3rd edition smuggler campaign writeup, Narrative write up of games - feedback welcome. Options

[Kren Cooper]

Hi everyone - and welcome to another update for the Smuggler campaign. Episode 355 is now published, continuing book 12.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1wanc3bzh333...hsp8sa&dl=0

Here's the "behind the scenes" from this week's run:
We didn’t get quite as far as I thought we might as the players seemed to really latch onto some of the RP opportunities here, and I never want to cut that kind of thing short. Marius made a big play on talking to the German teams, doing the whole “ahh – a familiar language, spoken by natives” kind of approach, so there was a bit of time dedicated to that, and me trying to give a background feel for the camps and the unusual atmosphere in light of it being Christmas.

Some of this comes from chatting with my wife Ali (Tads) who has been to Australia over the xmas period – and has described the weirdly surreal feelings for an average Brit to be standing in the baking sun, slapping on SPF50 and trying not to die from the heat – while listening to Christmas carols and spotting tinsel everywhere, and the TV is playing movies where everything is covered in snow… Part of that is my feelings (I don’t celebrate xmas and normally work on the 25th – after all, what’s the one day of the year that nobody cares if the network is down? It’s a perfect time to repatch cabinets or adjust your core switches. So normally Ali goes home to see her parents, and I work, and we catch up with each other a few days later… but I digress!

So, after emphasising the odd mood, and the players taking efforts to fit in and socially engineer their way through things, to RP with the teams and to ‘fit in’, we did a lot of background talking. The team also spent a while trying to work out how they would find this particular needle in a haystack. They’re probably all fairly sure that the race and the events around it are the reason they’re here – but they’re not 100% sure, so they’re also trying to think about other things as well, and make sure they don’t miss clues.

Towards the end of the evening they did get nudged into meeting Colin Furze – the third – as I shamelessly appropriated the mannerisms and personality of a well known Youtuber, to use as my NPC. I doubt he’ll ever become aware of this – but hopefully if he does he’ll see it as a homage, and not a slander! But again, there was a bit of frothing that probably wavered from in-character to out-of-character and back several times as we recounted various episodes or crazy things we’d seen him done, and how this is exactly the kind of thing he’d probably do, as well as the quintessentially British nature of a single lone genius inventor working in his shed to come up with some crazy invention with the potential to change the world… and to be disarmingly humble or nonchalant about the whole thing.

As a result of the RP and frothing, we didn’t get to the actual qualifying and the “main events” – which will come this week instead. But I certainly don’t ever want to rush people away from RP towards the action, especially when it’s some of the players that are often quietest that are doing it. I was extremely surprised that Hunter “blessed” the plane, as was Tads – but I’m certainly not going to knock it! And even better, at one point during the evening, Lee (Marius) sat back and said “I’m actually wanting to fly this plane now you know – now I’ve been told how crazy hard it’s likely to be…”

Music to my ears…

Otherwise though, I’d taken advantage of the useful resources on Wikipedia to generate not only the structure of the race and to extrapolate things out to the 2060s and how things might be – but also to generate my list of NPCS.

Using https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Bull_Air_...ld_Championship as a basis, I just lifted and dropped the names and countries straight into my race – why reinvent the wheel after all? And https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zivko_Edge_540 provided great reference images on the types of stock aircraft used by most of the teams. Some information came from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-blade_propeller - but also from a random Youtube clip I found about the strange design and how weird it looks – which was the main emphasis I was after. And of course, I made heavy use of Google maps for the layout of Melbourne, and the article on the city from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne to get some background details. In particular the lack of low-cost housing in the city, and the rent-squeezes to come up with the trailer park / tent city concept, and to provide a unique hook for the city design, to add some interest and intrigue.

Next week – qualifying, Horror action, shenanigans and Marius getting to live out his flying dreams, I hope!

And as usual, here are the notes from the game session to compare / contrast with the narrative:
1. Sunday 25/12/61, Location: -34.60062, 150.87941, Time 16:00
2. Tads asks Kai to shift his face to something else, before doing interviews, and to avoid facial recognition. Aswon also uses Melanin control. Hunter taking lots of photos. Tads backs to Elk, and does F1 illusion of big antlers +bells and tinsel
3. Marius+Tads thinks about going to spend time with the german teams: Klaus Schrodt, former airline pilot, (Lufthansa), Matthias Dolderer (SK) Tads staying quiet generally, but being astral eyes.
4. Claudius Spiegel (Black Forest Industries) - aiming to ingratiate himself a bit, listening for any oddities.
5. Many of the teams doing something Christmas related, dinners, gentle parties,
6. 24 competitors, 19 compounds.
7. Looking at some of the competitors - trying to work out homes and dreams. Aswon thinks Athabaskan council one a high chance.
8. Kai+Shimazu-trying to get in to see medical reps of each team, looking at mental pressure, long term effects. Ask 3 questions - something specific to them, 2 years, something personal, change one of the details. Looking for signs of possession. Medicine vs 4s, Etiquette vs 4s. 1+3. Find out they're out on the race circuit for several months. Tads suggests giving them a burner phone number in case stuff happens.
9. Hunter and Aswon as a team, doing recon.
10. Most people fairly heavy cyber - so almost no chances of talent. Think about Shedim/Horrors, previous possessions were at high BGC things, and team are familiar with the horror mark on spooks kid. Aswon it could take a human form - but probably not impersonate cyber?
11. Aswon - no sign of it. Might be in the city maybe? No sign of it here. Tads - we need to keep an eye on Colin to make sure he doesn't get possessed. Tads uses a flurry of small reindeer watchers to send nonsense messages as cover.
12. Tadibya: Find a clean empty bottle, sterilise it, and when no one is looking, fill it with the best Russian vodka Tads can create for Stuart?
13. Meet the race staff and get some opinions of them. Meet all the pilots,
14. Dario hits on Tads. She blanks him - but hands over the SHeko beach hyper-car business card.
15. CF III offers a tour, explains stuff about the aircraft. Tads- hey hunter, "bless" the plane. Hunter does... feels weird and self-conscious, but does it anywhere. Marius asks to put a camera on - CF says yes as long as race director is ok. Pilot is "Jeff", tries to avoid best photo angles. Assenses - 5.95 Shimazu reads body language - worried about being IDd. He doesn't react to having his masking penetrated.
16. Engineering checks for Hunter and Marius. Hunter superb roll, Marius good - edge of madness.
17. Talk to race director, approve camera, find out about press paddock, find out qualifying schedule and details of runs. Work out the details of how to do it, helmet cam.
18. Tads suggests doing a drive around the city for the course. Quiet due to day, but still party atmosphere, Tads and Shimazu keeping an eye out for the horror. General positive mood. Realise there is no low class housing.
19. Aswon - only low class area is the shanty town with the weird positive mood - probably the place to find any local shaman. Tads - maybe get Kai to talk to the few homeless we've found with some food, where are the low class? Marius - this thing might be drawn to the shanty town, so making friends there might not be a bad thing. Can it manipulate emotions and feelings? Aswon, think we have to assume it can... Marius - so it might go somewhere like that where it's easy to change it positively or negatively... team generally agree.
20. Hunter and Marius plan to watch all the qualifying, leaving the rest of the team to investigate other stuff.

[Kren Cooper]

Hi everyone - and welcome to another update for the Smuggler campaign. Episode 356 is now published, continuing book 12.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1wanc3bzh333...hsp8sa&dl=0

Here's the "behind the scenes" from this week's run:
Well, no plan survives contact with the characters – or in this case the players.

Unfortunately, this week one of the players was down with illness – and of course it happens to be Marius! So after missing a week while Hunter/Shimazu was off, I really didn’t want to cancel again… but then equally I felt I didn’t want to go forward with actions that really require Marius to be there, especially making decisions important enough to have long lasting effect on his character and potentially his karma pool!

So, time to throw on the brakes a little, and run through the qualifying round in a little more detail, as well as not stopping the inevitable derailing for side-conversations quite as quickly as normal. On top of that, I had the team do some assensing of the pilots and dropped in the “shared guilty secret” feeling or vibe, and then sat back.

The team thankfully picked up the clue, tugged at it a few times, and then went off onto a whole conspiracy theory discussion, letting me sit back and listen, and occasionally give a ‘knowing smile’ over the camera, as if they’d just got close to some hidden truth about race-fixing.

That chewed up a bunch of time and energy in the session, as well as being some nice bits of RP between the players – and they started to throw some serious effort into working it out, coming up with various different social approaches and blowing re-rolls on talking with people. Part of me wondered if I should keep it “secret” for the next session, but as they’d hit the mental thresholds I’d assigned, I went with the quick win – rather than trying to string it out for the sake of it. Especially as they’d used re-rolls to get the successes they had, it felt like they’d put the work in and expended the resources – and the brief side quest (of sorts) had fulfilled its purpose.

With the big secret exposed, that meant we could finish the night with the corporate hit-squad clearly getting ready to engage something or someone – and lots of speculation about who it was and what for, including some correct guesses that I this time tried to keep my poker face on for. But certainly they have strong suspicions that “Jeff Smith” is in trouble, and there’s some discussion already about what to do if ZIC does kick off against him, and if Marius is going to end up flying Colin’s plane.

I mean… come on. The chances of the team’s rigger being around when some scrappy plucky inventor hero is desperately in need of an excellent but slightly unhinged pilot to fly his dodgy as all hell experimental death trap in a nerve-wracking high stakes race?

Must be a million to one. EXACTLY a million to one in fact. And as anyone who has read Pratchet knows, that means it’s a certainty…


And as usual, here are the notes from the game session to compare / contrast with the narrative:
1. Monday 26/12/61, Location: -34.60062, 150.87941, Time 08:00
2. Back to work vibe, getting ready for the qualifying. Aswon - astral eyes on the racers. Tads wondering if they should go to the city. Kai - got a feeling we're in the right place... but my gut could be wrong.
3. Team watching the planes, the crowd, listening, doing research, Marius providing context from the broadsword.
4. Assensing - lots of successes, the crowd are *very* emotive, Shimazu one success and six 1s. Massive lean on the gambling aspect and the emotions of the crowd.
5. Kai keeping an eye out for the highest risk moves for potential crash planning. Tads suggests putting a bet of around 10k on Colin. Hunter checks the odds. Odds on Colin have dropped sharply since the start of the season, but now are levelled out slightly. 7:1 odds for winning the local race.
6. Pilots start to do the rounds for interviews. Team generally enjoying and working. Do interviews. Get a really good feel for the area.
7. 5/6 of the pilots and teams provide memories. Only one that doesn't is Mike Mangold, joint favourite on the odds. Kai wanting to do more careful observations on them. Kai checks for dignitaries. B and C listers, lots of music festivals, all sub-genres. Kai requests interviews with most of the major pilots. Hunter suggests looking for non-standard questions, unusual things to ask to give insight/personal stories. Kai agrees, suggests putting slight errors in to try and catch-out, or do more memory tests. Also quiz them on betting.
8. Aswon - what kind of questions might help us identify specific targets? Psych profile - decent roll for Shimazu.
9. General checks on interviews. Shimazu 7, Aswon 2, Tads 4, Kai 0, Hunter 1. Shimazu tells Hunter. Team start thinking about race fixing and other stuff.
10. Message to Shimazu that was shared: You're pretty sure there's something weird in the group of the top qualifiers. Either a gentlemens agreement, or a private bet, or maybe.... MAYBE even a hint at race fixing? Though that doesn't feel right to you. but it's private, like a shared joke, and they DONT want to reveal it. Slight nervous energy from them. Tads feels some kind of personal, simple thing.
11. Aswon wonders if they all have a shared experience with the horror, if it's already got to them. Tads asks about bugging stuff - Marius says doesn't want to try it, and would very likely get picked up. Same with bugging the compounds. Aswon - leave someone at the compound tomorrow to poke around?
12. Hunter gets a warning from Marius - there's an extra bunch of Z-IC team members turned up to join the Paul Bonhomme team in group 2. Hunter scowly face. Tads asks what the deal is - Hunter, they probably suspect I'm dead, but they probably suspect I'm not.
13. Balloon rides over the city, beach parties, music, general party stuff. Tads suggest Kai go back to "discover the secret" of the G1 six. G1 six might be drinking tonight as they're not flying for several days. Aswon gets the impression they won't go into town and mingle - too risky. Kai and Shimazu go back for minor interviews and schmoozing. Kai gets a good hit. RR, 1 success to 3. catches someone with the "already have the hooker outfit". Possible angle for questioning - a lack of concern over being "the loser",
14. Aswon goes on tour around the town, to get a background feel, with Tads. Hunter doing research.
15. Team look at putting a bet on. 10k to win at 12:1, 100k to place top 3 at 4:1 - split over multiple bookies / days. Melbourne has only one casino, not resorts.
16. Tuesday morning, 27th - G2 starts to prep, but the Z-IC new guys stay in the compound. Tads assenses 10, Shimazu 5, Aswon 2. Ambushes - planning, corp security vibe. ZIC split, the new guys don't go out with the plane. Tads suggest Hunter talks to Jeff Smith - drops ZIC hints? He's unknown - is he on the run from ZIC? Starts a conspiracy theory ramble.

[Kren Cooper]

Hi everyone - and welcome to another update for the Smuggler campaign. Episode 357 is now published, continuing book 12.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1wanc3bzh333...hsp8sa&dl=0

Here's the "behind the scenes" from this week's run:
With everyone back at the screen, it was time to push on the plot. And I was all ready to do so – when my thunder was stolen, and stolen in a way that amused me no end.

As the session started, there was a bit more talking (as there normally is) to get everyone on the same page, remind people about what’s going on, and fill Marius in on the events of the week before. Then Tads decided to “warn” Jeff, and detailed two spirits to go and deliver a message to him and monitor his response, using extra services to send them via the metaplanes rather than travelling physically or astrally. I listened carefully to her relayed message and tried not to let my expression change. Then I made a quick WP test for “Jeff”, to just see what would happen.

Oh dear… how it was described to me, would have freaked me out in the situation, so I was already leaning towards him having a bit of a panic attack and doing a runner in a panicked condition. Then the dice roll confirmed that. And in a weird ironic twist – the plot was made to happen by a player, seeking to try and stop the plot from happening. Oh sweet sweet irony! We’d already had a discussion skirting around the plot, while out walking the dog – though normally Tads is careful not to poke too close to the game in situations like this, as she doesn’t want to ruin it for herself. But in this case she’d told me what she expected to happen (something happens to the pilot, he’s taken out, captured or killed by the ZIC troops, Marius ends up having to pilot the plane) based on the events so far, and told me my ‘rails weren’t as well hidden as usual’…

So I just thought it was hilarious when she did this ANYWAY, and MADE it happen… and doubly amused by the looks of horror on the rest of the players faces as they realised that
a) She’d already done it
b) None of them knew about it in-character, as there was no giveaway or activity to clue them in
c) Now they had to wait for the explosion and just deal with the flying debris…
So none of the PLAYERS were surprised when Jeff came out of the compound in a blind panic, running away from the weird ghosts that were foretelling his death – and sending him straight into the arms of the ZIC squad.

Kai quickly piled in, and there was a few minutes of confusing but fun roleplay as I and Kai’s player kept talking over and interrupting each other, and then Kai “gave the signal” – much to the confusion and dismay of the rest of the team. Once we’d rolled initiative, several of the team passed / held actions, not quite believing that they were starting a fight based on the circumstances, and we got about halfway through the turn order before we reached Aswon, who played his merc straight down the line with the “boss has told me to attack… so ATTACK” mentality. Even then, the fight stayed non-lethal, and petered out before anyone got seriously hurt.

