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Backgammon
I have a run coming up, and I want the fixer to set them up to do a run versus a low-level corp, like A-level maximum. Not too much security, standard rent-a-cops probably, nothing hard.

I'm having trouble of thinking up of a good reason for a run, and a good setting. I was thinking firebomb the offices of a corp renting out of a larger building, but I'm not too sure.

Anyone got any ideas? The runner's strenght are social skills and demolitions, so preferably I'd like to set them up on a demolitin run where they can negociate past security and things like that.
Calvin Hobbes
The runners are hired by Eagle Security to rig a series of gas bombs throughout the ventilation system, which will knock most of the security personnel out for the raid on them tomorrow. (The president of the company will be visiting and he's being arrested by the corporate court for stock manipulations (read: not cutting them in for a share)).

Then, the PCs get dosed with a leaky container, and have to complete the job with serious stun as two rent-a-cops try to capture them with tazers.
ethinos
If they can't sweet talk someone, blow them up!

Corp A makes cars. In fact they have a sweet prototype ready to be tested.

Corp B makes cars too. Their prototype is a couple months behind Corp A's.

Corp B hires the fixer to scramble a team to "delay" the prototype of Corp A from being ready to test. (The prototype is being constructed at a subcontracted design studio.) After all, the first to the market usually makes the bigger splash.

Blow it up. Steal it. Drive it off a cliff. Up to the players on how they want to muck stuff up sufficiently enough to delay repairing or replacing the prototype. (Building a prototype requires a lot of one-off parts and sometimes unplanned changes. A new prototype might take months at the least.)
Kalvan
The Runners are hired to infiltrate the Aztechnology pyramid-in Giza, Egypt.

The Runners are hired by PETA to break out some paracritter sports mascots.

The Runners are forced to choose between covering up a heinous crime by (insert established real world church denomination here) or furthering the agenda (however reluctantly) of a toxic shaman.

There is a new and disturbing trend on the streets: instead of illegally bosted signal simsense chips, people are purchasing special members of the incect order Coleoptera and inserting them into modified simrigs and chipjacks.

The Runners are asked to smuggle some dope across the Salish-Sidhe border. After undoing the gag, they discover that he's no dope, just a jerk!
Ravor
The Runners are hired to empty an apartment of the current rentors so it can be condemed and bulldozed, do they use their Social Skills or weaken the building's surport enough to force everyone to leave? And what do they do when a little old lady/young child gets trapped in one of the upper floors while the building is threatening to collaspe?
Calvin Hobbes
It amazes me how fast most groups get to explosives. They're so fragging expensive, it seems like a total waste of the payoff to use them. How much are people getting per mission?
Critias
QUOTE (Calvin Hobbes)
It amazes me how fast most groups get to explosives. They're so fragging expensive, it seems like a total waste of the payoff to use them. How much are people getting per mission?

Well, if the entire purpose of the job is to blow something up, I can see a Johnson equipping them with some explosives, just because they're completely necessary for the completion of the task at hand.

Granted, that doesn't seem to be the case in any of the examples folks have mentioned thus far, but generally speaking it's how things have been done in the games I recall explosives being a factor. If your job is to blow up XYZ, Mr. J hooks you up with ABC in addition to your normal payment, etc, with the assumption that ABC is gonna get planted on XYZ.
Nidhogg
The fixer hires you to grab some floorplans and crap for seting up a 'real' run. The run is a cakewalk: all it invloves is a grabbing a folder or two from an office in a skyscraper. Problem is, halfway through, other runners on an unrelated run hit a AAA corp PR office on the top floor, and go in guns blazing. By the time the runners figure out what's going on up top, an NPC runner is hurtling from the top floor with an Azzie blood spirit in tow, and Lone Star ia getting ready to siege the building.
Snow_Fox
1)The group is hired to insert some data to the corp's mainframe. Get in/get out without tipping off security.

The plan is they are setting up corp A, later another team will make a run at the corp and 'discover' the evidence.

2)The team must make a run at the private, off line, data of a VP. his wife believes he is having an affair and wants evidence.

