Queen Euphoria Review Notes
By
- 12 minutes read - 2409 wordsIt seems I am often drawn to Shadowrun adventures with famous characters in the fiction of the world. Starting with Dark Angel and now moving onto Queen Euphoria, there is something special about the world that was written in those first few adventures of Shadowrun.
Queen Euphoria is one of the classic adventures that in general is one of the few truly horror based adventures in Shadowrun. Given there are always horror elements in all adventures in Shadowrun. The Dystopian world that our characters live in brings about some amount of horror in general. However, there are some special things that only Shadowrun can bring to bear. This is the first taste of real true horror (Though I think it’s been blunted by some design decisions i’ll talk about in the spoilers section). I think this had a kind of success with the players that the designers had not expected and then they began to do it quite a bit more.
One thing to add is a lot of this adventure is impossible to explore or even understand without a full magician. There are a lot of scenes or opportunities that just can’t be done or experienced without a mage. This comes back into my “Use Every Page” motto. You will want someone who can experience it because it is a great scene!
What can the players expect? Ratings out of 5!
Magic | 5 | Magic is nearly required for this adventure and there are several moments, hints, etc that can only be experienced by those who can astrally perceive. There are also some threats specifically that must be dealt with, with magic.
Matrix | 3 | There are several locations which can be hacked for extra clues and of course free nuyen if you can get away with it!
Combat | 5+ | Overwhelmingly dangerous if things don’t go the runners way.
Rigging | 3 | Depending on the route the runners take, a good wheel man and someone who can make a great escape will be required. Even better if they have enough firepower to fight back against other vehicles/riggers.
Face | 2 | A lot of the plot can be done without anyone who knows how to talk, the talk. There are always opportunities but it’s not really required for this run.
So now onto the Spoilers Section where I will walk you through the basic plot and how I would improve it. As well as adding a 3rd edition Matrix Sheafs where applicable.
Spoilers Ahead
General Plot
This is a story about a victim of their own fame. A woman who has become one of the first “Nova Stars” as they are called. In this case, it’s a woman named Amanda Lockhart. Her stage name of Europhia is from her various simsense movies. She even has a good understanding and skill in making simsense recordings instead of just talent. She however is emotionally underdeveloped (She acts as though she is an angsty teen), through the work of her managers they have managed to keep her personal life out of the scream sheets. Her stardom continued to skyrocket with this kind of added mystery of who this beautiful young woman was.
All of this would change when a company called Strice Food needs a new spokesperson for a “stuffer” called amber gel. A delicious but strange new wonder food has the potential to hit the big time nuyen if they can get a star to support it. Euphoria was served up on a silver plattered by her agent MegaMedia ready to make her very first commercial to utilize her stardom to push Strice Foods into every home.
That’s when Ludivenko, a rival corporation, decides she needs to miss those contracted show times and hires the runners to kidnap her. She needs to be held long enough for her contracts to be defaulted on and then released unharmed. This of course starts off easy and then has a super bounty hunter shaman chasing through players who is able to find Euphoria via ritual tracking. So until they are defeated, you can run but you cannot hide.
Once that is over the players then release Euphoria who Ludivenko then decides is a good fit for their new stuffer Blue Bacosoy. So they set up some appearances for Euphoria to endorse their product via MegaMedia. This triggers Strice to attempt some retaliation for their own failed deal and they hire their own runners to grab Euphoria to try to break that contract. Unfortunately for Strice, they hire an obsessive and dangerous insect shaman who wants Euphoria for himself. So he breaks into her apartment, kills everyone but Euphoria and steals her away to his new “nest” in order to make her, his Queen. The players must make a heroic rescue to discover that in the end, it is too late and nothing can save Euphoria from her dark fate.
Changes I would make
This adventure in general is kind of a bummer all the way across it. Euphoria isn’t setup to be a likable person, Strice is selling insect spirit honey as fast as they can make it without knowing where it comes from and Ludivenko is just a basic corp looking out for number one. So ultimately, the players won’t really care about anyone in this story. After dealing with holding Euphoria the first time, I doubt many players would even really try to save her, beyond that no person should ever have to deal with such an awful way to go.
I also feel like Amber Gel has so many great hooks that it could be used for, i’m shocked this didn’t get a direct sequel (And if it DID then I look forward to eventually getting to it and reading it). It feels like such a missed opportunity to not go into more detail on the Amber Gel and having it be more than just “Some strange but kind of delicious”. Especially since they have some unique astral moments when players eat / interact with it. So with this in mind, here are a BUNCH of changes I would make when running this story.
Change Euphoria’s Personality Traits
As written, Euphoria is a spoiled child. She wants only the best and will complain about anything she can once she’s no longer afraid for her life. She is a talented Simsense star with deep understanding of the business and production. I don’t really understand why she is “spoiled”. Most importantly, this is going to be really grating when you have to deal with her, which will make it extra hard to make the players WANT to go and save her the second time.
I’d recommend changing it instead to her being pretty reliant on technology and realizing as she is “locked in the slums” with the players the first time, that she doesn’t understand how normal people live, let alone how people live in the slums. Have her be actually confused and some what helpless when it comes to heating meals over a barrel fire or trying to eat an MRE/ration that have been left in the hideout. Once she realizes she is super out of her depth, she should become much more approachable and thankful for any assistance so she doesnt go hungry.
