Damn. They did it to me again., Just when you think they've stopped. Options

[Siege]

Although it's kinda tough to prove how powerful a spell a wiz knows until/unless magical witnesses provide testimony to the fact. :grinbig:

-Siege

[GunnerJ]

And especially hard if the Awakened witness doesn't even believe in "Force" ratings. One of my shaman characters laughs at what he calls "that mathmatical hermit nonsense."

[Siege]

[Jason Farlander]

Any time you cast a spell, it leaves an astral signiature. This astral signiature can be read and, with enough successes, the force of the spell can be determined from it. If the spell or its use is determined to be illegal, you can be astrally tracked and identified. If you're not careful (or if you dont have time to erase the astral sig and cant easily hide behind a ward) this can be a rather serious problem... one that tends to be ignored or forgotten, in my experience.

Lone Star doesnt care whether you *believe* in force ratings, just as they dont care whether you *believe* that murder is wrong.

[Crusher Bob]

I think he was talking more about the witnesses. Mr Shaman (especially when his bank account is now swollen by a 'mathematical' amount) might have trouble on the stand saying whether Mr Runner's spell was above force 2, after all he dosen't even believe that there is a mystical energy the controls his destiny... :rotfl:

[mfb]

they bought... metahumans? from where?

[CanvasBack]

I don't know, it sounds like this group has big plans. Let them do what they want, just enforce all the rules and such. Eventually, no matter what word is going to leak on the streets about what they're doing and they'll either be visited by a corp strike team or the subject of a joint Lone Star/FBI task force, slavery being a major no-no in the UCAS. At this point, the game has become how far do they take this and do they know when to cut and run...

[Adarael]

[The Synthcat]

A story...

One of my otaku character got *real* powerful ( too powerful for anyone's sake, in fact ) and had quite a lot of people - weaker otakus mostly - almost religiously obeying her. My DM let that character have them, but he did make her life quite a chore ! Of course, the ( matrix-based, in my case ) firepower and increased-income ( in my case, through btl deals ) possibilities were huge. But then, as time went by, she got the interest of waayyy too many ruthless power-monger.

It started with the Yaks ( with whom I chose to deal with ), then other otakus and deckers. One of 'her' pet-otaku was the child of some high-level exec of a med-sized computer-based company. Needless to say, daddy was highly interested.

Soon, she needed to orchestrate runs to keep everyone happy and to keep on increasing ( and securing ! ) her power. She almost got killed so many times I forgot. I found out she needed a mainframe ( I stole UCAS online's - the local equivalent of AOL ! ), then another, then she was afraid to get geeked because she had them... She got Pax and Dodger's attention when I started getting really serious with somekind of an Expert-System program ( previously Seader-krupp's )- that was what the mainframes were for.

Again, before I knew it, guess what, she was stuck in the arcology, with Pax having insisted to have her around... and I know for sure that she has Seader-krupp agents coming for her, along with Eran's ( It seems like I caught his attention too ).

The point : let them have their little power-trip : what comes up must come down. If you play your part well, they'll end up either making mistakes or getting noticed by people that :
1) will see them as a threat ( for their own power... )
2) will want to manipulate them to their own ends ( in my character's case, just about everyone... )
3 ) betrayal happens so often ! ( even between three friends... if you get what I mean )
4 ) two words : Murphy's law.

[Xirces]

I'd like to see this run - a bit of ingenuity never hurt anybody. Let them have fun (and you enjoy as well), but ultimately you and they know there's gonna be a big fall-out which will cascade into a whole new set of runs re-establishing themselves and their reputations.

[CoalHeart]

To answer the questions on where they Purchased the Metahumans they got them from the SiNless masses. Processessed by Tanamous. So anyone who would of cared couldn't do much about it.

The Personafix Chips were purchased by the Face using a level 2 Contact in the Benraku Parlor industry. So had access to good quality personafix of anytype even custom design. Very little chance of being faulty. (I am considering this as a good plot hook down the line if they abuse thier people)


A few things I did to them is give each of thier new 'employees' a very strong personality of thier own. They take things too litterally.

