1st session with Ghost Cartels, HELP!!! Options

[Troyminator]

Ok, we had our first session with Ghost Cartels with a small filler run before that.

Of the 5 players, 2 couldn't make it. The Street Sam and Hacker/Infiltraitor weren't with us. It was just the Face, Mage, and Gun Adept.

The Filler run was "Cold Blood" by Khadim Nasser. The players need to break into a small MCT manufacturing plant to steal a blood sample. You also need to understand that we're new to the Shadowrun system and trying to figure it out as we go.

The majority of time was spent upon the PC's roleplaying how they met/know each other.

The Face's player is a hardcore roleplayer. He came to the session with a WELL thought out concept of his character, why he runs the shadows, his history, and why he is the way he is. The face is a master manipulator and a ladies man. He loves to push people's buttons to see how they react and whether he should run with them. His belief is, "The best run is one that no one knows you did."

The Mage's player is a min/max'er who also likes to do some roleplaying. The Player playes him as the powerful mage that he is, but makes him sound and seem like a back-country hick (he's originally from the CAS). He has me cracking up a lot of the time.

The Gun Adept's player is a HARDCORE min/maxer. He has an interesting concept for his character: He's a full on adept, but he doesn't know his skill with guns comes from magic and he's magic phobic. The Gun Adept (GA) is also a fairly decent infiltraitor. His player is trying to do some roleplaying, but I think he's a bit intimidated by it.

I'm going to briefly describe the "Cold Blood" run and what we got through in "Ghost Cartels".

The Mage (the only one with a fixer contact) gets a phone call from his fixer to meet Mr. Johnson in a park in Tacoma. Mage calls The Face because they had met (in the throw-away run I had created the month before [that became a serious run]). Face has a car and can get them to the meet. They also call GA because they think they might need some "lead backup" on the run. GA gets to the meet an hour early, climbs a tree to get surveylance, but doesn't have an unobtrusive way of communicating with Mage and Face. (BTW, in 2072, do commlinks ring when a call is coming through?). They do their legwork (I"ll have another topic for my questions with legwork) and get ready for the run.

I must mention that the booze flows freely at our gaming days. I don't drink a lot as my hangovers are brutal. Everyone else drinks quite a bit.

They pile into Face's car to get to the MCT plant. The plan is that GA will break into the plant, get into the facility, find the blood sample and replace it, then plant the thermite grenades to make it look like eco sabotage, then get out. Face and Mage will supply backup if needed.

As they are trying to tell me what is going to happen using the map, it de-evolves into 3 people (2 of them fairly inebriated) telling me three different things. As they are doing this, one of the players notices a symbol that I must have told them at least three times was security cameras on 5 meter poles. As GA is over-riding the mag lock, the mage's player looks at his sheet and remembers that he has "Improved Invisibility" and "Levitate". He calls GA back and tells him about the spells. As noted above. GA is afraid of magic. In the middle of their run, about 7 meters from the gate, Mage (drunk) and GA (drunker) are having a philosophical debate about magic. I should have pulled out all the security and drones and set them upon the PC's, but I was a bit frustrated and flustered. My bad.

Eventually,Mage persuades GA to have the spells cast upon him. GA gets roughly 8 successes on his infiltration roll vs. the guards 3 successes to move around undetected. I decide to make it quick and painless.They succeed without alerting the guards, get the hell outta Dodge, and get paid.

This is where a lot of roleplaying happened and I'm not certain what to do about it. As noted above, Face loves to push buttons to see what the real person is like. Face starts pushing GA's buttons and GA repeats multiple times "I will fucking end you if you do/say that again". He also says it to Mage as Mage is trying to convince him to use the "improved invisibility" and "Levitate" to makeruns easier. At this point I am getting uncomfortable because I know if GA keeps spouting that off to people in 6th World Seattle, there will be at least one person who will take it personally and end GA.

Another side note: This group never does anything the way I think they will. I know that and try to plan accordingly, or at least have some backup's in place for when they go WAAAAYYYYY off the reservation.

They get the call from Mage's fixer again to meet a Ms. Johnson at "Ticklers" strip club (the beginning of Ghost Cartel). They show up, get the job, and Ms. Johnson tells them (if I remember correctly) twice that they MUST NOT MAKE CONTACT with the two people they are tailing for a week. They decide to break into two groups: Mage and Face will tail one person and GA will tail the other. Mage and Face go right up to the person they are tailing and attempt to buy some tempo off of him. Face rolls, roughly, 18 dice (attribute + skill + first impressions + tailored pheremones + 3 or 4 edge dice with a couple of 6's on the roll) and get around 10 successes to Littletree's 4. I decide that they so impress the dealer that he will sell to them for 25:nuyen: a dose and they decide to get 40 doses to resell at regular street price. Now they have made contact with the person they are supposed to be tailing.

Meanwhile, GA is tailing the other person and decides that he will go up and kill the person because he is a "lowlife, scumsucking dealer". At this point it is about 10:30 at night, so I call it for the day and tell them I am confused and need some time to think about where to go from here. And this is the "Reader's Digest" Abridged version.

Any suggestions? comments? Hints? Anything will be appreciated