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Talia Invierno
Warehouses. Offices. Safes. Standard security systems. All business as usual for the conclusion of the run, for the runners finally tracking down that item/person/useful blackmail photo.

Been there, ran that.

Try an interesting twist on the office-building-as-usual:

A trid station. Sound and trideo and splicing and sound stages. Electronics and computer systems and teleprompters and displays and racks of wall monitors. Track and spot lighting. Sound baffle curtains and soundproof rooms. (Lots of shooting and screaming, all fully visible through the glass front wall ... but with the sound "turned off".) Weather radar somewhere in the background. Lots and lots of trippable cables, everywhere. The live trideo soap opera going on - during the run: perhaps even in the middle of the run, when the runners stumble onto the set through the prop door.

And of course, large stand cameras and portacams and microphones everywhere ... most of them with camerapersons, many of them on Matrix-independent systems.

What interesting and different environments, indoors and out, have you come up with or would you like to try running through in your games?
EVLTIM
We used a yaht once that was mored in Seatac harbor .
A preaty Hi powered muckity muck was being held against is will on the yaht so the team needed to get up there and get the job done .
Kagetenshi
Trid station is fun. So is radio station. Matrix service provider or other data storage/processing facility can be neat. Shopping mall during business hours is fun sometimes, as is university/college campus (I've had a few meets go down in library conference rooms). Museum, always interesting. Public transportation.
There are lots of possibilities.

~J
FlakJacket
Got hired to hit a freighter in the middle of the ocean and take it over one time. Take down the crew - either permanently or temporarily - then sail to a certain set of coordinates, offload the cargo to another ship and split.

My GM at the time had somehow managed to basically track down pretty extensive floor plans for a genera; freighter so we had a real good time playing commandos running round the place. smile.gif
Sunday_Gamer
Head for the Barrens, oh the joy, oh the adventure wink.gif

Puyallup has some volcanic flats, mud fields and steam geysers, along with a few abandoned power plants. Redmond has several interesting locations, the most entertaining I believe is tent city, which is, for all intents and purposes, a jungle.

There's tons to see in Seattle =)

Sunday.
Cray74
QUOTE (Talia Invierno)
What interesting and different environments, indoors and out, have you come up with or would you like to try running through in your games?

Well...

There was the Halloween Special where they had a plain vanilla run, a run so completely smooth and quick the players were deeply worried. After that generic, quick run on generic city streets someplace in Asia, they crashed on a Pacific Island on the way home. The Pacific Island, with long-abandoned USAF airbase, was the site of a battle against "zombies" (flesh form insect spirits, the natives). Rather unusual setting - none of the usual mega-firepower gear was available, so they had to make do with M16s and leftover jet fuel.

Then there was the Halloween Special set in the Metaplane that was a cross between Beteljeuse (sp), a Nightmare Before Christmas, and Monkeybone. I'm rather proud of that one, very unusual setting. The runners had to chase down a kid that had run off into the plane.
Shanshu Freeman
QUOTE (Cray74)
QUOTE (Talia Invierno @ Oct 4 2003, 08:50 PM)
What interesting and different environments, indoors and out, have you come up with or would you like to try running through in your games?

Well...

There was the Halloween Special where they had a plain vanilla run, a run so completely smooth and quick the players were deeply worried. After that generic, quick run on generic city streets someplace in Asia, they crashed on a Pacific Island on the way home. The Pacific Island, with long-abandoned USAF airbase, was the site of a battle against "zombies" (flesh form insect spirits, the natives). Rather unusual setting - none of the usual mega-firepower gear was available, so they had to make do with M16s and leftover jet fuel.

Then there was the Halloween Special set in the Metaplane that was a cross between Beteljeuse (sp), a Nightmare Before Christmas, and Monkeybone. I'm rather proud of that one, very unusual setting. The runners had to chase down a kid that had run off into the plane.

