Unkillable Ghostwalker? Options

[Adarael]

Yeah, but a missile lock-on and firing test isn't a perception test. It's a sensor and lock on test.

[Draco18s]

Summon F1 possession spirit.

Use a service to "possess that missile."

(I'm not up on the possession rules, so it might require a higher force to realistically succeed)

[Adarael]

Yeah. Force 1 wouldn't be able to roll enough dice for a complex, un-prepared vessel.

[Draco18s]

Yeah. Force 1 wouldn't be able to roll enough dice for a complex, un-prepared vessel.

Still, even a force 6 isn't going to really bother GW when he summons it.

[LurkerOutThere]

Even a force six doesn't really bother a roadmaster, the civialianized version of the Ares Citymaster which is the law enforcement version of an APC. There is a matter of scale which isn't being properly represented here.

[Banaticus]

Ok, so you have a few suspected Ghostwalker lairs. You have a WMD scare and start clearing out all the civilians from those areas. You don't think Ghostwalker's going to notice? You don't think he might do something, like just fly the heck out of there? "But they would see him flying."

Let's think about how invisibility works. It bends the light waves around you, so that people looking at you just see what's the background, right? The only trouble is that it only works in a small part of the electromagnetic specturm and doesn't do jack diddely with radar waves. So, since Great Dragons can create the spells that they want to create, Ghostwalker creates a "Superior Physical Invisibilty" that works on "all" the electromagnetic spectrum. Now he's not only invisible to sight, he's invisible to radar. Then he casts a cold spell or something to hide his heat signature. Then he uses his insanely high metamagic to mask his astral presence. Boom, completely invisible dragon. Then he flies the heck out of there and crashes into the Pacific Ocean and waits until the president/leader of some group is going to be at some big convention and he picks up a few cars and ties them together then drops them onto the leader from 20 thousand feet up in the air. He could fly up to 50 thousand feet and still be within 90% of the atmosphere, but why go so high? Then he summons a spirit and stuffs it into the cars and tells it to guide it to the head of whoever he's targetting. Or he flies in and sits on the head of the guy. When you have the strength of a Great Dragon and the magical rating that they have, any human barrier is pretty much going to be like paper, so he could just fly straight to the leader of whatever nation and tell him to call in the troops.

However, this would never happen. If any one side starts moving troops in, then the other sides all have to start moving troops in and the situation escalates and you know, Denver just isn't worth that much. Those troops could be better used somewhere else, like chasing shadowrunners or fending off Aztlan raids or something. Why go to all that trouble (and expense!) to get rid of Ghostwalker? Honestly, what's the point?

Think of the uberest most spectacular most amazing highest karma runner that you've ever created or met. Now think of him but with at least x3 to everything. That's a Great Dragon. This is their world, they just let the rest of us go along while they do their own stuff.

[Semerkhet]

Ok, so you have a few suspected Ghostwalker lairs. You have a WMD scare and start clearing out all the civilians from those areas. You don't think Ghostwalker's going to notice? You don't think he might do something, like just fly the heck out of there? "But they would see him flying."

Let's think about how invisibility works. It bends the light waves around you, so that people looking at you just see what's the background, right? The only trouble is that it only works in a small part of the electromagnetic specturm and doesn't do jack diddely with radar waves. So, since Great Dragons can create the spells that they want to create, Ghostwalker creates a "Superior Physical Invisibilty" that works on "all" the electromagnetic spectrum. Now he's not only invisible to sight, he's invisible to radar. Then he casts a cold spell or something to hide his heat signature. Then he uses his insanely high metamagic to mask his astral presence. Boom, completely invisible dragon. Then he flies the heck out of there and crashes into the Pacific Ocean and waits until the president/leader of some group is going to be at some big convention and he picks up a few cars and ties them together then drops them onto the leader from 20 thousand feet up in the air. He could fly up to 50 thousand feet and still be within 90% of the atmosphere, but why go so high? Then he summons a spirit and stuffs it into the cars and tells it to guide it to the head of whoever he's targetting. Or he flies in and sits on the head of the guy. When you have the strength of a Great Dragon and the magical rating that they have, any human barrier is pretty much going to be like paper, so he could just fly straight to the leader of whatever nation and tell him to call in the troops.