3) team must break in without tipping off security and kleave a message on the desk of an exec. This is part of a black mail scheme, pay up or your dark secret comes out.
Dog
Mr. Johnson is at the center of some public relations fiasco. In order to draw attention away, he wants his own company hit. He is also the inside man and can provide all kinds of details on the security and generally help make sure it's an easy job.
will_rj
I GMed a Social Skills / Demolition run last week.

- Group is contacted by misterious Johnson.
- Legwork shows that Mr. Jīs name is really unknown in the streets, but he seems to be afiliated with the Biochemical part in Telestrian Industries
- Mission is to extract a doctor in a small corpīs research facility and plant charges in his lab, but only in the lab.
There are 3 main lines of research in the facility, which are fertilizers, agrotoxics and transgenic food. Let the players believe that this info is completely irrelevant.

( I used to maps from the Forced Recon mission, from shadowrun missions)

Twists...
The lab is insulated in such a way that itīs not possible to use radio detonators from the outside, only timers.

If the players do it right, they can go in and out without raising any suspiscion.
Actually, If their plan is not completely stupid, just let it work.

After they leave the facility, the doctor awakes (if they didnīt put him to sleep during the extraction, then make him faint when he sees the explosives) and tells them that there are some samples in his research on agrotoxics that are nano-smart poison agents, but there are lots of them in the lab and the explosion will probably insta-kill everyone in some miles.

That means, MrJ is actually a terrorist of some sort, who contacted the good doc pretending to be from Telestrian.

Now the players have 2 interesting issues to deal with:
- The clock is ticking, should they try to save the day ?
- What should they do with the doc ?


I think it was a very fun run to GM and i assume the players liked it. After all, disarming can be much more exciting than planting smile.gif





Backgammon
QUOTE (Nidhogg)
The fixer hires you to grab some floorplans and crap for seting up a 'real' run. The run is a cakewalk: all it invloves is a grabbing a folder or two from an office in a skyscraper. Problem is, halfway through, other runners on an unrelated run hit a AAA corp PR office on the top floor, and go in guns blazing. By the time the runners figure out what's going on up top, an NPC runner is hurtling from the top floor with an Azzie blood spirit in tow, and Lone Star ia getting ready to siege the building.

I like will_rj's too, but it's too high-level for what I'm aiming for currently. I'll keep it in mind for later though, as it does combine well face+demo.

Haha I like this one smile.gif

QUOTE

3) team must break in without tipping off security and kleave a message on the desk of an exec. This is part of a black mail scheme, pay up or your dark secret comes out.


I also like this one. Therefore, I shall combine the two! Runners are hired to put a message on the exec's desk, but another team goes in guns blazing on the AAA roosted on top of the building. LS SWAT shows up and set up the siege, the runners shit temselves, until they notice the cops don't give a damn about them.. hihihi...
Wounded Ronin
How'd it turn out? What did you end up doing?
Backgammon
The runners get a call in the middle of the night to sneak into a small corp building and defuse the bomb the client is sitting on, pronto.

They snuck past the feeble security measures - cameras, maglocks and 1 roaming guard. Then the demolitions expert defused the bomb. The client, the CFO of a small accounting company, turns out to be a good friend of the fixer that hired the runners. He's dirty as hell, laudering money and the likes. He did not alert building security, because the investigation onto why he's sitting on a bomb would have led maybe into investigation of his records. After being freed, he immediatly hires the runners to go after the people that did this to him, a band of orcs.

The bomb was set to go off at about 6 am if the client hadn't transfered money to the orcs account by then. Now, it is to be noted, I purposely made the band of orcs stupid. Their plan was full of holes. So, anyway, the client, while tied up on the chair and sitting on a pressure pad, was still free to make phone calls (in the orcs mind, he would use the phone to arrange payment. They didn't know he had a fixer friend). So the client had a decker trace the orcs to where they are hiding out, an abandonned gas station.

The runners take the big epoxy bomb they disarmed and head for the gas station. Fast forward a slow approach of the building, recon, and many stealth roles, and the runners end up planting the bomb, along with extra C4 just in case, on the first floor of the gas station building (2nd floor are small offices, where the orcs are sitting blissfully unaware, waiting for the money from the client), right under the orcs. BOOM goes the building.

