An SR5 actual game report Options

[Backgammon]

This sounds like you have an awesome game going, with some great players. I am curious though, how did you convert them? Did you use the conversion guide? Or did you just rebuild them and added the karma gained from privous editions? My group and I are still on SR4 but are pondering jumping to 5, we just have a lot of old chars we have played over the years and wanted to bring them along for the ride of the new edition.

We rebuilt. We switched over before the conversion guide became available, so it wasn't really even an option. Qualities were the biggest problem. Everyone had stuff from sourcebooks that isn't in SR5, so that had to change quite a bit. We house ruled in some stuff, just to keep character personalities constant. One player elected to switch characters entirely. Only the Face faced some gear problems, but they weren't big deals so we moved on.

I recommend making the switch, even if it's a little painful in character changes. I can't get enough of the new matrix and combat runs much faster now.

[Odsh]

At this point, however, the Hacker detects an incoming vehicule.

Did you make a secret matrix perception test for him to see if he would notice the incoming vehicle, or was he actively scanning for nodes around him?

[Backgammon]

Our hacker has a very good sense of paranoia. So, the encounter with the Triads and Wuxing and all that was occuring on an isolated beach outside of Hong Kong. Taking no risks, the Hacker place TWO commlinks configured to emit signal jamming on his team mates, effectively creating a static bubble over the entire beach. That meant the team couldn't communicate (over the matrix), but they accepted that, as most of the team had overlapping "eyes on" over each other anyway.

With the beach party (hah) secured, the hacker sat in the car on the road on a ridge overlooking the beach about 150 meters away, outside the jamming bubble, and proceeded to actively scan for anything coming in. This is the advantage of the secluded area - traffic would be uncommon and anything coming in would be suspect.

So, he was indeed actively scanning when the LAV came within range. It was pretty funny. He rolled a first test, and came up empty. He considered in, and declared WHATEVER it was, he was going to spike it. If it was just a random person driving by, then that's fine, he'd crash the car's node and stop the person from driving into a firefight anyway, right? And they had no allies, so anyone coming in wasn't going to be positive, so fuck it.

But when his 6 spike succeses came up empty and the thing advanced by 300 meters in 1 turn, he had a distinctive look of worry on his face. Previously, the team had faced a rather nasty encounter with a jet drone firing a minigun at them. It had 1 shot destroyed a car in their convoy - luckily this happened to be a decoy car. It had taken the team every thing they had - ending with the mage casting a Physical Barrier spell in front of the drone's projected flight path - to crash it and stop them all from being gunned down. He remembered that well, and his first course of action was to thus get the fuck out of the car before doing anything else.

It so happens this LAV isn't armed, but they don't know that. The runners inside are plenty armed and angry, though.

[Dolanar]

yeah, lets not discuss gear problems, my sniper in SR4 has a 200k sniper rifle at creation...can't do that very easily in SR5.

[Backgammon]

Well I hand-waved it for our Sniper, cause what's a sniper without his rifle. But yeah, it's a bit of an issue.

[Dolanar]

well they have some decent rifles in the core book right now, the one I picked up for my rebuild was about 2-3p stronger than my 200k rifle (but my rifle for my SR4 sniper was designed to get into ANYWHERE, I mean full briefcase auto breakdown, ceramic/plasteel components at max level etc.)

[mrslamm0]

Yeah I figured there would have to be a lot of hand waving to convert chars over. I am surprised no one mentioned the bioware cyber thing. I know for heavy cybered chars that will be a prob. I thought I saw either here or another SR forum that people were trying to convert things over from the SR4 splat books untill SR5 splat books arrive. Not sure how well that works though or its worth the trouble. With the priority system im not sure if alt meta type could be used yet but eh im probably geting ahead of myself. Love the story cant wait to hear more =)

[Backgammon]

Another game last night. We basically spent the evening wrapping up the beach scene.

So, the LAV and its team of shadowrunners, here to capture the Sniper alive, opened fire on the Spirits in melee with the Sniper but their fire proved pretty much useless. The Sniper managed to combat-shoot the Force 6 Earth Elemental, making it explode in a shower of fine grit. Meanwhile, the Face managed to scramble up the little hill and join in, using her monowhip to one-shot kill the Fire elemental. This is going to be a recurring theme for tonight's game, as we will see.

Meanwhile, on the beach, the Adept (who out of game had been proclaiming loudly he was gonna kill the Grenade Launcher Troll all week) goes for the Troll, ready to knock some enraged sense into him. However, this is where the Troll's critical glitch on his booze bender last week at the brothel came into play. A bright shield of light enveloped the critically wounded Troll, and an angel-like female being declared in a soft voice "Do not fear, husband, I will protect you". So, yeah. Turns out the Troll, in a drunken haze, married a free spirit of man and now has wedding vows in Enochian tattooed on his back. The Troll didn't do much for the rest of the game, pretty much being confused and still pretty severly wounded.

