Some unusual Shadowruns?, Or: How to frag your DocWagon Contract. Options

[ShadowDragon8685]

This Run idea came to me in that place of many ideas: The Shower.


The premise is simple. Johnson wants DocWagon to hurt. Bad. Digging reveals that Johnson's <Insert Important Person Here(Brother/Wife/Whatever)> was geeked when a DocWagon responded to someone's Super Platinum and started shooting everybody in sight. He wants payback.


The 'Run' is a bounty on all DocWagon equipment destroyed or stolen, and any good Matrixwork against them. A fair sum for the wagons - maybe 5,000 Nuyen, more for the choppers - about 8,000-12,000, and if you take out a corporate office or one of their clinics, it's up to the DM.

The easiest way, of course, is to beat someone with a DocWagon bracelet up, let him call the Doc Wagon, and then just ambush it. I figure it should be easy for awhile - DocWagon is an armed response extraction team. It's (IMO) never occured to them that THEY could be the real targets.

How the Runners do it is up to them - easiest way, of course, is to just put a short-range RPG into the wagon. They're armored, but I don't think they're heavy enough to take concentrated fire. DocWagons more or less pull people out of fights where they see lots of pistols, knives, pipes, and the occasional SMG, they're not prepared for heavy artillary like LMGs, MMGs, HMGs, assault cannons, or rocket launchers.

Of course, if the runners adopt a "No unnnessessary killing" policy, I'd give them more Karma. The way I'd personally do it would involve grabbing the vic, takeing him into the Barrens, and beating him. (Best way to handle this is to pay off the local gang for their support. They don't mess with the Wagon, or the runners, or the bait.) Once your guy has called the DocWagon, you set up a roadblock, KO the bait, and wait. When th DocWagon arrives and finds themselves the target, order them (through use of loudspeakers) to throw their weapons out and come out with their hands up. This order should be enforced with a very visible heavy weapon, and make SURE to have some kind of jammer up so they can't call the Star in on you. Everybody should be disguised, of course, in the kind of clothing that makes it impossbile to distinguish a cybered out sammie from a mage, and faces covered, of course. 'escort' the DocWagon personelle into an abandoned building, gas them unconcious, torch their van. Drop the jammer, leave them their own phones, and walk away to collect your bounty.

What do you think? Interesting, hopefully unique? Or am I an idiot? You have any other interesting off-the-wall ideas?

[fistandantilus4....]

That is a pretty neat idea actually, but would end up pretty combat intensive, as DW 'troops' are equipped with security armor, assault rifles and heavy weapons if needs be, and armored vehicles. Your PC's better be up for it.

As for taking them alive, Stun Ball and splat grenades w/ DMSO/G-S would probably go farther than telling a team wquipped with "security armor, assault rifles and heavy weapons if needs be, and armored vehicles" to throw down their weapons

[ShadowDragon8685]

Are they really that heavily armed? I always figured DocWagon to be a van armored enough to protect from small arms fire, but not from heavy weapons, and that they'd tote at most, one AR and a couple SMGs per van.

[Critias]

DocWagon's pretty heftily armed -- and they have been targeted before (almost exactly like you're describing, in fact). Remember, these guys roll around with vans (or VTOLs/helicopters!) chock full of tasty pharmaceuticals, guns, and armor. Name three things criminals like more, would'ja? So they get their fair share of random street violence, right off the bat, right? On top of that, there was at least one published adventure that dealt very specifically with DocWagon teams getting attacked/ambushed, like you described (IIRC it was one of their few NPCs with a tactical computer and some idea how to use it).

So, I mean, it's possible to mess with DocWagon. But it's not going to catch anyone but the first team off-guard, and it's nothing they haven't learned how to deal with before.

[Westiex]

A) Knock the bait unconcious, then strap a few gas grenades to him. They take the bait into the wagon, grenades trip ...

B) Buy yourself a few intelligent missiles, depending on the finances offered by the Johnson, and site them in random locations around the city.

Each time a Doc Wagon bracelet goes off, so does a missile, using said bracelet as a homing beacon.

