Christmas themed runs, Any ideas? Options

[Chrysalis]

Greets,

As it is the giving time of December. Does anyone have ideas for Christenmass runs?

-Chrysalis

[BlueMax]

I promise to post after tonight's game. My players read Dumpshock.

[Sir_Psycho]

Set fire to an orphanage?

[Black Jack Rackh...]

I had one in which the face of Jesus was seen in a soyburrito at a stuffer shack in the Barrens. Every whack job and religious nut came out of the woodwork just to look at it.

Meanwhile the runners were hired to find some data in the ruins of a decrepit building in the Barrens. I think you can guess where the entrance was.

It was especially fun when a free spirit showed up on the scene to feed off the free karma being given out by the worshipers.

Maybe that could get you started.

Mark

[Ancient History]

Beware the fruitcake.

[Morrigana]

Er, I apologize if I'm being presumptive in posting this...

How about pitting the runners up against a Santa-themed gang? Make them fight awakened reindeer, Santas cybered to the max, APCs designed to look like giant sleighs, and a combination of mages and spirits that all are dressed like elves.

[BlueMax]

Er, I apologize if I'm being presumptive in posting this...

How about pitting the runners up against a Santa-themed gang? Make them fight awakened reindeer, Santas cybered to the max, APCs designed to look like giant sleighs, and a combination of mages and spirits that all are dressed like elves.

I love the awakened reindeer.

[Chrysalis]

I love the awakened reindeer.

Can they use AK-97s?

[BlueMax]

Can they use AK-97s?

I believe the one called Rudolph prefers "beam" weapons. Nobody tell the Neon Samurai.

[hyzmarca]

The UCAS Air Force detects and shoots down Santa. A large chunk of his sleigh, including his bag of toys and a list detailing where they should be delivered, crashes into the PCs' hideout. The place stinks of burning reindeer flesh and the Metroplex Guard is immediately dispatched to the crash site, so the PCs have no choice but to abandon their safehouse. The GM should strongly encourage them to take the bag and the list with them, preferably delivering the toys to children around Seattle.

Santa himself is nowhere to be found. Before his sleigh went down, he jumped off and landed on one of the fighters that shot him down, driving his claymore weapon focus though the cockpit and killing the pilot before setting the drone autopilot to crash into the White House at Mach 3 and vanishing. The PCs are made aware of this via newsfeeds depicting the carnage; President Colloton was offsite at the time of the impact, but most of her staff died in the attack.

Some point later in the session a news report from the PCs' former safehouse shows a couple dozen Metroplex Guard members with their chests torn open and their internal organs ripped out and replaced with coal. There is no actual footage of the slaughter and authorities remain unaware of what actually did it, though forensic specialists are being called it.

The actual killer is the motherfragging Krampus, who has been unleashed to retrieve Santa's toybag and ensure its contents get delivered. It is an absurdly strong faerie creature (treat as a spirit without an Astral Form and with the ability to move bodily to the metaplanes or from with a single complex action). It wields a birch rod to punish the naughty (does stun that cannot overflow) and has sharp claws to punish the wicked (does physical damage).

The Krampus will eventually catch up with the PCs no matter what they do. If they are attempting to deliver the toys then the Krampus will be on their side, protecting them from any threat with its life. If they are not, however, the Krampus will attempt to kill them. If they dumped the toybag at some point it will try to capture a PC to interrogate.

When the night is over Santa himself will show up. If the PCs delivered the toys then Santa will present them with toys of their own, expensive high-availability weapons and equipment tailored specifically for them, possibly including things like heavy weapons, portable anti-tank missile launchers, maxed-out comlnks, milspec armor, 'ware, high-rating foci, and etc. One per character. If they chose to be greedy and were forced to kill the Krampus in self-defense, then they'll fight Santa instead, and he'll wield those very same toys against them.

[Heath Robinson]

A very brief primer on a small number of things for the holiday season.

• Whatever you do, don't ever dress up as anything. People pay far more attention to that kind of person (wonder why LARPers are so reviled? Now you know).
• If you do have to dress up for whatever reason, do it as one of the assistants. If I have to tell you why, you're better off working as one of these guys.
• Christmas rush: new products, less QC.
• Christmas is one of the bad holidays. Joyboys (and girls, too, I guess) see their own kind of christmas bonus, as do other parts of the street level service sector.
• Elf jokes got old 60 years ago. Real old. Old enough that your elf comrades might go medieval on your ass if you try one.
• A Troll santa is kinda cool. A Troll santa with a minigun is awesome.
• Remember, some of the folks celebrating one of those other holidays are Mages. Behave.
• The only kind of Toxic that doesn't care about Christmas are Sterilists. Man, I love those guys.
• Humanis likes to celebrate Christmas with their traditional troll beatings. Pack your festive heat, and make sure it's striped like a candy cane.
• CorpSec is already trying to go medieval on your ass, cracking elf jokes at them is alright.
• The only thing funnier than Humanis goons being beaten up by a Troll dressed as Santa is his suped up sleigh ploughing through a pack of Ancients.

