This was pretty awesome. When Shadowrun works right, it works right. Our DM was running Food Fight, the team is three runners on a late-night snack attack.
The team:
Skate, my wire-fu gal. (She IS a decker, but I took some advice I read on Dumpshock and used the million for other stuff, preferring to wait until I could steal a good cyberdeck.) Here's a picture of her.
Grog, the Sprawl Ganger premade from the SR3 rulebook.
Nhilith, elf female sammie without any wired reflexes.
Yes, that's right. Three on six. We may or may not be in for a whooping. Our story opens with three runners lamenting the lack of munchies. They all live in their own apartments, in the same apartment building. So they place calls to one another, and it is decided that we're going to get out of our building and roll all up in the Stuffer Shack's shizzle.
So, in full gear, but minus the heavy artiliary of the sammie's assault rifles - she has her laser-honed-edged katana and her pistol on her, and Skate is never without her Ares Predator - we roll up in the Stuffer shack. The troll goes to look for munchies, the 'delicate' sammie insists on trying to find something noncaffinated and potable, and Skate is looking for some soup-in-a-cup. (The 2060s version of Campbell's soup-in-a-can.) But more, she's also being mischievious. Out comes her radio scanner; filtering out all the expected city bands, nothing is found. Such a pity.
(Note, we are using a different map for the Food Fight. We had to use whatever was handy, and I found this image with a fast googling.)
So, here is our Stuffer Shack:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v323/Sha...fershackmap.jpg
A is the arcade, with the loudmouthed brat singing along.
B is... I'm gonna say it's the soycaf counter, now in 72 flavors of reprocessed soybean.
C is the counter with the angelfaced elf girl. (My character considered hitting on her.)
D is the make-it-yourself drinks mixer.
E never came up, except as a landmark. I'll ask the DM what it was later.
F is the room behind the counter, which opens into the main area without a door, and has a door into the stock room. (This will be important later.)
G is the stock room. (That thing at the top is a loading dock.)
H is still the stock room. It came handy as a waypoint describing the action.
Okay. Once that was out of the way, Grog wound up putting his brew and his chips on top of an arcade machine and told the kid he had the next game. Nhil was vaporing about Aisle 6, in vain hope of something liquid, potable, and noncaffinated.
Skate was a little to the right of E, scoping for security cameras and trying to decide if she was mischevious enough to maglock passkey her way through the door into the stock room.
The DM calls for perception tests, and audio perception is called for. I have 11 dice (6 INT +5 cyberear,) and so I easily make the TN to see the ganger van pull up, and hear the racking of shotguns.
Okay. Bad Fragging News, right? So, I do the crazy. The lunatic. The kind of thing most Runners would never dream of doing.
I whip out my cell phone, panic-button the Star, and drop it. If they don't follow proceedure when they get an unanswered panic-call, they'll damned well get moving when they hear gunshots. Right? Right?? (Not bloody likely in this 'burg.)
By now, the gangers are moving in. Catcher starts his giggle raid speech, and I (since I have a bloody damned high initiative thanks to Wired 2) get to move again. Istealth my way towards the stock room door, maglock passkey out. Sn-KT! it slides open, and I slide out. Unfortunately, I'm seen by sword-boy (Slicer?) who asks permission to chase me down. He recieves it, and follows.
I, howevr, am an order of Neo faster than he is. I dash through the stockroom - there's a soyproducts van backed up to the loading dock, but there's room to get out. Being Asian, I (or rather, Skate,) don't have to suck in much to slip out. I'm ahead of Slicer, and opening the gap. So I jump up on the ladder, and scramble to the top of the building, intending to ambush him when he's on the ladder. (Yes, Virgina, I'm a damned dirty ladder-camper.)
Inside, Catch has swung around the counter, behind the elf girl, one hand fondling her breasts inside of her employee polo, the other sweeping the shotgun around. It's a good thing my character wasen't there to see that, because she would have flipped out. (In fact, she does, later.)
The kid (15 year old with an Ares Predator, I think he may be Spike?) scratches his head with his gun (Almost a pity he didn't have a negligent discharge,) and wanders over to loot the candy. The bitch-girl with the submachine gun is alternating between cooing at the fat boy, and quickdrawing her gun on him. (Real flowerlike personality, her. Specifically, a venus flytrap.)
Which brings us to Big Man Grog's initiative pass. The kid beside him is going "Are they Shadowrunners? They're too coool to not be Shadowrunners." (Hehehe...) Grog decides he's not going to take this kind of bastard just rolling up in his local stuffer shack and laying down. So he rolls on up to the seemingly comatose hippy-back-to-nature fucker, with the full intention of rolling a few Improvised Weapon: Metahuman attack rolls later. Let's see here - 600 lb troll, 120 lb dude? This isen't a contest.
Which brings us back to Nhilith, who quickdraws her katana like a Samurai of old, walking up to the submachinegun girl bitch, and promptly cuts her a new cunt. In the middle of her torso. Just short of a disembowelment. (S wound, folks, staged down from a D.)
The kid yells out the girl's name "Janey!" and levels his pred at Nhil, but dosen't try to fire, since his girlfriend's in the way. So far, so good, right?
And now, the stupidity starts. The old man shouts at grog to let go of Willey, and racks his shotgun, ejecting a perfectly good shell. At this point, Grog realizes that he has a better use for Willey - human shield. Now's where it gets fun.