[Critias]

Remember, also, though, DocWagon provides the emergency medical response to Lone Star (among others). And no one likes it when you shoot at their medic.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Target: Lone Star.

For only the truely suicidal and/or revoloutionary Shadowrunners. :)

It is kind of a high-risk job, but I think it's unique and neat. The real pain is figuring out how to acomplish the Run (Destroying DocWagon propery) without violating your own ethics. Hence the "make them surrender" bit.


Another thing to do would, if you had a drek-hot decker, go after one of their clinics. Sound an alarm inside the clinic: Sarin or something equally deadly to metahumanity released, evacuate the building. And then firebomb it to hell. If nobody realizes the alarm was fake, people may believe the firebombing was an emergency response measure.

[Fortune]

I don't know any players who would ever have their characters do this kind of job for the money you are offering. I mean 12K nuyen for a DocWagon™ chopper??? Destroyed maybe, but not captured.

Also keep in mind that DocWagon™ has access to half decent mages, so be careful slinging magic during this run. Especially if you have, or plan to have a contract with them yourself.

[ShadowDragon8685]

How did you do the TM?

And yes, I did mean destroyed. I'm certain the smart DM would assess bonuses for captures. As capturing a helicoptor is an excessively difficult thing to do.

[blakkie]

Using some version of Windows? Either "Run" charmap.exe and select it from the grid and cut&paste. Or you can make sure your NumLock is on then hold down your left Alt key while you enter 0-1-5-3 on your numeric pad. When you then release the Alt key the ™ should appear.

Incidentally selecting a character in the grid in charmap.exe will display in the status bar the 4 digits for creating each character using the second method. For example ßlakkie or 451ºF.

[Tanka]

[ShadowDragon8685]

Cheers.

By the way, I thought of another unique Shadowrun™. Insurance Fraud!


Either as the fradulees, or the fraud inspectors.


Case Scenario 1: Fraud Inspectors.

<Insert Big to Megacorp name here> has a teensy problem. They suspect <insert name of middle-high executive here> of committing fraud on his corp car. You see, his ~90,000 :nuyen: Lincoln-GM Executive series company car has been stolen. Ordinarily they would simply write it off as the cost of doing bisuness, and provide him with a less expensive car. However, this is the third such car he's lost in six months. All the antitheft devices have been deeated in detail, as none of the car's automatic "I'm being stolen!" squealers got so much as a peep off.

The mission is a simple two-part op with little for a Slaughtering Sammie to do (unless something goes horribly, horribly wrong.)

The kicker is that the exec lives off of Company property, therefor they can't just bust down his door and start 'interrogating' him. If they did, the Star would arrive, and the Star dosen't distinguish between a Corp Black Ops Team and Shadowrunners or hooligans if it's happening off company property. To make matters worse, executive seems to know his ways around the Shadows, and he has many contacts at Lone Star, garunteeing that if the Company came after him in such a manner, he'd be getting a free ride to turn over all he knows about the company to the Star - not a disaster, but not a pleasent outcome (for the Company.) So they need some "Deniable Assets."

Part 1: Infiltrate executive's home and violate his personal privacy in ways that would make a 1600s sailor blush. The Company wants a copy of all his logs, any diarys, all cred transactions, how many times per day his auto-toilet flushes, the works. If the Runners uncover Damning evidence (such as "May 13th. Sold company car to chop shop in barrens for 34,000 :nuyen: . Instructed refridgerator to order frankfurters in anticipation of Baseball season. Lost my favorite pen.", then they have permission to engage the exec, deliver a very thorough but non-life-threatening beating, and deliver him to the Company for yet more beatings. Otherwise, return the data to the company for review.

Part 2: If the executive DID steal it, and they uncover good evidence but not wholely damning, the runners go back for those beatings. If they uncover evidence that he is in fact simply very good at getting his cars stolen, the runners get paid their pay, and offered a job to track down the cars and 'punish' those responsible. THIS is something for a Slaughtering Sammie to do. :)



Case Scenario 2: Insurance Fraud.

