Runs gone bad, horror stories please Options

[fistandantilus4....]

[ShadowDragon8685]

You mean C.L.U.E. file candidates?

[fistandantilus4....]

something like that. I'm a huge CLUE fan, but really I just want some examples of runs that jsut got all fragged because of something other than bad dice rolls. besides, I try to use rumor mills in my game when I can, and I'd like to be able to include some rumors of run successes and failures, like in SOTA 64.

[nick012000]

Well, there was the time my team blew up the freeway...

We got away fine, though, thanks to a mischevious free spirit that we convinced to tie up everyone's shoe laces, after which we crept away.

[Straight Razor]

i posted this once befor, but here goes...

My friend was running a game with 4 friends. I rolled up an phyAdept with katana. Useing a few non-fasa resources i ended up with a super samuri, but that is not the funney part.
the others were already on a run, forget what it was.
The GM Gave me a Run. Kill the other 4 players. Mwhahaha.
My first and Best hit was a cybered out troll. He was easy to find because we was a bouncer for a day-job. I followed him when he got off work.(we were both on bikes) He sptoed me following him, and used his eye-zoom X3 on his rear view mirror to get a better look at me.
well. it was decided he needed to make a drive check to see if he could stay in controll of his bike while doing this. BOTCH! He layed his bike down on the freeway. Took a M for his effort. it was a good enough of a wrech to draw a small crowd.
I pulled up and anounced that i was an off-duty paramedic. I did a decption check and rolled well. they believe me, Yay!
I tolled the battered up troll "i'm a paramedic, just yay down" as soon as he layed down I pulled out a HE offencive granade, pulled the pin, let the spoon fly, and shoved it down his pants. Rolling quickenss i rolled aou of the blast best i could. I took a L after all the dice. He had no success on his soke. he died. i got out of there.

I ended up killing two others, and then i got nuked by the mage.

And just so you all know everyone in that game agreed that it was one of the best runs ever.

[LinaInverse]

Posted this before as well.

I was starting up a new Shadowrun game, with a group of veteran D&D3rd players. None of them knew the Shadowrun system, but I figured I'd take it easy on them to get them started. Oh well...

Players included a 3 Sammys (different specialties), Rigger and a Shaman.

This being their first run, I deliberately gave them a "milk run" mission. One so easy, it should have been foolproof, but for the ingenuity of fools. Here was the drill:

A well-known mob boss was targetted for death. The players were chosen to carry out this assignment. To make it easy, they were given the target's schedule (early afternoon), and travel route (he was arriving from an airport, then driving home). No extra chase cars, no security convoy, nothing. Even the route itself was easy; airport to main freeway, turn off freeway and drive into nice neighborhood. The airport was smartly ruled out due to federal security. The neighborhood was Class AA. The highway was Class B, so the players decided to make their hit when the car got off the freeway, and before it turned into the neighborhood. As it happens, there was a 7-11/gas station at the intersection, so that's where they chose.

The players started out fine; one sammy was stationed at the airport to confirm that the target got off and nothing untowards was happening. The rigger followed the target car after picking up the recon sammy. The 2nd sammy and the shaman were in a seperate car, with the idea that they would block the target car and provide a getaway. The 3rd sammy, who was a heavy weapon specialist, was given the actual kill/ambush assignment. Everyone got to their assigned places early, so they would have time to set up.

The first two groups got into position just fine. The third lone gunman however had other ideas. He said that he "didn't want to leave his vehicle" at the 7-11 because it might point back at him. So he parks his motorcycle on the side of a street in the AA neighborhood, unpacks his 4-pack rocket launcher, his HMG, and grenades, then hoofs it 4 blocks through this Class AA neighborhood to his ambush point. His only saving grace was that this was in the middle of the day and most people were at work and he did have "Stealth".

He finally got to the 7-11, and in broad daylight, climbs up to the top of the small building (typical 1-story convenience store with a flat-top roof). By now, the other players are already nervous. I rolled a random chance and lo and behold, an off-duty Lone-Star cop was inside getting munchies. The cop came out, made his perception roll, then hurriedly proceeded to run back into the store. To make matters worse, the Sammy saw this, wasn't the least bit concerned, and stayed at his post, despite the rising voices of concern of his teammates, who were watching this exchange with increasingly ashen faces. After all, what could one lone cop do, right?

