Dragon*Con War Stories, Missions Report Options

[Whizbang]

For most of the Con, the group was pretty much the same cast of characters with a few changes, so by the end, we had gotten into a close knit operation. And this is your warning that there are major spoilers here.

Parliment of Thieves

[ Spoiler ]

This mission was simple enough. We got Stalker and Peaches to take us across their respective borders. Was a moment of concern when Stalker headed off to check on the 'raccoon', but we kept cool and proceeded on. When the Triad and Yakuza groups intercepted us, our face started an auction, which kept them occupied long enough for the hacker (my char) and the technomancer to hack their commlinks, and our rigger to start some crazy driving to get us out of there. Our mage powerbolted the car's driver, putting him in a world of hurt, but not quite killing him. So the car was stopped, and the group from the restaraunt had to go running for their car, but never caught up with us.

Meanwhile, while we were getting out of dodge, the package had actually been with our demolition expert, who happened to have a courier's uniform and license. Once we had the goons busy with us, he just threaded through traffic, and eventually caught up. We had extra time, so the GM tossed in some go Gangers who tried to harrass our 'courier'. We managed to take them down, with just one casualty on their part, the rest just out of it. We appropriated their bikes, the laugh of the mission was when the technomancer simply got on the bike, and had a sprite do the driving for him while he just rode along, arms crossed, all genie style. From there, it was a straight shot on to deliver to the Johnson.

Best Served Cold

[ Spoiler ]

This one was one that wound up making my head hurt. We were looking all over the room, and not coming up with any leads on just who our mysterious kidnappers were. The cigarrette butts were in particular misleading, as several of our party suspected Hafiz of being the one to just toss them there. (leading to much head banging on my part) Eventually, an hour or so real time later, I managed to trace the feather to the Black Cats, and we started getting places.

Our rigger, being AmericInd, though not Pueblo, talked to the bar owner about being interested in employment by the Black Cats. He was contacted, and directed to a meet, though they weren't fooled. We leveled with them, and found out about them being hired to test Blenkly's loyalty, and that they didn't know anything about the ransom note. We called back to Falcone, who told us that we were then to find out just who the real blackmailer was.

We were back on the Hafiz theory when 'Void' contacted me, and told us about Falcone's plan for a doublecross. From there, we headed back to the mansion, and hacked the security system, and found that the footage had not been altered as we had thought. Getting with one of my matrix fixer contacts, we found out that 'Void' was actually 'Hammerjack', a has been hacker with a grudge against Falcone. From there, we finally had our pieces together, and handed over recordings (our technomancer has a tendency to record ALL conversations.) of our talk with the Black Cats and with 'Void'. The true blackmailer exposed for what he was, we left it to Falcone to deal with him, and Blenkly was released after his stay with the Black Cats.

The Grab

[ Spoiler ]

This one was twisty and turny...especially the end. But yes, Chasing the Dragon did make alot more sense of it all.

We did have some misgivings on this one. It seemed a bit too much like kidnapping...but supposedly the mother knew about it. So we decided to take the direct route, by going to the girl's home. Instead of talking to her mother as we had planned, we found her mother wasn't there. Rather the mages who went in found Frost and his troll friend. An alarm that wasn't connected to the wireless system went off, alerting the sleepers. One of the pair who was watching around corners with his mage sight goggles, cast control thoughts on the troll, and stunbolt on Frost. The other mage went and found the girl. She started screaming her head off until the mage gave her a light stunbolt to shock her into shutting up. They then hauled her, and our mind controlled friend off to the waiting van.

From there, we duct taped the girl so we didn't have to deal with her screaming any more.... though we did wonder about her going on about her mother AND her father wanting to kill us for this, when we had found in our research that her father was dead. Dismissing that, the mage picked the troll's mind, finding out that he was just a poker buddy of the girl's bodyguard who had decided to crash there for the night. Thinking nothing more of it, we handed her off to the next group. Not sure what the mage did with his pet troll, though he did let him live.