Mr. Johnson is apparently someone in need of some very fast cash. He owns a shop of some sort (Snowmobiles, maybe,) and an insured house. The Run is thusly: They have to stage a threat on Mr. Johnson's life, which is ostensibly the trigger to run him out of town. He will report it to Lone Star. (Hint: a Lone Star contact may be able to make the Star's search cool down a bit.) While being hunted by Lone Star, the Runners must disguise themselves as something completely not what they are, and destroy everything Mr. Johnson owns. There has to be falsified evidence pointing away from insurance fraud, preferably at some group that would hate Mr. Johnson. (The runners are here encouraged to excersize something they get precious little chance to: Their imaginations.)

Mr. Johnson has enough of a down-payment scraped together to entice the Runners. Once the insurance check comes in, whatever dosen't go towards paying his creditors is split 50/50 with him and the team.

(Also, if the Runners are smart, they'll creatively steal some of his possessions and fence them for some extra cash. They can use, if they're creative, some junk electronics and a few fake cases to make the choiceiest pieces look destroyed - this gets the people hunting down fenced items off their trail, if they think it was in fact destroyed.)

[pragma]

Fraud inspectors sounds like a fun and easily executable run (though why the company is so bent on keeping track of its cars is beyond me).

Insurance fraud would be a hard sell, at least to my runners. You would have to pay them a lot of money to get them to actively bring the star down on their heads.

For example, the only time I suceeded in doing so their bowels were full of cutters ready to make them into hamburger if they didn't.

[ShadowDragon8685]

If you keep losing 90,000 :nuyen: luxury cawrs, it's going to be very bad bisuness. That's almost a tenth of a million there. Plus, it's the whole employee disloyalty thing - that can't be allowed to fly.


And as for the insurance fraud, the idea is that they bring the Star down on fictious other people's heads. :)

[Mortax]

:vegm: I like this idea. I have to run soon too.....bwahahaha!
Could make it real fun and have the guy possesed by a bug spirit or master shedem, if you wanted to spice it up. :-)

[Angelone]

Some of the most hair raising "Oh god what have we gotten ourselves into" Aliens flashback inducing runs I've played are escorting Parabiologists trying to find new species of flora or fauna in (insert remote god awful location here). To this day I cringe IRL when someone mentions Amazonia.

How about the runners get hired to protect an ophanage or soup kitchen? A paycheck and a good deed will warm their black hearts :please:

How about the runners are hired by the wife of an abusive husband, not to "teach him a lesson", but to teach the wife and daughter how to take care of themselves. This could lead to a situation with the daughter where she falls in love with one of the runners or wants to become one afterwards.

[Edward]

[Trax]

Why would she hire Shadowrunners? There are other places where she can learn self-defence. Plus she could always get a gun herself and shoot the guy while he's sleeping.

[Angelone]

Friend or family who "pays" them with meals or something simular just throwing out ideas.

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

[Vaevictis]

[fistandantilus4....]

one of my favorites was a run that was barely really a run. One of the characters contacts had a pretty young elven lady friend that lived in downtown. She had a perverted neighbor that lived across the street with a telescope. He was told once to mind his own business, but didn't.

The contact paid them 5k/ month to continually harass the target (we'll call him Mr/ P - for pervert). The conditions were that they were not to harm him in any physical way, and to never make any contact with him or the neighbor lady.

So they just went nuts. They changed his locks, set off his alarms, doctored compromising pictures of him and distributed them throughout his office, hid fish in his apartment, stole his car a number of times ( I always hoped they'd use it on a run), sent dozens of pizzas to his house, changed his SIN, filled his apartment with freeze foam, levitated his furniture to his apartment ceiling and screwed it in, that sort of thing. Occasionally they remmber him (2 years later) and think of something else to do. He's moved three times, gone through 4 security companies, three jobs, and two new identities.

[Hague]

[frostPDP]

Alright Fisty, I have to say that is hilarious.


A very gooooood idea.

[Jrayjoker]

I am definitely doing this next tiem I get a chance to run!