Police investigation declared that the orcs were up to unspecified no good, but one of their own home-made bombs blew up accidentally. Case closed.

So, all in all, it was an easy run, but it was fun.

Edit: I realise this isn't what I said I'd do, but I was still rolling the idea around in my head, when I mentionned my ideas to my girlfriend. She suggested the bomb-defusing thing for "teh shaderun thing I play", which I found to be inspiring.
Wounded Ronin
Sounds very easy but also very amusing. It'd be perfect for a newbie run. Maybe you should write it up as a module for newbie GMs and players.
Backgammon
Ok, need advice for another one:


The runners are hired by a fledgling terrorist group for a meeting with a larger terrorist organisation, looking to possibly absorb the smaller group. The large group is, unknown to everyone, a wing of Winternight (this is pre-SF). The runners are now one Social Adept and one face/sammy. The two runners are actually at odds, at the moment. The Social Adept has a contract to kill the face/sammy (obviously, the face/sammy doesn't know this).

Now, what I'm thinking, is that Winternight sets up the meet in a suitably creepy and isolated place - maybe a water treatment plant, abandonned automated facility, etc. Advice on suitable locale welcomed.

I want the shit to hit the fan, somehow. My ideas include having one of the fledgling terrorits actually be FBI, and call down SWAT on the meet, which the runners have to fight their way out off. Or maybe Winternight gets nervous and decides to grease everyone present. Point is, I need gunfights, and I need escaping while being hunted down.

But, what I need is a "shit hits the fan" scenario that the runners can actually survive... i.e., if I do the SWAT thing, it's unlikely they would, unless I made SWAT dumb.

So any advice would be welcome!
DireRadiant
Do whatever seems like fun.

One way to handle SWAT showing up, is to have another group show up. Or more. e.g. if the Terrorists, and SWAT, and someone other people are there, then have them get in each others way as they attempt to achieve their mutually exclusive objectives. Oops, got away from the Cops because the Terrorists thought the SWAT team was after them, not the runners. Add more or less to taste.

Unless your confident on the players being able to handle the fact one has the contract to kill the other, I'd be very careful in doing this. It can lead to a lot of bad blood OOCly.
Ravor
Personally if I were you, I'd do both of your ideas, the SWAT does show up, but Winternight actually hired the Runners to gather the smaller group of Terrorists in one place in order to grease everyone in the first place. (They hired the Runners because they didn't want to risk losing one of their own in a crossfire, or maybe they are planning to geek everyone with an experimental something that won't discrimate between 'us' and 'them'.)

Wounded Ronin
QUOTE (Backgammon)
Ok, need advice for another one:


The runners are hired by a fledgling terrorist group for a meeting with a larger terrorist organisation, looking to possibly absorb the smaller group. The large group is, unknown to everyone, a wing of Winternight (this is pre-SF). The runners are now one Social Adept and one face/sammy. The two runners are actually at odds, at the moment. The Social Adept has a contract to kill the face/sammy (obviously, the face/sammy doesn't know this).

Now, what I'm thinking, is that Winternight sets up the meet in a suitably creepy and isolated place - maybe a water treatment plant, abandonned automated facility, etc. Advice on suitable locale welcomed.

I want the shit to hit the fan, somehow. My ideas include having one of the fledgling terrorits actually be FBI, and call down SWAT on the meet, which the runners have to fight their way out off. Or maybe Winternight gets nervous and decides to grease everyone present. Point is, I need gunfights, and I need escaping while being hunted down.

But, what I need is a "shit hits the fan" scenario that the runners can actually survive... i.e., if I do the SWAT thing, it's unlikely they would, unless I made SWAT dumb.

So any advice would be welcome!

Well, for a creepy locale that the players can survive, don't go for the Sho Kosugi esque abandoned plant. That's atmospheric but it can be surrounded and the players are screwed. Instead, make it happen on the docks. The players get surrounded on the docs and are taking hits but they can escape by diving into the disgusting, oiliy, polluted water. Make all their wounds get infected and they might have to discard equipment as their Athletics TNs get high. It would be a gritty and malodorous escape!
hyzmarca
First, the FBI would not reasonably set up a sting like this. They would instead go along and attempt to infiltrate the group. Winternight would not send any of its higher ups. Capturing those people wouldn't make a significant dent in Winterknight's plans. They' d to best to wait and gather as much intel as possible.

