From SINners to Shadows, Game notes on everyday people becoming Criminals Options

[thorya]

We're having our second session tomorrow. The idea of this game that the players are starting as nobodies and working their way to shadowrunner status. By the end of the game, we hope to be where most games start. Players started from NPC stat blocks related to their careers. They changed out some of the knowledge skills and active skills to better fit them and then rounded them out to 300 BP.

The Team- (when possible I used their descriptions, hence the very different backgrounds)

Ed Lane- 26, M. Short brown hair, on the short side. (5'7'' or so)
Background: Normal Family, Lower Middle Class. (Some abuse)
Hobbies: Likes action movies, plays poker with his friends once a week.
As a junior in high school, Ed was arrested for breaking and entering. A local surge in petty theft at the time of his arrest caused the judge to hang a heavier sentence on him, resulting in him spending time in juvie and never officially graduating high school. (He does have a GED) Due to his criminal record, his career options were limited and he now works a dead-end job for Coca Cola restocking the coke machines at inner-city high schools. As his job offers him no authority on the premises, his job is a little like being stuck in high school forever. Having to handle constant run-ins with students trying to beg, bribe, or threaten him for free coke, he's gotten exceedingly good at the role. Ed gets by as something of a jack of all trades.

Mark Markson- an accountant - as mundane as possible. Think of the Narrator from Fight Club. But without the schizophrenia, split personality or any of his interesting traits. Works at Atlanta Computer Company (ACC) an A corp in Atlanta.

Kaymen Rider- For Kaymen Riyder (real name Conover Senduc) “The Good Old Days” were the years he spent working in the chop shop. His small time street gang worked an auto garage for a syndicate (or mafia). This garage was a front used for laundering autoparts. In the down time, the gang mainly roved about the town by motorcycle mixing with the local high-speed underground scene. They were small, but the fact that they were well taken care of (compared to other gangs) and they didn’t have any reason to get into the local turf squabbles made them more of a spectacle to the other gangs than a rival.
Everything fell through when the syndicate abruptly shut down the garage and pulled out of town. Some of the crew got relocated out of the area on a new project by the sponsors. Most of the rest moved out on their own or just found somewhere else to blend in. Virtually everything of value Kaymen owns is a remnant of his former occupation including his motorcycle (bought and built during his time with the garage), the old company van (where he now lives), and his fake SIN (provided to the crew by their sponsors).
Without any more support from the syndicate his only source of income is occasionally chopping parts from abandoned machines and fencing them, while his major pass time is trying to keep up a reputation a reputation in the racing crowd. The racing crowd know that he’s a wash up whose gang has dried up and who has lost his edge.

Maggie Donovan- Her parents are blue collar plane mechanics working for Southern Delta (an AA corp I made up for the game, it controls air travel and utilities and other things throughout most of the former United States). Corporate aptitude test to placed her for medical training (Emory). Paternal grandfather is a hedge wizard. He is somewhat paranoid and belongs to a pro CAS anti-Corporation political group with some extremist tendencies and connections with Tir na nOg.
Awakened in medical school outside of corporate territory. Got in touch with grandfather to help her through it. He got a friend of his in the history department to train her while she is in medical school. Still attending, in third year of medical school.
Some of grandfather's paranoia has been passed down and wants a way out of southern delta.
Has an old Chrysler-Nissan Jackrabbit 55'. Still runs, most days. Change of clothes in the trunk and a med kit rating 4.

Jerry
Jerry grew up in the outskirts of Atlanta (though his childhood home is now more part of the interior of the metro-sprawl), and was raised with a very open and friendly perception of other metahumans. He occasionally got into scuffles sticking up for his metahuman friends, and they quickly became a bit of an outcast clique growing up. As such, they took to VR/AR activities, such as video games. Any activities with more RL components were typically noncompetitive, such as building and flying Remote Control planes and helicopters.
Jerry attended CAS Polytechnic Institute, a mid-level college that specializes in training computer technician professionals. Jerry was a fairly adept student, made good grades, and had the spare time to start innocently hacking. His efforts primarily focused on fighting against extremist anti-metahuman campaigns on campus, but he "stopped" when the administration caught wind of his efforts, though he was never prosecuted for hacking (probably because the administration was against the hate speech of the campaigns). He has since picked up a low-level burn alias "Tom" that he occasionally uses on the matrix.
Jerry came out with a BS in System Management, and immediately went to work for ACC thanks to his work during school as an Intern with them. He has spent (4-12) years slowly climbing the ranks, though he is inexplicably bypassed for promotion fairly regularly, having only gotten (0-2) promotions in his time with ACC. As such, he has become slightly dissatisfied with ACC. Finds himself spending more and more time using "Tom" on the Matrix to explore things he shouldn't.


They all know each other because they are regulars at a Bar called the Tap Out, which is run by an elderly retired boxer named Steve "Wash" Washington. They all interact socially through the bar and some of them know each other through other connections.

[Paul]

Interesting. I look forward to following this as it unfolds!

[3278]

Yeah, this is excellent. I really enjoy reading play reports, particularly with GM notes: learning what other GMs are thinking about and planning for helps me suck less at it.

[Dez384]

The idea of running a low power level game was always interesting to me. Good luck!

[Midas]

Very believable characters for your DITG campaign. Congratulate your players for their backstories, and I look forward to hearing how the campaign progresses!

[3278]

The idea of running a low power level game was always interesting to me. Good luck!

We're doing a 350 point game of SR4 right now, and I was incredibly surprised at how competent and able a character I was able to make with those points. [We've played a lot of lower-power games, but nothing that low with SR4.] Now, I chose a simple melee brawler and offhand negotiator, so surely the results would have been different had I tried to make a magician of some sort, but the other characters all seem realistic and well-rounded. 300 is, proportionately speaking, a much bigger leap, but I find it a compelling play level, nevertheless. The system scales awkwardly around this point - largely because of glitches, which become much more common - but as long as you calibrate to it, it's just an interesting challenge, not debilitating.

[thorya]

Session 1

[ Spoiler ]

