Running a skyscraper Options

[prionic6]

I'm tossing some ideas around about a run into a skyscraper... Many good possibilities: Endless stairways with good opportunities for firefights. lift shafts. Outer walls to climb. The roof! Interconnected offices with own stairs & lifts. You get the picture. I know, all this stuff can be in smaller buildings too, but it's a size difference...

At the moment I am thinking about the extraction of something valuable (insert plot device) from one of the offices. Now, will a skycraper be the property of a certain megacorp or are there many small companies inside one? Do you know of any suitable targets in seattle? The problem with this is, the security can not be too heavy. My team is fairly fresh and only three people: A rigger with drones and some hacking skills; A stealth/acrobatics/electronics girl; And a face that is a magicians way adept.

Any ideas/comments on this?

PS: We are playing 4th Ed. so the game is set in 2070.

[mmu1]

Yeah... Don't go nuts with fights in stairwells, and be careful with planning a long, running battle there - it sounds fun (and can be fun, if done just right) but in SRs fairly complex initiative system, a combat spread out over a large area, and involving a lot of movement up and down stairways, etc., can easily end up dragging and being monotonous. If one player gets unlucky and ends up a couple of floors away from the action, he might spend two or three rounds just moving.

As far as other fun stuff... Ventilation. A skyscraper is one of the few places where you might legitimately have some ventilation shafts large enough to crawl through, Splinter-Cell style. As well as massive air conditioning units on the roof, making for an interesting entry.

Which reminds me... Here's my suggestion for "sinister corporate skyscraper", if you don't mind using something that doesn't exist in canon: http://www.greatgridlock.net/NYC_Images/nyteletr.html It's the AT&T building in lower Manhattan, and it's just absolutely beautiful as a cyber-punk reference... Granite exterior, no windows, just an undeground parking garage and some massive ventilation shafts near the top.

[prionic6]

Wow... That thing certainly looks... creepy

[Fix-it]

NICE. that one gets saved.

[Straight Razor]

I made a really in depth run around a skyscraper once.
I have a good archeture background so i took a couple weeks and auto CAD ed up 85 floors + 3 subfloors for the main tower, and 3 floors 1 sub for the D&R facaility adjecent to it. I probly put about 100 hrs in designing this game.

so they get the the building. there there to get some info and destroy something in the R&D building. They ended up only ever stepping foot on 2 floors. the top floor and the lobby(don't ask) then they droped 200 K of c12 down the elivator shaft to the bacement.

they got no karma for the run.

[stevebugge]

Skyscrapers typically are owned by a property development corp with lots of different tenants, notable exceptions being those few around Seattle wholly owned by a AAA Corp (the Mitsuhama Towers for example). In Seattle almost all of the Skyscrapers in the City are in the Downtown Core between the Arcology and Bell Street, and I-5 and the Waterfront, so getting to the Skyscraper in that AAA security zone with many toys will be a tough part of the run too.

[Fix-it]

[Wiz In Red]

That's part of the fun...making the characters realize they can't always depend on their favorite toys to get the job done. They might just have to sneak in as wage slaves, carrying their briefcase (the needs-to-be-assembled gun, can't think of the name off hand, no books at work) and whatever else can be legitimately carried into these buildings. It's going to require research and (possibly) the use of their contacts. Ideally, there shouldn't be a shot fired (and this should, IMO, be booku Karma bonus), and nobody should realize the mission ever happened until the team is safely far away from the 'scraper. We actually did a run where we stole an original, hand-written manuscript by Ehran the scribe, in broad daylight, in a skyscraper, and nobody had a clue.

[Shrike30]

Two words:

Base Jumping.

:ork

[Backgammon]

Honestly, for ALL the skyscraper runs I've done (a few), the players ALWAYS bypass having to go up the thing normally. They elaborate extremely complex plans to arrive directly on the right floor through a window, blow stuff up, you name it.

Don't get your hopes up for a daring adventure going up a building shadowrunner-style. It's againt Player Mentality to let that happen.