Meta-plane? Whassat? Where all your runners magically active?
Dashifen
Let's see ... stadiums, concerts, moving vehicles, hospitals, movie theaters ..... the last two haven't happened yet and the first might happen tonight, but I always try to put the players into a situation when they might be seen by the public. Tends to make them think twice about taking their high-power weapons wink.gif

Not exactly creative, but also not exactly the norm ....

-- Dash --
Cray74
QUOTE (Shanshu Freeman)
QUOTE (Cray74 @ Oct 4 2003, 10:51 PM)
Then there was the Halloween Special set in the Metaplane that was a cross between Beteljeuse (sp), a Nightmare Before Christmas, and Monkeybone. I'm rather proud of that one, very unusual setting. The runners had to chase down a kid that had run off into the plane.

Meta-plane? Whassat? Where all your runners magically active?

If you want to use such a plane for a whole group in a canon fashion, I recommend the "astral gateway" power of free spirits, which can let mundanes into astral space. If such a gateway won't let you into a metaplane, invoke artistic license.

Which is what I did. I liked the concept so much, I just let all the runners in. Besides, it increased the players' freakiness. "Wait...are we in a metaplane?" "Dude, my samurai's got the essence of a toaster oven. He can't go astral. Can he?" "Did some free spirit gate us in?" "I didn't see a spirit, I just saw [the target] run through a mirror..."

And if that's all too non-canon for you, don't use it. It was a bit out on the limb.
Chaos
Try a cave system( a massive one) like mamoth caves. Have all of the com gear go down too. Make the runners lost, seperated and scared of every little sound

This works best if they are hunting a real stealthy Npc/vampire/paracritter

I like the vampire part the best

Ohh yeah the would hear eachothers footsteps echoing all around them.
Buzzed
A run at a zoo can become very fun. Ohh the possibilities. What creatures will you encounter in a zoo?!

Museums can be fun because the hallways are usually designed to make it interesting. Hallways at museums can sometimes turn into labyrinths. The characters could get lost in an artificial cave and suddenly find themselves in the middle of an egyption tomb, then walk onto a 1920's street complete with shops and model T-20's (drone controlled of course). Also lighting and sound effects could be triggered accidently during gunfights creating a hilarious atmosphere.

Amusement parks are quite amusing. Set up a Mr. Johnson ambush deep inside the park. Have his muscle dressed in big fluffy colorful cartoon suits. Basically, any cultural icon that the players can relate to and most likely enjoy shooting. GM: "Look out! Barney just pulled out an SMG and aims it at you!"

Movies to watch with gunfights and such in these particular places:

Zoo - Bird on a Wire
Museum - The Relic
Amusement Park - Beverly Hills Cop 3
FlakJacket
Art galleries are fun, especially for the gratuitous destruction. Gets even more tricky if you're hired to retrieve a package from someone currently touring the museum with bodyguards, who doesn't want to give it up, and the Johnson has specified absolutely no damage to the exhibits - at least from you're side and to minimize any from the others at all costs.

What with the world of the 2060's, I figure that major city art galleries will be like freakin' fortresses. Double reinforced everything, all the scanners you can think of with levels up the yazoo on the doors, gas traps and heavily armoured security squads if anything happens. PC's of mine have spent many a pleasant hour wandering around some of Seattle's finer museums and art galleries talking shop with various Johnsons. Got to the point where Novatech always sent along this one guy that also had an interest so they could pause the shop talk and just enjoy the place every so often. Fine clothing, very decorous, all very polite.

Edit: Damn, and that's what you get for only skim-reading at best the other posts. smile.gif
Buzzed
Another fun idea. An aquarium simular to the one in Chicago. Entire walls with thick glass holding back millions of gallons of water. Watch where you aim that thing.
FlakJacket
But it better have vampire penguins, killer whales and a mad marine biologist. Oh and make that you run it at night with minimal firepower so they have to improvise.
Siege
"Eraser" with governor hopeful Mr. Schwartzeneggar has a gun battle with some massive alligators.

Definitely food for thought.

