Most Botched Runs Options

[Dun Fe'Ran]

In light of all the 'last 10 runs' threads and so forth, I thought I'd ask about the most botched run you've ever been on. What was the most disastrous mistake that lead to a failed, or nearly failed run?

Personally, I play a mage and we are doing a detective mission right now investigating the death of our fixer's cousin (this is a favor mission...). After finding our prime suspect, we engaged in a bloody battle, and only barely managed to come out with our lives. We subdued the suspect and brought her to a secure location, but decided to heal up before the interogation process. I assensed her, and found some of the normal cyberware and a tooth compartment. I don't know what I was thinking, but I just kind of shrugged and said, "OK. We'll be back tomorrow to get the info we need." For whatever reason it never occured to me that there might just be something in that tooth compartment. Boy, was that dumb. There was cyanide, and the only thing that prevented her from dying in the night was the fact that the GM rolled about the most favorable body roll ever, and she was merely brought to the brink of death. We very, very nearly screwed that one up.

So, what others are there out there?

[Kagetenshi]

I'll let my players have a chance to answer this before I give a shot at it. :vegm:

~J

[Lilt]

How about a time that we were going to take someone hostage and interrogate them, then erase their memories of the interrogation using an alter memory spell. First-off; it went without a hitch, we gamma-scopolamine'd the target & bundled them into a van.

Once the GS was having its truth seirum effect, we started the interrogation. As I, the player, go to the toilet; the rest of my team take it as a queue to blast one of the target's legs off below the knee and give the target other permenantly disfiguring conditions. One of them even signed their name on the target using his hand rasors (after, using hand rasors, he won a game of noughts and crosses on the target's chest).

Now that's what I call a botched run.

[CirclMastr]

Ye gods. Do NOT even THINK about bringing that up J. Maybe if I didn't have a starting drake PC (which are very expensive, as I talked about when DotSW came out), and maybe if any of the other PCs actually contributed something, and maybe if whatever dark ritual you performed to curse my dice had failed, it would have worked out. And it wasn't SO bad; everyone got out alive, after all.

Now then, my very first SR session, THAT was bad. Three very bad characters trying to get through Supernova from First Run. A toned-down Supernova. Very toned-down. You know the group is ill-fit for any task when you get through a facility by having the physad kick down every door in the place because it's literally the only way to get through.

[Dogsoup]

I think one of the few runs we really failed miserably was some written scenario ,where a masked dragon comes up to us and makes a demand.
Our (or was it mine?) answer were somewhere along "stfu, n00b".

I get insta-gibbed, the rest of the group managed to make a panicked escape in a slightly roasted van and the dragon proceed to ruin some minor neighbourhood.
All in all, it was fun. :D

[Kagetenshi]

I may or may not say anything, but I can't help it if, say, K1tsune happens upon this thread... ;)

~J

[Adarael]

Going to Iran to investigate the elf decker Leonardo.
Told we'd meet backup there.
Get to hellhole that is Amaz.
Run away from tanks, kill many bedoins.

See archeological dig site! Yay!
See men there. White men, speaking what appears to be english!
Oh! We think. This must be our backup!

Walk up, try to shake hands.
Get narcojected, foam-bound, and thrown in latrine.

Nope. They were from Saeder Krupp. We escaped, but couldn't get the foam from off our hands and feet. So we had to hop away from the SK guys, through the Iranian desert, and hide from tanks.
THAT sucked.

[snowRaven]

Adarael - TOO funny!

[RedmondLarry]

A runner, paranoid about the other runners betraying him, records on his desktop computer all the details of the run. A description of the Johnson, the job, the runners, their vehicles, their safehouses, everything. He programs the desktop computer to automatically send the details to Lonestar if he ever fails to check into the computer for more than 6 hours. He checks into the machine regularly as the run proceeds during the day.