So the night starts off with everyone hanging out at the bar on the Tuesday night. I started the game with everyone describing their typical night at the bar. (something I do to start campaigns, though usually we just talk through a scenario that happened in the teams past and I found out at the end of the game several of the players were upset that we just did what they do at the bar, so there was one of those at the start of the second session) Jerry plays miracle shooter and hangs out with his girlfriend. Mark hangs out with Jerry. Maggie sits in the corner studying by herself. Ed and Kamen talk about poker and action movies while they drink.
Then three guys in suits walk in and walk up to Wash. This gets everyone's attention, because this is a barrens bar and no one wears suits. Wash gets angry at the men and screams, "Get out of my fucking bar. I'm not selling." The men leave, but Ed and Jerry over hear them saying, "It's our best offer, it will be half that tomorrow."
Maggie asks Wash who the guys were, but he just says, "Ah, some guys want to buy my bar, but I'm not selling. Don't worry. I own this property and they can take it from me when I'm good in dead." (The group doesn't know this, but Wash has been fighting losing legal battles with several of the other business owners in the area to keep Delta from forcing them out. I thought they might try pursuing a legal path to trump Delta, but they are all pretty suspicious of the legal system and quickly abandoned that route)
Maggie tells him that if a corporation has its way, then that's not a problem for them. Wash blows her off. After a little bit everyone goes back to drinking and hanging out. Then everyone drifts home. Jerry is curious and does some searching on the Matrix, he finds out that Southern Delta is planning on buying the land because they need to store some obsolete planes until they can get them sold.
Kamen established at the start of the game that he's worked out a deal with Wash where he can keep his van (the one he lives in) parked out in front of the bar overnight. So Kamen wakes to the windows of the bar being broken in. He goes after the guys and he gets a good look at them. He tries to tail them but they spot him and take off and he lets them go. The window smashers were three guys in their mid-twenties. The next day there is plywood on the windows and a sign that says, "YES! We're open!!" They notice that several of the businesses along the street have closing soon signs and some moving trucks carting stuff away.
Wash is super pissed about his windows and what he thinks are just vandals. Maggie tries to convince him that it's the corporation trying to scare him off, but he insists that it's not a good neighborhood and that it's just a bunch of kids. Wednesday night several of them decide to stick around and defend the bar from the thugs if they come back. So Maggie, Ed, Mark, Kamen, and Wash hang around.
Jerry doesn't see the point. Jerry does more digging instead and finds out that apparently part of the purchase contract with Saeder Krupp when southern Delta purchased the planes was that they could not be resold for 30 years and now Southern Delta's stuck with them even though they've got a buyer in africa that wants to convert them to cargo planes.
The rest of the group hear breaking glass a few streets over and get there in time to see the guys fleeing. Coordinating, they manage to follow the guys and figure out where they live. The thugs enter a parking garage. Kamen and Ed are able to conclude that the guys probably are not associated with any of the high school or cycle gangs in the area. Kamen, Mark and Ed decide to vandalize the thugs' car. (I described it as a 2070 elcamino with a spoiler. Kamen had some tools in his van. They cut off the spoiler and welded it to the hood and then slashed all the tires) While they're doing this they meet another resident who tells them that the thugs are just a couple of losers. The other resident doesn't seem upset that they've vandalized the car. Ed tries to get in touch with a contact at Lone Star to do something about the thugs, but he critically glitches on the request and his contact tells him to go to hell, he's not his personal muscle.
Maggie is able to figure out exactly who three men that visited the bar are by looking through an employee who's who record the next day. She gives this information to Jerry, but he doesn't find anything interesting out beyond what she provided. Cletus Smythe is the head of property acquisition for Delta, Jackson Hunter is a lawyer, and Terry Lee is a low level security nobody. Terry does not work underneath either of them.
They are at the bar again Thursday, just waiting with no leads on how to deal with the situation, and the Delta security guy, Terry Lee, is drinking at the bar. This of course peeks everyone's interest. (No one asked Wash why he was there or when he showed up, but Terry had come in to intimidate Wash and Wash told him to buy a beer or get the hell out. So he bought a beer and was drinking it slowly to piss Wash off) Jerry is curious so he starts trying to hack Terry's signal and happens to be in his node when Terry gets a message that says, "Can't make the meet , our car got trashed." Terry responds, "Fine, I'll leave it in the alley on Gardner near that crappy bar." Terry gets up to leave and walks outside. He thinks he's being inconspicuous, but Mark's watching him. He ducks down an alley.
While he's doing this, Jerry puts two and two together and decides to try to go deeper into the commlink to see what else he can learn. He's detected while doing this and Terry is alerted that his commlink has been hacked and it goes into immediate shutdown. Terry bolts out the alley and jumps in his car and takes off. Jerry spends time tracing back the message and hacking the thug's commlink. He finds their record of all information passing between Terry Lee and the thugs. It's mostly a list of meeting times and places and addresses that have been vandalized recently. The thugs get a message from Terry that he's been hacked and that they need to destroy the evidence. The node suddenly goes out while Jerry is still going through the information. (they just smash the commlink to bits, but Jerry doesn't know what's happened until later)
Kamen and Mark search the alley and find a plug in arson device that fries the wiring and makes it look like an electrical fire. They take it and wait to see if the thugs show up. The next morning Kamen buys some stuff at a hardware store and mocks up a fake copy with a node on it so the group can track it. They leave it in the alley. One of the thugs picks it up early in the afternoon.
Jerry maintains a trace on the fake arson kit, while at work, and Kamen follows the car and figures out which garage the car has been towed to. He wants to see if there is a way to make sure the guys don't get their wheels back at all. Everyone else is at work all day. While at work Mark does some checking and runs numbers and determines that their neighborhood is not the best place for Southern Delta to build this storage area. It's off their main sights so security will be more expensive, the property values are higher than other areas (though that might not be a problem given their tactics), and getting the planes to the sight to store will be a big hassle.
Friday evening, Jerry and Mark sit down and try to figure out what is up, they try search for information again and focus on the block the bar is in and the next block over that Southern Delta is trying to buy. They find that six months ago several abandoned properties were purchased in the area by the same guy. John Cotton, supposedly a Southern Delta secretary and nobody with any reasonable means or reason to purchase large amounts of property in a random section of the barrens. Mark also finds out from a corporate contact that based on the amount of money Delta authorized for the property purchase, the offers they've heard from Wash have been really low. They do more digging on John and find out that it's a Fake SIN used by Cletus Smythe. They conclude that he's been selling the company his property at way above market value and then intimidating everyone else to sell their property way below so that he can make a nice profit for himself. Hunter Jackson should have been the one reviewing this, but he's obviously in on the scam as well.
Jerry notices that the arson kit leaves the apartment. It's a shitty low security apartment building so Kamen and Ed decide to break in while the thugs are out. The thugs apartment is a shithole with mattresses on the floor and fastfood wrappers everywhere. They find a gun hidden under the sink, a 6000 nuyen certified credstick under the refrigerator, a bag of jazz on the counter, and the smashed commlink. They take the gun, drugs, and credstick. Then they bail. Ed ends up with the gun, Kamen the drugs, and they split the cash.
Jerry traces the fake arson kit to a church in the next block over, the other one Delta's buying. Mark is about to go bursting off to catch the guys in the act. Jerry is like? do you really think we can stop four guys? they'll kill us but Wash is like, "They're breaking and entering? Just call Lone Star." They do call Lone Star and report the crime. One of the guys is arrested and the other two take off into the night. The next day another one of the guys is caught. The guys finger Terry Lee. Shortly later Delta releases an announcement that Terry Lee has been terminated. Officially, "Mr. Lee's prejudice beliefs and involvement in organizing hate crimes outside of the company time leave us shocked and horrified. Southern Delta promotes the highest standards of equality and accepts no less from our employees. Mr. Lee's has been terminated this morning and Southern Delta will do everything in its power to fight racism."
(The group doesn't know this, but Terry Lee and the thugs are amateurs. Cletus and Hunter picked Terry for his loyalty to the company and for being too dimwitted to put together what they are doing. He thinks Southern Delta actually needs the land and that he's helping the Company. Hunter told him he had been put into the Special Operations division (SOD is Southern Delta's unofficial illegal activities branch) When Terry got identified with the Thugs and proved unreliable, they had him burned and started pursuing other means of forcing people out)
With the Thugs dealt with, the group is undecided whether they should try blackmailing Cletus and forcing him to pick another site (and make some money in the process) or if they should just let the higher up Southern Delta officials know. Jerry thinks that because it's a bad sight the higher ups will close the project and pick a better location. Mark and Ed want to blackmail the guy, because they think that the companies too invested at this point and so is just going to go forward with the project. Kamen wants to blackmail, but is worried that it will mean that Cletus will try tracking them down and having them dealt with, so whistle blowing would be safer. Maggie is undecided, she thinks blackmail is more effective, but is paranoid that if company finds out that she knew about an embezzlement scheme and didn't report it, then they will come after her parents and her for it. (Maggie also decides that she needs to start accumulating a fake SIN/ID, some money, and equipment to get out of the corporate structure) Mark also investigated if there was some way to get the planes sold in court. He used his knowledge of Foreign Jellies to see if their is are ever legal tricks used to get around laws against importing or selling Jellies (I only include this because it's funny). He rolled well, so I pointed out that black markets can be used and that people have arranged rental agreements where they don't actually sell things, just rent for very long periods. They decided they were not going to solve Southern Delta's legal battle with Saeder-Krupp over selling the planes. We ended the session there, with the resolution that we would decide what to do at the start of the next session.

Maggie's player realized that she was always going to have to be on rotations at a hospital or in class as a med student when most of the things were happening, and that no one in the group was built for combat so everyone was avoiding it at all costs, so having a lot of medical training meant she was useless. She reworked Maggie as a nurse for the next game (the numbers stayed mostly the same, but she had a closer to regular schedule so that she would actually be around for things). Everyone else was pretty happy and made some minor changes. Overall I was pretty happy. They played smart and didn't try getting into gun fights, attacking the corporation, or anything a group of five regular people couldn't really do.

[3278]

How much of the background did you have planned in advance, and how much did you have to come up with on the spot?

[thorya]

How much of the background did you have planned in advance, and how much did you have to come up with on the spot?

Here are my notes for myself before the game:

[ Spoiler ]

Delta's Goal-
They want to expand their territory to build storage facilities for a fleet of decommissioned air craft.

Key Players
Cletus Smythe- The executive in charge of choosing the site for their storage facilities. He has targeted this particular neighborhood to dump their old planes in because he purchased several of the abandoned buildings after a foreclosure and plans on funneling the purchase funds to buying his portion of the land. He has contracted with some local muscle and coordinated them with southern delta security specialist, Terry Lee, to deal with the people living there. Though there is a team of southern delta lawyers involved, Hunter Jackson is the only one aware of Smythe's attempts to screw over the people there to line his own pockets and is getting a cut. He will stonewall any attempts to take legal action.
Hunter Jackson- Cletus's lawyer and accomplice. As slimy as they come.
Terry Lee- The southern delta security specialist, low level. Hunter has told him that he's working for the special operations division. Smythe has agreed to give him a small cut of the embezzlement as a company "bonus" if he scares everyone off. He will concentrate on intimidation and vandalism. He will go as far as arson, but does not intend to actually do more than rough people up. He holds racist views, but is not outspoken about them. He is working with the local muscle.
The Local Muscle- A group in their early twenties that are sort of a gang. Smythe did some investigation and decided to pay them (next to nothing) through Terry to keep tabs on things around the neighborhood and to intimidate some people they didn't like anyway. Terry Lee is coordinating their actions, somewhat. They're sort of loose cannons and think that being hired is their step up. They don't realize that Terry and Cletus are going to ditch them after they're done.
Jackie Carnes- Smythe's boss. Jackie is interested predominantly in storing the planes cheap. They would be scrapped, but she is trying to set up their sale to an African company, for which she will receive a large commission. It is caught in a legal trouble over the sale. Saeder-Krupp claims it is a violation of their contracts if the planes are sold within thirty years of purchase. She needs a legal loophole to keep the planes on paper, while also selling them or to trump Saeder-Krupp in court. If she can get it sorted out, before the new model is adopted in the next year she can score herself a big win financially and professionally and the storage project will be scrapped.
Joseph "Joe Blow" Blonski- A brew master for Terrapin - Sweetwater brewing company who is looking for official TSB bars. If the tap out is incorporated into the company, it becomes part of the official brewing land and would as such receive legal protections. It would be somewhat restrictive, but would be a legal way of handling this.

Routes to resolve the situation (that I can think of)-
Throw a legal wrench into the work.
Expose Cletus to his boss and get her to resolve it for you, perhaps by finding a better alternative sight.
Scare Cletus and his guys off. (tough, but death threats done anonymously and well might work)
Work out Carnes's legal troubles and get the planes sold.
Frame Cletus for arson on his own buildings and get the insurance after him.
Blackmail Terry with his humanis views.
Turn the trio of Hunter, Cletus and Terry on one another.

So I had some of the scenario planned out and I knew that the local thugs were going to hit the bar to intimidate Wash. I wasn't sure what route the group would take to deal with the problem, but I did ask them to have some attachment to the bar as a way of unifying the group before hand, so I knew they would try to keep it from being taken by Southern Delta. I worked through most of the details during the game. I have run games before and learned a long time ago that I can never plan for what my players do (and I'm usually delighted by the ways they think up to solve problems I throw at them). I honestly expected them to be a little more combat focused (really glad they weren't) so I expected they would grab one of the local muscle and shake 'em down for information. I really enjoyed them working around direct confrontation instead and all the information gathering. I'll probably post session 2 in the next few days (played yesterday), they did several things I did not consider at all which made several problems just go away entirely.

