I just improvised my characters into taking another Run., What kind of security are the Vory likely to have on something mobile? Options

[Kolinho]

Even so, I'm not going to throw a ridiculously deadly chestnut at them on the fifth session of our campaign. Sure, it's not gonna be easy, but it should be doable.

As every run should be imo. None easy, all possible. That said I can see Chinane's point, somewhere along the line you need to punish the runners for wandering into deep water without due concern, or the game loses its edge. Not that it needs a wipe, but in this kind of heavy hitting scenario I wouldn't have thought the team losing one of their buddies would be ridiculously unfair.

BTW ShadowDragon, do your players not have the internet? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotate.gif)

Jus' wondering...

[ShadowDragon8685]

They do, but though I've pointed them at Dumpshock as a resource in the past, they don't seem to come here. Which is just as well, even though I've told them that if they read my threads I'll become cross.

[Kolinho]

They do, but though I've pointed them at Dumpshock as a resource in the past, they don't seem to come here. Which is just as well, even though I've told them that if they read my threads I'll become cross.

I worry about it myself, that's all.

'Here's my super-dooper evil double cross, they'll never see THIS coming! Mwahahahaha!

..

'You what now?'

[kzt]

Even so, I'm not going to throw a ridiculously deadly chestnut at them on the fifth session of our campaign. Sure, it's not gonna be easy, but it should be doable.

They chose the path with both eyes open and after being warned.

It doesn't mean that it is impossible, but it should mean that any plan that seems obvious, would be expected by anyone who hijacks trucks professionally or relies on the bad guys being stupid or asleep won't work out well for the players.

[Murrdox]

This run sounds like a lot of fun. Please post how it goes no matter what you end up doing.

A few thoughts based on what everyone's said:

- Where is the shipment coming from? Bogota? Then I'd think it's likely that the shipment is arriving either by boat or by air, and then transported on the ground in Seattle to its destination. Plan the route that the shipment will take and its destination, and then let your players figure out where they want to boost it. Who knows, they may even decide to attack whatever cargo ship is carrying it before it arrives in Seattle. My players did this once, it was great. They sank a full blown cargo ship.

- I second the idea of stealth here. The Vory aren't going to have an armed to the teeth convoy going through downtown Seattle, ESPECIALLY one that it advertising itself with several high strength spirits watching over the vehicles. It would stand out to ANYONE watching in Astral. Way too high profile for the Vory.

- The Vory may not even bring this in THEMSELVES. I agree with the person who said BRIBES. That's what I think of when I think of the Vory. They may be paying bribes to make the shipment appear legitimate, with maybe no more security than usual except a few extra security goons to make sure the delivery happens. This means if the shipment gets hijacked, it could be whoever the Vory bribed that respond right away, not the Vory themselves. Knight Errant, or Lone Star, or another Megacorp they bribed to ship this in for them. Maybe Aztlan?

- I'd run it as Warded, and guarded by a few very well-equipped goons, but goons who don't outwardly LOOK like goons. The shipment itself should have all kinds of tracking on it so the Vory can keep track of it and find it in a hurry if one or more of the people they bribed double-cross them on the delivery. THAT is when the Vory will pull out the big guns.

[TwoDee]

As every run should be imo. None easy, all possible. That said I can see Chinane's point, somewhere along the line you need to punish the runners for wandering into deep water without due concern, or the game loses its edge. Not that it needs a wipe, but in this kind of heavy hitting scenario I wouldn't have thought the team losing one of their buddies would be ridiculously unfair.

My suggestion:

Canray and Crew wrote Safehouses for runs just like this one.

[Shortstraw]

While that's an idea, the Ancients have already said that if they can't get both, they care most about the nanofax, less about the feedstock. Getting more feedstock is easy, even getting clean feedstock isn't so difficult you normally have to do a run on the Vory. They'll still be pleased enough to throw the players at least some guns, and getting a pile of high-grade explosives as part of the deal wouldn't hurt. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

My point was the ancients try to use what they think is feedstock and it blows up in their faces - literally.