That night, two runners try to drive on the freeway in Seattle even after the GM gave hints and warnings about many freeways being overrun by gangs at night. They run into a gang and limp back to the safehouse two hours later. The paranoid runner then goes out onto the freeways AFTER hearing of their troubles, and by himself. A gang takes his vehicle and leaves him unconscious by the side of the road. DocWagon picks him up, the medic decides there is no physical damage, and instead of taking him to a hospital they let him save a load of dough by allowing him to sleep it off at the DocWagon station.

He wakes up in the morning, long after his computer has placed its call to Lonestar.

He confesses his mistake to the team. They call the Johnson with the info. He cancels the run and asks the team to cancel the runner. They do.

[theodorik]

I have a lot of characters who never earned karma. Seriously, half my characters never get through the first run, or if they do, they suck so bad they never get played again.

Here's a wonderful scene. The GM comes back from school after 4 months of no shadowrun and plans out a neat little campaign. Our first mission was to steal BTLs from a local gang and give them to another local gang, both reside in the Barrens. We had a Dove Shaman (look it up, I know none of you have every encountered them before) in our party who wouldn't let anyone kill anyone; Total Pacifist. We decide to stealfully climb a ladder leading up to the top of a building we know contains the shipment of BTLs we're trying to lift. (its their headquarters, we found out later). A simple PADLOCK (not a Maglock) keeps the entire team from getting inside the metal roofhatch. No one had wireclippers or anything that could silently remove the PADLOCK. The GM's little brother decides to open is using his troll's Ugly Stick (a massive quarter staff) by beating it repeatedly. The sound echoed across the Barrens, so much for stealth. After making so much noise we kinda just froze "maybe they didn't hear that" style. After 12 rounds the rooftop was being sprayed with bullets. Grenades followed, and our team was sent to the ground 30ft or so below. The rigger never rolled any dice; campaign over. And then we all made Other Game characters.

theo

PS Dun Fe Ran, we should start a "what do you do when you've run out of leads" thread. We might need it.

[Fortune]

[Sahandrian]

This was my old real-life group, in the single most idiotic series of actions I've ever seen any group in any game take...

It was the last (as in 30-90 minutes each) of a series of 8 information-gathering runs against various small corps, and the one that I, the GM, thought would be easiest. They needed to get into a small company that was a minor subsidiary of a local Ares branch. The security was light. Three guards at a lobby desk, some cameras, and a security force in the breakroom upstairs who would get called down when necessary. I played up the fact that these guards had been there all night, were getting tired, and were not really the brightest guys around. Oh yeah, and I think one of the guards was a bit drunk, too.

They could have easily faked their way in with what their Johnson supplied them, if not for the rantings of the (absent that game) adept. The adept was incredibly paranoid about Ares. He refused to take any jobs for or against them, and the mere mention of that corp would send him into a 20-minute rant about them tracking down the team and killing everyone.

Thus they went in with a decker, street sam, mage, and troll. The mage and troll stood there, supposed to be distracting the guards or something, but the mage's player was a ditz and the troll's was half asleep. So the sam and decker go up and invent a half-plausible story, and they're escorted towards the elevators by the drunk and the idiot. The computer rooms were downstairs, thus the elevator.

Now here's where it just got stupid. The sam noticed a camera, and being incredibly paranoid, decided to pick up the guard and carry him in front of his face to hide from the camera while the decker walked behind him. I let them off easy, said the guards just decided they were crazy people and they should just let them do their thing and go away quickly.

It was only their third game, after all.

The decker got his info in a few minutes, and they headed back up. Then the sam notices, to his shock and horror, that the camera is pointed at him when the elevator door opens! He quickly grabs the guard and repeats their entrance scene. This time the guard starts complaining that this was just getting weird, and the players decide this means they've been found out. So the decker shoots out the cameras, the sam clubs one guard over the head with another, the troll cuts off the head of a third, and the mage picks up the two unconcious guards and slams them into a wall with Levitate, repeatedly, and hard enough to nearly kill them.

Then they gun down a couple of wageslaves and the first-floor janitorial staff, realize they missed a guard who was calling the sec force upstairs, shoot him on the way out, and run away as the security guys are just getting off the downstairs elevator.

