On the Run (Again), One solution to the inherent plot weakness. Options

[Semerkhet]

I just started a new SR4 game. Four of my five players are veteran SR players, but none of us has touched SR since early 3rd ed in 1999. I decided to go ahead and use the published "On the Run" adventure for the first story of the game. If you'll indulge me a bit in setting the stage, my main point is to outline my solution to what I, and others, see as the main weakness of the plot.

[ Spoiler ]

Like any fully-fleshed out published shadowrun, On the Run has its problems and requires tweaking to fit a particular group of runners. For me, it involved tweaking the opposition up since I mandated 500 CP characters to start the game. These sorts of modifications are easy for a GM with some experience and, to give the authors credit, the "GM hint" sections of On the Run give good guidance on how to tweak the difficulty of both combat and non-combat encounters.

These minor tweaks aside, I couldn't think of a way of fixing the inherent weakness of the plot. That is, the characters are hired to retrieve stolen property in the form of an old obsolete data disc. The plot relies entirely upon the group deciding, once they've acquired the disc, to ignore their contract and spend time and resources to investigate the origins of the disc by working through several not terribly fruitful legwork encounters. This weakness was discussed in the RPG.net review (and comment thread), if you're interested in more explanation.

I decided to just wait and see what my group would do. Sure enough, when it got to the point that they discovered the disc had "unbreakable encryption" they promptly lost interest and two of the players made strong cases for simply fulfilling their contract and demanding more money from their Johnson on the basis of having been lied to about the status of the object as stolen and for misleading them about the expected threat of the job, i.e. the Shangri-La strike team. They got a bit more money out of the Johnson and handed over the disc.

I awarded Karma and let the group have a few days of downtime. The hacker said that he was going to keep an eye out for rumors on the Matrix over the next week to find out if anything happened to their Mr. Johnson, whose real identity they had uncovered. After a few days I let the hacker know that there were rumors that their Johnson had disappeared. Then I had a powerful Spirit of Man approach the team magician with an offer of employment on behalf of its summoner. The spirit offered the team a job retrieving, you guessed it, the same chip they'd just retrieved. After questions and negotiation the team took the job. A spirit with the Search ability was used to find the corpse of their former Mr. Johnson weighted down on the bottom of Lake Union. I also let them trace one of the email replies the original seller as coming from Ari Tarkasian.

That's where we stopped at the end of last session. Here are my thoughts going forward. I've decided that their new employer is Jet Black* and that Ari Tarkasian's shadowrunner team killed Darius St. George and took the disc. Tarkasian doesn't have the encryption key either and therefore must go through the same legwork the characters were intended to do in order to try to acquire the key. This presents opportunities for the team to encounter agents of Tarkasian. Basically I'm intending that the team eventually figure out where Tarkasian is keeping the disc and make a grab for it. Since Tarkasian is running this job outside of normal corporate channels, I'm expecting the showdown to be with Tarkasian's hired shadowrunner team in some non-corporate location. Should be a pretty tough fight.

Initial feedback from my players indicates they think it's cool to be hired to go after the object they were just paid for handing over. YMMV, of course. I hope this is helpful as a jumping off point for ideas for other GMs, should they encounter similar problems with this story.

*As an aside, I decided that Jet Black is a powerful Free Spirit instead of a vampire. Summoned after his death by a ritual group of obsessive fans with more enthusiasm than skill, he broke free and has spent the last couple decades much as the canon JB has. I made this change because I've run WoD Vampire games with this group in the past and, frankly, we're sick of vampires.

[SincereAgape]

Hey Semerkhet,

I like what you have proposed here. If you break down "On the Run" scene by scene, you'll find out that the adventure encourages Role-playing and investigative work above combat. The module has a nice balance between legwork, social interaction, gumshoe, and then combat. You've take the two weakest points of the book, story and plot, and have managed to turn it into something that has a lot of potential.