[ShadowDragon8685]

My point was the ancients try to use what they think is feedstock and it blows up in their faces - literally.

Ahhh, yes. That's got two problems with it.

1: That's on them, not the 'runners, for not checking the feedstock first.
2: They're not idiots, they'll check the feedstock first. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)



[e]Hrm... What would be the Vory's fallback plan? IE, the plan they'll execute if things go south: I'm torn between 'drive the truck to a safehouse and wait for reinforcements' and 'drop the load where it is and remote-detonate it when it's surrounded by the people who made you drop it.'

[Seriously Mike]

With a $600k gun printer? Floor it and run somewhere safe. Then find and murderize all those jackasses who tried to jump you.

[Blade]

With the state of encryption and spoofing risks, attaching a remote-detonation device on something can be risky. I guess it could work if the vehicle interior is wireless-proof. In that case, you can imagine a system where the load will explode as soon as it's not removed properly from the vehicle. But you don't need a remote detonation system for this.
Such an explosive fallback plan fits the Vory quite well.

Either that or, if they can't spare the load, I'd go with bribes again: "to all patrol cars in the area, there's a big fat paycheck for the first to bring us back a little something...".

[ShadowDragon8685]

With a $600k gun printer? Floor it and run somewhere safe. Then find and murderize all those jackasses who tried to jump you.

That's what I'm thinking. They're not planning to monetize the nanofax, they're arming for war. Their plan is to start impressing Tacoma street gangs and handing out AKA-147s and start taking more bites out of the Tacoma waterfront from the Mafia and the Yaks, or expand into Puyallup. (This is why arguably the players would potentially be doing more good than harm in the world if they give the Nanofax to the Ancients; they're just going to monetize the damn thing.)

Still, war materiel or not, I can't help but wonder if they'd rather blow it sky-high than risk it falling into the hands of someone else... Of course, that has to be weighed against the risks that another party which likewise would sooner see it destroyed than in the Vory's hands would be bold enough to spoof the detonation code and blow it to hell. That would be embarrassing, so I think I'm going to go with a big 'no' on the explosive countermeasures. Maybe fitting the trailer with some kind of poison gas trap wouldn't be amiss, though...

Such an explosive fallback plan fits the Vory quite well.

It does, the brutal, ruthless bastards. I'm half-convinced that the Vory exist to make the Mafia look like the good guys by way of comparison, and make Yaks look 'well, they're all right'.

Either that or, if they can't spare the load, I'd go with bribes again: "to all patrol cars in the area, there's a big fat paycheck for the first to bring us back a little something...".

They might be desperate enough to try it, but KE is new in Seattle and taking a very dim view of shenanigans like that. (After all, that's one of the reasons the Star got kicked out after all these years.)

[Blade]

If I were the GM, it'd end with a heavy assault helicopter (or more) arriving just above whoever has the nanofax and broadcast something like: "Please surrender immediately. You're in posession of property stolen from [corporation name]. Due to the hazardous nature of the equipement we are authorized to open fire if necessary."

[Warlordtheft]

That's what I'm thinking. They're not planning to monetize the nanofax, they're arming for war. Their plan is to start impressing Tacoma street gangs and handing out AKA-147s and start taking more bites out of the Tacoma waterfront from the Mafia and the Yaks, or expand into Puyallup. (This is why arguably the players would potentially be doing more good than harm in the world if they give the Nanofax to the Ancients; they're just going to monetize the damn thing.)

They might be desperate enough to try it, but KE is new in Seattle and taking a very dim view of shenanigans like that. (After all, that's one of the reasons the Star got kicked out after all these years.)

Other possibility, the Vory is planning to help arm the Ork underground in exchange for "safe and secure" facilities where no one is watching. Brackhaven is really making the Ork underground worried. THe vory arming them and the Skraa (IIRC that is the main Ork underground Gang), could lead to the ANcients losing money cause they would be the most likely alternative to the vory. ANd do the orks want to be at the mercy of some dandelion eaters? Probably not.