Spoiler, Ed talked down three gangers looking to beat the crap out of him.

[thorya]

GM's notes from before Session #2 (some of these were changed mid-game based on how things played out):

[ Spoiler ]

Terry Lee shows up and wants revenge and wants the team to help him (think they owe him). He blames Hunter Jackson and is showing violent intent while talking to the team, because he got burned.

If the team goes to Jackie Carnes, she'll turn on a jammer and then make a deal that if they lodge formal protests, organize a riot and then sabotage an aircraft, she'll guarantee the bar won't get torn down. Especially if they mention Terry Lee. She wants to use the insurance on the air craft as leverage to push the court case through.
She wants the team to file legal complaints, then stage protests, and finally to sabotage the planes they want to store on the property. Terry Lee can get them through security. Obviously, they will become felons on SD land for their sabotage, but the company actually has no reason to go after them and the evidence or identification will be lost or corrupted. They won't send a strike team for them and they'll liquidate their assets in the area around the tap out. She might decide to liquidate Terry if he is too obvious. She will of course liquidate Cletus and Hunter, but their actions and stirring up the local population is the perfect cover for the insurance leverage, since Saeder Krupp owns the insurance company.

If they try to blackmail Cletus Smythe, he will send credsticks with tracers and then try to have them killed. They might eventually get him to change his mind, but he will do everything in his power to take them out rather than giving in.

Meanwhile there is an ongoing conflict between two biker gangs the "Sundance Kids" and the "Rough Riders". The Sundance Kids are mostly human and run guns and stolen merchandise. The Rough Riders are mostly trolls and act as drug runners and dealers. They have been clashing over territory. The leaders of the two gangs have agreed to try to settle their territory disputes with race offs. In the neighborhood that is in question there are seven streets running east-west. They agreed to have races along all seven streets and divide the neighborhood according to who wins the most races. However, in the first two races the Sundance Kids had mechanical problems and they wrecked. The rider was killed in both of the first two wrecks. In the third that opens the game, there is another wreck, but the rider survives.
The Sundance Kids claim that the Rough Riders are trying to sabotage them and the rough riders claim they're just trying to back out of the deal. The tension is high. If the Sundance Kids are better armed, but the Rough Rider's have some connections and it could quickly breakdown into total gang war. The Sundance Kids have a loose connection with Kamen's former gang. Enough that they know him, but that's about it. The race is being managed by a third neutral gang called the Sons of Silence.

In Reality, the CP gang is looking to expand into the territory and they are trying to turn the two gangs against each other. They have sabotaged the bikes in the second and third races and the street in the first race (counting on hitting one of the gangs and not caring which). They are working with Mark Strong and Lone Star. After the two sides have torn each other up enough, Lone Star will break up the gang war with an amazing amount of inside information (that CP will supply), and CP gets to sweep into the power vacuum. They've gotten a little too forward though in their recruiting and have started trying to entice some high schoolers to act as local agents for them.

Former Mayor Mark Strong- He'll take a Strong Position on Crime, He'll take a Strong Position on Justice, Don't you want someone Strong on your side? He won't Waver. He is trying to up fears about gang violence so that he can get reelected. He has made sure that the news coverage of gang violence is much greater than it has been and is working with Lone Star to fudge numbers to make it look like the current Mayor (Ricky Waverly) has seen a rapid climb in crime. He also has ties with the CP gang and plans to make it look like crime has gone down drastically after he takes out most of their competition. He is the reason that Racheal Gomez is on the scene reporting very quickly. (Changed this mid game, decided that Mark Strong was the current Mayor and the reporting is a smear campaign to get him ousted)

The CP Gang is trying to exert themselves in the local high schools (the CP gang started as a high school gang). Most of the leaders of the gang are older now and are running it more like a brutal mob than a typical high school gang. They are always trying to expand and don't care who they piss off. They are butting heads with the Latin Kings and Young East Squad (YES) street gang.
They have been pushing drugs and organizing petty theft rings in other people's territory. When the new "members" get caught by the police or other gangs, the CP gang turns their back on them for being sloppy. They intimidate the kids in the schools and force them in, but to really move up and become a "Leetman" you have to make a big "score" or commit a violent act.

[thorya]

Session #2-

[ Spoiler ]