To no one's surprise, other than the sammy, 2 Lone-star cop cars showed up about 10 mins later, got on the loudspeakers and demanded that the sammy throw down his weapons and get off the roof. This didn't sit well with the sammy, who proceeds to open-fire with the rocket launchers and destroy the 2 cop cars, while his teammates are shouting at him in the radio. As the two cop cars went up in flames, he proceeded to use his HMG to gun down the cops for interfering, along with a stray civilian along the way. Less than a min later, it escalated, with a SWAT van, medivac and media helicopters and 4 more support cars showed up.

At this point, the team leader called out the "Abort/Walk away". "Andy (the player), you're on your own...".

To his credit (or shame), the sammy managed to blow up 2 more vehicles, gun down several cops and make it to one of the other police cruisers, while only sustaining a Serious Wound while doing so. Meanwhile, at the designated safehouse, his team was watching "Breaking News" on TV with their jaws dropped, while their teammate did his best OJ Simpson's White Bronco impression, leaving a trail of burning vehicles behind him.

He managed to make it to a large-scale apartment complex, ditch the car, and break into an apartment to steal some clothes and wash the blood off. While doing so, he was witnessed by 2 12-yrs old kids. Amazingly, he let them live, but instead proceeded to burn the entire complex down with C-12 charges. To get rid of forensic evidence, he explained.

Later that night, he managed to make it to the safehouse, much to the chagrin of the rest of the team. On the TV the was a story about "Terrorism strikes Highland Park" with an announced APB for a man resembling a fairly accurate composite pencil sketch given by the several dozen witnesses at the scene.

Epilogue: For some mysterious reason, the sammy decided that he needed some plastic surgery and a new ID. Out of player-to-player loyalty, rather than characters as they had just met, the other players managed to contact a street surgeon to do the job. Once he was under the knife though, the surgeon offered to split the reward (now around 200,000Y being offered by Lone Star) if they would just walk away. Again, out of unbelievable player-loyalty, they turned him down and paid the surgeon the equivalent to keep it quiet.

[Dawnshadow]

Posted a quite a while ago.. Very second run, 3 people who were in the first, 1 new guy.

A pair of adepts, and a pair of metalheads.

The run was fairly simple.. if memory serves, it was a 'find out where something is, and then grab it'. To find out where the something was, we had to do a minor kidnapping. Good neighbourhood, one of the adepts and one of the street sams were present.


So.. they snatch the guy as he leaves his apartment, tuck him into the car, and turn it on. Then the street sam notices the security guard, on his radio.

What does he do? He leans out the window, and shoots the guard. 6 successes.. guard went down, his head a ruin. And the lone star car that had been sitting there turns on it's flashers..

Now, we have an adept and a street sam driving for dear life trying to keep ahead of the car.. and the other adept and street sam watching it on the trid. Gorgious shot of the sam leaning out the window, caught on a news-cam. Fortunately or unfortunately, the other adept is part of an initiatory group with the first.. with a fraternity stricture. So, he and the second Sam grab maps, figure out a spot, and make a 2 second cell call. "Go here". And hustle to the same spot, setting up ambush positions.


Two lucky grenades later (one that hit the spirit using confusion, one that landed amongst the 'star), the second Sam is chasing the first trying to shoot that little moron, and the adepts are getting out.


The group decides to leave Seattle for a few months.. and the adepts call the street sam who shot the guard to help them pack. He arrives, all his stuff, including armour, already packed.. and the adepts tell him they've got stuff in the basement. He heads down first, walks in the door...

And to both the GM and the second street sam's amazement, the adepts pull out heavy pistols and gun down the street sam, before he had time to realize the multitude of mistakes he'd just made. Sold his cyberware to the fixer who was getting them out of Seattle.

[Apathy]

I GM'd a campaign where the runners were hired for an extraction that went bad. In fairness to the players though, it wasn't all their fault - I was kind of dick and manipulated their OOC guilt, which caused them to make bad IC decisions.

Subject was some corp exec's 13-year old daughter who had joined a cult. The exec had hired a runner team to kidnap and 'de-program' her, and now the eccentric cult leader was hiring our runner team to kidnap her back.

