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[The Jake]

Thanks for the update! My PC's haven't really had a chance to meet Chikao yet. I think I mentioned this before but in Dirty Pretty Money Goldman never made it to the parking ramp since our hacker blew their hacker out of the water. I had Chikao's men tailing Goldman's car, so there was a fight, but Chikao wasn't present. I think I'll lead the PC's to the hotel room, since another car chase scene isn't on the top of my list. It gets a little more complicated then a fight on your feet.

As mentioned, they are weak on magical support, so I might save his 8 edge to use against our pixie mage. It will probably annoy him, but it would make the battle last a bit longer.

Out of curiosity, how did your PC's track him down to the hotel?

Summoned spirits and watchers (basically) - they followed the Yaks from Villamoura's apartment. The entire first track is a cakewalk in a magic heavy party. And yes, he burned all his Edge against the main mage at my table too.

- J.

[Tycho]

I run a GC game since Dec and I found your session write-ups quite helpfull, so I am going to give a little review on my gaming sessions.

I have 3 SCs:
a male drone rigger (dwarf), has a couple of drones and some ware that makes him a competent shooter (cyberarm, wired reflexes 1)
a male oak druide (troll), focussing on spirits but with support spells and good in Melee Combat with his staff.
a female technomancer (human), as networker also the face of the group, but cannot do much else than matrix stuff and face.

We started with Strangers in our House:

[ Spoiler ]

This run was nearly made for the team, since the rigger got to use his spy drones, the technomancer took the matrix surveillance and the mage made himself usefull be sneaking around on the astral plane.
So they did not shadow the 2 targets on foot and did not encounter the Yakuza. Most of the time the team were in an old warehouse watchen the First Nation safehouse. The TM managed to spoof a low livestyle on the warehouse so nobody bothered team there.
The run was going really well, the knew something was odd, as the mage assenced the undercover cop and saw his high quality senseware (I made his Suite have betaware grade). They followed him to the roof of a building from which he climbed across the street to the roof of the nex building to watch the meeting with Blood-of-the-Buffalo.
The runners called Dea and she told them to kill the suspect. Of cause my runners bargained about a better payment, since the were only hired for surveillance. Short of an better posibility to solve the situation Dea argreed to pay them. Then they took the guy out with a spirit, put hin in his car and sunk the car in the harbour.
They did not take the data of the body, but still earned a good payment for some days work.

Body Snatchers:

[ Spoiler ]

This time the team were really outnumbered and outguned, since the is no real combat char in the team. So they faked a DocWagon emergency call involving a highly contagious illness, stunned the team with Spirits, Spells and Stun Weapon and drove the Emergency Unit back to the clinic. On the way, they called in, that the patient had died during the transport, so they tranported the body (played by the troll) into the morgue wearing full hazmat suites to avoid detection. In the morque they sealed of the perimeter by activation a Toxic Security protocol, so that noone can enter the morque until the danger is removed. Then the stunned the coroner and got the body, on the way out (again though the garage, they encountered 2 DW Security officers which they ware able to stun again. The drove away in a ambulance, but disposed it at the next possibility.
They did not kill anybody to avoid getting on DW bad side.
Afterwards they delivered the body to the ghuls, did not fall to their bluff, as expected.
The got to Smalls to save him and got the data, which maked Kaz happy and the team richer.

Between the runs the Technomancer tried Tempo, because of the great high, but was disappointed because there were no great colors as she was told.
Lucky for the player no addiction so far.

next up was Dirty Pretty Money

[ Spoiler ]

As mentioned before, the team hacked every node Mr Goldman used trough his day, since they didn'd find someting to blackmail him, they took the classic lolita approach: The hired to underage protitudes and made a little home video, while Mr Goldman was druged.
After he got the money, he tried to call Lonestar, but the technomancer left a Sprite in his kommlink to redirect any calls to law enforcement to her. So he tried to call some friends, but as he tried to leave with his car, the technomancer used his backdoor an stopped him and then was attacked by the Yakuza hacker, who lost the cybercombat.
So this was really quick solved, but i did not want to trick my players, so they had an easy job this time. They took Goldman and the cash back to Dea and got paid.

The Trouble with Tempo

[ Spoiler ]

The runner brought Dae and Kaz to the safehouse and were odered to bring Caine to Kaz. At Cains Den, the Runner looked arround and discovered the escape exit in the top floor. so the Troll and the rigger broke in throug the window while the technomancer hacked Cains kommlink. Cain catched her and in an cybercombat he knocked the technomancer out, but in the meantime, the troll and rigger got to him, bagged and tagged him and killed his girlfriend. The troll took Cain and the rigger provided cover for the getaway. They encountered some ganger at the rigger's van (the technomancer was inside but unconscious), got in a short fight, in which the van took some damage by ramming the surviving gangers. Kaz had his little chat with Caine and anounced, that the Ragars stole a Tempo delivery und he wants it back.

so the next day the runners wanted to go back to Cains den, but the technomancer was able to trace a call form there to Hard Rain: One of the ganger was going to deliver the Tempo to Hard Rain. So they encountered 5 Rager ganger on motorcycles on the freeway. A Spirit forced an accident on them so it gave a big crash the runner fought their way to the drugs an got away. Kaz gave them 20% of the Tempo as payment, since he had to pay them privatly (70 doses each head).

