Hi everyone - and welcome to another update for the Smuggler campaign. Episode 325 is now published, continuing book 11.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/cl9rcfa9fukm...xvm9p5&dl=0

Here's the "behind the scenes" from this week's run:
With the team having declined the job, but declaring they were heading back to BP-12 to find some sub-contractors, it wasn’t a hard decision to have the Wolfpac team that they’d already seen still be there. They’d only encountered them the night before, so it didn’t seem unreasonable that they would have stayed overnight, and it also let me introduce them up-close and personal. Very, very personal… <grin>

As they’d given me some reasonably firm intentions on what they were planning to do, I’d pre-mapped the route out, establishing the distance for each leg.
Logistics:
• 983km to BP-12, total 2140km used 10700 fuel, 2 hours
• 1355km to Elunes Bay, 6775 Ny, 2.75 hours
• 1381km to HK, 6905 Ny (Spook has arranged fuel truck, land at the building site again), 2.75 hours
• 580km to the mountain, 1 hour 10min

For these I use my handy dandy “smuggler tracker” spreadsheet that I’ve been putting together for the last 7 years. It’s evolved over time to add more features and widgets, and helps deal with a lot of the admin for the game and hopefully keep things consistent and logical.
From the base distance travelled, established by using the Google Maps distance tool, I put that into my “time, distance and speed” tab. This has an entry field for the raw number, and then a drop down to choose either m/turn, kph, mph or knots – and will then spit out the number in every other unit type. That makes using inspiration stuff a lot easier and less prone to errors – say if I grab the stats for a naval frigate in current use, listing the speed in knots, it then spits out the equivalent speed in m/turn to build the stat-block from.

Anyway, with the speed now available in a variety of units, I can move down to the next box, which has an entry field for the distance, with again a drop down choice of KM, Miles and Nautical miles. This performs in a similar fashion to the first section, spitting out the equivalent units for easy reference.
With both of those entered, the third box automatically displays the speed in m/t, and the total m to travel, does the math and then spits out the numbers of rounds, minutes, hours and days taken to travel the distance at that speed, and as the GM you just need to choose the “best” unit to relay that information in. For my team in the aircraft, it’s normally in hours, or sometimes minutes… but when they were travelling across the ocean atop a commercial cargo transport doing 15 knots, then suddenly it was a matter of days.

This might seem like a lot of effort, but it means that whenever my team are travelling it takes the “appropriate” amount of time, and they need to factor that into their calculations, and especially with the globe-trotting nature of our campaign, it feeds into things like time-zones heavily, which can really affect their plans. It also means that I can use things like distance and time as major plot points, having chases after people across long distances and making those factors part of the plot or challenge – but also have the faith from the players that it’s “legit”, and I’m not fudging things.

Anyway, with the time and distance worked out, I could get the total distance travelled, and add that up and then work out their fuel costs – in the next tab over on the spreadsheet. Again, I have a calculator with a drop down for their specific vehicle, the type of fuel stop and the price they charge above/below the base cost, to work out the actual fuel costs.
The cost of fuel is one of the things I use to keep things balanced – their tilt-jet is amazingly versatile and allows them to travel all over the place, but the cost of doing so impacts on their funding heavily, so they have to make sure they take the jobs on offer to keep them solvent, while doing their own goals or missions inbetween.

Once I’d worked out the costs and times, I updated the cash-tracker, and got on with running them through.
They took a more direct route over the Dayak Council land this time rather than sticking to the water, and as we’d rolled up a random encounter, they met a critter – and bumped into a mega-wyrm. They’d already been told that various corps have been using the Dayak interior for genetic testing of critters, and suddenly they’re presented with a critter that puts a juggernaut to shame. I wanted something really “weird” for them to see in passing, so they got one of my custom inventions. One of the things I try to do is have a mix of critters and situations – two of the players (Aswon and Marius) have been playing Shadowrun from the first edition, and are pretty good with the lore – so giving them something “new” helps preserve the mystery!

At BP-12 they found Sultan and then met Wolfpac – and encountered Monday who has a “thing” for Orks, the rougher the better. I really went ham with the description in game, and the players just sat and let it happen – I think mostly just smirking at Hunter (and his player) as I outrageously flirted with him…
After declining Kai’s offer to let him go and have a “quicky”, they offloaded their mission to the other team, then got back on the bird and headed for Hong Kong to collect Spook, before continuing on to the target.

With the stealthy nature of the aircraft, the skilled pilot and the concealing spirit, nothing caught up with them, and they got to Hong Kong without incident, picked up Spook and her kid. I dropped in that the construction was nearly complete on one tower to prepare them for having to be somewhere else potentially when they next visited the city, just to keep things fresh – but also to emphasise that the world is going to crack on and change around them.

The journey up to the final stop was also nice and easy, but spotting the people waiting sparked a fairly intense conversation – more so than was reflected in the writeup I would say. Very distrustful of an ambush, they hemmed and hawed for a couple of minutes before deciding to land. But, the hotel rooms made an excellent point to stop for the night, ready for the “climb of 10,000 steps” the following day.

And as usual, here are the notes from the game session to compare / contrast with the narrative:
1. Saturday 10/09/61, Location: -6.93684, 110.24745, Time 08:00
2. Stage 1, takeoff, out over the java sea towards BP-12. Over the coast and sees a great-wyrm looping out of the forest, and back. About 6-7m, diameter, ringed, scaled like a dragon, undulating. No clues on Paracritters, Aswon with an 8 - 2 orders of magnitude bigger than anything he's seen of before.
3. Approach to BP-12, same platform, professional approach. Aswon suggests putting the footage of the wyrm out - Hunter, yeah, on Shadowland.
4. Kai asks to speak to Sultan, M+T stay to refuel, everyone else goes. Down into the cantina, Sultan is sitting with some of his crew having a chat/laugh. Points to an empty table. "Back so soon", K "yeah, did our delivery, some tastiness that we dealt with, just passing through, but thought of you, customer needed some of the stock using for nefarious needs. We're busy, but he needs some help. We don't have contacts. We're happy to share." He calls Wolfpac, then goes back to chatting with his men.
5. Marius and Tads spots Wolfpac, F6 ward over the door as they get out, Marius calls that they're on the way down. They enter the cantina, Sultan points at the team, they head over. Shimazu - spots Monday staring at Hunter. Ork sighs in a resigned fashion.
6. Monday "Hey handsome, what's cooking?" Kai looks at Hunter and waits. Kai "how do you do, new fish, sultan pointed us to you, may have work. not after a profit, just helping out. Introduces team, hunter last, Monday smiles and nods, then puts a hand on Hunter's shoulder. K - can we outline the mission. M - begrudge ok. M does introductions. Other orks smirk at Hunter after he winks. K does a high level brief. Monday moves hand to back of hunters neck. K - spoke to sultan briefly, he passed to you. Seems legit. Being paid by someone else. Not nefarious.
7. M-Who's the job hitting, who's it for. K - hitting ZIC posing as SK. K - we'll warn the contact, what's your team name - M-Wolfpac. Kai mentions Kuku-Macan - M freezes, Hunter picks up, asks her if she knows. Hunter - while you're here, you seen this? Show the worm video. M leans in very close. Hunter sniffs. Smells like apricot. M "my, that's a big one". H to K - "what time we leaving?" over subvocal K-H "time for at least once". A - it's a time limited job. Monday sighs, then strokes Hunter as she stands. Kai warns Sujuno,
8. Maki leans in, Hunter stands. Maki hands up, no threat, Maki "playing hard to get? Noice". Hunter swaps details for commcodes. Maki leaves. Hunter gives the pad to Kai to show to sultan, heads for beers. Gets a selection. Kai gets Sultan's attention. S - business go ok? K - yes, went well. Interesting leader. Think they're going to go investigate the job. Decent pay, good success. Didn't want the job to go to waste - local jobs for local people. While coming back through, we saw something, can you shed any light on this? Shows footage. Whoo - big one. Snickering from the table. Stop that. Can you share the location. K-is that unusual? S - oh yeah, some back and forth about normal size and style of critters. K - heading off soon, got a job for one of our crew. S - next time you're passing, give us a shout and we'll hook you up. Marius and Tads see Wolfpac come up and take off, then head south.
9. Rest of team back to the Broadsword with the beers. Hunter uploading footage of the worm to shadowland, and does some subtle digging for Monday. Also gets Marius to bug scan him where Monday touched, and do a med-scan. Marius scans - clear. Ka checks - BP and HR very slightly elevated. Tads - no astral taint.
10. Hunter matrix results - worm =disbelief and fake/cgi, and Wolfpac decent rep, and Monday likes the rougher end.
11. Elunes bay 12:45, Tads checks on the food - she likes it. Kai asks for needs - she's ok. You have my number feel free to call. Refuel, then head out.
12. Aswon calling spook, due to HK at 3:30. Hi's, arrange landing, fuel, asks for some silk. Vehicle stealth approaching HK, 17. Spot the construction process.
13. Spook and Li are ready with luggage. She distracts the fueller, lets the team fuel up. 3:45 done.
14. Marius - so we can fly up to the top of the mountain right? Aswon - no, recount shit falling out of the sky. M - but we're protected, aren't we. A - there's protected and protected, and do you want to risk it. M - aren't we invited guests? Team - hmmm... Aswon - it's quite disrespectful. M - we are invited, aren't we? K - they wouldn't put 10k steps there if we weren't supposed to climb up them.
15. Take off and head up, Aswon spends time with Spook and Li. Spook makes it clear she's not told Li exactly what is going on.
16. Marius does some acrobatics to amuse Li and show off a bit. Heads to car park next to stadium west of town. Spot the priest talking with the police, coned off area.
17. Team wondering if this is an ambush. Aswon - a dragon with divining - well, if anyone will have it, they will. At least they're paying attention. Marius - looks like an invite. Comes in for landing. Cones and police blown, priest fine. Waits for landing. Cops looking very nervous. Team start to get out. Hunter goes to put the cones back...
18. "hello, you have a party of 8." Yes indeed, is there a parking fee? "no, I have arranged this area, nobody will approach your vehicle while you climb the mountain." Kai tells M to power down. Li
19. Aswon - what can you tell the young one to expect? It's a strenuous climb, but I'm sure you will succeed. You are all expected at the top, but perhaps tomorrow - it's getting late. Accommodation nearby. Start your journey in the morning.
20. Coppers argue. "This is a command from Yat Gwan. You will comply." Coppers accede. Point to local hotel.
21. Kai - what time should we go? After breakfast. Aswon - we have gifts, can we ship, or should we carry - carry them up. Aswon grabs gifts and harness / backpack. Bed down in the hotel.
22. Sunday 11th sept - Hunter news reports on SURGE.

Hi everyone - and welcome to another update for the Smuggler campaign. Episode 326 is now published, continuing book 11.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/cl9rcfa9fukm...xvm9p5&dl=0

Here's the "behind the scenes" from this week's run:
A fun session for me, and hopefully the players too – a new dragon to meet, a secret underground lair, some plot dumps and a new sidequest to take care of!

Starting off in the hotel in the town, I dropped some info to them from the café owner just to get them to the starting point of the 10k steps, and to give them some local flavour – a religious site, sure, and the start of a serious climb – but still some tourist shops and stalls to sell them the equivalent of straw donkeys and silly hats. Can’t let hyper-capitalism slide too far into the background!

I’d used a hiking time approximator to give me somewhere near the right kind of time for a climb like that, and then had a couple of talky encounters on the way up. The first to bring into play the idea of rubies being a good gift (as Yat Gwan demands a tribute of 30 rubies a year from the local population) and the second to talk about the mountain top and what they might find. Otherwise the climb was relatively easy for most of them – all apart from poor Tads.

Tads is a land shaman, and does whatever she can to protect people and places from things that will hurt them. This is one of the 5 sacred mountains, ancient power sites tied to the land. I figured I had to do *something* interesting to mess with her… <grin>

So, the first one was a callback to an astral quest she did a while back, where she went after a specific technique and was warned off by her totem, telling her she wasn’t ready. In the quest she was walking along a knife-edge ridge in the mountains, trying to get to the top but with a deadly drop on either side, and the route got more and more treacherous. She realised soon enough and turned back, getting an ‘easier’ metamagic technique (though she did stick a pert lip out at me, as she wanted to get the uber-technique to fight the Horror). I sent her the following first of all:

During the climb - Tads flashback
"You suddenly realise that you've seen this landscape before - the same, but different. In a dream.... in a quest. While initiating, with your avatar guiding you. A walk along a narrow ridge, a precipice, a deadly fall. Reaching for knowledge, knowledge you desired, but your totem told you that you were not ready for. That to leave the path laid out for you was dangerous. That it was not your time...

After that, and with her being a little ‘off balance’ the mountain started to affect her, and I sent this follow up:

Ali - HOW you play this, and what form it takes is up to you. But there is an external force acting upon Tads that de-emphasises certain aspects of her personality (peacefulness, diplomacy, patience) while emphasising other (temper, violence, physicality). These aren't things CONTROLLING you - but they are INFLUENCING you. How you react is up to you and your comfort level, but the rest of the team should be aware that you are not "yourself", and that rather than being non-confrontational, for whatever the reason is, now you're probably going to be the first one to suggest casting fireball in the room and then asking if there are any questions... You don't have to act differently - at least not at this time. But you should be discussing or planning, or raising opinions in a much more forthright, direct and confrontational fashion.

This mountain is aligned with the stem of fire, and gives a bonus to combat spells – things that are normally at a disadvantage for her. It didn’t have to be much, and Ali did a pretty good job with it. At the first snappy, snarky and impatient answer, there was a pause as several people looked at her, trying to make sure she was ok, and not having stress from a bad day at work or something. When it repeated a little while later, they knew it was Tads, and that caused them just as much concern, given how out of character it was. But, it wasn’t quite enough to trigger an ‘intervention’ where they needed to do something. They’ve got some fun to come when they visit the other mountains and find some other aspects of Tads’ personality coming to the fore – though hopefully after maybe the 2nd, someone will twig and they can research and find out what’s coming, and maybe how to deal with it!

Once at the top, they were met by someone clearly expecting them – again playing into the Divining aspect. Aswon had already mooted (mostly out of character) about how worried he was about being met, and if that was a show of divining. Now he knows they’ve used it potentially multiple times, and due to the limitations placed on the technique, that means a reasonable resource level – further indicating that they’re dealing with a bigger player.

Once inside I had another AI generated image to use as a reference (or vomit pizza as some have described it) for my description, and they met Yat Gwan, and presented their case. Helped with some suitable gifts, including of course a couple of points of karma from Kai, they were favourably received – and they weren’t to know that Lung had already passed word down that they should be helped.

As I was writing up the ‘shopping list’ for what they needed to fix the horror mark, I hit a creative block, and was struggling to come up with some decent and interesting reagents. So, I put out a shout on the SR discord – and someone came up trumps for me, giving a really detailed and well thought out suggestion.
I often find that doing this, it doesn’t matter if you actually get a good suggestion or not – because in mentally justifying why you can’t do something, or working out how to do something, it’s enough to kick start the creative process again and get over that mental hurdle. I do the same thing with my “random run generator” – even if it spits out a suggestion that’s no good for the team / players I have, it’s enough to kick me into a “no, but what if…?” mindset.

But, anyway – with the extremely well thought out suggestions to focus on, I then adapted to suit the campaign, giving them some different locations to get to and sort out.
The five items are:
1. A paragon ruby
2. A billet of steel
3. Rock dust
4. Plant strands
5. Sweat

I’ve worked out where *I* think they should go for each of these – but the players are also welcome to come up with some strange new plans.
1. For the Ruby, they can get back to Afghanistan, and follow up on Mary-Pat, who they know now is moving precious gems out of the village she’s settled near.
2. The billet of steel can come from Shimazu’s contact in Japan, a swordsmith that hasn’t come into the campaign yet. OR, he can also go to the 2nd swordsmith they’ve met, the one who has the matching dagger to his sword – either would do.
3. The rock dust is to come from an ocean trench in the south china sea, where geological conditions will produce alkaline material
4. The plant strands are from a type of bamboo – doing a quick wiki search I found a type that: “Bambusa tabacaria of China contains so much silica that it will make sparks when struck by an axe” which sounded interesting and noteworthy.
5. And last of all the sweat – all they need to do there is go back to the Chun Fu academy in Hong Kong, and there’s buckets to be had.

If they come up with better or alternate places though, then that’s all fine with me!

But, for now, they’re off to the merc capital of the far-east to start investigating who has been hiring mercs to strike at Nucor facilities in China for Yat Gwan, while she prepares the ritual.
In the next session, I’ll be running through a bunch of the players knowledge skills, getting them to make some tests to decipher the “hidden meanings” of some of the requirements, and try to steer them into the right ideas of what they need – though again, not forcing them to go to the locations I had in mind.

And otherwise – I need to scout out a location to land in Macau and finish throwing my NPC roster together for what’s going on in the city!

