Power Scenes, The best in the world ever... Options

[Prototype]

What's your favourite ever 'Power Scene' in SR... I'm talking about when the bad guys or players really go to it. When they finally meet the master villain or megacorp CEO who's been pissing them off.

What did they say? What did they do? How much meat was invovled?

Usually these scenes end up in some kind of Smackdown, though not always! Let's hear about the best Power-Scenes ever in your games!

[mfb]

connor, an amnesiac elven street sam (yeah, okay, it's a played concept--but as long as it's played well...) finds out he's a Ghost, and that he's got a daughter named Loriel, who is effectively a hostage of the Tir. after spending a year or so secretly in the Tir's employ as their man on the ground in Seattle, he decides to get his daughter back and cut his ties. to complicate matters, there's his old squad to worry about--he didn't leave them on the best of terms (they killed his wife, got away with it, then tried to kill him).

so connor takes the small fortune he's amassed and hires about twenty runners. one team will hit Loriel's schoolbus (and the military supply convoy whose schedule coincides with the bus's for part of its route) to nab the girl, another will knock out the nearby communications outpost, a third will stage a go-gang raid on the border post in order to clear our escape route, and the fourth--which Connor is with--will the military post where Loriel's orphanage is. incidentally, that's the same post that Connor's old squad is based out of.

the communications outpost team does their thing pretty much without a hitch (at least, that's the way it looks in hindsight), and the border post managed their job with only one major casualty. the snatch team subdued the convoy with stun rounds and knockout grenades, and grabbed Loriel--but not before someone in the convoy got a call out, despite the jamming fromt he commo station. the Tir cavalry arrived in the form of a young dragon.

meanwhile, back at the military post, Connor's team enaged the Ghosts. the two most dangerous combatants--Connor and the Ghost's squad leader--were effectively keeping each other out of the fight, and Ghosts were chipping away at the good guys.

the snatch team, through a combination of skill and massive firepower (an AR with 10 pts of RC is a fine thing to have) wounded the dragon badly enough that it retreated, allowing us to escape with both Loriel and several crates of high-end assault rifles.

then, one of the runners with Connor did something suicidally deranged, running right through the path of the Ghost's heavy machinegunner to aid Connor. insanely, she made it, and Connor opened up the squad leader--the man who'd murdered his wife in cold blood, who'd taken away his daughter for the first six years of her life--like a can of tuna. the runner team drove away with a pair of WP grenades ticking away in the squad leader's sternum.

[Dogsoup]

Every one of them.

Im a sucker for 'epic' in SR :cyber:.

[BitBasher]

Never, Ever. Any NPC head of anything important will never, EVER meet the PC's Nor will any PC that thinks there is any chance whatsoever that the PC's will try to harm them. That's the nature of the shadows.

It could theoretically happen, but it hasn't yet.

[Prototype]

Good stuff boys, BitBasher, I feel kinda sorry for you!

[Neruda's Ghost]

[BitBasher]

I have never had that complaint, ever. I don't believe in creating retard NPC's that hanging their schlong int he wind for the PC's to shoot off. I don't use some uber NPC in a fashion like that.

Then again, There is no such thing as an "Uber Villian" in my game. There are Nemeses and Antagonists but there is no good and evil in shadowrun. Usually theit opponent or opponents serve as much a reason for existance as they do, and there are usually reasons NOT to kill that person even if they want to.

My game does not break down to the white and black of "Kill the bad guy". To do so would decrease the complexity of the game down to comic book form, which in my opinion does aboslutely no justice to the game.

That's the exact reason that Cheezy action movies are just that, cheezy. I don't let my game fall down that hole.

For my players, victory lies in achieving their own life's goals, and doing what they set out for their character's life to accomplish. The story is about their lives and their journey through them. Shadowrunning is something their character does for a living, it isn't the actual central point fo the game. Their character's life is. Shadowrunning just puts the food on the table, and sets the tone, the atmosphere.

Sorry for the rant, it's just that it annoys me when someone says they feel sorry for me when they have obviously no concept of what it's like to play in my game. Just because it doesn't work the way you are accustomed to doesn't mean it's not rewarding to the players.

[Reaver]

[Fresno Bob]

Nemesises.

[Austere Emancipa...]