All this to get some legal information that the Johnson was having trouble finding. All they had to do was ask...

[k1tsune]

Look. It was a run so bad that Jon (Kagetenshi) docked me karma for not killing the damn drake afterwards.

More later.

[Shockwave_IIc]

[thunderchild]

We had been paid by a pirate group to steal a bunch of ships from Philidelphia harbor (thanks blackjack) we were to steal the 5 biggest and meanest ships and take them out to international waters, hand them over to an up and coming pirate group who made their money from raiding other pirates.

Anyways, our plan was to sneak onto each ship and run a system diagnostic, grab the ones that turned out the best, and take them.

It all went to plan untill we got them out to international waters and the pirates checked the hold, they were all loaded with drums of hideously nasty chemicals, most of which were leaking or rusted to shit. they kept their money and just sailed away. leaving us in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, low on fuel, and in ships that with a tad of bad luck, had the potential to explode at any given moment.

we left the game there for the evening to resume it later. The gm asked us to have new characters written up by next week. I.e we were fucked.

Next week everyone turned up with new characters, except me, i had a plan!

We took all the fuel out of the boats and loaded it into the smallest ship, stripped it of its guns and put them into the spare cargo room and took it to england (the gm said the currents were against us to get back to the UCAS) The gm said now you have to fly back to the UCAS, i had a better idea, we cut a deal with a local big time gangster.

We got a rigger of his, a few hot spellslingers, a diesel tanker, and a shiteload of hazmat gear in exchange for one of the ships AFTER it had been emptyed

We took the tanker back out to our floatilla (which was still there) filled up all the ships, moved all the crap VERY CAREFULLY into the worst of the 5 ships, set its autopilot to sail into the poluted north sea and to drop anchor in the middle of it.

We let the gangster have 2 of the combat ships if we could borrow them, the tanker and its contents for a short mission.... hunting down the pirates and making them VERY VERY unhappy.

While its technicaly a salvage when the gm said "make up new characters" i was not letting one of my favorites die.

[Digital Heroin]

The Run: A secret society known as the Skytale (pronounced ski-ta-lee) Club invites the runners to act as their agents in enticing a full on mob war in Everet between the Irish Mafia and the Yakuza. The aim is to bring out violence in the streets, which will bring an increased Lone Star presence thus lowering property values in the area. The Skytale Club wishes this to happen so they can begin purchasing warehouse and waterfront property through their various members.

The Target: A Yakuza underboss whom they are to kidnap, so the Skytale Club can set up a false Mafia ransom demand. They have four possible locales to make the grab: at the casino which the underboss owns, at his upscale condo, at his sister's tea house which he visits daily, or en route between any of the previous locales.

The Crew: A rigger hottie who drives a highly modified Ares Citymaster with a mounted Light Naval scale mortar; a Psyad Trog who's completely close quarters, and weilds a pair of stun batons if he feels like going non-lethal (Killing Hands: Deadly); an ex-Ganger Troll mage; an ex-Spec Ops sammie; a former Companywoman; a ninja-wannabe Sniper; and a drunken Irish Weapons Specialist. The crew is linked via battletac gear, so they should be in constant communication.

The Setup: The runners decided that they would ambush the Yak when he was leaving his sister's tea house. The sniper set up on the roof of a small store across the way; the Rigger parked five blocks down for overwatch; the Weapons Specialist played backup driver with a truck loaded to the gills with guns and ammo; and the rest of the group took an unmarked van and used it to block in the underboss' limo.

And thus it began...

Now I'll give them credit, they had a workable plan. They'd also done the most legwork I'd ever seen out of this group to set things up. All good things, however, must come to an end.

The first boneheaded move of the event would have to be acredited to the group's mage. As the Yakuza underboss and his bodyguards (5 of them) exited the tea house, the mage assensed the lot of them. He discovered through this that one of the five escorts was highly wired, but neglected to tell the rest of the group.

