Help For A Cornered GM!, Back pedalling on a bad decision in 'Mercurial' Options Track this topic Email this topic Print this topic Download this topic Subscribe to this forum Display Modes Outline Switch to: Standard Switch to: Linear+

[Askani'son]

Hey Folks,

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

Anyway....

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

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

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

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

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

Any ideas?