I’d given the capture squad low-strength taser weapons as a nod to them wanting to capture Jeff intact – or at least not burn out his cyberware – but it was still very amusing to watch Aswon’s player grimace as I told him he’d been hit and failed to dodge – as he was expecting something with a much higher damage code. As it was he shrugged it off, and then the tables sort of turned a little – as 75% of the snatch squad were now holding unloaded weapons or were stunned… until they were reminded about the 5th member of the team, when he started to aim at Marius.

Both sides backed down, the team realising they could lose someone to a headshot with no notice, and “accepting” the legal authority for the extradition, and the ZIC guys realising that something weird was going on, and wanting to get the hell out of dodge now they had their package.

And that meant we could move on to Colin – and the Horror, trying to tempt him away and fix his issues. It was always my intent to make this relatively straight-forward. The aim here is actually to get Marius up in the plane (from a plot perspective), so having the Horror suddenly be found, and actually be straight-forward to capture isn’t an issue. In some ways I almost want the players to feel a bit off-balance, and go “huh? That was too easy…” and be a bit suspicious, and wonder if there’s more going on here. But no – it’s a win for them against the Horror, but now they need Marius to qualify in the jet, and then be a true underdog story and win the race for Colin – and trigger the next main plot element.

And as usual, here are the notes from the game session to compare / contrast with the narrative:
1. Tuesday 27/12/61, Location: -34.60062, 150.87941, Time 10:00
2. Discussions - Hunter vs Jeff Smith. Aswon - check that the jar and bullroarer are always carried and on hand. 4 ZIC squad, lounging. Tads sends 2 spirits to warn Jeff Smith via astral shortcut.
3. Jeff does a runner, spirit reports back. ZIC guys move in. Tads "oh..shit. Kai - are we going to interview." Kai - kinda like that plan. KSATM go, H stays.
4. Jeff Smith emerges about 10:30, the ZIC squad move in. 4 X close work with taser nets, one at range with sniper.
5. In line with the Business Recognition Accord Act of 2045, Section 116.3, we have applied for and received an extradition order from the State of Victoria, signed by Governor Margaret Gardener. We also have a writ signed by Chief Justice Richard Niall, authorising the use of force to effect your detainment. Under clause 23 of the Undesirable Persons act of 2027, we have the legal authority to detain you and process you for extradition.
6. Kai - hi, we're live, on stream with Jeff - you have fans with you it seems. Most favoured TV personality. Aswon calls for Hunter to display the footage on the side of the bird. Kai continues to babble and distract, feeding stats and nonsense out.
7. In line with the deputised powers bestowed upon us, we have an order to detain one "Jeff Smith" AKA Michael DuQueen, AKA Simon Tag, a corporate citizen of Zeta-Imp-Chem, registered to an address in the ZIC Compound, Madrid.
8. Kai continues to babble and distract, talks over the guy and has presence. What's your name "Ricardo." Aswon looking uncomfortable.
9. "You are ordered to remain still, and comply with our instructions. If you do not comply, we are authorised to use deadly force to detain you and carry out this warrant. Focuses on Kai - You need to stop recording! NOW!
10. Great, so you don't want to be on film, ok, fine, we need you to get a waiver from you, so we need to get a signature. Kai got a warning, from the producer, does a count down and signs to the rest of the team.
11. Apparently we're starting combat!
12. T 21
13. G 20
14. M 18
15. S 16
16. A 15
17. K 15
18. 1 down and twitching (Aswon)
19. 2 empty gun, leader, show aswon
20. 3 empty gun, shot Jeff
21. 4 loaded gun, held by Marius at gunpoint.
22. Shimazu jumps to first, Grabs Kai and dives to the side. Tads drops illusions, but then holds. Guard 3 shoots JS and drops him with the taser net. Aswon and Kai checks - taser nets are turned DOWN. Rest of goons hold. Marius - holding, uncertain. Aswon - tases one of the guards. Guard 1 takes a D stun, goes down, Aswon steps towards next target. #2 shoots Aswon with taser net, 2 successes, Aswon dodge 0rr2, soak 6L half impact, soaked, no effect. Tads jumps in - shouts "STOP" with hands raised. 1 success, RR to 2. Marius draws Pred III and holds on #4. Kai - "live, streaming this kidnap attempt" Fast talk test, vs 5s - 4 successes. Jeff has been accidently hit, needs medical attention.
23. Rest of team bar Marius check - Hunter spots IR dot on Marius forehead. Warns team. Kai - calls for lowered weapons. Kai tries to interfere medically, #2 goes to restrain him. Signals to Marius to lower weapon. Dangerous criminal, need to prevent danger to anyone else.
24. Colin is at the gateway and distraught. Kai shown the writ, bit of legal wrangling. Crimes theft and corporate espionage. Kai continues to narrate the "capture", as ZIC retreat to their compound.
25. Team go over to see Colin. Hunter editing the footage to remove the team - hot news, will affect the betting. Someone talking to colin, another press guy. "Come on, let's go talk about it, I'm sure I can help you out." Team immediately suspicious, start assensing.
26. Aswon "uneasy read", Tads definite eldritch feel. Tads worries, and warns the team.
27. You don't need their help. Colin frowns - you've done enough damage. Tads - you should listen to us... Aswon moves in to attack, going all in to kick off. Tads puts up a dome illusion over the combat F2. Aswon got 9 success, it gets 5rr8. Takes an L. Shimazu dives in - smites it with 15. Hunter 2 successes, Marius 2r6. Capture the thing, weak mind affect. Colin looks at the 2 halfs of the possessed body, gasps. Tads shape earth to hide the body once they have his ID. "Greg Jenkins", local news photographer. Colin - what is going on. Kai - lets go inside and have a drink...Hunter gets the local guys camera. Tads modifies the illusion to have Greg head out, to cover him leaving.

[Kren Cooper]

Hi everyone - and welcome to another update for the Smuggler campaign. Episode 358 is now published, continuing book 12.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1wanc3bzh333...hsp8sa&dl=0

Here's the "behind the scenes" from this week's run:
A sudden last minute cancellation from Kai’s player left us one down this session, but with everyone else online, we could crack on ok. As a result of Kai being “in the blanket box”, I did a straight-forward roll for sorting out the business side of things when we got to the negotiations, with each side getting what they wanted and being happy with the deal as a result.

With Marius having agreed to fly the plane, things moved on at a decent rate of speed, with us fast forwarding to the test flight, then the qualifying and then the race itself with little else needing to be done. I handled the balloon hire abstractly as Kai wasn’t there – again, even though it was a non-standard request, Kai is an excellent negotiator and has more than enough money for the bribe, so it really shouldn’t be an issue – and it wasn’t that important anyway!

There were some (expected) raised eyebrows when I shared the picture of the new art scheme for the experimental jet, and a quick check amongst the players at the Discord history, to compare with the cave-painting to check it was similar – then some looking around for the “old man”, just in case.

When Marius did the qualifying and test flights, it triggered an interesting out-of-game discussion as the team tried to theorycraft the numbers. Was Marius better to go with his “fixed wing” skill, at the base target number and to throw in his control pool to give him 8 dice to roll on each test, or was he better to take the +2 target number for a rigger defaulting to reaction, and only get half his control pool – but have 18 dice to roll? The tried to work out what the target number range might be, based on what they knew of the course, and to see how it would make the target numbers land, especially in relation to TNs 7, 13 etc…

In the end, they tried the actual skill to start off with, and then shifted to using Rigged Reaction for the race, using re-rolls as needed.

I’d assigned target numbers for each of the gates / turns on the course, based on the handling of the aircraft, how tight the manoeuvre was and other situational modifiers, giving the list below:
1. 6 Enter the course over a floating gate in Hobsons Bay
2. 8 Fly over Sandridge Lookout pier, gate 2
3. 6 Gentle bank in the west berth, gate 3
4. 8 Sharp turn in Yara River, gate 4
5. 9 Split-S turn at Fishermans bend, high g turn, gate 5
6. 8 River skim past pier 35, low altitude section
7. 10 Swanson Dock split, high G turn, gate 6
8. 6 High speed straight up Yarra river
9. 8 Under bridge flight, M2 motorway, immediate pullup for min height through gate 7
10. 8 90 degree roll around Route 55 and turn to south, gate 7
11. 8 90 degree roll around M1, turn east, gate 8
12. 6 Low level buzz, M1 highway
13. 9 Corkscrew rolls, triple gate 9
14. 8 90 degree turn south, M1 and route 60
15. 8 Kingsway corner, roll to east, gate 10
16. 6 Golfers T - sharp turn to SW, gate 11
17. 6 Gunn island turn, gate 12
18. 10 Albert Park Z - very high g slalom, gate 13
19. 9 Cricket club - 90 degree roll, gate 14
20. 8 Fitzroy dash - low level on edge
21. 6 Yacht club see saw gate 15
22. 8 Kilda reef, high g turn north, gate 16
23. 6 Breakwater, gate 17
24. 6 Finish line loop

When we got up to the race itself, I briefed the players that I’d broken down the course into each leg or section, and that the target number would vary depending on where they were – so that Marius could then plan how and where he was going to use his re-rolls or karma. I wanted to let him know in advance the number of tests so he wasn’t going in completely blind – and also so they understood that this was going to be a whole bunch of tests one after another, as otherwise it would just feel like a never-ending series of “now make another”…

Doing it this way meant that the rest of the team were also involved, even in a small way, with the management of the tests – they too understood how far through the process they were, and had an idea of the course layout from the maps I’d distributed earlier, and thus had an idea of how hard the course was. That let them pitch in with managing the flight, keeping track of rerolls, the number of successes, how far through the race we were, and the likely range of target numbers – which seemed to have kept them involved, or not too bored by the process.

The dice were a little wild as we rolled, and even through 18 dice, on 5 of the tests Marius didn’t get a single 6 – forcing him to use a reroll. Thankfully in all those cases they dice came up gold afterwards, and he never missed a turn or failed a check. As he got to the end, he decided to really go for it, and threw in a double re-roll on the last check, and also spending karma to get a “big finish” – ending up with 9 successes on the last check. He was already doing well, and that pushed him way ahead of the pack. I’d worked out the number of theoretical successes for the top 6 pilots, assigned them values and then put that down as a table to give me something to compare too as we went along – but with Marius getting a total of 63 successes over the whole course, he blew his way clear to the top of the leaderboard, and took the race convincingly.

I hyped up the win, describing astral space pushing towards a positive background count of 5 as the “underdog” came from nowhere with a spectacular win, and how the crowd mobbed the aircraft as he came back to land – but the team played it cool, kept a lid on things and managed to maintain their covers ok.

With the race won, it was time for them to make tracks, and they were able to extricate themselves ok, and we’ll probably be off back to Uluru next week to drop off the captured Horror. I am guessing after that they’re going to head back to the ranch – they might have a bit of downtime, or they may just start looking for the next job – but technically they don’t have anything pressing at the moment, so we may just have to wait and see!

And as usual, here are the notes from the game session to compare / contrast with the narrative:
1. Tuesday 27/12/61, Location: -34.60062, 150.87941, Time 11:00
2. Colin - Cha 5, WP6
3. Team settling down in Colin's frame tent - slightly mouldy and has crayon drawings in the bedrooms. Need to explain what is going on. Done abstractly, Kai not present, all done on a GM roll. Tads cleanses spell signature. Colin explains he is doomed without a pilot... Marius offers services, Colin wants to know what he's flown. Marius offers a career summary. Colin - is a bit twitchy. Marius, I need to practice. Tads - have you flown it. Colin - not allowed. Are you going to charge me? What's the deal? M - if I win, you pay me. Tads - and if you sell the plane, we get a share of the royalties. Kai hands over a business card. "we move things from place to place". Colin and Kai haggle and discuss, keep Marius anonymous.
4. Check flight suit and do a fashion on it to make it fit. Colin asks for colours, mindlink and fashion spell. Tads shows Colin "privately" when Marius engaged the scramjet. Tads tell him to keep it quiet, Colin fails his WP test and can't keep from grinning. Arranges test flight for 6pm
5. Back to the broadsword, and then seal the jar shut with gaffa tape and rope.
6. Kai suggests doing a tour and asking the other pilots what they feel about the situation. Aswon suggests a 2nd foundation / cover as a media outlet.
7. Marius to qualify = test vs 8s for 5 qualifying runs. If Marius exceeds 3 successes on any run, Colin will radio and ask him to dial it BACK, to keep the odds good and sell the real underdog story.
8. Paints the nose art on - firefox, custom flight suit - sinking his last funds into this.
9. Marius assesses the vehicle - defaults off rotorcraft with ME3, flies on fixed wing+control pool, gets 2rr3. Marius has a "good time". Colin very happy, but asks to fly only "ok" during qualifying. Marius asks for spirit cover / magical protection on the plane. Aswon sleeps in there as well.
10. Qualifying day - team doing makework and usual stuff, Marius up last, 0rr1. Technically good flight but not fast.
11. Thursday - gets Kai to get balloon
12. Race day, F7 spirits one on the plane, one on Marius.
13. Test
14. 1 2
15. 2 0rr4
16. 3 1
17. 4 1
18. 5 2
19. 6 3
20. 7 0rr2
21. 8 1
22. 9 0rr2
23. 10 2
24. 11 1
25. 12 2
26. 13 1
27. 14 4
28. 15 0rr3
29. 16 1
30. 17 1
31. 18 1 buy 3 to 4
32. 19 2
33. 20 4
34. 21 0rr4
35. 22 1
36. 23 3
37. 24 4rr6rr9b3 to 12
38. 63 successes total.
39. Magic test for Aswon and Tads - 4+3
40. Tads wants to get out - balloon pilot "look shiela", Tads levitate out.
41. Marius in to land - pilots come out to congratulate him. Big crowd, helmet off, balaclava still on. Colin handles the marketing side.
42. Hunter comes in cursing about some of the bookies. Marius gets Tads to disguise him as Jeff in bodyshape - physical mask.
43. Mike Mangold wants to speak to Marius - Tads reminds him about the hooker story, Jurgis Kairys the Lithuanian - which town to send him too... Baku. Marius passes over a contact detail/number for evidence / amusement.

[Kren Cooper]

Hi everyone - and welcome to another update for the Smuggler campaign. Episode 359 is now published, continuing book 12.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1wanc3bzh333...hsp8sa&dl=0

Here's the "behind the scenes" from this week's run:
Life continued to throw a curveball – with Kai being unavailable at very short notice and Hunter on holiday. Normally we’d not play with two down – but as I knew it was mostly going to be a travel episode, I asked the players if they wanted to run the session as normal, and we ended up playing on.

With Marius having won the air-race, that is the end of a fairly major plot-arc – though I suspect the players don’t know this, just yet. They probably think it was all about recapturing the horror, and while that’s not something to be overlooked, that was almost a side-quest really. It’s probably going to become clear to the team that the race was more than it seemed over the coming weeks, as news focus in on the ‘mysterious pilot’ and the marketing machine gets into high gear though, and later one it should become a lot more obvious.

But, the team were ready to depart, and after a quick discussion decided to grab some supplies. Being New Year’s eve, I didn’t give them a huge choice – but there’s always *somewhere* open on nights like this, so neither did it prove to be impossible. And what do you know – the place I made available was *just* in range of Tads and her ‘Sensing’ metamagic, to warn her about the buildup in background count at the rock concert nearby. This was a positive background count though, and growing stronger as people got into the party mood, combining the end of a weeklong festival, a rock concert for a really good band, AND New Year’s Eve.

But the players decided not to bite, and actively avoided it. Oh well! Their choice, and this was more of a side-quest than main plot, so c’est la vie! On they flew to Uluru, to get rid of the Horror. A bit of social time with the shaman, and then an overnight rest, and it was time to move on. The advantage of the new fuel tanks became clear now as they looked at the map and realised they have all kinds of options now for travel, and a bigger choice of routes. They went for a minimal contact fuel-and-go kind of visit strategy, so after checking for some random encounters, we got them back to the ranch about two days later.

