The GWJ CRPG Club - Game 1: Shadowrun Dragonfall DC (Over)

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For more information on the GWJ CRPG Club, go here.

Shadowrun: Dragonfall Director's Cut is the GWJ CRPG's Club's first winner! We'll be playing this game until June 30, 2018. This thread is for friendly discussion as we play through the game. Share your reflections, successes, defeats, tactics, wishes, impressions, and whatever here! The more conversation the better, so post away.

For BIG spoilers, please use the spoiler tag. (No! I am your father!) Tactics, strategies, general story progression likely won't need them, but we're still working these things out. (Suggestions welcome!)

Anyone and everyone is welcome to participate, and can start at any time, so join the fun! One quick favor: If you decide to play, make a post here along the lines of "I'm in!" to let us know. If you start and finish the game before the end, you'll level up your GWJ CRPG Membership.

It's worth mentioning that if you are up for a bigger challenge, a few brave souls are attempting to play all three Shadowrun games during this playthrough. If Dragonfall isn't enough for you, feel free to add Shadowrun Returns and/or Shadowrun Hong Kong.

Helpful Links
Steam ($14.99)
Google Play ($2.99)
How Long to Beat (Main Story Avg: 21 hours)
Wiki
Achievement Guide
Metacritic
Pyxistyx's Guide to Customizing your Portrait
Antumbra Saga (Campaign Mod)
Mercurial (Campaign Mod)
Modding Tools Wiki
Getting Started with Modding Shadowrun
How to Build a Firefight
How to Build a Custom Map

Members Playing
pyxistyx (completed)
*Legion* (completed)
Godzilla Blitz (completed)
RnRClown (completed)
Hardek (completed)
beanman101283 (completed)
JohnKillo (completed)
WellAdjusted (completed)
steinkrug (completed)
SillyRabbit (completed)
Skraut (completed)
tundra (completed)
Feegle (completed)
benign1 (completed)
fuzzyslug (completed)
Clumber (completed)
SpaceDog (completed)
merphle (completed)
Redherring (completed)

absurddoctor
PWAlessi
karmajay
JeremyK
AUs_TBirD
Bubblefuzz
Running Man
prodiginy
Gravey
Eleima
kergguz
ClockworkHouse
tboon
Aristophan
Toddland

Final Stats
Players Starting: 34
Players Finishing: 19
Completion Percentage: 55.9%

I'm definitely in on this one. I hope to spread the play out, maybe doing 30 minutes to an hour a day.

Yay!

Already in, of course. My character for this playthrough...

IMAGE(https://smackfolio.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/shadowrun-character-sheet.jpg)

Depending on how quickly I get through this, I may move on to Hong Kong (or try the mod linked above...I've not actually taken a look at any custom mods for the game, actually)

I love that art, pyxistyx. Where did you find it?

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I love that art, pyxistyx. Where did you find it?

Agreed, that is very cool. I've posted pyxistyx's instructions on how to do that in the helpful links section. I might have to try that as well, once I decide on a character.

"Shadowrun" by Grobi Grafik on deviantart
Funnily enough I think it's the cover for a German Shadowrun book

When I have more time I'll probably try to do my own portraits for some games*, but right now I'm back to being up to my ears in homework so google-searches will have to suffice for now!

* though, er....maybe not to quite the same level of quality of the above :O

** Also, while the music in-game is pretty good, it get's a bit repetitive over time, so I've taken to trawling Youtube for "cyberpunk background music" playlists for a bit of variety. Especially since there's no spoken dialogue to worry about. Here's a couple of examples.

I'm starting Shadowrun Returns, and anyone that wants to play through all 3 Shadowrun games can join me.

*Legion* wrote:

I'm starting Shadowrun Returns, and anyone that wants to play through all 3 Shadowrun games can join me.

Awesome! I generally take twice as long as "average time to beat" information, so I'm going to do Dragonfall first, then decide.

Any suggestions for a starting character?

Aristophan wrote:

Any suggestions for a starting character?

I stumbled onto a discussion that suggested decker as a fun class that's always at the center of the action, so I think I'll go with that. Of all the classes, it sounds the most unique to me as well.

I'd link to the discussion but I can't find it again. :/

EDIT: Search history for the win: character creation

personally, my recommendation for Dragonfall specifically would be Decker. Their skills get a lot of use throughout the campaign and I think it ties in nicely with some of the story beats.

I'm in.

Firing it up now.

I found the original Shadowrun Returns a little... boring, I guess? Does Dragonfall improve on the original campaign a lot?

I'll be playing. I have all 3 so I'll try to do a Legion run as well.

Iridium884 wrote:

I found the original Shadowrun Returns a little... boring, I guess? Does Dragonfall improve on the original campaign a lot?

By a significant margin. I never played pen and paper Shadowrun but this feels like a proper PnP campaign, with some brilliantly fleshed out NPC characters in your crew and an absolutely fantastic main storyline. It's well worth playing even if you weren't too keen on the first game.

The opening setup/prologue is still probably one of my favourite openings of any CRPG of it's type.