The goal of the run is to kindnap Mr. Underboss, so they planned accordingly. The first action went to the Sniper (who incidentally had the highest initiative because something possessed him to wire himself with level 3 WR). He'd loaded in a clip of tranq darts, and he took aim, and fired on their target. Now, this would have worked out, except he didn't do his research right. He'd planned on a one shot, he drops scenario - which would leave the rest of the group open to slaughter the bodyguards if they wanted - but when he told me the tranq he was using I got a chuckle. He'd loaded the darts with the equivalant to a Rating 4 Tranquelizer Patch. That's right kiddies, one opposed test and the Underboss shrugged off the effects, and was alerted by the nice happy dart sticking out of him that something was up. The Sniper tried again of course, but once more to no effect, and this panicked the rest of the runners.

Full blown combat erupts after the van pulls in to block of the Yak limo from driving forward, and it's lead by the Psyad Troll leaping from the side door, and promptly having to roll an assload of body rolls as he's opened up on by three Yaks. Sure, he was drawing fire away from the rest of the runners, but at the same time he was ruining the backup plan, as the ex-Companywoman was going to gas grenade the men the Troll was now entering melee range with. A gun battle ensues, and during it the Sniper switches clips. Now he doesn't decide to use normal rounds, no, he slots depleted uranium rounds. I was thinking overkill, but then he revealed his intent. He switched to thermal imaging, and started scanning the interior of the tea house, so see what was going on there. When he noticed several figures rushing toward the door, he opened up and proceeded to waste some curious patrons. So much for keeping to just a mob war, now innocents are involved.

Meanwhile, in backup land, the Rigger's sensors pick up the rapid approach of a Town Car on her end, and when she checks it out, she finds it to be full of Yakuza backup. She relays the info down the Battletac (the first actual use of the system during the run), and word gets to the Weapons Specialist, who's been chomping at the bit to hold back this whole time. He takes it as his cue to join in the party, so he grabs up an assualt canon from the back of the car, and braces it out the window lance style (can anyone see where this is going?). Just as he's about to peel out, another Town Car passes him on by. Now he's all grins as he puts the lead to it, and skids out of the alleyway. Problem one for him is he's got a Car skill of 1, and because of his driving situation and haste, I required a Control Test. He actually does manage to get the car in check, but almost drops his assault canon out the window, which distracts him. It distracts him just long enough not to notice that the Town Car he was chasing has just become a smoking hole in the ground. You see, our Rigger she got a little itchy in the mortar finger, and fired a brilliant (it'd best be tossing 18 dice into it) shot to obliterate the Yakuza backup that was approaching from the side opposite her, and to leave a sizeable crater in the ground. It Weapons Specialist looks up just in time to see the aftermath looming in front of him. Not only does he fail, but he botches his control roll. Can anyone guess what happens when a beater of a car loaded with ammunition and explosives hits something at relativly high speeds? For dramatic purpose, I let the poor guy get off a one liner before he met a rather gorey end. His last words word: `Fiddledy Dee Motherfuckers, I'll see you in Hell.` Then baby go boom.

Back to the main fight, and we've got not only a highly wired Yak and several bodyguards running rucksaw over the runners, but a backup team as well. I let it slide when the players had to cry foul that the rigger planned on firing a mortar round into the mix, but things were bad, really bad. In the end there was a pile of dead Yaks, including the target (who couldn't flee because the sammie wasted his driver early in the combat), two dead runners, and a load of Lone Star on the way.

The final groanworthy act came from our friend the Sniper. You see, he just happened to posess a Platinum Docwagon contract, so he decided to use it as an escape plan. After quickly stowing his weapons, he stabbed himself in the leg and put in the call. This pretty much landed him in Lone Star's lap as the only captured runner, because DocWagon got to thinking that a guy with a stabwound in his leg up on a roof across the street from a brutal battle was a bit fishy.