In the process of extracting the daughter from the psychiatric ward of the local hospital, the team discovers that the girl doesn't want to go back, and starts having pangs of conscience. I set it up expecting the team to either

• tell the girl to shut up and deliver her as planned, or
• decide to not deliver her, in which case the family would hire them for protection (since they cut through the other team like a knife through hot butter)

Instead, they decide to set up the exchange with the cult leader, but then try to back-stab him, keep the girl, and steal the money. By the end of the run:

• the cult leader retaliates by putting their fixer in the hospital (after which he won't talk to them)
• the girl's a psycho basket case
• the runners have a new level 3 enemy (the cult leader, who actually turned out to be a wasp shaman)
• one of the runners was observed at the hospital and now has the police looking for him

[Kyoto Kid]

[Kyoto Kid]

Also posted a case of this in the thread "Freedom of the Press" whereby the group, by not keeping things quiet, triggered off a full scale invasion of Croatia by Neighbouring Serbia.

Tried to copy it here, but didn't work.

[FrankTrollman]

That's impressive. The best my players ever managed was to trigger a battle between Nagaland and Assam over Dimapur before fleeing to United Bengal.

Note that in our games we don't buy for a minute the idea that India could somehow hold together under a multinational wave of Awakening inspired balkanization that managed to gut China and the US.

-Frank

[Kyoto Kid]

[Slump]

My runners accidentally cut 50 blocks of AA neighborhood off from land-line matrix access. They were trying to use the main trunk to hack into a seriously whacked out security setup, and, thanks to poor judgement and bad rolls, ended up completely severing the 5 inch thick bundle of fibre optic line. They realized the location of the problem would be swarming with cops and techies shortly after it was found, so they started to beat feet outta there, but the tech wiz realized there was no way to get all his gear out, so he had the sammy toss in a few pounds of explosive on a radio detonator (gotta love headware radios) to clear the evidence. When detonated, it also set off the gas main, ending up a crater instead of a block of houses.


To summarize: About 300 AA citizens pissed off, 50 AA citizens wanting blood.

[Nkari]

oooh.. the laughs.. the laughs.. =)

[Krazy]

this one's not so much a run gone bad as a run gone stupid.
after a more than successful trip into the aztec zone of denver, and the complete leveling of an office tower the azzies cordoned off their sector as they believed that the strike was a precursor to invasion (they were right this was around the time of ghostwalkers arrival) the gaming session ended for part of the group, so they IC went to the safehouse in the UCAS sector. the other four should have OOC gone to play halo, but instead they decided to test the border defences. after a quick survey they saw three soldiers at the checkpoint (each street had a checkpoint, to deny all traffic movement, the place was CLOSED) each soldier in light mil grade power armor. they also saw two heavy machine gun nests with overlapping fire arcs, and what may have been AV mines. the plan was to blow up the guards with 4 kilos of c12 in a pizza box and have the sniper take out the gunners. (the sniper was equipped with a fully custom rifle similar to the barrett 121) the sniper found his perch in a now abandoned apartment building and while looking through his infared scope saw six sniper/observer teams. instead of telling the others and possibly backing off, he watched as two of the other three delivered the package, and began to scope the snipers. being under orders to not fire across the line (the snipers had all ready spotted him) he carefully lined up thinking he was unseen. one of the observers shone his infared laser down the scope of the PC. I told him he was dazzled and the infared part of the scope was burned out. PC then activates his own laser sight and attempts to hit the offending sniper team. the observer (with a smaller rifle) shoots the scope of the PC's rifle after shot #1. unfazed the PC attempts to fire again, this time as he lines up sniper 1 shoots the barrel of the rifle, breaking the weapon as well as the PC's shoulder. meanwhile the other half of the team has blown up the guards, gotten out of the line of sight of the gunners. the azzie response shows up in an APC, which is promptly destroyed by PC #4 with an AV missile. since all hell has now broken loose, they run for their (rented) van, parked several blocks away. realizing they are missing their sniper they all run back to help him. as he leaves the building, one PC activated his infared cybereyes, to see a large spot on the ground near him. mortar round one "misses" (I was feeling a bit sorry for them) just as the sniper exits the building. by the time they reach the van, and are able to escape they all had S Phys and at least M stun from falling mortars. two hours later tanks roll over the azzie line in responce to the "unprovoked" motar attack. and they arived at the safe house just in time to get captured by the other corp looking for them. they only survived because hitting a moving target with a mortar is hard! and the azzie ROE no troop could cross the line, if they had the PC's would have been Chrarlie Foxtrot.

[pragma]

There was that time we blew up all of downtown Seattle ...

I never purchased the Brainscan campaign and instead had to figure out how to resolve the arcology situation myself. I was aware that it had been cleaned up by 2063, but I didn't think that any books covered the cleanup so I made up a story which turned out to be remarkably similar -- involving Shadowland, Megara and a rogue virus which had been introduced in a previous plot arc.