Catcher shoots his shotgun. One-handed, half-blind around a corner, with the elf girl as a distraction, because he's ragingly hard against her and molesting her breast like it's the last thing he'll feel. (No, stupid. The last thing you'll feel is a numb coldness where your lower jaw and face used to be. But that's for later.)
Net result? He scores all of... One success on the troll. DM rules that a metahuman (Human or Elf type) body as a "normal barrier", neither hard nor soft. Net result? The damage code on the shotgun shoots down to 3S, and the troll easily soaks it to zero. (He used full combat pool, too.)
The DM then rolls damage against Wiley, and tosses down all of Catcher's remaining dice. Every single fragging one of them hits the DC.
Stunned, we all watch as Catcher blows Willey into Deadly Overflow, and the round just kind of pokes out of Willey and against the troll's vest. That was just right, in a wrong sort of way.
Outside, as slice was nearing the ladder, he hears the shotguns inside, and turns around to go back in. Wrong Move, assuole. (Intentional misspelling.) I lean out from the side, and let him have it, double-tap style. Meanwhile, inside, Nhilith neatly severs Janey at the knee, putting her down with a D wound, and moves on to the kid, threatening him.
He gets stupid, as Catcher puts another shot through Willey into Grog (again, staged to zero,) and the kid gets sliced in the side of the torso. I leap off the building to the top of the van, then squirm back onto the dock, making a bee-line for the door to F.
Grog, seeing that his personal riot shield has taken two shells and is very perforated now, throws Willie's body across the room, and rips an arcade machine from the wall, roaring an intimidation at the old man - who promptly shat himself and sat down, crying.
Go Grogdor.
Another shotgun blast zips through the machine, failing to penetrate Grog, and Catcher's out of shotgun shells in his gun. He STILL hasen't let go of the girl, which pisses us all off. Nhilith slices the kid's neck good, and he goes down hard, while Skate stealths up behind Catcher. I'm trying to do the Trinity move from The Matrix. (Dodge this, only I was going to say Fondle This.)
At this point, both Grog and Nhil want to attack catcher, and OOCly, I'm asking them if they're TRYING to get the girl killed. Somehow, it's decided that they're not quite that heartless bastards, and they let me take the shot.
He makes his last-minute perception check, so I don't get to bypass his armor. But I throw down every die I have, combat, and karma. (That's 15 total - 7 from specilization: Ares Predator, 7 Combat Pool, and 1 Karma.)
Net result: Even with his DR, I stage it into Deadly Overflow. The DM lets me describe this shot, but he edits it some. What happens is that I spend a long paragraph describing the bullet's trip through Catcher's jaw, speeding through and out of it, sending his jaw and most of his lower face flying into an aisle, as my bullet merrily proceeds onwards to shatter against the plate-glass front windows. Catcher falls onto the counter, ripping the girl's shirt apart (much to my character's visual delight,) and Skate takes a two-fisted aim at him, saying "I hate rapists worst of all." And BLAM. That was the end of Catcher. Impishly I steal a kiss from the elf girl, and vault over the counter to save lives. I apply a tramau patch to the kid and Janey, despite Nhil's telling me not to. There's no need for more death, especially if saving life means I get an excuse to cut a girl's shirt and bra off.
Then I go out back to see if I can save slice, but I did my job very well; the first shot caught him in the spine, right below the heart, and the second one perforated his right lung from behind. He lived for a meter's distance. So I loot him; he has a Pred with one clip, 9 Shuriken, and one katan, no sheathe. And an armored jacket in the form of a Samurai's tunic. I consider taking it all, but the bullets and the blood ruined the tunic, so I just take the weaponry. The DM has me roll hearing, and I hear sirens in the far distance. Nice job, Lone Star. You bastards show up to take all the damn credit. They're still minutes off in the distance, we have time.
So I go back into the shop from the loading dock, find the girl in the F office, wearing the dwarf's shirt and crying. Skate gives her another kiss on the cheek, tells her to stiffen up, and I give her the pred I got off Slice, telling her to learn how to use it. By now, Nhil is collecting the hardware off the fallen badguys, and Grog is showing his new hero-worshipper how to kick ass on that video game. The kid is now convinced that Grog is a superhero (and he may not be all that wrong.)
Our friendly neighborhood dwarf manager of the Stuffer Shack tells Grog that he can't offer anything that the company woulden't frown on, but offers us to carry out anything we'd like, free of charge. Grog responds by putting one of his brews in the old man's hands, telling him "I like this place, pops. I'm not about to let some wireheads roll up and trash it." I consider taking a disposable cellphone, but they're under physical lock and key, not maglock and key, so I can't open the case fast enough, so I just take the battery out of my own cell, and yes I know I'll have to leave it off a good while for the heat to cool down. I take that cup of soup-at-hand that I wanted earlier, and go back to give the girl another "cheer up" speech and kiss, then we vanish into the night, to go home.
All in all, a good night's work, eh? I'll have to go back to that Shack an' get the girl's number sometime. Meanwhile, Grog has Gang ID'd the gang involved, and we'd like a little payback. Since they're a small-time gang and Grog knows their turf, which isen't far, we figure we have a good chance. After all, nobody just rolls on up in our friendly neighborhood Stuffer Shack and knocks it over, and gets away with it.
Conclusion: Shadowrun is friggin' awesome when it works right.