-Siege
Kagetenshi
The Louvre would be good. Juxtaposition between the basement portions, the newer areas, and the original building...

~J
Siege
This is true -- and a word of warning if you've never been: make sure your shoes are comfortable and broken in.

I do speak from experience.

Ouch.

-Siege
ThatSzechuan
Ever considered a Film Noir-esque Astral Quest?
Kagetenshi
Siege is very, very right.

~J
Zazen
I've used an abandoned missile silo (with all the old crap left as is, so everything was dusty, dank, and cool), an old saw mill, a humongous crackhouse, and a car dealership. That's as exotic as I can think of right now.
Lort Gob
What about an oil refinery, a cruise ship or inside a human body?

I've always been fan of famous locations that exist this very day, and give it a little twist.
BlackSmith
QUOTE (FlakJacket)
My GM at the time had somehow managed to basically track down pretty extensive floor plans for a genera; freighter so we had a real good time playing commandos running round the place. smile.gif

geting your hands on a genue palns is not that hard.
just ask them from manufacturer or ask a scetch copy from them.

i just love the E-mail.

~

most exotic what i have played was desert strike against termite spirit hives middle of desert. it was only me and my buddy and we got no gear for the job, simple recon mission that turned to LOT more.
Cray74
QUOTE (Zazen)
I've used an abandoned missile silo (with all the old crap left as is, so everything was dusty, dank, and cool)

I've found floor plans for those online...they're on sale sometimes, and converted to homes or school. Some people bought themselves a nuclear-proof fortress for $1.00 at the right gov't auctions.

What fascinating potential adventure material, too.

Go to the Lone Eagle silos where the world was held hostage for a few days at the request of some kids of one of the Delta Force members who stormed the silo and killed the activists in it. Find a skeleton of a DF soldier abandoned in the silo, with a couple of bullet holes in the back of his head. Find recordings on his commgear (just needs new batteries) where he's complaining that his commanders deliberately turned down chances to destroy any fired missiles as they emerged from the silo...almost as if someone in the US gov't was determined to let the missiles be fired.

Simple conspiracies to be explored:
*Was someone in the US gov't engineering an excuse to villify Native Americans?
*Was someone trying to engineer a situation where the current President looked bad (remember the recordings of the President alternating praying and weeping when the missile was fired?)

Complicated conspiracy to be explored:
*Was some ancient Machiavellian (sp) schemer trying to engineer the persecution of the Native Americans, the follow-up Great Ghost Dance and breakup of the US?

Mystery and Violence clarified by the selected conspiracy:
*Why the launched missile didn't detonate (it was a dud, perhaps with a damaged heat shield, which would explain the fallout from the missile despite the lack of radiation - the warhead burned up and scattered its fissile material across Russia)
*Why all the activists holding the missile silo were killed during the Delta Force assault (dead men tell no tales)

And the question for the runners:

Okay, you found this information. WTF do you do with it?

(My answer: sell it to a tabloid for 10K nuyen.gif )
FlakJacket
Train freight yards can be good. Lots of movement, noise and cover which can make for an interesting game.
Zazen
QUOTE (Cray74 @ Oct 6 2003, 09:24 AM)
QUOTE (Zazen)
I've used an abandoned missile silo (with all the old crap left as is, so everything was dusty, dank, and cool)

I've found floor plans for those online...they're on sale sometimes, and converted to homes or school.

Yup, those are exactly what I used for the adventure. Where was that site again, missilesilos.com?

I used it as a hideout for a powerful, insane, and weird initiatory group. They were creating zombie mutants and stuff in tanks in between all the reel-to-reel tape machines and 1950's computer consoles. It was an extremely cool setting.
snowRaven
I had the character's sent to an oil drilling platform in the middle of the north sea to take care of a rogue cyberzombie that had gone ballistic and killed the crew (the place had been converted to a secret Novatech research lab) - most of the platform was built with ferrous metal and the zombie had powerful magnetic implants so he could literally run up the walls.