Back to the Sniper, immediately following the destruction of the Spirits, the sniper turns around and kills ones of the runner's hanging out of the LAV's back door. The runners had been holding fire till now because it's a confused situation as to wether or not the Sniper is hostile or not. No more. The remaining shadowrunner crew open fire, severely (but not killing) the Sniper. At this point, I also realized mages really got nerfed in 5th. I though manaball and stunbolt were still Force + hits damage. But no. It's just Net Hits damage. Woooah. Anyway, had to adjust myself a bit. So, Sniper goes down, but Face - well, turns out the Face has a lot of rage inside of her.

She rolls athletics and jumps into the back of the LAV (who is really close to the ground at this point) and uses her monowhip to instantly slice in half the remaining sammy. She dodges a fireball aimed at her by the combat mage, absorbs a tiny bit of stunbolt, and then slices the mage in half. She then runs up to the cockpit. Inside is the sole remaining opfor Shadowrunner, the decker. The decker (who had been battling the player decker - I'll get back to that) switches his attention. He's got mere moments before the Face and her monowhip reach him. So, first her Matrix Perceives her hidden node. Easy. Then he Brute Forces a Mark on her monowhip. And then he uses a Spoof command to tell the whip to retract. Face stares at her whip with a puzzled look (she is clueless about technology). She reached the cockit, just as the decker jacks out, scrambling for his sidearm. The Face calmly levels her gun at him and shoots him twice, ending his life, and ending the combat.

Prior to this climax, in Matrix space, the opfor Decker hacked the hovering Wuxing support heli and caused it to crash. Then, the Player Decker began an assault on the LAV's node. He managed an excellent Hack-on-the-Fly on it, gaining a mark. Unfortunately, he failed on his follow up attempt, thus alerting the opfor decker. The opfor Decker proceeded to ramp up another 3 Marks on the Player Decker. At this point, the player is sweating bullets as the two duke it out. The Player attempts several times to Erase Mark, to no avail, while the opfor Decker chooses this time to start rolling badly and fails to Spike him to oblivion. Finally, the Player decker has enough of fighting on the retreat, and jacks out of the Matrix, abandonning the field to the opfor Decker. Who, back in our timeline, then hacks up the Face right before getting shot to death.

The players conclude the deal with the remaining strike team members from Sharon of Wuxing's team. They end up with 120k payment each for the Coin of Luck and safe passage to Geneva, and a safehouse for a month. The Decker also crubbed the LAV for info, and thus learned quite a bit about the Sniper's problems... information he plans on using, shall we say, wisely.

So, highlight of the night was really the scene with the Face rampaging through the runners, ending with the climatic turn-by-turn fight with the Decker and calmly double-tapping him. Very cinematic. Gameplay wise, I continue to be super pleased with the Matrix action. The duel between the two deckers was a tense and strategic roll-off battle. I really think it's the game's strongest suit right now. There were definately some questions that came up as to the deckers' abilities to hack and LAV and helicopter - seems SUPER powerful. We kind of went with it, but I think we'll need to consider what to do about this carefully in the future.

[Lobo0705]

"There were definately some questions that came up as to the deckers' abilities to hack an LAV and helicopter - seems SUPER powerful. We kind of went with it, but I think we'll need to consider what to do about this carefully in the future."

That's why (for now, maybe they'll add something in the vehicle book) - I don't have NPCs who are in flying vehicles move around with the wireless on their vehicles on.

It just seems too far fetched that a corp would be sending a strike team into a firefight, even with a decker covering them, but all it takes is ONE lucky (or just skilled) shot by the player's decker and your multi-million-nuyen asset (including the cost of the vehicle and runners inside) just went boom.

[RHat]

"There were definately some questions that came up as to the deckers' abilities to hack an LAV and helicopter - seems SUPER powerful. We kind of went with it, but I think we'll need to consider what to do about this carefully in the future."

That's why (for now, maybe they'll add something in the vehicle book) - I don't have NPCs who are in flying vehicles move around with the wireless on their vehicles on.

It just seems too far fetched that a corp would be sending a strike team into a firefight, even with a decker covering them, but all it takes is ONE lucky (or just skilled) shot by the player's decker and your multi-million-nuyen asset (including the cost of the vehicle and runners inside) just went boom.

Ares Dragon: 355k. Can be lost to an extremely lucky shot from a highly intelligent and highly skilled person with very, very expensive gear.

Fully Augmented HTR Badass: Delta WR2 (372.5k), Beta Muscle Aug/Toner 4 (378k), Beta BDA4 (30k), Beta Orthoskin 4 (36k) [and other, lower cost augs], Crockett EBR w/ Internal Smartlink (20.6k) [and other, less expensive weapons] Full Body Armour w/ Full helmet, Chem seal, Environmental Adaptation (9.5k) [and various other stuff. Total: 846.6k. Can be lost to: Any idiot with a gun.

