Seriously Pissed Off Yaks, What is the runner team in for? Options

[bibliophile20]

Oh, our game was definitely Chrome, with a hint of Black to it. (Also, while I acknowledge the validity of the point on ritual sorcery, I will say in my defense that I am a newbie GM and keeping all of the options that are available to me in my head while riding herd on five very hard-to-keep-up-with players is something that I'm just learning to do)

Now, as for the point on tracking and the legal system, I am going to point out the following:

The Yaks, at this point, are feeling the effects of a feeding frenzy against them; I haven't been listing it in my report here, but I had been keeping up a running "news ticker" for the players of the effects that their actions had as other runners, bounty hunters, ork gangers, Humanis and Yakuza all clashed against each other, not to mention the chaos that Slamm-O!'s crew of hackers sowed. So I'm going to ask this: In a realistic game, which is what I was going for (which means that the NPCs make mistakes, make inefficient actions, make poor judgment calls and so forth) would you be able to notice that the head is gone from the burned body, get a ritual sample (i.e. drying blood on a piece of pavement or some ashes) from the first dead Yakuza to a magician skilled in the use of ritual magic, and then start an extended ritual that will take hours while the streets are breaking out in chaos against your organization? In the middle of the night, no less.

Anyway, moving on, I believe I had an ambush to describe.

The PCs were about 100 meters away from the Tomino and the cyberzombie. Now, here's the situation with the cyberzombie and the Tomino: they are "on loan" to the Shotozumi-gumi for "field testing". They are not broadcasting and are communicating instead via ultrasound and keeping their telemetry in "black boxes"; they are both under orders to retreat if they become too heavily damaged and are in danger of being destroyed. Additionally, the Oyabun wants the runners alive (my thoughts being that the Yaks could implant them with cranial bombs and then make it abundantly clear to the runners that their continued existence depended solely on Yakuza honor) so both the zombie and the Tomino are equipped with a mix of lethal and non-lethal weaponry.

The runners get one round of free fire at the pair due to the fact that they spent their actions getting out of their totaled rides. Over the next three rounds or so, the action, summed up is more or less as follows:
The cyberzombie keeps on getting his guns ruined or destroyed; he manages to get off a total of 8 shots in this phase of the engagement.
The Tomino fires several gas grenades at the runners, as well as a few flash-bangs, but the runners are either protected against gas or spread out enough that it has minimal effect.
Three of the runners are taken down or out of the fight.
Reaper sends off a call to Slamm-O! to have him crash something, a helicopter, perhaps, into the unholy pair in front of him.
The TMs hijack any and all vehicles on the road and try and ram the pair with them; the sports car misses the cyberzombie and the other Tomino narrowly dodges the other two cars they send careening after it.
Reaper and Billy open up on the pair, Reaper using a Barrett with 4 AV rounds in the mag and an Ares Alpha with HE grenades, Billy using his elephant guns (Merla standing by as a second to reload them for him); using called shots and a shitload of heavy duty ammo, they manage to force the Tomino into a retreat after five rounds.
The cyberzombie, however, is just standing there, taking it (he had 40 dice to soak physical damage; unless the attack did more than 10P, I just bought hits); he's getting P.O.ed, though, because his guns keep on getting destroyed; the last straw was his AK-98 getting reduced to bits and pieces by an HE grenade Levitated and detonated in front of him. He darts for the concrete divider and hops it.

Everyone holds their action, except the PC TM, who manages to hijack an 18-wheeler that had been incoming for the past several rounds; unable to see where the zombie is hiding (ruthenium polymers FTW!) he jackknifes the truck, sending frozen poultry skittering across the pavement and the cyberzombie manages to avoid the oncoming mass of metal by jumping on top of the cab, where he's spotted by Reaper using ultrasound vision. Reaper unloads another grenade at him, which the zombie dodges, leaping off the cab and at them.

Unfortunately, now he's been spotted and Otto, having held his action, manages to grab him with a Levitate spell.

At that point, the cyberzombie starts using lethal ammo, but it's too late, as everyone starts unloading into the cyberzombie, and Otto sends him soaring into the heavens, with the intent of dropping him when he gets high enough. Otto's also spinning and twirling the poor bastard so he can't get off a good shot; he still manages to fire grenades in their direction which do some nice damage and knock down more than a few of the runners.