Actually, in this use ("a formidable and usually victorious rival or opponent") the plural is nemeses. When it means an act or effect of retribution, the plural is nemeseses.

[Req]

<Brick Top voice> "Do you know what nemesis means? A rightous infliction of retribution delivered through an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by a 'orrible <deleted> ... me." </Brick Top voice>

If you haven't seen this movie, you're missing out.

[Reaver]

[BitBasher]

"Do you have anything to declare, sir?"

"Yeah. Don't go to England."

:D

[spotlite]

I see where bitBasher (sorry matey, couldn't resist) is coming from. I kinda disagree, but only because I haven't got the brain for that kind of campaign, and we get short enough gaming sessions as it is without worrying about machievellian politics as well. I'm just not smart enough for that kind of campaign, playing or gming. But I can do 'everyone's favorite action movie' pretty well, and I try to make it more Hong Kong Action Flick than Hollywood so at least there's a semblance of a plot, even a cheesy one.

I try to make the motivations behind the major NPCs detailed, like their backgrounds, so I can predict what they will do to react or get in first. And yeah, they'll be shadowy figures for a while. Last time I ran it they didn't even know who the bad guy was until the very end of a 2 year campaign. Once they figured out who he was though, it would have been almost impossible to stop them sorting it out, especially since they did it in a manner which put them in no danger at all and didn't get anyone except the 'bad guy' hurt. He's not dead, of course, so i could always bring him back, but its unlikely.

The climactic scenes were all during the campaign, plenty of them. A mass physad attack on an out of town airfield near New Orleans, a corp extraction through a AAA enclave outside of Boston, matrix runs on a global Yakuza clan's host, a bit of detective work, etc. But in the end the NPC in charge was much less of a direct threat. It was the power he wielded, so once they tracked him down, they just took away his power. The hit-squad-at-his-fingertips, corp-budget-backed Corp Exec becomes Instant-ordinary-bloke-in-a-suit at the drop of some-evidence-of-dirty-dealings to the corps head office.

Now, having ranted a bit, i think I'm ready for a conclusion - I disagree that Climactic Scenes shouldn't happen. If the players make them happen, then they happen. If they get killed trying, that's probably pretty climactic too. The game can be played either way though. Both the low and the very high end of the tech spectrum exist in the game and I think either will work, depending on the players and GM involved. But if you say 'no!' completely, you're ruling out that much of the player's free will, and I'd find that restrictive. Hell yeah, if they want LOUD and the job wants quiet so they hose it and die then that's their lookout, but if some Corp suit's making their life difficult and they find out who it is, what's stopping them doing a run to bust into his office and make him eat the photocopier, if they're good enough to pull it off?

[spotlite]

[Neruda's Ghost]

[Prototype]

Tend to engineer some scenes, but if the PC's stuff it up or do something ridiculous I just tend to let things fall where they may. I usually have a fair idea what they'll do in any given situation.

If you really want your PC's to never, ever challenge a mega-baddy, have him be totally mundane and have no-cyber or bio... they'll automatically assume he is some power-baddass and not even risk messing with him! At least, that's what mine always do!

[toturi]

As a rule, I let the chips fall as they will. If a PC dies, so be it. If the uber-villian dies, so be it. Shit happens to everyone.

In a cyberpunk world, I feel that the feeling that that risk you took may well be your last is quite in keeping with the ambience of SR. Damien Knight may have made his fortune in an instant but he could well lose it in an instance too. Drek happens, chummer.

[Abstruse]

I'm a notorious dice-fudger. I like cinematic-type games with epic encounters where the PCs are beaten time and time again in combat by an NPC/group all the while being manipulated by High Muckity Muck So-and-so (CEO, dragon, IE, powerful mage, bugs, middle manager with a bone to pick and a large slush fund, whatever). Eventually, it ends in the Big Showdown ™ where the PCs eventually triumph over the NPC/group they've been fighting in an intense battle...but low-and-behold, they were tricked into going this route by the big boss guy who they want revenge on but is far too powerful for them to attack directly. So they work their way up until they finally get the evidence/item/whatever that gives them the advantage over the big boss. Only to find out they were manipulated by ANOTHER big boss who wanted to get them to take out the other big boss. And thus the cycle continues. That style of game isn't for everyone, but it's what I like. Plus I make sure to put the PCs through hell before they get to "win".

The Abstruse One