I checked back through my notes, trying to confim when they were last at the ranch, and ended up finding it was longer than I’d thought. Along the way I noticed there was a “hole” in my information, so I paused the writeup for a while to fix that, adding in an extra column in my smuggler tracker spreadsheet on the episode list for “location”. It took a while to go back through all 360 episodes and add in the main location of each session, and with 20/20 hindsight is something I should have been tracking all along to make things easier – but I didn’t, and I am now… But that also confirmed that it was several months since they had been at the ranch, which meant Nadia should have had plenty of time to further her logistics campaign on the underground base, and to also tighten her steely grip on the local population.

So, I got to describe the Thunderbirds / Terrahawks style secret landing pad, and the kit-out of the base underground. It’s not a super-important thing really for the team, but there were lots of smiles, and it was clearly an evocative part of the night, so it seems to have ‘buy-in’ from them players as a cool thing for them to have, which is nice. It also should give them some protection from being spied on by the corps or governments, to at least some extent, and hopefully gives a sense of progression or achievement compared to other groups/campaigns.

With that done, I could also then drop the news about the magical explosions at the Megaslayer concert, letting them know that plot happened, and they missed it. Perhaps they’re happy they skipped over the quest line, perhaps they realise they missed out on some fun and adventure, or maybe they just realised they missed out on a bunch of karma they could have earnt – either way, it was a thing that they chose not to follow up on, and I’m firmly in favour of actions having consequences, and letting them know that the world will go on without them, and stuff will happen if they choose not to be involved!

But now we’re back at the base, and this week is likely to be chewed up by a lot of downtime planning. I know Tads wants to go back to her tribe for a bit – so there might be some magical foci coming from that for her and the rest of the team. Marius wants to improve his “future-tech” skill, which I’m all in favour of, and the others probably want to improve some skills as well. Nobody has mentioned any particular gear they’re hunting down yet – so we shall have to see what they’re after when the time comes.

And as usual, here are the notes from the game session to compare / contrast with the narrative:
1. Saturday 31/12/61, Location: -34.60062, 150.87941, Time 17:00
2. Aswon sets reminder for Marius to call Nadia at NYE her time, just in case.
3. Marius - when do we want to leave? Tads - does it matter? Does it need to be night time? M - worried about jug. Tads finds a quiet place to mediate for elk, look after all the people. Team think about trade goods. Shimazu - very basic med supplies for the Uluru tribes. Tads - alcohol of Australian booze.
4. 20km north to Truganina Central, get some basic supplies - alcohol and cheap food. Tads test for sensing - something joyous to the NE, 5-6km. Hunter checks map, there is the Ardeer stadium. "Megaslayer" hard rock with Orzet / trog influences. On the way back to the Broadsword, Aswon can hear the concert. Team take off, fly north, Tads picks up that it has flipped over to a mana warp as they draw level with the stadium.
5. Aswon - oh god, please no - let's just go, before we have something weird...
6. Fly north for about 2 hours. Clear mountain ridge, start getting radar pulse, Marius diverts and detours. Hundreds of km - team guess at military base or orbital launch facility. Hunter posts to SL - Woomera proving grounds and space launch, Novatech. Come in to land about midnight, Tads asks Hunter to display "Medika" as they come in to land.
7. Land, mostly stealthy then the tribe turn up. Offload the supplies, waiting for the shaman to turn up.
8. "you have returned!" Yes, we captured it, we want to give it back for safe keeping. There was a casualty. "There often is." The body won't be found, but can you look after his spirit? "The spirit will have been consumed." Oh. Point at the gaffa tape and rope "What is that?" To make sure it didn't escape. Aswon - container is symbolic - those are very real. Check with Hunter if the tattoos help - yes. Hand back the bullroarer. Hand over some authentic materials, describe how to make it, Tads listens with woodcarving, 2 successes. Kai presents supplies, tribe very grateful.
9. Tads checks if there is new pictures in the cave - no. Tads shows them the firefox picture - ahh - come, sit around the camp fire and tell us the tale. Marius grabs a snooze, Tads explains. Shimazu does some stargazing.
10. Power down for the night, sleep in relative safety, then head for BP-12, leave Uluru at 8am, get to BP-12 for 2pm. Then to Patels (6000km, 12 hours, no issues. Sleep for 6-8 hours, then last leg back to the ranch
11. Hunter doing a check on Iraq - durka durka jihad, NIJ getting pumped up. Sato going crazy in LA. Runners going mad all over thanks to Japan stuff. Tads asks Kai to contact wee-woo and update/thanks. Also send a message to family of the journalist to say he died, but abstractly.
12. Last leg back to the ranch, no encounters, arrive back at the ranch back at the ranch for mid-afternoon, Monday. Nadia has mostly finished the concealed base element.
13. Back at the ranch, two sets of guests in the chalet, Germaine has gone. Nadia happy to have Marius back. Local prosperity, don't annoy the "big house".
14. Nadia asks about what's been going on. Did you have something to do with the explosion at the mega-slayer concert? No! Dig up news, thousands of deaths, people get explodinated. Team sus - check for old man, tracking rituals, etc.
15. Tads - I should go check on that stadium. Rest of team - NO.
16. Karma award, 18-20 ish, trigger downtime.

[pbangarth]

Total aside here.

Am I right that you folks play on Discord? One of the crew I play with here on DS is thinking of moving to another platform, and Discord was mentioned as a possibility. So was Roll20.

When you have time, could you give a critique of whatever platform you play on? It would be much appreciated.

[Kren Cooper]

Total aside here.

Am I right that you folks play on Discord? One of the crew I play with here on DS is thinking of moving to another platform, and Discord was mentioned as a possibility. So was Roll20.

When you have time, could you give a critique of whatever platform you play on? It would be much appreciated.

Let me get some thoughts together, and I shall put up a post on it and hopefully cover the key points - and then it might be easier to find / more useful for other folks as well.

[Kren Cooper]

Hi everyone - and welcome to another update for the Smuggler campaign. Episode 359 is now published, continuing book 12.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1wanc3bzh333...hsp8sa&dl=0
A late one this week – in fact so late, that I barely got the story written up before we were due to play on Tuesday, so it was after the game session before I managed to get it edited and checked, and ready for release… and that’s why it’s only just coming out now! First time in 8 ¾ years that I’ve missed the deadline though, so I’m going to cut myself a little bit of slack, especially with all the hours I’ve been putting in renovating our new house. This week’s write-up is also likely to be delayed a little – but we’ve got no session next week as some of the players are on holiday, so that at least gives me an extra week to get the narrative done!

Here's the "behind the scenes" from this week's run:
Well, a really short set of notes this week, and I was fully expecting to run some downtime… maybe 3-4 weeks of training and stuff, then pick up the story again with the next mission. But then the players went “Milspec!”

And that’s too good an opportunity to pass up. There was some good discussion about the milspec and what it would do for the team, which was mostly out of game – with the players working out how it would impact their runs, and how it would impact their characters.

This is probably a good point to mention on of our house rules – a reworked armour / encumbrance formula. In the base SR3, armour penalties and combat pool penalties are based on the characters quickness only, with armour that exceeds the quickness attribute impacting both – unless the armour has some kind of modifier (such as being form-fit) that overrides this. That gives Quickness based characters a huge boost in the armour they can wear compared to non-quickness focussed archetypes, but also penalises a whole bunch of other characters that you would expect to be able to stack armour on. In particular, I have always disliked how this impacts orks and trolls – mostly because it jars with the lore and established stories. Whenever there’s a “Mr Big” style character, they normally have some bodyguards – which are often big orks, or trolls. But with their often low quickness, especially thanks to racial modifiers, how can these “bodyguards” wear the armour to fulfil that role, and actually still be effective – rather than having such low combat pools and horrible quickness related modifiers they can’t use their guns?

So I thought about a change and worked through the maths with a bunch of our Pink Mohawk and Black Trenchcoat characters to start off with, and found it was pretty much entirely neutral on existing characters – very little would end up changing for people’s characters generally – which was good. At least I knew I wasn’t “breaking” someone’s favourite toon. But, working it through with a bunch of NPCs, I found that it balanced things up slightly better IMO.

What did I change?

Simple. Add strength, body and quickness together – and then divide by three. That is the “armour value” that you can go to without penalties. Now really strong or big characters get a bonus to the amount of armour they can carry, using either raw strength or a larger frame to carry it better. I liken this to stuff like some of the NFL players, or some of the really huge guys in the armed forces, where they might not be the nimblest – but they just have enough grunt to still be scarily fast, even carrying stuff that would encumber us lesser mortals…

This also makes quickness slightly less of a “god stat” in SR3 – though it’s still important and used for Reaction and Combat Pool, its less valuable now that it also isn’t solely responsible for massive armour values. And that stops Elves being able to pack on more armour than Trolls just by virtue of having a couple of innate quickness more than them and ruining my world view. Of course, YMMV…

But – with that being the way we work at our table, and the players being all aware of that – that also opens up some other aspects for things like Milspec – where using an increased attribute spell for Body or Strength is also useful. And possibly using a couple of lower force spells that boost all three attributes might enable the team to get away with wearing Milspec without having horrible modifiers.

Of course, the two cyber/bioware enhanced characters won’t be bonding any foci themselves as the magic using types could – so the “load” would have to be carried by Tads. On the other hand though, they both have enough essence or bio-index that they can get some extra upgrades, and boost their Body/Quickness/Strength that way, and let their innate stats help them out – which was also factored into the mix.

So with the players no happily deciding they DID want some milspec, they reached out to contacts – and that let me throw in an extra job at them with a rushed timeline that saw them having to leave the following morning for a 3 week job – the reward for which is access to some armour. And they’ll probably get another couple of bits of karma as well… which means when they head home and get a chance to pick up some new foci from the enchanters in Nenet lands, they’ll have enough to bond them – and that lets them power up with the armour. And then I can throw some *really* mean shit at them! Or have funny/dramatic encounters with low level minions, and have them just walk through hails of gunfire like the bad-ass high level ninja’s they are…


And as usual, here are the notes from the game session to compare / contrast with the narrative:
1. Monday 02/01/62, Location: 40.02442, 48.95752, Time 17:00
2. Team discussion for activities. Marius flight school for legit licence. Aswon - reach out for milspec, and magic foci for +quickness spells, +IDs for journalists.
3. Team generally in favour of getting milspec to have in inventory. Discussing where to get it - Ares and SK both contacts, Aswon favours Ares. Acid+electrical resistance as mods.
4. Aswon contacts Mr Hu / Sophie, Marius to SK contact, Hunter talking to Ares.
5. Hunter calling contacts for muscle aug. Same for Marius (Geneva)
6. Usual lookout for AV ammo for team weapons, APDS, anything odd.
7. Tads looking for F3 quickness / body improvement spells. Aslick has Q but no B, Cat Q no B, Mage disconnected, Dog shaman has both. Nenet has both
8. Jules calls back, are you up for a meeting? Down to the ops planning room. Mr Johnson - some logistical support. 17 day contract. Offers fuel costs. Tads pushes for medical as well. Ask them to head to Ice Box. Marius remembers corp facility on the peninsula. Agree to job... Marius goes to break the bad news to Nadia.
9. Jules message - contract end should be Jan 21st, FYI. Hunter sends back list of guns and ammo. And are you ok? Sweating face, pile of poop. Aswon starts to break out the cold weather gear, pack the off-roader into the Broadsword. Hunter sends back a promotion winky.
10. Nadia not impressed - but Marius blames Kai. Marius warns Kai - who evades Nadia.
11. Aswon asks about what they might be facing. Indiginous / corp / deniable assets. Plan to get Brigadier to make some fuel available at Nenet village.
12. Marius sleeps overnight, set off just after Dawn, up to Nenet lands, refuel, then hop over.
13. Encounter happens north of Ludmilla, part way to Nenet lands - random encounter roll, multiple low rolls... pick up next week!

[Kren Cooper]

Hi everyone - and welcome to another update for the Smuggler campaign. Episode 360 is now (finally) published, continuing book 12.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1wanc3bzh333...hsp8sa&dl=0

Here's the "behind the scenes" from this week's run:
Starting off, we jumped straight into a bit of vehicle combat – with a VIP transport escorted by an AWACS style aircraft, and 4 jet interceptors with very short fuses. They picked up a sniff of the Broadsword, went to high alert, and then proceeded to go a little crazy trying to lock them up and deal with them – while Marius made with the crazy evasion flightplan and cranked the EDs up. The fighters kept rolling 23s or more and getting a vague hit – but not enough to overcome the ED modifiers, so it was just enough to let them know someone was out there, but not enough for accurate fire – not that it stopped them. It did seem to make for a little tension though, and as they kept firing missiles off and wasting copious amounts of money the players realised they’d run into someone important and it was probably best to try and disengage and slink off…

With that done, we got back to Tads’ village, got some fuel and got an update on the war with Yakut – which is going well for the Russia/Nenet alliance. Aswon asked about divining, and I knew that *someone* there definitely had it as a metamagic, but couldn’t remember who – fortunately, back in my notes for episode 279, I’d detailed the other shaman and their powers, so I was able to check back quickly enough, and then give Aswon an answer, and a free pack of intrigue. He’s an experienced enough player though that he didn’t dwell on it, and just accepted that magic is sometimes mysterious and it would all become obvious in the future. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Then we could move on to the over-pole flight, with a quick pretty showing of the northern lights, a willpower test for Shimazu to avoid being mesmerised, a nice character moment for Hunter, and then 11 hours later they got to land – two hours before they took off, by their clocks thanks to the extreme time-zone shift.

Landing at the space port, we had just enough time left for the evening before we needed to stop to do a meet and greet with the security forces commander to get a briefing done, and get the players thinking about what they needed to do. While somewhat sceptical at first about why they were needed, especially with a Firewatch team on base, as they started to look at the landscape and the approach from the north, they settled down and got some serious planning done, and I also reminded them of their own mission to take down the SK launch and scupper that part of the probe-race – as an example of runners dicking with rockets.

This is of course intentional – there’s a team from Seattle sent here to do exactly the same thing to the new Ares probe that’s launching, and the team are there to stop it. It’s up to them if they manage it of course. Assuming they do a broadly competent job, then Ares will win the probe race, and that will have some knock on effects for them later in the campaign. If they don’t, then the comet manages to escape humanities grasp for another 76 years, Ares will be a bit pissed… and that will have some knock on effects for them later in the campaign.

