[X] My Assistant

[Demonseed Elite]

This question is mainly meant for the folks who like the non-magical aspects of Shadowrun more than the magical ones. The people who believe there's a leaning towards all things magical in SR and get concerned by it. But, anyone who has an answer to this question can definitely answer.

Putting magical antagonists (dragons, "Horrors", free spirits, shapechangers, etc.) aside, what sort of antagonists do you love that you feel enhance the non-magical aspects of Shadowrun? Faceless megacorporations? Uber alpha-men (like Damien Knight)? Technological freaks (cyberzombies)? Strange techno-influenced phenomena (AIs, otaku)? Shadowy conspiracies (Winterknight, Alamos 20k)? Do you find that badguys like faceless megacorporations just don't feel defined enough next to antagonists like dragons?

I'd just like to know what kind of opponents these folks like to face. There's been a lot of discussion here lately about Horrors and the magical antagonists, and I'm curious about the flipside of the coin.

[Backgammon]

I try to stay away from magical antagonists, but I do always end up putting some magic in there.

My favourite non-magical antagonists to date have been anti-corporate terrorist cells. Secret societies and the likes. Powerful underground forces like top of the food chain fixers and their hired goons. Kinda like the Merovingian in Matrix. Yeah, those guys I like.

[DrJest]

Colonel John Adair, born Great Missenden, England, 14.03.2025. Graduated Sandhurst Military Academy with high honours, specialising in counter-terrorism and psychological warfare. Transferred to the Paras in 2048, operated in Euro theatre against Bosnian Serb rebels. Transferred to Lord Protector's office May 2051. Led covert operations unit for five years under the direct command of Lord Marchmont. Implicated in numerous acts of terror against targets designated as threats to national security. Dishonourably discharged 2056 for attempted assassination of senior political figures; claims of acting under orders from the Lord Protector unverified, but the death sentence was mitigated to exile. Joined Aztechnology as military advisor, served four years in the Yucatan. Believed responsible for the "lluiva de la muerte" incident, in which three villages held to be sympathetic to the rebels were bombarded with experimental neurotoxins. Left Aztechnology due to "professional dispute", believed to have killed Aztech General Juan Villa-Lobos during his departure. Since leaving Aztechnology, has operated as a specialist mercenary across the globe. Currently believed to have a core unit of 10 specialists in various fields, hires others as the need arises. Expert at reading a subject's psychology from their habits and tailoring actions against them on that basis.

I made this guy up on the spur of the moment. He's designed as a recurring enemy for a team; an expert in psychology who practically knows your actions before you do and has the tactical skill and experience to exploit that knowledge coupled to an absolute lack of any form of ethics or morality.

[Ol' Scratch]

The Media. The single most often ignored aspect of Shadowrun outside of the occasional newsclipping... which is just insanely odd.

After that I make heavy use of organized crime and the underworld. I tend to shy away from megacorporations simply because I find them dull and uninspired... corporate espionage gets boring after a while.

[Cray74]

Well...

Lately, I had one PC regularly hunted by his old gang. I'm going to have to figure out something when the gang gets depopulated - the PCs are thinning their ranks pretty quickly.

Oh, and the PCs are also being pestered by some immortal elves (yes, magical) and some very mundane Native Americans and UCAS gubmint types. The PCs were hired to investigate the Lone Eagle missile silo site, just to look for the corpse (skeleton) of one person in there, and have been subsequently deluged with assassination attempts. They're just starting to figure out they stumbled on a Huge Secret Conspiracy. Unlike the gangers, the supply of ninjas is nearly endless, and so the Evil Secret Masterminds behind the Conspiracy can always hurl more legions of ninjas against the PCs. One of these days, the PCs will suffer the fate of all those who poke their noses into Huge Secret Conspiracies.

[Necro Tech]

Fringe Wackos. Those who are so far outside the world view its like they live on a different planet. The cultists, religious extremsists, bigots, idle rich and cause heads who always seem to be remarkably well funded. They are all kinds of fun and don't need any magical flavor at all though of course you can always throw the surprise twist in which the leader of an anti-magic cult is really an idol shaman bent on killing all other magical practioners. Because they are so weird, you can justify damn near anything as a valid plot because it only has to make sense to them. After one of these runs your players can recall the good old days of being screwed over by the Megas and organized crime.

[Tanka]

Random note: Cyberzombies are created via magic, and therefore count towards your "magical baddies" list.

Edit: Unless you don't want them to, that is.

[Neruda's Ghost]

I agree with Necro.

Psychos, whether zealots or just mentally insane, always add that terrifying sense of unpredictability to the game. One villain in particular in my games was a corporate suite who also happens to be an insane serial killer on the side. The players were already expecting the worse from the magical opposition (the dragon or spirits), the fact that their johnson starts to secretly stalk them after the mission was over was something that really freaked them out.

Maybe I went a little over board, but this killer actually started murdering the players' contacts one by one before they finally took down the psycho. It took a while too, since the killer was actually very smart at covering his tracks and could make the crimes look like unrelated murders.

Guess I shouldn't have watched American Psycho while I was writing the game.

[Ol' Scratch]

[Tanka]

Otaku aren't really magical, per se. At least, not by any full-blown announcement that I'm aware of.

