beyond the usual corporate bickering... and they're fun to run. Everything is well presented and laid out so as to be easy to use, with comprehenive maps, handouts, rumour tables and more to make the game master's life easy.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Shadowrun: Sprawl Wilds
Publisher: Catalyst Game Labs
by Sean H. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 02/15/2014 22:06:43

Shadowrun: Sprawl Wilds contains four short adventures for SR4A or SR5, converted from tournament adventure:

Manhunt, finds the runners in a barrens defending a farm and investigating a series of odd attack. Carbon Copy, pits them against the latest version of a serial killer. Ashes, which finds the runners in the Ork Underground in the middle of an arson spree. Humanitarian Aid, finds the runners hunting for stolen medicine in a small town.

While a mixed bag, Manhunt seems exceptionally strong providing a good mix of roleplaying and problem solving, with some combat as well. Carbon Copy requires investigation skill and can provide the runners with a set of valuable contacts, if they succeed. Ashes but the character in a position to make a difference, a big difference, in the future of the Ork Underground, GMs should be very careful with this adventure, it is likely to have serious long term impact on a campaign. Humanitarian Aid is a solid horror scenario and is the lead in to the Romero and Juliet adventure. Pretty close to something here for every campaign.

Disclosure: As a featured reviewer for RPGNow/DriveThroughRPG, I received my copy of this product for free from the publisher for the purpose of this review.

Note: Read more reviews and other gaming articles at my journal https://seaofstarsrpg.wordpress.com/



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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Shadowrun: Sprawl Wilds
Publisher: Catalyst Game Labs
by Adrian S. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 10/10/2013 23:15:49

The collection represents a very clever move on the part of Catalyst and comes highly recommend. Firstly, the compilation offers four modules, collected from the convention circuit and made available to all fans at an extremely reasonable price (by current pricing, you'll pay $3.00 per module which is fantastic value). Secondly, the modules come dual-statted, showing both the rules for 'Shadowrun Fourth Edition (20th Anniversary)' and 'Shadowrun Fifth Edition', making the product accessible to players of both editions. The dual-stats are unobtrusive, and Catalyst does a good job (as expected) with layout to make it so.

The four modules offer a wide variety of locales, so each has a very distinct flavour. The break down is as follows:

Manhunt - on the surface, this appears to be an investigation centred around an aquaculture farm in the Barrens, but as we all know there is a lot more to the story than this simple premise. The setting was very interesting, and well-thought-out, and The Barrens were described in very believable terms. It offers a nice balance of investigative and combat scenes, but players who enjoy lateral thinking and in-depth role-playing will find a lot of satisfaction. Another nice touch are the notes which foreshadow to the GM how particular PC actions will influence the outcome.

Carbon Copy - this is tied to the 'Shadowrun Missions' (like the next module) and really you need to know a bit about the backstory to really enjoy this one. That said, it is a solid investigative module with some serious moral choices underpinning the end.

Ashes - set in the Ork Underground against the Proposition 23 Agenda, this is really a survival story set against racial hatred. The terrain can be used to great advantage in this module, as well as the political and religious beliefs of the Underground inhabitants.

Humanitarian Aid - rounding off the compilation is a seriously creepy offering. Ostensibly called to an isolated island for a simple job, the 'runners find a viral outbreak, astral disturbance and a final showdown with a horrifying foe.

I found the balance of module content and locations to be extremely satisfying. Each of the stories has enough to make it stand out form the others in the collection and create a memorable role-playing experience. The overall quality is very high, the artwork consistently good (nice to see some Jeff Laubenstein pieces in this title), and the editing issues which have plagued Fourth Edition releases are absent.

You would be hard pressed to find a collection of modules at a better price, and I'd highly recommend these for both the novice GM (I'd run 'Manhunt' and 'Humanitarian Aid') and veteran GMs (go with any of the modules) alike.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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Shadowrun: Sprawl Wilds
Publisher: Catalyst Game Labs
by Kyle W. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 07/18/2013 13:08:28

Shadowrun: Sprawl Wilds is a collection of adventures that are intriguing and provide a good starting point for prospective Shadowrun GM's. They focus more on a complex mission rather than a simple one; they'll take a fair deal of getting familiar with to run, and they involve fewer felonies than the average shadowrun, but not only do they show off SR5's new things well and serve as a decent starting-off point for Shadowrun players. Unfortunately, they are not quite perfect, but they're pretty good in general.

