The players want to run in Australia - suggestions? Options

[Tiralee]

As most posters here can guess, I run a small group of fellow Australians through the gritty, steaming, acid-rain etched cities of the UCAS not just because of the in-depth colour and splatbooks, but because I dislike having them reroll new characters each session.

And as I'm a dinosaur (and think rolling 24 dice is NOT streamlining a system) I'll be using SR3, probably set, oh, 2050.

What I would like, apart from the rather flavourless "guard an outpost from paracritters and angry natives" stuff, are some brief examples of other Oz runs that didn't involve Antivehicular Lasers and/or railguns, no TPK's, easy on the cheese, not too mirrorshade and above all, sensitively nuanced to the discerning bullshit detector we seem to drag along with our cultural cringe.

If anyone has something resembling the plea for help above, do tell:)

Thank you,
-Tir

[Shortstraw]

Send them to the Kimberly to get a fancy diamond reagent. Face mana storms, snakes, stumble across (fall into) abandoned facility buried by bulldust you know the stuff we do here now.

[Wounded Ronin]

Watch Picnic at Hanging Rock.

[Stahlseele]

Australia:
Everything slower than your finger can kill you.
Everything bigger than your Arm can eat you.
Everything in between still hurts like crap.

And it only got WORSE in Shadowrun!

[Tias]

Target: Awakened Lands - not sure where to get it, though.

[scarius]

Where in Australia are you going to have the campaign set? Because depending upon where you are The runs will be a bit different.

I can post up some stuff that I have written up on Australia if you want (it's for 4a though) or I could just give you some ideas for runs

[almost normal]

Australia:
Everything slower than your finger can kill you.
Everything bigger than your Arm can eat you.
Everything in between still hurts like crap.

And it only got WORSE in Shadowrun!

They're frakking nuts down there. I remember seeing my first croc. Thing was 4 feet long, and was swimming a few feet from me. I flipped the hell out. Folks were laughing at me for being afraid of a "Freshie". Cause, You know. If they bite you it's only going to mangle, maim, or disfigure you. It's the saltwater ones you need to be afraid of.

[Kagetenshi]

[…]rolling 24 dice[…]

So you don't have any Ambidextrous Physads? 18 dice before pool out of chargen, and that's without weapon foci!

I'll have to dig up T:AL for a reread.

~J

[Shortstraw]

They're frakking nuts down there. I remember seeing my first croc. Thing was 4 feet long, and was swimming a few feet from me. I flipped the hell out. Folks were laughing at me for being afraid of a "Freshie". Cause, You know. If they bite you it's only going to mangle, maim, or disfigure you. It's the saltwater ones you need to be afraid of.

You'd get hurt as bad walking through some spinifex.

[The Jopp]

EVERYONE is named Bruce or Sheila.

Mr.Johnson is is named Mr.Dundee.

[Halinn]

You'd get hurt as bad walking through some spinifex.

So what you're saying is that even the plants are actively trying to kill you? Remind me why you choose to live there, again?

[Shortstraw]

1. Safest country on earth.

2. Climate is perfect Well except Melbourne (but then you get every climate every day (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sarcastic.gif) ).

3. No majority French communities on continent.

4. Sparsely populated.

5. Boss provides beer at work.

[Sir_Psycho]

I've been thinking about expanding (and explaining) Sydney a little more lately. Two massive issues are the constant mana storm and the bridge squatters. The Harbour Bridge connects the CBD with the northern suburbs, which is where you'd find your high security districts and wealthy housing, so you need a way to connect these two areas without the bridge. That would be via VTOL aircraft from corporate arcologies and skyscrapers, or ferries and private boats across the harbour. The mana storm could make either of those very difficult or even deadly. Perhaps a tunnel for vehicles and maglev trains to cross underneath the city?

The bridge is inaccessible, populated by squatters with ramshackle shelters attached to the frame. A picture in Awakened Lands shows a ladder going to a boat, so perhaps they have a black market on road level. The corporate workers and facilities are going to want a buffer though, so barriers at both ends, or the shopping centres, arcologies and skyscrapers are built over the old city centre and inner suburbs, leaving the sinless in the dark and the mists of the mana storm.

The book says sydney only grew upwards, which is interesting, but I'd say it would sprawl out up to Newcastle and revitalising the shiping lanes to Aztlan and Seattle. Tanamyre is the resources and construction corp, if I remember, and they share control of sydney's metropolitan council, trade with Aztechnology and raid resources in South America. Other corps include Renraku through Baird Communications and Tesseract Communications, probably snatched by any other corp from CATco.

