Hey Folks,

Just before I get into this I should probably mention that this post may contain spoilers for the old 'Mercurial' published adventure, so if you're intending on playing through it on the players side of the GM screen, I'd stop reading now!

Anyway....

You know how sometimes.....just sometimes.....as a GM, you'll make a call that, in hindsight was hasty, reactionary and ill thoughtout, and is likely to have game altering consequences that you don't particularly want to deal with? Well, I've got myself in to precisely that tangle and was hoping I could get some help finding my way out and running the adventure to the end without totally shredding my PCs shadowreps (again).

So, to summarise, we're playing through the midpoint battle - yakuza soldiers and a yak wagemage attempting to kidnap Maria Mercurial, novahot rockstar - with a headware memory full of sensitive information - who's under the protection of the runners. They take down the soldiers, the mage grabs Maria as a bargaining chip to get out. Things go bad....very bad....and Maria ends up with her brains blown all over the carpet. PCs take down the mage and panic. Max Foley, the rockstar's slimey doublecrossing manager flees out the door and gets toasted by the dragon Perianwyr (who up until the PCs had no idea was involved). The runners watch the dragon fly off, quickly gather their things, and get out of dodge, realising that the run is hosed and their reps are going to be in tatters again.

Bit of a mess, but the thing is that I kinda feel like it was my fault and now I'm trying to find a way to fix it so, hopefully, we can get on with it! The runners have just finished rebuilding their reps after damage wrought during 'Missing Blood' (from the Universal Brotherhood SB) and none of us are interested in doing that all over again, so how do I get myself out of this corner I've painted myself into?

We've got Kyle Morgan & Perianwyr and the Dragon Knights trying to get their hands on Mercurial for the info in her headware. They were working with the yakuza mentioned earlier, but needed them out of the way (a job taken care of by the runners), and they wanted Foley out of the way (a job taken care of by Perianwyr), but I've still got the problem of the dead rockstar.

So, a burning warehouse, a group of fleeing PCs, a dragon on the scene (a possible magical solution?) and a dead rockstar (who I need not to be dead).

Any ideas?

It was all a dream or sim? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Possibly the "Mercurial" that was killed was her publicity double. You know, the one that makes all the appearances on the days she doesn't want to leave home. Don't think cloning technology was all that great in the 50s but maybe some really awesome cosmetic surgery on an indentured servant, some body mods and voila! instant rockstar.

You could also use those same techniques to actually replace her.

Well, is she really dead or just in damage overflow? *hint, hint* Make a roll behind the screen and have one of the runners realize she's alive but in a bad way. Some quick first aid and magical healing and viola adventure is back on track.

Do they have to use a viola or will a violin suffice? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Hahahahaha! And they all wake up in shower and the Dallas theme music cuts in? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I'd considered the body double switcheroo, but the PCs really got to know her in the time that they were all hiding out together, so I'm not sure that I can pull that one off.

I had thought about the dragon laying down to some major mind manipulating mojo on the PCs making it appear to them that she got her head blown off, PCs take down the bad guy (as per plans), make a run for it (getting them out of the way) and the real bad guys grab the girl and spirit her away apparently without runners knowing any different....until the mage gets the feeling that something's 'not quite right' and they go back to investigate the burning building to find Maria's 'corpse' gone?

Hmmmm, unfortunately the description I gave of the poor woman's head blossoming like a blood rose, may preclude the 'not quite dead' solution. I really covered all my bases! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

That actually sounds like a really good solution. It is a dragon after all ...

Wait a second, this happened in the middle of a firefight, right? It's not any less lame/cheesy then any of the other fixes that were suggested, but what's to prevent you from just saying that the PCs didn't see what they thought they saw. Movies use this unexplained-fakeout all the time, even without any particular narrative context or chicanery. (I'm thinking of the faux ending of Buffalo 66 for some reason but I know that's obscure as fuck.)

I.E. in other words, the PCs panicked and ran, Maria isn't really dead, her or someone in possession of her calls them from X, or whatever. The X and whatever obviously depend on the details of the adventure, which I haven't written. It could send home the message that in a firefight, without everyone spending turns and perception tests to 'Observe In Detail', things may not be what they seem at first glance. Maybe Maria's head-a-splode was just one of the PCs overactive imagination kicking in. This brings in the trope of "GM as unreliable narrator"...you need to be prepared for that.

I do agree that killing Maria Mercurial, a canonical NPC mentioned in dozens of subsequent Shadowrun products, was probably a mistake. (I always try really hard to respect canon even though there's no real reason too; I just respect the SR metaplot a lot.)

I'm totally with you Neurosis, I'm a big fan of the SR canon and draw on it quite exhaustively - things just got a little....squiffy....last session! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Technically the firefight was over, with all the yakuza soldiers down, and had turned into a tense 'gun-pointed-at-rockstar's-temple' hostage situation, otherwise the overactive imagination solution is a good one. I must remember that for the next time I screw my own game like this! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Possible (cannon violating) solution:

"Maria Mercurial" is a free spirit with the inhabitation and masking powers and made a spirit pact with a talented but unknown singer...

Fast forward 5 years to "Maria Mercurial", nova star...

Current situation- Maria's body and best friend are dead, and the spirit is PISSED, but you can salvage the headware from the body and the spirit can eventually find a new host, one willing to undergo cosmetic surgery. In the meantime she can keep releasing songs, making trid appearances (the spirits materialized form matches the old inhabited body), etc.

I recommend against the "it was all a dream" or even the "it was all mind control"—there are few better ways to devalue the experience of play than to make it all able to simply vanish.