I'm not going to go down and break down each adventure separately, because there's some spoilers that could be had and I don't follow the SR:M adventures, meaning that my first experiences with all these characters have been right here. However, none of the plots are overly simple-some of them are more complex, and might frustrate players who want to go in and shoot things, but all offer a decent level of engagement. Unfortunately, some of the twists were pretty obvious pretty early-and this is a spoiler: the uncooperative person, for instance, is obviously a Shedim.

That said, the writing's rather good, and there's stats included for SR4A and SR5; you could even run each edition for different groups of players to get a feel for the different systems of each-I'm pretty sold on 5th Edition and my 4th Edition campaign's in the middle of a story arc, so I can't pull players out to do one of them now, but I'd expect some pretty good results. There's nothing that feels overly dumb; again, some of the things can be guessed by someone who's particularly genre savvy or in touch with the universe, I'm contemplating running Ashes with a group of rookies to see how they respond to the setting and rules and I think it'd work pretty well as an introduction.

Layout and text design all work great; nothing super fancy, nothing super poor; the graphics are in black-and-white but still good; if you don't care about color you won't have a complaint, except perhaps on one of the handout maps which has somewhat ambiguous shading (it's still obvious what the objects in the map are, but it bothers me ever so slightly). On the subject of handouts, they're all compiled at the end of the PDF; not exactly a horrible thing, but it's a little annoying for reference purposes, especially since they're not in the end of adventure wrap-up.

As for the value, I'm sort of torn; on one hand, it is four rather lengthy adventures with large fleshed out casts. However, at the same time, the art is in black and white, and the storylines are all rather linear; with the exception of Ashes which has a number of potential failure points that make things more interesting. There's a lot of places where the storyline depends on the players going along happily with them-something that works better at certain places than others; these were missions written for a convention, and I suspect that they'd work better for a one-shot game or an introductory session than for a collection of adventures; they're all satisfying by themselves, but the chance that I'd be able to work them all into a single campaign is rather slim; I'd really have to run multiple campaigns to run them all, and while they all do a very good job of showing off the setting of Shadowrun, they'd be sort of hard to work together. That's the only thing really holding this back from five stars; as is I give it a 4-star rating, because at $3 an adventure it's really not a great deal; but if you only run two or three, like I'm looking at doing, that price per adventure skyrockets.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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Shadowrun: Sprawl Wilds
Publisher: Catalyst Game Labs
by Alexander L. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 07/18/2013 07:35:24

Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2013/07/18/tabletop-review-shadowrun-sprawl-wilds-fourth-and-fifth-edition/

Shadowrun: Sprawl Wilds is a reprint of four previously published Shadowrun Missions adventures collected and bound into one document. I’ve been praising the Shadowrun Missions line since I started reviewing tabletop games here at Diehard GameFAN as the best adventure format currently available, and you can’t get any of the Missions in this collection at DriveThruRPG.com or from CGL’s website, so it’s nice to see them collected here. As well, the price point is pretty solid. Usually Shadowrun Missions are $3.95 each, or less than a comic book. So the PDF price of $12.99 is a further discount on adventures that really are the best deal in gaming today. It’s such a crazy good price point that the cost alone is reason enough to empathically recommend this product to you as you’re getting four adventures for basically the price of three. The $19.99 “regular” price is a bit high, however, especially as these adventures are black and white and we’ve been spoiled by color adventures through this line for the past few years, so it’s hard to recommend at THAT price simply because it’s silly to be charged $4.99 for adventures that usually costs $3.99 if you buy them separately. So if you’re on the fence, get this collection NOW rather than later while the price is awesome rather than slightly overpriced compared to normal.

Another thing worth noting about Sprawl Wilds is that this is not your typical reprint. After all, we just saw the release of Shadowrun, Fifth Edition and as such, these Shadowrun Missions adventures have been reworked to be playable by both the new rules set and the old 20AE of Shadowrun. That means everyone wins with this collection. A big fan of the new edition (as you should be!)? Then you can replay some classic adventures with the new system and see how they compare? Absolutely hate the new rules and want to cling to fourth edition until they pry it from your cold dead hands, chummer? Well you can still play these adventures as they fit the version you love best. See? Everyone wins…except first through third edition fans that is.

If you’ve never played a Shadowrun Missions before, you’re missing out. As mentioned for THE PAST FEW YEARS, I’ve yet to find an adventure layout better than the one used with theShadowrun Missions line. Everything is laid out so wonderfully, even a brand new GM can run one of these. Then for the long time Sixth World Veteran, there are ways to scale the adventure up or down depending on the player’s skill at the game and/or the build levels of the characters. These things just flow so smoothly, I recommend them even to non-Shadowrun fans as an example of how to outline an adventure with the least amount of chance for GM screw up or confusion. I’m really glad the first official adventure release for 5e is simply taking some old SM adventures and giving them the new rules set. Fifth Edition is the perfect chance to jump on to Shadowrun for the first time and giving newcomers a set of easy to run, play and understand adventures is the best thing that could have happened for the game, especially as it had become far too insular and newcomer unfriendly towards the end of 4e.

