BY BRIAN SCHONER, LOUIS J. PROSPERI, JENNIFER BRANDES, AND CHRIS HEPLER
PUBLISHED BY FASA
95 PAGES $15

If you've played a cyberpunk/dark future game for any length of time, you are probably familiar with the stereotypical campaign: the characters are rough and ready edgerunners who live on the street. They have no family, no real friends, no hope, and no scruples. They are shiftless mercenaries specializingin horrifically violent assassinations and thefts. Entertaining? For a while, sure. Unfortunately, it can get old in a hurry.

In the Shadowrun Companion, put out by FASA a little while ago, alternate campaign ideas were discussed. They were intended to allow Shadowrun GMs to run a game that differed from the norm, and thus added a great deal of variety to the genre. FASAs Missions book for the same system contains careers and scenarios playable within these alternate campaign concepts.

In-depth and entertaining, Missions presents a series of adventures, each structured for a different type of group. While specialists will likely do better at these job, a generic group of Shadowrun mercenaries (yawn) can still play them as hired guns or deniables. Shadowrun GMs may want to pregenerate characters, see if the players like them, and then run a full-blown campaign based on it.

The first adventure, "Under the Influence," is a detective story intended for a group of Lone Star enforcement officers. Lone Star is the private police agency contracted to serve and protect the Seattle of the future, and playing a gang of LS operatives has some definite advantages. The PCs will actually have some back-up on call if they feet they need it, and can legally carry their firearms as well. Let's face it, what role-player hasn't wanted to be able to kick open a door and shout "Police! Nobody move!"

Of course, there are players out there who will feel confined by playing characters who have to obey the law. Never fear. The adventure works just as well if the party is composed of typical shadowrunners - they are simply approached by Lone Star to find a missing operative. The adventure itself is cTuite entertaining, with encounters everywhere from crusty apartments to cutting edge cyberware clinics.

The second adventure, "Malpractice," is written for a goup of paramedics working for Doc Wagon (m health management organization that maintains paramedic services for contractees). The players are part of a unit that's a cross between ER andCops: zooming into a hot zone and picking up a client whose caught one too many. Generic shadowrunnen, will probably not do well on this one, since Doc Wagon operatives are issued non-lethal ammunition. (if you hurt someone on duty, you've got to take care of them, too. Sound good?)

The action surrounding "Malpractice's" storyline is what really supplies the entertainment value not the plot, which is pretty basic. One encounter involves a call from a shadowrunning team who is currently pinned down in a gun battle with Lone Star officials. The PCs have to figure out how to help their client without incurring the wrath of the police, then keep the shadowrunners -- who need a getaway vehicle -- from carjacking their wheels. Other situations like these pepper the adventure. Done right, they're sure to make players think in ways they haven't before.

"Mission: Mars" is the weakest of the four adventures. In this one, the players are corporate security agents who are assigned to track down a major leak. A touch muddled and not very linear, it's liable to have players feeling like an episode of The X-files: aware that something big has happened, but unable to do anything about it.

The final adventure, "King of the Mountain," is a fun, straight-up special forces adventure. The PCs are elite soliders, sent to investigate strange goings on at a supposedly deserted mountain in Alaska. To reveal anything about the plot would give too much away; suffice to say that what lurks on the mountain is unlike anything the players have ever seen... and when its over, they'll never want to see anything like it again.

Missions is a great book. More than just a collection of drug deals gone wrong, it tries to get Shadowrim players to try some new things. Good or bad, there's merit it the effort, and most of the time in Missions, it's good. Really good. Hey, isn't trying the latest thing the properly 'punk thing to do anyway?