Shadowrun Survivor! Options

[Kesslan]

So yeah, I got bored again. Oh noes!

So I was thinking, and mostly as a potential 'fun thing' to run at a convention or something where you've only got about 4hrs a game session or so, what might be a fun, somewhat silly yet still quite plausible scenario for players to try to survive? The PCs would all be pregenerated for this sort of setup and then the players would randomly pick a charsheet and try to survive the scenario for as long as possible. The aim being for the GM to try to kill them off somewhat akin to Paranoia.

Basically the way it would work is you'd build a basic scenario, and the GM couldnt exceed the use of certain things. I'm not so good at laying things out so let me make an example with that 'naked arcology run' comment I made in another thread. Ideally of course you'd also have an actual map layout detailing where everything is compared to the player.

Shadowrun Survivor! Naked Arcology Run!

The big bad AI Deus has locked down the Arcology and now you've got to escape! The problem is that you were in the shower/having sex/other reason for being totally naked when the place went bonkers! You were forced out of your appartment totally stark naked in a bid to avoid a berserk secuirty drone that was trying to turn you into paste.

You goals!
To assumably aquire clothes, and weaponry! (Possibly just weaponry if your really that keen on running around naked.)
To escape five levels this madness alive at all costs!

The team!
1x Troll security specialist
1x Elf Decker
1x Ork Janitor with a flair for guns
1x Human chef with a flair for knives
1x Dwarf adept

Level 1: Housing Wing Mayhem!
The Opposition:
2x Gas traps
8x Sentry Turrets on rails
12x Security drones
1x Member of the Banded (Professional, Equal) armed with an ares Alpha, 4 clips of normal ammunition and 2x HE rifle grenades.
40x+ odd panicked civilians being slaughtered/subjugated

Available Items to be found:
Basic clothes and guns. Maybe one bullet proof vest

Level 2: Office Space Massacre!
The Opposition:
8x converted Security guards in basic armor, armed with SMGs + 6 clips
3x Combat drones
5x Gas traps
1x Dues oddity
X more cannonfodder being chewed to pieces.

Available items to be found:
SMGs, 2x assault rifles, some hand grenades, basic tools, maybe a suit of security armor or two.

Level 3: Here there be Paracritters?!?
The Opposition:
4x Lab Scientists that just want the hell out of here!
17x odd paracritters that were being experimented uppon
4x Security drones on rails
9x Combat drones
3x Banded in security armor with assault rifles
1x low level banded security mage

Available items to be found:
Security armor, guns, ammo, grenades, medical supplies

Level 4: Food for Thought!
The Opposition:
23x Civies who were working in the food processing center are trying to fight their way out, not caring who gets in their way! (Poorly skilled mob)
15x Banded samurai guards sent to kill/subjugate the mob involved and anyone else they come across!
2x Banded Samurai adepts
6x Drones in support
1x Devil Rat (Just for kicks)

Available items to be found:
More toys, more ammo, maybe some better stuff like AV, APDS, EX-EX ammo etc

Level 5: Light at the end of the tunnel.
Ground Level parking garage
The Opposition: LOTS!
Available items: LOTS! Including explosives and other fun things so the PCs can possibly blow their way out of the archology to freedom! But only if they sruvive to get the stuff in the first place, and they shouldnt! MUWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!
(but they could)

Course ideally it would be alot more specific than that, sort of a boxed scenario. But the idea is to have ever increasing challenges that the PCs must overcome with a very high chance of death as they work their way through the scenario. It should build in intensity from 'I can handle this easy!' to the point where at the last stage it's sort of like OMGWTF WE ARE FRAGGED!

Even general ideas will do. I'm actually seriously considering running something like this at the next Cangames this summer, as, unless I change jobs yet again I should have that weekend off to actualy GM some and get more SR stuff going locally. System can be SR3 or SR4, makes no difference to me.

[Trigger]

Sounds very interesting...now I have something to think about while reading my new copy of Street Magic that I got from Amazon.com in the mail today....I will probably post some suggestions after my reading spree...

