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

[emo samurai]

Then the runners have their rigger and mage redirect a power cable or something. Wait, this could be a good idea. Instead of there being a cable, the power will be transmitted by microwave. Anyone who gets in the way of the beam gets fucking vaporized.

[hyzmarca]

Dolemite. If you want to make SR pimps start with Dolemite. Nothing kills runners quite so well as a crack team of krotty whores.

[emo samurai]

I had an idea for what the other characters would see if they ever decided just to go meet him after they dump their hellhounds. He'll be wailing on a guitar enthusiastically but completely artlessly, and one of the dogs will be barking as loud as he can in perfect "rhythm" to his random thrashing. There'll be sweat in his armpits and he won't seem to notice anything besides the guitar and the barking.

[emo samurai]

For G's character, I'm thinking of having the Master become a researcher for the DIMR after G's dude leaves him. They'll dump all their psychotic blood, toxic, and insect shamans on him and he'll encase them in hermetic circles. They figure that he shares their penchant for forbidden magic, and they'll be right. He'll be sent to investigate the fovae because he's unlikable enough for them not to care and good enough to possibly find something out about the foveae. They won't set him up with Acquisitions Inc., since they're too busy rescuing drakes, so he'll hire the team with his own money. His spirits are good enough to Search and find G's character within an hour, and the group will meet him at his tower in the demilitarized zone between Tir and California.

He will be almost useless as a combat mage; his physical stats will be horrible, and he'll have Combat Paralysis. Without his tower and army of loyal things that shouldn't be, he'll feel powerless despite his being a 9th grade initiate. When you get to the first foveae, you'll see what looks like a cutout of a sphere of utter emptiness. Despite being unable to survive in the wild and his lack of combat spells, he'll have a great eye for managing risk in magical research, so there won't be a chance of getting magic drained by the fovea. He'll have several watcher spirits manifest and constantly cycle across the boundary between the fovea and the area around it, so that one is able to see the center of the fovea. After maybe an hour of digging, you'll find a pile of mutilated mummies with all the blood drained out of them and their intestines ripped out and used to tie them together. The fovea will be centered on the sphere of corpses, and burning them non-magically will destroy the fovea. When this happens, the Blood Mage Gestalt will be aware of the intrusion and send an army of blood spirits and mundane troopers to the spot. The party will have to haul ass out of there if they don't want to end up as the next sacrifice.

[emo samurai]

How do you think the world would react to the bodies being unearthed in the middle of the foveae?

[emo samurai]

I have another idea for a run. I got it from Lost.

Somebody pays you to steal a prototype Battlemech from Ares. It's being built on a secret island, and to get you on the island, they'll crash a commercial airplane in the ocean next to it and float all the survivors to the island. Ares will spend too much time freaking out over people being on the island, and since a famous reporter will be on the plane and transmitting via satellite and getting a better story being in the crash than what he would have gotten if he did get to his destination, they'll have to take care of the survivors as well as possible. The runners will be in autopiloted submarines for the entirety of the flight; the cargo boxes they came in will come apart in the water and release the minisubs. The airport records will show only the people who had seats, so Ares won't know that the runners were there in the first place even if security did do a head count.

[Azralon]

Dare I ask how they're supposed to get the mech off the island?

[Moon-Hawk]

It can fly, duh. :-)

[emo samurai]

Maybe they'll just steal the plans... but I wanted them to be able to pilot it!

[Azralon]

They'd better take out the AA batteries and aircraft hangars too, then.

Even if they can fly the thing off the island, you'd better make it stealth-capable or Ares will be sending waves upon waves of Kick Your Butt the whole way to the dropoff point.

What was that old Clint Eastwood movie with the stolen Russian plane? Firefox?

[nezumi]

[Moon-Hawk]

It took me entirely too long to figure out that AA batteries were not small duracell walkman batteries. *duh*

[Azralon]

[emo samurai]

Damien Knight's real identity is revealed: he is, in reality, the Energizer bunny!

But seriously, maybe I should make it able to fly, like Superion or something. But no, I'll just have them go amphibious and load it into a converted oil tanker.

[Azralon]

Make sure the tanker has one hell of a good cover story, then, since it won't be an especially fast (or durable) getaway vehicle.

[emo samurai]

It'll be owned by... hmm.... who should own it? Not Wuxing; I already have two runs centered around Wuxing, and I don't want them working for Aztechnology. Mitsuhama's already used them; this is way too daring for Shiawase. NeoNet has no interest in arms, and Renraku's the bad guys in my game... Maybe a tanker nationalized by Amazonia after it kicked one of the megas out?

The only way this would work is if they didn't track the mecha; they'd have to destroy the listening posts in the base before they could make a clean getaway... Saeder-Krupp? Nah, they have no interest in something ostentatious like this, and they'd have more to gain from the plans than from a working model. Yeah, Amazonia sounds good; they have a monolithic enemy to crush that happens to be on the same continent, and they don't have the facilities necessary to build one from scratch even with the natural resources and plans.

[emo samurai]

Oooh, I have an idea for a description of a bar. It goes as follows:

[ Spoiler ]

The bar you meet the johnson at is called Unwired; it compiles together 20th century tech in a way that ironically perfectly invokes the listlessly breathtaking speed of the wireless age. Otherwise worthless motherboards and chipsets make up the tabletops; the cups are laminated spools of copper wire. Strewn throughout the room are projectors that overlay newsfeeds and streaming videos on top of everything, including the patrons, to the point that it feels that the senseless mash of information has replaced any sort of physical reality within the bounds of the bar.

What do you think?

[James McMurray]

Could be cool. There's a similar bar in On The Run.

[emo samurai]

Oh... I didn't read On the Run. Is it too normal for my campaigns?

[James McMurray]

Definitely.

[emo samurai]

Oh. Fuck that, then.

EVERY CAMPAIGN SHALL BE A MONEYSHOT HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA!!!!!

[Azralon]

[emo samurai]

I also have a new idea for campaigns. At the end of maybe 4 or 5 sessions, I'll bring G's character to the side and have him help 2 corp kids commit petty crimes by using magic to help them levitate or walk out on pranks and car-window-smashings. The first one will be a girl with a datajack who seems at the same time streetwise, extroverted, and naively cheerful. The boy will be a childhood friend who she takes along both for fun and to make him more confident.

These runs will take about 4 minutes and will bring in about :nuyen: 5000 a pop. One of these will be "help us break a car window." The girl will give the boy a lead pipe and tell him to break the window with it. He'll hesitate for a bit and the girl will egg him on. He'll then freak out, let out a yell, and smash the fucking shit out of the window. You'll run away before Lone Star can get a bead on you.

On the fifth or so one, they'll have him invis them while they throw a rock at some random corper who always tells them not to run and stuff. The only problem is, they'll get the corper killed with the rock. This will commence a frantic run in which the kids pay you to either hide them, erase the evidence, or change the girl's SIN so that the biometrics are off. The boy is a very gifted hacker who breaks into systems on the side, and he's the one with the contacts who calls G's character in the first place. He's only known on Shadowlands, but he's pretty well respected. He'll want FanGirl's character on the job so that she can help break into the server; the server's data-keeping duties aren't very CPU intensive, so they can afford to put a lot of IC on it.

[emo samurai]

I'll have G's character research toxic, insect, and blood mages; he'll also know how to essence drain through his touch, since he studies vampires and shedim, too. His personality will be incredibly withdrawn; one of my beefs with RPG wizards is that they're always really boisterous and always have their "boss around cringing minions" skill maxed out. But if you hated the world that much and were that devoted to your work, more so than even a mad scientist, since all you need is pretty much yourself, then you'd pretty much lose the ability to talk to people; this guy has been living in his tower for about 30 years with only his intern spirits to go out and fetch things for him.

The only people he's had contact with have been G's character, who basically freeloaded off his books and food, and the Draco Foundation, who basically give him toxic shamans, blood mages, insect shamans, etc. and leave. Once in a while, someone will come by to copy down his notes, which they will have a full-time team of thaumaturgy trying to understand at all times, succeeding only 1/10th the time. He talks in half-mutters, and his eyes are always sleepy, even though he never seems to sleep. When G is summoned to his tower to go on the journey, you'll see him with his hands on an insect shaman's head; the insect shaman will shudder, go wrinkly, and die. The master will seem younger and more energetic.

He will be awesome.

[emo samurai]

Oh, and tomorrow? D-DAY

Should I buy On the Run? It sounds like everyone likes it.