That first mansion area is pretty tough. That last fight, I'm not sure if you can win or not, but I ran for my life as soon as I could. I did manage to scare off that Orc with a wind spirit summon that pretty much locked him down the entire time.

My early start got interrupted. I had initially rolled an elf shaman, but I think I will re-roll a decker and start over.

I'm in.
IMAGE(https://vgy.me/1GkLBI.jpg)

I have almost no experience with D&D style games, and Shadowrun is a property I know exists...and that's about it. I first heard about its 16-bit titles, and later that it had a crappy licensed multiplayer fps game. Also, there was an extremely cringeworthy ad from 1990, which I think I first saw around 2015.

So, having no knowledge of things, I went with what sounded pretty straightforward in my character creation. As a result, T-BirD is a troll street samurai with a nasty hatchet attack. Playing as a tank is not my usual style (going by other genres), but I figured I wouldn't need to understand too many other systems to just whack things.

Played through the opening scenario. Managed to scare off the major threat the same way JeremyK did.
After this little taste of the world and game systems, I want to see more.

In. Trying out the Android version. Only as far as character creation. Gone with a dwarf mage for starters.

I’m in. I actually installed it a couple of days ago when it looked like the winner.

Are we missing any story by starting with Dragonfall? I’ve never tried a Shadowrun game, despite owning three of them.

I rolled an elf decker. I died in the mansion fight before the door opened. I'll give it another crack tomorrow.

I really enjoyed Shadowrun Returns, so I'm not exactly sure why I never got around to playing Dragonfall. (I'll probably play Hong Kong when I'm done with Dragonfall)

Good luck everyone!

I’m in, chummers.

I had played about half of Shadowrun Returns three or four years ago. The other night I decided to resume my game. Since I was 1/2 way done, why not finish it?

I definitely like it, though it’s not amazing. I’m excited to get into Dragonfall since, like pyxistyx said, it’s said to be much better.

I’m glad to see decker recommended. I was thinking I’d try something besides the samurai I’m playing in Returns. He’s pretty lethal with his guns, but it’s not super exciting.

Alright, I made it out of Candlekeep with Imoen. Sad news about Gorion though.

Oh ah...Shadowrun then. I don't have alot of experience with this system so I went all melee with an Ork street samurai.

I'm glad we settled on a Shadowrun game, I've always been interested in it but things keeps getting in the way. Now I have good incentive to stick with it.

I’m all in. Looks like an awesome game.

fuzzyslug wrote:

I’m in. I actually installed it a couple of days ago when it looked like the winner.

Are we missing any story by starting with Dragonfall? I’ve never tried a Shadowrun game, despite owning three of them.

No, your good. Each one is a separate story with a fresh set of characters each time. You may spot some references to a serial killer in Boston, so I think the first two games are supposed to be happening simultaneously, more or less.

There are technical improvements in each game though, which might make backtracking to the first, simpler campaign a little bit jarring

This game is ridiculously good. Well chosen team!

JeremyK wrote:

That first mansion area is pretty tough. That last fight, I'm not sure if you can win or not, but I ran for my life as soon as I could. I did manage to scare off that Orc with a wind spirit summon that pretty much locked him down the entire time.

JeremyK wrote:

That first mansion area is pretty tough. That last fight, I'm not sure if you can win or not, but I ran for my life as soon as I could. I did manage to scare off that Orc with a wind spirit summon that pretty much locked him down the entire time.

I've always been curious if you could kill the Orc or not (my suspicion is not, because it's a struggle even on easy and given that he's a significant, named character).

I'm up and running. I've started with Godzilla, a Human Decker with Shadowrun etiquettes. I wasn't sure what I was doing with character building, but I figured that since I'm a decker I should spend karma points on decking and IQ.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/d6uk50x.jpg)

I didn't find any character images I liked, so I do think I'm going to swap mine out for something I find online.

I mucked up my first attempt on the first mission. A lot of my failure came from not realizing that I had such a variety of action options available to me. I kept trying to shoot things with my main character, but as a decker he's the worst marksman ever. The guy can't hit a barn if he's standing in it. But then I realized that his "Marking Target" skill can make it so much easier for everyone to hit things. Aha! And likewise, all the characters seem to have some very helpful abilities in their right-side menu bars.

Even with the mess ups, I almost cleared the first mission on the first attempt, except that I didn't realize Dietrich had been killed. I think I could have used Glory to revive him, but didn't realize that was possible until she was almost out the door and poor Dietrich was a cold slab of meat well back in the main room. Oops!

I reloaded a save at the start of the basement, and the second time through went much better.

I'm really enjoying the Cyberpunk theme. The story is engaging so far. The combat was quite a bit of fun.

Quick question: There is no "Opportunity Fire" kind of thing in the game, where you automatically shoot enemies who advance on you if you save AP from the previous turn? So saving AP doesn't make sense, right? I should just use them up as best I can during my turn?

I saw a skill improvement that allowed Overwatch, maybe that's the opportunity fire? I'm intentionally not reading up on everything I see, avoiding rabbit holes.

I'm in!

Going with a elf shaman. Looks fun, good luck everyone.

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