[SL James]

I wouldn't necessarily require that the PCs begin naked and wet. The shutdown is perhaps one of the greatest opportunities for pure role-playing possible in spite of the fact (or maybe because of it) that your PC has a very small chance of surviving the night. And I say this having run the shutdown in a game GMed by one of the authors of RA: S. He was, in case you didn't gather from the book, every bit as sadistic a GM as you could imagine. However, I do find the inclusion of a security specialist rather amusing as that was what I was playing. The scene began for me with the floor being locked down and the air being sucked out. That'll get you on your toes pretty fucking quickly.

[Kesslan]

Well as I'd mentioned before, the naked part purely came about because of my comment in another thread (entirely in jest) about a 'naked arcology run'.

One thing lead to another, and thus the scenario above :cyber:

[Ryu]

Hmm. Run it as a VR game with full sensory information, including scent. Have your players jack into the thing on hot-sim.

Mr. J says: The evil overlord on the last level is a new IC program outfitted with black hammer. It needs to be defeated to show the weakness of that new IC. We need your ingenuity as experienced professionals to outsmart it in matrix combat.

[wargear]

But what about the whole 'voting them off' aspect of the Survivor show? Finding a way to thin out the group as you go. Perhaps bulk out the initial group with a few NPCs they can 'vote off' in the initial stages... "Only 6 seats in the fast buggy escape tunnel...everyone else gets pasted by the drones, quick, decide who stays and who goes."

[Lindt]

Unless you run combat faster then I do, and I admittedly run it pretty fast and loose, you are way the hell over 4 hours with that. Never mind how long any reasonable RP could take, and with RA:S its such a good opportunity for it.
I have no clue how someone without a gun, adept or not, would take down a series of security drones. So tweak it a lot, and make sure you run thru it either on your own, or with your local group (or worst case here on the DS boards) before hand. You talking avg level folk, replace them with reasonably powered (160 bp-ish for sr3 should suffice), and you might have a better go of it. Wargear also had a good idea, what with the voting people off and all. Hell, you could (with some help) make it a mini-tourny with elimination. Start with 14-18 players and narrow it down to 1.

But all that being said, its a fantastic idea. Id be there for it in a heartbeat. The RP opportunities are huge, and the combat even huge-er.

[SL James]

[nezumi]

I think this is a very neat idea. The only thing is it would need a tiled board, sort of like the old dungeon crawler games, where you position little doors and stuff according to a pre-generated map, otherwise you'd risk being called unfair (since the game is really GM vs. players).

I think dungeonquest came with one of those boards... It's the wrong genre, of course, but if my players close their eyes, it should work just fine. Maybe I'll try it as a one-shot sometime, if someone does the pregen characters for me.

[Kesslan]

Well yeah thats the inital idea, they have to run, find the weapons etc. The first stage is ment to be relatively easy. I wouldnt be throwing deus drones at them untill like right at the end.

Some sort of gridmap is a definate must have though. I'd probably use some of the blueprints out of the old Sprawl guide. It has a bunch of 'offices' etc and you can use more modern blueprints. There's good sources for them online specifically for sale to RPG players in mind. Their not too expensive either.

Print a few of those off, scale them and use figgures to represent everything's location. You'd have a basic penalty table worked up allready anyway, since as a totally pregenerated run you'll have all the lighting penalties etc if applicable on hand, and can quickly look up any changes. Range is pretty easy to work out and cover shouldnt be much harder to throw in as well.

That 'voting people' off thing sounds like a good idea too. At least at the con I'm talking about though, due to room limitations I at most could probably have a group of 8 players. So yeah, throw in a few friendly NPCs and shave off room for people by one or two with each 'level' and your cooking with gas.

Keep in mind my example in the OP is a really quick and dirty example that was really just ment to sort of present what I was thinking of more or less. I just totally pulled numbers out thin air. (See the devil rat)

Also keep in mind the players are not -supposed- to surive. It should be potentially possible, but it's ment to be a 'way in over your head your sooo going to die' type of scenario. At least for Cangames there's usually prizes at the end for the group/player that does the best out of all the groups that play a specific GMed game. So in this case who ever actually manages to either some how survive and escape, or who at least gets farther than anyone else would be declared the winner.

