SRM0402 Extraction AAR Options

[Chance359]

I'm starting to get the feeling that Missions writers know they are playing to a captive audience. This is the second job where there is no initial payment offered. As soon as I was told that pay would be negotiated upon extraction of the target, I wanted to call it a night right there.

The team:
Former Doc Wagon medic
Former Doc Wagon Tm/medic
Fomori Street Sam
Gunslinger TM
Gunslinger Adept
Former Lone star detective
Street Sam Archetype

[ Spoiler ]

The job was rushed which was a nice change. I do like how we were told to come to the meet ready to work. We kicked around a few plans before realizing that we had no real mission parameters other than get the target out of the building.

Our plan
Have everyone but the former detective and both former doc wagon employees lay down targeted and suppressive fire across and down onto the party where the target is currently dining. After the shooting I will con my way past security with the two doc wagoner’s in tow checking the wounded until we find our target and throw him on the stretcher and evac the building.

The sniper on the roof of the Horizon building got into position and began firing upon the team. The Fomori Sam was shot twice with a Walther MA 2100 with APDS and managed to get himself scratched with one box of damage (burned 3 edge in the process). The team used the zip line to escape down the side off the building, then whipped up a sprite to pilot their getaway car.

Since he'd be struck with a stick and shock round, our extraction target was still in the land of nod, we stuffed him in a shielded compartment and began scanning him for hidden nodes. One of the TM's found his hidden commlink and owned it. We began to realize that Mr. extractee was Mr Johnson, and we've done this job with no money up front.

After finding the data hidden in his commlink, we began shopping the data around to perspective buyers. We were careful to be sneaky and avoid Horizon's spiders. First we went to Draco and found their offer lacking, so we told them we'd call them, next we called the atlantean Foundation. Their offer was less than the first so as a group we decided to head back to the Draco foundation. As we were leaving the Atlantean meet we were approached with another offer, 100K on a credstick in exchange for Mr. Johnson.

Since this whole run had felt like amateur night, we decided to take the money he was offering and still sell Mr. Johnson back to the Draco foundation. The TM who did the number on Mr. Johnson went to shake Lin's hand and then won and unarmed grappling test. He used an echo and pulled Lin into VR and then had his waiting sprite begin assaulting Lin. To add insult to injury when the TM let go of Lin, he was subjected to dumpshock. We were more than a little upset to learn that the stick was blank. Our GM was able to stop us from leaving Lin a trip into Puget sound with a 9mm flotation device.

We managed to make the exchange and get paid.

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

I understand your point. I had some discussions privately with Mesh. In the end, I liked the adventure, I'll be running it this next monday.
I'll let you know how it ended.

[LurkerOutThere]

As i was a playing the module with Chance and then got to read it after so i can run it later i thought i'd put in my two bits. On the whole I like this module a lot. My nitpicky stuff is spoilerific so i'll tag it out accordingly.

[ Spoiler ]

Chance leaves out a few details, after establishing who the target was and what his signifigance was we opted to demote him from person to commodity. He stayed sedated in valkyrie babysat by two of the team members at all times while the rest of us met with the other factions. This simple precaution saved us tons of hassle. Frankly after discovering his dirty secret and the way he tried to manipulate us I really can't see how anyone else treats him any other way. Maybe the runners I play with are particularly mercenary. I had to argue very hard for not just killing him outright once we found out and downloaded the codex.

Chance and are are totally in agreement on one point, in a home game the only appropriate response I can think of to "You have fifteen minuetes to execute an hostile extraction on a hard target." There is no upfront money, and no negotiating the price. Plus don't call us we'll call you. The only response to that in my mind is to suggest the J do something vulgar and biologicly impossible for most metatypes and break the connection. Hit the bar and drop a note to your fixer asking that they screen the clown's out of your potential customer pool a little better. It sounds too much like a jerk around or a setup for runners concerned about their future to accept outside of missions. Maybe i'm just more mirrorshades then most but that's how i see it. I say all this understanding that the intent is to limit the amount of planing and length of the fight that goes into the first scene to allow for the rest of the mission, but something got to give. Maybe the snatch should have bene at a more public locale, maybe he should have come out on the balcony so he could be scooped up spideradept style.

Final nitpick is small but at the same time the most irritating to me. Joe college kid cannot just walk into a clinic in chiba and pick up deltaware! It's the best of the best and the wet dream of anyone with ware.

Deltaware is still very much the province of closed corporate facilities and black clinics. I’d say there’s no more than six or seven of them in North America,
and only a couple of those are indy operations.