And as usual, here are the notes from the game session to compare / contrast with the narrative:
1. Sunday 11/09/61, Location: 27.24473, 112.71977, Time 07:00
2. Breakfast, café owner asks them and then directs them to the grand temple to start the route. Tourist trap and tat. Aswon buys some stuff, including local guides
3. Up the paved road to the NW, heading for the mountain. Aswon estimates the overall height, spots steps+slopes
4. Aswon - what are we going to tell him when he needs to be examined? Let's play it by ear. Even when he's being examined by a dragon? Yes...
5. Spot other groups, mixed ability. Nice wide path, moving as a blob. Up the first 4 sections.
6. Ali dream sequence note - Hunter and Shimazu grab her and steer. Tads looks shocked, and a bit grouchy.
7. Older couple, hello in Chinese, then in English, Hunter responds. You speak our language very well. We assume you're not from here, come to do the pilgrimage. Very quiet, much quieter than normal. Aswon - busy. Oh no, this is quiet. We seek an audience, with who, With Yat Gwan. You come with Rubies? Belly laughs. Aswon - no, seeking aid. Oh, well good luck then! Aswon asks a group - what's at the top? What etiquette. Don't stay up at night. Why not? It's dark... Shimazu Shinto roll - easy going, not stricture bound.
8. Get to the top at about 9:30. Tads - finally, can we get on with this! Others look at her a bit funny. Hunter engineering. Modern walls, old fixtures. Aswon assenses water troughs, looks natural.
9. Kai assenses area, power site 2,
10. Priestess, you have arrived, as was forseen. Please follow me. Tads "at least we're not late". Inside, through public area, into private locked door, single tooth key.
11. Into audience chamber, picture of Yat Gwan, shuffle into room, Shimazu nudges Kai forward. Kai approaches. Priestess speeds walks around. "my lady, your visitors" stops just in front of Kai. Kai stops and genuflects "we've travelled far for an audience, my lady"
12. "Ahh, you are here. Very good. It is, as was foretold." She folds her arms in front of her, tucking each hand into the opposite sleeve. "You may present your tributes and gifts."
13. Give cloth, fire elemental summoning material. Aswon gives,
14. "Your tributes are accepted. I will now hear your plea"
15. Kai - I'd like a quiet word, if I may. You may speak. We've offered the physical, child safety at risk, would like to offer some of my soul, my karma, offered willingly.
16. Eyes focus in, some of the team notice, Shimazu psychology, she is very interested. Finger to forehead - Kai offers 2 karma.
17. "Your tributes is accepted. So - tell me your plea?"
18. Kai defers to Aswon, he checks with Spook, then speaks. "We encountered something in HK, marked him. We don't know exactly what it was, but we know enough to seek help. "Hold the child... sleep now" Tads checks for spell signature, writhing snake like changes. Show me the mark - they do. Tell me the tale.
19. "The foe that you describe sounds like an ancient evil, one that has struck the land before. Unlike others it does not strike directly, does not engage in force of arms. Instead, it strikes through the weakness of men, using their greed and avarice to corrupt them, to perform evil on its behalf. It is known as "Druistadt" If this is the creature you face, and this mark appears to confirm that, we have a difficult challenge ahead of us."
20. Kai - how old/ancient. Points at Aswon's spear - older than that. Why choose a child? There is more to corrupt. Can we fix it?
21. "Ahh. Difficult. The healing of the soul is far more strenuous than the healing of the flesh. He has been hooked, barbs of evil sunken into his flesh. Marked for death, but not before he causes great harm." Considering look. "There are three paths before you. One is simple, but bloody, and will cause grief and loss. I suspect you do not wish to walk this path. The second is apathy and helplessness, acceptance of evil, and by extension becoming evil. And the third requires effort, considerable effort - but does not guarantee success." She pulls out three small cords of soft red silken rope. One is very short, the other is longer, but ends in a burnt mass of tangled fibres, and the third is fashioned in a loop, with the two ends sealed with soft wax.
22. Aswon - the difficult path.
23. "Very well. We can begin preparations. There are a number of reagents required for this ritual. They will be hard to obtain, and require much effort on your part. Without them we are doomed to failure, but with them we can resist the enemy, and strike a blow against them. These are the items I require."
24. Aswon - what does the ritual do? It separates the mark from the child.
25. A paragon Ruby, mined from the earth by hand, suitable for channelling mana through.
26. A billet of hand-forged steel, worked by a master from raw materials in the traditional manner, folded and refolded, a sword without form, waiting to be forged into a weapon - to attack, or to defend, as fate decrees.
27. Thirdly, the healing dust of the earth, compressed and crushed into solid form, the bones of the earth and able to absorb the acid of our foes, extruded from the very roots and formed under great pressure.
28. Then we must have that which grows and brings life, revitalising and nourishing. It must grow quickly, so quickly it can be seen by mortal eyes, yet strong and resilient. The fires must fly when combat is threatened, able to give life giving sparks even when struck with an axe.
29. And lastly, to oppose the sloth and greed of Druistadt, we must have self-determination, the results of effort, intensity. Sweat and tears, from prolonged exercise, those dedicated to improving themselves, focussed and guided to a sharpened point. A jug of liquid will be required, though it can be from many individuals - in fact it would be better that way.
30. Kai - we should check our contacts to help with those. Aswon - yes, we can get some of those easily from people we know.
31. Sudden ringing of a bell/gong, she looks up. Looks at Marius, could you assist me. Possibly, with what? Come with me. Into another tunnel, bulkhead lights, modern details, into control room, twin chairs, rigger jacks - Marius heads over. It's a power station, in a bad way. Marius has Chinese 2, gets the gist. Jacks in, rolls future tech. Fusion pebble bed reactor, near cutting edge. Takes a few minutes to resolve, goes back to normal. Tads "That's very convenient that Marius was here to fix it."
32. Marius "Nuclear meltdown averted" in a calm voice. Hunter engineering, powerstation is up to a GW of power.
33. Kai - does this happen often? No, not unless people make it happen. This will be a distraction. Tads - from what. Explains.
34. Kai - how long, days, weeks, we have people with families of their own. Oh - only days. But explains multiple facilities, recent merc attack. Head to Macau. Aswon confirms merc hotspot.
35. Tads - my lady, before we go, do we need to bring the subject back. They will stay here, as our honoured guest. We will look after them. Aswon - that's up to them. "Let us return to the audience chamber." all follow. You may want to go back to the wall.
36. Transforms, touches Li, makes promise to keep him safe. Marius dragon roll - it's word is its bond. Marius "let's go boys!" Kai backs off and bows. Priestess is waiting on the outside to guide them out. The team heads down the mountain. Kai "is there a landing pad for next time?" Grin, pulls out small chip, hands to Kai. "Feel free to use the back entrance next time" Kai deep bow and thanks. All head down the path

I think I may start reading through these. Kind of like a free Shadowrun novel series at this point. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

It works like that for me!

I hope so - the earlier ones are briefer and less well developed than the later ones, I think I really got into my stride around session 23. The ones before that were only about 2k each, and were much more factual - though I've gone back and edited them since to try and flesh them out a bit and make them more consistent with the overall style. From 23-to about session 50 they were averaging 5-6k words each week, and after that they crept up a bit more. On average I'd say each 2 hour session turns into about 8,000 words of narrative report, though sometimes some episodes go much higher (the "finale" for the Chun Fu section of Hong Kong for instance, episode 182, turning into a 19,263 word episode for some reason. Guess a lot happened that week!)

I've just finished writing this weeks up and sent through to Ali my wife (Tads the shaman) to sanity check and correct my abuse of the English language before I publish it tomorrow morning and do my BTS blurb... but that should take us up to 2,531,638 words in total. Not saying they're good words mind - but I hope that people enjoy them.

And it does make me wonder sometimes if people would be reading this and going "but that's not how it works.... OHHHHH, hang on, this was 3rd edition... oh yeah...." Mobile wards, no technomancers, pre crash 2.0 so no wireless matrix yet... those strike me as the main differences that might come across to players from 4/5/6

Hi everyone - and welcome to another update for the Smuggler campaign. Episode 327 is now published, continuing book 11.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/cl9rcfa9fukm...xvm9p5&dl=0

Here's the "behind the scenes" from this week's run:
First of all, a quick heads up – we’ve got one more session, and then we’re definitely having a week off, as I’m in hospital for a minor operation – so no game, and no story update. While on that line of thinking, xmas eve and new year’s eve are both Tuesdays, so we’re almost certainly having 2 weeks off over the xmas period. I’m sure I’ll be running some Shadowrun over that time (I don’t do xmas) – but it will be “Pink Mohawk” style drop in sessions, in our ongoing Seattle based LC. But, we’ll hopefully carry on as normal around those times.

So – this week. Major plot info time. Before the session I pulled up the list of requirements for the ritual and my notes on them that I’d made. For each of the items, I had a location in mind that the players *could* travel to, to obtain them. All of them were in the “Asia” area, some not that far away, some a little further afield – but all at least within 1-2 fuel stops. It might not be cheap to get around them all, but it was possible. That’s not to say that’s the only way to get them – just the way I thought of.

Then I did something that was probably a little overdue – I went through the character sheets and took notes of all the background/knowledge skills they had, along with the skill level, and added them to my “Smuggler Tracker” spreadsheet. If you’re reading this on FB/Discord, you can probably see a screen grab of the results. The team have a total of 71 distinct skills, and 63 of those are unique to the character. That gives them a good amount of breadth to the things I can throw at them – but being able to see it all in one place, also lets me look at how deep that knowledge is and then pitch the tests appropriately.

With list in hand, I then went through and worked out a number of different snippets of information to guide and influence the team on what the requirements actually were, and what they needed – as follows:
ONE - A paragon Ruby, mined from the earth by hand, suitable for channelling mana through.
Geology roll (Hunter+Tads) vs 4s.
1 Ruby is a pinkish red to blood-red coloured gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum (aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewellery gems and is very durable. The colour of a ruby is due to the element chromium.
2 All natural rubies have imperfections in them, including color impurities and inclusions of rutile needles known as "silk". Gemologists use these needle inclusions found in natural rubies to distinguish them from synthetics, simulants, or substitutes. Usually, the rough stone is heated before cutting.
3 A paragon is a gemstone of at least 100 carats / 20g in weight. Historically, rubies have been mined in Thailand, in the Pailin and Samlout District of Cambodia, as well as in Afghanistan, Australia, Brazil, Colombia, India, Namibia, Japan, and Scotland. After the Second World War, ruby deposits were found in Madagascar, Mozambique, Nepal, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, and Vietnam
4+ Ruby pricing will vary between heated/treated and untreated, from 12K per Carat for treated to 35k per carat raw, meaning a raw ruby of 20 carat would cost at least 3.5m

Dragons roll (Marius) vs 4s
1 It's well known that dragons hoard wealth. Probably just avarice
2 There's some rumours that gemstones actually have some weird kind of use for dragons, but you're not sure what.
3+ You remember some arcane bit of knowledge, about "memory crystals" and dragons being able to store information on gems as if they were computer chips - possibly then a gem this size could store a huge amount of information, or something extremely complex

Chemistry (Aswon/Hunter) vs 4s
1 Rubies have a hardness of 9.0 on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness, nearly as hard as diamonds
2 All natural rubies have imperfections in them, including color impurities and inclusions of rutile needles known as "silk". Gemologists use these needle inclusions found in natural rubies to distinguish them from synthetics, simulants, or substitutes. Usually, the rough stone is heated before cutting. These days, almost all rubies are treated in some form, with heat treatment being the most common practice. Untreated rubies of high quality command a large premium.
3 Spinel, another red gemstone, is sometimes found along with rubies in the same gem gravel or marble. Red spinels may be mistaken for rubies by those lacking experience with gems. However, the finest red spinels, now heavily sought, can have values approaching all but the finest examples of ruby

TWO = A billet of hand-forged steel, worked by a master from raw materials in the traditional manner, folded and refolded, a sword without form, waiting to be forged into a weapon - to attack, or to defend, as fate decrees.
Metallurgy (Tads) vs 4s
1 Hand-forged probably means worked in a small scale furnace in limited quantities, repeatedly heated and folded - and not anything mass produced on an industrial scale
2 The "traditional manner" has some significance in terms of production style, but you're not sure what that means
3 You've heard of a particular style of steel called tamahagane used to make weapons specifically.

Clan Society (Shimazu) vs 4s
1 Swords forged after 1596 in the Keichō period of the Azuchi–Momoyama period are classified as shintō (New swords). Japanese swords from shintō are different from kotō in forging method and steel (tamahagane).
2 "traditional methods" may refer then to a kotō sword, requiring specific steel and additives, and a forge of a certain construction to ensure the proper balance of materials
3+ Tamahagane is made of an iron sand (satetsu) found in Shimane, Japan. There are two main types of iron sands: akame satetsu (赤目砂鉄) and masa satetsu (真砂砂鉄). Akame is lower quality, masa is better quality. The murage decides the amount of the mixing parts. Depending on the desired result, the murage mixes one or more types of sands. The iron sand is put in a tatara, a clay tub furnace. The clay tub measures about 4 feet (1.2 m) tall, 12 feet (3.7 m) long and 4 feet (1.2 m) wide. The tub is dried and heated to about 1,000 °C (1,830 °F). Then, it is mixed with charcoal to add carbon to the steel so it can be hardened. The process of making tamahagane continues for 36–72 hours (a day and a half to three days), depending on how many people work and how much metal is to be obtained. Within an hour of smelting, the iron sand sinks to the bottom, called the bed of fire, in which it will be assessed by color to determine which parts of the smelt will be combined into tamahagane. The iron sand is added every ten minutes, and the mixture is frequently turned over. After the tamahagane is finished, the clay tub is broken and the steel is removed. The best steel is on the edges of the resulting metal block; in this area, the oxidation process is stronger. The quality of tamahagane is determined by its color: bright silver pieces are very good for making blades.

THREE = Thirdly, the healing dust of the earth, compressed and crushed into solid form, the bones of the earth and able to absorb the acid of our foes, extruded from the very roots and formed under great pressure.

Geology (Hunter and Tads) vs 4s
1 Bones of the earth indicate deep rock formations, or freshly extruded rock formations?
2 "compressed and crushed into solid form" may indicate harder rock formations such as igneous rocks, and "acid of our foes" might indicate that an alkaline rock type is required?
3+ You may need to find a place where you can find stretched and subsided continental crust that is composed of Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous strata that include calc-alkalic extrusive igneous rocks

Asian Geography (Tads) vs 4s
1 If the team is looking for alkaline rocks, you need something based on biogenic carbonate, formed by land submerged after a deluge. The South China Sea opened around 45 million years ago when the "Dangerous Ground" rifted away from southern China. Extension culminated in seafloor spreading around 30 million years ago, a process that propagated to the southwest resulting in the V-shaped basin we see today.
2 These accumulations of biogenic carbonate lie upon the higher crests of major submarine ridges that are uplifted fault blocks known by geologists as horsts. You think there are some horsts, part of a series of half-grabens and rotated fault-blocks which lie parallel and en echelon. The long axes of the horsts, rotated fault blocks and half-grabens form well-defined linear trends that lie parallel to magnetic anomalies exhibited by the oceanic crust of the adjacent South China Sea.
3 The Spratly Islands consist of islands, reefs, banks and shoals made up of biogenic carbonate, and should be made up of such Horsts. You'd need access to the deeper trenches to get something "formed under great pressure"

FOUR = Then we must have that which grows and brings life, revitalising and nourishing. It must grow quickly, so quickly it can be seen by mortal eyes, yet strong and resilient. The fires must fly when combat is threatened, able to give life giving sparks even when struck with an axe.
Botany (Hunter) vs 4s
1 The fastest-growing plant in the world is bamboo, which can grow up to 89 cm per day - which probably counts as "seen by mortal eyes". Growth up to 120 centimetres in 24 hours has been observed in the instance of Japanese giant timber bamboo. However, Bamboo is a group of woody perennial plants in the true grass family Poaceae. In the tribe Bambuseae, also known as bamboo, there are 91 genera and over 1,000 species.
2 Bamboo is versatile and has notable economic and cultural significance in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia, being used for building materials, as a food source, and as a raw product, and depicted often in arts, such as in bamboo paintings and bamboo working. Bamboo, like wood, is a natural composite material with a high strength-to-weight ratio useful for structures - so that would meet the "strong and resilient" requirement
3 Bambusa tabacaria of China contains so much silica that it will make sparks when struck by an axe

Wood carving (Tads) vs 5s
1 You've heard of some plant species that have trace elements in them - when cut they sometimes spark or generate fires
2 Bambusa tabacaria of China contains so much silica that it will make sparks when struck by an axe, you have to work it really carefully

FIFTH = And lastly, to oppose the sloth and greed of Druistadt, we must have self-determination, the results of effort, intensity. Sweat and tears, from prolonged exercise, those dedicated to improving themselves, focussed and guided to a sharpened point. A jug of liquid will be required, though it can be from many individuals - in fact it would be better that way.
This one seems fairly obvious to several of you - go to Hong Kong and visit Chun, and just wait for a hard training session...

The last one was a bit of a freebie – but the others all hopefully then had different information given to each of the characters, and a different slant on the knowledge they presented. At the start of the session we did a good number of tests, and then I had to sort through and send whispers/DMs to each of the players with the appropriate knowledge. Some of the tests went poorly, and they had the option to re-roll, and from that I could see how either invested they were in trying to solve things, or how much they thought someone else on the team might be able to cover things. Some of them got the same information and then took that as a good sign when they were able to corroborate each other, and others got something unique.

All of the info was taken from either the published source books (such as the core rules, Shadows of Asia etc), from the Shadowrun Wiki, or from one of my go-to sources, Wikipedia, along with a few general searches on t’internet, trying to come up with something that was factually accurate as far as possible, to help with consistency. Obviously that’s not going to work in all aspects such as their suitability for magical use – but at least trying to make sure that the geology of the area for Rubies is right, and matches the right countries makes things “feel” more correct, and makes it a lot easier to keep track of all the moving parts in the campaign!

The players made their rolls, and then started to share information, making a new thread on Discord to record their nuggets of information and thoughts, as they worked out what they needed for each of the five things, and they did pretty well at piecing together the list and working out who they needed to hit up, and what they needed to get, as well as coming up with some interesting alternatives – such as going to the volcanic lair next to the “Twin Peaks” smuggler stop near Japan, to look for the Ruby. As they found elemental materials and high force spirits there previously, that’s also a good shout and a likely point to find access deep underground and potentially to somewhere they might find precious stones, which gives them a backup.

All of that was for the future though – as they were currently heading for Macau. Once again they used their contacts to get some info on the merc capital of Asia, so I shared my maps with them to ID the different zones of Macau and a list of the most likely merc operators they needed to investigate, so they could hit the ground running.
To get ready for that part of the run, I’d quickly knocked up a brief character intro for the top merc candidates in the area:
1. 10,000 Daggers Slavomir Rawciz, ork,male,25, ukranian, heavy cyberlimb replacement, many combat scars. HQ in Constantinople, A rated corp, est 2038, Ukrainian and Turkish Euro-war veterans, and specializes in intelligence gathering, covert ops, and small scale tactical conflict
2. BrightEdge Jean Baptise, dwarf, male, French moroccan, 30s, no cyber, but some bioware, god-fearing
3. Combat Inc Zu Ling, Human, female, chinese, 25, tres-chic LBD and jewellery, cyber-eyes,ears,ram,sensors
4. Free Marine Corp Tiguan Oolowamba, human, male, black carrib, late 20s, in a suit but looks rasta/untidy, based in carrib league
5. MET2000 Hans Wolfgang, Human, male,german, 50s, sharp business suit, datajack, headware memory, chipjacks
6. Tsunami Aragoshi Mutahama, human, male, Japanese, 30s, slender, boyish charm, conservative suit, Japanese corp
7. Task Force Magus Sir Stephen Colbert, KCMG, english "Druid" (actually Hermetic with some nature spells), 65, white hair, distinguished, merlin robes. Smaller organisation, but focus heavily on magical security, threats, monitoring and intel gathering using mage/shamens and infiltration phys-ads
8. 58th Battle brigade Lt Wu Jung, human, male, 22, eyes+SL2+boosted reflexes, no.1 dress uniform
9. *Bravo Company Staff Sgt Terrance, human, ucas-japanese, male, 30, average suit, they do small scale insertions and sabotage/guerrilla warfare mostly
10. Team Zero Prof Jenny Lindstrom, elf, female, indeterminate age, pretty but very clever. Human engineering

That leaves us in a pretty good position to pick up on that investigation and possible infiltration in the coming week, to see if they can discover who is targeting the Nucor energy plants, and see if they can trace back the hirer to deliver that information to Yat Gwan – before they go out to assemble their shopping list.