Second, Winternight has no good reason to attack a small upstart terrorist group. Their business is the end of the world. Unless these terrorists are trying to interfere with that then they wouldn't have any reason to attack.

So, the little guys are not FBI and the big buys are not Winternight.

Instead, the big guys are the FBI and the little guys are upstart militamen who get some funding from the New Revolution.

The militiamen beleive that the break up the the US was illegal and that the United States still exists as a Soverign legal entity. They refer to theselves as the Washington State Milita. They beleive that they are the only legitimate military orginization in the Unisted States of America and assert that they are US citizens. They refuse to pay taxes and call the UCAS an occupying government.

The BATF has been putting pressure on them because of their unlicensed assualt cannons, miniguns, and ATGMs, among a plethora of other weapons big and small. Afraid of an iminent government raid (they're patriotic sepertists, not idiots;they don't want to do a Waco) they attempt to contact their handlers in the NR for help. However, the FBI followed their messenger to the dead drop and intercepted the message. Some agents are intrigued by this new devolpment and want to expand the investigation but this is shot down because the NR has people at or near the top of the FBI and on many other levels, as well. Instead, the agents were ordered to send a reply and set up the sting.

The runners were hired primarilary to gather intel and run interferance. They should not be in the area of the firefight. Rather, they should be doing security and overwatch first and foremost (yeah, they don't seem like overwatch guys but they'll be glad that they diversified when they aren't guned down in FBI/BATFcrossfire).

The run itself takes place in a disused sewage treatment plant. The place is huge and most of the cesspools are empty although a few are filled with filth that has just been sitting there and rotting for 50+ years. The equpiment is rusty and out of date, having been obselete before the awakening. Good footwork and high perception scores will reveal that there are drain pipes which empty into a nearby body of water and which happen to be large enough for an ork to crawl through (trolls may have trouble fitting).

The NR agents in the FBI and the BATF have set this up so it won't go well. The militamen will attempt to surrender but someone will fire (the shooter is not in either party and the PCs may see her with a decent perception test).
Once the first shot is fired nothing can stop what happens. The FBI agents start shooting the militamen in self-defense and the militamen start shooting the FBI agents in self-defense. At this point the BATF agents, who are unaware of the FBI operation, break in and start shooting at both groups and both groups start shooting at them. So, you've got two government agencies and some crazy militamen trying to kill each other and the culprit trying to excape through a convienent drainage pipe.

The PCs should be in the plant's security office or at a sniping position and radio in communication with the militamen. If they spoted the intruder they can choose to follow her and attempt to capture her or they can attempt to escape through a drain pipe if they are aware of them. Attempts to help out the militamen will be rewarded but are dangerous, obviously. In the end the FBI and AFT survailence squads have footage of them entering the plant no matter what happens and both agencies are going to be getting backup.
Wounded Ronin
I was always a big fan of the Damage Incorporated "let's blast inbred militiamen equippped with shotguns who charge across the field to chunky salsa with our retro M16A1s which we lustily fire from the hip."
Dog
I'm a little skeptical about the Winternight thing because 1) Winternight operates in small cells, and 2) These cells avoid meeting with one-another.

If you do need to use them, I suggest that the small group is the Winternight cell, and the big group is the Feds. Winternight either gets away, or suicides "for the greater good," and the Feds assume that the runners are surviving Winternight goons.

As for location, maybe a remote wilderness "training camp" that's actually staged by the Feds. Make sure the runners' transportation gets busted and they're hoofing it out through terrible weather, hungry critters, hostile locals, bounty hunters, angry spirits....

I like how the runners are going to be on the lam together, and even though one is planning to kill the other, they will need to rely on each other to survive for the time being.
Backgammon
Thanks for ideas so far, good stuff.

A note on the Winternight thing, since that seems to be an issue for people here: I meant to say a sub-group of Winternight. Winternight operates many puppet groups, who may not even know they are under the Winternight umbrella. This is what I'm talking about. Not one of the Norns or anything remotely high up.
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