A Run idea - Need input, Thoughts and ideas please Options

[DarkCrisis]

So far I've only thrown a couple of simple runs at the group. Go steal this from this minor corp. Go track this stolen item down.

Well I figure it's time they get that run that will get them some real pay and a nice rep.

So here's what I have outlined thus far:

The group gets a call from thier fixer. He has a lead on a huge run that will pay very well, but for the info he wants $1000 up front.

He then sets up the meet with Mr. J and the team goes and finds out that they are to be hired to run an extraction of a software wiz (who wants to change jobs) at a corp main branch in Japan. They are then to make sure the target stays happy as they take him to Germany. If they succeed they get 50k to split amongst themselves (10k apeice) plus a bonus of another 15k bonus if the target remains happy and unhurt through the trip.

So the team will fly to Japan and meet up with a fixer there (set up by the J). He can get them whatever they need while in town.

Now a team assualting a main branch of a Megacorp is akin to suicide so I'm thinking maybe the target lives in a gated community or something owned by the Corp. Perhaps they can grab him while he is shuttled to or from work. Or break into his secured house and grab him. That way it's not so rough on the Runners.

Anyways the big surprise is that he will only come willingly if his wife and son come along. To not take them along would make him "unhappy" thus they lose the bonus pay.

Assuming the extraction goes well they must then fly to Germany. Im thinking when they contact the Japanese Fixer for this they find out he is dead or missing. Possibly due to Corp Assassins or he turned traitor, i havent worked that out yet.

Anyways they flee Japan but the plane they are on starts to go down over the Russian wastelands. Possibly sabotage? Anyways they survive and must trek through the frozen wastes and hope to find civilization. I fgure one night they will be assualted by a Wendigo or 2. Speaking of why are they allergic to ferrus metal? Isnt that a bullet? Which most shadowrunners have plenty of?

Eventually the team makes it to a small town and charter another plane to Germany. Before they leave they are assualted by a Corp Squad that has been hot on thier trail. How does the corp know how to find them? Well thier is a transmitter implanted in the son that mom nor dad knew about.

Once they get to Germany they call the fixer to find out where to drop off the target and family but the J wont touch them until they figure out why they keep getting attacked. They are probably regularly assaulted at this point as the Corp keeps homing in on the beacon.

Hopefully the team figures out whats up and get the beacon shut off or whatever. Then they are able to drop off the target and collect thier money etc.

So thoughts and ideas?

[stevebugge]

Quick one. Ferrous Metals means Iron Based, which most bullets are not, but most blades are. The run sounds like a grand adventure, Shadows of Asia & Shadows of Europe will be helpful for locations. Mixing in the Vory and the Yakuza could add some extra fun.

[Teulisch]

first, the pay seems low to me... how much do you normaly pay your runners?

second- who is paying for the air transport? this sounds like a vital expense, which i would NOT trust the johnson to provide for the second half of the run. also, how do you get home from germany?

Thrid- japan and germany? is there going to be a problem getting through customs for this team? will they need to get new guns in japan?

4th- linguasofts? both japanese and german languages are going to be a must. how many peopel can speak these, how many can get a chip with the program?

Having him live in a plesant 'gated comunity' sounds good to me- either he takes a bullet train, or he logs in from his home. possibly a secure undergorund connection so theres no broadcast risk.

I would put his son in a nearby school, with afterschool sports.

target will have both physical and astral security. probably under surveilance from the matrix as well. if he dosent log in on time, a gaurd comes to check on him.

do NOT plan to have a plane go down at a specific point. leave open the possibility that the players avoid the problem. railroading is BAD. but if they dont pay attention then they get what they get. and how does a corp team FIND them if the plane gets lost so easily?

my advice, put a tracker (GPS) in both the father and the son- probably linked to a biomoniter. if they look for these, let the runners disarm or jam them. nobody panics about sending in a special force until these signals depart the island of japan- local vs global is a difefrent level of corp response. it could be hidden in as part of the datajack he had installed for work.

Overall, I see the main problem as being pay too low to cover the expenses this run will cost the runners (3+ international plane trips), and railroading that you plan to jump on them with the plane.

[booklord]

Most likely the runner team is made of non-Japanese with some metahumans. As such they'll be real fish out of water in Japan. I'd suggest the Johnson giving them the necessary data on the Gated Community so they can make the extraction. They'll need to get in and out of Japan as swiftly as possible.