And as usual, here are the notes from the game session to compare / contrast with the narrative:
1. Sunday 11/09/61, Location: 27.29376, 112.68486, Time 12:00
2. Team head down the mountain, duration 2:30 unless they do something non-standard.
3. Tads geology=2
4. Aswon chemistry=1
5. Shimazu clan society =0
6. Tads 2nd geology = 1
7. Marius dragons =2
8. Tads Asian geography = 3
9. Kai smuggling (for gems) = 3
10. Dragons roll for Yat Gwan promise vs 4s = 1 her promise was pretty unusual
11. Tads parabotony instead of botany = 0
12. Kai tries to call Ganesh - but it's too early local time, through to voicemail. Leaves a message, call when free.
13. Aswon - talk to Mary Pat? She does gems and stuff, but we need to not blow them out of the mountain. Tads, or the volcano on the ring of fire? Aswon agrees, that's a possible.
14. Tads - maybe not go to Japan for swordsmith, difficult to get into Japan. Aswon - why not bring him to us. Marius - we only need a billet - he can post that to us?
15. Tads - maybe try Ludmilla for the plant stuff, she works on stuff like that? Kai - yeah, good call, can even disguise it as just shamanic stuff.
16. Shimazu tries to call Fujiwara Kunanga - not available, leaves voicemail.
17. Talk about calling allora to talk about the dust - Marius, I had to rebuild her cred-reader. Her phone probably doesn't work that well.
18. Back to car park, priestess in a fold out chair, keeping people away from the bird. Tads offers food, creates fruit and thanks.
19. Aswon checks time difference, calls Sophie in Constantinople. He sends through info - portugese, SAR, gambling, merc central - you looking for work? Can give you a reference.
20. Hunter checks:
21. Geology=3, Chemistry=2, Botany=3
22. Hunter looks for landing point in Macau - Gets SkyTech, remarkably lax, even has a space for the false name "N Fish." 1K per day. Show map of Macau
23. Kai smuggling roll gunrunning and drugs, 3 way fight between triad/mafia/vory. Underworld politics = get locations of their main areas.
24. Hunter - so Tads, you in a better frame of mind?
25. Sophie sends through map to Aswon for merc company locations, +spinrad. Aswon wonders if Hunter can do some runs with his new deck on the merc orgs.
26. Tads - one of them is near the power station, is that a factor? Hunter - do we have intel on the incursion? Aswon - no, we just go told to go look into it. Shimazu, if they had footage, we'd probably have been sent it.
27. Kai megacorp politics. Two excellent rolls, info about Nucor, still have weapons grade stuff, but do medicine and stuff as well, terra-first strikes, widespread condemnation.
28. Team are flying down while all the chatting is going on. Shimazu - how long for the old man job? Aswon, couple of weeks. Shimazu did we ever work out if he was merlin or just pretending to be merlin? Aswon - yes.
29. Ganesh calls Kai, it's early, still eating breakfast. Sorry, hopping borders, messes with my time. What can I do for you? After some advice or products. Something called a paragon ruby. Oh ho ho - hope she's worth it! Need a certain one, some strictures. Explains cost 12k - 35k. Kai - are they rare, or are they in the market. Not that big, big producers are rare. Kai - any in the market. Or elsewhere. Oh, I can investigate - but stuff that big is in crowns and sceptres and stuff like that - you need to watch yourself, annoying some important people. Will investigate, but hard to keep on the downlow. Anything you want BTW? Giant Pandas- magical components. Hang on do you mean GIANT giant pandas? Some discussion re size.
30. Shimazu - can we use an earth elemental to search? Aswon, maybe, but big search area. Tads magical common sense. Combine a spirit search with local specialist knowledge to maximise search success / minimise time.
31. Tads - sends message to Mary Pat, looking for natural rubies, can you help. One success on etiquette.
32. Fujiwara - how can I help Shimazu San. Looking for a billet. Ah, looking to make your own sword. No, it's for a friend, enchanting process. Reroll shinto - all the sucesses, all the info. Goes for high quality. Shimazu - time? One to two weeks. Get me a cost. We'll pay for premium smithing and delivery. This must be for a very important friend. It's not an exaggeration to say it's a matter of life and death. To save a childs life. Ahh - a noble cause, I will start immediately.
33. Closing in on Macau - professional, but sighs, another private bigwig. Proper vectors through. Spot on arrival, lots of luxury vehicles. Hangers warded at force 6. Spot helipad numbers 1,2,3,5,6,7 etc - no 4. Directed to land at 7. Two vehicles approach - one airport, one special vehicle. Ali de-spirits. Turn down the ruth polymers, red carpet rolls out. Team open the door. Trot over and throw salutes. Kai to the door. Polished "welcome to Macau" Kai responds in English "thank you, what a great greeting"
34. "Your tributes is accepted. So - tell me your plea?"
35. Kai defers to Aswon, he checks with Spook, then speaks. "We encountered something in HK, marked him. We don't know exactly what it was, but we know enough to seek help. "Hold the child... sleep now" Tads checks for spell signature, writhing snake like changes. Show me the mark - they do. Tell me the tale.
36. "The foe that you describe sounds like an ancient evil, one that has struck the land before. Unlike others it does not strike directly, does not engage in force of arms. Instead, it strikes through the weakness of men, using their greed and avarice to corrupt them, to perform evil on its behalf. It is known as "Druistadt" If this is the creature you face, and this mark appears to confirm that, we have a difficult challenge ahead of us."
37. Kai - how old/ancient. Points at Aswon's spear - older than that. Why choose a child? There is more to corrupt. Can we fix it?
38. "Ahh. Difficult. The healing of the soul is far more strenuous than the healing of the flesh. He has been hooked, barbs of evil sunken into his flesh. Marked for death, but not before he causes great harm." Considering look. "There are three paths before you. One is simple, but bloody, and will cause grief and loss. I suspect you do not wish to walk this path. The second is apathy and helplessness, acceptance of evil, and by extension becoming evil. And the third requires effort, considerable effort - but does not guarantee success." She pulls out three small cords of soft red silken rope. One is very short, the other is longer, but ends in a burnt mass of tangled fibres, and the third is fashioned in a loop, with the two ends sealed with soft wax.
39. Aswon - the difficult path.
40. "Very well. We can begin preparations. There are a number of reagents required for this ritual. They will be hard to obtain, and require much effort on your part. Without them we are doomed to failure, but with them we can resist the enemy, and strike a blow against them. These are the items I require."
41. Aswon - what does the ritual do? It separates the mark from the child.
42. A paragon Ruby, mined from the earth by hand, suitable for channelling mana through.
43. A billet of hand-forged steel, worked by a master from raw materials in the traditional manner, folded and refolded, a sword without form, waiting to be forged into a weapon - to attack, or to defend, as fate decrees.
44. Thirdly, the healing dust of the earth, compressed and crushed into solid form, the bones of the earth and able to absorb the acid of our foes, extruded from the very roots and formed under great pressure.
45. Then we must have that which grows and brings life, revitalising and nourishing. It must grow quickly, so quickly it can be seen by mortal eyes, yet strong and resilient. The fires must fly when combat is threatened, able to give life giving sparks even when struck with an axe.
46. And lastly, to oppose the sloth and greed of Druistadt, we must have self-determination, the results of effort, intensity. Sweat and tears, from prolonged exercise, those dedicated to improving themselves, focussed and guided to a sharpened point. A jug of liquid will be required, though it can be from many individuals - in fact it would be better that way.
47. Kai - we should check our contacts to help with those. Aswon - yes, we can get some of those easily from people we know.
48. Sudden ringing of a bell/gong, she looks up. Looks at Marius, could you assist me. Possibly, with what? Come with me. Into another tunnel, bulkhead lights, modern details, into control room, twin chairs, rigger jacks - Marius heads over. It's a power station, in a bad way. Marius has Chinese 2, gets the gist. Jacks in, rolls future tech. Fusion pebble bed reactor, near cutting edge. Takes a few minutes to resolve, goes back to normal. Tads "That's very convenient that Marius was here to fix it."
49. Marius "Nuclear meltdown averted" in a calm voice. Hunter engineering, powerstation is up to a GW of power.
50. Kai - does this happen often? No, not unless people make it happen. This will be a distraction. Tads - from what. Explains.
51. Kai - how long, days, weeks, we have people with families of their own. Oh - only days. But explains multiple facilities, recent merc attack. Head to Macau. Aswon confirms merc hotspot.
52. Tads - my lady, before we go, do we need to bring the subject back. They will stay here, as our honoured guest. We will look after them. Aswon - that's up to them. "Let us return to the audience chamber." all follow. You may want to go back to the wall.
53. Transforms, touches Li, makes promise to keep him safe. Marius dragon roll - it's word is its bond. Marius "let's go boys!" Kai backs off and bows. Priestess is waiting on the outside to guide them out. The team heads down the mountain. Kai "is there a landing pad for next time?" Grin, pulls out small chip, hands to Kai. "Feel free to use the back entrance next time" Kai deep bow and thanks. All head down the path

Just a quick status update - off into hospital tomorrow for an operation, so no game this tuesday, and no writeup/notes etc this week to come - I know it's been a week or two since we last played. We'll hopefully be back the week after next, and there should be an update around the 16th/17th.

Good luck. Or, should I say, "Break a leg?" Maybe not.

Get well soon!

Back from surgery, essence intact - it was all bioware! Slightly sore, and getting used to new lifestyle, but hopefully we're back in action on Tuesday 12th.

Use Karma Pool to be sure!

Hi everyone - and welcome to another update for the Smuggler campaign. Episode 328 is now published, continuing book 11.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/cl9rcfa9fukm...xvm9p5&dl=0

Here's the "behind the scenes" from this week's run:
Hello again folks, and welcome back. I’m out of hospital, the surgery went extremely well, I managed to get my 10k steps in (much to the surprise of some of the nurses) the morning after and escaped from custody the following day! Then unfortunately we got hit with scheduling issues, so we’ve struggled somewhat getting the group together. But, we’re back, we had a nice session, and it all went well – though we’ve got holidays coming up, so I’m sure our schedule is going to go to rat-shit again soon!

But – in the meantime, let’s crack on!
The team had just arrived in Macau at the end of last session, so my plan was to get them to a hotel – any hotel – check them in, and then have them start investigating the different merc companies, interview the reps, and use their various skills to work out who was targeting Nucor. Of course – that didn’t account for the players getting involved.

This week, there’s a fair bit of chop and change between the narrative and the session notes. Maybe I should have said something *right* at the start of the session, but the team were roleplaying, planning and working stuff out, and I didn’t want to stop that process.
Of course they wouldn’t stand there discussing “the plan” in front of two random heliport employees, being all indiscreet. Neither would they drop to a subvocal conversation and stand there like they were at a silent disco, while the same two employees wondered what the hell was going on. And like I said, it seemed a little churlish to point this out and make a big deal of it… so I just rearranged things slightly in the writeup so they didn’t do it. It’s not like they’d actually be so daft if they hadn’t been so keen to start talking about how to investigate things, and maybe it was just because we’d had a week off and people were getting back into the groove.

Anyway – so the first thing I did was drop the list of the 10 merc companies to Hunter, along with their representative names and the locations they were set up in, so he could share that with the team. They seemed to default immediately to wanting to spy on them, and then realised that could be tricky with the amount of money and protection likely to be found in a 5* hotel in a place like Macau.

I’d tried to do some research over the past couple of weeks, watching various travel documentaries or shows talking about Macau, finding a little bit about the history of the island, to come up with some interesting places (the old Portuguese fort for instance has some interesting ghosts to encounter!) as well as finding out a little more about the Cotai strip – and discovering that the place turns over more cash than Vegas does. From that, and doing some image searches and checking out the hotel websites, I decided to turn the hyper-capitalist button up to 11, and go whole hog. I mean, it’s not like I have to change much from how they are currently!

So that gave me a load of interesting locations, and some great places with lots of security that would be challenges for the players that they can’t just gun down – at least not without triggering a major alert. And likewise, with the casinos about and how much magic would ruin their day, a really good excuse to have some top end wards and magical defences, meaning they do have to fall back on talking and brainwork.
Marvellous!

So, after a bit of discussion and planning, I managed to get them a limo and get them to a hotel – picking one of the ones without a merc company operating from it, just to give them a separate base of operations.
Once at the hotel, I tried to convey into words just how over the top this place is.

My setup is a fairly standard L shape desk, with a 32” 4k monitor landscape dead ahead of me, a 28” 4k turned portrait to the right, and a 28” 4k landscape to the left, all on gas lift arms. I’m a very firm proponent of “more is better” when it comes to screen real estate, and probably am compensating for lack elsewhere (I might as well say it, someone is bound to think it. My car is depressingly normal though…)
I have discord running on the right hand screen, and stretch it down to fill most of the display, so I can keep up with the conversations and dice rolls (we use Dice Maiden for our online rolls, which works just fine for us). The main screen has the Discord video windows on the right hand side, and my notepad window on the left, containing the plot for the session, and into which I type my notes as we go along (and as my webcam is just above this monitor, if I’m watching video of the players while listening, or looking at my plot I’m still mostly “looking at” the people I’m playing with). The left window normally has my browser on, which normally has Google Maps selected to show all of the locations. I also have my “Smuggler Tracker” spreadsheet on there, and switch between them as needed.

To help with the description, I’d pre-searched a bunch of images of the Parisian, from the dropped pins on Google maps, and by looking through Trip Advisor, and had those just shotgunned all over the left window. That way when I was describing the scenes I had decent source material to try and describe the scene fully and get over the grandiose nature of the hotels and just how over-the-top some of the stuff is.
Hopefully that gave the players something to imagine, and some sense of scale for the place – and is something that I’m going to build on next session. I firmly plan to involve the statement “as this is the 5th hotel you’ve now visited in the day, you feel pretty much immune to the glitz and glamour now, gold has lost all meaning to you as a colour, and your eyes are starting to get fatigued from being over-stimulated. Spending a night in the sewers is strangely appealing to you now, as the environment might be calm and restful…”

So, with any luck, next week we’ll be visiting the other hotels in the area, meeting the 10 npcs I’ve made up, with the players trying to get to the truth and discover who’s got it in for Yat Gwan and her nuclear reactors.
And maybe have one of the recruiters offer Aswon a plum job with a nice pay packet every year, just to see what happens… <grin>

And as usual, here are the notes from the game session to compare / contrast with the narrative:
1. Sunday 11/09/61, Location: 22.16513, 113.58226, Time 17:00
2. Hunter - Merc research
3. Combat Inc, Rep: Zu Ling, Location: Studio City
4. MET2000, Rep: Hans Wolfgang, Location: Grandview Hotel
5. Tsunami, Rep: Aragoshi Mutahama, Location: Grand Hyatt
6. 58th Battle brigade, Rep: Lt Wu Jung, Location: MGM Cotai
7. BrightEdge, Rep: Jean Baptise, Location: The Palace Gardens
8. Task Force Magus, Rep: Sir Stephen Colbert, The Palace Gardens
9. 10,000 Daggers, Rep: Slavomir Rawciz, Location: The Venetian
10. Bravo Company, Rep: Staff Sgt Terrage, Location: The Venetian
11. Free Marine Corp, Rep: Tiguan Oolowamba, Location: Wynn Resort
12. Team Zero, Rep: Prof Jenny Lindstrom, Location: Wynn Resort
13. map posted of locations.
14. Marius - these locations are going to be awful to try and eavesdrop on - super secure, lots of defences. Tads - do we need to eavesdrop, can we just investigate otherwise, and see what they do? Marius - we probably have to, but we're outsiders, and poking about. News will get back to them. I'm sure. Marius - can we just buy the info we need from the brokers? Aswon - but then sell that we bought that info to everyone else. Tads - do we have an in with the magus group - have the king of England. Hunter - dirty look. Aswon - don't think we can convince them that Hunter is actually nobility either. Marius - most spec ops won't need the specialist knowledge to take out a nuke plant, just how to upload a virus or take out a specific control panel. They can implement a plan.
15. Marius and Hunter talk about the knowledge to shut stuff down / sabotage, public perception of safety.
16. Aswon thinks about merc background - all of these are major players, any of them could do the job.
17. Hunter - checking, the man on the street doesn't know that Nucor has a dragon on the board. Marius - we need to find the org that is doing this, not the individual operatives. Aswon - even the bigger corps will still do shadow-work, even the ones that run cities.
18. Aswon - getting operational info from them over the matrix could be very tough. Tads - can't we just set Kai on them. Shimazu - I'm actually in favour of that idea. I could watch for tells as well.
19. Kai - how about if we meet with them, and say "we have a job to attack a nuke facility" and test their reactions? See if we can hit them with Deja-vu. Aswon - yeah, you two can have a game plan, and meet with them. Maybe get a couple of different hotel rooms, different places, make sure we're not leading people back to the bird.
20. Hunter 2 successes on searching for info on the nuke. Also suggests getting the bird into a hanger. 5k per night for the hanger, take 2 days to start with.
21. Minions ask - do you have a limo, can we call you a limo? Check local laws - no weapons allowed, no blades bigger than a penknife. Magic is very tightly regulated.
22. Look at rooms, 1k+ in Cotai strip big hotels, 200 Ny per single for the cheap hotels elsewhere. Minion recommends the Parisian. Kai asks for a private chat. Kai - people doing off the books work? Oh yes, I know a man. Kai offers a bribe of 2k, Aswon listens in on the phone call. Playing it straight.
23. Kai no weapons, Shimazu vibro-knife, no sword. Armoured suits all round. Tads F1 weapon staff.
24. Taken down to the Parisian. Pass the others, all gaudy, all turned up to 11. "good evening, welcome to the Parisian, French or English". Hunter - English,for the rest please. Bertrand, I understand you may have special requirements. Kai - ahh wonderful, bags - clicks fingers. Ahh, no bags - room, bar. French opera house reception. Turn on the beacons. Tads tries to mute hers as much as possible. Up to the 27th floor, 3 twin rooms. Bertrand all in, drops fake French accent, here's my comm code, tell me what you need. Tads asks about stick. Get a doctors note. Explains about the guards following protocol. Aswon asks Kai - shall we ask this guy about an info broker. Yes. He asks Bertrand. Looking to contract some mercs for a certain kind of job, looking for people who have done this kind of work before, so we don't waste our time. I know some people, let me make some calls. quietly. Hunter asks about how security - basic, but monitored. Can we get better - yes, I can arrange that. Kai - can we ask for some examples of fine local cuisine. Of course, I'll get some food sent up immediately. And some local stuff - yes. Hunter asks for a wheel of brie... Aswon asks for a WNG for the suite - Bertrand, sure. Buy or rent - just rent. Now about 18:30. Tads checks wards - all F1 stuff.
25. Food arrives - Aswon - all fresh made, real ingredients. Hotel room is clean, nice, as expected for a 5* resort. Team relax a bit, eat and drink. Hunter munching food while matrix searching using the sat-phone.
26. Team make a "doctors note" for Tads stick. Astral space is bright, lots of hopes and dreams, but almost forced fun. Bertrand back in 15 with R3 WNG disguised as a pack of cigarettes. Bertrand goes again, Kai says he will cover expenses.
27. Marius thoughts on surveillance - into a datalake, stays for 30 days, then overwritten. Monitor through the trid.
28. De-stress for the night, start investigation in the morning. Aswon goes to the bar, gets some interest, but nothing special.
29. Advance to next morning for breakfast

Good to see you're up and running again!

