Emo Samurai's dedicated campaign idea page. Options

[emo samurai]

This first one isn't an idea for a campaign so much as one for a side quest. It'll be two-parted. It'll be pretty much offhand; your fixer will tell you that there's a bounty out for people with bioware implants.

One of the types will be anyone with specific cosmetic implants, such as metabolism boosters (stay thin forever), elastin-producing glands, and vat-grown elf ears. Stuff like that. The employer will say nothing of who has these; the runners will have to do legwork. Since this is an optional, repeatable run, other runners will be going after the bounty. Some of them will succeed and the bounty will decrease gradually into nothing. I'll roll dice every week and count the number of successes; the underworld dice pool increases every week. With each success, there'll be a vain rich person caught and guinea-pigged. Also, if the runners get the paydata on how these processes actually work, they'll be paid more than if they caught 50 of these people. It'll be pretty hard to get into the hospital for that, though.

The other type will be people who were vatgrown from birth with inborn bioware that never lost essence for their bioware, with things such as synaptic accelerators and cat eyes. The employer will name one specific person, a simsense star for Renraku who's also probably the most capable Red Samurai in existence. He's more valuable to them as a simsense star than as a tactician, since being able to feel the rush of being 50 stronger than you actually are and being able to see and smell things you couldn't is big business, and they already have a dearth of guards. He's actually 5 years old and was born physically mature. The show will be Champion of Japanese Economic Superiority, or "Supeliolity."

As it turns out, the Red Samurai wants out of Renraku and has cut a deal with the runners' employers to give them the source data for the super-soldier project in return for what really amounts to a high-level extraction. He'll be paid much more than the runners for the paydata, which is fair, since they don't have to reverse-engineer paydata, and it's pretty much impossible to reverse-engineer someone's birthing process from his living body.

Note: I'm not making fun of the Japanese with that "supeliolity;" the announcer's accent will be just for show. His real English will be perfect, which will be evident when they make it to the actual set.

[Ragna]

I dont know what to say, seriously....

[Gothic Rose]

...I'm almost afraid to ask, but why would a Johnson put a bounty out on people with elf ears? What possible economic gain could this have for his company?

And if it's not a Johnson, then who/why/how? I mean, who's going to finance such a bounty.

And why?

It...um...I'm just trying to understand.

The Renraku Super Soldier idea isn't bad, although you should have the person be older than that - and have magic been involved in the process of creating him.

[Critias]

Whew. I'm bitin' my tongue. Somehow.

[Cynic project]

At least he isn't as bad as Blackie.

[Moon-Hawk]

At least there are two ideas in one thread.
So Emo. As for idea 1, we're all wondering why. It's a good idea, if it makes sense. Without a justification and a reasonable explanation, you lose the verissimilitude of reality and that hurts your players immersion into the campaign.

As for the second one, it sounds like a pretty cool idea. I think that giving the super-soldier reduced essence loss as opposed to no essence loss for their "inherent" bioware is slightly more in line with SR canon. SOTA '63 had some guidelines for genetech enhancements like that. Basically, they suggested that pre-birth stuff was cheaper, financially. IIRC, of course. You could also have it all be "deltaware" in terms of essence loss.

[emo samurai]

Both bounties will be made by the independent Deltaware clinic in the Pueblo Corporate Council and the first part will be because they want to get into bleeding-edge cosmetic surgery. Elf ears for humans will be the least of it. There'll also be testosterone glands for males and augmented mammaries for women. Silicon is obsolete for almost all purposes of cosmetics. They figure they can reverse engineer that stuff from live bodies easily enough.