I'd definately have to put it through a few test runs though both under SR3 and SR4 to see how it goes. If there's enough interest in it I'll bring RA:S to work with me and actually whip up a proper encounter scenario and pick out a few maps out of the Sprawl guide to use then run folk through it, either PnP or my own preference being online. (Either MIRC or, as i tend to prefer over a MUSH shell since those have a higher character limit)

[Drraagh]

Listening to all this, I'm sort of tempted to bring back my idea to take the Cube movies and make them into a Shadowrun. For those of you that haven't seen them, the idea behind the Cube movies was just that. People trapped inside huge Cubes made up of rooms of smaller cubes and they had to find their way out through all the traps and such that were in there. Be a great way to do a similar sort of game, I would think. Start with the huge groups and whittle them down.

[Kesslan]

Yeah that would definately work, creative use of gas, turrets, monowire, and other things. Maybe even if they hit the wrong thing attack drones/dogs/what ever comes out etc.

And hey if it's 2065 or later (Or Arcology) you could even have some of those fun nano doomsday weapons.

[SL James]

[Kesslan]

It doesnt soley have to be the Arcology though. The Arcology itself is a great example of a setting where just about anything goes for pure chaos.

Bug City would probably be an equally good scenario if setup correctly.

An undersea AAA experiment lab would be yet another.

Anyone else have any thoughts on alternative settings that could work?

[SL James]

No, but there are already made mazes where you can focus on more important things than the gimick of the maze itself.

[Kesslan]

Well mazes are easy anyway. As I pointed out earlier there are even proper blueprints for modern office setups that are sold by various companies specifically as RPG supplements. The SR Sprawl (Not Sprawl Survival, but either an SR1 or SR2 book) has several such blueprints as well.

The maze itself would probably work best for representation of the corridors but it should also to some degree make sense.

[Trigger]

You could also have in almost any corp buillding in Hong Kong, because the lay outs there are going to carzy anyway, with the Feng Shui and everything. The layouts could act as both a maze and create a background count in the area.

[Slump]

Reading through this thread, I had an idea (incredibly non-cannon though)

Bug City + SCIRE = fun?

[Kesslan]

[MaxHunter]

Bugs + Scire = Total Player Kill, IMO

But I have Gmd a run in Bug city and it was hell.

And I do own RA:S but never got into playing it; I guess I wanted it to come with maps, plus I don't want to adapt the stats for SR4 (nor my players would use SR3 rules now) Maybe I'm too lazy...

If any of you guys does the homework (or has already done it) please let me know. I just loved that books fluff!

Now I am getting all cranked up around finally giving it a shot!

Cheers,

Max

Ps: "running naked" that's a good idea...

edited for spelling

[Kesslan]

Well, I'll have to dig up the book then. It honestly shouldnt be too hard to convert to SR4. For Smartlink 1's just have it give a +1 pool bonus and SL2 a +2. Easy. Since it's 2060's, keep the essence costs the same or convert them to the new essence costs. Pull all the effects from SR4.

As for any TNs, well just go by the TN chart in SR3 as to what is a TN for something 'easy' 'hard' etc, and compare it to the SR4 chart for how many hits are needed instead.

I'm sure we'll also be seeing alot of the old CC and M&M stuff make a comeback with Arsenal and Augmentation, but in the meantime you could just cut off the damage codes (Light/Moderate/Serious/Deadly) and then compare the power to the power of comparable weapons in SR4.

Beyond that if I recall, it really shouldnt need a whole hell of alot of tweeking.

As for Bugs + Scire = TPK... thats kinda the idea. The players are not ment to survive the encounter. It isnt ment for your regular tabletop group. The idea is really ment more for a short convention game where your going to have just random people joining in with premade characters provided by the GM.

[wargear]

Check out Mean Guns (1997). The plot goes like this:

[Fortune]

Nice! Thanks. :)

[Trigger]

Except for instead of it being a gangster boss, it's a dragon. He gets to have some entertainment watching the metas fight like dogs, looks like a nicer guy at the end with the reward, has gained three very competent killing machines in his service, and also gets a nice snack of the leftovers at the end.

[FlakJacket]

Dragon? Reality television production company more like. You set something like that or a 2070's version of Battle Royale up right and you'd be able to make absolute mountains of nuyen out of it by broadcasting it as pay per view. :)