Needless to say, the runners were never hired again by the Skytale Club. They did manage to duck the Yakuza though, and the Sniper weaseled his way out of charges. All in all, it was a real drek hits the fan of a run.


The reason I refer to the Sniper as a Ninja wannabe is another story... which comes with it's own brand of madness...

[CirclMastr]

[Dun Fe'Ran]

[Shockwave_IIc]

[Modesitt]

This is the story of how one group I was involved in went.

The characters:

The Medic: The medic. He has a rifle and a pistol.
The Sammy: He's a german ork street sammy. 'Nuff said.
The Mage: He's a mage, a shaman of Gecko. He likes illusions and mind spells.
The Decker: He's a decker. 'Nuff said.
The Face: He's a face. 'Nuff said.

How the first run went.

The first run was pretty simple. We originally had a total of...I believe 8 players, but the other 3 had scheduling conflicts come up and lack of interest and such. So we were left with this group. Anyways, the job was to steal 10 nice sedans from a superfreighter and bring them to a warehouse. The pay was 125,000 nuyen(Because it had been for more people, yadda yadda). Our first step was to get our hands on a car carrier. We go through the phonebook...Bob's Truck Truckin'. Perfect! We go in at the dead of night...

The Medic and The Sammy split into one group. They're going to go to a car carrier and check it out. The Decker is off doing something else related to the run. The Face and The Mage decided to go in and get the keys from the main building. The Medic and The Sammy sneak towards a car carrier, sneaking past a dog house while they go...

And we find out that The Sammy has no sneaking. He's defaulting to quickness.

Well, a few rolls later he fails and the dog wakes up.

The Medic pumps the dog full of Narcojet. The Sammy promptly unleashes a 3-round burst into the dogs head from his suppressed assault rifle. Because, you know, that was REALLY NECCESSARY. As this is happening, The Face and The Mage have run into problems. There's a door between them and the keys, but they can see it through a window. So The Face draws his silenced pistol and tries to shoot out the deadbolt, waking up Hick Bob, the owner of Bob's Truck Truckin'.

Bob owns a shotgun. Bob keeps his shotgun loaded. Bob started shooting. He missed repeatedly, as he was blind firing. The Mage got the bright idea of looking in at Bob through one of the holes the shotgun had made to get line of sight. Suddenly, half of the Mage's neck is gone. The Medic and The Sammy run to their rescue as The Face pumps rounds blindly into the wall. Eventually, The Medic arrives, stabalizes The Mage, The Sammy Arrives, empties a clip point blank into Bob's face, and they drive off. Before they leave, they cut off The Mage's Docwagon wristband and throw it away.

The Medic just so happens to own his own medical clinic, so they drive The Mage there. They unload him and The Mage gets to work on Trauma Surgery! All modifiers told, it's a TN of 6. By the time it was all over, The Medic had rolled 21 dice and gotten not one goddamn 6. The Mage died on the operating room table. The Medic went about harvesting his organs, a gas came out of his chest, and The Medic passed out. When he woke up, the body was gone.

He immediately went and got high. Depending on the rules one went by, he would have become a drug addict. It's not like it would have particulairly mattered, as you will find out later. Anyways, after he got high, The Sammy arrived, helped clean up the blood, and that was that. The rest of the run went pretty smoothly. They got the cars without any further trouble.

One week later, a troll arrived at the front door of The Medic's home, a troll from Lonestar. He's got a photo of The Medic and is asking to question him concerning the death of Bob. So they get to chit-chatting about stuff, when The Troll starts getting mean. In fact, he uses a fear spell on The Medic. That's when the troll uttered the immortal words.

"I AM HERE FOR A GREATER CRIME: THE DEATH OF FIDO!" The Troll pulled out a PETA badge, slapping it over his Lonestar badge. The Medic began desperately blaming The Sammy for the deed.

The illusion wore off and it was in fact The Mage, who had come back to scare the shit out of The Medic as punishment for letting him die. Hand of God is great isn't it? The Medic socked him in the jaw and it was off to the next run our group of merry men went and to the more immortal of the two runs this group experienced called...