The second part will be impossible to reverse-engineer, since that bioware's pre-birth and it's much more complicated. They cut a deal with the super-soldier bioware-enhanced phys-adept who'll help you in his own extraction. The deltaware clinic has an agreement with him to pay for an extraction, the "bounty" on his head, if he hacks the databases and gives them the actual formulas. His keeper will be an insane toxic shaman who views his keeper-keepie relationship as a personal obession. That means he won't call for backup, but he'll also summon a force 10 toxic spirit. Also, there'll be a drone power suit that Renraku will call to take down the runners. It'll have a Battle Angel Alita-esque power fist that'll take a minute and the entire suit's power systems to charge up and cool down from fully. It'll be awesome, and if there was ever a time to play "Exile" by Chemlab, that was it.

[Moon-Hawk]

Eh, okay. So they're trying to capture people that have deltaware cosmetic surgery, in order to figure out how to do delta grade cosmetic surgery themselves.
1) You're going to be dealing with a VERY rich crowd, here. If someone's paying for a delta-grade boob-job, they're probably pretty rich, powerful, and famous.
2) If there's a blanket bounty out for people with cosmetic surgery, you'd better believe the news is going to be all over that. One job for one group of runners can be kept secret, but a city-wide bounty? Word is going to get out. And it's not like it's a bounty on devil rats, or even ghouls. It's rich people! Media frenzy. (hmmm, I like that idea)

[emo samurai]

They'll work through the BEST fixers. Remember that fixers can sell anonymity as well as connection.

[nezumi]

So for the first one, there's a black delta ware clinic running, and they are reusing bioware? You know that used bioware is never cultured and used cyberware is never above alpha-grade, so there's no reason for it to be a delta clinic.

I like the idea behind the second one (well, the basic plot). I'm hesitant to make him the 'best' simsense star, just for fear of making another Ryan Mercury, but the extraction part makes sense. The guy is part of a new wave of vatgrown people, which opens up a whole new chapter in Shadowrun (remember, no one else has managed to grow someone to adulthood in a vat like that, that I'm aware of). There's no question that a man who had no child-hood, no parents, really no background, might feel he needs to be free and discover himself. I also would expect he'd prefer someone else take the responsibility so if the extraction fails, it doesn't come down on HIS head, he'd still have a chance for a second escape.

Selling himself to another company that wants to find out how he works might be a little naive, but the guy never really 'grew up'. Maybe he is naive.

I'd recommend thinking longer about the management decisions behind his creation. This is a completely new technology to make a brand of super soldiers the world has never seen before. Who would you make them for? Where would you let them go? Would it be wise to make one into a simsense star? Wouldn't that attract unwanted attention? Would it be wise to even give them any freedom at all, when you aren't sure how mentally stable they are (and they are super soldiers, after all).

[Moon-Hawk]

[emo samurai]

He's the result of maybe 1000 trial runs. He's the only survivor, and remember, Renraku is both a media whore and an arms manufacturer. They want tol draw attention to him, and he's pretty much most valuable to them as a simsense star and a living showcase of SOTA arms. His show is popular because all the weapons in it are real. When the autosoft power armor comes in to take him and the runners down, he'll turn to you and say, "Aww... I was going to pilot that next episode!"

And he's not selling himself; he has a portable hard drive that has the formulas on it. He himself is useless to the clinic, since his bioware is pretty much impossible to reverse-engineer.

As for the Ryan Mercury part, he'll basically be a powerful street sam/phys adept. He's smart and better trained than any three Tir Ghosts put together, but he won't know or be able to do everything. If the street sam/gunslinger adept and party mage were to try to kill him, he'd die very quickly. Remember, skill and stat caps.

Also, they're not reusing bioware; they're reverse-engineering it, figuring out from residual DNA and other such stuff how to actually make it themselves. That's why having the specs on the equipment will negate the per-human bounty.

[Azralon]

Emo, I appreciate that you're dedicating a singular thread to your campaign ideas.

[emo samurai]

Instead of spreading it around, like, 5 or more other threads? Also, I'm hoping that the runners won't go after more than 2 people before they claim the paydata.

