Previous LogsThe JobPart 1: Converting STATsPart 2: Converting Skills, Cyberware, and Items Welcome back to the Eurotour, choombas.
In the third installment of this trainwreck conversion, I have one (1) present and one (1) review of
Eurotour. But before we get started, let's go over the basics.
As a reminder:
- Remember that our goal is to run Eurotour with RED's Jumpstart rules, not retrofit the entirety of RED or upgrade 2020 (the full rules will handle that, ideally). This means making some sacrifices and playing fast and loose with the Rule of Law (but you Edgerunners ought to be used to that. ;)
- I've got my way of doing things as a Ref, and it works for me. That doesn't mean it'll jive with you easily or that everything I do will work for everyone. Take what works, tweak what doesn't, and discard the rest if you've gotta.
- I'm in uncharted Netspace here, so if you've got a better idea or catch something odd in the data, hash it out to me in the comments.
- Lastly, there will be MAJOR spoilers for Eurotour here.
And now, onto the show.
A Gift, For You
I did promise, and I shall deliver. The Tour Crew's converted stats, skills, cyber, and weapons can be found on this
lovely PDF. Savvy eyed readers may notice that some characters lack a lot of their skills. The Tour Crew in
Eurotour were designed as fully kitted characters for the Referee's benefit. Their backstories, secrets, vices, and hobbies are all on display via their sheets (Entropy's business mind, Clement's "early retirement" plan, Kessler's lack of education, etc.). The best part of the old sheets as a Ref is that
you don't need their mechanics, just their information. Unless you're excessively meticulous, Jack Entropy isn't going to be rolling his Stock Market skill every hour on the hour. At worst, you need to know what happens if they get into a fight (which, for most of them, is not much). The PDF conversion of these stats will help with that, but they are barebones for a reason. Their gifts and talents can still be found in
Eurotour, so go get a copy and start reading.
And when you're ready, read on to the review. I've got some choice words for this thing.
EUROTOUR - The Premise
In the off-chance you've missed all the headlines, vids, and ads for it, Jack Entropy's
Total Entropy Tour is kicking off in Europe in 2021, taking the shining star of the music world from Liverpool, UK, to Copenhagen, Denmark. But not everyone is as hyped for the pyrotechnics he's bringing, with some governments and corporations fearful of the anti-corp sentiments of his songs and of the fervent fans that eagerly answer his calls for rebellion. And in the Dark Future of *checks notes* 2021, if you've got the money, murder is always an option.
Unfortunately for Entropy, one of his own crew is planning to kill him. And it's only a matter of time before they get their chance...
Eurotour is a short campaign that finds the PCs hired as roadies, stagehands, and bodyguards for Jack Entropy during his last tour in Europe. This star's going to burn out, but if the players pick up on the clues, maybe they can keep him alive. Or fail terribly.
These six adventures can be run without the additional dressing of the tour, and they can also act as intros to each locale for groups that enjoy a slower pace. With the tour, however, the party will also be given a bunch of clues that lead up to one last showdown 30,000 feet in the air.
While I plan on going deeper into each adventure as I run them through my RPG Conversion Machine
TM, today's post will take a quick look at each as part of
Eurotour and as individual stories. Starting with...
The First Night - Paper Chase
And I do mean "The First Night," as not three hours after Entropy's first show in Liverpool, the PCs are asked to go find out where he's run off to. Turns out he can get into a
lot of trouble in a few hours.
First, he and the techie Tinker (both at least a little high) ran off to a casino in Little Hong Kong to make a quick buck, but they got caught cheating the e-roulette.
Then Jack ditched Tinker to run off to a new night club while being chased by the Seven Feathers mafia. While there, he steals a BMW...
Which he immediately crashes. Stumbling from the wreckage, Jack interrupts a drug deal between two nomad groups, buys some Synthcoke (which he partakes of), and tries to hold up a pub, starting a bar brawl.
