Hoi chummers,

I've been planning a run for my non-magical group and though i have the rough outline ready I need to run it by some players to see what kind of fancy ways they can come up with to totally ruin the run before i let my players at it. I also could use some professional suggestions into the finer points of the run.

The group runs out of the United Netherlands, and while skimming through the SoE book i came across a fun little tidbit of info: Nestlé, a corp that in 2006 specialises in foodstuffs and is known amoungst the people for their breakfast cereals, survived the awakening and is alive and kicking in 2070. Nestlé (most likely an A, maybe AA, corp) was targetted by Zeta-Imp Chem for a takeover, increasing their revenue and market share over the current AA leader in western europe, AG Chemie.

Enough of the history lesson, lets get to the basics of the run:
AG wants some runners to infiltrate a production facility of Nestlé to add a common street level drug to the food additives. The ensuing media frenzy will take a fair bite out of their revenue, on top of what they'll need to spend to recall and destroy the crackcereal, plus Zeta-Imp Chem will lose face quite a bit.

How do they go about this?
I see two options for this:
1) They switch a truckload of food additives to a truckload of crack and they never even have to set foot inside the facility, save a quick incursion to make sure it passes the inspection. How they'll score such a huge amount (how much exactly?) of drugs remains a question, but a Maas-Wachter Security depot (Lone Star equivalent) could have apprehended a sufficient amount from smugglers in the north of the country, which is fairly fitting for the setting really and is an extra run by itself.

2) A small quantity of a particularly fun enzyme could be injected into the storage of the additives, the enzyme will be engineered to alter the chemical so its structure transforms into the drug. I can't think of any plausible explenation of who would produce such an enzym though, and it would have to be provided by the johnson which is kind of a deus ex machina... could use some help here.


The Aftermath:
Once the news gets out that kids are going into psychedelic sugar rushes far beyond anything ever seen, and after a few unfortunate deaths, Nestlé will have no choice to clean up the mess. Ofcourse large quantities of drugs that are stored until their destruction are always lucrative targets, even if they're in cereal form. The few lucky druggies who were lucky enough to buy a few boxes that supply them with part of a balanced breakfast along with their daily fix inspire a local gang to raid the storage facility and get away with the food. The runners would be hired as extra muscle for this, or as infiltrators to liberate the drugs while the gang plays the role of cover fire. This would depend on how itchy their trigger fingers are getting at this point.

There you have it, dead children and streets overrun by cerealjunkies, how's that for influence in the gameworld?



I know there is someone on this board that works in the food industry, it'd be great to get some insight in how these things are produced on a large scale and what kind of checks there are before products are actually used in the process.

Also, if anyone spots any flaws in the run, possible shortcuts or knows interesting possible twists, please note em here! Lets pull together to make this one hell of a sweet run! (pun intended)

I thought there already was crack in Frosted Flakes...

Great idea for a run. I'd just make sure that you phrase the job such that the group is aware that there are several ways of getting the mission accomplished other than dumping buckets of meth into the cornflake machine (i.e., something like "the cereal has to be tainted with a street drug of your choice, sufficient to cause a recall.")

I'm assuming their pay will include compensation for buying the drug? If it didn't my players would walk away.

I can see players getting an empty truck and painting it up to have all the company markings on it along with all the paperwork and driving into the plant with contaminated materials to be used in the production process as well.

What were you planning on for opposition? I would certainly think heavy matrix and physical security given your groups make-up, but I might want to push the edge by throwing a mage in or some spirits.

Finally... one of the Shadowrun staples:

It just isn't a run until you get screwed by Mr. Johnson.

Where is the twist? What do you have to throw at the players that isn't expected?

Also, think about the scope of the adventure. Does this run lead to a mafia boss's kid getting high and finding out the players pulled off the job?

Do you want to keep going on this theme for more then one night?

The short description you have is good enough for a GM to wing a one night adventure, if your planning on more then I think you need some more details. We need to know who the NPCs are and what are the motivations?

Very rarely would I ever make a run in which corp A wants to screw over corp B and they go to Shadowrunners. To me it always makes more since to think of motivations on a personal level. Why does this particular Johnson need to make this run happen? If there are personal motivations beyond nuyen you will find much more for-filling stories to tell.

Dear Lord no. Don't subscribe to the "the Johnson has to screw you" mindset. Most Johnsons would a0 be too afraid of these hired killers to screw them, b) want to be able to hire future runners without a history of double-crossing, or c) have more to lose from backstabbing then from playing square. A run where the Johnson screws you should be rare, otherwise it loses it's bite and just becomes another expected portion of the evening's gameplay. "Ok guys, we just got the target, let's go hole up somewhere and wait for the J to try to hand us over to Lone Star or something."

Even if they have to get the drug themselves they'll still have to plan how to get it in. Leaving drug acquisition up t them adds challenges, it doesn't detract from the other challenges inherent in the run.

I don't think the Johnson should screw over the group, but you should definately think of a twist of some kind. For example in On the Run...



You should also read the intro story in the rulebook. Very very similar to your run idea, and it includes a nice twist.