I think it’s fine that she tries to win someone over with some acting (She is an excellent actress!) to get them to release her still, but I think she should have a real reality shock when she realizes everyone else can survive where she is but her. Hopefully you can spin this into moments where she has a realization that she needs to understand the world a bit better and get down from her ivory tower. I think this could be most easily accomplished by having a conversation about why she was nabbed in the first place and having her come to understand that she is in fact just a commodity to these corps to be moved and played just like everything else they own.
Amber Gel in general
Have you ever seen “The Stuff”? The idea that Amber Gel is coming from insect spirits made manifest should have some REALLY strange effects on people. Part of the reason this isn’t true (At least my guess) is that Shadowrun has a rule that nothing “magical” can be used/consumed/etc by unawakened people for an effect. I think there are a lot of good reasons for that, but I think some stuff should override that rule. This is one of those things.
I recommend adding that people who consume the Amber Gel should begin to take on Ant like traits. A desire for sugar, a compulsion to organize everything in their life into discrete piles, a desire to dig and live in tight enclosed places. I think after they have consumed enough, they should seek out a hive with a kind of instinct to know how to find one or be able to detect pheromones. Finally, after consuming their weight in the stuff, they should be extremely susceptible to possession from insect spirits. Have them slowly be changing into an ant in the astral as well, so friends begin to see antenna sprout from their head. Mandibles appear over their mouth, eyes widening and moving to the top of their head, etc.
If you want to play it a bit “cooler” where its not so much of an apocalyptical spread, perhaps only some of the Amber Gel boxes contain Golden Gel (Royal Honey so to speak), which will have these effects on people and Strice is adding them to random boxes as a kind of sweepstake. That way you can really ramp up the horror to it, but not make it super common.
Vernon Grudder
This is a goofer interlude where a man is hired to deliver payments who believes he is in a spy movie. If you want the goofs, go for it. Personally, I don’t like it in this adventure. I think it’s just a bit too goofy for how brutally dark this adventure gets. I think if he was more “trying too hard” vs “trying to be a stereotypical spy” would be more interesting. I love the idea of him reaching into his pocket and spilling the cred sticks everywhere or accidentally using his real name or the likes. Getting parking tickets because he refused to put his car “in danger” to park too close. Also him being covered in sweat because he had to hike from where he parked. I think it would also be interesting to use him to make Euphoria’s trouble with basics more pronounced.
Euphoria’s Final Fate
This is something I continue to go back and forth on. There is something painfully cyberpunk about Euphoria being consumed by this company in a way that is impossible to rescue her from. The frailty of life is something a lot of us underestimate in the world of metal and magic and I think its a kind of tragedy that is worth experiencing. This is only true of course if the players gain some amount of affection for Euphoria. Without that vital connection, her loss is just another drop in the ocean of suffering for the people of 20XX.
If you decide that she should be savable, or she hasn’t connected enough with your players for her death to have the impact you want. Consider allowing them to save her if they are willing to go above and beyond. They will have already had to fight a horrid army of Ant spirits and their shaman and week. Perhaps they will find her spirit captured in the astral, needing a guide to be brought back to her body. Another idea is that her body is host to the queen and it must be brought out of the hive and then banished or waiting until Sundown/Up so that the spirit will have to leave. This will require some special ritual in order to make the body a “Bad host” for the Queen, letting you move into a spiritual battle for Euphoria’s very soul.
A final consideration
Something else I think would be epic, is Euphoria was hauled out of her apartment while still connected to the Simsense hardware that she was connected to when she was abducted the second time. I think it would be legendary, if she somehow kept it running. So when she regained consciousness, her recording was being written to an internal memory cache. There would then be a record of what its actually like to become an insect spirit Queen. This would become a kind of infamous record of something no one would actually believe to be possible. I also love the idea that even fragments of this experience would be sanity shattering, let alone the entire recording being played. Remember that Euphoria recorded at an illegal level of sensitivity. So this is basically a lethal BTL of the worst possible experience a human can endure. This could be recovered from her body via a chip or downloaded directly into a cyberdeck.
Final words
Queen Euphoria is a classic adventure that dips its toes into some true horror. I think for some first steps, it does some great work. I think some of it needed to be massaged in order to make it have a much deeper connection to the players than how it was originally set out, but some simple tweaks could easily make this adventure pack a huge emotional punch. Let me know what you think of these changes and how you changed the adventure yourself to flow at your table!
If you want to get your hands on this adventure, you can find it in the following places (Prices may change! This is as of 11/14/24):
DriveThruRPG PDF (No POD! Sorry) - $4!
DriveThruRPG 6th Edition Update - $2
Noble Knight - Physical Copy - $9!
Bonus Data
As always, here are the Matrix hosts converted to 3rd Edition
Strice Foods
Orange Average
orange-8/14/13/12/13/13
Step: Event
4: Probe-8
8: Tar Baby-8
12: Passive Alert
16: Crippler-6
21: Killer-7
24: Tar Pit-8
28: Active Alert
33: Blaster-8
37: Ripper-8
40: Blaster-8
45: Killer-10
49: Shutdown
Pacifica Towers
Orange Average
orange-9/14/14/13/13/11
Step: Event
5: Probe-8
9: Trace-6
12: Killer-8
15: Tar Baby-8
19: Passive Alert
22: Trace-10
26: Blaster-8
30: Blaster-10
34: Active Alert
37: Sparky-10
40: Killer-10
45: Shutdown