The group considers over the weekend and finally decide on Monday to send in the information to Cletus's boss, his boss's boss, internal affairs, and the accounting department all at once. Jerry tries to encrypt and send through a third party to make it so they can't trace it back to him (he fails, but Delta's hacker has about twice as many dice as he does so it's not really a surprise).
That night Terry Lee follows Maggie home and threatens her with a gun. Says he knows the bar gang is who called Lone Star on his guys and they're the reason he got fired. He thinks this means that they owe him and he says he's not going to let Delta screw him and he's going to make Hunter Jackson pay and that unless they want to be on his list too, they better be ready when he needs them. He doesn't seem all there. Maggie flips out over this and calls up Kamen and asks if she can sleep in his van. She gets pepper-punch and asks Ed if he can get a hold of narcoject or other more powerful chemicals for her, in case Terry Lee ever shows up again. Ed still stays sort of in touch with the guy he used as a fence in high school and it takes him until the next Sunday to actually set up a meeting with a guy that can sell him narcoject. Meanwhile Ed gets in touch with his buddy at Lone Star (his Juvenile Parole officer) and tells him about Terry Lee showing up. He says to give him a call if they see him again and try to set up a meeting. He'll bag Terry for them if it's not too much work.
Kamen meanwhile tells the group about the big street race that is going down Tuesday night.
Tuesday night they go to see the race. Jerry clashes heads with the Sons of Silence hackers controlling the video feeds of street cams, but otherwise it goes uneventfully. The Sundance Kids wreck and Lone Star is there with a T.V. crew in a matter of minutes. T.V. crew sets the downed bike on fire. Everyone takes off before they get caught (it's a near thing for Kamen) and they meet back up. There is now a lot of tension between the biker gangs.
Wednesday Kamen decides to go see the Sundance Kids at their main hangout. Pretty much everyone is armed, but he is neutral and doesn't piss anyone off. He lets Cassidy know that he wants them to win. Cassidy lets him know that they plan on proving the trolls are cheating and then it won't matter. Kamen proposes something else. He'll race for them, but he'll do a last minute change out so no one has a chance of messing with his bike. Cassidy agrees, since he doesn't have any riders that actually want to compete and since he already smells a fight, he figures if the Rough Riders take him out, it's one less guy he's lost.
The race is Friday night. Kamen spends the rest of the week tuning up his bike and making sure he's ready to go. Maggie checks it over every night to make sure that no one has tampered with it astrally.
Wednesday night, a woman walks into the bar and sits at the table with Jerry, Mark, Jerry's girlfriend (Stephanie), and Maggie. She slides the information that they sent to Southern Delta across the table and asks what Jerry's angle in all of this is. He plays dumb. It doesn't work. He pleads generosity and sense of justice. Stephanie and Maggie make an excuse and leave the table. Ed moves a little closer to listen in. Finally the mystery woman breaks Jerry and he admits that it was to keep the bar from being torn down that he sent in the information.
The woman responds, "I hoped as much. I appreciate you relieving me of an ambitious underling, but you must understand that with the seizure of Mr. Smythe's assets we already control 70% of this neighborhood. Even though this is not the best site, we're already invested. As long as I have planes that need stored, the project is moving forward."
Jerry's like, "What? But you can't just take the property."
The woman responds, "I can do many things. Your Mr. Washington has already tried many legal routes, we will take this bar. However, I have a proposal to let you save your crappy little hang-out. If a group of locals were to stage a protest, perhaps near the location where the planes are being stored, and that protest were to devolve into a riot and those planes were heavily damaged during the protests, our insurance would have to pay to replace them. Which normally would not be a problem for the insurance company, unless it looked like we would be storing the planes in a location where this could be a frequent occurrence and we already have our contracts signed for the next year. Obviously, the insurance company would be rather put out and they might convince their parent company to stop preventing us from selling those planes. No money will change hands. Your motivation is simply vandalism and protest. That is your only use to me. If I were to hire a team of professionals, it might not stand up in court because what would be their motivation? and there would be a trail and I might end up having to deal with insurance fraud charges. I'll let you consider it. I'll see you tomorrow night."
She slides a standard Southern Delta facility map over and indicates where a few of those planes are being stored.
Jerry responds with, "Why should we, as soon as we have do you'll take us out or blackmail us, or you're setting us up to get us arrested."
The woman responds, "There's no angle in that. Once you've done this, you'll never see me again. You've got nothing else I want. And blackmailing you with something that could also implicate me would just be stupid. I will see you tomorrow for your answer."
The woman stands and the power goes out.
"I forgot to mention that we control the utilities to this block. Something else to consider."
The power is out all night and is restored in the morning. All the other customers leave shortly after the power drops.
The group gathers together and talk about it. They decide that since Terry thinks they owe him, they should convince him to do this rather than whatever he's got planned. None of them like being told what to do though and the people that were pushing for blackmail are a little pissed that they didn't do that. Jerry investigates the woman, but her commlink I.D. identified her as Peggy Winchester, a former Southern Delta Stewardess from the western CAS. Maggie is able to get employee photos the next day and they identify her as Jackie Carnes. Kamen starts laughing (well his player did at least). He has the brilliant idea that plane parts are probably worth as much as car parts and he knows the Sundance Kids deal in those some. If they can get in with them and they can put this forward as a legitimate job and then it has an even better cover. It's not a riot to cover sabotage for corporate gain. It's a riot to cover theft for personal gain.
The next night, Jackie comes back. Jerry lets her know that they'll do it. She smiles knowingly. She tells him it has to be done in the next three weeks. She provides information on the security in the area and when they ask how she expects them to organize this in three weeks, she tells them it's not her problem.
Friday during work, Ed notices a high school kid grabbing a case of Coke from his truck and running off with it. He chases the kid down. The kid throws down the case and turns on Ed with a knife. Ed recognizes him from the CP gang, the biggest bunch of punks around. Everyone hates them and they're in everything. The kid says, "What you going to do, old man? CP gang takes what it wants."
Ed lifts his shirt to reveal the handle of the Colt America. The kid backs up and tells him he'll regret it. Then the kid runs off.
Now the focus shifts to getting ready for the race. Kamen spends all week tuning up his bike. Maggie spends the time checking periodically for magical sabotage after work. Jerry and Mark are at work most of Thursday and Friday. Friday after work Jerry starts probing the street cams to set up a back door and he succeeds, but the Sons of Silence hackers find him when they hack the cams later and kick him out. He resorts to sending in his helicopter drone to get a view of the race. Ed is on the ground ready to get in touch with Kamen to let him know when the race is about to go, so he can come in at the right time.
Kamen rides in and Cassidy announces that they're making a replacement. They've had their gang guarding the bike that was going to race. The Rough Riders aren't happy, but the Sons of Silence given the background multiple wrecks decide to allow it.
Kamen has taken a dose of Jazz and is in communication with the rest of the team. Maggie is following him astrally to make sure nothing messes with him magically. Kamen gets on the line and revs the engine. He ties initiative with the Rough Rider's racer. So they're neck and neck at the start of the race. Kamen does a better job handling the rough road and pulls ahead (he used edge and beat the Rough Rider's racer by several hits) He pulls several bike lengths ahead. Then Maggie sees something grey and roundish move from the road to the bike. Jerry sees something that looks like the road is suddenly slick for a split second as Kamen goes down the road. Maggie jumps back to her body and both immediately let Kamen know that there's something on his bike. Kamen says he's going to keep riding.
Suddenly Kamen's bike locks up, he manages to stay on it and keep it up as he skids to a stop (I expected a wreck or for him to use edge, instead he got 6 successes out of 12). Kamen jumps off his bike and starts looking for the thing that got his bike. He spots a translucent looking shape about 6 inch by 2 inch sliding over the surface from his bike. He runs after it and manages to pry it off the ground. It's a little drone with active camouflage and there is a saw, arc welder, gripper claw, and plasma cutter on the underside. The two gangs are staring each other down and there are a lot of weapons out. Kamen signals and the Sons of Silence ride down to him. Cassidy and Dead Ted come down too with their gangs. The Sons of Silence examine the drone and tell Dead Ted that he's lost the territory. Dead Ted claims that the whole thing is rigged and vows war. (the gang hasn't figured this out yet, but the CP gang is responsible for the cheating. They were trying to set off a conflict so they could come in and pick up the pieces) Violence might erupt right there, but someone announces Lone Star incoming. Everyone scatters. Maggie and Jerry arrive in Kamen's van and they load the bike in as fast as possible. They clear out. Ed again watches the news. The crew got there way too fast and Ed notices that there are a lot of political ads for the current mayor during the coverage of the "gang violence".
The group meets back up at the Tap Out for a celebration beer. Saturday they spend on their own. Kamen goes to congratulate the Sundance Kids (he brings Ed along), they're ready for war, but the Rough Riders are reeling because they lost a lot of street cred for their apparent cheating and now don't have the back-up they were counting on. They hook him up with the parts he needs to fix his bike and he pitches the idea of the Southern Delta plane heist. He brings in Ed as his guy that's got the information about their security. Cassidy thinks it worth considering and hands if off to a few of his guys to figure out if they can sell plane parts and for how much. He tells them he'll get back to them.
Ed and Kamen go back to the bar and there are three late teens hanging out in front. The park a little down the street and walk up to the bar. The three kids approach Ed. Ed and Kamen both see that they're armed. Kamen keeps walking past and goes into the bar. He waits by the door with a knife out, waiting for the fight to start so he can try jumping the kids from behind.
Ed asks, "What's up?"
The gang leader says, "What's this we hear about you messing with one of our gang members?"
Ed responds, "What are you talking about?"
The gang leader seems a little confused, "Don't play dumb. You're the Coke delivery guy that was messed with one of our boys."
Ed responds, "I don't know what you're talking about. There are a lot of Coke delivery guys."
The gang leader hesitates, he's not sure he has the right guy.
So Ed asks them, "Wait, so one of your gang members got sent packing by a Coke delivery guy and you're spreading it around?" Their leader responded with a clever, "Yeah, whatever. Come on guys, we got places to be. This guy's not worth our time."
Sunday Ed finally gets in touch with a guy that can sell them Narcoject. Ed and Maggie go to the meet. Ed goes in first to size up the guy and feels comfortable that the guys not an undercover cop. His old fence has put them in touch with a guy that sells all sorts of fun things, all sorts of chemicals, some drugs, fireworks, and old dynamite. Ed has Maggie come in to size the stuff up. Some of it's obviously hot (the CS gas still has Lone Star serial numbers on it). Ed negotiates to buy narcoject and a few other chemicals for Maggie. This makes Maggie feel better, in case Terry shows back up. Ed then buys some thermite and dynamite from the guy, for use in their sabotage. Then they head out.
Monday night, they're chilling at the bar again, when Terry Lee bursts in. He goes over to Maggie's table and says, "I've got it figured out. Hunter Jackson's the one that set me up. And he's going to be leaving corporate territory for a meeting downtown. We'll hit him then. I picked up the guns. You guys need to distract him so I can get close enough before he runs away." He flashes two Streetline Specials inside his jacket. Maggie is already afraid of him and when he flashes a gun at her, she pulls out a can of pepper-punch and sprays him in the face with it (the more powerful stuff is in the car). This sets him off (and also pretty much disables him for the rest of the fight). He responds by grabbing one of the guns and shooting her point blank. She's not wearing armor so takes some serious damage. She runs out of the bar and calls Lone Star. Everyone else springs into action. Mark leaps up and hits Terry Lee, but Terry doesn't seem to care. Jerry is hesitant, he almost runs but then decides to take a half hearted swing at Terry (he rolled to see whether Jerry bolted or stood around to help fight). The next ten seconds is insanity. Mark keeps swinging. Kamen gets over there a bit late and tries to stab Terry. Terry gets off two more shots and one of them nails Ed pretty good. Ed was hesitant to draw his gun, because he has it illegally, but once he's shot he pulls it out and nails Terry with it. Terry drops.
The next few minutes are damage control. The other patrons in the bar are dazed and don't know what's going on. Wash calls Lone Star as well. Kamen pockets one of the Streetline Specials and they decide that Ed took his gun (the Colt America) from Terry and shot him with it to explain how Ed ended up with a gun. Kamen walks out and hides the Streetline Special in his van before Lone Star arrives later. Ed meanwhile calls up his Lone Star friend who shows up to make sure that any remaining questions are smoothed over. Maggie uses her medkit on herself and Ed bandaged up so well before Lone Star arrives that they don't bother calling an ambulance. Terry Lee gets carted off to prison. Also, Jerry gives Maggie a commlink not tied to her I.D., so she can talk to the rest of the team without Southern Delta monitoring it. That night Kamen gets a message that says, "It looks good to my guys. We're in."
That's where the session ended.

[thorya]

Funny side story. Mark's player was on speaker phone for the first hour of the game because he was out of town. Then he went out of touch as he passed through airport security. Once he got to his terminal, he Skyped into the game. He happened to be on Skype, at a Delta terminal when Jackie Carnes showed up for her meeting with the team at the Tap Out. After she had left the team was discussing the feasibility of smashing up planes. And Mark's player said, "So how much explosives would it-" He was stopped by everyone at the table shouting, "Shut up! Don't say that! You're in an airport!"

Talked with the player yesterday, apparently the rest of that sentence would have been- "So how much explosives would it take to blow up a few acres of an airport?"

Really glad he didn't say that.

[3278]

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/notworthy.gif)

Wait, now who are the CP gang, again?

[thorya]

A gang I made up for the game they control most of Southern Atlanta (the game takes place in Atlanta, if you had not gathered and I could not find any official source material on it so I made up a lot of stuff). Ed has some knowledge of gangs in the area, since he has to deliver to the shittiest high schools and neighborhoods. Below is the information Ed knows about them:

[ Spoiler ]

The CP gang (College Park, originally)
They operate out of South Atlanta and are the largest gang in the city. They're in everything, drugs, prostitution, theft, extortion, black mail, etc. It started as a high school gang many years ago, but most of the people still in charge are now in their 30-40's. They're brutal and have a lot of violent hazing practices. They are known to have a lot of infighting as well. A full member is called a "Leetman" and to get this status you have to have committed a violent crime or made a big score for the gang of 10,000 nuyen or more. Their symbols are a Red and Black CP, a Skull with a Revolver Pressed Against it, and A Chain with a breaking Link

They have been pushing drugs and organizing petty theft rings in southeast Atlanta for a while and are butting heads with the local street gangs and the more organized neighborhood gangs. They tend to deal with competition through violence and have also had run ins with the big syndicates and the motorcycle gangs. In short, they don't get along with anyone, even each other.

