How can I make the Barrens dangerous again?, Without resorting to random encounters... Options

[Kyoto Kid]

...two words: environmental hazards.

Near the Redmond Barrens there is Glow City a toxic and radioactive nightmare. There can be chemical dumps awash with all sorts of lovely toxic cocktails (think of the final scene in the original Robocop). Don't want to deal with all the muss & fuss & expense of proper toxic disposal, theres always the Barrens. Also, toxic environments provide a favourable background for toxic magic & spirits.

...how many PCs are have you seen who have a chemsuit hanging in their closet and Hazmat gear in the footlocker? How many want to burden themselves down on a run with Hazardous environments suits and gear outside of a gas mask or respirator? How many take Survival (Toxic or Hazardous Environments) skill?

Besides toxins there is also disease. With little or no healthcare and sanitation a joke in the Barrens, disease would be a huge threat. Have that natural Immunity quality, Cure Disease spell or Immunisation Nanoware? didn't think so. Things as simple as a knife cut form a ganger's dirty blade, a bite from that devil rat, or a gash from tripping and falling in a stagnant puddle of water (I, I think it's water) can come back to haunt the character after the run is over.

...how many PCs have you seen go get a checkup at their friendly local street doc's after a run in the Barrens?

Keep in mind surrounding conditions also impact the success of First aid/Magical Healing and the Barrens would definitely be the worst of the worst there is.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/vegm.gif)

[Siege]

Now mind you, implement too many of these suggestions and the first thing a runner is going to wonder is, "why in the hell does Mr. Johnson want to meet there? And is the payoff going to cover just the operational costs in ammo and hospital stays?" (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

-Siege

[Shrike30]

It'd damn well better. I don't meet anyone in the barrens without a good excuse and at least enough pay for me to throw out my old body armor and replace it (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[fistandantilus4....]

More deadlines - two words : devil rats

I've hit PCs with swarms of devil rats in barrens and sewers areas three times. One time the mage managed to quickly mana ball the lot of them, and the rats died. The other two times, all the PCs were nearly eaten alive. Demon rats are worst.

In essence, don't forget the paracritter love. Gargoyles are also urban predators. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Siege]

Just make sure they're not whererats. I hate those things.

-Siege

[Earlydawn]

How do you guys justify giving a group Decker something to do in the Barrens? It's a little easier for a Rigger.. I'm having flashbacks of the "Be advised, you have a large crowd gathering" line from Black Hawk Down, when the overwatch Little Bird radios in to the Delta team. But Deckers? There's not much to maintain overwatch on..

[Fortune]

Just make sure they're not whererats. I hate those things.

Yep, those invisible lycanthropic rodents sure do suck! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[fistandantilus4....]

But Deckers? There's not much to maintain overwatch on..

Depends on what sort of Barrens area you're talking about. The Realit Hackers have their own matrix hardware set up in TouristVille Redmond for example. Just because folks are in a Z-zone doesn't mean they couldn't have some decent gear they took off a runner's corpse. There could easily be a ganger or three with a smarlink'd SMG or pistol linked to a metalink or even a decent comm with outdated security because they took it off a runner who succumbed to a number of the other hazards listed in this threa. Cyber on gangs liek hte old school Steppenwulfs (sp?) from Prime Runners could have the hardware, with still functional wireless and not enough security built in to it to be vulnerable to a decker. As in a lot of Barrens stuff, you have to keep in mind where the gear and supplies came from, and see what might be exploited. Deckers can and should do a lot more than overwatch.
Then there's always drones too.

[Siege]

How do you guys justify giving a group Decker something to do in the Barrens? It's a little easier for a Rigger.. I'm having flashbacks of the "Be advised, you have a large crowd gathering" line from Black Hawk Down, when the overwatch Little Bird radios in to the Delta team. But Deckers? There's not much to maintain overwatch on..

Overspecialize and you breed in weakness. It's slow death.

S'why Samurai will never, ever really fade away because sometimes it's just you, a gun and a bad attitude.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

S'also why every character needs to drop a couple of points into a backup skill - you won't always have the luxury of determining the field of battle.

-Siege

[b1ffov3rfl0w]

Keep in mind surrounding conditions also impact the success of First aid/Magical Healing and the Barrens would definitely be the worst of the worst there is.
(IMG:style_emoticons/default/vegm.gif)

Nah, bullets flying around you, or being in a burning building, those are the worst of the worst. Dirty badly-lit places where the air smells bad and is kinda greasy = still bad, though. A nasty infection won't show up until later.

[DocTaotsu]

I'd argue that the kinds of things that live in the Barrens are the kinds of things that might show up during the course of an extended run. And yeah, you'd be hard pressed to find anywhere that would qualify as clean enough for 0 penalties on your first aid rolls.

Hey there's an idea, keep the players in the Barrens long enough that they have to eat. Let them make hard decisions about what devil rat dish they're going to eat first (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) . Punish their intestinal system accordingly. No one packed rations or clean water? oooo... guess you're getting a bit peckish and a little dehydrated.

[Fortune]

I feel it is appropriate to again post the reminder that there are lots of people living, some even thriving, in the Barrens.

[Spike]

Starting sometime around the transition from 1st to 2nd Ed I realized that unless the GM was a total Gob, or my players were utterly noobish and unlikely to change (yeah, lets shoot some shit up! It's fun!!! types....)

That any starting shadowrunner who DIDN"T base out of the barrens was a liability. Sure, the GM may never punish players, but for my own suspension of disbelief, until the runners are worth millions per run, and are doing the sort of high level, high profile ops that justify a legitimate, if dangerous, existance...


Operating out of anywhere BUT the barrens is foolish. SINner-ville is for people who have nothing to hide, or people on the job.


Think about it: you do crime for a living, often very violent crime. Half your body is highly illegal and you've got enough guns and explosives to start a small war. Do you REALLY want to risk lonestar busting down your door some night because the neighbors saw you stagger home bloody and strapping?

Not really, and the only place you don't have to worry about it is the Barrens.

Hell, there are enough 'legit' areas of the barrens to serve as 'uptown' style locals for natives, and places where the SINners come to slum and rub elbows to making meeting the Johnson (who ALSO would rather avoid Lonestar scruitiny for the time being) feasable.


Of course, many of these suggestions are just 'facts of life' for barrens based runners, the rest can be used to illustrate that 'just cause you're a native don't mean there are places you wanna go'... areas that typical barrens rats treat as... well.. the barrens.

[DocTaotsu]

I believe in thriving communities in that Barren's, they've been there for years. That doesn't mean you want to drink the water or eat their food. I make the developing world parallel where they might have a huge populations but an average life expectancy of 45 and 60% of new births don't survive to the age of 5. This makes even more sense when you have ork's popping out freakin litters of kids and dying off in their 50's.

[tisoz]

How do you guys justify giving a group Decker something to do in the Barrens?

Have the target be a something like a Corporate Research Center or Unregulated Production Facility.

[paws2sky]

With little or no healthcare and sanitation a joke in the Barrens, disease would be a huge threat.

Going back to the earlier block housing from hell example...

You've spent the last 15 minutes trudging up 5 flights of stairs slick with horrible smelling, unidentifiable sludge, trying for your life not to slip and fall. You reach the next landing without taking and tumble and while taking a quick breather, you hear what sounds like a very loud toilet flushing. As you begin up the next flight, brackish water begins pouring down the stairs...


Having done a little bit of handyman work, its amazing what people who think they might know what they're doing will do. Including (real life experiences here)...

• This guy's siding had apparently caught fire (somehow). It was extinguished without any major structural damage, but a 3-4 foot wide, by 5-6 feet tall section of his house was blackened. So what did he do? He got some particle board, a drill, and some screws. And, I kid you not, he screwed the board to the side of his house to cover the blackened spot. He didn't paint it or anything.
• Another choice one was the guy who decided to save on plumbing costs by routing the drain for his upstairs bathtub to pour into the downstair shower stall...
• I've seen several houses where people ran extension cords instead of using actual electrical wiring. Some of it was stapled to the ceiling. A couple people bothered to use the kind of staple designed to not damage wiring. Some just broke out their Swingline desktop stapler and had a good old time...
• And last but not least, there there was the family(?) of "people" that kept their trash in the utility/broom closet. No trash cans. No trash bags. No bins. They just threw stuff in there. Stuff like mostly empty beer bottles, half eaten containers of Chinese food (crawling with maggots and cockroaches), used feminine hygeine products, and more things I couldn't identify.

That last one literally was the straw that broke the camel's back. I grabbed my tools, walked out of the house without saying a word, and drove off. After showering thoroughly, I called my boss to tell him I quit and where he could mail my check.

[DocTaotsu]

Gragh... Gragh...
*Is rarely glad that he gets to be an EMT in a quiet Japanese prefecture, this is one of those days*

Oh and this is how I typically try to describe the Barren's to my own group:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favela
Like Fortune said, the Barren's have a lot of people living and some thriving on it's shattered streets.