So far they've only just done a few small things with thier new army. They've secured and cleaned up about 2 city blocks worth of the NYC area. And started using thier goons to patrol and protect the people around and keep gangers away.

Funniest moment so far has been.

The runners head into the meet. They bring 2 of thier goons (one drives and another gunman incase) and give them explicit instructions to defend the car while they're away. The team heads in and starts the meet. They hear a gunshot outside, the sammy runs out to check what happened. He finds Goon B shot in the hand, and Goon A standing there with his gun pointed at Goon B shouting 'Step Away from the car' Apparently while the team was away, a bird crapped on the car. Goon B wiped the crap off with his hand. Goon A thought goon B was damaging the paint so shot his hand.

Took the mage a few seconds to patch it up. The goons were given much more detailed instructions the second time around.



So far they haven't done much with thier army. They have a warehouse HQ that is patrolled and kept up to spec by them. I'll keep everyone posted.

[Cain]

I'm going to join the others in applauding your players for being clever. Now, what they did isn't necessarily a bad thing, but you do need to alter your game a bit, to continue to provide a challenge.

Remember that the stealth of your party is the lowest stealth skill. Even with female elves, there's no guarantee that they're learning accurately or well. These goons are also not creative, and won't be using smart tactics. All they've done is provide themselves with a few rent-a-goon backups, that's all. That's not game-breaking in and of itself, any more than, say, hiring a gang to do attack someone for you.

If they do start abusing their new toys, just start enforcing the breakdown from continuous exposure to BTL.

[Frag-o Delux]

In the same vain as the "taking commands to seriously," my voodoo shaman had a zombie as a body guard. One of the players started mouthing of to me and I told my "bodyguard" to shot his ass. Well seconds later said offender had a bullet in his ass. Not what I intended, but I got my point across to the player. And learned that I will have to be very carfull about commands next time. It was a moment when I wasn't thinking clearly and I didn't want the PC dead he justed pissed me off, and the GM took mercy on him and had the zombie shoot him in the ass instead of the chest and killing him.

[Moon-Hawk]

I'd like to cast my vote in favor of the general sentiment of the thread. It's a really clever idea, and if that's the way the PCs want the campaign to go, go with it. Don't make it easy, but don't kill their fun just because it wasn't your campaing idea.
On one or two occasions, when my players have done something similar (I'm using a VERY weak definition of the word similar) I've had to stop play, right there and say, "Wow, that's quite an idea. I think we need to stop now while I think about how to handle it. No no, I'm not mad at you guys, i think this is cool, but I'm not going to touch it until I've had some time to plan."

Wow, what a cool idea.

[Omega Skip]

At first sight, the idea of buying a handful of slaves and wiring them up to be bodyguards, despite being completely and utterly whack, seems quite original. I for one never even thought of that in all those years, and I imagine your players must have put some real effort into the plot. But, before I go and congratulate them, I would like to know some things:

- What kind of scale do your usual runs have? Large scale, like "nuke that R&D facility" or rather low key, as in "fetch the gizmo quietly"?
- How much ressources do your players have? I mean, a runner that can afford to chip in with such a huge project (slaves, cyberware + surgery, housing, food, etc) might just as well buy a one-way ticket to early retirement at the cote d'azur, non?
- Most importantly, how do the characters justify their actions? Do they have no problem with brutally enslaving and brainwashing so many people? One could say that this kind of treatment is worse than death; it would be interesting to hear the characters' take on this. And how did their contacts react?

But still, the idea was kind of creative...

[Quix]

I made the mistake of reading this at ome of my runner's apartments. He was wearing this evil grin when he finished. Thankfully I don't believe Tom Collins has any use for 10 mindless slaves when he has frinds in the mafia, and the ancients.

[Tom Collins]

and the Yaks
and about a half a dozen of the big 10
not to mention the number of freelancers that I know.

Quix will forewarn anyone else who will listen, the most dangerous thing for a PC to have is information. Anyone who has or can get info. on just about anything is a danger to everyone else. Of course, I have to walk the line of knowing enough to be effective and knowing too much and thus being a liability to important people. Not easy to do, and good as I am, I have stumbled once or twice (as evidenced by having Cross' Seraphim pay me a late night visit once).