The runners were the point men for this operation (having escaped the arc after the shutdown) and things went south rather quickly once inside (due to a few intrateam rivalries and some old enemies who had been banded). However, Deus was going to go down regardless so he capitalized on the time afforded by the infighting and took a logical course of action: caused meltdowns in the fusion reactors out of spite.

This was retconned rather quickly -- but for a month or two out of game Seatlle had been wiped off the map.

[Dim Sum]

Absolute WORST fubar I've ever seen was me running a game for 6 players, 4 of them noobs, the other 2 seasoned SR players back when I was still in London:

PCs don't know each other in-game and respond to a job offer arranged by a couple of fixers common to all of them. The first casualty is an idiot who spent about 300k ny to trick out his Yamaha Rapier, including an anti-theft device that basically wraps the bike in a field of electricity, contact with which will do 12D damage. He rides to the meet. It is raining heavily and he parks the bike in a large puddle of water .... Yeah, you guessed it: despite repeated warnings from me and the other players OOC to THINK about it, he insists on engaging his anti-theft system. BZZZZT! Down for the count.

The others get briefed by the Johnson - sounds like an easy job: break into a warehouse, retrieve a 2-foot jade statue and replace it with it a fake. The crate containing the statue is arriving in 2 days by ship at Pier 49. The runners get 10% upfront and 90% when the run is completed. Sounds too easy for the 150k the Johnson is offering for a "discreet job". At the urging of the 2 experienced players, the team does some legwork and finds out the warehouse belongs to the Noble Prosperity tong, a powerful triad with good overseas connections. They go check out the warehouse and find a bunch of armed triad members unloading several crates from a ship.

The noobs get really excited and immediately conclude that the shipment must have arrived earlier than expected so without coordinating with the experienced guys, they head into the warehouse to find and remove the statue, forgetting that they've not even brought the fake with them!!! The experienced guys facepalm and go in after the noobs, trying to salvage what they can from the blunder but as fate would have it, one of the noobs boo-boos and a firefight ensues. By the time they extricate themselves, 1 of the noobs is dead and another is captured (the others think he's dead 'cos another noob reports that two were killed without actually checking). The survivors go back to their safe house, a small 2-room studio-style apartment on the 54th storey of a 55-storey apartment complex.

The triad tortures the captured noob and traces the team back to the safe house in double-quick time because one of the triad killed was the triad chief's only son. The doorbell rings. The 2 seasoned guys are immediately suspicious because no one is supposed to know they are there. One of the noobs opens the door w/o checking the surveillance screen before the veterans can say anything. Lo and behold, a Chinese guy chucks in a large satchel while another sprays SMG fire into the doorway. Noob dies. The satchel lands squarely in the middle of the main room and the two vets immediately act - one throws himself into the adjoining room while the other throws himself over the balcony in an attempt to reach the one that is one floor below. The remaining noob proudly declares that he is seeking cover behind the sofa .... Noob dies.

The 2 vets got captured after further playing but survived when they impressed the triad chief with their courage and resourcefulness and I spun that off into another campaign with new players. :D

[Nikoli]

Wouldn't the rubber, non-conductive tires kept the puddle from becoming electrified. Aside from that, bravo

[Fix-it]

If there's enough current to do 12D, I'm pretty sure there's enough to arc in a really wet enviroment.

[Mystweaver]

In this case, a team of 6 Runners: Decker/Rigger, Adept Swordsman, Cyber Dwarf, Adept Bowman/Rifleman, Troll Mage and Elf Sorcerer.


Zooming out of downtown after taking out a corporate executive in the Space Needle, the team looses their persuers and stop at a random bar. The car changes colour (Ruthidium) and Transponder chips. They are safe for now.

The group decides that the best bet would be to lie low. The Rigger and two mages decide they are going to go their own way and return to their respective safe houses.

The Dwarf and two adepts decide to go get a nice hotel with the money they just earnt and get in a couple of drinks and some socializing.

They ask for a list of decent hotels in Downtown. As soon as the first hotel is listed they shout "That will do fine" without any further information. To their detriment.

This hotel in particular was used primarily by another corp who they had recently pissed off. At this time there was a convention (that I was planning to use as back story for the next run) and unfortunately for the team, there were enough guards there from 3 corporations who had bloody money on the teams heads over the events of the past week (the runners had been busy!).