At that point, Billy lands the killing shot, using Edge; the cyberzombie has to soak 18P damage... and fails. As they're lowering the body back to the ground, a helicopter slams into it, courtesy of Slamm-O!; both the copter and the zombie are reduced to a buncha of very very tiny flaming bits scattered over an area almost a quarter mile in diameter.

The team sighs in relief and starts packing up and attending to the wounded; Slamm-O! confers with Reaper and tells him that they won't be able to keep the Oyabun contained much longer. The team burns rubber and heads for the Oyabun's gated community, which is currently blacked out and being evacuated. The team looks at the setup and the odds and decides to go for the unsubtle route:
Load two of the cars they've "liberated" in the last few hours with a ton of explosives each, code up a pair of high rating machine sprites to drive and send one into the garage and one through the front door...

One mushroom cloud, one imploded house, multiple secondary and tertiary explosions later, the PCs make contact with the Sepola Ring, get smuggled out of Seattle; they send the footage of the Oyabun's house going up like firework to all of the major news networks based in Seattle, and KSAF gets the frozen heads delivered to them a short while later.

And, with that, my first RPG campaign finished.

[Fuchs]

Lots of dead civilians (in all those vehicles). Hopefully slamm-o gets nailed by some relative's hired shadowrunner (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Spike]

two tons of explosives?

Seriously, I see all sorts of comments like this on Dumpshock. Is having TWO FRICKIN' TONS! Of explosives ready to hand just... normal?

I mean.. a few hundred kilos/pounds is pretty damn extreme. Having that much ready to hand (never mind that its both rules legal, and by the book... affordable) should make the runners a walking target for every wanna be armsdealer in the entire metroplex, every 'player' (not PLAYER)... and everyone with a grudge against someone else pretty much. I mean, they probably have 90% of all the High Ex available in the entire city just about... right?

Unless they make it at home from fertilizer that is.



That aside, if you hadn't closed with 'that ended my campaign' I would have pointed out the extreme likelihood of the Oyabun surviving. Carbombs, while pretty and reasonably effective, are hardly precision instruments. And I can gaurantee that just about any reasonably secure building (including paranoid oyabun mansions in Bellvue) have some basic precautions in place to mitigate just that sort of tactic..

But hey, sounded like your players had a blast, so its all good.

[bibliophile20]

Unless they make it at home from fertilizer that is.

That's what they did. And they spelled it out, in detail, what they were doing, during the manufacturing process.

But hey, sounded like your players had a blast, so its all good.

Literally.

[martindv]

Your players are monsters.

There. I've said it.

[bibliophile20]

Your players are monsters.

There. I've said it.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

I just called a few of them and told them that you posted this. Their reaction?

Yes. Yes we are. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Yeah? So?

They're very much amused.

[mfb]

for those of you watching from home, please note that almost any attempt to acquire that much fertilizer on that short a notice in a game i ran would bring down all sorts of national, corporate, and metroplex anti-terrorist forces down on the runners. which would tip off the Yaks, since they probably have informants in several of those forces listening for reports of just such activities.

[Guardian]

One mushroom cloud, one imploded house, multiple secondary and tertiary explosions later, the PCs make contact with the Sepola Ring, get smuggled out of Seattle; they send the footage of the Oyabun's house going up like firework to all of the major news networks based in Seattle, and KSAF gets the frozen heads delivered to them a short while later.

Pure poetry. I'd pay to see that adventure in the theater.

[bibliophile20]

for those of you watching from home, please note that almost any attempt to acquire that much fertilizer on that short a notice in a game i ran would bring down all sorts of national, corporate, and metroplex anti-terrorist forces down on the runners. which would tip off the Yaks, since they probably have informants in several of those forces listening for reports of just such activities.

Tried that. They spread their purchases out over the course of a week, and didn't buy more than one to two hundred pounds from any one location... and, oh yeah, had the infiltration adept or the hippie Wiccan elf make the purchases, so it wasn't the same face at multiple locations. And they made the purchases with cash/cert. credstick transactions or IDs that they were about to ditch anyway.