[ Spoiler ]

I ran the adventure about a year ago for a new group of players, and am planning to do so again in the month of October. The adventure went very well, and was almost played to the T of how it was written. The only aspect that I changed as that the runners had to obtain the encryption file as well for the datadisc to confirm it was a legit. Above all, the team roleplayed very well with each other and I have to contribute that to Robyn's writing.

Ironically, the only scene that I am not to fond of in this entire adventure is the large climax at the graveyard. Our next run/plot was based off the settings of "On the Run." Risa, Jet Black's guru vampire, was a large hit amongst the PCs that I decided to bring her back as a Prime Runner. Over the years, Risa had developed a large amount of jealousy towards Marli Brementon for a close relationship she had developed with Jet Black. Thus, Risa set a plan into motion to kidnap Marli's niece, Athlea, and turn the young shaman into a vampire right before Marli's eyes. The team was hired by Marli, through Darius St. George, to find the missing Athlea. They discovered that Athlea's boyfriend had been blackmailed into helping Risa, and thus they had to confront him to extract the plot. The trail led them to Marli's mansion, and they spent an entire session battling the defenses, security, and Risa to rescue Marli.

If you haven't decided where to hold the final confrontation between Ari Tarkasian and the players, Marli's mansion could be a perfect setting for that. You can write it so that Marli does have have the encryption code, and since the legwork ends with her, why not make the mansion the finall setting for the battle?

[Malachi]

The last time I ran On the Run the team tried to return the disc as soon as they acquired it. The Mr. Johnson told them the disc's contents would need to be verified before he would accept it, but offered them an increase in pay because of the unexpected difficulties. It was a pretty easy bridge into the subsequent scenes.

[Kerrang]

I had the same noted difficulty when I ran the mission, almost none of the legwork was done simply because my group was new and did not have much in the way of social skills or contacts, so they missed all the leads. The few hints they did get were not followed up on. The rest of the mission took a different track in that they made a copy of the disc when they were trying to break the encryption, and then sold that copy to the Vamps in the graveyard at twice the price they were getting paid for the run. When they gave the original to Mr. Johnson, he told them he knew about them selling the copy, and did not pay them, they also got a bit of a bad rep. Took a couple of street level "good guy" runs to recover their rep.

Ironically, after they started getting the big runs again, they stiffed a corporate Johnson almost immediately, but for the right reasons. They now have excellent street cred, but have not been offered a corp sponsored run since.

[Faradon]

I've also run this adventure and had very similar results to most of you. The team I ran also insisted immediately on acquiring the disc to turn it back in to their Johnson.

I tried to stall them using one of the methods listed in the advantures (where darius isn't around that day and such) but in the end they wanted nothing more than to hole up in a most paranoid way and turn it in as soon as they could.

Without having the Johnson killed before they return the item it would really of been hard to have found a reason to make them investigate further...

Not the end of the world though... the adventure still served its purpose as an intro to the system for many new players and got them all a contact, in Darius, who liked them for being so professional.

[Ravor]

Personally I found it rather refreshing that On the Run shows players that Shadowrunners tend to be the kind of people who stick their noses into places that they don't belong and who are likely to screw their Jonhson "just because". (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cyber.gif)

[Semerkhet]

Personally I found it rather refreshing that On the Run shows players that Shadowrunners tend to be the kind of people who stick their noses into places that they don't belong and who are likely to screw their Jonhson "just because". (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cyber.gif)

I agree that player curiosity makes the game more interesting. On the other hand, if you have a player with a very "professional" attitude toward keeping their contracts with Mr. Johnson, additional incentives may have to be offered to make it "worth it" to stiff their employer.

[Semerkhet]

Thanks for the reply. I really like your idea for the final showdown. I think I'll try to use that.

Hey Semerkhet,

I like what you have proposed here. If you break down "On the Run" scene by scene, you'll find out that the adventure encourages Role-playing and investigative work above combat. The module has a nice balance between legwork, social interaction, gumshoe, and then combat. You've take the two weakest points of the book, story and plot, and have managed to turn it into something that has a lot of potential.