However, this would never happen. If any one side starts moving troops in, then the other sides all have to start moving troops in and the situation escalates and you know, Denver just isn't worth that much. Those troops could be better used somewhere else, like chasing shadowrunners or fending off Aztlan raids or something. Why go to all that trouble (and expense!) to get rid of Ghostwalker? Honestly, what's the point?

Think of the uberest most spectacular most amazing highest karma runner that you've ever created or met. Now think of him but with at least x3 to everything. That's a Great Dragon. This is their world, they just let the rest of us go along while they do their own stuff.

Thank you for so eloquently stating the reasons why I'm taking Ghostwalker out of my game and thus de-emphasizing Great Dragons overall. Really, I couldn't have put it better myself.

[Fuchs]

Think of the uberest most spectacular most amazing highest karma runner that you've ever created or met. Now think of him but with at least x3 to everything. That's a Great Dragon. This is their world, they just let the rest of us go along while they do their own stuff.

That's not Shadowrun, that's "I LOVE DRAGONS!" Fanfiction.

[CollateralDynamo]

Thank you for so eloquently stating the reasons why I'm taking Ghostwalker out of my game and thus de-emphasizing Great Dragons overall. Really, I couldn't have put it better myself.

You want to do away with/ignore dragons in Shadowrun? Go for it. As has been said in the past many times over, "its your table, whatever makes it fun for you guys." I know there are a fair number of people here who seem to despise the high-power magical stuff that has traditionally cropped up in the past. People boo GDs, IEs, Bug Spirits, and even totem spirits and horrors if they too directly put hands in things.

The fact of the matter is, they are in the fluff. If you don't like that part of fluff, ignore it or change it. But its put in the fluff to take standard thoughts like "The dragon takes his money from a king and builds his secret lair in the mountains" or "The elf lives in the woods and ignores everybody in their big cities" and put a different perspective on it. How would these powerful entities deal with and work in a world similar to our own? If you don't like the author's solution, use a different one.

Personally I really like GDs. IEs I admit are much more hit or miss. Some stuff they have done with them I find interesting, but some of it is certainly silly.

That said, a GD is more intelligent then a standard person. Even someone who has found all sorts of ways to bump up one of their stats, will still fall short of a dragon in every other respect. That isn't fanwankery, that is simple crunch. Add in the facts that Dragons have incredibly long-sighted plans, have plenty of practice at being Machiavellian, and really REALLY don't like to lose, and you have a very difficult to defeat foe.

Turn around and look at standard meta-humanity for a moment. Sure, they don't like to lose, but they don't like to let other factions win either. In a case of Denver they are watching each other just as much as the Great Dragon. Most people seem to be in agreement that early on Ghostwalker could have gotten away with it, but by now they should be trying to oust him.

How, pray tell, would they be ousting him? He doesn't walk down the street with a sign on his head. He doesn't say "oh bee-tee-dubs, I'm sleeping in this secret lair today, not that one". It isn't a simple matter of rolling in troops, even if the city was owned by a single government. You can't fight him like one would fight a war. He is one target, and he should be able to out think most any general on the field. Are there fights he can't win? Sure. They are fights he doesn't commit too. Does that lower his prestige? Not at all when he can bring his force (and spirits) to bear somewhere else.

Again, my ranting aside, you don't like dragons, here is how you remove them from you game. You sit down at your table with your players and say "Guys, I hate the fluff for GDs, so they aren't going to be around in my world. Cool? Cool." And your problem is solved. Don't try to solve it by randomly bombing Denver, the whole strategy doesn't seem to make any sense to me.

[Dumori]

Yeah, but a missile lock-on and firing test isn't a perception test. It's a sensor and lock on test.

Sensor tests are a type of perception test iirc.

[Dumori]

Still killing a GD that knows its going to be attacked by RAW is hard I mean push comes to shove the can just HoG it...

They have stupid base stats to start with 12 magic min. We know roughly that Harlequin is above 50 magic below 100 (yes hes that op) We also know that a few of the big power playing GD are much more accomplished magic uses 60+ magic to say the least. GD is said to be in this group. We are looking at by the fluff plus RAW a STUPIDLY powerful magic user. going with a force 120 powerball thats 120dv to every thing in 45 238.9342m^2. Thats roughly 2 times the radius of a mk-82 bomb the 500bl bomb is use with the US according the the sketchy/false info I picked up.

[TommyTwoToes]

People (not just you) seem to like to put more thought into ways in which a Great Dragon is nigh-unkilllable than the much more boring, but just as numerous, ways which a well-funded military-magical-industrial complex would come up with to kill one. This is, IMO, partly because we have a reasonably workable rule-set for Magic in Shadowrun, but nothing even close to modeling actual military hardware, much less military hardware in 2072.

Of course the Dragon is likely smarter than all those folks in the military, by an order of magnitude or more. Its not so much the hardware itself compared to who is using it.

Really, none of us is actually able to think at the same level as the GD's so how can we effectively debate preperations, tactics, or responses they would take to military action against them. I keep picturing that aweful movie with Nicolas Cage where he was precognitive. Could someone like a GD be capable not so much of seeing visions of the future so much as modeling out possible futures in their head to the same degree? Sort of like those computers that beat the GM class chess players, just in a game with more variables.

[Dumori]

Seeing the furter with magic is hard by raw but with enought force behind you I guess you coudl do it. Then theres the fact with astral gateway GW could just go some place far far away then pop back after the WMDs have hit.

[Banaticus]

Great Dragons are plot devices, plain and simple. Planning out how to kill one in character is doomed to failure -- you might as well plan out how to destroy the sky.*

*Actually, destroying the sky is a lot simpler. Because global warming is increasing and because we know how much of an effect cloud cover has (the lack of contrails in the sky increased the average continental USA ground temperature in the days immediately after the September 11th attacks in New York City by approximately 3 degrees Fahrenheit, also note what's happend every time a big volcano has erupted), increasing cloud cover would reduce global warming. NASA (amongst other agencies) has already discussed the possibility of going up to the Artic and pumping out small particular matter into the lower levels of the atmosphere. Say hello to the environment of the Matrix. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) Ok, not really that much, just enough to darken it a bit, but it wouldn't be that much money or technology to destroy the sky, a lot cheaper than trying to develop and refine your own nuclear-grade plutonium.

Planning out, in character, how to destroy a Great Dragon would never work. OOC, sure, just use an erasor and soon his name is gone from your list -- perhaps you'll even erase him so well that it'll be like he never was. IC, not a chance -- IC this is the Dragon's world and we all just live there.

[LurkerOutThere]

Man the wank is strong around here.

Individual characters making plans to kill dragons? Yes kind of silly

Nation states and Megacorps? They should not only have a plan in place but a reasonable shot of succeeding, that's what's missing form Shadowrun now and ghostwalke rin particular, he picked a fight with 4 nations at once and one in particular (the Azzies) another he bought off (the CAS). IC it isn't the dragon's world any more then Damie Knights or Harlequin or dues.. Dragons have been killed by military force or even non military force in the past it's just for some reason in the steaming pile that was YoTC they forgot that.

Despite the scenario you lay out GW didn't behave like a canny military strategist, he raged across town trashed some shit and then landed in one place to lay out the law, at that point someone should have droped a rod from god or nuclear tipped hemdahl on him.

[Draco18s]

In any case: if you want to kill off GW you're free to do so.

But your players should come away from the game thinking "that was the most epic campaign I've ever been a part of." It should be a multi-session set up, they should have to do something about all GW's minions (drakes, spirits, and others). The dragon should get away / be assumed dead but comes back at least once. Challenge the players. This is the moment where you can set up something that should not be possible and let your player's creativity find a solution.* Much edge should be spent against the GD directly (keeps him from using his special edge functions! If you spend edge and he counters by negating, he can't force you to reroll your successes!).

This isn't an "oh, GW's dead" it should be "Holy shit guys, we just killed a great dragon!"


*Example from a game I was in, we had to extract a guy who never left an archology, was up in the research departments (so high security), was going crazy with paranoia, and we couldn't just abduct him ("don't cause undo stress to the target / get him to leave willingly"). GM did not have a planned solution.

We hired a cabal of mages to put a Suggestion in his head to "visit the hat shop in the mall" where we encountered him, tried on some hats, a little more control thoughts, some disguise work (so it looked like someone we came in with left with us, but we'd in fact swapped him for the target), and inadvertently played on his paranoia (something to the effect of a generic "they're after you! Follow me!"). We made like 10k (for the team) after expenses, but it was worth it.

[DeathStrobe]

DeathStrobe:

You are missing the point on several levels, first you are presuming that the NAN always just does what the shamans want them to do, half the political challenge in the PCC is between the Shamanic council and the more secular nation government.

It is a culture based off of respecting your elders. The shamans hold a lot of political sway and at the very least can tie up the hands of government actions long enough to have Ghostwalker do his thing, if that is what happened.

Secondly you presume that totems are normally in the habit of dictating directives to their shamans, which their not.

Really? Because after reading about Mentor Spirits in SR4a p200 I'd disagree with that. The whole point of having a Mentor Spirit, aside from adding some fluff to role playing an awaken character is to use them as deus ex machina to move the plot along.

Thirdly you presume GW with all his amazing Marysueness is also able to dicvtate directives to the totem spirits which have been held on par with the ED passions, so a bit more then him in power.

Mentor Spirits have real stats? I just figured they were plot devices like Great Dragons. But yes, I am saying that a Mary Sue character can influence a Totem. Its kind of what they do. Anyway, I'm saying there are still ways to explain, logically, how an all out war didn't take place after Ghostwalker took over Denver.

Finally basically your whole supporting argument basically boils down to: Dumb injuns do what their spirits tell them to do.

To be fair, all awaken characters SHOULD do as their mentor spirits dictate. If they don't they lose their Mentor Spirit's bonuses and followed by loosing their magic. SR4a p200. So yeah, they would.

Also further clarifications the GGD had more to do with the horrors giving magic to the Natams then the spirits offering aid.

Dragon power levels are disproportionate and silly in a world with fighter jets and ICBM's.

That's because PC's aren't suppose to interact directly with the big named Great Dragons. If your campaign should have a Great Dragon, it should be a "lesser" Great Dragon.

[Drats]

Despite the scenario you lay out GW didn't behave like a canny military strategist, he raged across town trashed some shit and then landed in one place to lay out the law, at that point someone should have droped a rod from god or nuclear tipped hemdahl on him.

Again, though: in the middle of Denver? Corps and Governments tend to take a bit of a longer view than that. No one wanted to be the poor fool that every other Treaty State and the Corporate Court raked over a bed of hot coals after the incident. Yes, action was necessary, but Sixth World politics don't take petty things like reality and necessity into account when it comes time to point fingers and divide spoils. Everyone involved knew drastic action was called for, but no one knew exactly what to do, and you can bet none of them were going to go out on a limb.

As far as GW being a strategic wunderwyrm, I don't think that was the case at all. He was just very powerful and very, very fortunate. He obviously had his sights set on Denver from the moment he popped out of the rift, and he just got lucky in that it was the one city in the Western hemisphere where he could actually pull something like this off. I don't have direct access to any YotC material, so I could be wrong, but that's always been my read on it.

It is a culture based off of respecting your elders. The shamans hold a lot of political sway and at the very least can tie up the hands of government actions long enough to have Ghostwalker do his thing, if that is what happened. (...) To be fair, all awaken characters SHOULD do as their mentor spirits dictate. If they don't they lose their Mentor Spirit's bonuses and followed by loosing their magic. SR4a p200. So yeah, they would.

We're not dealing with a theocracy here. The shamans don't run the show. To draw on a recent example, G.W. Bush was, on camera at least, a very Christian president, and America is still arguably a very Christian nation, but the fact that a lot of prominent priests spoke out against the war in Iraq didn't make Bush bring the troops home.

If things in the NAN were all about "Kumbaya, listen to the spirits and we'll be alright," they wouldn't have been bickering since they day they were formed, and Daniel Howling Coyote wouldn't have walked away in disgust and disappeared. It's not like that. It's a real-world nation, and when it comes to dealing with other nations, it acts according to pragmatic political concerns.

[Semerkhet]

In any case: if you want to kill off GW you're free to do so.

But your players should come away from the game thinking "that was the most epic campaign I've ever been a part of." It should be a multi-session set up, they should have to do something about all GW's minions (drakes, spirits, and others). The dragon should get away / be assumed dead but comes back at least once. Challenge the players. This is the moment where you can set up something that should not be possible and let your player's creativity find a solution.* Much edge should be spent against the GD directly (keeps him from using his special edge functions! If you spend edge and he counters by negating, he can't force you to reroll your successes!).

This isn't an "oh, GW's dead" it should be "Holy shit guys, we just killed a great dragon!"

I agree with you in principle, but not in this specific case. Also, I think you're mistaking my intent. It was never my intent for the PCs to be the ones to take down Ghostwalker. Quite the contrary, I don't want them directly involved at all. My intent here is to *reduce* the influence GDs have in my game and to avoid having the PCs put in positions where they're directly interacting with GDs. I want the drama to come from having the team stuck in the middle of this enormous shit-storm while they're trying to accomplish another mission entirely. Imagine that long amazing scene near the end of "Children of Men" where the protagonist is trying to make his way through an urban battlefield. He's not directly a participant in the battle, he's just trying to stay alive and accomplish his personal objective. That's the kind of mood I'm trying to go for with this. There will be opportunities for more personal drama as the team runs afoul of elements on either side of the conflict. They'll face enormous hurdles trying to carry out the legwork necessary to find the one individual they've been hired to locate in the middle of this conflict. I feel like I'm adding drama to what would normally be a kind of ho-hum 24-hour breeze through Denver and making it a larger dramatic scene for the setting at large.

So, in the end, I guess I don't really care about the details of how someone would take out a Great Dragon. As has been pointed out numerous times, Great Dragons are plot elements, not NPCs. I am choosing to use GW as a plot element in which the nations of Earth say, "Enough." I'm not even going to be definitive about whether they actually kill GW or not. All that is for sure is that he'll no longer be in charge of what's left of Denver when the smoke clears.

[Draco18s]

Your table, your shadowrun.

But speaking from (admittedly limited sideshow) experience, setting up the PCs to destroy the world makes for an epic game.

(The PCs did in fact cause the apocalypse, fought in ragnorak, destroyed reality, and one of them used Epic Manipulation to quote "be the first one back"*)

*IIRC his exact words were "If my friends destroy the universe I want to be the first one back when it restarts."

[Wandering One]

I'm not entirely sure where all this hate for the GD's comes from, but perhaps that's my perspective. GW taking over Denver was probably one of the best things that could happen for a GM. Why? *Built in hand of god plot device*. You want a campaign that 'changes the rules'? Fine, Ghostwalker wanted it.

Who the hell deals directly with dragons? For example, I have a campaign currently running where my characters chanced on some data for a huge blackmail list of middle-managers in the government. After some fancy footwork in not getting killed (and having a hunter team leave 'calling cards' at their primary residences) they get the data offloaded and some cash. They've got an enemy they're not even aware of yet, but that's besides the point.

This sparked off a campaign war between GW and Aztechnology (who got the data) and are trying to leverage their way back in. Noone's fighting the dragon, the dragon doesn't even care about the runners, nor does Aztech. He's a plot device. Use him. GW in Denver is wonderful. It cleans up a lot of the arguments of the 'expected' from Seattle because, and I can't say this enough, a city to play in where you can change ANY expectation as a GM you desire, and do it IN CHARACTER.

As to military action, yes, the majority of GDs should be worried and concerned that a concerted attack from a military, where he stands his ground, he will most likely lose. Short of that... yeah. Here's the city.

[Semerkhet]

I'm not entirely sure where all this hate for the GD's comes from, but perhaps that's my perspective. GW taking over Denver was probably one of the best things that could happen for a GM. Why? *Built in hand of god plot device*. You want a campaign that 'changes the rules'? Fine, Ghostwalker wanted it.

Who the hell deals directly with dragons? For example, I have a campaign currently running where my characters chanced on some data for a huge blackmail list of middle-managers in the government. After some fancy footwork in not getting killed (and having a hunter team leave 'calling cards' at their primary residences) they get the data offloaded and some cash. They've got an enemy they're not even aware of yet, but that's besides the point.

This sparked off a campaign war between GW and Aztechnology (who got the data) and are trying to leverage their way back in. Noone's fighting the dragon, the dragon doesn't even care about the runners, nor does Aztech. He's a plot device. Use him. GW in Denver is wonderful. It cleans up a lot of the arguments of the 'expected' from Seattle because, and I can't say this enough, a city to play in where you can change ANY expectation as a GM you desire, and do it IN CHARACTER.