[kzt]

for those of you watching from home, please note that almost any attempt to acquire that much fertilizer on that short a notice in a game i ran would bring down all sorts of national, corporate, and metroplex anti-terrorist forces down on the runners. which would tip off the Yaks, since they probably have informants in several of those forces listening for reports of just such activities.

Yes indeed. If you trying to order hundreds of pounds and are not buying on an existing account from an agricultural firm and and loading it in a truck from there, there is something totally wrong. Most people who are legitimate buy a small amount (like 1 bag) or huge amounts (tens or hundreds of tons).

And as Joel Henry Hinrichs found, many places that once would have ammonium nitrate don't carry it any longer. Hinricks had to blow himself up with TATP instead.

And people will call the cops.

http://atlanticville.gmnews.com/News/2004/...t_Page/005.html
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/Midwest/08/05/chicago.arrest/

[martindv]

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

I just called a few of them and told them that you posted this. Their reaction?



They're very much amused.

I can't say I'm surprised.

I'm not averse to doing awful things in game, but I'm just... They were about as discrete as a Michael Bay film. That's a giant no-no in my view to the point of appalling.

[knasser]

Wow! Just wow! Bibliophile - that was absolutely great!

And they beat up my Tomino! Again, wow! Please relay my congratulations to them. I'll have to work on a new version now. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

It sounds like you and your players had great fun. Newbie GM, my arse! Bibs (if I may call you that), you are a fully fledged GM and let none tell you otherwise.

And again, thank you for taking the time to write all this up and post it. This has been one of the most entertaining threads in ages. The levitating, spinning cyberzombie is a great mental image.

EDIT: And I'm glad it had a happy ending, too. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

-Khadim.

[bibliophile20]

Wow! Just wow! Bibliophile - that was absolutely great!

And they beat up my Tomino! Again, wow! Please relay my congratulations to them. I'll have to work on a new version now. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

It sounds like you and your players had great fun. Newbie GM, my arse! Bibs (if I may call you that), you are a fully fledged GM and let none tell you otherwise.

And again, thank you for taking the time to write all this up and post it. This has been one of the most entertaining threads in ages. The levitating, spinning cyberzombie is a great mental image.

EDIT: And I'm glad it had a happy ending, too. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

-Khadim.

*snort* I think the Tomino soaked something in the range of 80P damage before it had to retreat, and alot of those shots were APDS or anti-vehicular rounds from a Barrett. And the thing could have killed all of them in the first round of combat if not for the Oyabun's order that they "must be taken alive if practical!" One rocket into the van carrying two tons of things that go boom and... yeah. That would have been it.

And it was my first campaign, and I did make alot of novice mistakes, so I'm still a newbie GM... but one with some promise and some talent, I hope. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) (and call me Joe if you need a knickname; Bibs sounds like something that gets food dropped on it (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) )

And I'm glad to have entertained you, and the image of this giant figure in pitted, dented, smoking armor, spinning like a psychotic top through the air, is indeed entertaining. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Kremlin KOA]

Your players are monsters.

There. I've said it.

No, their characters are monester, the jury is still out on the players

for those of you watching from home, please note that almost any attempt to acquire that much fertilizer on that short a notice in a game i ran would bring down all sorts of national, corporate, and metroplex anti-terrorist forces down on the runners. which would tip off the Yaks, since they probably have informants in several of those forces listening for reports of just such activities.

mfb, If i were to acquire that much fertilizer for one of your games I would proceed to do so IRL wsith you taggintg along first. Then I would turn it over to the feds with a full diary including how they need to toughen up their security systems. Worse it would all e legal and I would be able to make a fortune of the interviews alone

[martindv]

Given their replies, I'm pretty confident that the players are indeed monsters as well.

[Jhaiisiin]

Or they realize it's a game, and thus don't *need* to care about the actions within it. That's the nice part about role-playing games. You can be someone or something you can't in real life. For instance: I'm not a stuck up, egotistical asshole with a belief I'm one of the Highborn members of my race, but one of my characters is.

[mfb]

man, Kremlin, you are such a complete fruitcake.

[Kremlin KOA]

man, Kremlin, you are such a complete fruitcake.

Sanity is a delusion shared by the masses

And more seriously. I find it amusing to see how much more effective the police are in RPGs than IRL
As to the fertilizer thing in my home city (which is way smaller than Seattle.) there are about 50 or so stores that sell garden supplies. Buying a pair of 20kg bags of fertilizer is not something that triggers the radar. 40kg x 50 stores = 2 tons of homemade boomex.

I used to work in security, it is easy to see the holes. As to the feds thing.In Australia there is a thing called crimestoppers which works with state and fed cops and gives rewards to people who do things to help police. They would pay for info on how to tighten security on such things.

Oh and MFB, you never did answer myh question. Yakuza vs Storm Botnet, who would win in your campaigns?

[Adarael]

Bibliophile, the next time your players make two tons of explosives, mobilize shadowrunners, gangers, and thugs against a major metropolitan syndicate?

Make damn sure something like "Jet City Woman" by Queensryche - or ANY Queensryche - is playing. Because that is so 80s action movie it hurts.

And I mean that in a good way.

[martindv]

I'm not a stuck up, egotistical asshole with a belief I'm one of the Highborn members of my race

Isn't that a requirement to post on message boards?

I don't understand people who play Shadowrun with characters that have no sense of subtlety or discretion, or basically act like they are in a bad action movie. Would you rather I just call their PCs idiots? Maybe the players, too, if this was the best idea they could come up with.

man, Kremlin, you are such a complete fruitcake.

I'd say braggart myself.

Maybe Internet Tough Guy.

[toturi]

I don't understand people who play Shadowrun with characters that have no sense of subtlety or discretion, or basically act like they are in a bad action movie. Would you rather I just call their PCs idiots? Maybe the players, too, if this was the best idea they could come up with.

Precisely because it is called Shadowrun. If you wanted subtle, it would have been Shadow-walk or Shadowcrawl.

I really do not understand why people use the name of the game to try to negatively comment on other people's playstyles.

[Guardian]

I don't understand people who play Shadowrun with characters that have no sense of subtlety or discretion, or basically act like they are in a bad action movie. Would you rather I just call their PCs idiots? Maybe the players, too, if this was the best idea they could come up with.

You know what they say, "desperate times call for high explosives."

[bibliophile20]

Isn't that a requirement to post on message boards?

I don't understand people who play Shadowrun with characters that have no sense of subtlety or discretion, or basically act like they are in a bad action movie. Would you rather I just call their PCs idiots? Maybe the players, too, if this was the best idea they could come up with.


I'd say braggart myself.

Maybe Internet Tough Guy.

Alright, everyone, I suggest we stop feeding the troll and get back to the topic at hand. (and, yes, martin, you are trolling. You are insulting me, my friends and Kremlin with your attitude and I see no reason to indulge you in it any further and allow this thread to descend into name calling)

I know that I made mistakes with the ritual tracking issue (which is semi-debatable, but I won't deny that keeping the heads was a foolish move, because burning the bodies doesn't get rid of ritual samples).

I know that I could have handled the part where they get the explosives with more finesse, but the thing of it is, I had no problems with them getting a few tons of fertilizer piecemeal from every garden shop in the city, mostly because I knew that they needed alot of the stuff to have any real effectiveness. It was when they said that they were going to refine it into nitro and then stabilize it that alarm bells started going off in my head, but by then it was too late.

An issue that arose from my reporting of events is that I didn't report each and every detail that occured, leading to some misconceptions. For one, as I put it to my players, at one point, judging by the traffic on ShadowSea, roughly a quarter of the city's runners that are active on the boards are either on the team's side or rooting for them, a quarter are out hunting for them to try for the bounties, a small quarter is ambivalent and a largish quarter must be out on runs or at parties tonight, because they're not chiming in. That's a far cry from the presumption that some people had, that all of the runners in the city were rooting for the PC team.

[kzt]

It was when they said that they were going to refine it into nitro and then stabilize it that alarm bells started going off in my head, but by then it was too late.

Huh? That's going to require some mighty specialized hardware and skills. I though they were just making an ANFO slurry. While it does take some skill to make an effective ANFO bomb and have it blow up when scheduled and high-order without tests it takes a lot less skill than trying to turn ammonium nitrate into something else.

[siel]

Sounds like a great game. Good job.

And if they body is burned to ashes, it might be hard for them to even know that the players have a head?