Hi everyone - and welcome to another update for the Smuggler campaign. Episode 329 is now published, continuing book 11.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/cl9rcfa9fukm...xvm9p5&dl=0

Here's the "behind the scenes" from this week's run:
I’d had warning a few days before that one of the players (Hunter) might not make the game as he was working away from home, and was thus at the mercy of hotel Wi-Fi. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad. You can never tell. Then, on the day of the game another player (Kai) posted to say he’d had to go in for emergency dental work and was feeling broken. Normally at this point I’d call the game with the potential of 2 people down. However, with xmas coming up soon and us struggling for game dates around families and stuff (just the timing this year – xmas eve and NY eve are both game dates, so clearly not happening…) With that in mind I decided to play on – as I want to keep the momentum going to a certain extent. As it turned out, Hunter had good Wi-Fi and made it, and we had a good session.

Of course it wasn’t ideal. Kai is the face, the social adept, and a monster at negotiation / etiquette battles. And this was very much the moment for the social monkey to come to the fore. A soft interrogation of 10 different skilled negotiators, trying to solve a “who-dun-it”. I really would have preferred to have had him here to run his character and have his “spotlight” moment. But, balanced against that is making the other players wait just because one player couldn’t make it…. Not ideal either way, but sometimes you have to just do the best you can.

At the start of the session, I had a quick chat with Shimazu’s player, asking him to take the lead and play Kai along with his own character – Shimazu is normally glued to Kai’s hip as his primary close in bodyguard, and would be taking part in the negotiations anyway as he’s the team psychologist. So, taking double duty meant that he would just be doing most of the talking, with the rest of the team pitching in with ideas and suggestions. I grabbed the relevant parts of Kai’s character sheet, including his phys-ad abilities and passed them over…
• Kai's ID is in the name of Zunduin Khangal, a Political speechwriter / PR activist,
• Kai has Charisma 8, Negotiation 7, Etiquette 7.
• Empathic sense, MITS p150, make a perception (4) test to read the target visible to the naked eye, and gain a sense of their feelings
• Empathic reading (-2TN to detect lies told to you) To try and detect lies, roll Intelligence (6) vs their negotiation (GM will roll in secret)
• Kinesics Reduce the TN for Etiquette and Negotiation tests by 2 to a min of 2), also add two dice to all social tests
• Facial sculpt and melanin control - change appearance and colouration
So – as you can see, if Kai put’s his mind to it he’s rolling a big old handful of dice to resolve social situations, and has some nice modifiers.

We started the session off, had a quick refresher on what was going on, and then they headed off to the first location and started to feel their way into the situation. As you can probably see from the sparsity of the notes, there wasn’t a lot of ‘action’ going on, but there was a lot of chat, and I was busy enough rolla-ma-playing and finding it difficult to keep up with the note-taking, and having to rely on my memory for actually crafting the narrative.

Once we’d gotten the first encounter done, and moved onto the second, there was an initial scene setting description, along with trying to make the NPC feel memorable and unique, and then things went a lot faster, as effectively they were repeating the same script. Then we moved onto the 3rd NPC and it was much the same again.

Overall, it led to an ok session that went more or less as I’d planned – but I also found that getting Shimazu’s player to be more verbal and involved was quite rewarding, and got a message from him afterwards to say he’d enjoyed the session a lot. I might have to have a chat with him to see where he wants to go – I think he’s perhaps painted himself a little into the corner with his “quiet watchful bodyguard” persona, and feels he’s a little typecast. So, perhaps there’s some way I can engineer a character changing moment to give him a chance to change or redefine himself someway. I’m sure I can come up with something…




And as usual, here are the notes from the game session to compare / contrast with the narrative:
1. Monday 12/09/61, Location: 22.16513, 113.58226, Time 08:00
2. Breakfast. Brief talk about what they are going to do, techies responsible for jobs. Talk about the jobs, Marius dredges memory - a number of previous assaults have covered physical and rigger assaults as well as matrix. Tads checks - Hunter has done her a sick note. Also doesn't want to kick off in the high security zone.
3. Team thinking about what direction to go - starting with Zu Ling / Combat Inc / Studio City. Aswon thinks about merc tactics, they will run the ID, find they are fakes but good quality = professional.
4. To studio city, into reception, asks for map and bar recommendations. Directed to the "golden oldies" bar - Marius checks out security, bar=low, casino=high, Aswon goes to game, Kai talks at the bar, both get info on Zu Ling. Kai asks for a meeting to be set up. Barstaff oblige. Aswon loses a bunch of cash thanks to bad cards. Bar keep arranges meeting for 08:45. Ask for a food platter.
5. Into producers office, scent perception for Hunter.
6. Ms Ling, looking as wonderful as the hotel does, requested some food, hope you don't mind, no, of course not, though I could have taken care of it. Glass almost impossible to see. Food arrives. Calm and collected. How can I help. K: bit of a pickle, looking for a team to enter a secure facility and plant some data. Need secondary team for a distraction, primary team not to get spotted. Some back and forth. Clear they're not that happy, Kai has to reassure it's not destructive. Kai asks who to avoid - good roll, gets list of other corps. More sales sleeze.1 hour meeting, takes to 9:45
7. Off to palace garden next - shall we set up meetings. Kai, I like the random element of surprise! TF Magus.
8. Pings on vibro knife twice, takes keys out, 3rd time lucky. Ask for sir Stephen, do you want a guide, yes, orangery very busy, detect BGC,
9. To see Sir Stephen, Kai spots medal (botch) thinks it’s out of a cornflake packet, Hunter searches, finds KCMG. Helps Tads sit, gestures for rest to sit.
10. K - they say chivalry is dead these days. SS - they do, but it's not, you just have to know where to look. Do intros. K- looking for work, urgent, need right fit. Specialist team, power team, covertly, 2nd team, distraction. He does a demo on his laptop, shows skills. Mentions nuclear side, SS not happy, catch disapproval. Kai covers it's not destructive, media damage. SS starts to dig for more info. Kai gives vague info, SS gives a high price and escrow, Aswon picks up on that. SS wishes them well. Team feels that he's not the right guy, they're not happy with the risks.
11. Go to see Jean Baptise, greets in French, Kai asks for English. Hunter guesses at French Moroccan, no sign of cyber, slightly fuzzy aura. Guesses that there are foci and astral critters in the back. Aswon certain that BrightEdge is HQ in Morocco.
12. Good morning, be welcome in the sight of god. JB jumps onto the details. Kai bullshits answers. Starts to lay out a detailed ops plan including god-support. Shimazu picks up on sales people promising moon on a stick. Hunter and Aswon pick up he's an operator or ex operator, and definitely knows how to plan a job and execute it.
13. Finish this meeting around 11:45

Hi everyone - and welcome to another update for the Smuggler campaign. Episode 330 is now published, continuing book 11.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/cl9rcfa9fukm...xvm9p5&dl=0

Here's the "behind the scenes" from this week's run:
Once again, real life conspired against us this week. Shimazu’s player was having to do some late night training in the UK for some US colleagues, so I knew we’d be down one. Then on the day we got a message about an hour before the game was due to start with Marius having to work late not being able to make it. However, as the team were walking around Macau and doing “more of the same”, we were very much going to crack on – and at least with me knowing I was going to do the writeup as normal, they’d be able to catch up with what had gone on by having a read on their way to work Monday morning!

As Shimazu had covered Kai the week before, I just reversed that if it was needed, and Marius was not likely to have much direct, skills based or dice rolling requirements for the session, so any little comments I took care of during the night.

Once again there aren’t a lot of comments in the notes, as I was doing a lot of descriptions / expositions and dialogue for the session, and I find it quite hard to keep up with the RP side and try to type extensive notes as well. Most of the time the team have a lot more discussion and planning, or them trying to work out what to do – and that lets me catch up with the notes for the session.

Fortunately, in this case – I was trying to base a lot of Macau off the actual maps and real life buildings. So, I’d spent a fair amount of time moving around on Google Maps, looking at the various hotels, and then examining scores and scores of photos from the outside and inside of the hotels as reference material. I’d also made a quick PowerPoint of some of the information to use as a crib sheet and to help trigger my descriptions.

I did find something a little bizarre and amusing while doing this planning – looking at the 3d overhead maps I could see these incredibly upmarket, glitzy, glamourous hotels. But zoom down and get the street car view, and suddenly you transported back about 16 years, and there were just massive open lots, construction sites, thirty-year old vehicles and a *very* different view of things – so I could use some of the photos uploaded by Google reviewers, but not the Google images themselves.

The session went ok, and the players worked through four more contacts, getting hopefully an interesting mix of people and places, and they got a bit of a feel for each merc company and how likely they were to be their target.

The last one of the night I decided to go full ham and turn the racism up to 11 with the Japanese rep, with his interaction with Hunter – making sure that everyone in the team would clearly remember this guy. Not that they’re going to potentially bump into him again in the near future….oh no! <grin>

Hopefully next week we’ve got 3 contacts left, and they’ll soon enough find the “smoking gun” they’re looking for, to report back to their dragon, and then progress on to the next stage of the run.

And as usual, here are the notes from the game session to compare / contrast with the narrative:
1. Monday 12/09/61, Location: 22.16513, 113.58226, Time 11:50
2. Approaching Wynn Palace. Water show, Aswon gets BGC details, Tads asks to stop and watch. Very busy, crowd.
3. Hunter goes for Team Zero first. Vibro knife gets picked up again... pull the toolkit again, then it's fine. Inside not quite so fancy as the others.
4. Go to lounge area, spot magic plants on trellis, para-botany, screamer vine. Probably F4-5. Hush field.
5. Hell Mr Khangul. Drinks - just water. Are you in a rush, or last 2 mins of the display. Hunter engineering roll - end of display big propane cannon. Prof - see it every day, still amuses. So you need some mercs. Yes, you came highly recommended. Need a strike, heavy infrastructure, damage and disable. Not destroy, send a message. Gives pony show, team zero all multiskilled, Kai nods along and listens.
6. Kai owns her in opposed test. Team all pitch in, doing their now standard routine. Drop the nuke aspect. Responds more from an economic / political aspect, working out the fallout. But still not familiar. Get wrapped up in under an hour.
7. Meet Tiguan, start the briefing, gun bunnies go a little more in the conversation to settle him down, very straightforward. Concerned about "setting off the bomb". Aswon chips in - asks about reach. He prefers to be near water. Confident vs other merc units. Shimazu - thinks this guy likes it here because of the water, maybe has a side job or a jet ski or something.
8. Aswon talking about 58th battle brigade, ex military, combined arms force
9. Approach MGM Cotai, stack of boxes, spot ideograms and luck stuff. Weird wujen stuff going on. Spot common themes SUT, private access road, unsettling in astral. Inside is worse, sweeping atriums, metal and stone lump foci.
10. Security pick up the vibro knife, Kai interjects. Doesn't call the police...
11. Meet Lt Wu Jung, Kai greets in Chinese, then drops to English. Kai bows, he responds - looks unnatural, offers food and harder drinks. Kai - plain water please, religious reasons. Chinese buffet. Do the dog and pony.
12. Everyones a shooter, then other specialisms, they have AN225s for deployment. China based, power plant uncomfortable, nuclear - turns the job down. Not in the past, not now, not in the future. Seems to be over principle. Not attacking civilian infrastructure. Kai does still thank him. "Ask your employers not to ask us a 3rd time" on the end. Kai - probably an admin error, we'll look into it. "I'm sorry, I've said to much - I won't discuss his prior meeting" Kai, will respect your discretion, make sure my punishments with my people are equally discreet. Kai changes demeanour - can you suggest local places? I live in the hotel, sorry.
13. Aswon - pretty sure it's a male, and they don't know their merc companies any better than we did, or they'd never have asked this company to do the job.
14. Hyatt, lost all meaning for style, gold etc. In, much the same. Don't detect vibro knife. Ignores Hunter.
15. Aragoshi has a relaxed business suite with a small bar on the 24th floor, with a large terrace looking out over the Performance lake of the Wynn Palace, that is actually subdued and relaxed, with fairly normal lighting. Tries to slight Hunter, ignores him, doesn't offer him a chair. Pick up that he's struggling with Hunters presence. Cookie cutter japanocorp. Kai does the spiel. Is this in the home islands? No. Absolutely fine. Nuclear drop. First time looking at hunter, sneers, we're sensitive about nuclear stuff. Shimazu warns about honour. Leave, he tries to let the door hit Hunter. Shimazu explains about honour and staying bought.

Hi everyone - and welcome to another update for the Smuggler campaign. Episode 331 is now published, continuing book 11.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/cl9rcfa9fukm...xvm9p5&dl=0

Here's the "behind the scenes" from this week's run:
And we’re at the end of this little side mission for the team, with them successfully discovering who was behind the attacks on Nucor – both in terms of which mercenary organisation it was, and even finding some information pointing towards the Yakuza.
Of course, with Yat Gwan their dragon Johnson for this mission being a vassal of Lung, and the strike teams being organised by the Yakuza, that does somewhat point the most logical finger at Ryumyo, given the well-known conflict between them, and potentially drags the players further into this fight, though this time leaning more to the side of Lung, rather than as neutral pawns. I’m sure they’re going to love that concept, especially Marius!

The little spat between Ryumyo and Lung is of course very, very personal, and I’m sure that Lung’s side of things won’t miss the deliberate barb of their fake name being used to hire Bravo Company being “Gwat Yan”. Not a personal insult at all, of course…
I do wonder if the players thought I’d arranged the order deliberately?

As it happened, I’d made up the 10 merc organisations, NPCs and then assigned them out to hotels, mixing them as either singles or doubles, just to make sure there was a good mix. When they first arrived, one of the options was to start with the Venetian, which would have meant meeting Bravo Company either first or second. I held my breath and tried not to give anything away while they discussed, but did a quick mental high-five as they decided to go south rather than north and work their way around anti-clockwise – which meant that instead they would visit Bravo company in either 8th,9th or 10th position.
What would I have done if they’d gone there first, talked to Bravo, got good rolls and then buggered off? Let them have the win of course. Much as it might have been a bit annoying to have spent several hours coming up with the NPC descriptions and styles, and placing them in hotels and working up my descriptions and such like… sometimes that kind of stuff just happens. And while I do try to “gently guide” my players from time to time, and sometimes (infrequently hopefully, and only where it makes sense) absolutely railroad them – I try to give them free reign to do what they want, when they want and have all the agency I can give them.
Why? And why is this important?

For one, I’ve played in too many games with less experienced GMs where I’ve picked up on the blatant railroading they’ve tried to do. I recall one game in particular where a situation as described, and my somewhat amoral and deviant character decided not to do the noble, heroic and virtuous thing, and quite blatantly sell out the poor downtrodden member of society in pursuit of personal gain. Clearly in this case it was not what the GM wanted, and wasn’t the way the plot was “supposed” to go, and I was questioned on if I *really* wanted to do that. Trouble is – it was. So I reiterated what I wanted to do, and explained why from my characters POV. The GM was at a bit of a loss, as they’d not designed their decision tree for the plot to cope with this decision, and the next thing myself and the other players knew, there was the sudden application of force majeure from a completely unknown external source. Things like that leave a bitter taste – revealing both a lack of prep, a lack of ability to think on the feet, and more importantly from my personal point of view it told me that my character was only free to express their personality provided it followed the pre-approved plotline that the GM had come up with.
Many years ago, when I was still live-action roleplaying, we had a plot rep / writer for our faction that acted in exactly this way, and it became so obvious, and so widely known that there was a standing joke amongst the members of the faction (200+ people) that we should seek out this person at the start of the event to obtain our “script” so we know how to think and feel when things happened… a pretty awful state of affairs. That was a powerful and long-lasting moment for me, of aspiring to make things better – and certainly not wanting to try and ride roughshod over players’ feelings. It was also from my point of view a masterclass in how NOT to railroad. I hope very much that I’ve learnt my lesson, and that my players feel like they’ve got the agency to do as they wish. Will I warn them if they’re about to do something that I consider stupid or dangerous in character? Probably. But it’s just that – a warning, or a moment to consider. There are no safety rails, and they have the ability to do as they wish… and to deal with the consequences (as long as they have understood the situation correctly – after all, sometimes mistakes happen, and it’s imperative as a GM to make sure the players properly understand the situation and aren’t making plans based on a faulty understanding!)

I’ve briefly covered this before WAAAAAY back at the start of the story I think – one of the very first plots I had was to take the players up into the Russian countryside to investigate and old biowarfare site. But the players decided not to bite, and to go elsewhere. So at that point, the whole plotline went onto the shelf, to be looked at later. Maybe they’d come back and find out what was going on shortly. Maybe they’d never come back in time. Maybe they’d only see or hear about the consequences (which is what actually happened to the team). But it has to be their choice!
Of course, who knows how the players will think – it’s often said that no plan survives first contact with the enemy, and the GM version of that is no plot makes sense once the players start to talk bollocks about it. It’s entirely possible that they would have seen Bravo Company first, not rolled the same ridiculous number of successes that they did (and they did – IIRC, Kai got 9 successes on his negotiation test with Bravo, and Shimazu got 5 on his psychology and 4 on his aura reading – they might as well have just read the plot brief they were so sure!) and got a “possible” on him – but then found as he was the first or second one they spoke to they wouldn’t have had the same level of certainty or other people to compare his reaction to. It might have required them to visit 3,4,5 or more to be as certain as they were!