[ Spoiler ]

I ran the adventure about a year ago for a new group of players, and am planning to do so again in the month of October. The adventure went very well, and was almost played to the T of how it was written. The only aspect that I changed as that the runners had to obtain the encryption file as well for the datadisc to confirm it was a legit. Above all, the team roleplayed very well with each other and I have to contribute that to Robyn's writing.

Ironically, the only scene that I am not to fond of in this entire adventure is the large climax at the graveyard. Our next run/plot was based off the settings of "On the Run." Risa, Jet Black's guru vampire, was a large hit amongst the PCs that I decided to bring her back as a Prime Runner. Over the years, Risa had developed a large amount of jealousy towards Marli Brementon for a close relationship she had developed with Jet Black. Thus, Risa set a plan into motion to kidnap Marli's niece, Athlea, and turn the young shaman into a vampire right before Marli's eyes. The team was hired by Marli, through Darius St. George, to find the missing Athlea. They discovered that Athlea's boyfriend had been blackmailed into helping Risa, and thus they had to confront him to extract the plot. The trail led them to Marli's mansion, and they spent an entire session battling the defenses, security, and Risa to rescue Marli.

If you haven't decided where to hold the final confrontation between Ari Tarkasian and the players, Marli's mansion could be a perfect setting for that. You can write it so that Marli does have have the encryption code, and since the legwork ends with her, why not make the mansion the finall setting for the battle?

[Ravor]

Or you pull the player to one side and gently remind him that "Ice-Cold-Pros" are boring and Shadowrun is in the Cyberpunk Genre for a reason. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/silly.gif)

*EDIT*

Seriously though, I never understood why people would want to play a character that could always make the right choice, no matter how hard, never fall prey to a flawed nature, ect...

[Twilights_Herald]

Seriously though, I never understood why people would want to play a character that could always make the right choice, no matter how hard, never fall prey to a flawed nature, ect...

Well, to be fair, the professional is a jumping-off point for a personality. Most of my characters take their word seriously. Once they've agreed to do a job, they will do it, at least to the letter of the agreement. Within SR, that's pretty much the definition of professional.

Where things get interesting is when Mr. J hires you to do a job you later find out you'd never have agreed to if you'd known the whole story, still get things done, and figure out how to screw over your employer anyway. Especially since, once the reputation of always holding to the letter of your word at the least comes out, Johnsons will usually start trying to get a lot more specific than "grab the data disk."

If these ideas intrigue you, well, I would advise you not to pull a Literal Genie on every J. That's just trouble. Save it for when the employer really deserves it.

[Semerkhet]

Agreed. It's not that this particular player would *never* have his character try to screw a Mr. J. However, in this case the Mr. J lied to them about a couple aspects of the job and downplayed the threat level. The group saw that as bargaining leverage to negotiate a higher fee and an excuse to hold on to a copy of the data. Also, the character in question is in the position of coming out of retirement and forming a new team and taking their first job. (Two of the five characters are from my 3rd edition game ten years ago, remade for 4th edition.) He rightly worries about stiffing their Mr. J on their first re-entry to the Seattle shadow scene. His argument was that it wasn't important or personal enough to actually screw their Mr. J.

Well, to be fair, the professional is a jumping-off point for a personality. Most of my characters take their word seriously. Once they've agreed to do a job, they will do it, at least to the letter of the agreement. Within SR, that's pretty much the definition of professional.

Where things get interesting is when Mr. J hires you to do a job you later find out you'd never have agreed to if you'd known the whole story, still get things done, and figure out how to screw over your employer anyway. Especially since, once the reputation of always holding to the letter of your word at the least comes out, Johnsons will usually start trying to get a lot more specific than "grab the data disk."

If these ideas intrigue you, well, I would advise you not to pull a Literal Genie on every J. That's just trouble. Save it for when the employer really deserves it.