The party catches up to him as he's stumbling into a duel between the Galvanized Roses and the Dancing Demons, to which he "intervenes" by shooting one of the Demons. Cue a melee and the police showing up soon after, and you've got a four-way battle with one objective: get Entropy out of it in one piece.
This adventure is, to put it simply, bonkers. And it is by far my favorite from the whole book. From the get-go, the party is introduced to the diva antics of Entropy, the brutal world of Cyberpunk UK (Post-Brexit?), and a chain of events that tells a complete story while leaving some breadcrumbs for the party to follow. And it can also work as a solid one-off adventure in itself with little effort.
"Flush Johnny Silverhandle" - European Graffiti
Jack Entropy's antics in Liverpool pisses off a lot of people in the up-and-up, so the tour skips over the Channel to Brussels, Belgium, for the next leg of the tour. Though the Main Man is on "house arrest" by the rest of the crew, he asks the players to do something...unofficial for some extra pay.
The job is to find a French artist to paint an Entropy ad on the side of the unfinished New Age Office Building, one of the largest in Brussels. Sounds simple, but nothing is. The artist is hiding from Biotechnica after a different graffiti stunt, and the team's inquiry into his whereabouts falls on the ears of a Goldengirl who wants to get back together with her old flame. And what she wants, she's got the money and muscle to get.
If the party can get the artist out of there, then there's the other issue: getting into the building. That's right, gato,
it's a heist! Well, no one is stealing anything, but it's still breaking and entering with extra steps! The party has to figure out how to infiltrate the building with the artist and his assistants, cover him while he's working, and get out. And there are the predictable complications that occur when getting out, but there's an added twist: Entropy (and his marketing director Clements) forbid the party from using lethal force to keep the heat off the crew.
Where Paper Chase was a Hangover-style runaround with a rather direct path, European Graffiti slows things down and lets the party take things at their own pace (within reason, as the first show in Brussels takes place in 24 hours). The hunt for the artist puts the party in familiar territory (another hunt for a person) but throws the massive curveball of the heist in the second half that will require a few
Mission: Impossible musical cues and
Neuromancer vibes. And the non-lethal requirement of the mission forces more trigger-happy parties to work outside their comfort zone. No one wants to get caught in a firefight without a gun.
Though European Graffiti isn't as tied to the characters and overarching plot of the Entropy Tour as Paper Chase, it's major job is to introduce Continental Europe's glitzy lifestyle and the strict crackdown on the Night City/Liverpool "Blood and Chrome" way of handling disputes. Players will have to choose between following the letter of the Law (which keeps the well-funded and -armed military police off of them) or settling things quicker with a three-round burst of lead that can lock a PC up for good.
When in Europe...
No Do-overs - Trapped Animal
While the adventures are a little light on conversations between the PCs and the Tour Crew, hopefully everyone's had a chance to really sit down and chat. Maybe a player really gets attached to Tammi-Lu, Entropy's girlfriend(?), and wants her to do better than that dick. Or perhaps a solo starts hanging out with Kessler, swapping war stories and sharing cigs in between shows.
Unfortunately for the latter, Kessler bites it in this one.
As the PCs arrive in Paris, Kessler accompanies the gang as security detail for Entropy, who proceeds to get himself infatuated with one Beatrice. As they agree to meet up for breakfast the next day (and possibly have a stint in the bathroom), Kessler tells the team that he and the lady used to work together and that if she's here, Jack's in trouble.
He's right, which he proves when he meets up with Beatrice in Jack's place and is sniped by an unknown assailant. The party is tasked with investigating Kessler's death, finding Beatrice, and putting a stop to the assassin before they strike again.
A murder mystery adventure! While not a difficult mission, this one is heavily centered on the Eurotour storyline and depends on getting the players to care (or at least know) the rest of the Tour Crew going in. A party that could care less about characters won't find their heartstrings tugged here. On the other hand, this mission could give the crew the motivation they need (and the clues required) to keep on the hunt for the
other mystery (who's trying to kill Entropy?).