It's not just a matter of money, it's a matter of connection. Just by raw numbers delta clinics are avaiability 24 with a week per interval. Never mind all the fluff stuff about the connections you'll need to get them to work on you. Again I understand this was mostly for the necessity of plot but there are other ways to accomplish the same goal. Maybe he got his alpha grade cyberyes and internal link after his initial (more invasive) physical so the alpha ware just had to stand up to more casual scrutiny. When i found out he had Deltaware the first thought I had is we just kindapped Damien Knights other illegitimate child. Then i briefly considered the essence implications of scooping out his eyes and implanting them in someone else but decided it was impractical.

So yea other then that, good mod with some minor thematic and story hiccups.

[Mesh]

[ Spoiler ]

I enjoyed reading how this played out, and as always I'll re-iterate that the GM can do whatever he wants with the mission. That said, you can't find Acson's commlink when it isn't on. It isn't a hidden node when it's off, and it's off all the time unless he is communicating as The Scion. That's a major point in how he managed to keep Horizon from realizing he had ware. This is why his gear list contains a pos for-show commlink that he orders the runners to destroy.

So as far as parties instantly realizing he is a mage with an internal commlink to hack, there shouldn't be any way for them to find out... at least not initially.

Mesh

[Mesh]

I'm starting to get the feeling that Missions writers know they are playing to a captive audience. This is the second job where there is no initial payment offered. As soon as I was told that pay would be negotiated upon extraction of the target, I wanted to call it a night right there.

There was a Season 3 mission that started you out laes-drugged with no memory and having already accepted a mission. I know that kind of in-ass-deep "in media res" is going to tick some people off. I was going for a quick start for its advantages and rarely seen disadvantages. You have 15 minutes to say no, so you still have a choice. I had no intention of abusing the captive audience dynamic. We all know the GM has this Mission in his hand ready to play, and both parties came to play and have fun. So even if you feel the choice is an illusion, you are not started past the point of choice.

The advantage is that people who want to get some action in can get it right away without delay and without the worry that they'll run over their 4-hour block. There were a lot of potential scenes. Four hours is so short when you're having fun! So GMs can wave their hands, start people with all their gear, put the (initial) run right in front of their faces, and pull the trigger. Blam! Good times.

The disadvantage is the shadowrunners don't get days to track down info or acquire specific gear for the job. Data Searches can yield a lot of info in time, but in only 15 minutes, you probably can't get the big picture. You have to choose what you want to spend your 15 minutes on carefully. Good contacts can be quicker which can be a reward for those who invested in them. Anyway, the runners will have time for more in depth research after the job (probably), but the quick start should leave them paranoid... which is good. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I don't have much on the lack of initial pay. I know that can cheese some people off, but pay is not a formula. You don't sit down at the table and make a few grand just for showing up every time. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotate.gif) It shouldn't be so strange, even to the mirror shades, that an employer won't pay (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) .01 for a damaged extractee. However, with the target in your hands, you hold all the bargaining cards... and without having agreed to sell him to anyone in particular for a certain amount, that can be pretty enticing itself.

Mesh

[LurkerOutThere]

[ Spoiler ]

I enjoyed reading how this played out, and as always I'll re-iterate that the GM can do whatever he wants with the mission. That said, you can't find Acson's commlink when it isn't on. It isn't a hidden node when it's off, and it's off all the time unless he is communicating as The Scion. That's a major point in how he managed to keep Horizon from realizing he had ware. This is why his gear list contains a pos for-show commlink that he orders the runners to destroy.

So as far as parties instantly realizing he is a mage with an internal commlink to hack, there shouldn't be any way for them to find out... at least not initially.

Mesh

Fair point however:

[ Spoiler ]

My character is built very similar to a cyberdoc and this was a hostile extraction. Good practice to me seemed to be giving him a very thorough work up once we got him back to the safe house before the other team met up with us since I had time to kill. I was completely ignorant to the fact that he was a mage until i read the mod once we established what he had other then a brief "Hi your fragged, and way you want to buy your way out of this?" conversation he spent the rest of the module asleep. We eyeballed some thresholds using the cyberware detection table as a guide and i gave him a very thorough work up. Once I established the existance of his headware through the grope and scan method getting access to it was just a matter of how invasive we wanted to be. While our GM might have forgotten about the the completely off part (i just presumed he turned the wireless off) since i do have the touchlink echo anything i can touch i can hack so our GM just rolled with it given my character was perfectly willing to spend a couple hours touching the sedated targets eyes. Do i think we're the normal team? Likely not. Personally i felt like this module was an affirmation for the stone cold pro philosophy. We encrypted our comms, we practiced good Opsec, and we were paranoid as all hell and I think it paid off. I kind of shudder to think how things would have gone otherwise.

[suoq]

[ Spoiler ]

To me the inability to pay, the deadline, and the icon all screamed "I'm kidnapping myself!", but since I was the only person who read it that way, I'll take my free beer from Lurker's fridge for being right and let it go.

That being said, one thing annoyed me. I haven't read the mod, so I'll ask here.

WHO left the ziplines on the roof and when? The target couldn't have possibly done it or he wouldn't have needed us to kidnap him in the first place. The fixer would have just told us to buy our own ziplines and where we could buy them. I made sure my role in the plan did not involve soaring 20+ stories over the ground depending on someone else's zipline. I had visions of this all being a setup where Horizon was going to show off it's new Gatling gun and we were to play the role of clay pigeons and I didn't want to be anywhere near the field of fire if that happened.

Regardless of the plan, I wasn't going to use that zipline.

[LurkerOutThere]

I don't have much on the lack of initial pay. I know that can cheese some people off, but pay is not a formula. You don't sit down at the table and make a few grand just for showing up every time. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotate.gif) It shouldn't be so strange, even to the mirror shades, that an employer won't pay (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) .01 for a damaged extractee. However, with the target in your hands, you hold all the bargaining cards... and without having agreed to sell him to anyone in particular for a certain amount, that can be pretty enticing itself.

Mesh

Not every job has to have an upfront pay out, just the ones that require the runners to understake something high risk with a big stipulation (it must be commenced in 15 mins). Further while holding the target in hand and not having agreed to sell to someone makes sense from a run setup scenario it doesn't make much sense to the J scenario. The problem with the mission is it doesn't smell a little like setup it smells a LOT like a setup. Up front pay does help convince runners that the J is serious and at least has some intent on paying them.

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

@suoq

[ Spoiler ]

The ziplines were to be mentioned by the GM only if the team didn't have anyway to get inside the building.

[suoq]

[ Spoiler ]

I'm having flashbacks to a painful metagaming discussion.

The ziplines of unknown origin appear to be a DM fiat.

What gear to bring also felt like some metagaming was expected. Personally, I don't want to carry the monofilimant chainsaw or the 6F tag eraser unless I know I'm going to need it. I know not everyone marks their gear with "at home" "in car" "in medkit bag", etc but if I really carried all the junk of my character sheet I'd set off every scanner in a 2 block radius and have more gear than a deployed marine.

Finally assaulting a Horizon party on the promise of future pay from what could easily be a 5 year old kid making a prank call really means I have to metagame to take this mission. There is no way on Earth that I'm falling for this in a home game. Anyone who accepts this mission deserves to find the Head of Vecna halfway through.

I had a lot of fun on this mission. I really enjoyed it. But those first 5 minutes were painful. Once the train is moving, either on or off the rails, it's a great ride, but getting on that train was took a lot of handwaving.

[ Spoiler ]

Were I to run this, I'd have the job come from Draco with advance notice. Treat the target as some sort of Manchurian Candidate who doesn't know what he's got in his head. Either some part of their plan went sour and they need an extract here or they see an opportunity here that makes bringing in the runners worthwhile. Draco will take care of the security on the building the mission starts on if you want to use it for a start point, escape route, recon, or overwatch. But treat the runners like professionals dealing with professionals, not amateur night.

Edits and apologies.

So GMs can wave their hands, start people with all their gear, put the (initial) run right in front of their faces, and pull the trigger. Blam! Good times.

I've been approaching Missions with completely the wrong attitude. I need to think of it like a first person shooter or MMORPG where I can carry an infinite amount of gear and swap armor in an instant. My apologies for the things I've written above. I was approaching Missions from the wrong direction.

[LurkerOutThere]

@suoq

[ Spoiler ]

The ziplines were to be mentioned by the GM only if the team didn't have anyway to get inside the building.

I'm starting to question the usefullness of spoiler text at this point but:

[ Spoiler ]

See this argument seems silly to me. While it is mentioned that the GM should only mention the ziplines if the runners have no other way the simple fact that none of the other floors or locales of the Splendor building, especially not the ground floor, are detailed indicates that zipline to the balcony is how the module really intends for the runners to get into the building, heck there's even art depicting exactly that happening. The only other logical conclusion the module is set up for without adlibing is varying degrees of flight. Our GM did like she was supposed to and only mentioned the zipline when several people shot down the idea of free climbing the building. In the end we decided to wing it with the bluff and firepower method we mentioned above.

Suoq i'm not entirely sure the FPS comment is fair. Do i feel at times missions has pandered a little too heavily to the pink mohawk crowd? Certainly, but there have definitely been times when smart mirrorshades play has saved you guys tons and tons of hassle.

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

The calling for the run comes from a fixer the party knows. It is understandable that said fixer already did his homework and truly believes the team is capable of doing what Scion wants.