Whatever you do, have fun, and if the PC's don't do this job right make sure the PC's have a rough life ahead of them.

[ShadowDragon8685]

If I were the GM, it'd end with a heavy assault helicopter (or more) arriving just above whoever has the nanofax and broadcast something like: "Please surrender immediately. You're in posession of property stolen from [corporation name]. Due to the hazardous nature of the equipement we are authorized to open fire if necessary."

Not only would that not work (the mage would call up a Possession spirit to possess the chopper's pilot and compel him to land the helicoptor wherever they wanted/make the now-uncontrolled helicoptor crash because the person rigging it can no longer control it,) but that would be mean-spirited.

Other possibility, the Vory is planning to help arm the Ork underground in exchange for "safe and secure" facilities where no one is watching. Brackhaven is really making the Ork underground worried. THe vory arming them and the Skraa (IIRC that is the main Ork underground Gang), could lead to the ANcients losing money cause they would be the most likely alternative to the vory. And do the orks want to be at the mercy of some dandelion eaters? Probably not.

If it were any other cartel, maybe, but the Orc Underground are decidedly not-Russian, and the Vory wouldn't want to deal with not-Russians with their own large and robust culture like that if they could avoid it. More likely they might think about moving into the Underground after Brackhaven sends in the goon squads to murder the women and children.

Whatever you do, have fun, and if the PC's don't do this job right make sure the PC's have a rough life ahead of them.

Yeah, if they flub this one, it's going to be time to (a) bring in the backup characters while the mains are all out of town, or (b) shift the campaign to another metroplex. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[ZeroPoint]

Here's what i would do.

Blend stealth with firepower. If it has to go through town, you just do the tractor trailer full of dudes and a lead and trailing car with overhead stealth drone.

With mapsofts and traffic apps linking the vehicles, you can also co-ordinate some of the aforementioned Citymasters full of goons with heavy weapons that are on parallels streets or hanging back a ways. If trouble is encountered, they can make it on scene within 30 seconds to a minute.

If the forces in the truck and cars are ready for delaying/defense tactics rather than firepower, you can hold off any would be attackers until heavy hitters arrive.

Priority for truck and cars if attacked may be scattering gas/smoke grenades, flashbangs/flashpacks. Taking cover and delaying actions until players make their moves. maybe a drone rack on the truck and drop a few amped up dobermans that run out to keep the runners busy and attention off the convoy. In other words they let themselves be pinned in and waste time until the heavy hitters hit the would be attackers from the rear.

What this does is create a tiered challenge for the players. They can try to hit the main convoy and get out within that response window. they can try to do it without alerting the response team. If they do the first, they have to deal with pursuit from response team who probably has the convoy surrounded. If they do the second its gonna be ripping tough.

They can also just opt to hit it hard. If this is the case, you get the benefit of being able to have response team arrive at whatever you deem to be an appropriate time. If they are cleaning the convoy to quickly, they get there faster. If they are having a tough time of it, you can delay them.

And there's a lot your AI can do in this environment without hacking the convoy directly, as others have said. Imagine the convoy driving down the road then all the parked cars along the side of the street start up at the same time and drive into traffic. changing traffic lights to create denser or traffic areas. you can use this just to delay the convoy to move into position if you don't know exactly what their route will be.

[NiL_FisK_Urd]

Not only would that not work (the mage would call up a Possession spirit to possess the chopper's pilot and compel him to land the helicoptor wherever they wanted/make the now-uncontrolled helicoptor crash because the person rigging it can no longer control it,) but that would be mean-spirited.

Just quicken a Force 6+ Spirit Zapper spell on the rigger cocoon.

[The Jake]

Oooh, this is good. The Vory don't like magic? My players really like magic. They can hit them at the intersection of "Our strengths" and "your weaknesses" with that. (They could probably even talk one of the Jungle's Shamans into providing some extra spiritual support for this one, because he really wants to arm his people.)