Leaders

Sherry- The official leader of the gang. Human, Female, Black.
L. Brown- "Lee" He served 7 years for a shooting related crime and possession of Jazz. He is out on parole and looking to settle a score on the person that ratted him out. Ork, Male, Black
N. Smith "Smitty"- A ranking leader in charge of the prostitution side of the organization. He is well known to dislike Sherry and there are rumors the two have tried to have each other killed. Human, Male, Black
J. Tremblay "JT"- Elf, Male, White
T. Johnson "Tin Lizzy"- Troll, Female, Hispanic

[thorya]

So between the first and second session we did a little talk through adventure no dice rolling to establish that the group had some background and to get a better feel for how everyone wanted to play. This takes place a couple years before the game, when the gang didn't know each other very well. Some of them had just started coming to the Tap Out. It includes a little more character development, but isn't directly related to the game we have ongoing.

[ Spoiler ]

It's a quiet night, a little after nine when the after work crowd is already mostly gone and it's a weekday so the party crowd isn't going to show up later. The characters are the only ones left, as usual. Wash's Niece Maria is in the bar. She works as a waitress there part time. She has an ex-boyfriend that has been giving her some trouble. She's complained to Lone Star about it, but she's a waitress in a Barrens Bar, she doesn't have the nuyen to make it worth their time to do their job. The Ex shows up obviously high and belligerent. He yells at Maria that she's coming with him. Jerry and Mark get up and try to calm him down. He tells them to mind their own god damn business. Wash tells the guy that if he doesn't leave, he's calling the cops. The other three stay seated. Maggie digs through her purse and realizes that she left her tranq patches in the car with the rest of the med kit stuff.
The Ex tries to drag Maria out. Jerry steps forward and tells him to take his hands off the girl. The guy punches Jerry in the face and knocks him to the ground. Ed and Kamen get up from the bar. Wash goes to get his baseball bat. Mark looks at Jerry on the floor and say, "Wrong move asshole". (Mark apparently has a tendency to overestimate his chances in a fight which is becoming more and more pronounced as the game goes on. I'm considering letting him have the poor self control negative quality considering how prone he is to jump into fights he shouldn't be able to win.) Mark takes a swing at the Ex. The Ex throws Maria to the floor and grabs a chair. Maggie runs to her car. The guy smacks mark with the chair. Ed grabs the guy from behind. Jerry grabs his legs. (I'm glad we weren't rolling dice, figuring out the actual mechanics of that would have been miserable) Mark keeps swinging. Wash hits the guy in the gut with a baseball bat and the guy drops to the floor with Kamen, Jerry, and Ed holding him down. Maggie returns with a tranq patch to finally knock him out.
Maria is in tears. Ed is like shit, if you're calling the Loaners I'm getting out of here. I'm not going to court for assault. Kamen suggests that they throw him in a river somewhere. Mark seconds this suggestion. Maggie is horrified that they plan on drowning the guy, no matter how much of a jerk he is. Jerry agrees this would be wrong. The other three try to explain that the guy will probably wake up when he hits the water. And then he's just a druggie that fell in a river. Not their problem. But he'll probably come back and go after Maria again, or all of them depending on how pissed he is (they decided early on that just beating the crap out of the guy was not enough). Ed has relaxed now that it's apparent that they're not going to rely on Lone Star or have to answer awkward questions about a bar fight.
Kamen suggest that he hotwire a car and they shove the guy inside and call Lone Star so he gets arrested for auto theft. The group quickly escalates this plan to ensure that the guy gets locked up for a while and thinks twice before coming for Maria.
He's found passed out in a car that he apparently tried to break into (it has a smashed window and he's leaning through it into the drivers seat), he has some drugs on him (he already had these), and he at some point in the night tried to order 50 kilos of cram from a shady Matrix site in the carribean (who now has his financial information since he did not have it well protected when Jerry hacked his commlink). He gets sent to prison for the next few months and no one believes his story of being attacked and drugged at the bar. Especially since his commlink shows no record of ever being near the Tap Out during the night.

I liked it because it established that they don't trust the system even if they are SINners (everyone except Kamen) and have previously done things of questionable legality before and stayed in touch with each other after.

[thorya]

Session #3- GM's notes

[ Spoiler ]

The Sundance Kids identify that the pilot program and processing hardware for the planes is the biggest ticket item. It use to be top of the line and coordinates with millions of integrated sensors throughout the plane and is constantly running thousands of fluid dynamics models to ensure the greatest efficiency possible. Now you could do it in a package half the size, but it's still an impressive piece of hardware. They've got a client lined up (Mafia operation in Savannah). This requires removing a huge section of the cockpit and hauling away the 100 kilo central computer and pilot interface (100,000 nuyen is the price they're getting). There is also the Matrix antenna and security node. This is running the highest level Matrix security available (Firewall 6, System 8, Analyze 6, Black IC, and a system sprite that's bad ass, Command Professional, Analyze Professional, Scan Professional, Armor Professional, Blackout Professional, Sniffer, Track Professional) (worth about 20,000 nuyen on the blackmarket). Tearing out this node on the underside of the plane might be worthwhile, if they have a buyer for it, but they don't. The larger atmospheric sensor and other sensors on the plane are all rating 4 or better and go from between 200-1200 nuyen each on the black market. The aileron and flap drive motors also would fetch a nice chunk of change on the blackmarket (3,000 nuyen). They can also sell the single grain Tungsten-Titanium alloy turbine blades at a price of 70 nuyen a kilo, which makes them worth hauling if they can get them pried out probably the easiest way is just to blow the engine and pick up the pieces. They can get 10 nuyen a kilo for copper, but it's probably a liability. Most of the rest of the plane isn't worth the extra weight to haul it out. It will actually take the security team about 20 minutes to respond if they hit at shift change and having a protest will add 5 minutes.
It takes a mechanic check (or demolition check) to remove each piece of equipment, 1 minute interval:
Main computer- 20
Matrix hub- 18
Aileron Motor (6 per plane)- 10
Sensor Arrays- 12
Engine (2 per plane, contains 100 kilos of Tungsten Titanium, only half can be recovered if the engine is blown, but using explosives counts as 2xEffective Rating of the Explosive hits)- 15
Copper wiring- 2 per kilo
The group's cut if they make it out will be about 5% (finder's fee and leg work) + 1% for every member that participates in the raid:
Main flight computer and pilot interface- 5000 nuyen
Either they can take the Matrix network hub or try to find a buyer-1000 nuyen
Sensors- 2d6 x 100 nuyen
Aileron motor- 150 nuyen
per kilo of TT- 4 nuyen
per 10 kilo of copper- 5 nuyen
Total possible ~8,000 nuyen. Additionally, the Sundance Kids will send Kamen a thank you package. It's a Ruger Super Warhawk with a custom red and brown paint job. Sundance Kids loyalty increases from 2 to 3.

Delta Security has a strong matrix present, but there are only going to be two active patrol drones. There is a security fence and a mechanic and two plane cleaning technicians at the storage hanger. There are also three cleaning drones and two maintenance drones. A bunch of tools (worth some money). Primary defense is the main response team from further within the corporate territory, normal response time 5-10 minutes. Shift change is 3:00 PM. There is a motion detection system that goes on at night it has lock down capabilities for the building and narcojet response canisters, but this is a low security location and none of this is top of the line. There are also watcher spirits roving over the complex and several Merlin Hawk lives in Delta territory that might be in the area (it's a magical bird that hunts other birds and is protected by the Delta corporation as a natural magical defense). There are three planes in the hanger.
As a side note, the particular hangar is a cleaning hangar out by some storage sheds and corporate dorms for low level employees right at the edge of corporate territory and with much lower security than the main airport area. There is a gate nearby with one guard, because of the relatively high traffic into Southern Delta territory of passengers for flights, this is very easy to get through.
Jackie Carnes is of course lying to the team when she offered the reassurance that Southern Delta would let them go, because there was no margin in their capture. The corporation still needs to save face and catch and publicly try several of the looters/rioter. She assumes that several of them will be caught in the act and sentenced by Southern Delta without incident, but she's counting on enough getting away that more rioting will appear likely. Then there will of course be a big public show of tracking the criminals, with little to no resources being expended on actually getting them. Whereas normally a team would be hired to round up the saboteurs. Southern Delta's public image and marketing are not Jackie's problem, so she's not worried about the possible backlash.

A few weeks later, if we have time.
Wash tells the gang that he has a buddy at Terrapin-Sweetwater Breweries and apparently they've got a shipment of 1600 cases of Troll Ale Brew that were mislabeled as IPA (in cans) and the company was just going to pitch it all. They normally retail for 20 nuyen a case. Wash's buddy has made it vanish from company records, marked as disposed of. He needs someone to remove it from the factory physically. It's currently in a store room. He thinks that they can just mock up a fake pick up and cart the stuff out, but is open to other ideas. He contacted Wash, because he thought that Wash would be able to sell, but Wash doesn't want serve beer from cans and his customers would have a problem with mislabeled cans even if he does. So Wash originally talks with Ed and Mark thinking that Mark as an accountant will have some brilliant business plan and Ed can get a delivery truck or similar to pick it up in. If the group can think of something to do with 32,000 nuyen of mislabeled beer for a profit, it's there's.
Kamen's Van carries 2000 kg max, if he unloads his tools and such for the run. 10 kg per case, means he can only haul 200 cases at a time.

We played yesterday, I'll put up the play report some point later this week.

