Emo Samurai's Dedicated Campaign Thread, The Next Generation Options

[SL James]

[nezumi]

[emo samurai]

The mall will be semi-secret; it'll be maybe 5 miles away from the Salis border. It'll be a sort of well-kept secret for Seattle, sort of like a hole-in-the-wall cafe in modern cities. They won't advertise at all in the public screamsheets, but they'll spread the word through the underworld. I think I'm nixing the whole joe consumer at the mall thing; I don't need it. After all, shadowrunners need cinnabons, too. But how do I make the shadowrunners special? Maybe I'll only have the gangster posers go to the mall. You know, corp kids who think they're cool if they wear the right stuff and go to the right mall. Actual gangsters and shadowrunners are even more worried about their reputations and will therefore work the streets for that wonderful, wonderful case of explosive ammo. This might make the players themselves feel like posers, right up until Knight Errant aggrees to pay 10000 :nuyen: each in certified credsticks to get rid of the problem themselves.

Also, how profitable would organlegging be if Docwagon can clone organs in the ambulance? It seems as if the only people who'd buy those are people who can't afford Docwagon, and that wouldn't be at all profitable.

[nezumi]

You sound like you're talking about the Crime Mall in the barrens. Look it up. It WILL have miniguns (and concievably a cinnabon as well. KE (actually, more likely LS) sends the team in because they can't blow the whole place up (there are some big names which have made it politically unfeasible) and badges are unlikely to be popular. Hence, they need a team of specialists who are clearly NOT affiliated with Lone Star to do their dirty work. Make sure the team is aware this is also due to a time crunch. If they had more time, they'd probably come up with a better solution.

[emo samurai]

How are prices in the Crime Mall? I think actually having the new corporate Crime Mall that doesn't have "finder's fees" will be more profitable for both corps and criminals. It'll be placed in the Barrens, and the costs will be hidden in the window washing budgets for the mysteriously overfunded candy research subsidiary. That way, they won't have to pay off the Star because they don't go there, and they won't have to pay off the mafia, because the mafia is smart.

[Dissonance]

Sidetrack: I hope that SR4 improves the rules for miniguns, or just gives them their own rules. I especially hope that they make belt-feeding the stupid thing an option, as any kind of max ammo capacity isn't going to work well for a gat.

Once you get wound up, you might as well spend the rest of your life making with the surpression fire. Miniguns are cool. Seriously, they are. But they need to figure out some way to make the darned things usable outside of vehicle mounting.

Secondary tangent: Couldn't you 'mount' one on the ground and make with the awesome? It wouldn't be very portable, but, hey.

[emo samurai]

Miniguns aren't supposed to be portable. A gyromount is concession enough.

[SL James]

[Crusher Bob]

I forget which game company said it (Chameleon Eclectic or Steve Jackson springs to mind):

If you don't like our books, feel free to buy and burn as many copies as you want. Volume discounts are available.

[nezumi]

[Brahm]

[emo samurai]

So the megacorps being able to jerk around the Star would pale in comparison to their fear of runners getting the military grade stuff? I'm not sure; the Star is a corporation, and money talks to them more than anything. And what do they mean when they say that Lone Star stays out of the Barrens? They don't maintain presence, or they don't maintain an obvious presence?

Also, I was afraid of Knight Errant not wanting the mall to exist, but Ares the parent corp has a habit of paying runners in military grade weaponry, so I don't think they'd mind.

[Brahm]

[nezumi]

I expect Lone Star WOULD send drones over, get pictures, etc. But if the barrens are as many people seem to feel they are, Lone Star won't go in there without a dozen tanks and two dozen attack helicopters and eve then, it's for a surgical strike and nothing more. Against a crime mall especially, I can only imagine the fireworks that would ensue. It's not worth Lone Star's money to try and shut down a crime mall out in the barrens that'll cost hundreds of millions in equipment, lawsuits and deaths, when said mall will only reopen somewhere else.

[Brahm]

[emo samurai]

Keep in mind that the place is run by megacorps, and it wouldn't be that hard for them to keep picture drones out. They'll be monitoring the radio traffic for maybe 3 blocks around, and if there's a mysterious signal coming from a rooftop that's normally accessible only by air, then they'll know. And you're assuming that the Star listens to the city more than it does to money; since it's a private contractor, I'll assume it doesn't.