But, they have their info now, and can report back – and crack on with the next section which is gathering the materials needed for the ritual they need to carry out the horror mark removal. Let’s see how they get on with that – especially finding a dirty great honking big ruby of great clarity…

And as usual, here are the notes from the game session to compare / contrast with the narrative:
1. Monday 12/09/61, Location: 22.16513, 113.58226, Time 18:00
2. Just left the Hyatt, plan to go to the Venetian and get 2 in one place, then taxi to the old city if required. Aswon wants to be more prepared / careful as word might be getting round. Kai decides to get taxi to the old city first. Booked in to see him at 18:30
3. Into the old city, much smaller, basic, western style. Busboy/guard, can I help. Get referred to 3rd card table on the left.
4. Get to see the pool area, WS goes off, do the toolkit routine. R4 wards and bound air elemental waiting at the bottom. See 50s guy nursing a drink, talking with the pit crew. Dealer "welcome to join if you wish to play." Hans introduces himself. Marius - native berliner with a 22 on german. Marius greats with a friendly native. Non poke chip gaming pieces, given out by the dealer. Straight down to business.
5. Kai does the pitch, Hans is very hard to read. Normal security on the table, but the game is like a kids version. Kai drops the nuclear aspect. Agrees to do the job, but the strike team would need specialist training, might take time. Slides chips over, Kai gestures to Hunter. SUT and merc rolls for Hunter/Aswon. Good read on met2000 abilities.
6. Team leave and head back to the venetian.
7. Hunter checks availability on the 2 venetians, both are free this evening. Hunter suggests going back to the Parisian first to freshen up.
8. Weapon scanners pick up exact knife, try the toolkit, they ID the knife exactly and its location. Kai does a disappointing look and scowl, apologies, this will never happen again. Sec guard - need to call the police, prohibited item. Kai greases the wheels, works the angles, kinesics, his mate starts nudging him, Kai ups the bribe. It could be 2k Nuyen. Kai - let's make it 3. Take the knife, in the security office, and then take the bribe, then team released. Team freshen up.
9. 10k daggers first, then bravo company.
10. Get to the venetian, it pings on the multi-tool, but it's fine. Back into glitzy glam hotel, marble and gold, all OTT.
11. Get out the back and discover the canal system and rides. Blue Lagoon venetian pizzeria. Aswon assenses, near a cyber zombie. Aswon warns no SOH from him. Hunter checks out - he's old and grizzled. Kai polite greeting. Orders garlic bread and beers. Aswon Russian(ukranian) - knows exactly where he's from. Lights, look at marble. Be impressed, Now, on with meeting. He is very plain speaking, cites training example, no hits on the nuclear side. Aswon asks if they won't do anything - everything has a price. Tads pokes kai to ask - done this kind of thing before. Tells story about humping a sat out of desert wars area. Shimazu thinks it's not the guy. Passes over 50 cal round on conclusion of meeting. USB stick disguised.
12. Go to the London bar, Kai - how do I call you. Clyde, whatever you want - west coast accent. Not fussed about Hunter. Warns off the team from the fish and chips. Maybe the whelks. Do the basic checks and plot out their skills, the mission etc. Lights up a cigar during his brief. Not an operator, tries to portray that he has. Drop in the nuclear aspect, Shimazu gets an A1 read on him. Positive hit, his language leans towards "again". Tads ducks under the table, Aswon tries to deflect. Terrance tells story about previous mission to steal a nuclear kettle. Marius knows it's bullshit. Tads plunders his mind, finds out about the pad. Gets details of all the jobs, contract finished. Tads "bashes her head" on the way up. Hunter brings the deck up and does some background searches. Hunter goes looking for signals. It's on, but he'd need to go via the hotel wifi WAP. Elects not to push it. Tads thinks - could she plug in a cable to his ipad. Hunter suggests getting more beers in. Rest of team start to get him talking about stories. Tads does magic fingers, he doesn't notice, Hunter gets the details. Team start to extract, and get out. Hunter tells people to take the glasses with them. Tads does a little spell dispersion. Team leave. Back to Parisian, grab stuff and head back to airport. Start preflight to get out. Hunter shares the info.

Hi everyone - and welcome to another update for the Smuggler campaign. Episode 332 is now published, continuing book 11.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/cl9rcfa9fukm...xvm9p5&dl=0

Here's the "behind the scenes" from this week's run:
Good morning everyone, and welcome back! Hope you had an appropriate Christmas and New Year, depending on how much or how little you care about such things…

But, we’re back now, and hopefully getting ready to get back into the swing of things after a couple of weeks off. With Xmas even and NY eve both falling on a Tuesday, and with most of the players having families, I knew we were almost certainly not going to be playing over the period – now I just need to chivvy them back into the right mindset and make sure everyone is ready to go!

We’re just entering year 8 of the campaign, so I just sent out a quick email to the team to remind them that we’re on, but also to do a quick check in with them, posing the question “are you still happy with the game, are you getting what you want from it?” After all, while I do have an ultimate plot goal in mind, it won’t help or bear fruit if the players aren’t enjoying the game and decide to jack it in to do other fun stuff! I’m not sure I’d want to just write pure fiction to “finish” the story off, if it lacked the crazy that the players bought to the table!

The last session started with a bit of a fun moment for me with Slavomir, one of the merc fixers they’d interviewed rocking up and smashing his way into the compound – then making a beeline for Aswon. The team were nervous, and wondering if they should go loud – and I managed to get the dramatic timing just about right before I demanded that Aswon ID himself. And the player, being a quality roleplayer that he is, played his line perfectly – responding of course with “I am Aswon. Erm, no shit, I mean…”

But then I got to do the bait and switch, and suddenly offer him a job – which he thankfully turned down. Now the team are hopefully somewhat aware though that at least some of them have a reputation, and are becoming “known” on the underground circuit. Hunter still gets occasional recognition for his testicular devastation back in the quarry and the bootleg fight club video doing the rounds, and Aswon now joins the club as a “merc to watch”. They didn’t make enquiries as to WHY that was – so that can wait for later.

But with that out of the way, the team got in the air and flew vaguely northward, and then reviewed their options. There was a good bit of chat about what order to do stuff in, and eventually they decided to go after the Ruby first, and took the offered choice of chasing up with Tad’s contact Mary-Pat – having worked out that she was definitely involved in the illegal smuggling of gems out of the area.

Wanting to keep things moving along, the journey went smoothly with no random bat-shit crazy stuff to derail them or slow them down, and they got to the village in the mountains ok, met Mary-Pat and headed for the mine.

Here I’m thankful that I’ve got a decent team of players who understand what the game is about. Based on their single afternoon of “mining” for gems, they’ve earnt a good few thousand Nuyen. Extend that over a couple of days of using spirits to find the gems and magic to extract them, and there’s no reason at all to keep doing Shadowruns. Who would? This is pretty low risk, nets them a lot of cash, and doesn’t force them to deal with horrors, dragons and death on a daily basis.

But of course, that also doesn’t make an entertaining game or story… and just like in “regular” Shadowrun, it requires a bit of buy in from the players and characters as to why they don’t just become car-thieves or art-thieves, and make their money that way.

Next session I think we’re going for a big spirit, and I’ll roll some dice, have them find some more small stuff to give to their contact to keep her happy, and then probably give them the Paragon Ruby as their quest reward, and let them head back east to get the rest of the ritual requirements so they can heal up Spook’s kid and get rid of the Horror mark to resolve that little bit of plot – but then further hook them into the Dragons-vs-Horrors conflict, and raise their profile further with more of the Dragon council.

Because once we’ve finished Year of the Comet, there’s the plot for Dragons of the Sixth World beckoning them!

And as usual, here are the notes from the game session to compare / contrast with the narrative:
1. Monday 12/09/61, Location: 22.16513, 113.58226, Time 21:15
2. Hunter running bug-scanner over Broadsword. Team settling in, getting changed out of suits into more normal travelling clothes for Tads, Aswon stays on guard. Marius warns of high speed vehicle approaching heliport. SUV. Tads offers to go astral check, Kai asks Aswon to load up some AV rounds. Tads spots Slavomir on a drive through. Aswon loads AV into a shotgun. Shiamzu - Kai, do you want to talk. K- yes. S grabs sword. Slav rams the gate, then opens car and gets through the gap. Menial running towards Slav, Kai heads towards him and shouts it's ok to menial. Tads assenses - determined, not hostile. Slavomir picks up menial and tucks under arm. Kai - put the guy down, let's have a drink me old mucker. Marius preps the rear autocannon.
3. Slav puts dude down, heads to Aswon. A - that's close enough. What is your name. My name is Aswon, Erm, I mean... Ahh! I knew it. Pulls chip, approaches, throw chip. Offers 6 figure contract. Kai sorting out the heliport staff. He's not happy, but not kicking off. Kai - everything ok. Yes, just trying to poach your man. You could... call. Didn't know if I would catch in time, and better to do face to face. Kai - everything ok. Slav - some rioting kicking off, hedgehog man. Aswon - Tads, go check? Slav slaps guy on the head/shoulder, then off he goes. Disentangles car and closes gate. Aswon, gets the guy a cookie and a coffee to help calm him down. Tads spots a whole bunch of surge and mini-riots, police responses, paramedics.
4. Tads tries to shout, but drowned out. Heads back to bird.
5. Surge checks - all ok. Hunter checks the chip - 100k basic pay, + welcome to 10k daggers briefing pack.
6. Kai looking at calling Yat Gwan. Kai reveals. She sends them off to get the shopping.
7. Team discuss the shopping list, recap. Talismonger roll for Chun - best to be there to collect. Shimazu texts Saito about fire bamboo - steered towards the Shaanxi province, Shimazu sends a thank you. Shimazu suggests Afghan first to get the big trip out of the way.
8. Tads and Kai argue over who calls, Tads- I pissed her off. Kai calls, checks the time difference! It's ok. Tads suggests she gets any other gems they find while looking for a paragon.
9. Do you have a few moments? She looks around - you're not about to land are you. No no, a way off, but want to come see you, what can you tell me. Discuss - are you willing to dig? Better than 0 chance, but still not great. Plans trip, arranges to be there tomorrow after dinner.
10. Hunter picks up the news stories. Rioting kicking off and getting more and more widespread. All kinds of talking heads having contrary opinions. Aswon nudges Hunter to upload their survey to Shadowland.
11. 12 sep - surge riots globally, Nationale Aktion releases an airborne strain of VITAS-1 into the Olympiapark Stadium in Munich, killing nearly ten thousand homeless metahumans and aid workers, 100k bounty on the 37 heads of the cells. People start to claim they have captured cell leaders, and getting done for murder.
12. Tads asks Aswon - you have an op to go back being a merc, why did you stop? Got put in a cage... now I'm in a contract. Private security now...
13. Marius does an all-nighter, and then rests in Afghan. Uneventful trip. Land in the valley, cover the bird with cammo nets, Aswon starts to collect sweat. Marius preps a drone to go with the team, stays at the bird to R&R and do maintenance.
14. 10am, Tuesday 13th, all set in afghan. Head to village for midday. Met by MP - so why do you need a ruby that big? It's for a magic spell, very specific. Well, no blasting, I have a site. Discuss some critters. 2.5hour walk. Uneventful apart from trash-crows. Get to ruby dig site. Tads deploys 7 X F4 GF spirits. Rest of team set up camp. 1 comes back, 23m in, 5m right, 1m down. Tads and Aswon go in. Get 1 Ruby, 7 carats, give to MP. Explains it's worth more as magically pure. Hunter - probably worth 3k. Hour 2, two more hits, 4 gems at 1-2 carats+ 1 7-9 carat. Hour 3, no hits. Even split with MP. In the next 2 hours up to dusk, they get another 4 small rubies. Get to dusk, Tads does a fresh spirit to conceal the Broadsword.
15. Tads outlines options for small, big, big+free. Aswon says big only. Got lucky previously, and it was a specific, noble task. Tads- maybe do some smalls and then a big, then recover.

Looking for thoughts and opinions.

One of the things I noticed is that there’s really not a lot of lore / backstory on the Sea Dragon, other than her little spat about eggs. My players tonight just met a shaman NPC they’ve had dealings with before in the China Sea, asked a favour and then been told to wait for a while she checks “with her boss”. She came back with a bunch of naga and merrow, some magic necklaces and were told to put them on, shut up, and get in the water… to thankfully find out the oxygenate / water barrier / prevent pressure spells were working as intended. Down they go, into the depths with me trying to evoke scenes from “The Abyss”, until they find a merrow colony working the sea bed, a long tunnel and then the entrance to a lair, about 1100m under the surface, where they meet a Sea Dragon.

I did a bit of a quick search to get some sense of scale.

Percentage of Earth's water in various locations:
Pacific :52%, Atlantic: 25%, Indian: 20%, Ice: 2%, Ground water: 0.6%, Atmosphere, lakes & rivers: 0.01%

Area and depth of the major oceans
Area (million km2) Average depth (m)
Pacific 166 4282
Atlantic 87 3926
Indian 73 3963
Arctic 14 1205
Southern 20 4000

71% of the Earth’s surface is covered by oceans, while only 29% is land. All of this water is not distributed equally over the Earth; 61% of the Northern Hemisphere is covered by oceans, while in the Southern Hemisphere the oceans cover 81% of the surface area.

So – here’s my “expanded” lore, as there’s not much on the Sea Dragon, and when you look at how big the oceans of the world are – there’s a LOT of water for just one Dragon!

Instead of there being 1 Sea Dragon, how about if the Sea Dragons had as their “special feature” that there was one per named ocean from the table above, all raised from the same clutch of eggs. And like many of the other dragons have a “special” power such as earth-diving, spirit summoning, etc, the Sea Dragons are linked by the ocean currents or the manasphere of all that unique life?

When talking, they always talk about themselves in the plural, but act as if they are an individual. Not quite the borg, but with that touch of the alien. They generally resent the meat-sacks that walk the earth and poison their watery domains – but some of them have their uses. The big argument with Rhonabwy is because he split up a clutch of eggs, the next generation of Sea Dragons, and splitting them up would prevent them from bonding and forming the link they would need to share experiences and act as a gestalt – which is why she took it so personally. All of them. <grin>

After introducing them to one of the Sea Dragons, I’d let this sit for a while, and then have them meet another, say in Cardigan Bay, and realise that physically this is a different creature, but mentally it’s exactly the same and knows everything about their former dealings.

Can anyone think of a lore reason why this couldn’t happen, or what it would interfere with in the canon timeline?

I think it's a great idea, so do run with it. However, there's actually not that much water in the world: https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/all-earth...a-single-sphere

Maybe that's enough for a whole wheelbarrow of dragons, but maybe not?

Yeah, compared to the whole earth, the two spheres of water look small, but even a wheelbarrow of dragons would be invisible at this scale. I agree. go for it!

Hi everyone - and welcome to another update for the Smuggler campaign. Episode 333 is now published, continuing book 11.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/cl9rcfa9fukm...xvm9p5&dl=0

Here's the "behind the scenes" from this week's run:
We were one player down again this week with unexpected work shenanigans – fortunately there wasn’t a lot that was Kai specific, so we rolled on as usual to keep the game progressing.

Picking up at the top of the mountain in the Afghan Badlands, the team had a quick refresh of their options on spirits, and decided to do a couple of smaller great forms, and then a big normal spirit, to see if they could maximise their search area and chances. Only a mild headache from the drain, and off it went on an extended search of the mountain. The size of ruby they need is pretty big, and correspondingly pretty rare – so I set the target number at 20 for the find. But, to counter that, I just added up the force of all the spirits doing the search and did that many D6 as a roll, exploding as normal.

This is where I really love the target number system in Shadowrun, and how it works out. 20 is a high target number – really high. It’s not likely at all – but it is POSSIBLE. Sure it’s difficult, but it’s supposed to be to represent something being mind-numbingly troublesome, or vanishingly rare. But you never know when the dice will (as we’ve taken to calling it amongst our player base) “do the thing”. I’ve had a rigger in one of our other games suddenly roll a 53 (the highest we’ve seen!) for an off-road driving test – the 6s just kept on coming to the point we wondered what was going on. But that triggered a description of some of the most cool, awesome, Stig-like and amazing driving you could possibly imagine, and that player still gets a buzz from it. Sure, it was still technically only 1 success, but WHAT a success!

I suppose in later versions you could get something where you rolled 18/18 dice being a 5+ and had the most awesome number of hits to do the thing – but it doesn’t feel like the same to me. And one of the lovely things about variable target numbers like that is that anyone can get lucky. Sure, your street sam with a rifles skill specialised to 9, and 9 combat pool has a lot of dice to throw to try and get that hail-mary sniper shot needed to save the situation. But that one armed, mauled by a dog, drunk, street hobo with a pistols skill of 1 can still TECHNICALLY make that shot. The odds are against them, sure. But it’s possible. And that one time when it comes up, and they make the one-in-a-million attack it will probably redirect the entire adventure, and be a huge thing.

Conversely, (and this is based on my admittedly limited understanding of version 4+), if you discount the used of edge in the equation, rather than moving the TN, you take out dice. Raining? -2d. Dark? -2d. You’re wounded? -2d. You don’t have Wi-Fi enabled on your gun? -2d. You’re running? -3d. What’s that – you’re out of dice? Well then, the attack fails, it’s now impossible. Not just unlikely, not just vanishingly rare – just flat out impossible.

And that to me, does not sound like the start of fun heroic stories. I have a bunch of other issues with v4+ as well, so it’s not just that – but that’s one of the reasons why we’re happy to stick with SR3.

So anyway, we make the rolls, and the dice spit out a 26 – so bonza! We find the ruby. They’ve still got some time, so they do a little more searching and find a few more tiny stones – enough to help offset some of the outrageous fuel bill for getting from China to Afghan and back, which is fair enough.

With that done, it was back to the bird, into the air and head back east – until one of the players rolled up a random encounter. A quick check on my list and another roll, and it turns out that the Iranian clerics are trying their best to find the team still and recover their priceless artefacts. So, they managed to get at least one success on a tracking ritual, and then Shimazu gets that funny feeling down his spine.