So now let’s talk about the adventures themselves. There are four of them here and as they are four adventures, the quality does vary. The collection starts off with Manhunt and it’s a personal favorite of mine. Back in the day (AKA a few years ago…) I turned this adventure into a Shadowrun/Werewolf: The Apocalypse crossover, which is surprisingly easy to do once you read the text (I don’t want to spoil it.). Basically your characters have been hired to investigate a string of mysterious animal killings up by a hydroponics farm. Not your usual Shadowrun, is it? Well, it stays that way throughout, believe me. The adventure features some unusual antagonists and NPCs. It’s a great introduction into just how weird the Sixth World can be as well as showcasing how not every adventure needs to be wetworks or industrial espionage. The Plastic Jungle is always a memorable and far underutilized backdrop and I love that this collections starts with Manhunt as it will really stick out in the minds of newcomers and also keep them from being introduced to the system via the usual tricks and tropes. Character will use a range of skills, many of which aren’t killing things related.

The second adventure in this collection is Carbon Copy. I honestly didn’t remember this one at all, and the events seemed out of place since it’s the “third” appearance of the Mayan Cutter and a major Shadowrun Missions character that was alive all throughout last season has a pretty good chance of being axed here, so I had to go look and discover that this one is an all new adventure just for the collection. Nice! Well, not so nice for CHARACTER NAME REDACTED, as I’ve always liked them. Boo-Urns. Of course the synopsis is written in a way that had me thinking they were definitely killing a certain Knight Errant NPC that is quite popular with Shadowrun fans, but thankfully that was just a very bad turn of phrase not caught by the editing team.

Carbon Copy is a fun little adventure, but there is one rather big problem that lessens its impact. While it is nice to have a new adventure, without any connection to the two previous Mayan Cutter adventures, the importance of who and what the Mayan Cutter is or the potential death of a longtime NPC will be lost on a lot of people who picked this up. Even more important, as the first adventure collection for Fifth Edition, Sprawl Wilds is the first introduction for a lot of gamers to Shadowrun and already they’re going to be in over the heads thanks to an adventure that harkens back to a veritable dump truck load of Fourth Edition metaplot points, making it a bit confusing and inaccessible to newcomers – the exact problem I feared we would see with Fifth Edition and the EXACT OPPOSITE thing you would want to see with the only premade adventures currently available for 5e. Now don’t get me wrong – the adventure is quite good, but it would have had far more impact had it been released in the closing days of Fourth Edition.

As the first truly new adventure for Fifth Edition you get a well written story but it does breaks every cardinal rule and commits every faux pas one can when it comes to releasing something for new players and a new system. Seriously, this would be like me writing for Vampire: the Requiem and then having the entire adventure reference Vampire: The Masquerade Second Edition and the death of Lodin, prince of Chicago or some such. Had Sprawl Wilds been a Mayan Cutter collection, this would worked so much better for both longtime Sixth World fans and newcomers alike. Instead you get an adventure that is awesome (I can’t stress that enough; I really liked the adventure) if you are a longtime fan of the metaplot and Shadowrun Missions in particular or if you are new to Shadowrun it becomes a mediocre experience that highlights the disconnect between the current writing staff at Catalyst Game Labs and their need to bring (and keep) new gamers into the fold instead of writing for the longtime SR zealot, because eventually that audience is going to dry up. So much for hoping Fifth Edition would be less about the metaplot and more about the game and gamers.

Adventure number three is called Ashes. It’s been modified a bit from the original version, at least metaplot wise. Now the adventure takes place after Election Day and/or Dirty Tricks with Proposition 23 passing. This changes the adventure slightly, but not enough that it affects the outcome or flow. People who played the original Ashes might be a bit disoriented and like, “That’s not how it happened,” but GOOD! It’s like the old B1 In Search of the Unknown or a Tunnels & Trolls in that you can replay it and still get something new out of it. As well, the changing of the metaplot actually makes the adventure a little more welcoming to newcomers as Proposition 23 is done with and they aren’t coming into the middle of this massive metaplot aspect that is actually already said and done from the closing days of Fourth Edition. It’s done and over with and so the changes let the players cleanly deal with Fifth Edition instead of retconning bits of Fourth Edition and I like that. An introduction to the Ork Underground in this collection is a wonderful idea, as it’s a defining aspect of 2075′s Seattle. Out of all the Ork Underground adventures, Ashes was also the easiest and most inviting to newcomers because the others were so intricately woven around the then upcoming referendum vote that a complete rewrite would have been needed to make them work. Even better, Ashes contains a nice primer on the Underground and its various sections, making sure new players and GMs alike will be able to understand its organization (or sometimes, complete lack thereof) and how different it is from the rest of Seattle.