[thorya]

Session #3-

[ Spoiler ]

(Mark sat this one out because his player was working)

The group get the information from the Sundance Kids on what parts are most valuable and they coordinate with Wash. He's going to get the a few of the other shop owners in the block and a few of the tenants of one of the apartment buildings to protest. The group decide the shop owners should protest at a different gate if things go bad.
The group discusses various distractions, including setting a car on fire away from the hanger they're hitting. Firing random shots or wrecking a car into a building to create a panic. Kamen finally decides he's going to steal the car that belonged to the thugs that originally were vandalizing the bar. He knows which garage they had it towed too and they never picked it up. It's been transferred to a tow lot. One of the guys is still on the run. Kamen plans on taking the car and then leaving it on the sight to draw attention to these known criminals. Ed plans on firing several shots in an alley near one of the dorms and then leading out to cause confusion, but this plan is eventually scrapped. The Sundance Kids plan on protesting and blocking the road for a little while until the guard comes out to disperse them. Then they plan on rushing the gate and setting fire to some random buildings around the corporate territory, before hitting the hangar. They'll do this entirely without the team if the group wants them too. The Sundance Kids very much see this as a smash and grab where some random protesters are going to get blamed.
Jerry spends every night for the next week pocking and prodding his way into the main matrix hub that provides service for the corporate dorms. The security feeds in the area are also routed through the this matrix hub to the security management services deeper in corporate territory. Jerry sets up a back door and makes sure he has things in place to block any alerts that might be raised.
Ed meets with the Sundance Kids and works out to buy a few illegal pistols Ares Predator IV and Colt Manhunters for the team. He and Maggie meet up with Maggie's Grandfather in an abandoned warehouse and they practice on bags of sand for a few nights in a row (they both acquired a rank in Pistols). Maggie plans on just getting a clip and some spare ammo, but her Grandfather insists that you want to have several stashes of ammo hidden in various places with "as much ammo as you can afford", so she ends up spending most of the pay from her day job on the gun and ammo.
Maggie watches the guard post for a day or two when she's not at work and they decide that hitting at shift change is a really bad idea, because there are two guards on duty for a 15 minute period. She decides that she's going to go visit her parents and be jogging in the area during the job so that she can't be linked with the crime, but is close by if they need medical attention. This was where the group really slipped up, they didn't do anything about the astral patrols that sweep through the area periodically, because Maggie would have been the one to do it.
Kamen steals the car with no problems. He jams the identification but does not wipe the RFIDs because he eventually wants it to be traced back. He immediately heads to Southern Delta territory with Ed. Kamen flashes the guard at the gate an easy smile and tells him he's there to see a janitor buddy to the watch the game, the guard waves him through. They're both using low level burn fake SINs, eventually the two SINs are traced and they officially become Southern Delta fugitives (Jackie informs them of this later) The two park nearby and wait for the Sundance Kids to show up.
They finally have almost everything in place and it's time for the run. Wash is staging his protest at another entrance while the Sundance Kids stage there's. Wash and the business owners get fire hosed and tear gassed. The Sundance Kids have a jammer set up to keep the guard from reporting them and they taser him and start their rampage in. They leave their jammer with a few fake protesters to keep the blocked traffic from reporting the trouble. Jerry has hacked the fire alarms in a few of the buildings in the area and sets them off to cause general confusion. He scrambles any communication from the areas matrix hub with the main office and instead runs a loop of traffic from the past few hours (Jerry has seen one too many action trids and is convinced that looping camera feeds is the top of the line infiltration technique).
The Sundance kids set a storage building on fire and taser the guards there. Then they proceed to the hangar. Maggie goes to mingle with the confused people outside the corporate dorms. Kamen and Ed follow the Sundance Kids to the hangar. The two cleaning technicians surrender and the Sundance Kids taser them. Kamen pulls the stolen car under a plane wing and then goes to work cutting the wing off with a monofilament chainsaw. It takes him about 4 minutes and he succeeds in dropping a wing on the plane. The Sundance Kids tear the cockpits out of the two of the planes and get out of them loaded up on a truck they brought. They start to go to work on sensor arrays and Kamen gets to work taking out the main matrix hub for the air plane. Ed goes to investigate the offices connected to the hangar to make sure no one else is around. He gets ambushed by a mechanic with a wrench and they struggle for a little bit before Ed finally Tasers the guy down. Ed searches the office, but there's nothing of real value there. It's at this point that the watcher spirit happens along on its patrol. (rolled 2d6 every minute, with the spirit happening along on a roll of three or less) The watcher spirit reports that things are not normal in the hangar and a company spider starts to look at the security feeds to double check. He sees that the traffic is off and goes searching in the nodes in the area. Jerry detects him and lets the team know they might have trouble on the way. Meanwhile, a tougher spirit is dispatched from corporate headquarters to investigate.
As Jerry is telling them that there might be trouble the spirit manifests and the shit hits the fan. Jerry relays that they've been ambushed by a spirit to Maggie but she's in the middle of a crowd and can't get there to do anything about it. The Sundance Kids unload on it with their pistols, most of the shots are ignored. Kamen is really close to getting the matrix hub out so he keeps trying to while they deal with the spirit. Ed tries the taser on it, but it fails. The spirit blasts several of the Sundance Kids with an ice blast and then hits Kamen with one as well. The Sundance Kids keep shooting while the truck and several of the bikers take off. A team stays behind to distract the spirit. One of their shots finally gets through, but the spirit is still kicking. Ed tries to use a force of Will Attack on the spirit and he draws the spirits attention (critical glitch). The spirit hits him with an ice blast that leaves Ed reeling and nearly unconscious. Maggie finally finds a place to lay down away from the crowd and astrally projects. She rushes to the hanger and banishes the spirit. She snaps back to her body. Kamen finishes getting out the matrix hub and they jump on with the Sundance Kids. They dump out cans of gasoline and set hangar on fire to try to cover up what they were really after. Then take off for a gap in the fence the first group knocked in the fence. (Their cover-up attempts were sloppy and it's immediately apparent to the investigators that this is a parts grab and not just random rioting and damage).
The Spider finds Jerry and Jerry briefly tries to engage in Matrix combat. The spider is significantly better than Jerry and he's running Black IC. He hits Jerry with 9 stun in a single pass (Jerry runs in Cold Sim or he would have been fried). Jerry immediately logs out and triggers his countermeasures to cover his tracks. The Spider sends one of the patrol drones after the group and tries to Trace Jerry (I suggested that Jerry might want to use some edge here on his spoof check, and he just barely prevented the spider from tracing him).
Jerry logs back in once the drone has followed the group outside of corporate territory and spoofs a signal telling the drone to return to its normal patrol route. Then Jerry logs out and goes to nurse a major headache with a cold beer. The spider realizes what's happened and jumps into the drone to pursue them but with the drone off them, the group splits up and go into hiding.
Maggie gets up and heads towards the now burning buildings to see if anyone needs help. A few of the employees that were tased earlier are stumbling out. She tries to administer first aid, but security forces show up a few minutes later and inform her that they will handle the situation and she should get lost.
They eventually meet up at the bar later than evening and Wash greets them with a big black eye. He explains that some guard tried to turn a water hose on him and that he knocked out two of the guys teeth. The real protesters eventually were driven off by Lone Star and the corporation forces were reminded that their power only extended to the edge of their corporate territory. Ed is at home recovering, so Kamen goes to pick up payment without him.
Kamen meets up with Cassidy and they haggle a little over payment. Kamen successfully implies that he has a network of people behind him supporting the operation, by pointing out that the security was stalled way more by his guy than anything the Sundance Kids hacker did and that his mage on the scene was the reason they dealt with the spirit so quickly. Cassidy agrees to turn over the matrix hub to the team and pays Kamen 8,000 nuyen that's divided between the group. Cassidy also tosses Kamen a Ruger Warhawk and tells him that he's welcome there any time. He also tells him that if he hears about any other easy jobs, he should get in touch.
Jackie Carnes realizes that the parts were stolen from the planes and is uncertain if the group played her to get the security information and an easy heist, or if they're just much better than she thought they were. Regardless, the damage to the planes serves her purpose and it's all put down officially as a rioting and fire damage. She isn't able to leverage the insurance companies to force the deal through, but the insurance company terminates their contract with Southern Delta and pays the 100 million nuyen early termination fee. Southern Delta decides that putting these planes in a region removed from the rest of their corporate territory might end up being costly if gangs are going to continue raiding them for parts. They officially, recognize the complaints of the local population and announce they will be finding a new site for the facility. Jackie investigates each of the people she knows are involved and finds that Maggie works for Southern Delta. Because Jackie is still not sure how to judge the group arranging a theft so quickly, Jackie sees Maggie as a loose end and so arranges to have Maggie laid off. She also contacts the group to inform them that they are officially criminals and should stay off corporate land, but that the land Delta owns around the bar will be going up for auction soon. The gang doesn't have to find a new bar and they've gotten in good with a local gang.
Jerry is looking at his 2,000 nuyen credstick and thinking that it was really only a week's worth of work and he could be making 8-10k a month doing this. That's more than he's making at ACC and he hates his office job, this is way more fun. He decides to lower his lifestyle to start saving money so he can try being an individual "contractor". Maggie moves in with him so she can save money while she looks for another job and to reduce both their costs.

I'll post the beer run separately.

