I just watched "Last Team Standing," and the object was The Briefcase™. It is never explained what The Briefcase™ is. I was immediately reminded of Ronin, where there was also The Briefcase™. Have you ever done this to your players, where they have to transport The Briefcase™?

Yeah, all the time. Sometimes the "briefcase" is another package of some sort also. They're always given the instruction not to open it.

Do they ever open The Briefcase™?

Ha. I just ran a "briefcase" run just before my last game ended. It was a distraction, the briefcase was empty. The standard "don't open the briefcase" instructions were given, and ... they didn't.

I was amazed.

If you run with genuinely competent professionals, it takes a hell of a lot to make them open the case.

I don't think anyone in my gaming group has ever opened the case, despite offers of payment and threats of reprisal.

I only GMed one "case" run. From the Shadows of the Underworld adventures.


You know which "case" I'm reffering to, right?

Needly to say, they did open it but at least they made sure the contents got delieved to the rightful owner.

I made a run that was the Johnson testing the runners professionalism before trusting them with some really heavy work.

So, it's a Briefcase run -- you know, get it from this guy, deliver it to this guy in 3 days. Keep it secret, keep it safe, don't open it.

What was in the briefcase? 20 kilos of high explosive, wired to explode if: 1) the case is opened, 2) light hits the inner liner (in case of drilling and a tiny camera), or 3) it gets hit with a high enough dose of X-Rays.

They opened it. The case exploded, and the heavily cyber'd troll was the only one there who survived. Barely.

Mr. J only had to watch the news to discover that the team wasn't reliable.

-------

From that point on, my players always made sure they opened everything they got from a Johnson with a remote drone. And they don't open the Package (unless so instructed)

I had the Briefcase™ done to me a lot of times. Most of the times I am really tempted to open it... even tried it a few times.
I wonder: We can infiltrate heavy secured facilities undetected, but we can't open a Briefcase™ undetected?
Or why is there another, Smaller Briefcase™ in it, which is even harder to open?

The one time we actually managed to get to the contents, it turned out to be a a very poisonous chemical agent (which would have leaked out anyways, as the GM later admitted).

So, if you have a Briefcase™ at your hands, which you should not open, do the natural thing and give it a try, sometime.

Genuinely competent professionals would never take a briefcase run, period. It is a damned if you do and damned if you don't scenario. If you don't open it the contents may kill you; if you do open it the contents may kill you; there is no way to know.
It is best to have one simple rule. Never transport a package unless you are told up front what is in the package.

Wha? What's the point of that? All it does is force the J to come up with a good lie.

~J

Best story reguarding the briefcase? I had crashed a team into the middle of no where. The second thing one of the charcters did (after he stopped burning), was open the case.
Point blank ICE consussive, with an incendary chaser.

IPE, you mean? Or has the border between the Wired and the world broken?

If a Johnson can afford to have people know what's in the case, he would use Fedex.

Edit: Plus the very good chance that Johnson doesn't know what's in the case either. If knowledge of what's in the case is a lethal secret, than why would he want to know either.

I did the briefcase to my new SR4 crew. They were sufficiently paranoid but didn't open the case. They had less than a day to deliver, and it was a test by the fixer. Now they are screwing uo runs with a new GM.

I got a briefcase run once. I made it ALMOST to the end without opening it, but I finally failed my will save. There was a crazy robotic skull inside which I used to do a puppet show with.

I have given briefcase runs. Generally the J doesn't ask the runners to open the briefcase (in my runs) because the contents are worth more than the runners are getting paid. As an experienced runner (as in, someone with friends but also enemies), however, I would be unlikely to accept a briefcase job unless I knew the Johnson or knew what was in the briefcase. Otherwise you just let your worst enemy kill you for $5k down.

I'll always have the Johnson be smart enough to make sure the players are good. If they aren't, either I screw up, or it's a plot point.

Does not the 'breifcase' run usually get preceeded by a long conversation about french fast food?

Not since Seattle went metric.

~J

I don't know. I didn't go into Burger King.