Explosive Finish - Menace in Venice
Two words: Bomb Plot.
Short version: one of the biggest corporations in Venice plans to blow up Jack Entropy and blame a rival corp for the act.
Long version: Ace, the head of security for the tour, brings the party to Venice's police headquarters to meet up with the head of Wortrac-Italy, who claims that their German rivals Seal GmbH are puppeting the local eco-terrorist and anti-tourist organization to assassinate Entropy for his anti-German rhetoric. In actuality,
Wortac is the one pulling the strings, and Seal is trying to put a stop to it.
After the party dodges an attempt on their own lives, they once again go mystery-solving. Unlike Trapped Animal's clean-cut ending, this adventure--like Venice's winding canals--can go just about anywhere. One party might fight their way through the eco-terrorists Salvare Venezia, get the names of their members that infiltrated the construction crew, get the location of the bomb, and desperately race against time to cut the right wires. Another could figure out the Wortrac connection and attempt a net-run into the Corp's servers, leading them to the location of the solo running the assassination op. Or the party could persuade the general manager Jimenez to cancel the show and hunt for the bomb at the cost of a week's pay, only for the mystery assailant of the campaign to have more chances to cause a mishap for Entropy.
This one might be a headache to run (and to read), but it covers a lot more contingencies for the players' actions and provides the options for the players to end the story how they want to.
Well, I say "end the story," because I plan on ending
Eurotour here when I run it. This is partly to time constraints, but it's also because the next two adventures... Well, let me show you.
SideQuest Central - Touring the Margin
Due to the sheer number of attempts at Entropy's life (and the general violence used in stopping said attempts), a bunch of cities drop out of the tour. Clements sends the party to Sweden in an attempt to set up a series of shows in the untapped ScandBloc countries, which could make up for all the lost revenue (and the general clean up from the party's messes).
When the party arrives, their contact turns up missing, kidnapped by a rival rock group. Following the trail, the group rescues the VIP, who then gets them in touch with two promoters. One is a kindly old lady who can set them up with a risky but potentially lucrative show that could be the best of Entropy's career. The other is a typical corp offering a typical deal for a typical rate.
If the party doesn't immediately jump onto the corp's safe bet, he tries to bribe one of the characters with 10,000 eb and the promise of more. If that fails, he takes the typical corp approach... and threatens to break some kneecaps. After a showdown later... that's it. That's the adventure in a nutshell.
Compared to the previous four adventures, Touring the Margin hopes to slow things down for the party, and it succeeds. If anything, this adventure works best as an opportunity for the party to explore some personal quests, talk to the Tour Crew, and explore a rather unique part of Europe. This would also be a perfect spot to ramp up the "mystery assailant" angle of the adventure. But it does feel more like a sidequest, much more so than European Graffiti did. The story is very straight forward, but there are plenty of points where the party is just kind of waiting for things to happen rather than being proactive.
While it matches the adventure's goals and style (the general plot is music business at its finest), the lack of extreme danger might be a good change of pace... or the party will be more than a little antsy to "get on with it."
They might be disappointed in what "it" is.
Seriously, Why? - Plundering Praha
The final stop in the
Total Entropy Tour is Prague (also known as Praha), and not long after landing, the party figures out that things are not well in the state of the Czech Republic. Civil war is about to break out, and the team is "persuaded" to join a deadly heist for the Czech crown jewels. Why? Because reasons. Honestly, the PCs have no way to wiggle out of the job that's forced on them. Remember my note about wanting players to be proactive? This is not that. This "You do what the Ref tells you to do or die."
And the end result? Absolutely nothing of importance to the Tour, the Party, or the overall plot. The whole venture just... happens.
But it wouldn't be a rock tour without one last show, and stapled to the beginning and end of Plundering Praha is Jack Entropy's last gig. Unlike every other adventure, Plundering Praha gets really meticulous about introducing the many, many, many complications and mishaps occurring as the show rises to its crescendo. And just as Entropy hits the final act, the metaphorical sh*t hits the metaphorical fan. That civil war set dressing? It sets off, with planes, mercenaries, and warring factions paying more attention to each other than the stadium.