[Ryker]

I once had the Runners extract a retired exec from an upper class old folks home.
They went in and out over the frozen lake the place was located on, since the security
wasn't quite as good on the ice as anywhere else. It was a short scenario, so everything
went pretty slick, including handing over the target on the Nuremberg Christmas Market.
(I changed a summer based scenario to the Winter season, because I liked the drawing
of metahumans visiting that event in Germany in the shadows so much). That location
was choosen, because it tends to get a bit crowded.
Some pictures you could use, if you don't own the book:

http://www.augsburger-allgemeine.de/cms_me...g_nuernberg.jpg
http://www.nestor-hotels.de/var/nestor/sto...rg_1024x768.jpg
http://images.google.de/images?ndsp=18&...tart=0&sa=N

Few other things:
- a short skidoo race over the lake wouldn't hurt
- the old fellow likes to listen to his "old" music and is a bit chatty: play "wham - last christmas" and other todays music your players don't like in the
background, have him talk about concerts and things from todays bands your doesn't like....
- maybe they forgot to extract the guys medication when they picked him up
- if your runners don't work abroad, place the christmas market on saeder-krupp grounds as a publicity event (lax security since it's open to the public),
including snow canons if the seattle weather doesn't want to deliver.
- serve fruitcake and flavoured hot red wine, for translated recipes of the latter can be arranged (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Chrysalis]

The Draco Foundation is looking to hire a group of magic oriented runners to travel to the Free State of Thuringia in central Germany.

It has come to the attention of the Draco Foundation of a group terrorizing Thuringian villages since Christmas Day. They arrive under cover of heavy fog and go through each household of the village. Local authorities have found coins of silver stamped with unknown symbols among the survivors possessions, while the victims have had their internal organs removed and replaced with straw or pebbles. As the organs have not been found it is assumed that the group takes the internal organs with them. So far they have attacked one village a day. A child has been abducted by the group and two children were identified among them.

The Vatican has dispatched investigators to the region.

An eyewitness has described the group as being:
"...the hunters were black and large and terrifying, and their hounds were all black and broad-eyed and terrifying, and they rode on black horses and black goats... They were led by an elven woman wearing all white."

The Draco Foundation suspects the group may be located in or near Hörselberg. Strong magical and investigative skills needed.

Keywords: Krampus, Perchta, Weisse frauen, Frau Holle, Wild Hunt

Edit: I think this would make a solid adventure, but wanted other input. Do you think mythology awakened be a good choice for a magically themed adventure in Shadowrun?

[Morrigana]

Bwehehe!

Ares Macrotechnology is currently looking for a team of runners to help deal with a saboteur. A shipment of Ares Alphas that were on their way to the Ares facility in Seattle disappeared en route. What arrived instead was a shipment of coal. From drone surveillance, Ares has come to suspect that a fat man in a red suit, driving a sleigh led by reindeer, is responsible for the theft of the weapons.

Ares Macrotechnology has stated that any runner group which successfully retrieves the stolen shipment of weaponry will be massively rewarded by the corporation.

[Snow_Fox]

Er, I apologize if I'm being presumptive in posting this...

How about pitting the runners up against a Santa-themed gang? Make them fight awakened reindeer, Santas cybered to the max, APCs designed to look like giant sleighs, and a combination of mages and spirits that all are dressed like elves.

A street gang known as the santas is truly twisted and evil. I love it!

We regularly have done xmas themed games since our D&D days when we had to get the magic sled engine to santas workshop.

Other adventures have been get the ulitmate gift for some corpers kid (yeah, think of it, a run to get a cabbage patch kid/tickle me elmo /whatever.

destroying a warehouse full of toxic coffee cakes (yeah who could tell)

getting a celebrity to a public tree lighting

this year we got really weird. hired by a Johnson to find the corp ceo who was grabbed after the Macy's Thanskgiving parade.we went from New york, to Copenhagen to Lapland only to find out the CEO was St. Nick and he'd been grasbbed in an attmepted "corp take over" by Black Peter. I don't know how we didn't see this one coming. Mr. Johnson was an elf!