[nezumi]

[emo samurai]

He'll have wired his portable hard drive to a biomonitor; he goes kaput, hard drive goes boom. The data is in an off-line server, so only he has had enough access to his past. He's not filming simsense all the time; he's also training and researching military theory constantly, running transmutations and the like. Renraku also considers it necessary that he knows his own biology well enough to use his abilities to the fullest.

He's also being paid about 5 times what the runners are being paid for their extraction, since he's giving the actual data. The runners can negotiate as much as they want, but the Genewar Samurai isn't stupid, and will point out repeatedly that they won't get paid even for their extraction run if he calls their bluff and they do whatever they threaten to do for a bigger cut.

His physical-adept powers will be pure chance, and he'll be the only one who knows about them, besides his keeper, who knows full well that his keepie has seen him astrally projecting from time to time.

As for making a production run of people like him, Renraku isn't exactly flush with cash after losing its munchkined-out Immortal Elf technology, the Arcology, and lots of company funds during the Novatech IPO. He cost about 50 million nuyen, not counting billions in research and development, so their private clone army is now only a pipe dream. His only real cost-effective use on the battlefield for customers is as a general, with his augmented intelligence and fast response, and, well, as a simsense star. There aren't enough customers to have a production run of his kind even for client work. Like with the Arcology, his very existence has turned out to be a PR blitz, not something that actually helps productivity.

And yes, Renraku WILL look for him, which is why he's willing to risk it with the world's premier cyberware clinic and soon-to-be premier bioware clinic owing him a favor. He's counting on their being able to make him look completely different from what he did before, which they will manage easily. The Pueblo Corporate Council probably won't tolerate a Renraku military intrusion on their borders, and they probably aren't concerned enough about their relationship to Renraku to make a potentially difficult arrest or to piss off one of their most high-profile businesses.

Building people out of embryos will be out of the question, since someone built from scratch our little Genwar Samurai will be continue to be costly. Their real payoff will come from using that technology to make super-cultured bioware that will have half the essence cost of cultured bioware. The deltaware clinic will try to reverse-engineer a way to build a sort of delta-cultured bioware, which will be insanely awesome. The runners can expect that to go on the market within a year. That's IF they're ever able to afford it.

As for the cultured cosmetic bioware, the people will normally be very well guarded, but the runners will be relying on the fact that the human element in every defense is always the weakest. The bored socialite will do her best to avoid the bodyguards/private prison wardens that her husband has watching over her. The corporate executive will try to avoid being seen by anyone on the way to his mistress, and he rightfully doesn't trust his bodyguards not to be bribed into opening up. Etc. etc.

The cosmetic bioware clinic, of course, will be really well guarded, which is why a data run will be very well compensated.

[stevebugge]

I think on the first one that before you run it you should take the time to read about the Lindberg Kidnapping, just to get an idea of the sort of media frenzy it caused. And that was in the early 20th century before instant communication. Kidnapping the rich and famous in 2070 without it being noticed within a few microseconds is going to be extremely difficult at best. If word got out there was a bounty on highend cosmetic jobs then a number of things will happen. The rich will higher a lot of extra security (I'd love to be a bodyguard in your city, I could name my price and get it) they will demand a massive investigation by whatever corp holds the law enforcement contract, and finally they may have the clout to take their case to the Corporate Court as well, especially once all of the well paid investigators start turning up evidence (which is a case of when not if, no matter how good the fixers are)

[nezumi]

[mfb]

the deltaware clinic thing just plain doesn't work. at the deltaware level, churning out elf ears and bigger tits isn't even on the menu you hand your clientele--that's betaware clinic stuff, at best. moreover, there's no way a deltaware clinic--or anybody without some horrible sociopathic agenda--is going to pay for chopped-off ears instead of paying for a datasteal. the datasteal might be slightly more expensive in the short term, but in the long term, you won't have thousands of bereaved friends and relatives howling for your blood. that sort of thing creates publicity, and publicity is something deltaware clinics want to avoid. after all, there are only a handful of deltaware clinics in the entire word, each one in cutthroat competition with the rest. you think one corp won't blow the hell out of another corp's deltaware clinic, given half a chance? especially if it's easy to find?

