Final Shadowrun Missions Five Take Aways of 2018

Every last Tuesday of the month at my FLGCS there's a Shadowrun Missions organized play event. Looking back, 2018 has been a horrible month for it. In a perfect world, Season 9 (Neo-Tokyo) modules would be starting next year. Instead, two or three mods remain of Season 8 (Chicago). Unfortunately, too many events were cancelled. We already know December won't work out. The last session of the year would have fallen on a holiday, chummer. So tonight was now or never.


We didn't have the full compliment; but we decided to game on once there were four players in attendance, myself included. Alas, the pre-game discussion led to the conclusion that tonight was the final Shadowrun Missions session at my FLGCS for the year. Ergo, this is my final Shadowrun Mission Five Take Aways of 2018 too.


As always, our infrequent Shadowrun gaming meant we were rusty throughout the evening. Hopefully, we can remedy the rules rustiness during 2019.


Reagents + Edge re-rolls Is Powerful Combo when casting some spells
Yeah, I've covered using drams of reagents to augment spells here before. However, I never used to Edge to re-roll failures. Furthermore, I hadn't used them to augment to limit of spells where Force didn't matter mechanically except for drain if the limit had been increased. Tonight, I verified reagent-amplified direct combat spells backed by Edge failure re-rolls fulfills what I have felt combat magic has been missing in fifth edition. Combat magic simply doesn't possess the knockout punch it had in prior editions. This combo solves that.


GM forewarnings and clues improved game quality substantiallyThere are times we can be quite destructive as a group. Due to GM hints we avoided several nasty ramifications throughout the module. Considering Shadowrun Missions hasn't been established despite running several years at my FLGCS, I feel this was a wise course of action. Plus, this was easily the best Shadowrun Missions session of the year; and without these I don't think everyone would have enjoyed it as much.


Loot!
Over in Adventurers League, there's much gnashing of teeth over loot. Shadowrun Missions doesn't really have a hard fast rule over plunder. Was your group lucky enough to acquire some? Do you keep it all? Do you sell it? SRM turns a blind eye; and the campaign is better for it. On the side, we've gotten better regarding to time management fencing it.


Prepped visuals and narrative enhanced and improved game flow
One benefit of the delays is the GM had plenty of time to prepare visuals and decide how narrate some portions of several mass combats. Either that or experience is paying off as Season 8 has required many combat encounters to be narrated in order to speed the game along. I'm a theater-of-the-mind guy but I have to admit miniature use made the session.


Use of the full complexity of first aid/heal spell rules were used
First aid rules have been glossed over quite a bit too the point we often forget tables exist. We also haven't had too many encounters where magical healing was significantly needed afterward. Not so tonight. Really did impact the game.


That's all. My remaining Five Take Aways will be D&D 5E related.


Happy gaming!