Run ideas:
-assigned to hijack a drone convoy carrying water through an underground road. Either they need to make a plan to get the trucks out of the tunnel or use them to enter a desalination plant and sabotage the equipment. Make it more intense by having it outside in a mana storm or have a crew of bikies compete for it.
-Enter Sydney via watercraft, evade Knight Errant patrols and climb a rope ladder to the bridge squatters and acquire Anarchist Black Star's fake id's and software. Cross into the CBD, infiltrate to the penthouse of a corporate skyscraper or arcology and escape back to the water via portable gliders before hearing about the virus on the news.
-BADs are making the Sydney underground a bad place to live. Tempo is in the hands of many low level dealers, while the Olaya and even David Cartels are dead ends, the daughter of a local Genesis Consortium R&D head from Rio, Metropole has more connections to her home and dark spirits than first appears. Triads are importing ingredients and product like deepweed from the tropical mess north of Brisbane via T-Birds and off road vehicles. So many people opened to the astral history and the fury of the storm are leaving a bodycount, and the Shedim are taking many corpses and threatening to rot Sydney from the core. The chaos can include a turf war between the bikies, yakuza and mafia for the drug and prostitution trade.

[almost normal]

1. Safest country on earth.

2. Climate is perfect Well except Melbourne (but then you get every climate every day (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sarcastic.gif) ).

The city of Darwin would like a word with you.

[Angelone]

1. Drop Bears, I'm shocked no one has mentioned them yet. More disappointed really.
2. Everything down there will kill you, the entire country/continent is where Mother Nature put the stuff she didn't want mixing in with the general population. Look at the platypus, it's just a bunch of spare parts that was Frankenstein'd together and it can still cause blinding pain.
3. Kurt "Motherfucking" Lazarus

[Tiralee]

Erm - I'm a native, and have got my mits on Awakened Lands, so that's a few suggestions.

As for the Sydney question posed, you can't run a tunnel underneath the bridge area due to the underlying geologic rock formations (harder than steel, then soft as butter, according to the guys who did the foundation work for the harbour bridge) but you could run a maglev around the harbour (under the shoreline and then a quick jaunt across the harbour as the rock there is more...forgiving.

Ulgh, the Top End is a deathhole. And yes, I'm aware and would use all the various horrible fanged, venomous, pulsating, acid-spitting, furry and scaled beasties.

A Recovery in the outback is a viability - someone might even make a rigger and have somewhere uninhabited to actually use those driving skillz.
Gang (as in organised crime - we're a simple mob down here) work might be possible, but the players have always tried to steer clear of underworld influences having had to "tidy" up things too many times before.

I'll see how we go - Turf wars are always a good start, doesn't have to be between the leather-clad highwaymen after all..(IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

-Tir

[Shortstraw]

The city of Darwin would like a word with you.

I'm one of the Top End's Own - born and raised in Darwin.

[Azrael]

Given the amount of mining that goes on now and assuming most of it stops when mana goes munyuck, SR dungeon crawl rescue mission through an old underground mine? Or have secret research facilities 200 m below ground, makes for an intersting entry / exit strategy.

Probably be some opportunity to use the great barrier reef and/or associated islands smuggler / pirate style, figure they may have escaped the brunt of the crazy.

And it'd be Mr Bruce, not Mr Dundee. don't you know your Monty Python!

[Stahlseele]

You want them to enter the waters?
ARE YOU NUTS? o.O

[almost normal]

I'm one of the Top End's Own - born and raised in Darwin.

It's like 100+ on a cold day! You gotta rinse off every few hours! How is that perfect!?!?

This totally isn't a knock, in fact I think it's funny and awesome, but Darwin was one of those towns where most of the male population worked until they could afford to get shitfaced, and not an hour more. There really isn't a place like that stateside.

[Wolfgar]

I ran a game set in Sydney, and posted a write up here about a year ago. I loved rolling up random manastorms for my players to deal with in the middle of an run. Sometimes the effect would be laughable, like illusory images and false, amorous emotions. Others it was manabolts from the sky. According to canon, Sydney has the worst manastorms, so I created the Storm Watchers Guild, a hermetic order dedicated to studying the storm and operating warded storm shelters around the city.

Also, Sydney is ruled by a Corporate Council- Aztechnology, Wuxing, Knight Errant, Baird Communications (owned by Renraku), and Tanymere (a local 1A). With the Azzies around, you can always find something horribly interesting to do.

[Shortstraw]

It's like 100+ on a cold day! You gotta rinse off every few hours! How is that perfect!?!?

This totally isn't a knock, in fact I think it's funny and awesome, but Darwin was one of those towns where most of the male population worked until they could afford to get shitfaced, and not an hour more. There really isn't a place like that stateside.

1. You are correct there are no cold days and it is always swimming weather like islands in the Caribbean or Bahamas.

2. Yes people do drink a lot but hey beer is awesome and there is nothing like sitting on a veranda in the evening with a beer and a book.

[Angelone]

GAH!!! https://www.google.com/search?q=Marsupial+M...lient=firefox-a

Seriously wtf?!? Here comes years of nightmares.

[Shortstraw]

Tasmanian devil - 2' long, 1200lbs of bite force, screeches like a harpy, worst stench on earth, oh and it transmits cancer with its bite.

[Stahlseele]

http://www.news.com.au/travel/news/spider-...0-1226332961171
run for your lives.