[BookWyrm]

The fruitcake is a lie!

[the_dunner]

I do a Christmas gaming session every year. My favorite Shadowrun one was as follows:

-Mr. Johnson, an old man, contacts the team for a bodyguarding assignment on Christmas Eve. He's been visited by the ghost of an old business partner, warning him that he would be visited later that night by three spirits. He haggles fiercely over the price with them, and they end up a bit underpaid for the night's work, but it's Christmas Eve, and he's the only game in town.

-On the way to the condo, I made it a point to explicitly mention several begging squatters in front of the building.

-The team sets up some powerful wards, and thoroughly over the top armaments in Mr. Johnson's condo.
The condo furnishings are obviously quite expensive, but outdated. The condo is also kept quite cold, with the heat turned down to 50-ish Fahrenheit, as Mr. Johnson is too cheap to keep it any warmer. Once the defenses are in place, Mr. Johnson pulls the curtains shut to his canopy bed and goes to sleep.

-Three spirits appear, over the course of the night. All are very powerful spirits of man. The first is angelic in appearance. The second is a jolly looking human dressed in red and green robes. The third is wraithlike. After each visit, Mr. Johnson complained that they made far too much noise, and expresses his annoyance that they woke him from their sleep. He progressively cuts their pay as things continue.

-When morning arrives, the team collects their smaller than expected payment. Upon exiting the building, they see that several of the squatters from the evening before have frozen to death in the streets outside.

[The Jake]

I like the idea of a Santa gang and I like the idea of Santa being behind an Ares shipment theft. Oh and a troll Santa with a minigun.

So lets combine it.

Eyewitnesses report that Santa and a group of 'little elves' (dwarves with plastic ears?) were seen hijacking the truck and making off with the gear. Through their connections they find out someone is trying to fence a large volume of Ares gear and gives them the location of the drop.

The drop winds up being a massive showdown between "Mrs Claws" (fully cybered female street sam) "Santa" (troll rigger with gunnery/piloting skills for the sleigh) and elves which are a local dwarven gang recruited to assist. Throw in some mages for good measure.

Not sure how to squeeze in Awakened reindeer but if you can fit that in, you're good to go.

- J.

[ShadowPavement]

The fruitcake is a lie!

Dang! I know way way too much about fruit cake since I have a mother-in-law who was a high school home economics teacher for 30+ years. Apparently there are two categories of cake: those made with rum, and those made without. In a competition they would each type would be judged separately.........

I'll stop now before the my dork-quotient gets any higher.

[Hagga]

The UCAS Air Force detects and shoots down Santa. A large chunk of his sleigh, including his bag of toys and a list detailing where they should be delivered, crashes into the PCs' hideout. The place stinks of burning reindeer flesh and the Metroplex Guard is immediately dispatched to the crash site, so the PCs have no choice but to abandon their safehouse. The GM should strongly encourage them to take the bag and the list with them, preferably delivering the toys to children around Seattle.

Santa himself is nowhere to be found. Before his sleigh went down, he jumped off and landed on one of the fighters that shot him down, driving his claymore weapon focus though the cockpit and killing the pilot before setting the drone autopilot to crash into the White House at Mach 3 and vanishing. The PCs are made aware of this via newsfeeds depicting the carnage; President Colloton was offsite at the time of the impact, but most of her staff died in the attack.

Some point later in the session a news report from the PCs' former safehouse shows a couple dozen Metroplex Guard members with their chests torn open and their internal organs ripped out and replaced with coal. There is no actual footage of the slaughter and authorities remain unaware of what actually did it, though forensic specialists are being called it.

The actual killer is the motherfragging Krampus, who has been unleashed to retrieve Santa's toybag and ensure its contents get delivered. It is an absurdly strong faerie creature (treat as a spirit without an Astral Form and with the ability to move bodily to the metaplanes or from with a single complex action). It wields a birch rod to punish the naughty (does stun that cannot overflow) and has sharp claws to punish the wicked (does physical damage).

The Krampus will eventually catch up with the PCs no matter what they do. If they are attempting to relieved the toys then the Krampus will be on their side, protecting them from any threat with its life. If they are not, however, the Krampus will attempt to kill them. If they dumped the toybag at some point it will try to capture a PC to interrogate.

When the night is over Santa himself will show up. If the PCs delievered the toys then Santa will present them with toys of their own, expensive high-availability weapons and equipment tailored specifically for them, possibly including things like heavy weapons, portable anti-tank missile launchers, maxed-out comlnks, milspec armor, 'ware, high-rating foci, and etc. One per character. If they chose to be greedy and were forced to kill the Krampus in self-defense, then they'll fight Santa instead, and he'll wield those very same toys against them.