It was gratifying to see a little bit of concern and consternation amongst the team as they realised that yes, the NPCs can ALSO roll a 53, and beat the ridiculously high target number – though of course they didn’t know how many successes or how much the enemy had beaten the target number by. There was some mulling in the team, discussions about landing so that they could get Tads into the right domain, and then someone had the genius idea of checking the cockpit to see if it counted as a hearth domain now. So that seemed reasonable, they whipped up a spirit, and with the extra +4 on the target number now, I rolled with that and told them the ritual had now failed.

With the players all happy, they continued onwards to Elune’s Bay, met Allora and asked for some help – and then looked a little shocked when they got a no. So they asked again nicely, and still got told no but she would at least go and check. And then they all get invited to go and meet the boss. Initially they two mundanes, Hunter and Marius didn’t want to go. Technically there’s no reason why they HAD to be there – but I very much didn’t want to split the party, so I dropped some fairly strong IC hints that they were expected, and they grumbled a bit but let themselves be bullied by the rest of the team into going.

After that it was trying to create a weird crossover that combined the Abyss, entering the Vashj'ir zone and a sprinkle of Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind. Eventually they get down to the sea floor, find a veritable army of merrow down there and then get taken inside a sea cliff to come face to face with the Sea Dragon. And that’s part of the reason I would have preferred for Marius to be there – as he’s the one with the “Dragons” knowledge skill!

That took us to our ending time, so at least hopefully Kai’s player will be back next week, to actually carry out negotiations and discover why the Sea Dragon is here, rather than just off the coast of Wales, and what she wants the players to do for her.

And she does want something. There’s been this theft you see… I’m sure a lot of you will know exactly where this is heading!!!

And as usual, here are the notes from the game session to compare / contrast with the narrative:
1. Monday 12/09/61, Location: 22.16513, 113.58226, Time 21:15
2. Just after dusk, 1 spirit on the bird, a few personal, one bigger one - F6 GF, 8 on a search.
3. Marius back at the bird, ok comms to team and monitoring.
4. Aswon, Shimazu and Hunter reinforce shelter.
5. Catnap between digs, 11,9,8. Few gems come up, and then a roll of 21 just before dawn, get one at 04:30 - 22g. Broaden search terms for spirits, Hunter searches for most valuable gems. Finds out based on cut, clarity, purity. Tells tads to go for mythic bonus. Tads - will vary depend on use. Do more until dawn, get a mix of other similar gems. Team have quiet discussion on how to split the rest of the gems - 50/50 by size, weight, alternate picks etc. Mary Pat wakes up as camp stirs. Hunter already has the paragon in his backpack. Shimazu has a think on the psychology and trust.
6. MP - hows it going, find much more? Aswon - we started getting other stuff, be we found this. Ohh, gimme. Look with eyes, not hands. No, I need to examine it. No smell of acid from hunter. She has a fangirl moment. Tads reminds her about magical purity. MP talks to Hunter+Aswon about how to split. Hunter - don't care. Just get 50%. MP picks. Aswon assenses her intentions. Conflicted, but end up with a reasonable split. Tads warns about seam potentially being mined out.
7. MP describes getting stuff cut, maybe they could be worth 100k in the end. Explain about pipeline, cutters work on a percentage, have their own dealers. Lots of trust. Tads appraises, value for talismongering is likely the same as fashion, just different market.
8. Team packs up. Aswon leaves and offering for the local spirits.
9. Back to bird from 7-9am, then head east, 15 hour journey, +3 time zones.
10. Spratly first, then Chun - discuss, collect in person, Aswon suggests a tournament. Shimazu - bag of rubies for the prize.
11. Get Kai to call Chun and make arrangements. Hunter says he's going to enter the competition.
12. Flight back to Trafford OK, to Dragon Peak - get a hit. Shimazu detects tracking ritual on Shimazu. Tads slaps on Shielding.
13. They have a think about who could be doing this, and how hard it is. Decide to keep moving and make it tough, but get magical weapons. Shimazu manages to assense - angry Iranian magic. Check - it's Shimazu, not the Sword. Move Shimazu to the cockpit, summon a hearth spirit to add concealment. 1.5 years since they did the job. Aswon thinks there's one guy who's been assigned to sort it, and is now being beheaded for failure...
14. Land at Dragon Ridge, and then fly down towards Elunes Bay - 15 hour flight down to the Bay.
15. Arrive at Elunes Bay 3am, Allora is there, one merrow - no naga. Refuel and pay, Kai grumbles.
16. Tads starts negotiations. Oh, you want to take the oceans bounty away. Oh, yes... I suppose. Can't deny that. But innocent child. Noble cause, but I suspect the answer will be no. I can check though. Aswon - the other alternative is killing the child, the outcome was that bad. Tads, does mindlink, does the horror show. Ok - I will be back, probably by dawn. Tads - I can trade with stuff as well. Team waits. Tads pushes people through wards. Wait until dawn.
17. Renew spirits, Allora comes back with 2 dozen naga and 2 dozen merrow. Tads assenses, 7, resentful, watchful, distrustful, wary. Allora - you've been granted an audience. Tads - with who? She who lies below. Merrow bring out the magical necklaces. We're all extremely honoured by this privilege, we'll all come. Grumblings from the mundanes. Tads gets ready+Shimazu+Aswon. Tads assenses necklace, oxygenate+water barrier+some other health spell. Aswon/Kai makes an excuse for Hunter and Marius.
18. A>T, they should come. We won't force you, but they should come, she will want to see all of you. Strong encouragement. Kai and Aswon persuade Hunter and Marius - who are not happy.
19. GPS fades off, keep going down, bubbles start to shrink, ears pop, pressure rises.
20. Into a tunnel, into dome, about 1000m down, bioluminescent inside down, sea dragon. Marius dragon roll 5-1-1, confused - only one sea dragon, it's in the north sea/Atlantic.

Hi everyone - and welcome to another update for the Smuggler campaign. Episode 334 is now published, continuing book 11.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/cl9rcfa9fukm...xvm9p5&dl=0

Here's the "behind the scenes" from this week's run:
Back up to full strength, we picked up with the team having their interview with the Sea Dragon. They were understandably careful not to annoy or irritate her, and were generally pretty compliant, not arguing about being given a job to do.

This was one of those reasonably rare times where they’re most definitely “on rails”. The Sea Dragon isn’t going to mess around, and they’re not in a position to negotiate – especially not in her domain. They needed to keep their heads down, take the job and say thank you. If they want to betray her later – then fine. But while a kilometre deep in the ocean is NOT the time!

I actually think they’re happy enough to take the job – and they’re not planning on welching on the deal, so that’s probably not going to be an issue. During the session, I sent private messages to both Aswon and Marius (the two most experienced players, and biggest lore-monkeys) to say “you probably know more about the upcoming job from reading the books / background – but please restrain yourselves so they others can find out!” and got an affirmative from both. She then revealed that someone had stolen something from her… which are of course her eggs, and will tie into a raid on another dragon’s lair in the future, to throw them directly into the middle of more Dragon-Dragon feuding. But that’s for a little way down the line…

Once they had (wisely) agreed, they got their rocks and headed back to the surface and were on the way to Hong Kong. The next session was mostly RP, with descriptions of the dojo being in better repair, and the warm welcome – and then the tournament. Hunter’s player insisted that he wanted to get involved, so I had him make a fairly simple martial arts+combat pool roll, and based on the number of successes, equated that to how far through the knock-out tournament he got. It was a very high level and simple mechanic, but gave him some idea that his dice roll mattered, without bogging down the session in a huge series of fights against opponents that I’d have to gen up on the spot in some kind of escalating level of ability – and it was good enough.

With that all done, and the team still struggling on the last item on their shopping list, I made use of the fact that Marius has a “perfect memory” edge to give him a nudge – a quick intelligence check made him remember that they’d talked to a plant expert before, and that in turn finally got them onto the previous contact that Aswon’s player had forgotten about (though, being fair to him and his busy life, this was back in episode 106, played on 10th September 2019, so it’s not exactly recent!)

But with contact made, they now knew where to get the last bit of the puzzle they needed, and started to look at fuel and routes. I’ve got a little bit of homework to do before Tuesday to come up with a new Chinese smuggler stop somewhere along the way to give them a new fuel bubble for their map, and work out how much it’s going to cost them, or which NPC needs a favour for the information – and then what kind of distraction that will cause.

The final bit of the night was Aswon calling Germaine – and as she’s such a well known NPC for the team, I made a quick surge check and the dice “did the thing”. One 22 on a essence check later, and poor Germaine has sported Elven ears (a fashion statement perhaps?), flatulence (going to be interesting to cover up) and a sudden addiction to drinking pee (going to HAVE to look at working that into a future episode!!!)

However, the team don’t know that yet, and may never discover it – we’ll see how negotiations go! But for now, they’re going to get called back to pick up Yat-Gwan, and start working around the 5 power mountains in China to do the ritual, which is going to be an opportunity to mess with Tads a little bit as she takes on some characteristics of the mountains once more.

And as usual, here are the notes from the game session to compare / contrast with the narrative:
1. Tuesday 13/09/61, Location: 10.35214, 116.44811, Time 8:57
2. Sea Dragon swims in front and comes to a halt,
3. "thank you for the audience", deep bow from Kai.
4. "Very well - make your request! But be swift in your thoughts!"
5. K-"here to ask a favour, one of my colleagues has a need, seek aid from your knowledge and resources, Aswon here can perhaps explain..."
6. A, makes sure spear is not pointing at dragon. "Greetings, I am Aswon." Explains about contact with horror, inimical to all life, ritual, Yat-gwan is helping us, this is what we're after. Wish to bring no trouble to you, only help my friend. Maybe after getting rid of the mark we can deal with the thing. But need to get the innocent child free of it."
7. "you saw this, you experienced it first hand, show us your thoughts!" Shimazu thinks / allows thoughts.
8. "We have a requirement for some land walkers. We have had some property stolen from us. Something most precious to us indeed. We will allow you to take these rocks with you, to save the child - because you will help us recover that which is ours. You have things to do now, we understand. This will come later. We need to set events in motion to make this possible. But you will help us, and then this boon is repaid."
9. Aswon - what's been stolen, and who was dumb enough to steal from a dragon.
10. You will be appraised by our landwalker when it is time.
11. "When you enter the deeps again, take this. It will show the creatures there that you work for us."
12. A naga swims over with a small crystal, and presents it to Kai. When you examine it, you can see that its not a crystal after all - but some kind of resin, shaped to resemble a crystal. Inside is a small brass plaque, and when you rotate it back and forth to catch the diffuse light of the cavern you can make out the stamped letters on the plaque 'S.S.Titanic'.
13. "It is agreed then, you will go out, get rocks, and we will contact you when ready." Team dragged back outside, merrow have rocks, start to ascend.
14. Get back to shore, pressure removed, Allora gets the necklaces back. She then ferries the rocks out from the merrow to the team, they secure in the Broadsword. Hunter and Aswon think it's probably the right stuff.
15. Examine the crystal - looks like a name tag. Shimazu aura-reads it. Antiquity, death, folly, resolve, Shimazu gets sense of familiarity with what he felt at the Battle Barge.
16. Get ready to head north to Hong Kong, 3.5 hours. Talk about where to land - Aswon suggests paying for the country club, Tads - shape earth top of the cliffs. Or out on the island in the bay.
17. Uneventful journey back to Chuns, called ahead. Tads lowered and shape earth, makes a landing spot, land the aircraft.
18. Tads thinks about taking the toilet out - but realises it's not worth starting the warding.
19. Get down to Chuns, meet him and the wife, invited in for dinner and a chat, check up on the team. Kai regales with some stories. Chun busy, explains max bookings, tournaments success. Tournament starts at dusk / 7pm - 5 hours away.
20. Team prepare buckets, clean things, purify, do some mythic cleansing. Chun is happy for Hunter to enter. Aswon gets the medkit, just in case. Hunter general attack roll, gets 4/10, RR, 6/10. Aswon asks Marius to get the surveillance drone up. Beach party. Chun has spoken, everyone is expecting sweat collection. Hunter gets through to 6th round. Not a street fight, all controlled. Good night overall, several litres of sweat. Party atmosphere. Semis are ork v troll, and human v human. Final is human(w) v troll. 10pm finish.
21. Team offer a bigger ruby as the reward to Chun. Aswon suggests take to a jeweller / enchanter to make something nice, sell if you must. But make a prize for the annual winner. Chun wants two smaller ones for the eyes, for a fighting figurine
22. Marius memory check - singing soulweed contact. Aswon memory check. Vague memories of Han Lee. Tads and Aswon get in touch.
23. Backdrop of monastery, candlelight. Ahh, friends of gentle flower how can I help. Aswon - matter of life and death - waffles. Lifts trid over to window - there. Aswon - can we land there. Explains yes. Team check - one of the 5 mystic mountains. Do you want anything bringing? Money or knowledge. We'll work something out. Aswon asks when next induction will be for training Hunter. Chun offers to run a class whenever for him. Team bed down for the night.
24. 1500km to Hua Shan, look at route, discuss Chengdung vs Henan route. Look at the fuel, realise they have no contacts in the area. Aswon tries Mr Hu first. Not available, leaves VM. "Going to be within a 1000km in the next few days, do you need anything shipping while in the area?"
25. Bed down for the night.
26. Weds 14th, 7am. Hunter checks news. More surge violence and deaths. Stabilise in a bad way. Shadowland is covering the full gamut. Hunter has a bit more rep there.
27. Aswon checks in with Germaine. Germaine has surged.

Hi everyone - and welcome to another update for the Smuggler campaign. Episode 336 is now published, continuing book 11.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/cl9rcfa9fukm...xvm9p5&dl=0

Here's the "behind the scenes" from this week's run:
This week the team were heading off to mountain #3 of 5, to do their little ritual, and it was time for a bit of trouble. Mountain #1 was Yat-Gwan’s lair, so no problems there. Mountain #2 was technically of the “other” alignment in yin/yang, but there was no warning of their arrival, and it was a major tourist spot – and as they got in and out fairly quickly, they avoided any trouble there. But mountain #3 was also not aligned with her/Lung, and after a warning was flashed out from the people working at the 2nd, they were on alert and monitoring things – so they had a response force able to intercept the team after they landed. The players haven’t worked this out or thought about it much – but when I’m doing this stuff, I always try to have some kind of internal consistency or plan to work out when things should happen, or have initiators and consequences.

Partly that’s so if they DO investigate this later, they can find a cause and effect chain that will make sense, and hopefully make the world feel more “real”, and the circumstances “fair” – there’s a reason why the opposing forces did what they did, and how they got caught. Partly it’s a way of keeping myself in check – and making sure that GM omnipotence doesn’t counter-act player agency and planning. I know how frustrating it can be as a player to feel or come to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter what we do, the bad guys will ALWAYS seem to detect us and foil our plans, and we’ll never get away with something.

I’m reminded of a mission a long time ago, when I was playing rather than GMing – and Lee (the guy who plays Marius in this game) was running a printed adventure. We were out to steal something, in a remote location that was stuffed full of guards – and a little out of comfort zone. Taking it steady, we were trying to be very careful and avoid detection. I came up with what seemed like a cunning plan – and as it turned out that plan was indeed most cunning and avoided 99% of the defences that were printed in the book as being the obstacles, and also took us out of the path of the guards. And the GM rolled with that and played it out as we had found a genuine loophole in the defences. We did the job, and he described us circumnavigating the issues and the entry into the vault, getting the item and then getting out.

The entire team were nervous – characters AND players. We were convinced that we were going to get a “yes, BUT” moment at any time, and steeling ourselves for getting bent over a desk and brutally taken… but we just slid out of the castle, and down the cable car and got away. And it wasn’t until we actually GOT away that we realised just how stressed we’d all gotten by the job going perfectly well – because we were convinced that the other shoe was going to drop.

Sure – drama and conflict are what makes the game fun, but I think it’s a very important part of things to make sure that if the players DO cover all the bases and prepare really well, that stuff should go their way, and they should overcome obstacles. Random things can still happen, but they don’t need to be show-stoppers, or even much beyond eye-candy, but your players need to learn that PPPPPP – proper preparation prevents piss poor performance. Because if you’re going to just hit them with stuff regardless – then why bother planning at all! And that’s a very different game, and tends to push them more to a Pink Mohawk response of “get the biggest guns and major league fireballs, kill everything and then there’s nothing to catch us!” – and that’s certainly not the game I want to run here – that’s for Friday night’s actual Pink Mohawk games!

But, that being said – the team were not going to get a free run past all the mountains, so at this one there was some opposition. Actually some serious opposition, that would give them some pause. This mountain was on the “wrong” side of the yin-yang balance for Yat-Gwan and Lungs forces, and I’d further written up that it was under the control of the “Natural Life Bio-research corporation”, which has Ryumyo as a major backer/stockholder – and of course he and Lung have a bitter rivalry (which the team has been involved in before, back in episodes 156-203).

Given the tech / gear level of the players, I also knew I didn’t have to pull any punches with the op-for, and I could give them some tasty gear of their own. So, I started off with a 5-man patrol, in an electric 6X6 APC that would have reduced signature and give them a decent response time and mobility, to catch the players. Of course, I was planning on having them approach while the ritual was in progress, so the players had to “defend the base”, and stop the ritual being disrupted.

To give some decent staying power, I went with some reasonably physically strong humans in light security armour with helmets, kitted them out with battletac receivers that were wired in to the APC, and then decent assault rifles with APDS – giving them some reasonable defence, perception and attack options.

The core stats for the troopers were:
4 Troopers, Light security armour with helmets (7/5)
HK G38, 30 rounds, SA/BF/FA, Gas vent 3, padded stocks, foregrips and strength mods total recoil reduction of 6. Rifles 6
B6, Q5, S5, C5, I5, W5, R5(9), CP7, Init 1(3)D6, Wires 2, 3 Good karma, 5 Karma Pool.