This is what we just did in our campaign. We got money from the Koshari and Triads to basically remove the Vory from Denver.

We had a lot of intel on Vory movements in the city, so we knew a fair bit about their operations and who their key players was (one player a former employee with them as an Enemy, Wanted and a few other merits, flaws, related skills). He also rolled well and spent Edge to cough up the intel.

With a lot of cash from the Koshari and Triads, we hired a professional merc (tier 1) unit to stage a hit against their primary smuggling hub (basically human trafficking, with security from Tamanous). The purpose of this hit was to stage a serious business disruption but more importantly, get them to a war council meeting.Through our other contacts, we knew where they were going to hold the meet. So we just had scouts there and call us in when they started gathering.

They had snipers, drones and all sorts of stuff there. They weren't ready for an army of Force 6+ spirits to take out their snipers, 35+ gangers (all surviving members of the Three Kings with an axe to grind against the Vory) fully kitted with Ares Alphas and a lot of grenades, 12 of which were protected with Immunity to Normal Weapons via Endowment from an Invoked spirit. After the snipers were down, building shelled with explosives and munitions for a good ten minutes, we sent in the Endowed gangers to clear out the rest.... along with the Force 10 free spirit (see my other thread) which possessed my character to go in and do the cleanup of anything remaining. All members were wearing purple jumpsuits and clown masks during the hit and all equipment was taken and disposed off afterwards.

Our final coup de grace was to send a message to the media outlets very publicly announcing that our fictitious entity ("Mr Heisenberg" .. yeah yeah we were strapped for a name at the time) was taking credit for the kills and offering a 10,000 nuyen bounty on any Vory still surviving within Denver. So that way, anyone with an outstanding debt that can't pay it, anyone with a daughter hooking for the Vory, or anyone just generally doesn't like them, will rat out any street level thugs still collecting that weren't at the meet.

We know there will be blowback for this... but it was glorious.

- J.

[kzt]

Umm, and the multiple militaries and heavily armed police didn't notice that you were SHELLING THEM for 10 minutes? Whatever.....

[ShadowDragon8685]

This is what we just did in our campaign. We got money from the Koshari and Triads to basically remove the Vory from Denver.

.....

We know there will be blowback for this... but it was glorious.

You basically wiped out the Vory in Denver... Wow.

You had Ghostwalker's sanction for this, I trust? He might've wanted the Russians gone from his territory, so he might keep them from coming back.

[The Jake]

You basically wiped out the Vory in Denver... Wow.

You had Ghostwalker's sanction for this, I trust? He might've wanted the Russians gone from his territory, so he might keep them from coming back.

He wasn't looking. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Seriously though, GW has been very distracted lately.

Umm, and the multiple militaries and heavily armed police didn't notice that you were SHELLING THEM for 10 minutes? Whatever.....

OH Thanks, I forgot that part. Basically we knew that would be an issue, so we pulled a Die Hard 4 to tie them up. I called in a bomb threat to a hospital but didn't specify which one. Cops spent hours searching every single hospital in the city. We'd caused one major explosion in-game recently that the threat couldn't be immediately discarded as a hoax. Objective was only to delay the cops anyway.

Meet took place in the slums of Denver (equivalent of the Barrens, forget the exact name). I was expecting it would have been a higher quality neighborhood personally, that would have changed our MO and really thrown a spanner into the works...

- J.

[Manunancy]

Even if teh Vory don't like magic and it makes a weak link in their defense, if someone goes magicrun on them, it's a safe they bet they're going to have someone on their call list who can deal with that sort of crap - that's one advantage of being part of organizedcrime : you can afford various legit and semie-legit services.

Now as far as securing the cargo, the explosive option is a likely possibility. Couple motion sensors ('is the truck moving' and pressure sensors 'is the cargo moving'). If the pressure gets lifted whithout the truck moving, Boom. This prevents it from exploding if a bump on the road lifts it up enough to disrupt the pressure sensor.

