Delay on Valkyrie Ride

UPDATED: Session 1 has been posted.

The next Shadowrun session report is delayed because we didn't play for reasons entirely my fault - I left the run notes on my laptop at work.  That was September 28th.  Last week two of the players were out of town and I ended up with a cold and an allergy attack piled on top of my head, so no game.  I did spend the time getting the run (mostly) ready.  It turns out complete NPCs take some time to put together.  We will be playing tonight (October 12), so there will be a session report next week for Valkyrie Ride.  [No, I will not explain the name before the run finishes.]

The run will be fairly simple and straight forward, but with the usual Shadowrun "here's the job, you figure out how to do it - oh, and hurry up if you want to get paid" complications.  If it was easy, Mr. Johnson would do it himself, not hire some deniable assets who might get killed trying.  You know how Mr. Johnson is.

Running this campaign has been a learning experience by design.  Most of the group had not played Shadowrun before and those that had played previous editions.  We've stuck with the Core Rules only as Shadowrun has lots of moving parts.  I cheated once to pull in the succubus spirit in for one run (to great effect), but for the most part if it isn't in the Core Rules, it wasn't used.   This has helped us come to grips with the game in manageable chunks.

This has also lead to some grey areas as there are gaps in the Core Rules that are supposed to be filled in by the splat books (Chrome Flesh, Data Trails, etc.).  I've consulted with a fellow GM who has run SR5 for his own group, which has helped, but sometimes there is no good answer (for example, how much does IC cost if a player has access to a host and wants to install some?).  It has also occasionally unearthed a noticeable difference between SR5 and previous editions (data bombs are much more dangerous from what I remember).

I've been very satisfied with SR5 overall.  It limited the more comic book-y elements by adding in limits without removing the ability of player characters to do cool things.  Each character archetype shines in its own environment and each is jonesing for a different resource.

At some point, we will be re-spec-ing characters, using all the splat books.  I need to read through them to determine if there is anything I don't want to include and from what I hear, there is stuff in Data Trails I may not want to use (growing hosts from the Matrix like something organic?  Really?).  I think we are starting to get a good grasp on the Core Rules now, so I'm looking for a good story point to suggest a switch over to the other co-GM, but I'm not in a hurry.