It's theorized, sure. However, theories are just that -- theories.

[Sabosect]

Actually, mine is a squad of corporate guards. We're talking full armor with their only enhancements being cybernetic arms to increase their strength. These people turn runner teams into paste quickly with their combination of firepower and armor.

[Crimson Jack]

Tir Ghosts make for a cool black ops style enemy to use in a game. For that matter, black ops in general are pretty fun to use as a GM (nod to Wildcats).

I've used terrorists before in games and even played off the terrorist theme by reversing the protagonist/antagonist roles of the terrorists in question (ie. Eco-terrorists). I wrote a run once where the runners switched sides when they realized that the eco-terrorist group was actually providing them with a service which would be more important to the shaman in the group, than finishing the mission.

[DocMortand]

Hell - couldn't you throw in Deus and his minions? I believe there are hints in the SOTAs that he's still around somewhere.

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

I wouldn't exactly call Tir Ghosts non-magical. As a matter of fact, they're pretty effing magic-heavy.

[Blaze]

In the past 18 months game-time my players have faced down a conspiracy to break Seattle away from the UCAS (masterminded by a Lone Star Special Ops commander, a department chief of the CIA and a corporate CEO who had a penchant for installing cyberware in his family against their will), tangled with Tsunami Special Forces while breaking up a WMD smuggling chain and fought against the Vory and a hard-as-nails ex-SAS merc in Vladivostok. They have also (under different guises) been involved in starting a civil war in Egypt, destroying a Swiss corporation's headquarters and preventing the release of a mutant strain of Ebola across Europe. And that's just the non-magical threats. I think they're glad they're not playing mages...

-JH.

[Crimson Jack]

[Cynic project]

Well, the scariest non magical threats to runners are ones they can't fight. I mean you can't shot your way out of black listings,nor can you kill every "cop", nor can you stop A mega from doing what it wants. But for enamies,have them be faceless, have them be subtle,and have them go at the players whent hey let their gaurd down.. Wire taps can be scary things.

[DocMortand]

Yeah, I had my archnemesis create clones (plastic surgery, not real clones) of the runners and had them blow up a cop car. The real runners immediately got framed, their contacts squeezed for info...their main doss tracked down by FRT teams...and they had to figure out how to get their names "clear".

Sometimes the scariest situtations are when things are normal - yet not.

[CircuitBoyBlue]

In the campaign I've been running, I've had several long running story arcs, starting with renegade factions within the Puyallup division of Lone Star, a criminal association that took control of most of Puyallup (this one overlapped with the first, because LS helped them take power), and now some corporate happenings, though magic has been thrown in sparingly (as a GM I hate using magic, but there's magic users in the group, so I have to, or they get to do whatever they want). The problem with these is that the solution to the particular ones I've used can often be as simple as mass murder if you don't structure things well (with the criminal association, the group killed all 70+ of the major players eventually, which brought all the horrible consequences you'd expect; they just took really good precautions against those consequences like finding the right allies and what not). Also, deckers make good enemies if there's a decker in the group, because if the enemy has a lot of power in the matrix, he's a VERY dangerous enemy. The problem here is that if there's no decker in the group, they're unlikely to be able to do anything about it, and that's no fun.

[Wounded Ronin]

I like villians who are smart enough to use suppressive fire on the party. Leeches away their combat pool.

Villians who use super munchkinous tactics and budget their combat pool till just the right time are all the scare that you need.

[DrJest]

I find it's the intelligent ones that screw up a party the most. Hence Colonel Adair, above - a Thrawn-esque bloke who anticipates you three steps ahead.

Try watching a little Alias, as well; the main villain in that, Arvin Sloane... hmm, how do I do that spoiler tag thing?

[toturi]

Just make sure you have a high Intelligence to back up your Thrawn. My group has an Otaku PC/NPC(when she can't come down for the games) who calls the shots because she's got the data and she's got the brains. Imagine an 8 year old girl strategic genius commanding a team of shadowrunners. Most (meta)human villians can't match that in my games and I can't see a reasonable way to make the opposition any smarter, other than AI or Dragon.

[FlakJacket]

[Conskill]

I like AIs. All the potential alien malice of the Horrors without the baggage and deus ex machina. My last campaign focused around the characters being occasionally helped and hindered by an AI who took the unwieldily name of Mr. Iam. It was manipulating events around a state-of-the-art biotech company based on its fractured, ungrounded concept of ethics.

Beyond very specific antagonists and organizations, though, it's hard to create a totally non-magical baddy. There's too many magicians running around Shadowrun for anyone to ignore. Unless your campaign is a particularly low-power or low-magic varient, anyone at the apex of Baddiness is probably going to have access to a quickened or anchored spell, spirit bodyguard, or some other means of protection from the prolific magical threats that pop up in the average day of a bad guy.

[DrJest]

Cheers, Flak

Okay, let's try that again.

Alias spoiler up into Season 2

[ Spoiler ]

We discover about halfway through Season 2 that from the beginning of the series Sloane has been setting up his allies in The Alliance to be taken down, removing his major competitors in the race for the secrets of Milo Rambaldi. Every step the heroes have taken, practically, has been an asset to him.

Toturi: