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

[Dissonance]

Please be a parody.

Please.

[boskop-albatros]

its not a parody....it's just ideas...shadowrun just needs to keep pushing the envelope

[nick012000]

Now, go and take your pills.

[emo samurai]

Can we talk about my game now?

[nezumi]

I think the bugs getting energy from eating sugar is hilarious.

How many insects do you anticipate? This may be a bit much for a 'first' run, at least if your players aren't familiar with SR. ALso keep in mind, you're not going to find a lot of magical gear or any real good weapons by looting a mall. Most of that is either illegal or very specialized. A talismonger will do better setting up shop elsewhere (she has a very specialized product and mall space is pricey). I doubt weapons world will be a full sized warehouse either, but there'll still be more Preds than your sam will care to count.

Make sure you make lots of big maps beforehand.

I PERSONALLY wouldn't use this only because I like bug spirits to be more creepy, and that means lots of build-up and little use. But that's just how I like to run things. You sound like you enjoy action, and so a good bug smashing could be a lot of fun, as long as you keep the power levels in check.

[TinkerGnome]

Well, you could make it something of a RAS game where the bug spirits are running around, but the PCs really don't want to confront them directly when they can avoid it. I'd go so far as to cast the bug spirits as more of background to what was really going on (defeating mall security systems, avoiding being seen by the bugs, confrontations with other survivors over resources).

[nezumi]

That's true. It really depends on the background. Alternatively, if you're using ants or something, their job could be to go get the queen. So there WILL be points of barricading yourself in and looting stores, but they'll benefit from being smart and avoiding fights over just blowing up everything.

[emo samurai]

There'll be a deadline for when Strain III is released; it'll be about a month. If you don't form a supply chain, then the food stocks won't last you more than a week. That's the time you have to kill off the ant queen. And it'll be a BIG extraterritorial mall, owned by all the megacorps at once. The draw will be low prices from the lack of taxes and the illegal stuff you could get. So you'll see miniguns being sold next to Gap Kids. It'll be a free economic zone, and the runners are there because it's got all the illegality of the streets with none of the troublesome searching. It's almost perfect for shadowrunners, which is why I'm destroying it in my first campaign.

[TinkerGnome]

[emo samurai]

I'm thinking of doing it, but not as a first run. And what do you think is the plausibility of this mall being made? I mean, the megacorps banding together like this just to make a free shopping zone. Would Joe 2070 take his kids to a place that sells sniper rifles and power foci for psycho toxic shamans even if everything's 20% off? Oh, well, the runners'll get to loot the place.

Also, the Renraku Arcology will be pretty much fire saled in my game. The mission will be to steal the diamond optical core of Deus's original server. It's way too big to be called a chip; it's perfectly spherical and is suspended in a fluid of perfect liquid density for the sphere to be suspended in the exact center. Pointless? Yes. Way fucking cool? Definitely, and that's why Renraku did it. It'll be the most delicate extractee ever, and the mission will require much subtlety.

[nezumi]

[emo samurai]

Shadowrunners and gangsters are a pretty big customer base, at least in my world. The corps pay the Star to leave them alone. The shadowrunners don't go for the whole "sheltered customer base" thing, so they'll need to sell weapons there if they want to get paid for their equipment instead of having it fall off the back of a truck constantly. And having a supermall with 30% off from not having to pay taxes on their payrolls and products and everything else means that they'll attract lots of norms to cover up the runners and gangsters. Even if the weapons are a little above street price, runners and gangsters don't have to wait a week and run up a network of greedy contacts who themselves ramp up the price above market price in order to find a case of bullets.

[Glyph]

Meh. I could see a "crime mall" that the Seattle criminal syndicates considered neutral territory, in some gutted building in the barrens, but I have a harder time picturing a legitimate mall offering all of this quasi-legal and illegal stuff to shadowrunners while people two stores down are buying slurpees and donuts for their kids. I could see a few stores in the mall with a "back room" for parties in the know, but I can't see a Panther assault cannon being sold over the counter - not when you need permits and such to buy those kind of things.


Besides, if you are doing a run where the PCs are trapped in a mall with a bunch of (hopefully not too high Force) bug spirits, it might be more fun, and encourage more creative thinking, if the stores sell normal stuff, and the PCs have to figure out how to improvise weapons out of it. Maybe the sporting goods store will have some bows, or the camping store might have kerosene cannisters or flare guns.