9/11: 2063

This run was again fairly simple - Go into an office building, smash up the 3 underground floors that happen to be secret labs, and get out. But we have to be REALLY thorough on how we destory the stuff.

We came to the conclusion that the best way to do this would be with explosives. The Sammy happens to own 130 kg's of explosives, so we use his explosives. Seeing as how we have blueprints of the place, we were able to figure exactly how much we'd need to destroy all the lab equipment. It came out to 100 kg's. We put all of the explosives in 1-kg's satchels and wired them all to a detonator. The plan was to plant all of the explosives, then leave and remotely set them all off at once. BOOM! We buy a cart and off we went.

We enter the office building in the day time. 9 AM. Monday morning. Guns a' Blazin'! I didn't mention this earlier, the other part of the agreement was that we had to shoot everything that moved in the labs, ie the scientists/researchers. Security guards! WOO HOO BANG BANG DIE MOTHERFUCKERS DIE DIE DIE! We're on a roll! We get to the elevator and damn, The Decker has to hack the controls. So we sit around and begin jerking off. Then the BIG BOYS began appearing. Heavy security armor. SMG's. The works. We begin to get shot up. Everyone's wounded. Something just landed in front of the elevator! OH SHIT! The Sammy fires his underbarrel grenade launcher at the enemy.

He rolls all 1's.

The GM rules that there was a flaw in the grenade itself and it blows up in the launcher, blasting the small device back and hit the rest of us with some sharpnel. The Sammy is obviously down for the count, but his bulk saved most of us. The Decker manages to hack the controls and we begin closing the elevator door. The Face realizes that they might take The Sammy alive yet, as he's a little bit outside the door. So he finishes The Sammy off with a shot in the face.

They go up one floor, The Face grabs two kg's of explosives and the detonator, The Mage randomly pushes buttons and they make a run for it. The plan is to get to a window, shoot it out or blast it out, then jump out it. To the nearest window, with the building plans in hand, they went. Along the way, they get in a brief scuffle with security guards, but they blow them away. In the process, a civilian is also killed. The Mage also comes up with a plan for a distraction.

He uses Physical Mask. Cries erupt from the crowd! "WHAT IS THAT?" "OH MY GOD!" "CTHULU!?"

The Decker looks back and utters the line "You suck at Elder gods." They get to the window and place the explosives and the GM asks for a TN 2 int check. We make it.

Do you remember what I said about how everything was wired to one detonator? About how they were going to dramatically leave the building and blow the labs up as they went? All 100 kg's, including the 98 kgs on a cart that is going up the main elevator in a sky scraper at 9 am on a monday morning, are wired to one detonator. The Face pushed the button. BOOOOOOOOOOM!

They drop off the side of the building, then split up. The Mage and The Medic went for the cars and began trying doors while The Face and The Decker went for the fence. The Face and The Decker climbed the fence, disappearing into the alleyways. Meanwhile, The Mage and The Medic found an unlocked car and went off. The Mage used another physical mask to make them look like businessmen, himself a japanese one, The Medic a german one. They get to the gate out and are stopped. The Mage begins babbling at them in Japanese, The Medic in German. When they don't get any results, they floor it out of the gate and to freedom!

Osama would have been so proud of us.

Epilogue: The Face took the money up front to the phillpines. The Decker went underground and came back in a later group. The Medic and The Mage were caught and went to pound-me-in-the-ass prison.

[k1tsune]

[RedmondLarry]

The runners stole a T-bird, and after 15 minutes of flight are far from any landing strip. That's when they notice the blinking "low fuel" light on the dashboard, and remember all the fuel drums they passed while sneaking onto the airfield. They had to land in the NAN wilderness and call someone in Seattle to sneak fuel out to them.

[Ghostly Enigma]

Umm hey J should I go and spill the beans or wait for K1tsune to do it :smokin:

[Talia Invierno]

[moosegod]

contact yes. Runner, no.