It’s a tough life being a Shadowrunner… <grin>


And as usual, here are the notes from the game session to compare / contrast with the narrative:
1. Tuesday 03/01/62, Location: 62.25287, 44.89578 , Time 13:27
2. Sensor check as alarms go off, EDs on, dive for the deck, look for clutter. call over intercom "need to be invisible",
3. Hunter EW roll - gets specs on the other craft. Tads sends a spirit - attack the awacs, start to sabotage the electronics. Kai - see if you can bend any aerials or refuelling probes.
4. Aswon - let tads get on the optics to examine it. AWACS tries to reacquire - unsuccessful. Russians turn west, team continue north ish. One fighter gets a sweep, but no lock. Missile flies off after a sensor ghost, explodes in mid-air. Marius sensor check - 2 more migs coming in hot, mach 2+, from the west. Marius "this looks like a VIP transport". All 4 fighters in range now - one tiny hit, another missile launch.
5. Tads - if they fire again, I can do an illusion of an explosion maybe, try to throw them off. Marius - yeah, that would be great. Tads - targeting will be tough though, through the optics. Aswon - give them an aircraft to shoot at, and then have that explode?
6. Next sweep, fighter 4 gets one hit and launches. Dead astern, team decide to hold based on distance.
7. Team manage to get away out of the search box, fighters still very angry. Awacs loses half its flux thanks to spirit, but no worse. Team escape to the north. Arrive at 15:00. Land, refuel, bit of maintenance, then Marius looking to sleep for at least 8 hours, then 11 hours flight.
8. Village looks mostly the same - initially. But there are landing skids, and some disguised sensor pods and vehicle bays disguised as yurts.
9. Tads asks for formulas to take away - happy to provide. Inc Quick F3, In Body F3.
10. Parako asks when they will be back. Tads - 18-19 days. Could you be back in more time than that? I don't know - how much time, we have another job to do after, unsure. Well, could you be back in 24 days? Tads checks with team on her stopping here, catching up with them. That aligns with the full moon. Tads wants to know why. Parako offers foci. Calls a soldier, salutes, explains the Russians are now on the offensive, using native support, actually doing well against the Yakut. Aswon asks about divining. Evening meal, divining, good roll. It's not a trap - but there will be sadness.
11. General relaxing in the village, sleeping mostly, until 1am Wednesday. Parako asks for everyone to come back in 25 days. Can't help "those two" - points at Hunter/Marius. Tads asks the soldiers to thank the Brigadier, and makes sure payment is offered. It's refused, already arranged, The Captain says it's a "down payment". Tads lets them know they will be back in 25 days, want more, and to pay that time.
12. Marius warns not to stare at the ice through the optics - snow blindness. Shimazu checks, avoids the hypnotic northern lights. Tads - oops, sorry, that's how we check for magically active kids, should have remembered. Hunter sees them for the first time, it's pretty, slightly moving.
13. 11 hour flight ok, no encounters. Arrive after 11 hour flight across 13 time zones, all in the dark... all kinds of weird. Arrive Ice Box 23:00.
14. Iceman66 is waiting Aswon - what are ares up to over there? What - at the space launch facility? Dunno. Aswon - how long is the average mission - about 17 days? Just thinking out loud...
15. Buy 5500 litres of fuel. (28,485 Nuyen) Tads offers food - makes some steak after negotiations, and some fruit and other stuff. How much - tads uncertain 150? Snaps her hand off... Temp is -27
16. Kai volunteered to call the contact, 438km away. "Ahh. Mr Kai - are you at the Ice Box." Yes we are. "Will send over the details now." Anything changed "No nothing at all" All kinds of electronics details and passwords transmitted over. Team head down.
17. Arrive just after midnight. Humvee with follow-me sign.
18. Ares Firewatch escort the leader over to them, waiting and stamping feet. 2 firewatch magically active, hanger has a F2 ward.
19. Major Davison, in control of security forces. Ex UCAS army, one cybereye, slight limp from unbalanced cyber-leg. Who's kai. I am, this is the rest of the team. No go areas, or a briefing later? "What have you been told?" Marius poked to recap.
20. Explains the bullseye, and fears. Transponders for all staff. Need IFF. Aswon asks for on-demand in case. rotation. 2 week minimum. Aswon says 3 days before launch. Tads asks about survey - not up to date following ring of fire. Not what you're here for.
21. Team looking at map, thinking about clear bubbles.
22. Team looking at island to the south as well. Thinking about lasers against SK rockets, drone kamikaze. Tads asks about magical security.
23. Arrange meeting for breakfast, magical security, meteorologist. Aswon gets the combat vet feel. Hunter asks for a live feed from the sat. Additional air-sweeps. To the bunk room. Hunter says keep it cold - we need to acclimatise.

[Kren Cooper]

Hi everyone - and welcome to another update for the Smuggler campaign. Episode 360 is now (finally) published, continuing book 12.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1wanc3bzh333...hsp8sa&dl=0

Here's the "behind the scenes" from this week's run:
Late again this week – been putting in lots of time at the new Shadowrunner haunt, painting and decorating and working on the new crib. The day-job flaw is leaving me tired and grumpy, and just ran out of time over the weekend for getting the writeup done… still – the new place is starting to come together, and hopefully another couple of weeks and we’ll be ready to relocate!

We didn’t “do” a lot during the session, or so it felt, but as is often the case, the writeup easily topped 9k this week as there was a good chunk of dialogue and RP back and forth, and lots of planning. Lots and lots of planning and contingencies, and what-if scenarios being discussed. I of course have no-one to blame for this, as the group tends towards careful planning anyway, and a situation like this requires some thinking.

There was some nice (or at least I thought they were nice) RP moments emerged from this. First was showing the mage team just what level initiation they were up to now, and the base mages suddenly feeling like noobs, and more than a little overwhelmed. And then following that, with the team needing to get almost naked to be scanned for the mil-spec armour, it meant Tads exposing her horribly scared body. But this time she went first, with no shame – explaining that she *knew* the team would support her, and not let her take any shit from it… and they didn’t. I went for a mix of reactions… with the base commander looking at her and revising his opinion of her up a bit, as someone who had very definitely seen some drek, and lived to tell the tale, and the quartermaster on the opposite side giving her the yuuks. And then Hunter felt that someone needed to be put in their place, went for a quick loom, rolled his intimidation, and was *very* successful. So yeah… a nice little moment for the team bonding, without any harm actually done. All good <grin>

I tried to keep the shopping brief – but also made it clear that Ares was being supportive with what they had, without being daft. Well supplied, and knowing they could burn through ammo if required, they loaded up with gear, and then got ready to head out… and by then we were at our 9pm cut-off point, so we didn’t get to any actual exploring.

And as usual, here are the notes from the game session to compare / contrast with the narrative:
1. Wednesday 04/01/62, Location: 57.43546, -152.34489 , Time 07:00
2. Aswon uses temperature tolerance, just because.
3. Tads gets people up for 7-8am to meet with the military folks.
4. Ensign takes them to commissary for breakfast, hearty but basic. Them and us techs vs security forces. Aswon starts to question the techs about comms, they reveal to start off with, then get suspicious. They connect via the lan for computer updates. Hunter reminds them about physical connections for the IFF - they don't let security go via wifi.
5. Kai asks for hyrdo dams in the area or other things that could trigger a disaster. Aswon suggests finding a geologist
6. Introductions from Major Davison, meet the mages, they drop their masking to share signatures. Tads asks for a meeting location to send spirits / astral forms to. Assenses all of them.
7. Kai after the admin people for unexplained recurring non-disruptive incidents. Pass data to Hunter to analyse.
8. Peter knocks chair over, other two mages aghast, Major drops hand to pistol. Jerry "she's quite potent" Tads shows them a watcher spirit - reindeer.
9. The Captain torn about obeying rules / sharing procedures.
10. Kai checking on sat coverage, heat signatures such as camp-fires / heating elements from cookers, light sources at night.
11. Kai asks mages about search powers from elementals - Jerry "no, they don't work like that" - ie no remote services.
12. Aswon checks on science teams - Ares only in the spaceport, some natives, but generally left alone. Piasma and other critters up in the hills.
13. Aswon asks for drones - none available, we got told you would have your own kit. Repairs not manufacture. QM stares at Tads uncomfortably, Major "reappraises" Tads.
14. Satellite has 4 hours on/off windows. Kai asks about mines - there are none.
15. QM - standard and Exex for smaller arms, standard for bigger. Tads, asks for ballbearings. Grudingly will crack open a claymore. I wasn't joking. Hunter looms and intimidates. Aswon asks for grenades as well. Cyril the QM is worried by Hunter. Tads asks Kai to get copies of all the measurements.
16. Kai asks for neurotoxin / dart guns. Net guns, fab, gel rounds - they have only stuff to kill people. Aswon gets some claymores and wire and detonators. They have some flare launchers, but no mortars. No incendiaries. Check the QM gear - no better than the teams. Show the team LAW and MAW storage. Gets 2 of each for Hunter.
17. Measure for armour - cold room, just tolerable
18. Tads suggest Marius arrange remote launch / door codes for launching the Broadsword. Kai asks about air strike launches, ranges, existential threats. Major - if they're all dead, who's gonna tell. Kai asks about deadman switch equivalent - major, no - would want to confirm.
19. Major - I want a quiet life, 3 weeks, nothing happens. Suspect I'm going to be disappointed. Hunter asks for intel - Major, disappointingly vague indigenous /corp / deniable.
20. Aswon asks for For shotguns: take a bunch of ex ex. Do they have shot available (i.e. flechette damage)?
21. Grenades: take a mix of standard and AP grenades
22. Claymores: I'd like at least 12
23. I would like a really nice scope for my purdy. I probably wont' use it for shooting but it'll be helpful for scouting
24. One water purification system - for emergency use if something happens to Tads
25. Zero the sights on the north road, call range control.
26. Hunter realises they've made the peninsula a zero zone - no interface with the locals.
27. "Dawn", lighter grey, some visibility, barren, pretty, brutal, inhospitable.
28. Tads talks with comms guys to show them spirit and watchers and explains about messages. Hunter gets sat images to start analysing. Kai checks closest approach of shipping routes etc - nearly all comes up from Seattle.
29. Aswon and Tads start to analyse maps once hunter has them - where would they NOT go, and where would an enemy team want to end up.
30. 03/01/2062 CAS offers a standing bounty on any mage found to have reanimated corpses
31. 03/01/2062 14-year-old Yasuhito, the only survivor of the Imperial Family after the eruption of Unzen volcano, is named Emperor of Japan.
32. 04/01/2062 Aztlan reinforce military in Denver in response to Ghostwalkers appearance and attacks

[Kren Cooper]

Hi everyone - and welcome to another update for the Smuggler campaign. Episode 363 is now (finally) published, continuing book 12.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1wanc3bzh333...hsp8sa&dl=0

Here's the "behind the scenes" from this week's run:
Once more the players did a lot of planning and discussion. Or at least the proactive members of the team did – with me trying to throw in some tests and knowledge skills for the less involved people to bring relevant knowledge into the game and keep them involved in the process.

But, they ‘red-teamed’ the problem, working out how they’d do it, and then assessing the chances that the enemy would do that, worked out some contingencies, and then cracked on towards the end of the evening with actually patrolling and looking for stuff.

Starting on Day 1 , Wed 4th January, they began their patrolling, and at this point I have a few events set out on specific days – contacts getting in touch with them about stuff, or major world events or news, but they aren’t going to specifically come across the enemy team until day 19 at the earliest, and probably day 21 when they launch their attack and have to come out of hiding.

On each day I normally go with a random D6 roll, and there’s an encounter of some kind on a 1. If we get an encounter, then I get a second D6 roll, and go with a 50/50 on good or bad, and either make something up on the spot, or have a look on my wilderness encounter table as needed, guided somewhat by what the players are doing and how they’re acting or what situation they’re in.

Rolling for the first five days gave us nothing, and we had the first two news items – one of which I’ve just realised did NOT make it into the writeup – so I’ll have to mention that in this next weeks and shoe-horn it in somewhere – that of Colin the engineer launching a range of toys based on his acrobatic plane as piloted by Marius. They also got told by Spook that she had money for them, from the sale of the super-conducting materials they stole in the Philippines.

So, this week will be them dealing with the random encounter – hopefully fairly quickly, then probably burning through a bunch of days in relatively quick succession to get us close to the launch date. Though, of course the players may decide to kaibosh that and come up with some crazy plan out of left field – we’ll have to see!

And as usual, here are the notes from the game session to compare / contrast with the narrative:
1. Wednesday 04/01/62, Location: 57.43546, -152.34489 , Time 10:00
2. Hunter given data for sat scans and shit that happened.
3. Looking for passes / ingress points - Hunter and Aswon SUT tests, Tads geography and geology, Aswon 1, Hunter 2, Tads 2
4. All routes possible, depends on team expertise and risk/reward. Aswon suggest Kai and Shimazu look for people. Marius - talk to the locals sounds like a good plan. Kai thinks about who might have hired the oppo team. High chance probe mission, if not other mega corps. Probably not eco terrorists, they'd be planning to get out as well. Marius - they may not know it. Tads - when we did a similar job, it looks like we were not intended to make it out - deniable assets, expendable. Bear that in mind. Kai - we could be that team to ensure deniability... oh yeah. Aswon - we could be working for ares, and against ares too... remember megas are very complicated. There could even be a 3rd team out there, to take out the deniable assets.
5. Kai - we can probably rule out slow-med drones, the base is likely to have defences against that kind of stuff. We should consider our experience with the laser, and the start-up sequence/testing etc. But a light-anti-tank weapon might not be accurate enough, same with a mortar.
6. Rolls for weapons skills - theory and tactics. Aswon- finding a spotter would be very difficult, but it's very risky. Hunter talking about smart rounds coming in - Hunter, might do hot mike jamming of GPS? Mortars probably not the ideal weapon. Aswon, two approaches, direct fire from a peak with a LR weapon, or a full infiltration. Kai - yeah, the infiltrate is what we'd probably do - but also outside our zone. So it's probably a long shot and book out. Agree mortars probably not the answer. Balance between points on the ridgeline for a clear enough shot, but lower = easier escape,
7. Aswon - look for escape plans, not mountains with cliffs on the back side.
8. Tads - We'd probably exfiltrate from a mountain top via pre-created tunnel, sealed after us. But we can provide own food, water, oxygen and tunnel and take our time exiting back out into the open air until after the heat is off post-launch. Can we call in a favour with Icemann66 to find out if he's got other teams in the area? Also - group levitate, arrest falls on a ridge drop. Kai - wingsuit or parachute? Might be their MO. Aswon - sounds like we need to do general survey / area protection. Marius - we're trying to create a short list / searchable area. Kai - also consider the magical side - lightning bolts, powerbolts etc. Tads - changing magical signature. Marius- recalls wording. Likely humint report from inside the targeting corp, not specific info about the attack, more reports about it.
9. Can we scan for stuff? Local wifi, chemicals, etc. Marius - we have a handful of seismic mikes - but need locations to drop them. Kai recalls Hunter can sniff. Tads - can use spirits. Shimazu - can use the spirits as "beaters" Marius - like the japs used the destroyers to herd us over the submarine. Kai - can you talk to animals to search via the local critters? Tads - no, not really, I can control a pack, but not quite the right thing. But I can send someone as a bird to do recon flights.
10. Kai - Marius, can we do recon via the condor? Marius - the sensors aren't great, so it's not going to help us that much. The jet drone would be better - but it doesn't have the loiter time. And it's noisy as fuck
11. Shimazu - could use watchers+drones to herd people into a seismic mic trap or area, or where we're monitoring.
12. Aswon - how long would we be here for - surely only about 3-4 nights. Ka- maybe a week, work the risk/reward slider.
13. Hunter - question for myfic folks, can you hide on the astral (aswon interrupts no) - Not finished, so can you hide on the astral? Can mask spells, but not their astral forms. Hunter - so why aren't we searching. Tads - because we're vulnerable to being mobbed by elementals /spirits. Hunter - but that works both ways.
14. Aswon and Hunter - look for egress tech, and work back from there to narrow escape routes. Tads also mentions astral time out of body, getting weaker.
15. Go out and do initial intel searches and analysis. Divide into segments. Ignore areas near the coast. Aswon wants to start outside and work in - as if they are doing the infiltration.
16. Day 1 - clear.
17. Day 2 - clear.
18. Day 3 - clear.
19. Day 4 - clear. Spook holding onto cash at Kai's request
20. Day 5 - clear.
21. Day 6 - Fozzy rolls a 1, then a... then a 3. Marius drone flight spots something.

[Kren Cooper]

Ooops! My bad. Didn't post last week for some reason - apologies for anyone missing their fix! Here's 364 - last week, and 365 (this week) will be along in an hour or so...

Hi everyone - and welcome to another update for the Smuggler campaign. Episode 364 is now published, continuing book 12.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1wanc3bzh333...hsp8sa&dl=0

Here's the "behind the scenes" from this week's run:
Picking up the action with the spotting report, the drone went back over, but got an awful sensor roll, so they didn’t get to confirm the target – leaving the players in an interesting predicament. They of course had no idea what the random encounter was, or how important it was – or even, being blunt if it really was a random encounter and might not be the main mission objective disguised as a random roll… not that I’ve ever done that before to them of course <grin>

So, encounter one of their frigid patrol was a local shaman out of his mind on a vision quest, randomly shooting at stuff, messing with the wildlife and generally having a weird old time. They poked him carefully, established he wasn’t really a threat, thought about how they might be able to use him, realised it wasn’t a reliable thing to plan on, and then adjusted their plans to work around him.