[ Spoiler ]

Quite possibly, Scion paid the fixer his finder's fee and showed some fake or temporary bank account with the money they runners would receive in the end. The fixer than calls the team as requested by Scion and makes the presentations.
Sure, later on the runners might get pissed with the fixer for not being thourough on his job, but hey, sometimes even the best can fail, right?

[suoq]

My assumption is between missions whichever one of us found that fixer first dumped his body in the barrens.

[LurkerOutThere]

[ Spoiler ]

Well in the fixers defense evidently the kid is a talented enough talker to walk into just the right clinic in chiba to get a walk in appointment for deltaware, so how could a mere fixer stand up to him. He's like the walking example of beginners luck and spending edge. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)

I do want to re-iterate, I did have fun with the mod, there was just some wobble to the setup that I think it would be better if it were fixed. If i were to run it outside of the missions environment where things like pay and setup are up to my discretion they'd be easy fixes, but as long as I am running under official auspices I try and keep things as close to the text as I can. I understand the choices made for storyline expedience though.

[Sally]

Like Suoq said, those first five minutes were touch and go. The entire table was torn between role-playing and meta-gaming. Someone paid for the module. We all took time out of our day to get together. We all wanted to play a mission that night, but every one of our characters would have walked away.

[ Spoiler ]

As for your comm-link being off/silent, an e-sensing check would have revealed that in a heartbeat. I should have offered to do so, saving Lifeseeker some time, but it was fun to watch him be sadistic.

And that is why Raisa is a TM gun bunny.

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

My assumption is between missions whichever one of us found that fixer first dumped his body in the barrens.

Unless half the team died, I see no reason to kill a fixer just because of this. I mean, even if you ended up with less money than you began. You just stop working with that fixer and move on. Even, a runner's haven like Seattle, I would say there is at best, one hundred-ish runners around still running, some dozen fixers and a lot of other former runners that are in still in the network for some reason or another offering support.
Killing a member of the shadow community just because he failed to see the cake was a lie (initially) but that after some legwork you would get your cake is a pretty harsh, isn't it?

[Chance359]

Well it won't be me going to kill the fixer, I've got McCallister and that would be build points down the drain. Not to mention his protected status as a plot device in future missions.

[LurkerOutThere]

[ Spoiler ]

Well e-sensing might have gotten the presence of cyberware and then confirmed it was headware, but not type at least on it's own. Reading it though we could definitely look into using it as a substitute/widearea cyberware scanner.

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

Well it won't be me going to kill the fixer, I've got McCallister and that would be build points down the drain. Not to mention his protected status as a plot device in future missions.

McCallister is the fixer with highest loyalty among my players. If he screws up and the runners feel they were screwed by him, I would make McCallister offer some gear with discount or buy them dinner at some fancy restaurant or whatever.

[Chance359]

No that is an interesting idea, but I don't think the mod would support it. Maybe a raise in McCallister's loyalty?

[LurkerOutThere]

Generally i feel more free on offering up extra gear and money then i do raising contact loyalty, although i've done both as situation warrants it.

[Bull]

One thing to always keep in mind...

We trust the GM.

We provide as much of a framework as possible so that the GM doesn't have to "wing it". Many GMs like having a very structured adventure to play off of. It's a big advantage to a scripted adventure vs. running your own adventures.

That said... There is no possible way to plan for every contingency, every player type, every play style. The best we can do is write it up as best we can, tell the story that we, as writers, want to tell, and hope the players have fun. The GMs job is to tailor things to fit his groups play style, power level, abilities, etc. We try to throw in extra hook suggestions to help the GM when situation arise where players can't accomplish a main avenue we assume they will (Finding a piece of data through legwork or hacking, for example, or SRM 04-02's rappelling bit). This is not ebcause we want to railroad players into doing a certain way... It's to help the GM have a quick way to solve what could be a roadblock. In a convention game, where you have less than 4 hours to play the entire adventure, you don;t have time to spend an hour as a group of possibly complete strangers discusses and argues how to access a highly guarded roof. So the GM's job is to give the players a little time to discuss the matter, and then help them along if a solution hasn't presented itself.

It's not perfect, but... Shy of each adventure being several hundred thousand words with each scene including advice of dealing with numerous avenues of pursuit and suggestions for dealing with the nearly innumerable combination of player characters that could be at the table... Instead we just try to tell the story, offer up some broad advice, keep things interesting, and rely on the GM to fill in the gaps once he's at the table.

Also, I apologize for not being around to weigh in more... My day job has completely crushed me for the last couple weeks. I'm pulling 10 and 12 hour shifts, and not sleeping much. So I've been checking in briefly from time to time, but haven't really had the chance to sit down and reply.

Bull