fun with new players, and this is me going easy on them... Options

[Nerbert]

Before I begin, this group has never played Shadowrun before. This is what happened over the very first three hours of their very first experience. They are all reasonably experienced roleplayers, primarily with D&D.

Three characters, a human shaman medic, an orc mercenary and a human adept "urban samurai". Only this urban samurai is all style, no tweakage. Wears typical japanese garb, carries two dikoted katanas, even though he can only use one at a time, spent extra to get all his weapons, and his dikoted armor, engraved and embossed.

Their mission, given by a branch of LoneStar, is to track down three kidnapees, all of whom disappeared in one particular area. Mistake number one. They accept the mission practically blindfolded, they don't ask for a percentage up front, they don't try to negotiate for a better price, they don't even ask for the J's name or to see any identification, all they get is a phone number to contact him at. Ouch. Thats gonna come back to bite them.

The next thing they do is leave that very night to go to a club where one of the kidnapees was last seen. The shaman and the mercenary enter the club, leave their weapons at the front desk, and proceed to ask people in the club if they've seen the kidnapees. This is a club full of writhing dancers, alcoholics, and drug addicts. There isn't a single sober person in the bar except for a collection of people sitting at a group of tables. These sober people consist of couples not much more sober than the dancers, and clearly people here to avoid attracting attention. And they talk to every single one of them. Mistake number two. They walk around, from person to person, showing them all a picture and telling them all different stories about why they're trying to find them. *slaps forehead* They're up to five successes on their wrong party test and they haven't even learned anything yet.

Meanwhile, the adept samurai stealths off down the alley to scope out the club from the rear. All he finds is a solitary elf guard smoking a cigarette and occasionally huffing from what looks like an asthma medicine dispenser. Our adept watches for about half an hour, sees a car pull up around dusk, some people get in, and the car drives up. He records the license plate dutifully. He then proceeds to hurl a trash can at the guard to distract him and GreatLeap through the air to attack him in a single strike. Mistake number three. The guard is hopped up on Jazz, which gives him enough of an edge to dodge the adepts running attack and go to hammer on the nearby door. Adept chops the guard in half and jumps out of the way of the guards exiting the building with SMGs. (yay improved reflexes) At this point though, things turn sour. He tries a running disarm (he's too far away from them for a regular attack) on the first guard, who dodges. This puts him at point blank against two SMG wielding Jazzed up guards. Between the two of them, one burst a piece, they put him down to one box away from death before he gets his initiative again, which he spends fleeing for his life. I basically let him get away at this point, I didn't feel like killing him before he'd even accomplished anything useful at all. Though I did penalize him for two ballistic armor points off of his nice, pretty, expensive armor.

By the way, these guards were average in just about every respect.

So, miraculously our other two characters hear the burst fire from the alley way over the din of the band playing and run out to help him. They see him hauling his bloodied carcass towards a public park where they stowed their transportation. Mistake number four. Bloodied, shot up people should stick to the alleys. When we closed the session (we had to finish early because one person was busy) a cop car had just pulled up after witnessing the shaman heal him back from certain death in the middle of a public park. I can only pray they have enough presence of mind to tell the cop he was mugged.

The moral? A combination of lousy dice and poor planning will lead to disaster every time, no matter how much more powerful than your opponent you think you are.