I like the idea of having them be temp employees, but you really don't need to have that done, as part of the fun would be casing the facility and finding a way in, while working on covering their tracks.

I think Mr. J should supply the chemical. Maybe his motivation is more to test the chemical that they have developed and he wants to use another company and their customers as the guinea pigs...

I think you could also make it a part of the job to recalibrate the "quality" machines/programs, so not only do the runners need to infiltrate and drop the vial of chemicals into the batch, but they also need to get into the system and reconfigure. Maybe Mr. J gives them a program or specs that they need to load as well, so the batch will get processed undetected...

You may even want to make it that the specific batch that is going to be "fixed" is being processed that night, so putting a limitation on the time as well could work to your advantage and make it a solid, quick hit adventure. The runners get a couple hours to case and infiltrate, then a couple more to make the drop and respec the quality processes before the batch is processed and the run fails...

Just some random thoughts.

Ah, from what I've seen of the food industry (ok, I toured a Kraft foods production plant) there's no way you can just innocently throw some CRACK in there without anyone noticing big time.

Your best bet is to say the entire facility is automated, with abolutely 0 human presence. The facility is monitored remotely by a team in Nestlé HQ somewhere else. As long as the machines don't report a malfunction (which actually happens fairly often but it's no big deal), no one comes to check up on them.

In order to achieve 0 human presence, the machines have an insane level of complexity and highly advanced sensors. IRL, there are so many little things that go wrong that humans always have to be around to constantly perform small maintenance tasks. So to have a fully automated facility, the technology level has to be very impressive.

This doesn't really matter for the runners though, it's just something for you to keep in mind. As far as the runners are concerned, the hurdle is this: the sensors WILL detect that there is a foreign ingredient (cocaine) in the cereals.

The runners will therefore need a good hacker to mess that machine up and let it pass the cocaine, probably by adding cocaine into the Recipe List the machine has in memory to compare against.

Today, as we speak, Nestlé intentionally murders one million children every year, give or take. In 070, a little crack in tehir cereal will not faze them. Recall and destroy? Hell no. Just divert new shipments of the tainted cereal to Africa and South America.

As for adding the chemical, this is best done in the warehouse, not the factory. By the time they're in the warehouse they're sealed in airtight containers and all the testing has been done. All you need to do is jab the bags with hypodermic needels and fill them up. Repeat 20 million times or so. Drones help.

Woah... Please try to keep RL(even if it is real) out of the game world, will ya?

That's like the third time I hear Nestlé is like the epitome of evil... what's up with that? I'm missing a story here I think...?

Another way to do this would be to bypass production entirely and just go after random cereal boxes in stores. Grocery stores will be far less secure and there will be no further checking of the cereal. With a large enough effort, this will still cause the scandal desired (how large of the effort depends on how many childern severely affected you think is needed to become a media target, I would say 3). For added effect, get plane tickets and do it to scattered places all over North America or the world. That'll help slow down the invisigation as they'll likely assume at first that something during processing or transport is the cause of the problems. This will however remove the whole "warehouse full of crack" subplot.

Hey why crack? Microbes make lots of interesting compounds. Just inject some spores into the bag and let nature take its cause.

Well assuming you are paying 5Y for a crack rock, that's 250K Y for 50K crack rocks. In addition, you'll have to do some processing on the crack to get it into a form that you can contaminate the food with. Of course these would be street prices for the drugs, and you hardly walk up and buy 50,000 doses of a drug from your corner dealer. Of course, you can probably buy hazardous industrial chemicals for muhc less. Or even better, bid on a toxic waste disposal contract, so you get paid to haul away the stuff you are going to later poison the food with .

Of course, good spin doctors with the Nestle could make the company look like a fellow victim instead of the villian here. A much better choice would be to find some toxic chemical that Nestle produces, then miss-direct some of it into the food production vats. Then Nestle won't be able to play the 'outside agitator card', after all their own toxic chemicals somehow ended up in the food.

The way I see it is that using a drug allows a bunch of other follow up runs involving the drug tainted cereal. Sure, using a bacterial or fungal agent might also work, but in all honesty that's probably going to get noticed before the poor unfortunate eats the cereal. You might try something a little easier to administer than crack though. LSD could be entertaining plus it's very concentrated and a little goes a long way. Ethically minded runners would also probably be more comfortable with LSD as it is not going to kill due to an overdose.

Targetting the cereal once it has reached stores is useless, as the producer will blame the distributers or retailers. It needs to be done at source so that the paper trail leads to one complete batch not to the odd packet in many different batches.

The runners will need to do some hefty research on the manufacturing process, either talking to a worker or somehow getting the face into the facility so they knnow the appropriate point at which to plant the compound. If, as has been suggested, the plant employs zero labour some other tack would need to bhe taken.

Regardless the machinery used in food manufacture is invariably large, shiny and very complicated. A cursory glance would probably not yield adequate understanding to operate the machine. Also, these machines can be quite dangerous incorporating high pressures, high temperatures and, on occasion, whirling blades. Be sure to drop unprepared and arrogant runners into the machine so the rest of the team can enjoy Runner Flakes, Runner Pops and Chocolate Coated Puffed Runners!