The terrible sewer level happens too soon. Move it to the middle like other games do.

Didn't miss these, don't worry - have been polishing the writing on the runner encounter and the ending, and working a few different ways to improve the escort sequence.

I'm tailoring the runner encounter to be more directly tied to the karma choices made, giving you a chance to call out your skills to C & E.

As far as skill checks themselves go, I'm holding off on those until Part 1. Through the end of the prologue, you're still basically a John/Jane Doe, not a runner. Your skills are what they are, and you don't have that knife-edge luck that runners acquire - that fun comes later.

Robie99/Shiki: Is there something in particular you don't like about sewer levels? In general, or this one in particular?

That all being said, keep the discussion going. You all have no idea what a huge help this is :)

I still believe that it should be possible to add some skill checks, just do them very low. The idea is to let the player roleplay the character he rolled. Even with initial karma, you can still get a few points of charisma and an etiquette. Any fresh char could have a few points in guns or magic.

Here's an example. The dwarf uses a shotgun, right? So IF your character has at least 1 point into shotguns, then he could recognize the model and/or tell him that the barrel needs maintenance (or something like that), which would engratiate the Dwarf with you.

Stuff like that is what really makes the player feel atached to both their characters and the NPCs.

I just played the piece today, and I really like where it's going so far. The player's characters is sympathetic and understandable, thrown into the situation that's way bigger then they are and only able to get through it by fluke and circumstances, and the stakes are personal, which I always like.

I disagree with the above posters. The sewer level makes the most sense given the scenario of getting out of the hospital through a waste dump site, so I would keep it as it is. Those ghouls are a good challenge that early and I don't think anything is lost by having the sewers be in the opening act.

I like the shadowrunners. Having the PC tag along because of an innocucous connection ala knowing the area is a good way to pull a normal street rat into the world of running the shadows, and the pair you gave us work well in the sense of being personable but also practical. I look forward to seeing more of them.

And as to Cmrd. Deathcall's comment on small skill checks, I agree that things like that can help immerse the character in the setting. Caldecott Caper had cases where there were two, or sometimes more, skill checks in a conversation tree to accomplish the same goal, and I really like that approach. If that's something that works for you, I encourage you to give it a try.

Regarding some things that can be improved, I found that waiting for Kirah to catch up when getting to the taxi, as well as waiting for the guard to escort you down the hall felt very laggy. I'm not sure if this has to do with the engine or the triggers or what, but there were times I felt like the game had crashed.

All in all, I look forward to the next installment, or the updated version of this one, whichever you choose.

Played through this, and found myself enjoying it. Had a couple of suggestions, but take them with a grain of salt...

Seems that Kirah's following is interupted by a timed event to make her double over. While it's astetically pleasing, it makes walking the long distance to the taxi bothersome. Try setting her idle animation state to something like "straightjacket" so she'll be hunched and have her arms crossed across her chest, without causing the delays.

You've got a bunch of inspection icons on things, which are fun bits to make the world feel more alive, but they should disable after you inspect them. (Or have mulitple comments, if you want to go that route). Also, some of them are pretty quick... add a bit longer delays on clearing the messages.

The stepped 'follow the guard' encounter, those are trickier. Try setting them in passive mode, so the guard can move during the players turn. It'll go a long ways towards smoothing that out. If you need a hand with setting that up, feel free to hit me up... I'm sure I can point you in the right direction.

The sewers had some map clipping errors, and I could walk out across the water around the 'north side' of the pump chamber. (From the last ghoul cave, behind the large tanks with steps, and over to the large power station.) Invisible block-movement blocks should take care of those errors nicely.

I also agree with the skills check, give you a chance to feel more involved with the story. I made a mage character, with no pistols skill... which made it tough to feel useful with the runners. Standing a square away, with 40% chance to hit. I did get a spell from a dropped body, but it was a cooldown spell, rather than just the generic attack spell (Which would've been more useful for my character)

Just curious, but what happens if you have a street sam, and you manage to fight off the 4 guards from the hospital?

You're off to a solid start... Curious to see where it goes.

I think the initial hook could be drastically improved with the addition of a short scene with the sister character right at the start. Doesn't need to be anything grand -- just some banter between siblings to establish the relationship, and ending with something along the lines of "Just rest for now, I'll be back with some food" before going out to meet with not-Shyu.

Great stuff, only have this to add:
When running to leave the sewers after pushing the button, I ended up in combat right as I got there. No idea where the enemies were, and just kind of had to sit around like an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ while I waited for them to show. Let the elevator be usable when you get there, rather than waiting, or have the ghouls cut you off before you get there. I had to pass at least four turns.

meh. Try to tighten up your story a bit. Massive first map that I wandered around for no reason, only to walk across the street and get pork buns. Had to call and then wait for a taxi. These are parts that either need to serve a purpose, i.e. introduce recurring characters, or should be done in text format. The quicker you can move the player into interesting dialogues, mysteries to solve, or combat the better. I don't need to have a thirty second conversation with a receptionist unless there is some dilemma to solve or some important character to introduce.

I get why you don't give the player starting weapons, but that created a problem I noticed. I was going to start as a cyber adept, very few points in ranged at the start and I was planning on taking the cyber whip once I could, and I had no melee points. so the first weapon I got was a pistol nearly useless for me and then killing fists where I could barely hit with unarmed, normally I would have been given ares hand razors or something to start off. Though admittedly I may not have had the best choices of where to put karma to start off.

Overall, good proof of concept, and I hope you carry it out to fruition.

I played as a Mage, so I'm glad to see we got Manabolt right off the bat, but I can't imagine what other players will have to do to get through the sewer section.

Only dialogue thing I noticed is that the Runners refer to the PC by their street name when the PC hasn't given them *any* name. May want to take a look at that initial dialogue again.

My big suggestion is that, any time you have "pop up" combat like the ghoul pockets, put something in the room to reward the player for poking their head in and exploring. Even if it's vendor trash. A hit of cram, med kit, some chump change in nuyen. It'll give the player that "reward!" bump and not make them feel like the combat's just bogging them down from story chunk to story chunk.

Will you finish this mode?

"Only dialogue thing I noticed is that the Runners refer to the PC by their street name when the PC hasn't given them *any* name. May want to take a look at that initial dialogue again."
this! so much this!