[thorya]

Session #3- Part 2. Beer Run

[ Spoiler ]

A few weeks later, Wash gets a call from a buddy that works at Terrapin-Sweetwater brewery (a brewing corporation subsidiary for a larger AA conglomerate). They had a run of 1600, 24 packs of Troll Brew Ale that was canned and packaged in IPA cans by mistake (we estimated this is 16 pallets of beer). The guy was instructed to take these to the shredder to be scrapped, but he decided that it might be worth something and it's a shame to just waste it all. So he tucks it away in a back room. He calls Wash and offers to sell the beer to him for 1 nuyen a case if he arranges pick up. Wash tells the guy he'll get back to them. The cases retail for 20-25 nuyen when labeled correctly. Wash asks Ed if he thinks he can arrange a pick-up. Wash doesn't want the beer, since he can't really sell mislabeled cans and he certainly can't store that much. Wash offers to front the cash if Ed thinks he can move it. Wash's cut will be one pallet of the beer (100 cases, Wash plans on selling it to regulars that won't ask too many questions and he has some old boxing buddies that won't care what the can says as long as it's cheap enough) and they'll pay him back for fronting the cash. Jerry and Ed pooled their money to pay Wash back.
Ed talks to the gang to see if they can think of a way to pick it up and sell it. They decide to see if they can borrow the Sundance Kids' truck and Ed thinks he can probably sell it to high school students near retail cost (since CAS still has strict drinking laws) or else move it at other locations for 5-10 nuyen a case. They start scouting around. The two of them work out a deal where they'll trade 100 cases of beer to the Sundance Kids in exchange for the use of their truck for two days and some storage space in one of the Sundance Kids hideouts (with the understanding that they won't be too upset if a few more cases go missing when people get thirsty if they leave it there for a long time). Wash's buddy puts them in touch with the paint shop that does the company logo on trucks and they trade him beer to have the truck repainted as a Terrapin-Sweetwater brewery. Wash's buddy lets Jerry into the system and he adds their truck up as one of the companies trucks and sets it up to drop from the system in a week. They put a legitimate order one the truck in the system and then add the extra beer in as well. They drop off the legitimate order and then take the truck to be repainted.
After trading away various cases the group is left with 1300 cases of beer. Ed gets in touch with his old fence. The guy mostly is a fence for high school thugs and smash and grab jobs. Ed asks him if he can sell the stuff to high schoolers. The fence thinks he can and Ed negotiates him up big time to 15 nuyen a case, but the guy thinks he can only reliably move 50 cases a month. They arrange a regular drop off with Kamen delivering. (The fence will probably trade stolen merchandise for beer and sell them at a mark up to other students, but at that price he's not going to be selling to the gangs. If Ed had gone down more they could have sold more of the beer faster.) This nets the group 750 nuyen a month and they have plans to make some friends by handing out cheap or free beer at various places. Kamen plans to make some friends at street racing events or using it for barter for equipment if they end up needing it.
In the intervening time, Kamen has decided he's going to start working on a custom bike. It takes Maggie a month and a half, but finally gets a job as a nurse with the Emory medical network. Jerry decides that to start advertising as a programmer for hire.
The teaser for next time, Jerry gets a call from an old Troll friend of his who needs a place to stay. He of course says yes. Maggie is pissed because she's racist and hates Trolls. It should make the next session interesting. The next game will consist of each of the group being asked to for favors by one of their contacts. I expect we will get through about 2-3 of them in the next session.

[Warlordtheft]

Like the post and game style. The group has been lucky their original Johson was nice enough to warn them. Also, Maggie losing her job is not that big of an issue-if the end result is to see the group become shadow runners. The big loose end is the car, but it being a burnt hulk should only lead back to the owner of the car.

[CanadianWolverin...]

I love these, it lets me vicariously experience the game, thank you for sharing (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[thorya]

We're doing a 350 point game of SR4 right now, and I was incredibly surprised at how competent and able a character I was able to make with those points. [We've played a lot of lower-power games, but nothing that low with SR4.] Now, I chose a simple melee brawler and offhand negotiator, so surely the results would have been different had I tried to make a magician of some sort, but the other characters all seem realistic and well-rounded. 300 is, proportionately speaking, a much bigger leap, but I find it a compelling play level, nevertheless. The system scales awkwardly around this point - largely because of glitches, which become much more common - but as long as you calibrate to it, it's just an interesting challenge, not debilitating.

It has actually worked surprisingly well. Everyone spent between 150-170 on attributes (including points spent on edge) and about 70-100 on skills, which left them with pretty competent characters. We don't have the giant dice pools one sees in a normal game, but for things that people are especially competent in they're rolling 8-12 with a lot of 4-6 range rolls (here glitches can get to be a problem, but often I can't think of anything that makes sense as a glitch beyond failure anyway so it's not a huge deal). I think the place where everyone trimmed was combat, no one started with more than 1 rank in any combat focused skill, no one spent more than 10-15 BP on equipment, so no loading up on cyber/bio to improve agility. Everyone took at least some social skills. The only person that had trouble getting their character to do what they really wanted was Maggie's player, because it was hard to fit in the additional points to raise magic, buy the extra skills, and get spells while also having enough skills to be reasonably competent at her day job. She ended up simply starting with 2 magic and 2 spells. Also, Jerry and Mark played the first two games at 270-280 BP, because of a misunderstanding on free knowledge skill points.
It has been a very interesting level of play. Bonuses and penalties matter way more. Random NPC's are appropriately powerful and threatening.

[thorya]

Like the post and game style. The group has been lucky their original Johson was nice enough to warn them. Also, Maggie losing her job is not that big of an issue-if the end result is to see the group become shadow runners. The big loose end is the car, but it being a burnt hulk should only lead back to the owner of the car.

Thanks, glad you're enjoying it.

The Johnson was nice because I have two newbies and I wanted to make sure that they understood that they had to be careful around Souther Delta territory since they're officially criminals, if they were identified. The more experienced players assumed that they should give a wide berth to Southern Delta, even if they were invited to sabotage them and even if they weren't all identified during the raid.

Maggie's player was not worried about it and was actually happy since she knew eventually she'd have to get out of her job at Southern Delta, but Maggie the character was worried and was frantically looking for work.

They took that car because of its previous ties to vandalism and were planning on it getting traced back to the original owners. Kamen intentionally dropped an airplane wing on it and lit it on fire. But we'll see if it comes up again.

[thorya]

Session #4-

This consisted of favors or requests from various contacts of each of the players. It didn't go great, since I felt like I railroaded them a little and Maggie and Jerry didn't follow up the intended jobs I thought would come from their favors. Also the gang decided to go into Rough Riders territory and end up rolling really crappy and almost getting killed in some random street fight. (also, Mark's player has had to drop due to work reasons, so we're down to 4).

GM's notes-
Maggie's Favor-

[ Spoiler ]

Wash is going to an underground to check out an up and coming boxer for an old contact, local Yakuza boss Hiroki. The fighter's name is Ricky Radisan. He asks Maggie to come along. He's arranged for her to be the "doc" onsite for the fight. She'll get paid for this (50 nuyen). He needs her to spot if the up and comer is an adept. There are five fights lined up for the night. And then Trog the Gladiator will take on four guys in a row, one right after the other. Entrance is 10 nuyen if anyone wants to go. The odds are as follows
2:1 (Troll vs. Elf) Troll wins
4:3 (Hiroki's Guy vs. a Dwarf) Hiroki's guy wins
3:2 (Ork vs. Ork) Ork 1 wins
5:3 (Ork vs. Human) Human wins
Trog:
10/100/50/40/30/20
You have to bet on which round the Trog will get knocked out in or if he'll go all the way. If he loses in any other round, you lose your money.
If you wager 10 nuyen the payouts are as follow if you're correct-
100 nuyen round 1
50 nuyen round 2
30 nuyen round 3
20 nuyen round 4
20 nuyen Trog wins all the rounds
Trog loses in the 4th round

Radison is not an adept, but there is a magician watching the fight and manipulating.
Dae-Jung (black korean) wizard. He is a broken man with a serious gambling addiction and alcohol problem. His magic is mostly broken, but he still has access to a few spells. He has been boosting Ricky to make him a better fighter. He is granting him improved reflexes and improved skill. Dae-Jung will flee if the group approaches him. He will set a force 1 spirit on them and try to escape. He thinks they are Jopok (Korean Mafia) enforcers that want to bust him up for money he owes. He’s too messed up to be very useful by himself, but he still has a few magical contacts if the group want to pursue it and is willing to do almost anything for money to pay off his gambling debts. He knows a street shaman who would be really useful for helping with preventing magical detection. Ricky meanwhile is a friendly kid, but would not be as good as he has been without Dae-Jung backing him up. Wash will suggest that Hiroki should pass on him for now and keep an eye on him, unless Dae-Jung is not spotted.
The mob is called Chil Sung Pa, the seven star mob.

Jerry's Favor

[ Spoiler ]

One of Jerry's Old Friends (Named Bobby in game) needs a place to stay, he's a low level flunky at Kong Walmart. and barely makes enough to get buy as a cashier. He's looking for a permanent place. He got docked half a month's pay because someone shoplifted a whole rack of the cool new extra mega large plasteel thread jackets (they're in this year) and of course it gets blamed on the Troll. Investigation will show that this is a common tactic managers to abuse Kong Walmart employees. Some data searching will track down a black market site selling the clothing. From there it can be traced to one of the Kong Walmart managers. It's a small matter to hack the accounts of said manager and show he's guilty or get even. Alternately, they can stage their own theft and frame the guy for it.