As to military action, yes, the majority of GDs should be worried and concerned that a concerted attack from a military, where he stands his ground, he will most likely lose. Short of that... yeah. Here's the city.

An undercurrent of this discussion/argument is one of the things I really like about Shadowrun and why I keep coming back to it again and again over the last twenty years. There is an awful lot to do in Shadowrun. You could run the game for sessions and sessions never mentioning IEs, GDs, Changelings, Infected, or Horrors. Shadowrun makes you choose your dramatic priorities. You can't focus on everything, so you have to pick and choose.

Now, I don't want to rid my game of dragons, or any of the other entities I mentioned.* I have, however, noticed an ongoing thread of jokes among my players that whenever anything mysterious or inscrutable happens, a Great Dragon must be behind it. So for my particular game and my particular set of players and based on my own set of biases and proclivities as a GM, I am choosing to make a point that Great Dragons are not the secret masters of the Earth. They just aren't. They're massively powerful players, but they're not untouchable and they're not behind everything.


* Except Changelings, I have a burning irrational hatred of Changelings. I retconned them out of my game entirely.

[Semerkhet]

Your table, your shadowrun.

But speaking from (admittedly limited sideshow) experience, setting up the PCs to destroy the world makes for an epic game.

(The PCs did in fact cause the apocalypse, fought in ragnorak, destroyed reality, and one of them used Epic Manipulation to quote "be the first one back"*)

*IIRC his exact words were "If my friends destroy the universe I want to be the first one back when it restarts."

My table, my Shadowrun is different over time. We've done the epic campaign arcs, saved the world, etc. We've also done the barely above street thugs game. What I'm doing now is something in between. It's a testament to the versatility of Shadowrun that after five campaigns scattered across twenty years we're not done yet.

[Draco18s]

My table, my Shadowrun is different over time. We've done the epic campaign arcs, saved the world, etc. We've also done the barely above street thugs game. What I'm doing now is something in between. It's a testament to the versatility of Shadowrun that after five campaigns scattered across twenty years we're not done yet.

The epic game mentioned above was actual Scion. Our face GM'd it with an interesting thought in mind:

Start at the bottom (starting Hero) and work up to God in 11 weeks. In a system where year-spanning campaigns can be played at one level. It'd be like playing a shadowrun game where you got 100 karma a session and there are things that you could get that cost over 200 karma (and were worth buying) and without maxing all your stats in a week.

Maybe in the future you can run a game where they are the team that takes out GW.

[DeathStrobe]

We're not dealing with a theocracy here. The shamans don't run the show. To draw on a recent example, G.W. Bush was, on camera at least, a very Christian president, and America is still arguably a very Christian nation, but the fact that a lot of prominent priests spoke out against the war in Iraq didn't make Bush bring the troops home.

If things in the NAN were all about "Kumbaya, listen to the spirits and we'll be alright," they wouldn't have been bickering since they day they were formed, and Daniel Howling Coyote wouldn't have walked away in disgust and disappeared. It's not like that. It's a real-world nation, and when it comes to dealing with other nations, it acts according to pragmatic political concerns.

That's a terrible example. America was clearly built on the concept of Church and State being separate. Not to mention there are plenty of Christians that were so afraid after 9-11 that they used the middle east as a scapegoat so were more then willing to have a "Holy War" to keep America safe.

I think a better example (for me anyway) might be World War 1 where Woodrow Wilson got us involved in WW1 while Congress did not want us to get involved. While we did go to War, Congress was able to undermine the President and keep us out of the League of Nations, as well as both Britain and France were able to undermine Wilson's 14 Points setting us up for World War 2. The point is, just because you REALLY want to go to war, or not go to war, if there is another political force that is moving against you they can undermine your efforts or at least stall your political agenda.

Another good example might be Republican actions to undermine the Obama's public health care plan. Just because the President wants something doesn't mean there aren't other forces at work that can slow down his progress.

Also, which book talks about the internal politics of the NAN? As far as I'm aware they're Councils that govern them are made up of shamans. They are Indian Nations after all, I don't think they'd follow traditional politics. But once again, I don't know. I've never read about it. So some clarification might help out.