We were then rather shocked to hear later on the news about the girl having been killed by a sniper after the kidnappers released her during a standoff. But as I said....clarification comes later....

Thrash the Body Electric

[ Spoiler ]

Okay....this one was just fun. Being hired to harass a corporation. Needless to say our demolitions expert was disappointed that he wasn't allowed to blow up the building. But he was satisfied with being allowed to follow and harass secretaries... didn't work quite as planned, though. They spotted them following their car, and nervously headed back to work rather than letting themselves be targets. Meanwhile the technomancer and I were having a field day. Pop ups, porn, messing with payroll, and songs that get stuck in the head easily blaring through the radio were the tip of the iceburg... they were lucky we didn't quite get to cutting off the water.

Was surprised when the Family broke the window on the rigger's van. Surprised that the Family men didn't get mowed down by the 'blow it up' section of the table. But we took the warning...and ignored it.

Anyways, the big hit came when we decided to let the demolitionist have his fun... at the power transformer. We picked a peak time for him to blow up the transformer, while the mage fried it with a storm spirit, and the technomancer set a sprite loose to wreak havoc....suffice to say I let him have that operation. I wasn't keen on being around when things crashed.

From there, the Johnson called us off. The sale went off, but not to him. We still got our payment...After the session it was revealed just how much plot we had missed by our not needing to outsource to the local gangs.

Through a Rose Colored Display Link

[ Spoiler ]

Here was another one where we managed to skip bits of plot. The face headed to talk to Dean, while the rest of us went to his apartment. Dean gave us his access code, and the tag for his girlfriend's (who's name I've forgotten) commlink. While poking around online, I managed to scare up a sprite, which the technomancer and I then caught and traced back to the girlfriend's commlink. It was off to the mall from there.

At the mall, we found a Triad ceremony going on at the temple, and our target in an upstairs store. The more militant members of the group were going to go in while the technomancer and I dealt with the target and the system. However, I tripped another sprite or something, and the Triad security came to question us. Surprisingly it was the technomancer and his chinese ettiquette (still wondering just what they went off to the other side of the room to say....) who was more use in talking our way out of it than the face, with all his dice.

After that talk, the Yazuka let us into the room, where we found the dead guards, Alice's (?) commlink, and another sprite. The technomancer offered a meet, but was disappointed when only a sprite showed up. Directions from the BTL in the commlink and a trace from the store directed us to a warehouse of chipheads. However, the technomancer picked up the signature across the street, and engaged the technomancer there. Black Hammer and Electron Storm took care of it rather quickly. From there....we found that sprite from the meet....was infact a free sprite. The technomancer then suggested that it go to Seattle...it's more fun there. And yet again, the obsessive recordings of the technomancer was useful evidence.

The Flip Side

[ Spoiler ]

Our only failure of the Con. It seemed that we took too many directions at once this time. The techonmancer was out of it most of the game, as apparently the GM's dice hates compilers and conjurers. Amusingly enough, one of the mages had taken a liking to shapechanging the technomancer when he was sleeping off stun or full VR, and he spent most of the mission as a baby tiger snoozing in the back of the car. Anyways, the face made his calls, turning up the Aurora area. The combat types got to Aurora first, trying to find info on the BTLs. I talked with Peaches, who directed us to 5x5, and mentioned a girlfriend.

Meanwhile, our new mage, who hadn't bothered to give us his contact info, had headed to the wife's house. He questioned a random neighbor, then proceeded to summon an elemental to kick the door, then stunbolted the wife and her guard. He did a mindprobe on her, turning up that she knew nothing of her husband's true activities.

We were going to go to 5x5, but then our demo expert, who had been keeping an eye on the house as well, caught up with what our errant mage was up to, and summoned us to go pick him up. Honestly, there was temptation to just kill him for that mess, but we let him live. Thankfully the security system critically glitched, and never sent off it's call.