It was a very interesting run. Oh, and did I mention that they were paid a huge bnus if they took down the zombie without damaging him? vegm.gif

(They actually managed it...)
Impact
Hehehe - lessee, done the missile silo(with a doozy of a past), Oil Rig, underwater arcology under construction with no SCUBA/rebreather gear, the Louvre, The British Museum, Nursery School during nap-time, abandoned meat-packing plants, slaughterhouses(FUN background count), Circus, hospitals of all shapes and sizes....my runners get bored with the same old same old.
Arcanum V
MissileBases.com.

I used one of these for one of my favorite runs. The top end was more like a run of the mill missile silo that had been converted into a top secret underground lab. The bottom end was more. . . buggy. And unholy.

. . . in a Kult kind of way. Nachtkafers and techrones are fun! eek.gif

I've also used Scotty's Castle, a computer nerd's robot-filled basement, Hissarlik (Troy), the Sea Shadow, Area 51, Angkor Wat, and the Karnak Temple in one form or another.
Comedian
All about the offshore oil platform.

Disco clubs, movie theatres(porno theatres if you really like to screw with your players), garbage dumps, hospitals, paintball/lasertag facilities, castles, Gold/diamond mines, churches, logging factories, corn fields/rice paddies/cultured pearl farms, hydroelectric dams...
Cray74
QUOTE (Arcanum V)
. . . in a Kult kind of way. Nachtkafers and techrones are fun! eek.gif

Now THERE is a game that gets far too little attention.
Hot Wheels
odd runs we've had include a gym, a bordello with theme rooms and the kingdome, which they obviously rebuilt by 2050 wink.gif .

That was fun becasue the GM who ran that was pretty familiar with the guts of Giants Stadium so had a good idea what the behind the scenes stuff was like.9workers wewre disappearing and the union was ready to take action, solve it before we get bad press!
Drain Brain
QUOTE (Arcanum V)
MissileBases.com.

OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I want one!

COME ON, LOTTERY WIN!!!!
snowRaven
and Kult is 'Made in Sweden', too! grinbig.gif

EVIL game...maybe do an SR crossover? Kult in 2063 anyone???
mfb
lessee. i'm currently running a Betrayal (Threats 2) firefight on the top of an autotruck convoy. i'm planning a fight eventually that will take place in the middle of a parachute drop; i'm trying to decide of the runners will have already strapped their chutes on, or if they'll have to chase 'em down. i'm also pondering a melee in the middle of a strobe-lit, very loud, very packed dance floor--maximum confusion. we once had a random gang fight in the midst of a grocery store, a la food fight--that was a blast, since both of the runners involved ("involved" in this case can be defined as "caught smack in the middle") had brought their kids along. a melee on a large glass skylight might be intersting--figure up some on-the-spot rules for deciding whether or not someone's done something that will break the pane they're standing on.

when you're in need of inspiration, go rent a high-octane action flick, and watch their fight scenes.
Talia Invierno
Seattle remaining still a major crossroads: if it's anywhere in the world, sooner or later it's likely to turn up in Seattle. If the runners themselves don't bring it there or create it, some group of runners or other players will have.
QUOTE
Shopping mall during business hours is fun sometimes
- Kagetenshi

There was a (real life!) group of WoD LARPers - I can't remember where for sure, but it might have been in Florida - who regularly ran their campaign in a shopping mall during regular shopping hours. No one noticed.
QUOTE
as is university/college campus (I've had a few meets go down in library conference rooms)

A scene in one of Tanya Huff's vampire series (I think it was Blood Line) had the heroes desperately searching through a university for the site of the crucial ritual so they can stop it. One of them overhears some references to "cleric", "sacrifice" and such, rushes in ... and finds himself in the middle of a DnD game.
QUOTE
Then there was the Halloween Special set in the Metaplane ...
- Cray74

Oy, metaplanes do take the turn toward anything imaginable! Has anyone yet tried for a Simpsons metaplane? or devil.gif a Dilbert universe?
QUOTE
"Dude, my samurai's got the essence of a toaster oven. ..."

grinbig.gif

Public transit is always fun - and what type of transportation you choose completely alters the dynamics of the exchange/encounter/what have you. Which Shadowrun book was it that ended with a fragged exchange attempt on the Seattle monorail?
QUOTE
Try a cave system( a massive one) like mamoth caves. Have all of the com gear go down too. Make the runners lost, seperated and scared of every little sound
- Chaos

Beautiful! but exceptionally tricky to run - unless the GM is very experienced and skilled, running each runner as completely isolated is an excellent way to create game chaos!