Ed's Favor

[ Spoiler ]

Ed's Lone Star buddy calls in a favor. Officer Frank Serpico does trust other officers in his department. Everyone's on the take after all. This is not too big of a problem, if it's limited, but Frank suspects that the some higher ups are working to cover up crimes big time. He doesn't know how deep it goes, but he's got a witness that places his captain receiving a case of drugs and credsticks from two thugs. This could be innocuous, maybe they're undercovered and its evidence. Frank is worried that the witness will end up dead (I changed this to information he had copied onto a chip that proved corruption going up to at least his captain). He wants Ed to put this guy some place safe. Frank doesn't realize it however, but his contact in the CAS government is working for Rick Waverly, who is in on this Lone Star cooperation with the CP gang to stamp out the other gangs. Given that the tide has changed against the Rough Riders, (The Sundance Kids fire bombed Harry's Harleys and Dead Ted was shot and killed in a deal with the Mongols that went south) the CP gang has decided that the time is about right for pouncing on the Sundance territory, but they're arranging to have Frank killed and framing the Sundance kids for it. The CP gang has a spy in the Sundance Kids and they have been amassing evidence and weak points for a Lone Star raid, the week after the election. (Waverly will vow that the killing of a police officer will not go unmarked)
Frank gets wise to this just a second too late, he hits the floor but takes two shots. He drops CS grenades and returns fire. Then he bails out the window and makes it down the fire escape. He ditches his commlink and his gun so they cannot track him. He makes it to a main street and calls Ed from a burner. He ducks into a dumpster to wait for Ed to arrive.
Once he's with Ed, there's a general search on for Frank and he's been officially declared a fugitive with Lone Star after him. Frank needs fixed up and he wants to get some place safe or out of town, but is not in any shape to do so. They can turn the evidence Frank is carrying over to Knight Errant. The Lone Star contract is up at the end of the year and what better way to gain public support than revealing a cooperation of Lone Star officers with the local gangs at the highest levels. If the team succeeds in getting Frank there successfully, there will be quite a bit of upheaval as Knight Errant goes public. A third of the Lone Star officers and several members of the city government are involved. The new mayor will manage to avoid any connection and get off, but will be hurting publicly. The CAS military will step in and put in martial law for a few weeks, until things get settled down. A lot of the Lone Stars will go fugitive and there will be a glut of former officers turned runners, local security specialists or skipping town. Hopefully, during this time period Frank will be able to wipe any evidence of the teams involvement so that no one with a vendetta comes after them. This will make things hard on the team.
Frank has 9 boxes of damage. There is a manhunt out for him. The Knight Errant Facility is private security local offices are in northern Buckhead. There is a ⅓chance that any Lone Star they run into will be corrupt and will immediately open fire on them if they realize they're with Frank. Additionally, the group will be followed by the Lone Star astral search squads. Maggie can pull off some deflection or astral diversions to keep the spirits off. If the team helps Frank and is identified, they will have bad blood with a few of the fugitive workers.

Kamen's Favor

[ Spoiler ]

Kamen's old gang tried to heist the wrong bike. It belonged to a Triad hitter (they don't know he was Triad, just that he was packing some serious fire power, roughly the same stats as a Red Samurai). He killed two of their members and the gang wants revenge. They chased him down old I-85 towards Atlanta, but they lost track of him after he ran one of their guys into a semi-truck. He lost them, but they figure with Kamen up ahead to intercept him and find out where the guy's heading, they can ambush him and put him down. They call Kamen to keep tabs on him until they can get there.
Boxes 11
Body 5
Armor 10/8
Firearm 14
Assault Rifle 6P -1
Katana 11, 6P -1
3 passes
Commlink Device Rating 4
High speed hi-jinks should occur.

[thorya]

Maggie's favor came up first. (I rolled to see what order they came in)

[ Spoiler ]

It's been a few weeks since the beer run and things have settled down quite a bit for the gang. Kamen has started building a new bike, Jerry has nearly configured the matrix hub they stole from Delta for the teams general use and has picked up some slightly better programs. Maggie has taken a part time Job as a nurse as a 24 hour clinic.
Wash tells them about this underground boxing league he's going to check out a fighter at and asks for Maggies help "detecting if he's a magical fighter or just a guy". Maggie accepts the Job and the rest of the gang happily pay the entrance fee. They bring some beer with them.
The fight is run out of the basement of an apartment building and there are about 50 people milling around and watching. The fight is charged to "Dry Rite Dry Cleaning" for entrance. Most of the guys running the fight look like they're 18-24. The rules are standard boxing. This is a small time operation. Bets on the fights are capped at 100 nuyen.
Ed spends some time talking with the guys at the door and gets a tip to bet on the human fighter in the fourth round. Kamen gives the guys at the door some free beers and then carries in two cases and sits on them drinking while watching the fight. Ed and Kamen spend the rest of the night betting on fights and selling beer for 1 nuyen a can. They make out pretty well. Betting on the Human pays out, turns out he shot up some Nitro before hopping in the ring. Jerry sort of hangs out with them and places bets on whatever Ed tells him to.
Maggie has her hands full stitching up the Elf from the first fight. She checks out Ricky astrally and sees Dae's Focus. She points him out to Wash. After the fight Wash talks to the Dae and subtly questions him. Maggie uses Clareaudience to listen in. Wash says that "Ricky winning is like magic." and asks if Dae knows the kid. Dae says no and then excuses himself and runs out the door. Wash shrugs and lets him go.
(I thought Maggie would talk to Dae at this point or go after him, because Maggie has been actively looking for other casters to help her get better at her Magic) Wash talks to Ricky for a little bit and figures out that he doesn't know Dae and thinks that his recent run of good luck is due to a lot of extra training time he's put in. Wash wishes him luck and decides to advice Hiroki against sponsoring the guy in the bigger league underground fights. The rest of the night finishes out uneventfully.

Jerry's was next.

[ Spoiler ]

Jerry's Troll friend, Bobby, (mentioned at the end of last game) shows up needing a place to stay. He explains how he's been getting docked at work because people have been stealing troll sized clothing. Jerry welcomes him. Maggie tries to throw him out. She softens a little when she learns that he's getting screwed over at work and tells him that he better be out at the end of the month. She goes in her room and locks the door and refuses to talk to Bobby the entire time he stays. Jerry and Bobby play some miracle shooter and Jerry tries to convince Bobby that he should get another Job. At the end of the month Bobby finds a new place (in the slums).

Then in-between Jobs, the word on the street is that the Rough Rider's garage that they operate out of got fire bombed and that their leader was killed. There's now an internal struggle and they're losing the gang war badly. Kamen decides to raid their old garage to see if there are any parts he can pawn there. He goes on a Saturday and gets the gang to go along. It ends poorly.

[ Spoiler ]

The gang goes in Kamen's Van which is pretty well armored. They gather some information first and learn that the neighborhoods are bad news right now, with so much gang fighting going on. When they get there, no one is in sight. They pick up a tail, but don't notice him. (they had detect enemies up, which was glitched in casting, three perception checks where the maximum number of successes was 1, and Jerry scanning for devices in the area getting a whole lot of home appliances) They make it to the garage and Maggie, Ed and Kamen get out to investigate. They find a whole lot of nothing. The place has been pretty well stripped. What's left behind is mostly burned out or completely useless. They again all fail their perception checks to notice the guy outside cutting the powerlines under the van. After a little while searching, they give up and head back to the van which won't start. Kamen gets under it and checks and sees the damage. They flip out. Kamen immediately starts trying to fix the van and Jerry starts scanning for hidden nodes to see if someone or something's nearby. They think that it might have been another one of the sabotage drones from the bike race. Maggie starts searching astrally to see if she can spot the drone from that side.
Ed heads back around the garage and finds a way to climb up on the building. Then sneaks back towards the street. From up there he scans the street and manages to spot a guy laying behind the low wall of an abandoned store front with a machine pistol trained on the group. The guy doesn't spot Ed. Ed relays this to the team and lines up a shot on the guy. He decides anyone with a pistol trained on the group is an enemy and puts two into the guys head, killing him outright. Maggie goes to see if the guy is dead and yells at Ed for killing people. Ed maintains "better him than us". Jerry finally manages to find the guys node and intercepts some traffic to it to find out that he sabotaged their van to stall them while waiting for back-up. Kamen keeps trying to get the van fixed up. He's just barely manages when they hear three bikers coming towards them. They're on the street a few seconds later. Jerry spoofs a message to the new bikers that Ed's hiding on a different building than the garage. The bikers get off their bikes and advance with machine pistols out.
Finally the groups luck started to turn (these are 3 level 1 thugs, using the stats for Halloweeners, with 5 added to body for being trolls). They won initiative (except Jerry) and the bikers didn't see Maggie hiding in the store front. Kamen rolls out from underneath the van and jumps inside. Ed and Maggie both get shots off from cover and nail two of the trolls for quite a bit of damage. The trolls respond by spraying bullets. Ed avoids getting hit the on the first burst and takes quite a bit of damage on the second. Maggie takes one burst and doesn't have any armor, so gets pretty badly wounded. The third troll sprays the van with bullets, but Kamen gets hit, but his armored jacket takes the bullets no problem. Jerry hacks the trolls commlinks and turns them to maximum volume playing polka music.
Kamen floors the van and rams one of the Trolls. Ed gets off two good shots and is slowly bringing the troll down. Maggie gets off one shot that hits, but her gun fails to eject and she has to stop to unload it. Maggie and Ed both take another wide burst of fire from the Trolls. Ed manages to soak most of it. Maggies got two boxes left. The troll that was shooting at Maggie heads for an alley to seek cover. The troll that was hit by the van unloads the rest of his clip into the van. Jerry is almost knocked out by a barrage of bullets and is barely conscious, but the van's armor saves him from much worse consequences. Jerry keeps blaring the music and starts copying the Trolls personal messages off of their commlinks.
Kamen rolls down the window and fires two useless shots at the troll. Maggie retreats into the store front to avoid getting hit further. Ed manages a good shot on the troll he was firing at and the troll goes down. The troll that was firing at the van throws his empty pistol aside and pulls out a grenade. He throws it at the van and it bounces off. Jerry keeps copying files. The grenade goes off and knocks out the troll that threw it. Kamen soaks all the damage and Jerry has one box of stun left. Ed manages to struggle down from the rooftop. He goes after the troll that tried to crawl away into the alley. He finds the guy hiding in a doorway and hits him before the Troll can respond. Maggie and Ed are seriously wounded and Jerry's barely conscious. They grab the ganger's machine pistols. They search them and find a grenade. Kamen rigs it to two of their bikes and rides off on the third. Jerry drives the van back to the Tap Out, where Maggie does her best to patch everyone up. It takes several days before everyone's back on their feet. Kamen is the only one that made it out of the encounter okay. Kamen spends the next week trying to cover up the bullet and grenade damage to the van.
They don't know this, but a few locals got a description of them and the Rough Riders will be after them sooner or later.

[Kolinho]

This is a fantastic thread. Loving it.

You seem to have a great knack for running things on the fly, and also keeping a couple of simultaneous plot lines from becoming too fragmented. Kudos to you thorya (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)