The overflow option is a reasonable one—did you actually kill her fair and square, or did she go into Deadly and you simply declared her dead? Giving her her rolls to stabilize could do it, and if the PCs checked on her during the time period you could maybe give someone a free First Aid roll to try to stabilize her, but that seems a little too much especially since you imply they were in combat at the time. If this is the case, the proper thing to do is just to announce to the group that you'd made a mistake in not properly following the overflow rules and roll the missed overflow tests in front of everyone. She might even have a point of karma for one of them.

Alternative options, if you haven't decisively determined her Cyber/Bioware loadout, include a biomonitor/auto-injector combo with a cocktail equivalent to a Trauma Patch (which should probably be canon)—I don't remember the character well enough, but the risk of permanent damage could be worth it to the company. A Metabolic Arrester could also work, though if she has Body 3 and 10 boxes to start she'll still be dead within 135 seconds (45 Combat Turns instead of 15).

If she's genuinely dead, though—either running out of overflow through direct damage or with proper stabilization tests every turn—my recommendation is to instead throw the runners a chance to reinvent themselves, maybe get some plastic surgery and move to Denver where no one knows them.

~J

Maybe the wagemage actually cast a mind effecting illusion whilst holding mercurial hostage to keep them talking whilst he and his captive snuck out the back door - an illusion primed to end in as screwed-up a way as possible in order to make the PCs panic and not think clearly about what they had seen.

Have their hacker uncover CCTV footage that shows them standing talking to empty air whilst the mage drags Mercury behind a curtain covering an exit, and their subsequent panic as (on the footage) absolutely nothing happens in front of them.

A powerful spirit used Concealment on Maria, and hid her get-away with an Illusion of her getting killed. Spirits of man can do that.

I'd just be up-front and admit that you hosed it and roll back to the point before it went totally pear shaped.

MARIA IS NOW A CYBERZOMBIE.

Problem solved.

Terma-Maria is now going to take down the bugs all by herself!

Well, scalp/head wounds do bleed pretty heavily and there have been documented case of attempted suicide using a gunshot to the head having been survived so she could have survived even with the description you gave. She might not be quite as mobile and lose a little memory, but as I recall she is pretty well cybered so a little more cyber could repair the damage.

Alternately, I seem to recall the Dragon Knights need some info from her not so much the body so a "Johnny Mnemonic" solution might work (the body doesn't need to be alive to recover the data).

Have her manager or record company cover up the death, modify some wannabe singer to look and sound like her and take over her identity, to keep the nuyen flowing. If you want the new girl to do good or be booed off stage (and then the company kills the stand in too to profit from the sales spike following a star's death) is your call. Either way, the runners get off the hook for killing her.

This sounds nice. It helps explains the situation, and it doesn't sound like something yacked from your drek-hole.

My suggestion would be let them think they are totally hosed. Then have them over hear some chip heads talking about this new sim, that's combined with some of real-time live simulation gaming via the matrix to simulate murdering known people. The first one is of that chick, Maria Mercurial. Spin a nice side plot of how they got hit by another team testing out a new sort of mind-bending substance (aching to be abused, obviously). The other tema hit them with this new drug/chip combo and upon digging further Maria is "fine" as can be, but needs rescuing.

Hilarity ensues, and one of the PC's and her fall in love, have lots of babies, retire to the CAS and start a nice soy farm. Okay, maybe not this last bit. But still, the idea of not simply backpedaling, or at least not so obviously, is what I'm aiming for. And if it were me, I'd even fess up to the group after you got back on track, in regards to her not being dead and all that, that you did zig when you should have zagged.

And all this aside, I have one question- How did she get dead in the first place? I got the attempted hostage/stalemate situation, but what went south? Did the PC's just say "fuck it" and pulled theie triggers anyway, or did the yak dude realize he had nothing going for him so he hoped to buy some time while the scooped up the gooey bits?

I dislike those "it was only a dream/flesh wound/illusion/clone" solutions to remedy a GM's failure. A GM may lose his credibility if he has to resort to such actions. And Maria is not Damien Knight or Dunkelzahn. Your group's Sixth World will not cease to exist if this NPC dies an untimely death. (If not, I'd suggest that she really died and Aztechnology replaced her with a double to continue the business)

I had a similar thought to Mayhem_2006. Magic, illusion magic, was used to make it look like she had been killed. Perhaps the yaks had a second mage who cast the spell, while the one holding her cast improved invisibility (on both targets). They are making their way out of the burning building.
Have the runners make perception checks to notice that there are fresh footprints, perhaps appearing not far in front of them, in the soot and debris.

Either that, or have the runners check her body, perhaps to take it with them, to realize that she has a cyberskull, which stopped the bullet from killing her, but it did peel her face a bit, which was very messy and is bleeding freely at the moment.

I vote for Perianwyr was casting some illusion mojo to fake the runners out. Have one of the runners see her body disappear as they are running out of the burning building.

Have her replaced by another generic popstar who fulfills exactly the same function.

After a quick reading of the module:

Mercurial states explicitly Marias death as a possible outcome of the adventure in the good old news paper clipping section. I would not even bother to create an artificial plot twist if I were you.

I think the free spirit ihabitation suggestion I had works particulalry well when you consider the plotline. Why the hell did the shaman want to grab some pop star in the first place? Makes no sense (sure, he's crazy anyhow, but.) But if her body was already a prepared vessel....

I really like the idea of someone having used a physical illusion so it only looked that way, and carting off the 'body' while everyone was freaking out, and running around. Or maybe the mage cast both an illusion spell, and an invisibility spell at the same time, so they only saw an illusion of her get her head blown off while he carted the real rock star off.