I'm assuming the plane is a private charter provided by the Johnson?

Most likely the team will have to double back to Vladistock after the plane goes down which is where the corp will make its big power play to get its people back. I don't suggest the runners learn the Japanese Johnson is dead until they get there. Once in Vladistock the runners will be forced to figure out their own transportation to Germany as they have no way to contact the johson in Germany.

Unless the runner team is really thick. They'll find the transmitter. ( Especially if its strong enough to transmit over any real distance ) A better solution is that the son is more loyalist ( brainwashed ) than his folks and is ( he a bright young hacker or technomancer himself ) alerting the corp as to their location whenever he can. In fact one could even go as far as it being him who was responsible for sabotaging the plane and revealing the identity of the Japanese Johnson to the corp. In the end climatic moment he may even take a gun and openly betray the runners.

Once in Germany the Runners will want to make sure they get comensated for expenses. After all getting out of Vladistock on the sly would not be cheap. Most likely it will be routine as the son's treachery would probably have come to light in Vladistock and any fight in Germany would likely be anti-climatic compared to the struggle the runners have already faced in Vladistock.

[DarkCrisis]

The runners usually earned from 2k-3k each per simple run. Takes ques from the On The Run adventure.

I figure the amount is enough for them to provide thier own transport. Whats the cost of an international flight? Maybe 300-500 nuyen?

The German corp hires out of-or-towners so that no direct line can be drawn to them. So they hire a group from Seattle to make thier own way to Japan, do the job, then make thier way to Germany.

I was going for a very fish out of water thing.

Perhaps it's the wife who is a traitor? She likes her life and thinks it's foolish for the target to put her and thier sons life in danger.

She gets the Fixer in Japan caught and alerts Corp Security who hounds the team untilt hey solve the problem. Plsu as mentioned it makes them have to find an alternate route out of Japan since the Fixer was going to set up a ride for them...

Having the wife involved could help them to get stuck in Russia as well.

[booklord]

Perhaps but its the son whose been in the corporate education system.

I just have a mental image of the son having gotten his hands on a gun, pointing the weapon at the runners and his horrified parents at a vital moment when the corporate team is making its big effort to get the extracted employees back while declaring loudly that that is parents are "traitors".

The son betraying his parents out of blind loyalty to the corp is just creepier ( and therefore cooler ) than the wife doing it of a desire for safety and financial comfort. Plus in this scenario the son is willing to do far more riskier things to stop the runners than the wife would. ( such as sabotaging the plane over the Siberian wilderness )

Make him a Hacker or a technomancer and he's just as big if not bigger threat than the wife.

[DarkCrisis]

Thats a good idea, though the son would have to be in atleast his mid-teens i suppose. I was thinking more like a 6 year old so, but yea thats a good idea.

[Jaid]

the big expense on the international flights is not so much the fact that the flight itself costs... it's the new gear that has to be at each new location. that gets really expensive, really fast.

[Shrike30]

If they're only netting 10k apiece (or 13k with the happy bonus), having the Johnson provide transport and "basics" (like light pistols, armored clothing, a safehouse, that kind of thing) seems reasonable. Obviously, if the runners want to use their own connections to set this kind of thing up, they can do it out of their own pockets. If they choose to do this, they might be able to say "Look, we appreciate the effort, but we have people we usually do this kind of thing through... if you wouldn't mind covering some of the expenses, instead. Say, ten thousand?"

Given that their J disappears partway through, you could always have had him get captured and interrogated. If they're using their own connections in the area, there's less risk of exposure for them.

[GrinderTheTroll]

@DarkCrisis sounds like a cool run! You might consider some sort of bonus from the Target to show his appreciation for saving his family (maybe a Favor at a later date? Hottest Rate-7 warez?). Pay sounds okay if the fixers are providing all the gear and transportation expenses, else I'd offer more upfront to cover those things.

Sounds good!

[DarkCrisis]

Say 15k apeice (75k total not counting the bonus) and they cover thier own expenses?

[Ophis]

Thats still barely anything. For a run like this I'd go for about 150K for the team including expenses as the base offer, (50K advance, transport is expensive for people with illegal ware), with the Johnson willing to go double if the negotiate well (win by 10 hits on how I do it), though prolly only 50K advance still.

Where are the team based? It sounds like they're going from one unfamiliar location to another that should up the price. That makes the job vastly more difficult

[booklord]

The price doesn't seem that bad to me provided the following.....