You should also keep in mind that in my world, 20%-30% of guns fall off the back of trucks somewhere along the line. This mall is the megacorps' way of combating that reality, by selling them directly to the criminals and actually making money off of it. It's kind of like how movie studios sell cut-rate featureless DVD's to China in order to destroy the market there. Yes, it probably won't work that well in China, since they'll probably make perfect copies of THOSE DVD's, but gun's don't copy as easily as DVD's.

[nezumi]

[emo samurai]

My god, I can't believe I'm making a scenario in which the megacorps are the shadowrunners' best friends.

[Brahm]

[emo samurai]

In this case, the Man is working to keep the fence down. The Man works to make a profit in my world. In this case, that means making a mall to sell all the guns that would normally be stolen and fenced.

I'm also thinking of adding a prime runner to the campaign after a while. He'll be kind of Clockwork Orange-ish, and he'll be a gangland enforcer who does his work for fun. His archetype will be troll samurai, and every time he gets killed by the runners, he'll come back with more cyberware until he's a cyberzombie. It'll eventually be revealed that he's a hidden life receptacle for an Aztechnology blood mage, and the troll body was just a throwaway one for the mage to have fun from the safety of his pile of skulls. The first few times the troll's killed, it'll be treated as a really nice video game for the mage. Near the end, once the troll body has, like, -5 essence, he'll come down there himself to kill the runners. Or try. Which will be an awesome opportunity for the runners to make a nice million nuyen.

And do you think insect shamans should be included in Dunkelzahn's little triumvirate of evil? I think so.

[emo samurai]

Maybe I should have Knight Errant pay the runners to make surgical strikes from within the mall in order to make it easier on the team. Knight Errant will have a timetable on which certain objectives have to be completed; if they aren't completed by x time, they won't get paid for that specific mission. Not only will the runners get to loot, they'll be paid. It'll also be more realistic; I don't think that a military force that rams giant beetles with APCs is going to rely on the players for the gruntwork; the fact that they are within the mall, however, will give them unique strategic value.

[emo samurai]

I've got an idea! I'll have this be a followup to the Champion of Japanese Economic Superiority campaign. This will feature an elite team of Red Samurai hunting down the runners. The team will think of it as an honor thing, refusing help from any outside sources, even other Red Samurai. All the Red Samurai were raised on a very Lone Wolf and Cub sort of honor, but this team more so than others. I want it to end with the Red Samurai captain losing faith in combat as a whole and the Red Samurais' place in it; I have to have him come to hate his employers and everything they stand for by showing them to be dishonest and evil in their use of the Red Samurai. I want them to be double-crossed somehow, with the runners and the Red Samurai both being ambushed for some reason.

Maybe I'll have it so that the captain is sent to fight the obviously formidable runner team that stole the champion of Japanese Economic Superiority so that he could be ambushed more easily by MCT forces. What happened was that he pissed off an oyabun/MCT shareholder who tried to use his position to attract the captain's sister by kicking his ass in honorable combat at a company party. Renraku needs to un-piss off the oyabun in order to close a 50 million nuyen deal, and they need to do this by giving him the captain. Renraku does it this way so that they can disavow all involvement and not lose the loyalty of the most powerful corporate security force in the world. In the end, the captain will commit seppuku, realizing that in this age, there are few good causes to fight for and fewer honorable battles.

[Shrike30]

[emo samurai]

The Red Samurai shouldn't have much trouble just ambushing them and challenging them to honorable combat, though, maybe even dogging them through several runs. Maybe I'll have the Red Samurai give the Fixer an offer he can't refuse, meet him in public, ambush him, call the runners, and then fight it out. Whether or not he has a loyalty rating of 6, he'll try to give every indication that this isn't a trap, since if they don't come, he dies.

And I DO like the books. I just want to mix and match things as much as I want.

[boskop-albatros]

Three more exotic anomals that eat bugs

Solendon
Elephant sherew
Loris(Bush Baby)

That is about it for insectavor specialist totems/mentor spirits I think