On top of that, I wanted to give Shimazu a challenge – he’s been used to absolutely mincing through combat for quite some time now, and understandably so.
Shimazu has quickness 8, and a skill of Edged (Katana) 6/8. Along with that he has Combat Pool of 9, he’s a Grade 9 physical adept initiate, and has “Improved ability – Edged (2) Along with that he has a rating 4 weapon foci made by Tads from the sword they stole from the Iranian museum.
As he tends to go ‘all in’ on his first strike, that means 8 dice from his skill, 8 from his combat pool, 2 from the adept powers and 4 dice from his weapon foci, for a total of 22. Along with that, his normal target number of 4 is often reduced to 3 from his sword’s reach, and then 2 with the meta-magic “attunement”. 22 dice needing 2s normally sees a frankly obscene number of successes, and that lets him stage up to Deadly damage and start ramping the power up – and is the principle reason why there are so many decapitations or dismemberments in his combats!
So – to challenge him, I just needed to cook up something a little bit special – but without going too far.
Starting with a troll, I gave them some decent stats without going over normal racial maximums. This gave me access to a good body/strength combo for soaking and hitting with some punch, as well as the troll natural reach of 1. The base stat line was:
B13, Q5, S12, C4, I4, W6, R4((IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif) , CP7, Init 1(3)D6. 8 Good karma, 7 karma pool.
So still not as experienced as the team, but no noobie straight off the farm either. Good physical stats, but not obscene or game breaking, and mental stats were just ok – though I did go with a reasonable willpower to make sure he had a chance to resist things like Kai’s commanding voice.
For the weapon, I had a quick flick through the Canon Companion list, searching out a nice Reach 2 weapon – and settled on the kusarigama as something a little unusual and distinctive. Making that a force 1 weapon foci added a little extra power, and also gave a nice representation of him being an “elite” and somewhat more powerful.

Next up was the magic side of things – and I had some specific goals here. As well as being a challenge for Shimazu, it was also going to be an opportunity – this guy was going to have a new power that hopefully would get demonstrated to Shimazu, and that could then be used for inspiration for him learning that ability in the future – if he wanted to. So, I set the troll as a grade 5 initiate, giving him a total of 11 power points to draw on.
First up was mystic armour at level 6 – which would stack nicely on top of the medium security armour’s 7/5 base stats to give him 7/11. Even a nice D strike from Shimazu was then going to get downpowered to something that would be conceivable to soak with a trolls high natural body – so he *probably* wasn’t going to get one-shotted.
Then was improved reflexes 2 to give at least a couple of actions a turn to attack/move/interact in. I knew Shimazu was going to go first – he has quickstrike as a power – so it’s not about beating him in the initiative order, but it is about making sure he’s got some options.
Just in case he did get tickled, I added 3 levels of pain resistance to allow him to take a moderate wound and keep on fighting ok, which seems more than reasonable.
Then we added Improved Abilities: Whips, and here is where we had maybe a light sprinkling of cheese to dust things – as we went for level 6 here. With a whips skill of 6, that meant that we would consistently be rolling 12 dice as a base on attacks. Still less than Shimazu’s alpha strike, but potentially higher on actions 2 and 3 if we got that far…
And finally we went with “Master Armourer” – which is one of our custom powers that allows the phys-ad to make a test (similar to boosting physical attributes or other similar powers) and for a small number of rounds to “harden” their mystic armour so that it would provide ballistic armour too! It’s a two edged sword of course, as doing it at a higher level means there’s inevitably going to be some drain, but it could be an absolute game changer, and I think very cinematic!

With that combo of powers then, we had Whips 6, Improved ability: Whips 6, 1 dice from the foci, and then up to 6 out of the 7 combat pool – to give 19 potential dice to throw, or a base of 13 consistently without combat pool.
But, on top of this we had the natural troll reach of 1, and then 2 from the kusarigama. Depending on how this was applied then, I could stick with base 4s to hit Shimazu, but use all 3 reach to push him back up to 5s for the strike back, use the weapon reach to lower the troll down to hitting on 2s, and use the 1 point of natural reach to push Shimazu back up to 3s, or do some combo between them. Either way – they were probably both going to get good numbers of successes, probably be fairly close to each other in overall terms, and both had enough karma pool for a reroll or two if needed. But with the two sides mostly balancing out, that means the power level wasn’t going to be crazy high from huge stageup calculations – and that meant that between the mystic and physical armour, and a 13 body dice roll, the troll should be able to take a good few hits, shrug them off and keep on trucking – and provide a *real* challenge for our pet ninja.

How did it work out? Absolutely spot on thankfully. Shimazu powered up, used his improved strength, got surprised at not getting a mountain of hits, and then his face fell when the troll managed to soak his distance strike. Then he tried shooting, so I got to demo the new technique, right in front of him where it *definitely* counts as being seen and being inspiration for him to consider later.
Aswon jumps in to try and help, and gets flipped across the battle arena and that gives me an opportunity to reveal the latest add-on for his spear that he unlocked a while back and then has stubbornly refused to fall from anywhere that would let me actually demonstrate it!
Shimazu is now sweating bullets, knowing that his improved strength is going to drop off soon, and he’s got some hefty drain coming his way – and then also of course his strength is going to drop and he’s got even less chance of causing damage. He’s wondering if he needs to throw a whole bunch of re-rolls at the issue and maybe some more good karma to just power his way through… and then Kai comes in and challenges the guys “honour” and gives him a way out to de-escalate the situation. Perfect!

Because the other side of this is that the troll is also a person who doesn’t want to die. He’s probably been just as complacent as Shimazu has gotten, and isn’t used to coming up against someone quite so tasty – and is now wondering just what a hornets nest he’s investigating. Sure, he got a hit in on his opponent – but he’s aware that he only just won combat, and he also doesn’t know what else Shimazu might have tucked away. He’s aware that Kai did something “weird” and disarmed his other troopers and also got them to agree to something. And his sensors had picked up the Broadsword powering up and he probably had suspicions about reinforcements. So giving him a reason to back down gracefully – or at least with the semblance of grace and honour, was something he felt he could do.

And I’m sure it was a fun object lesson for Shimazu that’s probably going to stick with him for a while – and also give him something interesting to investigate with the new power. But all that to come of course, while we move on to the next mountain.
When Ali (Tads) returned the write up after proof-reading it for me (which she normally does to try and catch as many typos or abuses of the English language as possible) she also attached two comments this week:

Working as intended. <grin>



And as usual, here are the notes from the game session to compare / contrast with the narrative:
1. Wednesday 14/09/61, Location: 39.65724, 113.75046, Time 12:15
2. Hunter gets 4+ succeses on research as you approach. Tads magic check on 8s - gets 2
3. Hunter puts out his research on the screen.
4. Wujen research - 4+ successes on computer (5) check
5. 1) Zhurong: Fire/Combat. Yin, under control of Yat-Gwan and by extension Lung
6. 2) Hua Shan: Metal / manipulation. Yin. Rumoured to have the tourist industry controlled by the Red Lantern Triad, associated with Ryumyo
7. 3) Xuanwu: Water / illusion. Yin - controlled by Ryumyo, who owns significant shares in the Mountain Development Corp, who have rights over a number of the peaks and uplands of the range, and operates the "Natural Life" bio research corporation.
8. 4) T'ai Shan: Wood / detection. Yang, rumoured to be a Lair for the great Dragon Lung
9. 5) Song Shan: Earth / healing. Yin-yang.
10. Tads direct sensing - 8 success, R4-5 power site for wujen, ebb for everyone else, spirits will hate it.
11. Tads briefing sent - unhappy noises from Ali.
12. Kai checks in with Li - lots of attention and focus, he's having a blast.
13. Shimazu checks Tads aura - prevaricating, conflicted, wondering what to do. Psychology test - just treat her carefully.
14. TAds "guys, we need to talk." Aswon - to who? T to each other. A - right... or what? T we need to get things out in the open. S - is the mountain talking to you? T- no it's like the other two mountains. K - what was the feelings from the other two? H - being a bitch and needing bigger guns. T - if that's how you want to describe it. We need to get things out in the open, talk to each other more, resolve old arguments. K - does the mountain give a timeframe on this? It's not exactly T - as long as we do it sooner rather than later... K - how is everyone for scheduling in a performance review and a 1-1 for next week... S - is the mountain gaslighting us into infighting? T - no - the opposite, we want to get on. And Hunter - not a bitch, that's a bit confrontational, we should use less aggressive language. Aswon - is this what the mountain wants from us, or in general.
15. Shim to YG - what does your mountain want from us. YG - oh this is NOT my mountain, not at all. Tads - think this is just the aspect of this mountain. Hunter looks between YG and T - this is your baggage, she's already told you this! F7 spirit comes inside the ward and sulks.
16. YG - we should move quickly, we're not welcome here. Checks watch. Team "oh great". YG points at a spiney - in there. Start part #3 of the ritual, Aswon contributes some as well with evacuation and relocation.
17. Perception / sensor checks on 6/10s. Aswon and Tads hear something coming, Marius gets a good hit. Hear the military truck coming up, send out alert. Marius detects life signs getting out on the approach. Kai - getting out for a walk? M - got to assume they're hostile. K - can you launch a drone? M - will take a few minutes to prep - we've been flying. Kai is monitoring the ritual.
18. Team magic go stealth intercept, Team mundane start to gear up - panther cannon. Marius makes sure back ramp is secure, and armour/gun up.
19. Get to edge of woods, SUT roll, probably picked up on sensors
20. Tads steps out - sorry, we're here, Mechanical issue, might be trespassing, sorry, please be careful with the guns.
21. Restricted corp property, must leave immediately. Aswon to group: subvocalise to the group "contact. Assessing. Assume comms penetrated
22. Shimazu - we only need a few minutes to get ready to go.
23. Aswon - there are children present, how will the PR dept feel about that. We'll be gone in 15 minutes. Guns come up again, ready, final warning, you must leave immediately.
24. Tads - how, walk off the mountain? Leave the chopper? Trooper - yes. Leave. Shimazu - think our translation is duff, just calling for my translator. KAI! Kai, starts to come over. Emerges slowly, addresses in mandarin. Deep apologies for my colleagues misunderstanding, no disrespect, wish to be out of here ASAP without any disruption. Need to remove our polluting vehicle, take about 10 minutes. Happy to stay with you while my friends go and make it happen - is that ok. Tries to make it happen. Aura wobbles, Shimazu sees it, not normal.
25. Troll gets out, stomps towards the team. Shimazu - I can have him... I think. Aswon - watch out for disarm or entangles! Deep booming voice - get off the mountain! Don't know what trick you're pulling. Aswon - doesn't Ryumyo owe us a favour? Can't we make a call? Kai steps out "want me to come with you". Troll starts to wind up an attack. 10m apart. Tads - not sure we should be fighting on the sacred mountain. Shimazu - stop! Face me! Troll does.
26. Shimazu waits for 7m, then quick draw. Increase strength +6. Test vs 7s - none, RR twice, get 1, buys 1.
27. Kai shouts - drop your weapon. Commanding voice. Troll resists. Troopers don't
28. Hunter leaves Broadsword with Panther and heads for Yat-Gwan.
29. Shimazu goes for distance strike - 8 rr1 11, rr2 16. 7 on the dodge, net 9. 4 stage ups = 17D. Minus armour and mystic armour = 4d, soaked.
30. Kai asks the troopers why the troll is attacking. Aswon moves in called shot to try and trip the troll. Uses sprint power to cover the distance. Gets 2 vs Troll 8 - flicks Aswon through the air (successful strength check to hang on) then he suddenly starts to float... figures it's the legacy of the cloud dancers.
31. Shimazu goes to quickdraw pistol and shoot. Draw ok, shoots, 2 successes. Troll doesn't soak - takes an L. Pistol bounces off the armour. Melee starts. Shimazu gets 7, rr 17, troll 9, 4 stages up, 17D, Troll soaks.
32. Shimazu 8, troll 11, net 3 - 14D, armour to a 5D, 3 success buy 1. Takes an M.
33. Tads moves to flanking position and makes magical etiquette appeal to stop fighting. 1 rr3 . Troll gets 1 vs 9s. He stops and considers. Moves to keep tads and Shimazu in front. Aswon now to his rear. Shimazu takes a step back and tries not to wince.
34. Troll points - get off our mountain. Kai interjects - we arranged for 10 mins with your colleagues. Troll - oh I heard your negotations, you might affect their weak minds, but not me. Kai - ahh, but made it with your pals, it's their honour you're breaking. Hmmm. Join me for some meditation. Troll steps back a bit, then gives the team 10 mins, tells troopers to pick up their guns.
35. Broadsword up to altitude - then peace breaks out. Marius gently lowers it down again, but engines hot. Yat Gwan is hurrying as much as possible.
36. Aswon SUT - troopers are being bollocked to hell - but probably warned. Shimazu takes an S stun from the attribute boost.
37. Just as 10 min expires, YG tells Hunter we're done, team egress. They watch from cover.
38. Kai starts to biotech Shimazu. Tads makes one more attempt to make people talk to each other before they leave. Good biotech and then heal. 1 hour for Shimazu to get 1st box back. 1 hour to next mountain.

Hi everyone - and welcome to another update for the Smuggler campaign. Episode 337 is now published, bring book 11 to a close.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/cl9rcfa9fukm...xvm9p5&dl=0

Here's the "behind the scenes" from this week's run:

And here we are – another quarter a million words written, another book done – or at least a good place to have a logical break in their ongoing story. And – a free youtube video to share with the players, and you my lovely readers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9I2njBfUD0

So – what happened this week, and why the end of the book? Well, the team had two mountains left to visit to finish the ritual for little Li – and entirely RP plotline that does them no real good whatsoever. But, this has sent them on a journey of over 16,000 kilometres to search for materials for a ritual and then to ferry an eastern dragon around a bunch of mountains, taking up a bunch of resources and time for the team, just to help a minor NPC out – because it was the right thing to do.

What they didn’t know was that they’re also being tested, and in particular this was *really* important for Tads, as the only member of the player group that doesn’t have her ‘campaign special’ yet- something which has started to rankle her, I can tell you!

When I started this game, I wanted it to have a fairly epic feel – or as epic a feel as I can manage. I had my long term campaign arcs planned out, and knew that this was going to be – or at least end up – as a fairly high power game. This was something that Jez/Aswon in particular had requested, as he’d been in so many street level / pink Mohawk style games and wanted something with a real sense of progression and depth – and I’m certainly ok with that as a concept. So when we started, that’s one of the things that drove me to the campaign starting build.

All the characters started as 135 build points, rather than 125, and in addition they were all told that they would start the game effectively naked, having lost any/all gear – internal ware was fine, but anything mobile would be gone, and they should not count on getting it back. That immediately focussed them away from lots of toys, and instead investing in their attributes, skills and cyber/bio/magic. Marius worked around that a little by having some cash and a phone hidden in a cyberware body compartment, but I was ok with that – it’s a fair call, and gave them a little bit of extra utility then.

That helped me as a GM at the game start with their gear by allowing me to drip-feed upgrades to them, just like the first few levels of an MMO or FPS game – where they had to scrabble from a knife to a light pistol, to a crap break action shotgun, to a 3rd rate ex police SMG, working up the ladder on the gear list as they managed to get some cash together and slowly upgrade their supplies – but hopefully giving them that little dopamine hit with every upgrade in power and capability.

Giving them the truck gave them a mobile base that was somewhat safe and secure, and feasible to run their missions from – as well as something that they needed to look after, keep fuelled and also look at upgrading. After a while, once we’d done some longer range missions and they were starting to chafe at the speed, then it was time to introduce the chopper and let them play with that for a while. Just as they were used to that, I blew it up and took away their toy – knowing that in the session afterwards they were going to be able to steal the bad guys transport and get some more flexibility and a little more range. Onwards and upwards, more karma, more cash, more toys and a lot more experience, and after one more plot contrived vehicle upgrade we get to where we are now – where that 16 thousand kilometres journey is practical and feasible to do, even on a whim – so we’re looking good. With some of the team at Initiate grade 10, and a pretty fearsome set of abilities to work around between them, we’re now going to push into the “major league”, with some jobs that are going to pit them against some much bigger adversaries.

As they’ve just finished this mission, and it’s been nearly 30 play sessions since they last got karma (and 36 weeks real time) this also feels like a really good place to have them stop, have a little training montage, update their character sheets (to a new version I’ve refined and started to push out to all my groups), check that everyone is still happy – and then plunge into a nice, big, meaty job.

As part of that “epic” setting, I also wanted to give everyone something unique, some kind of “campaign special”. Something that perhaps feels more like the kind of legendary item that a long term D&D group might have, something flavourful, impactful and unique – which I also think is a little unusual in Shadowrun terms, based on the game trope and setting. My hope was that by making each item tailored to the player/character, and only achieved after some important part of the game, that they would value *their* special thing, without resenting anyone elses, but also feel that they had something noteworthy and interesting. And poor, poor Tads has had to wait a long time for hers – sometimes it really sucks being the GM’s wife. I certainly didn’t want her to be seen as a favourite, or getting any kind of advantage, but it turned out that just the way the story developed, she was going to end up getting pushed to the back of the queue. She has been very good about it, but I’ve had a LOT of digs this year about “so when do I get my thing? When can I spend 5 karma?” And I just keep grinning at her, and not saying anything…

So… this week we had two mountains to do – one under Lung’s control, and one neutral – so I was pretty sure we were going to get both done no problem. I had a bit of a challenge in the first one as Lung’s guardian Wujen spirits didn’t recognise them to start off with and started to mess with the aircraft, giving them their roller-coaster ride, which Marius had some fun rolls working around, before Tads put up her defences to get them down safely – and as soon as they saw Yat-Gwan, the team were safe. Then it was time for a very quick bit of theatre, as the team watched more ritual (which they got a high level overview on, then we moved on nice and quickly – enough I hope for them to understand the aims/intent of the NPC and the concept of what was happening, but not so much that they were bored watching the GM describe something they had no real control over…)

On to the last mountain, and another ritual to do – and a minor interaction with the car park attendant for Hunter. Would he just shoot the guy in the face? Batter him senseless? Tie him up and just ignore him? I honestly had no idea how he would react to the jobsworth traffic warden – and in the end I would have lost my bet as I didn’t have “threaten to set him on fire”. But, we got that ritual done, collected the rest of the team and got back to the first mountain to finish things off.

Aswon seemed in particular to like the concept of what was done, of spiking the ritual link and creating a decoy, and everyone seemed happy enough to accept. And with that done, and the bird refuelled, some trades done and the players probably starting to wind down as it was getting close to 9pm (our usual finish time) and the plot seemed to be “done”, I had the dragon mental whisper Tads, telling her to put her mindlink up to share her experience with the group. And thankfully Tads/Ali did – and the rest of the team were ok with participating.

I had a couple of reasons to want to do that:

First, that way I could include the whole team in what I was going to show them, so they didn’t get left out.

Secondly, I didn’t want to just show Tads, as it would be very easy to view the footage from only one point of view, and not take the meaning I was aiming for from it. With multiple people watching, and having seen the same source, much like when people start spitballing ideas about how to do a job, you were much more likely to get some differing viewpoints and alternative interpretations for what they’d seen.

Third, by having all of the team see it, it would be MUCH easy to include it in the narrative as something they all had experienced, rather than if just Tads had seen it, and then decided not to discuss it for a while (like Shimazu did when he got shoved to the rift between worlds and saw the Horrors building the bridge). That was his choice, and I didn’t push the issue as that really would have been taking agency away from him, but this meant that I could hopefully work around the problem.