Upon walking into the main door, they noticed nothing and booked rooms each. The swordsman was the first to enter the bar and straight away all the squad leaders of each of the corps noticed him and moved their troups into ambushing possitions. The adept noticed them surrounding him with almost every exit covered. Fortunately he had a reusable anchoring focus (Invisibility): 6.With a hand in his pocket he texts help to his collegues upstairs and turns invisible. With 5 successes, only the Mage can see him.

Upon turning invisible, he pulls a knife, switches to astral and slays the only mage in the room. Bullets start to fly, each of the corp's troups getting crossfire from others. The adept pegs it and escapes through the front door getting in a cab after becoming visible 4 blocks away.

Meanwhile, the Dwarf and the adept upstairs get the text and hear gunfire. The other adept jumps out of the window, fires his grappling hook spider-man style onto an adjacent building and swings into the window. I give him TN of 9 to pull the whole proceedure off and he makes it.

The Dwarf on the other hand from the 2nd floor throws 3 white phospherous down the two stairwells and jams the lift doors. Fire breaks out and the Dwarf makes a barricade. Trapped in his own mess. He pulls the fire alarm and surely 5 minutes later the building is surrounded by Lonestar, Media choppers and ground reporters and a fireengine pulls up and begins putting out some of the flames.

The Dwarf then decides to be valiant (or stupid) and jumps from the window onto the roof of the fire engine. One jumps down but the Dwarf disarms him of his fire axe and sticks it in his face.

Armed with said fire axe the dwarf makes mince meat of the firemen and proceeds to drive away in said Huge red vehicle.
Now fortune landed slightly on the Dwarfs lap in the sense that firetrucks are pretty hardy things but at no point could he evade the cops. On Route he phones his decker who is not all that surprised to hear his call after she spotted the report on the Trid minutes before with the rest of the team.

He askes for a building in his local area that had a sewer entrance. After a quick three minute deck, she gives him a location and he drives bang on into the building. Bailing out the side before impact and running through the gaping whole in the side of the building. I ask my players sometimes for a number on a d6 they dont want (i.e. if it comes up something bad will happen) and visa versa. Needless to say something bad came up. I put him into initiative and told him he had to make up his mind (he had three turns to either get out of the building or into the sewer though he didnt know it).

He made up his mind quick and went straight for the back room. Just in time he got down into the sewers and started pegging it before the building collapsed crushing the persuing officers and medical teams.

The Dwarf then forsook his identity and reputation by changing his name, face and getting DNA implants. All in all, they survived after making a right hash of things.

They learnt from that point onwards to listen to the options before jumping at the first opportunity... well, sort of learnt (they did something similar later in the campaign but that is another story).

[TheBovrilMonkey]

[Kyoto Kid]

Then there was Celtic Double Cross...

(My Decker) "No General, don't shoot that policeman!"

(The 'General') "Why not?" *Blam*

Any who have played in this adventure knows what happens next.

Definitely the shortest lived character I ever ran.

Can you say Kobayashi Maru...? Sure, I knew you could.

[Snow_Fox]

Only one that was really OMG! momment. In an underwater base. sneaking in got cuaght by early sec guards. Instead of letting us deal with him magically, one sammie opened up with his smg, loaded with APDS rounds and by a fluke rolled 6 ones.

As soon as I saw the dice rolled I yelled that I ran for the nearest lock.A spectacular failure the GM ruled that the bullets not only missed the guard but hit and ruptured the side of the hall way. A tunnel connecting to spheres.I and a psy-ad excaped into a safe door, everyone else, the guard included suffered from "exploside decompression" and were blown into the water as the tunnel came apart. The rigger was able to grab them up and apart from a major case of the bends(RL player has his divers cert and at once declared he was putting the people into the decompression chamber before the GM could say anything.) but that left two of us cut off and trying to finish the run.

[Trax]

That doesn't make any sense, when something ruptures underwater, you don't get sucked out, water rushes in. As that hall came apart, water would've come in and crushed them, especially at that depth.

[Herald of Verjig...]

It depends on the relative pressures. If the aquacology was designed to have open bottom entry exit points, then the internal air pressure of at least those portions would have to match the external water pressure. If the facility was overpressurized, it would potentially provide more time to get away from a hull rupture and get the emergency doors closed. If the facility was designed to have 1 atm of pressure, it'll go crumply once the hull takes any damage that can escalate (as would most at significant depth).