For reference, there is exactly 1 multi-million dollar aircraft printed so far, and that's the Banshee. The rest are cheaper than that HTR guy. Plus, if you slave the aircraft to something with a sufficiently badass firewall, and you're pretty much good (see: Rating 12 host). Besides, I don't buy for a second that they want to bother with a physically present pilot, when it's so much more logistically efficient to have remotely jumped in riggers.

[Backgammon]

Last night we moved on to the next mission from Corporate Intrigue, set in Geneva (which, for those who don't know, is a broken down Matrix dead-zone nobody understands). This mission is pretty calm and tame compared to the last couple of ones, so nothing extraordinary going on. The group is contact by Puck to find a certain Dissonant Technomancer hiding in the city. The first half is just some light legwork, little bit of raw Roleplaying.

The action sequence hit when the group has to storm a warehouse where they think the target is hiding. The target is defended by several LMG-equiped, Sprite controlled drones, along with a Feral AI providing support.

Now, clearly, SR5 doesn't have rules for AIs. So, I had to adapt. I kind of went with the AI being a Force 7 device. Turns out that was maybe a little too heavy-handed. The AI bricked 3 guns, and nearly killed both Puck and the team Hacker with bio-feedback laced Spikes, while I sumltaneously discovered Technomancers really do much better as support roles (buff/debuff) than attackers. So, I had to fudge the rolls to prevent a AI rampaging and killing Puck and the HAcker and totally disabling the other runners.

As it was, with my judicious fudging, it ended up being a good challenge. Lots of wounds all around, but mission accomplished. Of course, the warehouse raid only gave them a trail to the NEXT location, and now they are wounded and damaged. So, challenge isn't over yet.

One highlight of the game is the Adept Brawler finally picking revenge on the Grenade-launching Troll by smacking him hard while they were reconning the warehouse, giving him a nice 4S lesson. It almost escalated but the other team members seperated them. It all happened pretty cool in-game.

[Backgammon]

Finished up the mission last night. Pretty straightforward, really. The team, needing to gain entry into Geneva's guarded Exterritorial Business Zone, after some discussion, decide to send the Face to talk to the doctor friend they made at the Red Cross outpost. The Face, as Faces do, rolls shitloads of successes. We translate that as the Face showing the Doctor the evidence they have that an evil Technomancer plans on destroying the Geneva Grid in a Most Horrible Way, and the Doctor fully gets onboard. He tells the runners to hide into a supply truck while it passes the checkpoint, so the team gets in without hassle. All agree that this worked out much better then the other plans being considered, namely "go into the sewers and hope it connect and we don't get eaten" or "jump over the wall with some team members have pitiful athletics".

The team quickly make their way to the target building. The team Hacker, assisted by Puck, do a run against the building Host to determine the location of the server room. First time we do a run against a Host, so a bit of page flipping. Basically, there isn't that much to go on until the Matrix sourcebook comes out. But, anyway, we manage. It all goes pretty well until they CRITICALLY GLITCH editing a file to insert themselves as authorized users. After some thought, I decide that to them everything appears fine. But, in reality, they have now just warned the bad guy they are coming in. So, bad guys set ambush.

Team walks into gigantic, multi-level cylindrical server room. Right into awaiting bad guys. Ensue very bitter gunfight. Final tally:
Troll, out with 16P of damage
Adept, out with 13P of damage
Face: 1P damage
Hacker: 8P damage
Sniper: Out with 11P damage

So, quite a bloody battle, with everyone completely using all Edge. As a GM, you call that a successful game (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

So, they manage to defeat everyone, but then the UN security forces troop in and arrest everyone. They are in no shape to defend themselves. so have no choice but to get captured. We end there

Now comes the fun part - what will the UN do? On one hand, they did a great deed and saved the city grid, which they will be thankful for. On the other, they are Shadowrunners. Now, add to this mix the fact the Sniper's teammates have sold him out to both parties out hunting him. Plus, the Troll's Free Spirit wife (that's right) had to pop her head out to help, so it turns out a powerful mage looking for her has been able to track her.

So... while they are sitting in jail cells, all of their stories are converging... Should be very interesting.

[DMiller]

Hmm, sounds to me like the UN needs a favor, off the books of course. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/devil.gif)

[RHat]

Hmm, sounds to me like the UN needs a favor, off the books of course. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/devil.gif)

If you REALLY want to be evil, maybe they need to get some people out of Asamando after the events of Storm Front...

[Backgammon]

Yeah I'm thinking of creating a UN NPC that'll act as johnson for the next mission. The next one is this incredibly hellish mission in Bogoto from Corporate Intrigue. Having the UN send them them - possible pro-bono to be especially ESPECIALLY evil - might be interesting.

But first I have to deal with Ares and The Fallen both coming for the Sniper, as well as a deluded, annoying Indian billionaire proposing to the Face and her reaction to such a horror, plus a high-powered mage - let's make it interesting, a member of the Black Lodge - coming to claim back his escaped pet spirit that is now the Troll's wife.

Such evils to visit upon my players... MUAHAHAHAHAHAH