And of course, there’s the added benefit that by making it a video I could share with the group, I can also then share it to you folks as well!

I’d found a bunch of video snippits I wanted to use, some images and then pulled them all down into Clipchamp to process, putting a fairly simple timeline together with some transitions. I’m not an artistic fellow, so I knew I wasn’t going to get an epic movie put together, but I’m hoping it was at least not too bad, and at only a minute long, didn’t stretch things out too much.

With the file ready and cued up in VLC, I started a screen share in discord, made sure everyone could see the screen (paused on the first frame of the flying section), described Yat-Gwan flicking Tads and then hit play, and got to watch as all the players were peering at their screens watching the movie to see what important plot shenanigans were going down. There were some raised eyebrows, especially when we got to the skull, and then contemplative looks at the end of the file.

And then I turned to my left, looked at Ali/Tads and said “So – do you wanna spend 5 Karma?” And everyone got to see her lose her shit on camera as she realised what I’d done and was rendered speechless (if only for a short amount of time, while she tried to signal me with a thumbs up that yes, she did, thank you very much). I really wanted to record this as I suspected I’d get a strong reaction – but Ali also HATES having her photo taken or being recorded, so I resisted. Such is love…

Then she asked me what it did, and I told her she’d have to find out in play, which of course just made her even more annoyed as she’s now got something but has no idea what it is…

Evil? Moi. Perhaps. Very funny though. I smirked no end, so it must be true!

The team actually had a bit of a discussion on how they were going to spend their 2 weeks downtime and what they were going to do, which I’ve cut from the writeup – I think that would be much better to do as a pre-amble at the start of the next chapter to describe what they’ve done, and to finish with Tads still pondering what exactly it is that she’s done.

Where does this bring us to then? With the end of “book” 11 we’re sitting at 2.6m words in total, representing the story told over the last 8.18 years. The players have earnt on average 350 good karma and though there’s been a couple of close calls – are still all bouncing along with their original characters. We’ve moved from playing at the table through COVID and a move onto discord, and now settled firmly into online play. And we’re now firmly towards the main events of “Year of the Comet”, and moving on to the intro of “Survival of the Fittest” and some major league dragon bullshit along with a good sprinkling of “Immortal Elf” nonsense to sprinkle on top.

Hope you’re all still enjoying this nonsense and the direction it’s going. It’s only going to get weirder from here (though hopefully without quite jumping the shark…)


And as usual, here are the notes from the game session to compare / contrast with the narrative:
1. Wednesday 14/09/61, Location: 39.65724, 113.75046, Time 12:45
2. T'ai Shan - large air spirits swooping around, sudden wind shear.. Broadsword handling 2. +4 tight terrain, +3 weather condition - vcr 2(4) = 5s
3. 475 km to mountain. 1 hour. Get to 5km away, Tads starts to had effect "We've had weird things happen, we should put up a mind link before we get there, so we can co-ordinate. Team agree. If there's bad astral it might pop, but otherwise...
4. Hunter checks how tads is feeling. Glad I'm not a snake shaman... Tads on the optics. Spots dozens of air spirits around the top of the mountain, cover the climate shift. Tads just resists assensing them. Reaction check for Marius - none, RR, gets 2, then passes handling, massive wind shear. Tads spots the spirits ragging the Broadsword around but chooses not to share. Marius asks for help due to wind-shear.
5. Tads changes to spirit power nullification on the bird, instead of shielding. Wujen air element spirits - 8-10 force, dozens. Air elementals start to congregate around the Broadsword and start poking it. Tads warns Marius about this. So this isn't just windshear then?
6. Ace the landing - Marius flying like a pro.
7. Yat-Gwan, 1/4km to immortal bridge, let's go. Hunter staying with Marius, rest go. Spirits start to congregate around YG, look excited.
8. Spot signs warning not to climb. Aswon puts li on shoulder and gecko climbs.
9. YG - starts ritual, life choices, spirits gather and watch. No events, 30 mins later, clap hands, thanks the spirits, back to the Broadsword.
10. 420km to Song Shan. No weird magical effects or spirits on patrol. Drop the ramp to allow passengers off, go to the car park 1km north for the tilt-jet, land in car park. Turn off polymers - Tads, no, will put illusion over the top. Hunter computer search - gets images of China Shipping zeppelin. Drops the mindlink.
11. Courtyard, trees, tourists stay back. YG starts, fixing mistakes, Li slightly more involved. Mundane team hassled by jobsworth parking attendant. Wispy little moustache, tiny guy, absolute weed. 5/7/50 Ny for tour busses - not sure what to charge for this! Hunter finds some cash, he wants 200 Ny - undaunted. Hunter flicks avgas on him, then warns how explosive it is! He retreats.
12. After completion, clap, thank the mountain and spirits, call the Broadsword. Shimazu gotten rid of stun. Perfect pickup from Marius, team all aboard and heading back to YG mountain. Li asleep, Spook nervous, YG reading. Aswon staying alert. Tads checks about where to land - well I'm not walking up. Aswon - so what now. Created a false Li to host the mark, we can't actually remove that - but we can redirect it. Ahh - a false material link. Very clever, and easier than going to the metaplanes. Kai spots that Spook is very nervous. 18:00 arrival at YG. Pokes Kai - there's a fuel bowser for you. Been bought up the mountain by hand. Hunter goes to refill the tanks / barrels.
13. Back to audience chamber, priestess still humming doing the ritual. Lift off the harness. place on clay representation of the boys head, put in a brass box. Aswon and Tads assense the box - f18-20 ward. Wooden staves, arc of the covenant, priestess take the box. Smile from YG - "I believe our business is concluded." Aswon - thank you, nudges Kai. Kai sincere thanks as well. "Let me show you back to your aircraft... Aswon asks about warding materials in exchange for a donation. Tads suggest the fire summoning materials instead. Team get 45 units of warding materials in exchange for 45 of fire combat materials.
14. Message to Tads - are you in a sharing mood? Encourages her to do a mindlink.
15. Tads asks for a mindlink from the team. YG not in it.
16. Video plays as YG flicks Tads and she falls. YG turns and heads back into the monastery. Hunter waves bye - she returns it and grins.
17. Ali spends 5 karma - but can't speak...
18. Back to HK - Spook calls ahead to Grandfather, the team are fine to land there. Head back to HK, discussing plans. Hunter wants 2 weeks at Chuns. Old man is not till November. Sounds like downtime coming... Aswon suggests that Marius Jn and mom get to fly over to HK. Get Germaine to sort out ID for the kid, Nadia should have an ID already...

Hi everyone - and welcome to another update for the Smuggler campaign. Episode 338 is now published, starting book 12!

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1wanc3bzh333...hsp8sa&dl=0

Here's the "behind the scenes" from this week's run:

This week was one of those “weird” sessions – as I’d given karma out the week before and I knew we would be doing some downtime, so there was a bunch of admin and out-of-game details to sort out. Each of the players got around 33 karma, which should have been enough to initiate, raise attributes, buy skills or make some other really meaningful advancement to their character.

I’d gone through all the session notes from session 309 to the current ending, first of all double checking that I’d counted up all the awards for mission success / progression, but then also checking through the notes for the “right skill, right time”, “drama”, “humour”, “cunning plan” etc type awards. When I’d added them all up, for the first time I found that pretty much everyone was on the same award level – so I just gave a blanket award to them all, rather than having 4 with 33 and 2 with 32. We’re also far enough through this campaign that splitting hairs like this really doesn’t make much sense, and also doesn’t really affect them much anymore. They’re all on karma pool 15 now, and are pretty good at their respective specialities.

So – what did they spend all that lovely karmic goodness on?

• Kai initiated from Grade 7 to Grade 8, learning “Attunement” to his Mongolian Horse-Bow. That lets him reduce all target numbers by 1 for shooting, so it functions as if it has a laser sight on it. He’s not really used his archery much, if at all yet – but he also has spent some adept powers on it, including some of the expanded rules we have at our table. He has purchased “Rapid Shot” and “Fist full of Arrows”, both of which let him hold/use/reload ammo FAR quicker than would be possible normally, to a certain point. Someday, someone is going to piss off Kai, and they (and the rest of the team) are going to get a very rude shock as he goes all Robin Hood on their ass… I’m looking forward to that day. He also spent all of his power points for this level on “Improved ability: Projectile Weapons” – so with his archery skill of 6, he now has an additional 4 dice from powers, and potentially up to 6 dice of combat pool, giving him a pretty hefty alpha strike potential. He ended up with 9 GK remaining, giving him a healthy buffer for use in game.
• Aswon initiated from 6 to 7, realising that otherwise he’d be a fair bit behind the others in terms of magical power. He also learnt “Attunement” to his spear, then spent a few more karma getting attuned to his Purdey rifle, giving him a strong improvement to both his melee and ranged powers. He spent his power point on a bunch of extra senses to round out his detection capabilities, leaving him with 4 GK remaining. He also then did the RP time for mastering his ability to fly, using the newest part of the Spear’s powers that he’d unlocked.
• Shimazu initiated also, going from 9>10, and picked up “infusion”, as well as learning the centering skill and breath control from Aswon. He pumped up his great leap with the power point gained as well. With centering further improved, he has raised his already formidable melee potential, and the possible bonus to some of his skills from Infusion gives him the ability to nuke *really* hard at a push – though he then has to deal with the drain afterwards of course! That leaves him with 15 Karma left for play – plenty!
• Marius went with mostly skill upgrades – pumping karma into his “future tech” skill in anticipation of another test from Ares at some point soon, along with getting background skills in some security systems, raising some language skills and otherwise keeping the rest back to pull of some crazy stunts in game. Spending 21 good karma on those left him with 18 to use in game.
• Hunter made a big push with the martial arts training, spending karma to raise his quickness up by one, and then improving his brawling skill to follow up with the newly raised attribute. Normally I’d say going from 5 to 6 in a skill and reaching that “international repute” level would be enough for a single advancement – but with the location and training on offer, I thought that if ever there was a good example of the right place to get advanced training, then this was it. So, Hunter is now up to Brawling 7, and the legend he built with the ‘testicular destruction’ video way back in episode 109 he can now potentially follow through with! He ended up with 16 good karma remaining for use in play.
• And last of all was Tads, who also initiated from Grade 9 to 10, learning “filtering” as her metamagic. This was a hard choice for her – as she’s also contemplated getting hold of a power focus, or a summoning foci, or indeed just learning a whole new bunch of spells. All of those things would use up enough of her karma to be single choices, and she did put out a poll to the other players to try and get some feedback from them. In the end she went with more raw power and abilities, and trusting that she’d get a useful metamagic from her totem. She also spent time to try and work out what her “campaign special” is, finally managing to change her totem and discovering that her life had suddenly got a lot more interesting and a LOT more complicated! She has 13 good karma remaining after her power up, which at least gives her the 5 required to unlock the 2nd level of her power, after this next mission.
• With the upgrades out of the way, it was time to crack on with the plot!

Part of the early part of the session was a quick visit from the “mysterious old man”, giving the team some more precise information on the job they have to do for him – as Tads was certainly fretting about making sure they were available. That took off the time pressure and gave them plenty of time to finish their training. I’d got a timeline that I was working to for the next mission for them, with some quite tight time chops – so I wanted them to use up some of the time before that with their downtime, and not head off to go and do something else and end up out of position for what I had lined up for them next.

Once that was out of the way, it was a fairly simple phone call from a previous contact to set up a meeting, and then a simple matrix meeting to introduce the job – so far, so straightforward. A little unusual for some of the team with having to dive into the matrix and rely on Hunter to set things up, but not too far out of the normal wheelhouse. But it was then followed up with a request for a physical meet, which gave the location away – in the Philippines. That then triggered a little concern for the job, as the last time they were in the region there was an unexpected meeting with a submarine which led to a number of surface to air missiles heading their way from the IVIS equipped Japanese frigates.

They got away of course using the “secret afterburner”, but also discovered that was a one-use item, so not that sustainable (especially not with the cost), but also hopefully have a healthy respect for the Japanese naval forces.
But, already signed up for the job, they headed in to attend the meeting. Tads had been re-reading her spell descriptions and realised that casting “vehicle mask” on the Broadsword would also affect their signature by a fair amount now, and that was worth doing – and so it was advantageous to cast an illusion during their journey. That meant it would be advantageous to make sure she was using a totem that gave an advantage to illusions – and that seemed like a perfect opportunity to make sure the rest of the magic users saw her new “shamanic mask”.

Once we had arrived, and the Johnson introduced himself, I made a roll for Marius using his “Dragons” knowledge, and revealed to him via private message that he knew (or at least strongly suspected) the actual ID of the Johnson. The meeting went smoothly enough, and got over that this was going to be a very definite stealth mission, that the team were just the taxi for – and that they weren’t going to get involved at all. It was all going to be handled by the NPCs.

Of course, if you believe that, you must be new here… <grin> Oh, and do you want to buy an iceberg?

Next week we’ll get stuck in, and then wait to see when the funniest moment will be to drop the other shoe!


And as usual, here are the notes from the game session to compare / contrast with the narrative:
1. Wednesday 14/09/61, Location: 22.30336, 114.19264, Time 19:00
2. Nadia and Marius Jr on the way to HK for a holiday for a week+
3. Spook moves house to the south island, on the Aberdeenshire strip, into Braemar Hill Mansions. Team put up a f10 ward on her new place. Aswon introduces Spook and Li to Chun, and gets Li some lessons.
4. Kai initiates, practices archery.
5. Aswon initiates, practices poles, flying
6. Shimazu initiates, practices martial arts
7. Hunter intense martial arts training, increases quickness 7>8
8. Marius future tech 3>4, background skills in security. Chinese 2>3, sec systems, sec devices
9. Tads - initiates, learns filtering
10. Look at inflight refuelling from the barrels - need 1CF of equipment and 5k.
11. Kai puts in call to shipping guy for fuelling stop near the spot? Tads - can we rent one? Aswon, can you steer it? We'd need a captain too.
12. Tads does improved strength foci for Hunter and Shimazu on 8s and 6s +2str.
13. The sweeper catches up with Marius in the maintenance facility.
14. "The time is closer now, the signs and portents easier to see. You and your team will be needed when the Teapot sinks to the top of the Summer Triangle, and the Southern Cross matches the False Cross in orientation. You must go to a point where a southern line from Singapore would meet a western line from Melbourne, and wait. You will know what to do, when it happens...
15. -38.74559, 102.98735, approx. 1300km from Perth. The absolute closest land is 1100km away, so you would need some kind of freighter or other ship to base from, if you're to have any kind of loiter capability.
16. Hunter - Crux is the smallest constellation but one of the most famous in the Southern Hemisphere. It’s easily recognisable due to its cross shape and is a crucial navigational feature. Crux contains the bright stars Acrux and Mimosa
17. Triangulum Australe, the southern triangle, is a small but bright constellation. It was introduced by Dutch navigators and is easily recognisable due to its triangular shape. The constellation contains several bright stars, including Alpha Trianguli Australis.
18. The bright stars of Sagittarius create a common image known among most of the public who have been stargazing before. This is called an asterism. Sagittarius’s bright stars create a shape that looks like a teapot.
19. Working out the rough date from the procession of the constellations, you get 20th December +/- 7 days.
20. A call to Kai from Sultan, general hellos. I have someone that needs some people moving, in the Philippines. Are you available? Want to have a virtual discussion with you to establish availability. Kai checks for area of the world, and time frame. Nadia is taking a dress back for Germaine made from Vampire silk. 10am meeting.
21. Meeting with smart dressed man, business suit. Orangery, invites in, Heard good things about you, hope they're true. I need a team to carry a number of highly motivated individuals from a location where they can all meet, to an isolated location that is heavily defended and secured. They must be dropped off in secret, while you withdraw from the area, and stand ready to retrieve them, 1-2 days later after they have secured their objective. Can you do this?
22. Kai check with the team, all ok. The pay is your fuel costs, as I understand that is often important for you, access to my considerable resources, and I have heard that you are after some particular equipment. I have access to a Kadron 200 cranial battletac unit with IVIS integrations - that I could provide for you on completion of the task. Kai makes good noises.
23. I have a meeting to set up then, in Tuguegarao on the 21st of October at midday. I can arrange for "friendly" controllers to be on duty, when you arrive, though you will need to arrive without notice from the wider area.
24. Tuguegarao - City of 150,000 people, local airport,
25. A major urban center and primary growth center in the Northeastern Luzon, it is the regional center of Cagayan Valley and also its regional institutional and administrative center. The city is a convergence area for the provinces of Cagayan, Kalinga, Apayao and northern Isabela.
26. Tuguegarao Airport is classified as a major commercial domestic airport by the Air Transportation Office, and has up to 200k passengers per year or 550 passengers per day. It has a single 2000m airstrip, no taxiways and minimal servicing facilities.
27. Arrange to arrive at dusk for dinner. He de-resses. Aswon - who got us in touch with him? Kai - Sultan on BP12, Aswon - hmm, sounds like a trap. But ok.
28. Get on board about 16:30. Tads gets new shamanic mask -spider like, everyone in the back - WTF. Shimazu - I preferred the horns. Tads - this works better for the air spirits and vehicle mask. This is complicated, stuck with this for now, but I can swap again.
29. Japanese sensor net gets a 15, Broadsword has a 27 though. Get to Tuguegarao.
30. Unlisted flight - you here for a meeting? Y. North or south approach, easy landing. Covered by vehicle mask still. Dark red BMW let onto airport, heading to the plane. You won't need guns - only going local. Points to house. Says his driver will look after the plane. Kai general greetings, gets a sense of power/charisma.
31. Hi, I'm Manuel Ortega. Marius Dragons roll - alias for Masaru. Was the deal ok. Kai yes. Aswon - can we get receiver units as well - hmm, probably. This is a very important mission for me, not getting everyone back, omelette eggs. Do you have a map? Outlines mission parameters. Corps are land only, IJM guards the exterior. Get food.
32. Kai - I have minor questions. Go ahead Kai. Have there been other attempts. Explains, no. Aswon - do we need boots on the ground. LZ secure only. Team makeup, ask for gunshot supplies. Shake hands, then back to aircraft. Onboard. Need to have the seats out. Aswon - can you get hammocks? Tads- warns about net system. Ok
33. Can we get there early - yes of course. I'll make arrangements. Ortega leaves. Marius tells everyone that was Masaru.
34. Shiawase, Mitsuhama, Renraku with 100k prisoners, +Japanese orks and trolls.