The trouble with spirits is their immunity to normal weapons power, which can make them frustrating for mundane characters to deal with. Maybe instead of a bug spirit infestation, you could have a surge of wild magic turn a swarm of devil rats crazed, and give a few of them some random paranormal powers. And the background count will make things tougher for the mages, while everyone else is scrambling to find some kind of weapons. And even though they're just devil rats, they're still nasty critters, and the random paranormal powers make them more unpredictable. Just a thought.

[emo samurai]

I want to blow up Cinnabon!

[nezumi]

[TinkerGnome]

Here's an idea.

The characters are called by their respective contacts for a meet. It's going to be held at some huge mall food court (extrateritorial doesn't matter so much here) and the run is supposed to be a profitable one. Plop the mall in the middle of downtown and inform them of this. Remind them that there are MADs on the entrances and unlicensed weapons (and licensed weapons that scream "looking for trouble") will likely get them in trouble.

The Johnson comes in and the meet starts. He starts describing how he wants the PCs to pick up his friend who is considering changing employers (just another extraction) and offers them some figure of cash or some amount of goods for the job.

Once the PCs agree, bug-da-monium breaks lose and the Johnson declares a change of plans. He wants the PCs to get him the drek out of there.

Then proceed with the game as normal (since, obviously, you can't just walk the Johnson out, no matter who he is or really works for). Now the PCs have to protect the J if they want their pay, but they're in meet clothes without their heavy firepower. Probably a few pistols and tasers among them, but that's about it.

Fun fun.

[emo samurai]

Dude, survival horror would be so much cooler. Organizing the peasants, finding hardware... but then again, Knight Errant probably wouldn't need the shadowrunners for help much.

[TinkerGnome]

To do that, same setup, just the Johnson dies in the first few seconds of the bug attack and never tries to change the job.

[emo samurai]

I want the players to stand and destroy the bugs themselves; how do I justify not having Knight Errant doing it for them?

[nezumi]

Maybe the fact that KE pays a lot more for each dead KE officer than it does for each dead runner?

[emo samurai]

So I could play down the "Knight Errant as Champions of Order" angle. Makes sense, since they don't have to play to public opinion; normal people don't shop there. I'll get rid of the "normal people being there" angle. But how will the characters stand out and manage to take command, if the people there are already killers and stuff? Maybe I'll have the gangsters mostly dominate the mall, with most runners being too smart and paranoid to go anywhere owned by a megacorp and not do everything in their power to not stand out.

[mfb]

you don't... jesus christ, why would anyone go to this mall? normal people don't go there because there are miniguns for sale, and criminals won't go there because the mall makes it insanely easy to track their activities. you can't just hand LS some money and expect them to look the other way while millions of dollars' worth of weapons are sold to criminals in a public venue. it doesn't work like that, for chrissake. you can bribe a security guard to let you into a warehouse, you can't bribe a security guard to let you throw bombs at people.

for pete's sake, if you're so dead-set on having miniguns at a mall, have the miniguns being sold out of the back of a truck in the freaking parking garage. don't put them in display windows next to the food court.

[Brahm]

Next to the Food Court? In the Food Court! I can see it now, an international chain that was created as a result of Ares buying Taco Time. It's called Guacamole & Guns. You can chow down on crappy psuedo Mexican food while checking out the latest and greastest in bigtime blackmarket firepower. Their marketing slogan splashed across nationwide saturation-run ads is We spice up your criminal activities, no questions asked. :wobble:

[nezumi]

[Brahm]

You really think that anyone that can own or carry a class 'F' weapon legally is going to shop at the mall? Those are institutional buyers, if they don't actually make the weapons themselves. You don't sell to them through a store front. You sell to them on travel junkets treating them to a Sasquatch BBQ, complete with sorted vices, on the company yatch. :wobble:

The nastiest 'R' weapons listed are hunting rifles, shotguns, the microwave laser pain inducer, and basic ARs without the grenade launchers. About as much as you could argue as personal defense or recreational use.

But really, isn't that going to be more than enough for most criminal activity? Strolling around with a minigun laying down covering fire tends to draw attention. Do that in anything above a Z zone and expect Lone Star to throw just about everything they can muster at you. Stand your ground against LS and expect the UCAS military to start showing up, and not just a mule loaded with grunts.