Transportation to Japan is probably provided by the Johnson. If the shadowrunner team has to arrange transportation to Japan themselves then there's a good chance they'll be flagged by Japanese authorities. Besides private transportation provided by the Johnson allows the runners to bring some of their gear with them to Japan that they'd otherwise have to get there. And remember the runners are likely all foriegners with no contacts in Japan. The local shadow community would likely treat them as if they had the ebola virus.

The team is probably given all the details they need to perform the extraction. Such as travel times and a detailed analysis of the security at the gated community. In normal runs the team is expected to get this data on their own. But it's not realistic for the Johnson to expect a team of gaijins ( non-Japanese plus probably a few metahumans to boot ) to be able to pull this off in Japan. The Johnson would have used Japanese runners to get all the pre-run data.

Nor can the runners really expected to arrange their own transporation out of Japan. They have zero contacts in Japan. It's an unacceptable risk for the Johnson to expect the runners to arrange their own air travel. ( Public air travel is out of the question )


So here's what the job entails......

1) Go to Japan ( Transportation provided by the Johnson )
2) Perform a willing extraction of a software specialist and his family using data already gathered by Japanese runners from light security.
3) Babysit the family as they travel from Japan to Germany. ( transportation provided by the Johnson )
4) Go home. ( Transportation likely provided by the Johnson )

If everything goes well this run is a cakewalk! A good runner team would be able to pull off this extraction with a minimum of violence or exposure. From then on in, the runners merely need to play bodyguard until they drop off the family in Germany.


10K each is plenty. But a good runner team would negotiate expenses should the Johnson provided transportation fall through. They might also negotiate a hazard pay bonus should they be attacked by corporate teams during the bodyguard part of the run.

[DarkCrisis]

Thats why I have the J set up a Japanese Fixer for them to get in contact with and use when they get to Japan.

They can arrange transport etc through him.

But yea i might have the J set up transport to Japan but thats it. They can use the fixer to get back out whichever way they want, probably charter a freelance plane.

I wonder how I could get the Yaks involved.

[NightHaunter]

Offer your origanal amount, make them negotiate for a "fairer" fee.

The run sounds great.

If the plane doesn't crash, i would have an equally annoying encounter set up for arrival in germany.

[booklord]

[Edward]

Minor issues, why is the fixer asking them to pay him, usually the Johnson pays the fixer.

If you don’t want the mark in a gated community you can have him go out for shopping and entertainment on a semi regular basis (chaperoned of cause), or the team could go in and arrange for him to go to a specific place. If they do this he will show up with his family (who he assumed was included in the deal) and his usual chaperones (witch he assumes the runners will deal with)

Also 10k isn’t much if they need to reequip in a foreign town, unless of cause the J is paying there tab (in witch case he should specify a cap, 5-10k for the team (higher if there going to need a vehicle).

You need specific contacts and a lot of bribes to get runner level cyber on international commercial flights.

As to wendigoes being vulnerable to ferrous materials and that being bullets, most regular ammunition is iron. Which qualifies, but non of the specialist ammunitions are.

[DarkCrisis]

I always thought the Fixer was paid by the team member who knows him. Usually a small fee like 10% (negotiable) of whatever that member earns.

The Fixer just wants cash up front cause they might not come back to pay him his small cut.

Just figured it would help if he asked for a fee up front to instill in them that this run is hard but pays very well.

[NightHaunter]

[Tetsuyama]

Most (modern) bullets are lead or a lead alloy surrounded (at least partially) by a brass or brass alloy jacket. I'd say that's unlikely to change soon. There's some chance that armor-piercing rounds (APDS? I don't have my SR4 book here) would have a ferrous core as they're intended to penetrate, not deform. More likely they'd use some more-dense material for the core like tungsten carbide, which contains no iron. So generally, I'd say that the PCs guns will not be causing "ferrous" damage.

[GrinderTheTroll]

[Shrike30]

One of the reasons you don't make bullets out of iron is that it'd tear the crap out of the rifling in your barrel right quick. Iron, compared to lead, is *HARD.*

Lead slugs (or more commonly, copper-jacketed slugs) put a reasonably soft metal into contact with the rifling before the powder explodes and forces that metal to conform to it. That softer metal puts a lot less wear and tear on the barrel every time you fire it.

[Geekkake]