After that they continued with their plan, which was mostly boiled down to a few random rolls, working through the party and describing the advancing calendar, and glossing over the hours and hours spent patrolling with feedback to the team on their solid progress in mapping out the terrain and finding all the choke points and observations spots, decent camp sites and so on. Everything they do here will help them when the actual infiltrators make their move – though again of course, they don’t know that.

Day ten gave them a positive random encounter rather than a (potentially) negative one, so they ended up with a bit of enchanting loot – nothing too spectacular, but it might prove really useful if they need any unique ingredients for something, and when described really seemed to be appreciated by Aswon and Shimazu – both of who latched on to ‘star metal sword forging’ as a thing. So, that was a nice thing…

Also laced into the days out were a couple of news reports and global events, just to remind them of the big wide world ongoing out there. Nothing too important really (or not at the moment), but hopefully it not only reminds them of the advancing timeline of the world, but also the general machinations of the mega-corps. In this case, they know now that the cat is firmly out of the bag with regards to orichalcum finds, and that the corps are ruthlessly pursuing the veins, and fighting each other – and then they made a connection that Mitsuhama may well have had an inside line on the appearance of the metal in Nenet waters, and may try to move in – so they sent off a warning to the Russians.

Next week I think we’ll get close to launch day, and they’ll get a bead on the infiltrator team – and we’ll have to see what they do, when they spot that they’re armed with a laser designator that looks EXACTLY the same as the one they used in session 254, when they blew up the SK rocket…

And as usual, here are the notes from the game session to compare / contrast with the narrative:
1. Monday 09/01/62, Location: 57.4541, -152.42147 , Time 15:29
2. Day 6 - Fozzy rolls a 1, then a... then a 3. Marius drone flight spots something.
3. Drone does 2nd pass - rolls a 2, misses the target. Tads - shall I go for a quick astral look. Aswon, take a spirit with you. Marius grabs co-ords, passes to Hunter to paint on a map. Hunter gets A1 location fix on the map.
4. Aswon and Shimazu light stun - 9 boxes, 7 success on a survival check
5. Tads gets down, in cover, detects a force 5-6 powerbolt into a tree near her, goes immediately evasive at high speed. Circles back after a few seconds and reports to the team. Aswon - we should try to take out their wizard. Tads - hang on, powerbolt. Physical spell - I was in astral, I just panicked, it wasn't going to hurt me... Marius - do we want to close in, or go with the drone. Target about 500m north, 200m below them. Aswon - can we send watchers to approach from the north, and flush them towards us?
6. Target is down by the river valley, amongst the evergreens in fairly dense cover. Team decide to keep the drone back as a reserve.
7. Aswon SUT - set the watchers as tripwires to the side, team move down covered by Tads+shielding. Shimazu tells Kai to stay behind him - Kai is ok with that. Marius hangs back to do rigger overwatch.
8. Team approach, Aswon listens, Hunter sniffs. Smouldering smell, weird chant/muttering. Team move in - shaman chanting, control pack on some fish. Aswon complete glitch on listening to the shaman. But, picks up that it's the wrong intonation for someone planning murder.
9. Tads assenses - chaotic and discordant, impossible to get a good read. Shimazu reads as he sniffs the herbs - spike of psychotic change. Tads - hunter you might want to stop sniffing!
10. Aswon - can you alter memory or influence him to help us, provide warning? Shimazu - might not be the best idea. Tads - multiple personalities, would work on whatever was in control, but he'll cycle. Shaman stops the control pack, powerbolts another tree away from the team. Hunter/Tads - think about planting a tracker on him - but they don't have anything disposable here, so they decide not to.
11. Tads checks - he's in his walking about clothes, no survival/camping gear. No local towns / villages. Tads - we should start looking for fires, he won't mind giving off an alert.
12. Aswon - can we start checking for fires. Though shadowrunners probably won't be stupid.
13. Marius - shadowrunners from seattle might be so out of their element they have a fire. Hunter gets a chemical sniff of the smouldering stuff and a signature. Rest of team can start to work out what the effects are. Hunter - don't think this is a threat... Aswon - but he might be an early warning system, but he's off his face right now.
14. Tads leaves a spirit to watch him and report back before it expires. Team head back. Plan to start from the eastern side on next sweep.
15. Base mages have 5 units of watcher materials they donate / allocate to the team. Tads asks for breakfast with the mages. Hallohan agrees to breakfast. Boring and tunnel vision, but Tads doesn't offend him. Spirits report in on the shaman location before it pops, move 1/4 km.
16. Day 7 - Tuesday 10th, roll=4, nothing happens.
17. Day 8 - Weds 11th, roll=4 nothing happens.
18. Day 9 - Thursday 12th, survival=8 boxes, team get 4 (Aswon 1, rr 3)=6, 2 boxes, Aswon and Shimazu again! As they get in range, Germaine's message about drone comes in.
19. Marius - pickup tricky for several weeks, Nadia is probably not happy. Hunter - but with Kai. Marius - there's always spillover. M - was planning a trip to Germany with Nadia anyway. I suppose it's not that far, as things go. Hunter - and I could do with some time in Moscow. Aswon - sounds like maybe in a month might be good, after we're done here and had holidays and stuff. Aswon messages back, ideally 6-8 weeks. Germaine comes back - ok, will arrange. Hallohan is not keen on Tads polluting the other's mind... Marius - corporate thinking and upbringing I guess.
20. Day 10 - Friday 13, random roll=2,
21. Day 11 - Sat 14, random roll=6, 2nd roll = 6, finds some loot, finds some meteoric iron, virgin telesma. 2kg.
22. Day 12 - Sun 15, Tads does nutrition and fast on aswon and Shimazu, JUST in case. Survival test = 4 (2/2) Roll=10! One box for everyone. Weather changes, temp rises 10, wind calms.
23. Day 13 - Mon 16th, 2, no event
24. Day 14 - Tues 17th, 3, no event, finish their initial scans, find 8-10 spots along the range.
25. Day 15 - Wed 18th, on the way out, news report from Wuxing/FB. Team monitor. Tads warns the captain / brigadier+ nenets. Aswon - possibly mitsuhama incoming.
26. Day 16 - Thursday 19th, first major perception tests, non, though close. Spot the shaman, now normal ish, levitating above trees, bear shaman. Tads changes to elk. Plans to go speak to him. Astral+manifest. He starts, pulls a knife, F4 nature spirit to guard him. Try to communicate - no shared language. Magical etiquette Who are you. Tadibya. You come from the noisy people. They think enemies of all coming through the mountains in the next few days, we're trying to find them and stop them damaging the land and the people. Ok, stay near mountains. Why? their land, our land. Unfriendly people won't respect that. Ah - bears eat them. If you see strangers, that are not me, could you tell me - can try to protect the land. I tell you second. After the bears? Yes. I tell the bears, they eat them, you clean up their junk. Tads - can you tell the bears not to eat us? Stay on your side. Your side, my side. Do you have a commlink? No. What's your name - Bear. Tads returns. Marius - so he's still mad as a hatter.
27. Tads warns about bear / berserk / healing requests.

[Kren Cooper]

Hi everyone - and welcome to another update for the Smuggler campaign. Episode 365 is now published, continuing book 12.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1wanc3bzh333...hsp8sa&dl=0

Here's the "behind the scenes" from this week's run:
Just before we were due to start I got a message from one of the players, letting me know he was down with a migraine – fortunately in this particular session, it was easy to put Marius in the “blanket box”, and have him just play a very passive role.

Once we got started though, we quickly worked through a day of IC time, with the players making some perception tests, and me describing the change of pace now that they were essentially lying in ambush positions, rather than actively scouting. Hopefully I managed to convey in game the weird difference between the physical exertion of active scouting from the previous week, and the mental exertion of trying to stay mentally alert and active while surveying what feels like a whole bunch of nothing, and the weird tension that comes with waiting and wondering if there is anything out there.

As we got to just over 12 hours from the launch time though, the team finally spotted some targets – one is the actual team, and another is a random coincidence, put in just to spice things up a little. Paracritter and magic rolls were made though, and soon they were steered in on the actual team – and then Tads discovered that she “knew” the signature and that it was Vadim.

If you’ve not been following all that long, Vadim was a trooper in the Russian military, that suddenly manifested his magical powers when the team was being investigated by an “internal affairs commissar” type figure that was investigating events at Samara base, in session 146 (August 2020). A pagan, who’d been along to some of the nature services Tads had organised out in the woods, he reacted when an order was heard to shoot her for being a witch – and he blatted the commissar. The team arranged with the Brigadier to take Vadim with them, to get him out of trouble / investigation, and to help train him up to manage his magic. I also knew the team would need a second mage soon to do some ritual tracking, to let some other bits of plot happen, so this was a good way to introduce a trustworthy NPC to help them out a little.

Several adventures later, in episode 206 (December 2021), Vadim elected to stay in Seattle with some other Shadowrunners, effectively leaving the team to follow a call from his totem. He left on pretty good terms, and the team generally trusted him and liked him enough… so he was an ideal person to bring in as the magical support for the strike team against Ares. I was hoping that it would give them at least a moments pause before going all murder-hobo on the team, as they tried to work out what to do… and it actually worked!

It’s going to be interesting to see if they wantonly slaughter the rest of the team but try to leave him alive, or if he’s seen as an unfortunate but acceptable casualty of war, and someone potentially too dangerous to leave active.

Will they actually get to meet the rest of the Seattle based Shadowrunners who have been thrown together for the mission, and promised a high five-figure payout to spike the rocket? Will they discover the team have been set up by their employers with a laser equipped with a self-destruct mechanism, just like theirs was? Will they get a name for the fixer that hired the Seattle crew for the job, so they can investigate and find out which AAA mega-corp were behind this job – and their own to Baikonur?

My money’s actually on no, with someone rolling for imitative, kicking off the fight and unleashing Panther Cannons, HMG twin-linked death or sniper-rifle fire, or maybe even a surprise dose of beheading to start the party, and it all going rapidly down-hill from there.

We’ll have to wait and see!

And as usual, here are the notes from the game session to compare / contrast with the narrative:
1. Thursday 19/01/62, Location: 57.4541, -152.42147 , Time 12:00
2. Enemy team have made it into the area without being spotted.
3. Aswon - should we get the 4X4 up here, if we can, and under the cammo? Or do you think it's too close to launch date?
4. Check the weather - 2 week window where it's good, great for the launch.
5. Hunter has been doing image analysis of the footprint of interest.
6. Kai - if we were inserting, we'd do it at night, right? General assent. So they're probably not moving right now, but they're probably resting, up until dusk or so. Aswon - agree. Look at maps, 3.5km to either coast. Team make some plans about movement.
7. Aswon makes a really good improvised shelters roll, find a natural defile L shape,
8. Little natural critters in the area, kept away from spaceport by ares patrols / noise / pollution. Not able to disguise as magic birds (kai)
9. Tads - if we find people, what are we doing. Just heading over? Need to plan better. Kai and Shimazu resting, planning to be active at night.
10. No random encounter, get to dusk, 16:30,
11. Overnight checks. No spots on the enemy team.
12. Fri 20th, dawn, standard spirits, no sign of the team, very little sign of themselves, well hidden from enemy drones.
13. No random encounter. Friday passes without too much incident. Tension slowly racks up. Nightfall. More perception checks. About midnight, Shimazu spots something right up, Kai spots magic bottom left, down in the valley. Shimazu vaguely recognises the sig. Different directions. Shimazu points at his - Tads looks, spots and recognises (3) Vadim's signature. She checks the other signature out as well. Only 1 success, paracritter blipping back and forth. Tads - it's def a shaman, a wolverine. It's Vadim.
14. Tads checking the bottom sig - fear / desperation, but can't work out what it is. Aswon looks, get good successes, snow hare stuck in a trap. "Shame, not our problem".
15. Kai - can we see if the trap is native. Tads - I could check it, but leaves you unguarded. Don't like that idea. Aswon - military, in the cold, seems like he'd be ok for the job. Can we ring him? Hunter - nah, out of cell range. Talk about if he had comms can they reysnc to it. Hunter/Marius - nah. Marius checks for signals - no contact, must be shielded, low power or stealthed.
16. Aswon - send a watcher, "hey Vadim, team knows you, turn back now, don't let it get messy". Kai - I'd say don't make contact at all - the team might over-rule him, he might not be in control, have a say. But we're on a job, and so is he, got to treat him like an enemy.
17. Aswon - don't disagree, but what would we do, if we got a message saying the base had spotted us? We'd rethink. Kai - hmm, don't want to play cards too quickly. Shimazu good psychology roll. He's not going to scare easily, but he will have good tactics. Send a message.
18. Kai says pursue. It's been more than a year since we left him in seattle.
19. Hunter checks map, possibly two of the 3rd tier spotting spots. Tads - could send a watcher to camp 7 or 13 to "greet" them. Marius doesn't get a great stealth roll.
20. Hunter says "I should go and look". Aswon comms might be an issue, depending on how good their rigger is. Shimazu - we're on the defence, think we have to risk it. Aswon ok then, I can cover from here with the rifle. Tads unhappily in agreement, staying and shielding. Hunter gets pointed, still can't positively see them, but spots a boulder. about 4-5 hours from their destination, about 2.75 hours from the y split in the path. Now a little after 1, they will reach their destination about 4-5, before dawn. Tads - I could slow them down with a landslide / shape earth? Not dangerous, but slowing. But will impair them. Kai - I like that idea. More inclined to ambush them sooner rather than later. Just the one target, the rabbit is still bouncing around.
21. Hunter looks really hard, pierces illusion and the boulder looks less convincing.
22. Tads sends a spirit downtrail to look for escape vehicles. Kai thinks about the landslide again. Geology checks. Kai says be ready, but see how they react. Tads - would be really funny to make cookies and drop them in front. Aswon - we just need to stop. Hunter - no, we were told to stop with extreme prejudice. Shimazu psych roll. Could make oats / penuts - non-verbal way to say who is there. Aswon - don't like giving away that much info. But still think it's worth letting them know they've been spotted... and can let Ares know that we're in contact. Shoot at the ridge to raise the alert and provide a "cause" for the landslide so it's not obvious it's a spell. Look at movement options.
23. Aswon, are we moving up then? Expectant. Aswon, Tads and Kai go up and over the ridge, and hustle down the south side to get ahead of them.
24. Tads - are we letting them base know? Kai - I'd say no, not yet. Concerned that they'd see us as expendable, and might target us both. Worth getting the dalmation up in the air, but not the Broadsword.

[Kren Cooper]

Hi everyone - and welcome to another update for the Smuggler campaign. Episode 366 is now published, continuing book 12.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1wanc3bzh333...hsp8sa&dl=0

Here's the "behind the scenes" from this week's run:
Marius is still in the blanket box, as the player is just out of hospital after an unfortunate discovery that migraine was something a little more complicated – hopefully he’s on the mend and back with us this week, but until then he was definitely in the background – fortunately easy to do with the rigger and the situation as it was.

So, in the BTS from last week, I posed a number of questions – here’s how it played out.

Question 1) Will they actually get to meet the rest of the Seattle based Shadowrunners who have been thrown together for the mission, and promised a high five-figure payout to spike the rocket?

Answer. No – not really. Once they’d stopped the enemy teams “vehicle”, Hunter saw their sniper getting out to do some recon, thought that he’d spotted Kai+company and was lining up for a shot, and decided to take pre-emptive action. And an 18D Panther canon to the ass, it turns out, is pretty lethal.