[Moon-Hawk]

Maybe change it from cosmetic deltaware to delta grade brainware. You're still going to be targeting the rich and powerful, but it makes more sense. Also, yeah, have the media go crazy. Have Lone Star go nuts cracking down on the whole city. Make it a secondary focus of the entire campaign. THAT would be cool.

As for superdude, I have also seen campaigns where the GM has a superdude. It's fun for the GM. Not for anybody else. I'm sure you're not planning to do that. I'm sure you're planning to give the characters a chance to do stuff, too, but can you be positive your characters will see things the way you do? How 'bout this for an inspiration: Ever see the TV show Firefly, or the movie Serenity? There's this character, a girl named River. She's sort of a superdudette. Awesome martial arts, amazing markswoman, mental powers, she's awesome. The reason she doesn't outshine the rest of the cast is that she's nuttier than a fruitcake. The evil government cut into her mind so many times in creating her that she's severely insane. Most of the time she's just muttering cryptic phrases to herself and peeling the labels off cans, and even though she has super abilities and everyone wants her, she doesn't contribute a whole lot to the things they do most of the time, so the rest of the cast isn't outshined. Now take this 5 year old super soldier sim star. Holy crap, if that isn't a recipie for severe emotional problems, I don't know what is. He's a child diva in the body of a tank. Sure, sometimes he kicks ass, like maybe when he gets his special drugs, or maybe just whenever, but the rest of the time he's watching TV, or crying because he has no parents, or just off getting himself into trouble. What I'm saying is, there are ways to make him be dangerous and sought by corps without making him better than the PCs. Sure they could kill him if they ganged up on him, that's not the point, as it is he's still better and cooler than any of them, and that's not good.
As always, YMMV.

[nick012000]

Also, cosmetic surgery costs no Essence, so Deltaware cosmetics are redundant- a severe waste of money for all concerned.

[hyzmarca]

Deltaware does have the advantage of being much more difficult to detect, a pluss for cosmetic surgery. The last a wealthy socialite wants is to have everyone talk about her 5 :nuyen: stuffer shack tits behind her back. Likewise, when leonization fails to restore Bill Gates's hair he doesn't want a transplant that looks like someone grabbed a badger by the tail, beat it to death, and sewed it onto his scalp.

No, the rich want to look as natural as possible except for their shiny orihalcum-plated jewel-encrusted datajacks.

[Kerberos]

[emo samurai]

I won't make him THAT much more powerful than the PC's. I'm assuming he's got a specialization in, like, 2-3 skills, which won't be that much higher than the PC's, assuming they haven't maxed out most of the skills he's got maxed out. The skill and stats caps, remember, aren't that high. He'll have been made before the Matrix Crash 2.0.

The Arcology shutdown really wasn't that big of a deal for the company as a whole; losing lots of its senior management and company money on a badly timed stock sale is. They envisioned a genome army, and they would have had it, if they kept their shit together. No one without an insane cross-culture social engineering agenda would pay for that crap. The Champion of Japanese Economic Supeliolity will be a successful prototype of a failed product line, useful now primarily as a simsense star.

You have to realize how I'm playing Renraku in my game; it'll be the mad scientist corp. It has Red Samurai and an arcology where it's completely redundant to have one. They're the insane social engineers of the world, and everything they do for business is a lead up to that. None of the other companies seems to be that way, besides maybe Yamatetsu, which is more open about their transhumanist agenda and doesn't seem to want to own the world that badly. Renraku's media whoredom is a symptom of a deeper need to force their ideology on their world.

As for how he'll guarantee his own safety from the runners and the securing of the paydata, I've got to think on that.

[Critias]

If you've already got your madcap mind made up, why are you asking for opinions/advice? Play your super dude, and be happy.