[Lindt]

Can anyone else say "Brutilism?"
It does reek of late 80s punk though. But as far as huge facility things, they just get combersome.

[PlatonicPimp]

As steve said above, most skyscrapers are filled with several dozen different corporte offices, and the tower itself is owned by a property management group. Sometimes the company that owns the tower has it's offices there too, but only a AAA megacorp would ever fill an entire skyscraper in house.

As both an employee in a skyscraper and an architect, I'd like to note these things.

First, Skyscrapers are the most difficult things to design. Only someone with fairly high architectural or construction knowledge skills is going to make sense of the blueprints. Even then, companies usually rent whole floors, and have the right to lay those floors out however they want, except for the elevator, stair and utility cores. The glass used on the outside of skyscrapers is the strongest glass we can manufacture, because it has to be. Breaking in through a window on the outside will require more than a gunshot or two.

The bottom few floors of a skyscraper are lobby, and retail. They are open to the public. An observation deck near the top is not uncommon. Therefore elevators are open access, though those elevators may only go to certain floors without access codes, keycards , or other authorization devices. Emergency stairs will have similar locks on their doors on the appropriate floors. Security for the tower as a whole will be pretty easy to social engineer your way by, because the larger the place, the more people work there, meaning the more people who might have a legitimate reason to be there. Hell, in my building, They let my wife up to my restricted floor simply because she said I worked here and I wasn't answering my phone. It was a true story, but only thing the guard did to verify her story was come up with her to get me. A runner could use the same story, get alone in an elevator with the guard, wait until he swipes his pass, and then knock him out. Security on the floor itself may be tighter, if they have thier own checkpoints just outside the elevators.

Damn, I could probably ramble on for a long time. I have to get back to designing ways to keep unauthorized people OUT, rather than telling you how to get IN.
Back to work!

[Shrike30]

[PlatonicPimp]

The reason it isn't done that way anymore (ie, it was a 70's and 80's thing) is because it turns out to be massively inefficient to house your entire company in a monolithic structure. The cost of the building is very high, and a more distributed office base responds better to client needs. So the monolithic stucture tower has been replaced with the balkanized tower, which serves all purpoeses wbetter except for Image. After all, It's very Imposing to have your own skyscraper. I say only an AAA corp would fill a skyscraper because only a AAA corp would have an need of that large of a co-ordinating office to manage their various interests.

However, I am using a 50+ story definition of skyscraper in my mind. And real world examples trump design theory. Safeco really has their whole company in one building? Wierd.

[Shrike30]

Actually, no... they have all of THAT building, and they've got other offices in other buildings around town.

The interesting part of it is, the Safeco building is one of two buildings in the entire University District that is over eight or so stories tall, with the vast majority being 2-3 story houses and apartment buildings that max out around 5... even though it's a little stubby for a skyscraper, the thing *really* stands out in that neighborhood, as you can see it from a few miles away.

[The Amazing Myst...]

prionic6, I'd imagine security in any skyscraper would be pretty tight. What you could do is give your players a little help with access codes supplied by the johnson and prep them pretty good about the security measures. This way you wouldn't have to comprimise the level of security.

I've always wanted to setup a run in a skyscraper, I periodically look for floorplans online, but so far I havent foundy anything. Does anyone have a link to a site with skyscraper plans?

[eidolon]

[PBTHHHHT]

I can't help but think of the Die Hard movie, which I'm sure it was talked exhaustively in some old thread somewhere. Not the most accurate of stuff, but still, the fun of running around in a tall office building with fully automatic weapons and saying bad one-liners. lol.

[Kyoto Kid]

[Shrike30]

[mmu1]

[PlatonicPimp]

[The Amazing Myst...]

Pimp, You're right about being able to walk right up to the side of the building. I was looking online for skyscraper images and noticed you could technically pull out your suction cups and
start up the side right from the sidewalk. Not like you could would get away with it though. I figure they would have sensors, not to mention you are downtown someone is going to see you.

[PBTHHHHT]

[Kyoto Kid]