That doesn't stop the crew from making one last attempt to get to the airport and steal a jet out of there. Yes, we've hit the big finish, where the party and the Tour Crew must evade an invading military coup and get the hell out of Prague! That one solo who has been itching for a firefight finally gets their wish, and it is
not an easy fight either.
Here's my problem with this ending, though. It, again, heavily relies on forcing the party into a situation where there's only one predetermined solution. It's the RPG equivalent of when the final boss is defeated via quick-time events. I'm not saying players wouldn't be down for it; really, I'm the one who's not down for it. I want my party to feel like they earned their victory, not that they were buckled into a roller coaster they couldn't leave.
What a Twist! - The Hidden Villain
I've been talking about the "mystery assailant," but there hasn't been any detail given on that.
That's because it isn't one assailant. There are
six. Well, six options. In short, each one of these six wants to off Jack for personal, political, or business reasons, and they'll use the plane ride back to the States to do it. The party might just be collateral damage or, worse, accidental accomplices. At the beginning of the campaign, the Ref chooses the villain and then provides the set of clues during each individual adventure that will build up this mystery. So who are these devious devils, and what are their plans? More importantly, which ones are the best to choose from? I'll be ranking them in reverse order, starting with the worst of the lot.
The Worst: Tinker "Aha! Tinker was actually one of Jack's exes!" Which one? "You've never heard of her!" And the players would suspect this because? "Uh...because they kiss a lot!" Why would Jack hire her anyway? "Because she actually biosculpted herself to look like Jean Gardner, a completely random individual! And with her intimate knowledge of Jack, she could re-seduce him, only to trigger the trap in his new cyberarm!" Wait... What?
Yeah, it makes as much sense as it sounds. It's a twist for the sake of a twist. Worse still, Tinker's "revenge" hinges on Jack's old associations with the 3000, an eco-terrorist group that Jack used to run with that no one even hears about until they show up for some two-bit sidequest roles in Plundering Praha. Then there are the connotations that the only major black character in the adventure turns out to be someone in a disguise. At best, the reveal is cliche and shocking for the sake of drama; at worst, someone had themselves biosculpted to look like a murdered black woman (and I
really don't want to touch that).
2nd Worst: Tammi-Lu "Alright, I've got this idea for the villain of Eurotour. basically there's this girl except she's got huge boobs. i mean some serious honkers. a real set of badonkers. packin some dobonhonkeros. massive dohoonkabhankoloos. big ol' tonhongerekoogers. what happens next?! Jack Entropy keeps runnin' off with other chicks with even bigger bonkhonagahoogs. humongous hungolomghononoloughongous. So she decides to kills him!"
...So the "jealous lover" angle?
"Yeah! And, get this, she gets one of the PCs to give her a good *cking and scares them into thinking she's prangent! Then she drugs them or something on the plan and get them to fight, idk"
Oh BOY is this one a can of worms. Like with Tinker, we again have the only prominent minority character (an Asian woman) being the villain. But this time, her motivation is "This woman is seriously mixed up, and has a real love/hate relationship with Jack" (
Eurotour, pg. 84). Quite literally, the designers of
Eurotour want you--the Ref--to throw Tammi-Lu at a player until they hook up, hit them with the pregnancy scare (along with lines about how Jack is abusing her and she only wants to be loved), and then have the two brawl in a drug-addled craze. Just... no.
Middle of the Road: Clements "Alright, I've got this idea for the villain of Eurotour. basically--"
You did this one already.
"Hold on, hear me out. There's this girl--"
NO. We're not doing the jealous lover again.
"But it's not!" ...fine, what is it?
*"*Remember how Clements' whole deal is she wants an early retirement? Well, she's been seeing Jack more or less throw his career away, and she doesn't want to see his star crash and burn from one bad move. So, she decides to slip the Main Man and Tammi-Lu some poison in their cups."