At the next evening the runner took Dea to the Poker game, Kay gave them the order to look out for the poker players and if anything looks suspicious. They waited outside in the parking lot as a hacker was discovered as he hacked into the riggers car. The techno and the rigger drove him out and tracked his signal to a appartment in sight of the hotel. The technomancer hacked his link and discovered it was a lonestar officer of the organised crime division, who just shut down his kommlink, so she took as much data as she could before she was locked out by the system. Ending up with a couple of police reports on the observation of the Shangri La Casino. The rest of the evening was more or less uneventfull, the waited until 4AM and took Dea back to the safehouse.

The next day the slept late to recover some wounds, since Kaz had no plans for them the troll met with a connection for dinner, the technomancer visited some matrix clubs and the rigger worked on his van. Kaz was going to meet his boss, but he refused to take them with him. While the troll was still out, Kaz returned covered in blood and very furious. Told them to kill all Yakuzas and bring him the haeds of his assassins. The runner tried to calm him down, and after he took a tempo patch, he got better and told them to go to the restaurant, where the meeting took place, find the yakuza and kill them. The runners tried to help him but without first aid skill, they were only able to bound his wounds.
So they drove to the meeting point, found a dead yakuza there and followed a blood trail and used spirit search power to find the yakuza in the Western Hotel. As they arrived they were allready an there way to the Shotozumi Mansion, but the technomancer took over the cars and forced them to a parking space, were a great shutout with Chikao and his man begun. With luck and 3 spirits als allies, they managed to kill the Yakuza and capture Chikau (he had 10G, 9P in the end) and took him to Kaz. Kaz was very generous for this job, paying the team 10k per yakuza men killed/captured

So there we are right now, Kaz asked the runner to acompany him to his boss, to take him to task, but we made a cut there because it was late enough..

I would like to make some more runs before Tokyo Fireworks, because my SCs are not that good in combat and they need some more karma to advance, if they gonna to survive HK and Tokyo, not to mention the 3rd arc. So if anybody has an idea I am open for suggestions.

cya
Tycho

[Jimson]

My group had a lot of fun with Dirty Pretty Money. Our mage used control mind, or control actions (don’t recall off the top of my head) on Mr. Goldman. The hacker drove the car around, and the mage had him snort some novacoke, find a prostitute, snort some novacoke off her butt crack, then do it with her right there on her car and then said, “You are much better than my wife.” All of this was being recorded. Just as they were parking him in his driveway the mage used Alter Mind to make the whole thing seem like it was Mr. Goldman’s own idea. For kicks and giggles, I rolled out the results of Alter Mind…in 2 years he will finally realize that it was not his idea.

As for the karma, just do a few runs and be a little more generous with it. I gave a bunch for Dirty Pretty Money for great role playing, creative thinking, and for achieving their goals in a great way.

[The Jake]

Jimson, its interesting your group took an approach to Dirty Pretty Money not that different to ours. I have to say my players really liked that adventure (minus the gun battle due to the fallout).

One of my players is still struggling with his tempo addiction which has become an interesting element of comedy at our group. He has about 70 patches worth and is making lots of Composure tests and burning Edge to resist.

Tycho, I would consider using the side adventure runs provided prior to doing the final mission in the first track. There's enough there to net the players at least another 12-18 karma if you're using standard karma awards under SR4A.

- J.

[Jimson]

I tried to entice my players with tempo, but none of them wanted to even try it. So I had my mages Talismonger get hooked. Being so close to leaving the states (if they take that route after Tokyo Fireworks), I won't be able to play this up more. Oh well.

I second Jake, Tycho. There are a lot of spin off adventures, but you can always throw your own stuff in between if you like. For instance, one of my players took Borrowed Tim quality, so in between Body Snatchers and Dirty Pretty Money, we ran a little run to get rid of it. Netted them some extra karma and got rid of his tumorous testicles. This was our Pixie mage who would constantly fly around because his nuts were too big and hurt to walk.

[Tycho]

[ Spoiler ]

Yes, I looked them up and maybe I run the game with the priest killing tempo addicts because they are possessed by a demon. thats sound like fun.

I would make something up, but i don't have any good idea.