The actual adventure itself is another high quality affair. What was supposed to be a simple courier job explodes into something else entirely – literally. What then follows is one of the more open ended Shadowrun Missions ever written. Don’t get me wrong; it’s still basically an on-rails shooter, but there are so many different things for players to do (or attempt to do) and a myriad of directions the adventure can go, that it really tested the Missions layout back in the day and proved how incredibly solid the format is. If Ashes hadn’t been written in the SM format, I think a lot of new or inexperienced GMs would have been lost or let things got to pot. Instead, the format of these adventures keeps things nicely contained while still listing (and organizing) all the possible outcomes of the sheer chaos and bedlam this adventure degenerates down to. Ashes is very different from the stereotypical Shadowrun experience while also introduces players to a regularly occurring location within Seattle, so it’s a wonderful juxtaposition of things that will be all too familiar to players as they get more experienced with the system and location while also reminding them that not every mission can be solved by a decker and a metric ton of bullets. This is another great choice for the collection and although I’m not generally a big fan of retconning adventures timeline wise (system wise is fine), Ashes is one of the better examples of this actually succeeding.

The fourth and final adventure is Humanitarian Aid, which got a sequel in the latest edition of Shadowrun Missions entitled ugh…Romero and Juliette. Yes, R&J was easily the worst Shadowrun Missions adventure of the season, and arguably ever, and it was lambasted from here to DrivethruRPG.com and back to ever major Shadowrun site out there, but good news everybody – Humanitarian Aid is written by a different person altogether, it’s of a much higher quality and it actually gets how to use a shedim correctly! So if you’re had the misfortune of sitting through Romero & Juliette and the inclusion of this adventure feels you with worry that Humanitarian Aid is just as terrible – sigh in relief because it most certainly is not.

Humanitarian Aid is a great way to end this collection, not just because it features a pretty powerful end boss which lets the collection end with a pretty powerful and memorable battle, but it’s another adventure that breaks from the usual, “break into location A and steal Object B or kill Person C” format that it is all too easy for homebrew adventures to fall into. At the same time it does bring into play one of the big Mega-Corps for the first time (Horizon – run technomancers, run!) in this collection and revolves around a nice kindly mission where you are retrieving a vaccine for a town in need. Clearly the players have a pure white hat on for once and they’re doing a mission where they can feel good about themselves, actually be as close to heroes as it gets in the Sixth World and earn some figurative Karma in addition to the literal Karma that acts as the XP system for Shadowrun. Of course things are not as easy as this adventure also introduces the shedim to newcomers. Shedim are not the Hebrew demons of lore, at least not in the Sixth World. Instead they are astrally existing spirits capable of possessing physical bodies. They’re a pretty loathsome and fearsome enemy in the Sixth World (although perhaps not as creepy as Insect Spirits, which thankfully show up in this collection, but just wait until the Chi-Town Rumble season of Shadowrun Missions starts up!) The whole adventure is a thrill ride from beginning to end and I’m happy Catalyst included Humanitarian Aid in this collection as it’s a great introduction to balls to the wall combat Shadowrun style, the Shedim, Horizon and how even the simplest mission in theory can go haywire, but also it gives newcomers and vets alike a chance to finally own this adventure which while, cited recently, hasn’t been availably digital before now (at least that I can recall. Hey, I’m old!).

Overall, Sprawl Wilds is a truly top notch collection. You get reprints of three well done adventures and a brand new one. I loved them all, even if one is too metaplot heavy for newcomers to truly get into. The price is especially good, and doubly so when you consider this is the first time any of them have been seen since 2010′s convention season. The Shadowrun Missions format is exactly what I hoped I’d see for the first official Fifth Edition adventure release(s) as it’s a great way to help people learn the system as well as keep GMs focused. This is simply a wonderful collection across the board and, while not perfect, is an easy recommendation to all Shadowrun fans out there new and old, fourth edition stalwarts or those who heartily embrace the fifth rendition of the Sixth World.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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