Question 2) Will they discover the team have been set up by their employers with a laser equipped with a self-destruct mechanism, just like theirs was?

Answer – No, also not really. They spotted the laser, and I went to some pains to make sure it was described as being identical to the one they had used, even down to the same number of power packs and systems. I actually expected them to investigate this a little. After all, there are only so many manufacturers in the world that make laser canons – so getting the same make/model to do exactly the same job is a coincidence perhaps, rather than confirmation. But if they investigated and found exactly the same cell in the battery pack showing no volts/amps, and with a suspiciously C4 based smell to it? Well, that’s a different matter. But no – they decided to leave it in the vehicle and just blow it up. Though Tads has expressed regrets on this matter now she’s had a chance to think about it…

Question 3) Will they get a name for the fixer that hired the Seattle crew for the job, so they can investigate and find out which AAA mega-corp were behind this job – and their own to Baikonur?

Answer – maybe kinda. It was mentioned in passing, but the players didn’t seem to take that much notice of it, or be that bothered. I’ve made sure to put it in the writeup, to see if any of them pick up on the name drop. They do at least have a new contact number for Vadim, so they can follow up later if they want. But I was again expecting them to want to have the option of following the breadcrumbs… if they find the fixer, they can investigate, and find the hiring Johnson, and then establish which AAA hired them for their own job, and (they think) set them up to be murdered after. But no! They didn’t appear to care. Oh well… that’s up to them. Onwards with the story!

So now they’ve stopped the Seattle Shadowrun team from striking at the rocket, and they’ve got about 12 hours until the launch. Tads was still making noises about searching for more people in case this was a decoy… in which case she may very well find the backup team that is lurking for just such an eventuality! But if they manage to get them, or at least stop the attack, that will continue the canon timeline, and Ares will manage to get a probe onto the comet during the return leg, and get some massive bragging rights – and make their Johnson very happy.

Either way though, a few more days and they’ll be done on Kodiak Island, and will head back to the Nenets lands to meet with the shaman, and pick up a freshly made power foci for Tads, and then back to the ranch for their actual downtime, during which their Mil-spec armour will be delivered, and we can mark a close to book 12 and another 270k or so of story.

Next main plot arc is going to be more Dragons, bringing in some new NPCs to play some of the Greats that have not made an appearance yet, and get us closer to the Dragon conclave and some of the missions from the 3rd edition Dragons book. Let’s see what the team makes of those…

And as usual, here are the notes from the game session to compare / contrast with the narrative:
1. Saturday 21/01/62, Location: 57.46939, -152.40079 , Time 01:03
2. Tads - we should check the other end of the mountain range in case Vadim is just a decoy. He's being too subtle to be a good decoy I think, but we should check.
3. Stealth, Tads (17), Kai (11), Aswon (11), flankers Hunter (11), Shimazu ((IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)
4. Get over without being made, just as they're getting to the fork. Tads preparing to do avalanche. F7, 4 successes. major landslide down the hill.
5. Aswon checks thermo - entirely regular, avalanche hits, sound hits, Tads spots more spell sig, Aswon recognises it as a vehicle, top team have a look and think it's an IWS Mk 6. Tads projects out to go looking in case this is a decoy. Hunter lining up shot with panther cannon, traversed over slightly to get a clean shot, Shimazu moving up to about 50m on the other side.
6. At the top, Aswon lining up with the Purdey, and crouching over Tads. Kai ready with bow, fires a normal arrow. One success, disappears up to the feathers "through" the boulder. Hatch opens at the back, sniper slithers out (doesn't spot the team), Shimazu spots the team inside bickering, as he keeps moving up.
7. Hunter shoots the sniper, 18d, no soak, splatter.
8. Roll for init
9. Tads 32 huh? : Heading back to body
10. Shimazu 20 advance forward and close the distance,
11. Aswon 25 hold pending target, turns on comms after Tonkas flash attack :
12. Hunter 19 shoots at bottom right corner of "boulder", called shot, 1 hit, rr 3,
13. Tonka 19 soak test, M from dump shock, flash pack activate
14. Dr Boom 18 perception check, spots Shimazu. Free action "there's one",
15. Kai 15 shoots at the bodies on the drone, hits Vadim, who screams (soaks)
16. Vadim 13 powerbolt on Kai, 2 successes. Soaking none, RR, 5.
17. Doc Abernakkie 13 jumps out of vehicle and beckons to Shimazu. "I challenge you".
18. Hunter shoots, blows the boulder off the top of the IWS and wrecks RHS drive.
19. Tonka activates flashpack, Shimazu takes an L.
20. Aswon free action to survey and get layout, shooting at Vadim hoping not lethally, takes an M, gets knocked down. Change target to vehicle controls 1 success. Kills the vehicle.
21. Hunter geeks the troll.
22. Kai shoots at Doc, misses, RR, misses.
23. Shimazu - "what are you weapons of choice?"
24. Aswon covers Vadim. Tads tells Aswon to tell him to keep down. then coughs.
25. Doc Abernakkie "challenge you to slaps". Shimazu steps in. Psych test - he's being serious. Shimazu - you choose slaps, I choose swords. Distance strike. Splits him in half.
26. Vadim starts to get up, "stay down" Aswon, head up, Aswon pings a shot nearby, "stay down", memory test, "Aswon?"
27. Hurried conversation between Tads and Aswon, stay here, you can stop Vadim from kicking off / hurting us.
28. Gather and grab loot. Vadim pulls out arrow and heals himself,
29. Hunter to Vadim - is this the whole team. ARe you sure? Yes. How were you getting away. I was going to levitate. they had a shit plan. Vadim checks tonka - he's still alive. Just letting you know. Hunter checks with Vadim on Tonka, "loss to society". Spots the laser canon. H to V - can you levitate this guy out? Kai - have you done a similar job Vadim? No. Get your shit and get out of here Vadim. Vadim - you were wearing Ares uniforms right? Right. Tads and Vadim hug it out. Pass on regards to Fang. Hunter warns them to be under cover in 90 mins for next sat pass. Vadim passes over new business card. Bugs out with spells, but Tads sends a spirit to trail, just in case.
30. Check the scabbard. Enchantable, but not enchanted - but hand made, 100+ years old, burnished brown leather.
31. Break contact, blow up the vehicle and laser, Hunter empties the mag.
32. HK417 is a 7.62mm battle sniper rifle. Tough, high tech design, probably around a 14S, 8 round box magazine. Scope has e-zoom 3, thermal, ultrasound, laser designator combi sight. It's intact, though has scorch/blast marks all down one side now, and viscera is gunking up the ejection port, so needs disassembling and thoroughly cleaning.
33. The medpack can be salvaged and is nothing particularly special - count it as a R5 battlefield medic patch, optimised for shadowrun style combat damage - mostly gunshots and deep cuts.
34. The MGL6s are loaded with IPE Offensive in one mag, and IPE concussion in the 2nd mag, and there's 3 full reloads of mini-grenades of each type, for each gun, on the drone that could be scavenged.

[Kren Cooper]

Hi everyone - and welcome to another update for the Smuggler campaign. Episode 367 is now published, continuing book 12.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1wanc3bzh333...hsp8sa&dl=0

Here's the "behind the scenes" from this week's run:
Marius is still in the blanket box as unfortunately the player is stuck in hospital after his operation – hopefully he’ll be released back into the wild soon to get back to his family.

But, again for this session, he wasn’t a key player, so we could crack on with no worries. The team hunkered down and continued their observations, keeping up a high state of alert and monitoring whatever they could – not trusting that they’d all finished with the mission.

I took advantage of this, by having Marius “spot” the laser with his sensors on the rocket at what felt like a dramatic and appropriate time, forcing them to take urgent action and respond without the chance to plan or discuss. They responded quickly, countering the laser designator on the rocket and preventing the enemy teams planned assault, forcing them into a fall-back plan. By then, Hunter was already in motion, so as the jet-packed wingsuiter arced through the air, he’d closed enough to make shooting him down a possibility – and then he went all in with the combat pool and a big handful of rerolls to ensure that even with a moderate target number, he was going to get the job done.

That took out the backup plan as well, leaving the enemy team a little scuppered – so they went to their tertiary plan, and tried to mind-control the security team to create confusion and chaos with some murder, while they bugged out. But equally good perception checks from Shimazu and Tads spotted that too, and she was able to dispel the effects before anyone got tagged. Even though the magical security troops at the spaceport are not great (they’re up here as punishments), the standard troops are pretty good – and like most corp-sec were trained to detect things like astral travellers pressing through their bodies, or the weird feeling of a mind-control spell. So they immediately radioed in that they’d been attacked…

Hunter spotted the hide and opened up, and I figure that it was a more than reasonable jump of logic for the security troops to work out what was going on, and open up. Six trucks with .50 cal HMGs going full rock-and-roll on an area, just spraying suppressive fire was more than enough to do for the team, and hopefully might be a nice reminder for the players that if the opposing force have the opportunity to throw enough shit at the wall, some of it sticks!

But, with that done, they got some loot, and some intel on the hiring fixer – I’m not sure if they’re going to follow up on that later, or just leave it be… I suspect it will get forgotten about unless I press the issue. On the other hand, they’ve surprised me before, so they may go after the fixer with a big chip on their shoulders. Who knows?

With the launch away, Ares will now ‘win’ the probe race (maintaining canon timeline, not that it really matters – what will matter is that they helped the winners, and Ares will remember, and that’s going to help them loads later in the campaign!) in a month or two, and they’ve now completed the job and are free to head back to Nenet lands. After a good meal, a sleep and an 11-22 hour time jump for the travel, they arrived back on the northern coastline of Russia – just in time to see a corporate attack force swarming over the village… and cue cliffhanger ending!


And as usual, here are the notes from the game session to compare / contrast with the narrative:
1. Saturday 21/01/62, Location: 57.46939, -152.40079 , Time 02:00
2. Launch in 12 hours
3. Tads still wanting to go scout in case this was a diversion. Team stay in good lay up location, Tads goes astral with spirits to guard / report back. Spends about an hour searching - doesn't find anything. Rest of team have cleaned gear and loot checked.
4. Get to 3am, no sign of anything, keep a lookout. Marius is with the team now. Team start. No alert from the spirit trailing Vadim.
5. Set watches, resummon at dawn, check the snare/rabbit - Tads finds the shaman cooking the rabbit for breakfast. Tads just summons small spirits to make sure there is no drain. Rocket moving from VAB to launch site, bubble of EW, full security team out, sensors on max. Marius drops the drone down due to the interference from the base EW. Marius RTB with the jet drone due to the EW.
6. Tads more daytime searching - does not roll high enough, no alarm.
7. Get to 12, fuelling, de-icing the rocket, full security patrols. Aswon confused about why the scope has ultrasound - has a think with SUT/rifles. Works like a laser designator.
8. Get to T-30, max alert, ground teams prepare. During a sat-window, Hunter does a check. Kai asks for multi-spectrum scans from the team.
9. 5 mins to go, propane cannon, vehicles stopped, full surveillance. Aswon checks the base for abnormal behaviour, good centering. Spots nothing, great roll.
10. All normal, get down to 30 seconds to launch, mission control is a go. Marius detects a laser on the rocket. Tells Tads to do a mist, Kai - warn them about the attack.
11. Base to Kai - do we need to abort? K - no, do not abort. Do you have fast response for that area. Security patrols heading over
12. Tads ex-area mist, 5rr4 successes. Hunter takes off and runs that way, great athletics test. Laser boils/coils, gives a visible line to follow, Aswon ready with rifle for a shot intercept if possible. Hunter shouts for Tads to levitate him, she does, 32m/turn.
13. Wingsuiter appears on rocket assist launch, Hunter fires the MAW at him, 1rr2rr3rr4b2 total 6, gets within 5m,9d hit, takes a D, target tumbles out of explosion, on fire, clearly dead - no jet pack explosion.
14. Rocket is launched, clear.
15. Shimazu and Tads spot a spell on one of the sec-troopers. Laser cuts off. Hunter can spot launch site, launches a full clip of speculative fire.
16. Gunner is dispelled, launches 50 cal barrage, Hunter empties the mag. Hits 2, hits Hikari and Akira.
17. Hide gets wrecked by ground troops - target that explosion and fire! Blood and gore everywhere.
18. Call to Kai - what the frak was that? Elementals now approaching from the base - cautiously.
19. 2nd team, we got them, has the rocket launched ok? See the elementals heading over - cautiously. Confirm the rocket launch. Kai - we're going to search for more.
20. Hunter can spot the loot pile, and no live targets.
21. Weapon foci - broken. Spell book and F2 weapon foci - fine. Maglock sequencer and sat-phone - fine. Street sam gear = fine. Find the laser canon, spot that it has only 4 packs.
22. Find the open phone, get details and names for the rest of the team and Tanaka-san. Marius catches the name and mentions it...
23. Aswon - we should follow up with Vadim. Tads prepares message.
24. MC to Kai, orbit achieved. Thanks, heading in for a debrief. Do you want a pickup.
25. Back to the base, people are generally jubilant. Security captain happy, Jerry where were you, procrastinate, sent off to fill in forms.
26. Captain reports in that he's happy, tells Hunter to hand over 1 empty mag, tells them fuel and food is available.
27. Rest and recuperate. Sunday 22nd - get ready to leave, heading back to Nenet lands, Marius calls out "Combat ahead"

[Kren Cooper]

Hi everyone - and welcome to another update for the Smuggler campaign. Episode 368 is now published, bringing book 12 to a conclusion.

Sorry it’s been delayed – but life has been more than a little hectic recently. We’ve (me, the GM and Tads, my wife) been packing up to move house, and working on renovating the new property to get it ready to move into. That’s kept us both pretty busy at evenings and weekends, and running low on energy generally. But then, just to add some extra spice, we found out that I need an operation, and when the dates came through for that, we realised we needed to bring out moving date forward several weeks, which threw all of the schedules out of the window, and added a bunch of stress!

So, we had to cancel the game of Shadowrun, which joined all the other gaming nights “on hold” already, while we tried to get everything done.

We’re all moved in now at least, and we’ve got the house in a liveable state – though we’re still surrounded by boxes in pretty much every room, making it look more like a cross between a safehouse and a warehouse – but we’ll get there!

We should be gaming this Tuesday, and back at it – though I’m into hospital on the Wednesday, so I don’t know when the start of the next book will be out. I’m hopeful that we can run next week after that, as I should be ok for at least sitting and running the game on discord, even if I’m recovering from the op (just not allowed to do any lifting, DIY or even walking the dog!) – so we can get a few sessions in before we break for Christmas.

Anyway… that’s what’s been going on – so on with the show!

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1wanc3bzh333...hsp8sa&dl=0

Here's the "behind the scenes" from this week's run:
Marius was still in the blanket box as unfortunately the player was still in hospital after his operation, so once again he played little part in the session, being “asleep in the Broadsword” for most of the post-battle

I’d hoped he would be at the game to do some of that fancy flying shit, and maybe throw some moves around – but with his absence, I did the general descriptions for his sensor checks, approach and manoeuvring for the assault, and let the team handle the actual nuts and bolts of the battle. It’s not an ideal situation, but at least this way the player doesn’t lose out on any resources such as karma pool or good karma, and I can direct the narrative of the game to be more reliant on the other characters. Rather than doing any rolls, I assume that as a typical runner, they will do “better than average”, not drop any clangers, and get the job done – certainly nothing that will embarrass them in the writeup afterwards!

I’d pre-planned the assault, and made a bunch of random rolls for the villagers and each of the shaman to pre-determine how effective the Mitsuhama assault squad was, and had a general plan of attack sorted out – so I could then work out how far down that list of actions and consequences we’d get when and how the players intervened.