A curious twist on museums and art galleries (and perhaps other former and active palaces - good places to get lost in, so many of them are huge) might require the runners to keep the exhibits intact - the Johnson owns them, but needs one particular item to be stolen out (possibly with associated evidence planted). For some reason that suddenly suggests a Ghostbusters scenario: "Whoa whoa whoa - nice shooting, Tex!"
QUOTE
An aquarium simular to the one in Chicago. Entire walls with thick glass holding back millions of gallons of water. Watch where you aim that thing.
- Buzz

Or maybe a restaurant half under a lake and with similar walls (its theme is "underwater"). Break those, there isn't really going to be an end to the water pouring in. (Mmm ... gives me an idea for the Seattle landmarks thread ...)

Most major public buildings - and especially those which would be over a century old in current SR times - have hidden passages and attics and rooms which periodically flood with water for no apparent reason. For some reason older railway terminal stations seem particularly prone to this kind of construction. There's social groups who continually try to explore their eldritch depths. At least one railway station apparently houses (of all things) a police shooting range.

I'm guessing that most temples usually wouldn't ... but then that would depend on what the temple was constructed to worship - originally - and whether another group has since used the active building as camouflage for its own underground operations.

Didn't at least one person IIRC build their home in a former missile silo?
Drain Brain
QUOTE (Talia Invierno)
<snip>unless the GM is very experienced and skilled, running each runner as completely isolated is an excellent way to create game chaos!
</snip>

Replace "unless" with Especially if

devil.gif

Muahahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!
Talia Invierno
biggrin.gif

Several standard environments are easily quirked simply by using unusual temperatures - or weather conditions! - for that environment. A nice, blinding snowfall inside that standard office building can really put a damper on the average shadowrunner's day ...
Stormdrake
Am working on a possible run on the Field Museum in Chicago (before Strain III but after the quarantine). A friend used to work their and gave me a map that they use to use to navigate the lower levels. Very maze like. If any one has seen the movie reliquary(?) the museum they are running through is the Field Museum. The runners could find almost anything in there. I have been told that the museum was used as a human refuge in the quarantine period but that just leads to images of Aliens and the space marines, lol. It also throws in a nice moral issue. Do they get what they came for and leave the humans to die or do they aid the humans and possibly blow the run?
Lazarus
Want to send the runners to a complete sh*thole? Send them to Africa. There is desert, mountains, jungles, rampant megacorp abuse, and not to mention racial genocide. Man if you want the characters to see grim, dark reality staring them in the face, Africa. I sent my players there and their characters have not been the same since. (Tough to complain about the Barrens of Seattle when you have seen much, much worse. It's also tough to have any empathy for super rich corp types when you see how they make all that money.)
Stormdrake
Research bases or prisons in the artic could be fun and creepy. Especially if the inhabitants have vanished or died horribly seemingly at each others hands.
Drain Brain
QUOTE (Stormdrake)
Research bases or prisons in the artic could be fun and creepy. Especially if the inhabitants have vanished or died horribly seemingly at each others hands.

It's not original, but you are still soooooooo right... devil.gif
ShieldT
Stormdrake - The Relic?
Stormdrake
My bad. I gave the title of the book that followed the relic but was thinking of "The Relic".
Snow_Fox
QUOTE (EVLTIM)
We used a yaht once that was mored in Seatac harbor .
A preaty Hi powered muckity muck was being held against is will on the yaht so the team needed to get up there and get the job done .