And they don't suspect her because...?
"well first, because she put a forged suicide note in one of their hotel rooms just within Ace's sight when he calls the players to warn them!"
Alright, that's not half bad. She has a motive, and the method is pretty chill. Hey, I think this one is--
"And, get this, she gets one of the PCs to give her a good *cking and--"
--Nevermind.
This one was
so close to being fantastic, and it probably still can be! The major problem is that the "clues" are... Clements dating one of the PCs. And paying them more? It doesn't make much of a mystery to solve. Rather, this "ending" is intended as a gut-punch to the player who decided to engage in romantic activities with the business lady. Also, has anyone else noticed that
every female character in the Tour Crew is a possible villain?! Cause I have. I could see this one working with some tweaking of the clues (maybe have a player find the note and try to investigate it?), but as is the plot is the best of the "Honeypot Trio."
3rd Place: Jack Entropy "What if... Jack was the killer! :0"
Hey, I could see that. Jack's been running on the Edge for a long time, and his self-destructiveness makes sense if his target was himself! Plus this would be an interesting look at mental illness and cyberpsychosis.
"Yeah, and he shoots Clements for trying to take him to therapy!" What?
So this one is number 3 because it
fits. Jack has been the star of the show for the whole campaign, and the party's biggest threat to Jack Entropy... is Jack himself. He's already a sociopath who only uses people for his personal gain and could care less about others' feelings, so he's prone to cyberpsychosis (even going so far as to chrome up his arm in a vain-attempt at mimicking Johnny Silverhand). Tinker even admits that Jack's drugs from Paper Chase were supposed to help him self-medicate, but the boy needs therapy! But he's too proud so he... starts blasting? The ending here can fit (and fit really well to cap off the adventure), but it needs to be handled with tact and taste. Otherwise, it will crash and burn.
2nd Place: The Martial Law Authority (MLA) "So you know how Jack made a mess in the UK?"
Yeah.
"So what if... they wanted to make a mess of him?"
This one is simple, and its simplicity is its greatest virtue. All through
Eurotour, the party has to deal with MLA assassins and agents trying to stop Jack from singing his songs of rebellion (and his gun-running side gig) for good. Not only will the clues to this one be
painfully obvious, but the setpiece ending is delicious. The plane's autopilot has been hacked and is sending the plane into a corkscrew straight into the ocean. You've got the stakes (everyone's lives) and the chance to turn a humble stewardess into an MLA agent. It's good, but my favorite is...
1st Place: The "Company" Okay, so I really like Clements' plot, but I despise how her plot is introduced rather suddenly. So here me out for once, what if she's not the only one who wants an early retirement?
What was that old saying: "A dead artist can make a good living?"
Who better to want to take out the "anti-corp" Jack Entropy than his own corporation, Entropy Enterprises? They've also noticed Entropy's downward spiral and want to make his
Total Entropy Tour the last. In short, they want Entropy to join the 27 Club like Jim Morrison or Kurt Cobain, and they're going to make sure it happens. A latecomer to the tour, a "Mr. Anderson," has hidden a microwave bomb on the undercarriage of the wheelwell. Did I mention the plane was
flying over the ocean? However the party manages to solve this one is up to them, and I am down to find out just how they do so.
Final Thoughts
I've got a lot of praise for this adventure, but I also feel like it drops the ball. A lot. The fact that three of the "villains" are the three major female NPCs is only the start to the rather "boy's club" approach to female character design here. The final adventure also doesn't quite fit with the rest of the tone of the tour. There is this lovely high-point with Menace in Venice that just doesn't come back until the Epilogue, and that's
if you picked a decent "bad buy" and dropped the requisite hints.
I'll gladly give more thoughts on each adventure as I convert them over, but for now, I ask you, humble 'runner, to let me know what you think in the comments.
Until then, this is Masq, signing off.
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