I had no doubt at all that the team would wipe the floor with the assault team – they arrived in stealth, effectively attacked with ambush, and all of the players are very experienced now, with karma pools in double digits, good gear and pretty powerful. It was however, more about how many of the Nenet people got slaughtered by the assault force, in the process.

And the answer was “not many” – but oh, did the dice come up a doozy. Unfortunately one of the NPCs that was destined to die was “Parako”, the tribal shaman, Tads’ mentor and their main contact in the Nenet people.

The players swept in like the cavalry, took out the assault force, and saved the day with only a handful of casualties amongst the tribals, but when I detailed who had died, it hit really hard. Ali, Tads’ player, is very much a roleplayer, and wears her heart on her sleeve a lot of the time. She’s a “goody”, and sometimes struggles with the murky grey world of Shadowrun, but she’s definitely moral and empathic… so this session hit her really hard. There were some tears, and she was very subdued at the end, and needed a good hug to get over the ‘trauma’.

The rest of the team supported her, and Mitsuhama are *firmly* on their shit list for this latest escapade, so I’m looking forward to throwing some more shade their way from the AAA soon <grin>. Can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs and all that, and it’s nice as a GM to see some emotion because the players care about the situation and the NPCs, even if it’s a weird feeling to go “oh yeah, just made my wife cry….”

Being a stone-hearted GM of course, I doubled down and had Parako’s orphaned little girl come up to Tads and give her not only the magic stuff they’d been working on (which was the reason they were back at the village) but also her moms own power focus, to pass on to her “heir”. It’s going to be an interesting choice to see if Tads goes with bonding her mentors foci which will cost her more karma, or use the prepared one stuffed full of orichalcum, that is cheaper, but has less “sentimental value” or emotional baggage attached.
After that, there was a bit of discussion on if the corp would be back. I made it clear that the Russians were digging in now and fortifying the place – they know exactly what the magic is worth to them, and the conflict with Yakut has swung on the Nenet shaman helping them and providing magical mojo. They wanted to move in earlier, but didn’t want to piss off the locals – but this is all the excuse they need to take over the defences properly now. But as we’ve already established, they’re just not good magically!

So Tads decided to risk summoning another big spirit – another Force 9, like they did in Nigeria. It worked ok last time… so what could go wrong, right? Right??

When we got a bit of a lull, I generated the spirit then (or rather I got each of the players to roll dice and consulted the chart to see what we got from the Magic book. The dice indicated a Spirit of the Elements, then a Wood spirit (Maintou) – a little unusual for the tundra, but workable with 2 forest nenet shamans there, and especially as Tads although born to the Tundra clan, moved to the forest clans as part of her backstory. For it’s initial “free” power, it got Personal Domain, so that immediately made it more of a force to be reckoned with, just like Pebble was. Completely random both times, but I’m sort of inclined to make it a “thing” now if she does free spirits, where they just get that as a result of the particular way she summons them, or was taught – a signature method as such. And finally it was time to roll up the personality – and we got “player”… so there’s some scope for shenanigans in the future! But to start off with, it’s certainly going to play nice, while it gets some karma donated to it, to raise its spirit energy!

With that rolled up, I could then have Noley the senior remaining shaman do his divining attempt, and tell the team how he thought it was going to go – and based on that they decided to give it a go. Unsurprisingly, Tads managed to get the target number for the summon, just based on the sheer number of dice she has to roll, and with her grade the drain tests weren’t even that bad – but the other two shaman, down at grade 3 and 1 with more regular stats, really suffered. Not enough to kill them, but enough to put both on serious stun.

With that done, and her village now much better protected, we wrapped things up, quickly covering the team dropping off Hunter to go get cyber-surgery, and the rest of the team heading back to the ranch, to actually start the downtime they thought they were getting a few weeks back, before I slung the Ares missing at them.

That brings this arc of the campaign to a close, and is the end of Book 12 – adding 287,500 more words to the count, and setting us up for Book 13! Coming up there’s going to be a variety of missions and jobs – from a meeting with Germaine’s contacts off the coast of France to pick up some drones for the Broadsword and make Marius happy, to some investigations around Batumi to get more involved in the organised crime stuff there, another attempt by the Iranians to track the team and send out some enforces to “get” them (good luck with that!), another probe by Aztechnology and their blood mages (who have a much higher chance, and are much more of a threat), another decker job to throw at Hunter, and then probably at least a couple of actual smuggling jobs to provide some background “normal” work, some meetings with new Dragons (which I’m lining up NPCs willing to jump on Discord and play the parts of, just in case anyone is interested) and we’re going to be heading towards the events covered at the back end of Year of the Comet and into the Dragons of the Sixth World source book, and the big Draconic Conclave.

If you’re reading this – I hope it’s still being entertaining. Just a reminder that comments, questions, feedback and suggestions are always welcome (well, I say that… as long as there’s at least something constructive in there!), and if you have any ideas for “enhancing their roleplay”, feel free to pass on your mean and vindictive ideas!!!

And as usual, here are the notes from the game session to compare / contrast with the narrative:
1. Monday 23/01/62, Location: 67.88823, 48.67591 , Time 07:41
2. Marius calls out "Combat ahead", flying over the site of the peace treaty signing, few KM shy of the village
3. Spot landing craft and hot engines, troops heading south, village under fire, large explosion in the village - Hunter thinks it was the fuel bowser. Shimazu astral check - troops vs frightened villagers.
4. Marius - what's the plan of attack. Hunter SUT. 5 successes. Kai - stitch the troops. Marius passes over control of the autocannon to Hunter. Spirits coming back from the village now. Broadsword stays stealthed. Good gunnery roll, Hunter kills half a dozen. Shimazu and Aswon head to doors, Tads to optics.
5. 5 go down to Hunter stitching fully auto, tads stunballs another 5, spirits take on another couple. Aswon looking for flanking / infiltration forces - Shimazu and Kai ready to disembark.
6. Hunter and Marius fail perception checks, spot the steel lynx open up on a chum. Takes a full auto ATG5 - dead. Spot the hauler.
7. Remaining troops running for their lives. Tads throws up scary water illusion around the boat. Hunter - "called shot, leg, get us a prisoner!" Aswon takes a knee shot. Drops one. Hunter takes out the remaining troops. Aswon asks for a magical watcher to trail the boat. Tads sends one.
8. Marius drops the bird behind the village.
9. Marius - detects radar out to sea, doing full active sweeps. Just as they land, they see missiles on the horizon. Hunter - those are Kalibr-4 VLS missiles, Russian naval ship-to-ship.
10. Get into the village, spot the missiles hitting out at sea.
11. Find the Russians - all dead, find the radio. Someone sqwaking for a sit-rep on the radio. Hunter gets on radio. Passes over details. Cruiser Kenisky has engaged a hostile warship out to sea, suspected launch vehicle. Reinforcements are inbound, 20 mins.
12. Find dead locals and shamans, and wounded villagers - Kai and Shimazu start doing first aid. Find all the goons are Mitsuhama equipped / looking.
13. Team loot up. Aswon wants some mind-probes on the attackers. Tads is crying, but still working. Gets the full deal. The LT corporate propaganda, believes it was a righteous assault.
14. Russian choppers come in with reinforcements, sams, MG nests, ground forces are on the way. Gather intel on the Russian troops down. Start forting up.
15. Aswon advises to make spikes out in the water to discourage bigger craft assaulting in the future - but not affecting row boats. Tads goes to seal form to do that and distract.
16. Spirit returns, boat heading north east. Tads goes to check
17. Dawn arrives. Send new spirit to trail the boat. Aswon asks for a transport to take the prisoners away. Hunter contacts the captain.
18. Noley - organising funeral rites, asks for Eir, funeral cloth, coins and pearls over the eyes.
19. Tads to Noley - can you take in some of the villagers, it's not safe. Noley - points to the Russian troops digging in, I think they'll be fine. Tads worried about missile strikes. Aswon - doesn't work from a corp perspective, takes out the loot, and there's no profit.
20. More Russians arrive and intensify fortifications. Hunter - there's now a blood bond between the Russians and the tribe. Aswon - good job the Russians were here, they saved the village, all things considered. Lt finds Hunter, to take the prisoners. Off they go to the south. Pass over the intel. Aswon - happy to get rid of the prisoners, not his concern any more.
21. Team look after the village, do rifles 101. Tads does shape earth. Replacement fuel is on the way. Tads does mindlink with combat engineer and shape-earth, does more traps out to sea.
22. Lunchtime - replacement fuel arrives. Aswon suggests Shimazu work with the kids/tribe to do a thank you to the platoon from which the defending troops came from.
23. Parako's kid presents some loot to Tads, who tries not to cry. Team spot Tads having a wibble. Hunter squeeze on the shoulder. Aswon - Mitsuhama are right at the top of my shit list right now... team generally in agreement, they had the slave camp, tried to take us out etc.
24. Tads suggest a local free spirit - magical etiquette with other shaman, they agree.
25. Free spirit = Other, spirit of the elements, Manitou (wood), Personal Domain, Player. Noley does divining - it's ok.
26. Summon F9 GF get multiple successes on summon, and GF test. 32m tall siberian larch. Ground shakes, spirit "feed me", Tads gives 3 karma, other shamans do as well. Shimazu assenses, personal domain. Gets Spirit Energy 3
27. Russians are in awe... Tads spends a little while talking with the spirit. It suggests planting the bodies in the roots, to learn their ways.
28. Marius - wakes up, are we going or what? Team head south, drop off Hunter at Ludmilla's to head for Moscow. Rest of team go home

[Lionesque]

Kren Cooper wrote in the Old School Shadowrun (1st through 3rd edition) - group on Facebook that

Anyone here got a still active Dumpshock account, and would be willing to help a chummer out?
I moved house recently, which meant changing ISPs, and that meant changing email address. I updated my Dumpshock profile, but it won't send me a verification email - and that means I can't post, or DM people - including the admin.
I've tried to set up an alt account, and that's not getting verification emails either.
Without an active account, I can't DM the admins to let them know that verification emails aren't getting through to gmail addresses, or that I've got an issue.
If anyone still has an active account, could I ask them to try messaging any of the admins, especially Redjack, to let them know, and see if they could look into the situation please?
My account is "Neralet," with a display name of Kren Cooper, if they want details - but at the moment I can't update my big Smuggler thread with the latest episodes!

...which means that more goodness IS on the way, chummers! If only we could work out the rules for hacking and fix it for him (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[pbangarth]

I reported this to Redjack. Don't know if anything material has happened yet.

[Kren Cooper]

And we're back! Thank you to @Redjack for sorting out the activation issue!

[Kren Cooper]

Hi everyone - and welcome to another update for the Smuggler campaign. Episode 369 is now published, starting book 13 of the Smuggler story.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1wanc3bzh333...hsp8sa&dl=0

Here's the "behind the scenes" from this week's run:
Not much to say for this one really – or at least no interesting GM insights! It was the first one back after a long break, so as expected there was a bunch of admin to do on character sheets for downtime, and a bunch of catching up as people got back together for the first time in 6 weeks or so. I was certainly of the opinion that unless the procrastination is truly epic and the tangents have tangents, just to let it run its course, let people get the gossip out of their systems, and then get focussed back on the game.

Between the admin, gossip and catching up, there wasn’t a huge amount done – mostly all crammed into the last half hour or so as the contacts called them to kick off the next bit of action. That all went as planned, but as it’s people responding to the team with things they want – that’s hardly surprising.

So, the team were presented with their mil-spec armour, customised to magical/non-magical nature, in a dashing anti-sensor night camo pattern, and with some bells and whistles attached. If they know they’re going into a fight, and they decide to armour up, they can now bounce pretty much all small arms fire and only vehicle mounted and heavy weapons are a credible threat to them. That’s going to change the threat mix a little, but again, we’re ramping up the campaign scale / difficulty level, so that’s hopefully not going to be too much of an issue!

And, one of the things I am going to do is make sure there’s at least one fight they can have, where the enemy totally deserve what’s coming to them, where they can just mow down scads of mooks and wander about in effectively god mode, soaking inbound fire and feeling all good about themselves, just to give them a ‘hero’ moment, and bring home how this changes the stakes. Of course, at some point later, one of them is going to get tagged by someone with a big-ass gun firing APFSDS rounds that will cut through the armour like butter, to remind them they are NOT actually gods… but the rollercoaster is full of ups as well as downs. 

Mixed in with their downtime results were the key highlights from the canon timeline, just to let them know what is going on in the world around them. Some of this is or will be relevant to them, while some is unlikely to be… but of course they don’t know which, at this time.

By the end of the night though, the team were at least on the plane, taking off and heading out on the start of their next little adventure. A short writeup this week, but that’s hardly surprising – though we’re probably going to be back to a more normal output next week!

And as usual, here are the notes from the game session to compare / contrast with the narrative:
1. 04/03/2062, Location: 40.02442, 48.95752 , Time 08:00
2. Hunter - bioware install in Moscow, muscle aug level 4, cultured 320k+surgery costs Surgery squeaks past - 2 negative options, .5 BI EXTRA, 1.9 total, also fragile flaw
3. 360k
4. Kai not enough to initiate, bow skill is ok. Specialises in mongol hunting bow to 7
5. Marius - future tech research, piloting, holiday with Nadia
6. Shimazu - initiate to G11. Mystic armour 2. Cognition
7. Aswon - move with spears, sweep. No karma spends, more training time on underwater combat, poles, reading the Quran,
8. Tads - reindeer boot liners (2 karma), working in the local cllinics, spell design and research
9. Tads suggests that Kai talk to Nadia's parents to sort out the situation - Kai not keen, talk to Marius. Marius - amazingly bad idea.
10. Aswon does gardening up in the hills, nurtures garden, may make herbal materials easier to find in the future.
11. 05/01/2062 Ghostwalker starts attacks on Aztlan military
12. 18/01/2062 Wuxing clash with FB over orichalcum mining on the emerged island in the Pacific, 300km West of Petrolla Cal-Free. Wuxing appealing to corportate court
13. 27/01/1962 Council of Denver formally cedes control of the city to Ghostwalker. Aztlan territory of the city is given to CAS; Aztlan personnel and businesses are ordered to leave the city immediately.
14. 01/02/2062 Emperor Yasuhito rescinds the Yomi Island Decree, which mandated the deportation of Japanese metahumans. Yomi Island prisoners are free to return to Japan.
15. 05/02/2062 Aztlan/Aztechnology military forces start a slash and burn of the Yucatan.
16. 05/02/2062 "A Wuxing cargo-freighter, Jade Petal, sunk last night approximately 150 kilometers due east of Western Samoa. All hands appear to be lost, though rescue craft are still searching for survivors. There is no evidence as to what caused a suspected hull breach in the ship, which was transporting a load of light mining
17. equipment on behalf of Debeers-Omnitech. Wuxing has asked the Corporate Court to investigate the incident, claiming that a flight of Aztechnology Aguilarattack helicopters was spotted in the vicinity. The Corporate Court and Aztechnology have declined to comment."
18. 04/03/2062 Halleys Comet becomes visible again on pass 2. Final surge test for PCs!
19. Nobody surges at the comet return
20. Yakuza exploiting Shirvan, leaving Hajgabul alone
21. Aswon thinking of asking Hunter for details on Mitsuhama Russia execs - Hunter makes a start.
22. Julius calls, country mansion - you in? Tailoring in is it? That or a corp hit squad. Julius looks tired - busy, pulling all nighters. All good stuff from the mission, except from some people, and we ignore them...
23. Lunchtime, Rusudan, "amazon order", coming in. Clear the helipad.
24. Milspec suits, Ares design, anti-sensor night camo, rating 4 encryption comms, e mag 3+ll+thermo / o-mag 3, chem-seal+respirator
25. Kai - phone call - Germaine. Tickety Boo. Devices are ready - can you pick up. Le Harve.
26. Team start planning - either going via Patrik in Bulgaria, or the Cyclops in the med. Kai makes a call, go via Greece

[Kren Cooper]

Hi everyone - and welcome to another update for the Smuggler campaign. Episode 370 is now published, continuing book 13 of the Smuggler story.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/6andi42vbylb...y77n5o&dl=0

Here's the "behind the scenes" from this week's run:
And we’re off! Time for fresh adventures, new challenges and to ramp things up a bit – though slowly. To start off with, we’re going to ease the team in with a nice simple pickup. They asked about some of the “Sabre” drones that are designed to fit in the Broadsword, and Germaine has hooked them up. The drones are going to be useful, in the right circumstances, but aren’t super powerful by themselves – but does give me an opportunity to relieve them of a chunk of cash, and ensure they’re hungry for work.