I like it. Santa's initiate grade must be hideous. Mine was much simpler. "The pcs must deliver toys from Horizon (Branded, of course) to all the good girls and boys in the barrens. Horizon knows if they are sleeping, knows if they are awake, knows if they've been bad or good and doesn't tell the PCs so leaves them to do research and pays them depending on how many they got correct, and three of the presents have been replaced by Humanis supporters with VITAS spreading food, HMHVV (Ghoul strain) mechanima toys and a chunk of high explosives."

Everyone loves Horizon. Gary Cline is everybody's friend!

[TheOOB]

A new, very expensive, very low-production toy(1,000 or less) is coming out this holiday season and a rich corper promised their child the toy, only to have their contact fail to get one. Now his little daughter will never talk to him again if he doesn't get this toy, but luckily he knows of a collector who managed to get their hands on it, that's where the runners come in.

Beware the exotic animal collection and security devices that look like Christmas decorations.

[pbangarth]

A corp scientist goes mad and decides to take revenge on his bullying, cheap masters by destroying their corporate headquarters.

He decides the best way is to steal Santa's bag (from his hideaway in the Trans-Polar Aleut), actually a tesseract of enormous capacity and sets up a machine to turn it inside out in the basement of the building, thereby sucking in the entire building like a black hole.

The runners are hired by a rotund, old man in dark glasses to retrieve the bag before it is ... too late. With questioning, the old Johnson (who refuses to identify himself) lets on that the bag for all intents and purposes -would- act like a black hole, sucking up a large part of the planet and opening rifts to places best left unopened.

Depending on how long the runners take to get the bag, increasingly strange effects begin to happen, and nasty (Horror-like?) spirit-thingies appear and must be dealt with. Also gravity effects begin to warp.

Upon success, the old Johnson is pleased to pay the runners, even giving a bonus to any elves in the party... rosy cheeks that glow slightly and increase CHA by 1 when dealing with children.

Peter

[Jhaiisiin]

One of our GM's once ran a game where our team was approached by 2 separate johnsons for directly competing jobs. Both were along the lines of wetwork. The first was the CEO of an unknown company who needed us to put down a revolt in his factory. The other was a member of the Elven Liberation Front, asking us to put down the CEO and take a powerful focus off of him.

I can't remember what the acronym for the unknown company stood for, but it spelled out S.A.N.T.A. Basically the Elves were tired of Santa working them to the bones, while Santa wanted things to stay as they were. Completely player decision on who to help. And strangely, it took about half the session before any of us clicked on what the acronym spelled.

The focus on Santa was a massive power focus called "The Spirit of Christmas." It's a sort of get-out-of-jail-free card for the PC's. Once they take it, they're healed full across the board, even smelling of gingerbread, that way everything is all peachy keen. Of course, they could just put down the revolt and let christmas happen as normal...

We had a blast with it.

[Zen Shooter01]

The PCs are hired by a rich corporate executive, or media personality, or socialite, to sabotage the Christmas party of a rival, causing the rival to lose face. Maybe by putting something in the food that will make victims vomit.

The PCs are hired to steal the certified credsticks that have been collected for a Christmas charity drive.

The PCs are hired to extract a target from a company Christmas party.

A blizzard and power failure pins the PCs in a particular building, where they are besieged by elf gangers, or ghouls, or vampires, or ghosts, or insect spirits, or maybe an unhinged street samurai with bad childhood memories of Christmas. Dawn on Christmas day brings an end to it.

The PCs are hired by a corporate executive or research scientist to deliver Christmas presents to his children. His work keeps him isolated in a secret location, at least until after the holidays. Another team of runners tries to intercept the presents, believing that the packages contain important data or material related to the man's classified work.

[Morrigana]

The runners are hired to retrieve a package. They are not told what it is, only that they will recognize it because it is wrapped in green paper with a yellow bow on it. The package itself is inside the home of an important researcher for Saeder-Krupp. The target and his family will not be home, and security for the target location is light.

When the PCs break in, they discover the package fairly quickly... it's under the Christmas tree. And, if they check it, it has a card, indicating it's a present for the house owner's son. Not only that, but if they open it, they will find the toy inside is just a current-model toy train, of which there are dozens currently sitting on the shelf of the nearest toy store. They're left with the dilemma of spoiling Christmas for one child or not getting paid.