Meanwhile, I was with the combat types, at 5x5. Bribes weren't effective, and questions were leading us towards the girlfriend. The combat types wanted to interrogate the barkeep, but I didn't really want to ruin a potential contact, so I convinced them to lay off. So we were heading out to meet back up with the rest of the group, when the Vory came in. Apparently the confusion with the other group was so great that the plot was advanced before my group, which was still stunned...and not totally sure that the three of us were up to taking on four gunslingers (I'm a researcher, not a gunslinger). Also, the GM neglected to have me roll for hidden nodes earlier, just saying there was nothing there for me to access. so I was thinking that I couldn't touch any security cameras, where I might have stood a chance of figuring out that our target was in fact hiding in the bar...

Anyways, 5x5 got trashed, and the Vory moved out. We failed in attempts to follow them. Our Technomancer then picked up on Jana accessing a message Wyatt had sent to her. We raced to her location, and followed her down into the sewers. We lost her, but we were already too far off the plot, and were out of time, so the GM put us out of our misery and called it there.

Well, win some lose some. At least we all lived to tell the tail.

An Ounce of Prevention

[ Spoiler ]

Stealing medicine from a hospital...saw images of Firefly there. But that's getting ahead of the story.

To start with, we decided not to take payment. Instead we settled for just having the Doc owe us a favor. Having a Doc on call is never a bad investment. The technomancer also upped the clinic's security and left his resonance signature and a warning that the clinic was under his protection. One of our less diplomatic party members was still gracious enough to float the clinic a loan.

So we were off on a charity case. Out front assult was out of the question, and stealing an ambulance was doubtful. So we found a disgruntled employee. A female employee. Our male face volunteered to wear a nano paste disguise. We had everything he needed to know about her. Fortunatly he also had all the dice he needed to bluff his way into the pharmacy. Once there, he swapped the labels on the medicine boxes with ones of a more common medicine. The technomancer and I then swapped the AR tags, and set up a shipment to another hospital. Then a flood of attempted escapees from a prison were brought in, and the face managed to get himself kicked out of the hospital. (He's probably still going to be getting ribbed about that disguise by next Con.....)

Our demolition expert then got to use his beloved foam explosive to blow a pothole in the road. The ambulance fell in, and the drivers were incapacitated. We stole the medicines, including some additional stuff that we had included in the shipment. We were then off to the clinic to finish up our good deed.

Chasing the Dragon

[ Spoiler ]

Okay, now here is where The Grab gets explained....though there's still plot hanging over our heads.

We were hired by the girl's mother to track down the ones responsible for her daughter's death. Needless to say, all but one of us had been on the Grab together, so we were rather nervous about taking it. But at the same time, we wanted to know who had turned our run sour. So we took the job.

All the second team was dead (except Frost, but that was metagame knowledge that I didn't act on) so we went to Lady Jade, who could tell us more about the run. I had also turned up the fact that the girl's father wasn't actually her mother's deceased husband, but a Yazuka hitman who was currently out of favor. Lady Jade gave us where he was hiding, though she thought it was the father's friend, who was holding a grudge for the death of his family, who was the real culprit. She still offered us payment for bringing in the killer for interrogation.

We went to where I had turned up that the friend was hiding, and peacefully convinced the tailsmanmonger to let us talk to him. After the talk, we were convinced that it was the father. It corrolated with another of our crazy theories, and I had also found an email alluding to what he had done, and that what he had stolen was the Dragon Stone (I still want to know just what that thing is...couldn't turn up a darn thing, even when we mind probed the father)

But anwyays, we headed for Klub Karma (btw...was that spelling intentional?) We were hesitant about going into Triad territory, and the technomancer came up with the idea to ram a screen in the chimney loose with a small drone, so the mage could astrally project in through the hole in the ward. From there, we figured out where the father was. I crashed the club's system while the demo expert blew a hole in the side of the building and the mage sent in an elemental to grab the wounded, but still alive hitman.