[Shortstraw]

Not only would that not work (the mage would call up a Possession spirit to possess the chopper's pilot and compel him to land the helicoptor wherever they wanted/make the now-uncontrolled helicoptor crash because the person rigging it can no longer control it,) but that would be mean-spirited.

Well you could have the helicopter as a prepared vessel inhabited by a great form guardian spirit.......

[The Jake]

Even if teh Vory don't like magic and it makes a weak link in their defense, if someone goes magicrun on them, it's a safe they bet they're going to have someone on their call list who can deal with that sort of crap - that's one advantage of being part of organizedcrime : you can afford various legit and semie-legit services.

Now as far as securing the cargo, the explosive option is a likely possibility. Couple motion sensors ('is the truck moving' and pressure sensors 'is the cargo moving'). If the pressure gets lifted whithout the truck moving, Boom. This prevents it from exploding if a bump on the road lifts it up enough to disrupt the pressure sensor.

That's why I said 'bound spirit' in my original post. You can't say 'they have access to a mage' because you then run into the 'everyone has a mage' dilemma. Spirits can be summoned and command turned over to another so long as they always maintain LOS of that individual (bearing in mind that mundanes do not have a mindlink to the spirit). That is quite feasible.

Also I should add, we've gone full magic on them only once thus far. We left no telltale signs or overt use of powers that our forensic cleanup and my Flexible Signature didn't take care of. While a truly cunning person will assume the use of magic based on how thorough the job is, the evidence isn't there. That said, we fully accept this is probably the last time we will get away with such shenanigans, let alone survive. Our plan is to keep mixing up our MO, never once using the same tactic so we can be sure that it's impossible for our enemies to ever know for sure what tricks we have up our sleeves.

- J.

[The Jake]

Still, war materiel or not, I can't help but wonder if they'd rather blow it sky-high than risk it falling into the hands of someone else... Of course, that has to be weighed against the risks that another party which likewise would sooner see it destroyed than in the Vory's hands would be bold enough to spoof the detonation code and blow it to hell. That would be embarrassing, so I think I'm going to go with a big 'no' on the explosive countermeasures. Maybe fitting the trailer with some kind of poison gas trap wouldn't be amiss, though...

That is a fair point too. Who is to say that the Vory boobytrapped the case and didn't tell anyone precisely for this reason?

That way, even if the players go manage to retrieve it, they are dead unless they think to search the case for traps (or hand it over to the Ancients in its "as is" state).

- J.

[AppliedCheese]

The vory will not be rolling an up armored convoy through down town. That's the sort of thing corps, who are allowed to legally own the stuff, do. Likely it will be fairly normal looking, supplemented with bribes to make sure everything is smooth.

Security will be discrete, as someone said, some very professional killers with some drone and astral support. Maybe some guys in the truck, but more likely, guys watching the truck from OPs or a stalk vehicle or two. Hell, if its real real important, maybe another runner team escorting the shipment. The point being while there will be a brief exchange of fire during the hijacking, the real threat is the guys you don't see. Shortly after the players go all red direct on the truck and the driver and shotgun flop out full of hole, your players are being hit from other positions, their images and astral signatures being recorded.

A hack, favor, or front company to make sure a perfectly legal drone is flying in appropriate airspace with top down feed. Satellite link only of course, no sense letting a hacker get in to it.

A simple low grade mage in astral to let them know when the weirdness is up "OMG! someone just summoned a huge spirit of man in great form 500 meters away!", tied in back at the drone feed. Everyone's AR gets a mage highlight on the associated individual.

Point being - if your players try to bull rush this one, they should die handily. Bring out mega-magic, die handily as mages are ID'd and killed. Fly drones into restricted airspace? Lose the drones. Basically, for something like this, make them actually creatively plan it instead of relying on "we'll overpower them with runner awesome, dice pools, and access to more magic than most militaries!"