[CoalHeart]

Wow, completely lost track of this topic. Just recently saw it linked in a more recent thread.

Ok to Answer questions and a more recent rundown of how things have been going.

The scale of runs used to vary greatly. They take charity work for the little guy every once in a while so they didn't feel like total assholes.

Sometimes they work both sides of the fence on the Yak/Mob Thing. They never take a job that affects the other side.
They've pushed out one of the smaller triads and took over their business of BTLs and drug pushing, and cyberware retrieval.

The doctor keeps himself busy with a self imposed Dayjob of being a back alley doctor. No questions asked but it costs double. Also fences and deals in used cyber. He also likes having 'hired' help scrub the floor tiles after a messy job.

Now they're doing some political work. They've assassinated the Govenor's wife and pinned it on him, and are hired to dig up dirt on political candidates and expose them to make their employer look like the best thing. (Which means laws will change)

As for resources they're pulling it in from every where fairly consistantly. It's a very bad idea to play with pot smoking business majors. ;)



As for how they justify.

The weapon specalist Sam usually gives people the ultimatium with the barrel of his gun to their head. "Work for me or have my ugly face be the last thing you ever see" So he's a bit on the psycho side, but a controlled psycho. He likes the whole power trip and having sparring partners available all the time.

The Mage/face does worse to his elementals, so using people isn't something he cares about. After all there are mind control spells. Plus he thinks it's better for them to live and work for them, than die as their organs are sold off on the black markets. Plus he finds it to be good business, and an interesting excersise of his leadership skills.

Rigger/decker likes having extra hands to help with his cars. And machines and computers are better than people, so he doesn't care. (One of the orks used to be a very skilled mechanic before he got snatched)

the Brick sam troll is completely in the dark(int 2). He just thinks they're a bunch of gangers with a very regimented life. He doesn't care, but he did try to get jiggy with one of the elfs... He walked with a limp for a few days afterwards :P

The Stealth adept is really into having his own little band of ninja girls. He's a Ninja Pimp as he calls himself. He took it hard when one of his diciples was captured.

Their contacts wouldn't like it. There have only been rumors floating around that the new gang is a bunch of Beetleheads, and the runners are their leaders. But because no one can really prove anything the contacts havent found out.


As for the state of the gang....

8 brainjacked orks remain alive. 6 died in various incidents, one practice accident, 2 to a grenade fumble during a merc run. One started to resist the Personafix and started to act on his own. The sam shot him. and 2 more fell in a gang fire fight.

4 elfs ninja girls remain alive. 1 died in a car accident. Totally botched a driving test. The other was captured while trying to sneak into a target's house. She then bit on her cyanide capsule and offed herself.


3 Trolls and 2 humans and 4 orks actively and willingly joined the group. Displaced gangers looking for a new crew. They have no idea that the others are brainjacked. These guys joined up for the ware, spurs and smartlinks are relatively rare on the street. And this group always seems to have top notch stuff.


They haven't abused anything so far. They use their gang to secure their base and turf, to chase away other criminal elements. They sometimes use them on merc style runs or bodyguarding. The elfs have proved to moderately useful in stealthy situations.

In fact they're begining to get a good rep for keeping part of the city safe and rumbling with other gangs. So this image of a strong group is attracting followers.
I roll the Face's leadership once a month TN 6 to see if the group gets willing followers :)

There has been one private investigator coming around so far. The Face charmed the pants off of her. Literally. Face has a new level 1 contact, and npc girlfriend of the hour. (she's slowly realising that the goons don't act quite right and take everything literally every time. That should prove interesting if/when she starts to find out what really happened.)


The whole scale of the game has moved a bit away from down on the street running to building a little empire. They're micromanaging things here and there. They still do runs of my making and some of their own, now they just have backup and a semi dependable group to create distractions. They have a monthly budget they earn from protection and dealing. Supplimented by the Doctor's work, and the Rigger doing custom work for various people, and of course running the shadows.

I still think its fun. They still think its fun. So all and all everything worked out. They're gradually losing their brain jacked followers and getting volunteers that have more free will and initative to do things on their own without explicit instructions.