We knocked him out, and drove off in the chaos. We headed for the meeting point the mother had appointed. Which was the same place we had traded off the girl. Big red warning lights here. But we did still go in. Fortunatly, since we had spared Frost's life, he decided to give us a call to save ours, giving us time to get out before the explosion went off. We then handed the father off to Lady Jade, and swore vengance on the mother who had double crossed us.

All in all, 8 runs, 7 successes, 1 failure, and 0 team fatalities. I'll call that a win.

[the_dunner]

Thanks for the detailed reports, Whizbang!

Sounds like you guys took a few interesting twists and turns along the way. :cyber:

I saw the attendee numbers report for Shadowrun, but hadn't realized that the 8 sold out/oversold games of Missions were all the same people.

For those following along at home, there were 8 scheduled SRM games at DragonCon. We actually ended up running 9 tables. (We had an extra GM and 8 extra players at one session.) 5 tables were run at more than capacity, and only 2 had 1 open seat.

[Whizbang]

Yeah...I only actually managed to get tickets for 3 events. I was lucky enough to generic into the rest, though. *Thanks the GMs profusely for allowing folks over capacity*

For future missions, it might help to make the Denver map a bit more friendly to black and white printers. I believe it was Parliment of Thieves where, number 1 blended right into the road on the GM's black and white map.

And a bit more on The Grab since it doesn't seem to like me editing my long post....

[ Spoiler ]

Btw, as for the helicopter and the cars, the technomancer crashed the chopper and I stalled the car. We got out of dodge before they could recover enough to come after us.

[dog_xinu]

[the_dunner]

[RobertB]

I'd also like to chime in my thanks to all the GMs that ran Missions. I realize you folks didn't get a lot of time to prepare for the events, but we appreciate the effort. GMing is usually a thankless task, so volunteering late in the game as I know some of you did is appreciated by all of us.

Robert (aka Spanner)

[Zolhex]

Just a note while I was unable to go to this con it sounds like SRM's were a real hit which is great and if anyone that was there plays a physical adept you may want to check out the SRM thread about the player created initiatory group we have going.

[KarmaInferno]

Thanks to all the folks running games, and putting up with an old Virtual Seattle player trying to figure out the new systems.

Doc Thunder will be making more appearances in Missions, count on it.


-karma

[Kai]

Hey, thanks for putting up with those of us a bit underexperienced with Missions procedures! I know some of the players were probably a bit dissappointed and expecting more out of the GMs, I promise it'll be better next year :)

--//[改]>

[SwampGator]

I will say that I had a hell of a lot of fun playing every mission. All the GM's were great, and I look forward to running with them next year.

[Whizbang]

Yep. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone, GMs and players alike, next year.

-Zelda

[Dyspeptic]

I for one am already looking forward to next year. The SR availability this year (both quantity and quality) was orders of magnitude better than previous years. Many thanks to the SRM GM team; you guys were great. And a huge thank you to all my fellow runner out there, in particular what worked out to be our "core team": Spanner, Toast, Chen, Swamp Gator, Zelda, and Kali. Any mission, any time, anywhere, guys.

--"Smith"

[TranKirsaKali]

Zelda's account's were very accurate. The only thing I would change is the shapechanging mage is actually a Shaman. And what a way to play with Technomancers! Who would ever suspect a pigeon of hacking your comp?
We worked well as a team and I am looking forward to playing with the gang again next year.

Kali[FONT=Courier][COLOR=purple]

[Dragoonkin]

Damn...wish I'd signed up for a Shadowrun game or three at D*C...it was my first time there and to be honest, the game signup system was a blur of nonsense to my brain, I didn't end up playing ANYTHING over the entire weekend, which sucked because I'd gone there mostly to experience SR4 done by someone who actually knows it.

Ah well, always next year.