It is an excellent plot device that can create a lot of tension if it is used correctly and not over used. The two big instances where I feel it was used right was Ronin, and Mission Impossible III.

However, GM's have a tendancy to overuse it and abuse it. The instance of the case exploding was stupid. The GM new the players were going to open, and he chose to execute them.

The best use of McGuffins is when people simply do not have time to open them. Once you open them, they are no longer McGuffins. From the instant you get the case you should be on the clock with just enough time to deliver it.

That was one thing that I had to give MI:III credit for (well, that and taking some steps back towards the relatively cerebral original from the pure action flick second movie)—they let the MacGuffin be a MacGuffin. No explanation, no plot to set it off, no nothing within the scope of the movie.

~J

Much agreed. Though I must admit, where MI:III was an action movie, it was pretty damn good at it. The opening raid was fucking excellent.

Where does the term "MacGuffin" come from?

Hitchcock. It's something everyone wants that functions purely as an abstract plot device.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin

Rubbs his hands together.

It’s a term that Alfred Hitchcock coined to explain a plot device that moves a story forward but is not actually explained.

The number of amusing things you can do with a briefcase are staggering.

Probably the best briefcase I've heard of, though, is the one where the SRs ask what's in it, and the Johnson says "Documents. Ones that are too sensitive to transmit normally."

If the SRs investigate to the point of opening it and checking out the contents, they're documents, all right... in the Usual Suspects tradition. Their character's personal history, regular hangouts, contacts, family, friends... and a little note saying "I asked you not to open the case. Call me at this number, I've got some work for you to make it up to me."

You might as well have him transporting some actual documents in the case. Otherwise your runners get pissed

How does the J know they opened the case? Having it be airtight (and filled with nitrogen) is a pretty good way. If he cracks it once it's delivered and something besides pure nitrogen comes out, it's been opened. If he cracks it and gets pure N2, he knows he can hire these guys to do stuff more advanced than shootups and distractions.

How would you measure that only N2 was coming out? Open it in a vacuum chamber?

Pretty cheap to do, compared to hiring Shadowrunners.

~J

Of course, "pop-top" briefcases work pretty well, too. They're manufactured by Snapple.

Every Briefcase run I've tried with my group they don't even get back to the safehouse before they try to open it. That's why the last time I GMed one it was a bomb set to explode upon opening since the group had gotten a rep for looking in things the shouldn't.

Now they have a fixer with an X-ray, ultrasound, and MAD scanner. So when thier expirencing pandora syndrone they just take it to him. He charges them out the yinyang for the scans but they're stupid enough to pay to see that the briefcase has a thin lead lining that prohibits X-ray and ultrasound and the MAD scan came back negative, but it's thier dime.

I've had alot of fun with that too, once the briefcase contained a replica of the Hellraiser cube, complete with bound spirit, that manifested chains and things like that. And the sad part was one of the PC's had a skill in 20th century movies, and opened the cube. You should have seen the look on the player's face when I told him a force 9 spirit of man was not very happy with him.

Dude, how does Mr. Johnson open the briefcase, if professional criminals can't?

Shouldn't runners have ways of spoofing whatever high-tech countermeasures Mr. Johnson might have?

Sure, which is why you give them a time limit to deliver. If they can open the case undetected and still make it on time, then that demonstrates their abilities as much (if not more) than those professionals that don't open it.

Also, the cost of opening and resealing the case can approch the cost of the job very easiliy.

Yep, they can opent he case. Like I said though, it's doing it without getting caught that can be the hard part. To use an example given above, how would the runners ever think to refill the briefcase with pure nitrogen after they opened it?

The Briefcase™ isn't just a shadowrun thing ... I did in in fantasy (Scroll, Letter, Crate), the presence (Letter, packet, storage medium, Briefcase™), and the future (Crate, chip, Briefcase™) and the far future (Crate, data crystal, etc).

Always the same, alltough the fantasy ones are normally easier to get into .

They can also have the hardest to find traps. Magc=ic is hard to see with the naked eye, and detection doesn't necessarily mean there's a trap, there could be a cool item ni there.

NEVER OPEN THE CASE!!

Just like a good Gamemaster .