Rather than going with something out of the book, I had in mind a custom drone based on command, control and recon work. The Sabres are designed to fly along with the Broadsword, extending the sensor bubble around the vehicle, and allowing for some funky options – like the rotor mast mounted radar on some current gen helicopters. I had in mind the Broadsword hovering behind a ridge or building, with just the stealthy drones poking around the corner or over the ridge, getting a sensor lock on the target and then relaying that data back to the mothership to allow it to conduct either indirect attacks, or to quickly pop out and shoot direct – without losing that vital few seconds to get a lock on – and thus shooting at them, while they’re still just picking up your presence.

The drones aren’t armed, and can’t really be modified to carry any firepower – not enough load or CF – for them it’s all about combining reasonable stealth, a decent pilot/autonav and some great sensors, and providing information, detection and target locks for the rest of the team. As they have IVIS and FDDM built in, they can also feed into the Battletac unit in Hunter, and provide even more information for his Small Unit Tictacs rolls – if the circumstances allow.

So, they should be desirable, situationally very useful, powerful if used “right”, but not a blunt tool that just goes dakka-dakka-dakka – and at half a million Nuyen, they certainly don’t want to risk losing them or squander them on a stupid risk!

The team don’t even have the stats yet – they just know that they’re special drones specifically designed to go in the Broadsword, and they didn’t have them – but based on the quality of the vehicle, have decided to take a punt, and trust in the tech wizardry of the RAF.

To get there, they’re going via an already established smuggler stop – so I made sure they spotted the NPCs and found them the same as the last time, but also added a little change to show progression – the smuggler base has upgraded their landing pads slightly, but otherwise is as they remembered it, hopefully just showing the evolving world around them.

That also was a good opportunity to introduce another NPC smuggler team to them in a new vehicle, and give them an opportunity. This time they met “Wolfpac”, a team supplied a good few years ago by a contributor when I put out a shout asking “tell me about your Shadowrun teams”… that gave me about 25 different groups, some of which I had to tweak a little (like Wolfpack, who were a bunch of characters from a later version of the game, so I had to ‘fix’ the presence of a technomancer, which doesn’t fit in with the 3rd ed timeline/lore) but also gave some weird, wonderful, wacky and interesting personalities and mixes drawn from other games.

On the way we rolled up a random encounter, and looking at the map I quickly decided it would be something Aden related, bringing in something/someone to his lair, from down in the Islamic Republics, under heavy guard. The team reacted in about the best way they could to show they weren’t a threat, so that one ended peacefully enough, and let them fly on, out over the med and to the island. Once there they discovered Wolfpack, and soon spotted an injury – one that had been given expert first-aid, but no magical healing, which did give them an opportunity to score some points.

To add a little extra intrigue, I added a disease to the wound, the “payload” for the mission the other team were sent to get (a bio-war facility in north-Africa, maybe in/around the Desert Wars area – the team had gotten in, set off a booby trap of some kind, and been tagged – and infected, but weren’t aware of it.) – which gave them a bonus to having the Saviour medkit over the other teams standard medkit to determine it was there, and to react – and then for Tads to use her “Cure Disease” spell to really earn some kudos.

That also meant the team is well aware that at least one of the other team was infected with a gene-altered disease… and when in a few months an outbreak of some particularly nasty disease starts to rip through somewhere in Europe, they’ll probably have a pretty good idea who is responsible. They may not do anything about it of course, but hopefully it will make the world feel connected and intertwined, and they may wonder if they *should* be doing something about it.

With that done, it was onwards to France. A good nav roll from Hunter meant he was aware and alert to the Avignon volcanoes, so the team avoided that without issue, and then they got to deal with a very stereotypical, shallow, and hostile set of ultra-nationalist 2d caricatures. I try not to go with ‘obvious’ things like this too often, or play against stereotypes – such as the Islamic cleric they ran into in Constantinople being a very decent, caring, thoughtful person, struggling against the religious fervour and terrorism of the ‘Christians’ – but sometimes it’s good to throw in something that is very ‘black and white’, exactly what it seems and very simple to understand. Not everyone needs to have a complex back-story and deep-seated reasons for their actions – they can just be a shallow prick, and that’s ok!

So in this case, they simply refused to speak English, and kept hanging up on Kai – until Hunter got in touch, and could converse in very passable French. Fortunately he *does* have etiquette, but it also mixes things up a bit, and makes the gun bunny into the face for a while, due to in-game prejudice! Always good for a bit of a role-spin.

With the random encounter at the start of the game, and some good RP around the Wolfpack surgery, we were cracking on for time, so we had just enough of the session left to get them to the smuggler stop and down on the ground, and to set up the journey on to Le Harve to arrange the drone pickup for the following week – giving us a nice neat stopping point for the session, and a reasonable ease back into things and to get everyone back in the right headspace after the break.

Next time – onwards to the meet, and dealing with the smugglers, and hopefully getting some new toys!

And as usual, here are the notes from the game session to compare / contrast with the narrative:
1. 04/03/2062, Location: 40.02442, 48.95752 , Time 09:00
2. Takeoff from the ranch, heading towards Navaia Base, Patmos (2000km, refuel - 10k cost)
3. 1/6 encounter on the way to Patmos - some of Aden's drakes+spirits flying escort to a helicopter on the way to Ararat from Kuwait
4. Mass of jamming to the west, heading s to n. Marius slows and avoids, Shimazu spots confusing ball of magic / illusions / multiple overlapping high-force spells. Team start to assense / poke. F8-9 illusion spells, concealment, at least one F8 astral entity closing on the team. Team discussion, do we let it in? No. Not unless it attacks the ward. It assenses the ward, then barrel rolls.
5. Marius thinks it's a heavily jammed / stealthed Eurocopter, flying flat out.
6. Marius resumes course.
7. Arrive at Patmos around 13:00
8. Aswon thinking about surge, team biotech checks, realise nobody has double surged. Arrive at Patamos, spot the base is bigger, 2 pads, Wolfpack is on the south one near the beach.
9. Maki is blue oni. Tads assenses - alarmed, concerned, anxious, fearful. Maki limps to the back as the team arrive obviously wounded.
10. Kai greets, Zoe - gas and go, or staying? Go, keep things moving.
11. Kai asks about the limping Oni. We know em, just done a run. Kai makes nice. Monday heads over. Hi I'm Kai, needs some help / TLC. I'm Monday, depends how much you're charging. Kai - no charge, friends of friends. Kai calls for Tads, she changes to "Sun" totem.
12. Shimazu checks Biotech. 0rr3 - very competent dressing, but Hunter sniffs. Slight tang of decay. Tads gets 2 successes on healing. Pick up that it's a disease, not infection - no heat around the wound. Break out the saviour kit - gene-engineered bio-disease - the other team share "a look". Does remove disease - massive handful of successes.
13. Kai makes a point of giving them the medical info and showing them removing the data / samples afterwards. Tads creates some sake to give the ork. Very deep and respectful bow, takes a knee, sips. Presents card in 2 hands to tads, taken in 2 hands. Swears oath of help in Japanese. Monday hands over card "Wolfpack, Monday. xxx-xxx-xxx" Kai hands over one, glances at New Fish with a sigh...
14. Decide to avoid borders, fly via scicily, up across the med, monaco-marseile, lyon, and then across to Le Harve.
15. Germaine calls with details of the fuel stop and the contact in Le Harve. Marius stealth check into france
16. cross into France, no problem, good stealth, spot the volcanic region looking ALL bad.
17. Arrive at the oil terminal at 20:00. Marius gives 30 min warning. "This is Kai, 30 mins". Ahh - no. Hang up. Kai tries to speak English again - they hang up. Brief argument, Kai a bit indignant, get Hunter down. Give directions, red red green, land inside. About 30m high, people on the top. See the covers going on.
18. Giselle throws a rock to bounce off the Broadsword. Marius very annoyed, but the team head out, G comes to meet.
19. Etiquette check for Kai - language. avoid English, any other language is still < French.
20. You need fuel and a taxi to le harve, arranges transport. Tads creates truffles for Giselle. Plan to stop for a bottle of wine on the way.
21. Giselle to taxi driver - leave them if they don't keep you updated. Meh. Tads leaves additional spirits on guard / defend for the Broadsword. Team go with concealable weapons and long coats.

[Kren Cooper]

Hi everyone - and welcome to another update for the Smuggler campaign. Episode 371 is now published, continuing book 13 of the Smuggler story.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/6andi42vbylb...y77n5o&dl=0

Here's the "behind the scenes" from this week's run:
Last but one update pre-xmas, and another little break in the game – though hopefully shorter! Picking up the story from the smuggler stop, the team headed over to the bar in the doom-taxi with the most stereo-typical caricature I could come up with.

The bar I had in mind as a seedy, run down, dangerous location. Full of drug dealers, sex-trafficers, muggers, lawless scum and smugglers. A place where you have to be on your guard. A place that Obi-Wan would warn you was a “hive of scum and villainy”. But… the team are not noobs any more. In fact they are so far from noobs, it’s difficult to see the starting line in the rear view mirror any more. They should feel about as afraid as a bunch of special-forces vets wandering into a rough bar somewhere. The locals may *think* they’re hard, but if they poke the bear, they’re going to end up wishing they hadn’t.

So, on entry I tried to describe that to the players – spending a few moments describing the looks, the sneers, the silence bomb that had gone off around them, and the general mood and sense of people that would quite happily screw them over as soon as look at them… but then spent the same amount of time trying to describe the internal confidence of each of their characters. For starters, if Tads dropped a stun-ball in here, they’re all going down, with not a lot of chance of any kind of soak – and the team would be all fine because of her shielding. Shimazu can slice people in half with ridiculous ease. Aswon has a massive reach advantage, even having to crouch a little. Hunter can punch people out for days. A shout from Kai to “drop your pants” would probably see massive compliance… Marius was the least offensive there, being “only” able to take someone out with his pistol two at a time – but even he has enough dice and combat pool to execute two people a combat phase, round after round. If you take the team as a whole, I doubt any of the locals would actually get to attack…

With that in mind, I tried to let them know that the situation was intimidating – in theory – but in practice, given what they’ve gotten up to for a while, that actually they were kind of not fussed… hopefully it came over ok for them.

They certainly took the casual and lazy racism in their stride, and just threw money at the barman until he stopped being a pain – letting him know that they were operating at a very different level and he really wasn’t going to get very far with that.

I’d originally planned on a bunch of etiquette checks for Hunter to do with him having to take the negotiation rolls for the night due to the “language barrier” – but he roleplayed the situation really well, and played the part perfectly, so I just went with the narrative flow and rule of cool. It wasn’t as if he has an awful skill either, and despite being amazingly ugly, chances are that he’d actually find that an advantage in the current situation!

The team forked over 250k – with a little hesitation and some out-of-character musings, wondering if I was setting them up… but they went with it, and trusted the process. On the way back for the quick dive into the shops, I rolled for the weapons scanners – not expecting anything – but the dice roller had other things planned and I had a pair of 6s explode, detecting multiple weapons, and leaving the slightly terrified security guard to intervene. Again, I didn’t want to make this a big thing, and they threw some RP at the problem with a hefty bribe, and made the problem disappear.

And last of all, now the pickup was sorted, I could feed them the breadcrumb for their next job – a nice straight-forward extraction to do on the way back, which will at least cover their fuel costs for the job – if it all goes well. It may also provide some space for them to test the new drones, if they feel they need to.

The pickup of the drones went smoothly (and in my head, plays out in a calmer version of the stolen Bird of Prey decloaking over the whaler from ST:IV), they got the cargo and with a quick check for random events, we fast forwarded through the journey to Corsica and got them on the ground by the end of the session, giving us a good pickup point for the next session. Just enough time on Monday to throw together a map of the area for them, and we can see what interesting plan they come up with to snag the executive.

And as usual, here are the notes from the game session to compare / contrast with the narrative:
1. 04/03/2062, Location: 49.48023, 0.542 , Time 21:00
2. In the taxi heading west, get to le wrench. Team agree on a non-English language for internal discussion - Russian. Into the bar, dingy, threatening, but mixed feelings, bar height 2m, Aswon having to duck. About 30 in the bar. "what do you want" to hunter. 6 beers. Sloppy pours. 60 francs, Kai works out cost for a round for the bar and they pay that. General surge to the bar for the free beer. Barman "you're not from round here." No, here to meet the captain. Over there in the booth. Spot the captain and his hook. Cyber roll - spots the weird high tech hook, titanium mix.
3. Kai, questioning name. Oui. Bonjour - Kai. Gets Hunter to translate for him from there on.
4. Thanks for meeting us, we want to do this quickly and not inconvenience you. Ahh, you're from le bitch formidable. Oui. Talk about collecting, your craft can hover. Agree 50% up front. Fishy reader. Pulls up map, co-ords 20km offshore, 6am.
5. Sound based perception as the team leave. "She was right, they did just do business..." Lurkers outside still lurking. Still want to go to the hypermarket? Oui. Hunter - you want anything? Carton of fags. Pulls up at Hypermarket, in disabled space, we're here... team can go shopping. Weapons scanner pings. Overweight guard "weapons are prohibited". Kai - can we pay a fine / donation? Nervous licking lips, get out of camera view. Asks for a hundred, Kai gives 100 per person. He becomes very friendly and helpful, he calls for "Marielle" to help them. Rough, middle aged woman, thick makeup, not helpful, but efficient. Spend a good chunk of money, then out to the taxi.
6. Germaine texts, free to talk, then actually. Kai says arranged for tomorrow night. Ahh, that won't work. Kai wheedles the details out. Pickup tomorrow mid-afternoon. Jobs paying 80k
7. Talk in russian in front of the taxi driver, then get back to the base and in the Broadsword. Middle of the mountains, 15:00-15:30. Aswon realises the timing is critical. No mention on how good the EPT is. Team wondering about levitating her straight off the mountain, she probably has "some" magical defences.
8. Hunter research, get details on GR20 route, pic of target. Aswon magic background - nothing of massive concern. Marius checks dragons at Aswon prompting - all clear.
9. Aswon queries - out to get drones, pick up, then head over to Corsica? Tads - find an ambush spot.
10. Leave in the morning, hand over the wine/truffles to Giselle. She doesn't seem super impressed, but takes them. Marius stealth check - bad, RR, still bad. Buys a pip to rr a 5 to a 6, gets a 17. Enough to beat the local defences. Out to sea, Hunter makes the call, gives slightly updated co-ords. Kai prepares the credstick. Captain can't see the Broadsword, but gives Hunter directions.
11. Credit monkey swings up the trawling poles, also can't see. Marius brings them in super-steady. Hunter thrown test to get the credstick in the hole. Indicates to a bouy, they move over - grab it no problem. Pull up the box without issue. Captain asks for the buoy back.
12. Bug scan - nothing found. Examine the cargo - all as expected. Then exit stage left.
13. Tads suggest going to Corsica to check/prep the drones, while the team waits for the right time. Get to Corsica and lay up well hidden. Team look at stops for fuel, and wonder about having to backstop the other extraction team, just in case. Work out route, Patricks, Quarry.