Yeah, we did a run where we were baby sitting a big star on her yatch cruising down the coast.

Another different run would be on an underwater complex, you start blazing away with AP rounds you will start bringing the whole place down around your ears.

We also did a run as guards on an archeological dig in the PCC that was having a whole bunch of paranormal problems.
Dim Sum
Unusual locales in which my players have found themselves:
- a deep underwater arkoblock slowly flooding (Abyss meets The Rock).
- an ancient Mayan teocalli filled with old booby-traps (very Indianna Jones).
- top of a speeding train (hehe, yeah, very cliched).
- (hijacking) a naval submarine (a la Under Siege with a twist).
- a haunted house in an amusement park.
- Hiroshima a day before the atomic bomb was dropped (time travel scenario which didn't work out as well as I thought it might).
- unopened kaer from the Earthdawn era (went surprisingly well!).
- an aging VLCC (that's Very Large Crude Carrier for the uninitiated).
- catacombs in Rome.
Drain Brain
How about the lair of a something in a geode or crystaline cavern formation?
ShieldT
How about a rice field in CFS or otherwise? You have 6-30 foot ditches filled randomly with water (whether you jump or swim it's a great way to test your Athletics), some with crumbling sides ready to absorb any passing too heavy vehicle, hundreds of bridges in various states of repair. You have too thin dirt roads that twist and turn and sometimes dead end without apparent reason, weeds lining them too high to see across in places, others where you have no landmark for miles. The main gravel roads are great for fishtailing and scraping up a car's paintjob if you go too fast. You even have rice fields that are flooded, blocky rough and dry, filled with 5 foot rice, or flooded with 5 foot rice depending on the time of year. Great for rolls involving tripping / losing your shoes or even your socks. You also have small airstrips for clandestine transportation, and the pounding seasonal rain can flood and washout areas of road, or render places death traps for vehicles, depending on your mood. The local barns are also great for track vehicles and local Alien-syle 'walker' loaders, great for esoteric rigging.

CFS agriculture is naturally a focal point for the country's 'Water Wars'... And you can always have a paracritter/manhunt across the fields. How about having to kill a flock of storm crows threating to rain out harvest and costing local farmers millions of nuyen.gif ? Have the farmer provide vehicles with heavy mounted net guns and see how well they navigate smile.gif
Maybe they were even introduced as part of a localized corp plot, so you can expect opposition..

How about having to track a huge animal.. Or say... Your runners were asked to go to the local town and 'extract' the resident with internal nanites giving off a radio signal. The run goes off without a hitch, except, while being transported to the dropoff point over a bridge he reveals himself as a seal shapeshifter and disappears (maybe even still handcuffed/whatever) into the network of ditches. Ignore the nanites and impose a time limit if you really want it to be hairy.

Don't forget to have them run afoul of any local nature spirits equipped with Confusion/whatever. grinbig.gif
Seville
I always wanted to send the runners to a long abandoned, sunken nuclear sub. Maybe something where the virus wiped out the whole crew, but the hull is intact, and the runners have to go down an locate it. Nothing works anymore, but there are Shedim trapped down there, who use the PCs equipment to escape. The players have to jury rig the equipment on the sub to escape, and maybe the aging hull finally begins to leak due to the runners actions. Could be lots of fun.
Kanada Ten
How about a luxurious Spa, nestled in the Cascades. You could have Cascade Crows as guards around the land and security personal on-site. Or not.

It would suck to get trapped there in the winter while trying to steel some of the spa's famous healing water. Then to accidently release the angery spirits once set to guard the springs, but that the lodge owners had trapped in a champagin bottle. Of course the spirits don't attack directly. Instead they use Confusion and Illusions to drive you insane.


[Edit]That site even has floor plans for some of the lodge and ballrooms, ect.
Talia Invierno
It might suck even more if the PCs choose to go there for some downtime R&R and decide to have some fun ... grinbig.gif
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