[Blade]

This reminds me of my trip to Mauritania. They may have waste collection in the center of the biggest cities, but in most places there are absolutely no waste collection, not even containers. They just throw things out in the streets and the waste goes wherever the wind pushes it.

But the biggest trouble comes during the rain season. You've got puddles filled with litter everywhere in the streets leading to 2 things:
1. A horrible stench everywhere.
2. Flies, mosquitos, and lot of other bugs thrives there. A few days later, the town is swarming with flies and you don't want to get the diseases the mosquitos carry.
Actually a lot of inhabitants just leave the town for a few days to avoid these.

So I guess that in the rainy city of Seattle (or during the rain season in Hong-Kong), the Barrens should also suffer from that kind of problems.

[Drogos]

Drop Bears (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[DocTaotsu]

When I visited Rio de Janeiro I took an escorted trip through a favela and got some very interesting photos of an entire city within the city. We skirted the very lowest, most legitmate areas but we saw all kinds of things like plumbing, running water (they had dug up a water main and tapped it with a network for scrap pipes), electricty and so forth. These weren't shanty towns, people were building multi story structures using concrete and rebar. They'd leave rebar sticking out in case they wanted to expand their residency/business at a later date. It was surreal how well they were getting along without any sort of state sponsorship. That said I was told that the higher into the hills you go the more like the wild west it becomes getting to those storied heights where the gangs are better armed (and paid) than the cops/military and cops go in fire teams if they go at all.

But yeah, I only see select parts of the Barrens built up to that level, most of it would lack that sort of group organization and you'd get roving trash heaps and plagues of egypt all over the place.

[Kyoto Kid]

Nah, bullets flying around you, or being in a burning building, those are the worst of the worst. Dirty badly-lit places where the air smells bad and is kinda greasy = still bad, though. A nasty infection won't show up until later.

...but lead flying doesn't give penalties or add thresholds to First Aid/Healing DPs (unless your doc/healer's already taken wounds himself). Now the dirty fetid places on the other hand...

Hey there's an idea, keep the players in the Barrens long enough that they have to eat. Let them make hard decisions about what devil rat dish they're going to eat first smile.gif. Punish their intestinal system accordingly. No one packed rations or clean water? oooo... guess you're getting a bit peckish and a little dehydrated.

...another good one to consider.

...how many PCs really purchase Ration Bars & Survival kits with purification tabs with their starting resources or before a run?

Paws2sky. Very appropriate picture. Seen this kind of thing before, and sometimes not necessarily in areas you'd consider a slum.

...and like Blade just mentioned...there'd be bugs lots of bugs (of the non-inhabiting kind). When I lived in New Orleans about the only way to kill the cockroaches was to smash them (usually with something like a heavy boot or hammer) or burn them. Pesticides...? paugh! you could almost hear them laugh at you when you pulled out the can of Raid. And some of these were big I mean 3 - 4 inches long. Think of what another century of adaptation will do.

[Blade]

As for the favelas/shanty towns, there'll be a big difference depending on what services (electricity, water...) are close enough to tap from and what's the education level of the population.
It doesn't take a genius to tap electricity, but if you don't know that electricity is carried in the cables, it won't be easy to do.

[DocTaotsu]

I'll tell you what a half century of adaption did!
*points at the bug spirit in the corner*

Blade: That's certainly true but I tend to think that a lot of the Barren's actually have "real" jobs and what not, they're just too poor to live or work anywhere else. And even in an relatively uneducated population there are still enough smart cookies to figure out some sort of hack. Of course if they're deep in the Barrens and no where need working infastructure, it simply won't matter.

[b1ffov3rfl0w]

Think about it: you do crime for a living, often very violent crime. Half your body is highly illegal and you've got enough guns and explosives to start a small war. Do you REALLY want to risk lonestar busting down your door some night because the neighbors saw you stagger home bloody and strapping?

The idea is that you're a professional criminal, though, not some dingus who freaked out and killed a guy with a tire iron and now has no idea what to do. You've got a safehouse in the Barrens maybe, or in a low-security part of town (that's not the Barrens but is only marginally better), you use the side entrance to the Street Doc's clinic (he's a vet, actually, and manually overwrites the security video for the side door after you leave). Your bloody clothes are sterilized, Sterilized, burned, Fashioned, replaced with vending machine flats, or all of the above.

[b1ffov3rfl0w]

...another good one to consider.

...how many PCs really purchase Ration Bars & Survival kits with purification tabs with their starting resources or before a run?

Paws2sky. Very appropriate picture. Seen this kind of thing before, and sometimes not necessarily in areas you'd consider a slum.

I think this is also a good place for the Survival(Urban) skill.