Maybe if they are in Hongkong, as I understand I have to flesh things out there quite a bit and i find HK more interesting than seattle.

cya
Tycho

[Jimson]

Here's a quick one with little set up at all. I got the idea from someone on the board a year or so ago. It's a beer run in the barrens. It didn't pay out much nuyen, but you can hand out whatever Karma you want. The names were the names of my PC's in the group

[ Spoiler ]

Delroy calls Mikey up to join him at Rock Bottom, a crummy bar in the Barrens. This is a bar Delroy frequents almost daily. Low-blow will be there with Delroy. Around 11:00, the bar tender approaches the Delroy with a very concerned look on his face.

“Hey Del.” <looks around and leans in the say something in Delroy’s ear> “Keep this quiet, but we are almost out of beer. Our delivery didn’t come in today. I’m worried if we run out the patrons will start tearing the place apart. I’ll pay you and your friends 200 nuyen, plus free drinks for a month if you can make a Beer Run for me.”

If they agree:

“Here’s the nuyen for the beer. I need 2 kegs. I’d say you got about an hour before we are out.”

Encounters, use as many as needed/wanted, or as time allows:

1. Robbery: A group of gangers (probably at least 2 per runner), hold up the runners at gun point and attempt to steal their car, coat, money, etc. (See Shakedown). If the runners are in a vehicle, the runners get boxed in by two ganger cars.
2. Gang fight: As the runners show up (or when they are leaving) the liquor store, a gang fight erupts between two groups of gangs and the runners are caught in the middle. Sons of Sauron and the Night Hunters (SR p.50 and Runners Haven p.92)
3. Hell Hound pack looking for their next meal
4. Toxic Sprit - Sludge (Toxic Spirit of Earth or Water) – Street Magic p. 146 (Runners Haven, p. 106)

The Toxic Sprit uses its accident power to cause the vehicle to crash (or blow a tire). When the runners are changing the tire, the Sprit will attack.

5. Ghoul pack, or the 162s (Runners Haven p.93) also looking for their next meal
6. Undercover cop’s cover is blown: An undercover Lone Star agent has his cover blown and is being shot at by several gang members (The Cutters, Runners Haven p. 89-90). If the runners help, the can gain a contact within Lone Star. (See The Rescue)
7. Hate Crime – The Humanis Policlub is rolling around Redmond to blow off some steam. What better way they to attack some meta-humans. They will be driving around in a van. Have the runners make a Perception check to notice they are being followed (see the Shadowing skill). The runners could use this for delivering the kegs.

Tailor the encounters to suit your needs. These are just a few that came to me, or from other sources.

It was kind of funny for #6. I thought this was going to go down pretty good, but as the person (cop) ran out into the street (with people chasing him), the runners just drove around him. The next day in the news was a story about an undercover cop being killed in the line of duty.

Not sure if this helps.

[The Jake]

I tried to entice my players with tempo, but none of them wanted to even try it. So I had my mages Talismonger get hooked. Being so close to leaving the states (if they take that route after Tokyo Fireworks), I won't be able to play this up more. Oh well.

The PC in question was disguised as Goldman and had cameras rolling on him. He wanted to make it look like Goldman was into drugs. He rummaged through his pockets (character sheet) and noticed he had all sorts of stuff from various runs - Jazz, Cram, Red Mescaline, Kamikaze even. He notices that he's also got some Tempo. He figures that he's got a part to play so he pops the lot (minus the Kamikaze of course).

Long story short - after a very twisted escapade with an underage, illegal immigrant Russian hooker and plying both herself and himself with drugs, he experiences an incredible high (the tempo feedback loop) and has the time of his life. He fails an Addiction test and winds up with an Addiction (Tempo, Mild) negative quality.

It has become a bit of a joke in our group atm - he goes out of his way to get his hands on tempo whenever he can. So far he's got around 70 doses of the stuff and he keeps stockpiling it. He's itching to use it but when the urge is really strong he actively fights the urge to take a hit. He keeps thinking about going back to that hooker with his stash for round 2 however...

- J.

[Tycho]

I just read Seattle 72 and in the Underworld Section in the text about the Kenrai-kai:

Still, Oyabun Kosuke Tomizawa has taken the duty of leading the Kenran-kai very seriously, working hard to win over the trust of the suspicious peoples of Puyallup and convince them that his association has their best interests at heart.

Still in GC Oyabun Kosuke Tomizawa dies in Mai 71?

Something is wrong there.

cya
Tycho

[Megu]

OK, this is some necro, but did anybody else do the spinoff run where a killer is targeting tempo users, and it turns out to be some priest mage guy who's trying to exorcise them? How exactly did you have that play out? Is it the Yaje-type spirits burning people for some reason? Is it the dude? I'm a little confused, but my players jumped on that hook from Body Snatchers.