Thanks Adam, it was my mistake as I was starting to read a second book as I was commenting on the first.

...nice solution I must say. I'd give bonus karma for that one.

Well, that's good roleplaying.

That's hardly professional in the traditional runner sense but good roleplaying.

You might want to think about steering your gang toward becoming permanent crew of a reasonably moral organisation who needs shadow work or something of the genre.

They don't seem quite cut out for the 'professional mercenaries' paradigm (nothing wrong with that). I mean, if morals didn't allow them to complete that mission, this is about to become a recurring problem. Like, every run.

Nothing wrong with that solution. Of course she can be killed. It won't be easy, of course (especially for a team of newbie runners), but it's certainly possible.

....Vampires have influence powers, so unless you are a mage with a boosted WP you are basically putty in their hands. The rules also state that the adept power of Spell Resistance or the Magic Resistance Quality do not work against citter or innate powrers.

Also, there oare only a few ways to destroy a Vamp. Since the characters are unwares she is one at the outset, they wouldn't be packing any wood weapons.

Of course since the encounter, KK now carries her Bokken as well as several wooden stakes a mallet and has garlic hanging all over her doss.

Where the hell is Buffy when you need her...?

Read the Regeneration rules in SR4, they don't work the same way as in SR3. They're significantly weaker.

On average regeneration heals (Body+(Magic or Essense depending on how you interpret the rules)) / 3 boxes per turn.

In addition damage from combat spells, adept powers, weapon foci or called shots to the head cannot be healed through regeneration.

Under these rules.....

Just keep shooting her until her head falls off.

She works for others, so killing her is not getting rid of the threat - though you could get paid twice like this. It might also hurt your rep though. My PCs killed the vampire (without trying to get paid twice, they refused her), and I gave them a noteriety point for gaining a powerful enemy. I plan on using the people she works for in a future mission. If they tried to do the double pay thing, I might've given them two points of noteriety.

You make that a real lose-lose situation.

If they betray their first Johnson on their first run they gain a notoriety point too, and rightfully so. So basically you were giving them notoriety no matter what. That kind of situation happens but I'd reserve it for more momentous occasions.

Beside, Risa the Vampire represents JetBlack. That's a 'powereful enemy' that would encourage other shadowy player to back away from the team a bit according to you? Well, I disagree.

"Should I deal with these guys, Mac?"
"They're new but I hear they didn't sell their employer when presented with a substantial offer."
"Good, Good. I like them already."
"But word on the street is they killed an unknown Vampire and as a result Jet Black is pissed at them."
"Jet Black? Rock star, died in 2045 Jet Black?"
"Yeah, that guy."
"Whoah, We don't touch them then. They are pissing of the dead! Next they are gonna make an enemy out of Elvis. What about Farrell's team? Lung and his triads are still calling for their heads or are they safe to use?"



Sorry, couldn't resist. JetBlack isn't known to be alive and not that powerful anyway. And his street gang barely register on the Seattle underworld scene. This couldn't possibly make the PCs contact very nervous (Or else they are due for retirement).

...it's not so much the regeneration that bothers me as the influence spells she had. KK would have been brain fodder against her with only a 3 WP considering only one net success would be needed for a Mental Manipulation spell to work. The way things were set up, KK would not have even been able to get within striking range before she got zapped..

The unnerving part of all of this was that Risa made the initial contact with KK . That means she knows who KK is & where she lives etc. etc. etc. in spite of the adept having her Hacker buddy contact (Loyalty 6) covering her wireless ass every moment of the day and night.

As Fool mentioned above, it appeared should KK have turned the offer down, she would either be dead-dead or the walking dead.

There were a few 1e & 2e SR adventures (Mercurial, One Stage Before, Dark Angel, ) that involved musicians, so maybe an old-school shadowrunner?

Add in all the other entertainment media (sports, simsense, trideo, reporters, etc.), and entertainment industry contacts aren't bad ideas.

Charon, I laughed at your dialog hehe

Yes, if you look at it that way it seems silly. I don't think word would get out that the PCs killed a musician groupy. What they would hear is that the team pissed off a faction of vampires by going out of their way to kill one of them; they noticed she was slowly regenerating so they removed her head to make sure she was dead, yet purposely let her lackies live to tell the tale. If the PCs let her live, ran away, covered their tracks, or didn't go to the graveyard in the first place, they would not have gotten a notoriety point.

Any organized vampire faction is a powerful group IMC. I think you're underestimating them - the book only hints at how powerful Jetblack and his people are. It never says he's not that powerful, infact it says " he can be an implaceable and deadly enemy if he is crossed." Risa herself is a grade 3 initiate! The only reason they're not major players in Seattle is because the nature of vampires is to be discret, which only makes them more powerful IMO. They're in the background pulling strings.

It's not the end of the world anyway. 1 point is a drop in the bucket in the long term. It's a warning, so that the players will think about how they act and know that their actions have consequences. I also wanted to foreshadow the posibility of a future plot hook.

Well, Jetblack is first and foremost a musician and while he wasn't portrayed as harmless in the original adventure, it was obvious pissing him off wasn't like pissing off the mafia, both in terms of danger and in terms of notoriety.

But you can play him as ruthless and powerful as you like, especially if the players never heard of him before anyway (re-using Jetblack is a somewhat obscure nod to old timers).

While I still don't think this warrant a notoriety point because the secretive nature of JetBlack, the PCs did seem to go out of their way to piss him in an optimal fashion.

If it seems feasible for JetBlack's gang to track them down, you can organize a messy retaliation and that could be worth a notoriety point (who wants to deal with runner who seems to attract this kind of attention?). He risks exposing himself if he takes it too far, tough, but hey, you could chronicle the emergence on the Seattle Underworld scene of a vampire gang immersed in the goblin rock scene with a secretive leader. Why not. It's your JetBlack and there's a known gang of ghouls already roaming the streets!

If you're going by the canon adventure, that is going to piss off JetBlack in a way that failing to obtain the disk won't do. Marli is a close friend and one of the few people out there who know he's still alive and know what he is. He won't take kindly to her having been screwed around with. And if they kill her--that's going to get them a very angry multi-level-initiate vampire and his buddies as enemies.

Have fun.

(Of course, you might see it differently--that's just my take when I wrote the adventure.)

If you don't mind a question or two, then...

What logical steps did you believe the 'runners would follow to find the information on Nabo's commlink (And the location of the commlink itself)?

...and...

Is it just natural curiousity that leads you to believe all runners will decrypt the disc before giving a heads up to their Johnson about it's possession?

This is all I really have for now, just musings from an interested person.

That’s how I see it. JetBlack is really pissed off and concerned for Marli's safety. Now he tried to negotiate for the disc and Marli's safe return through he agents in the cemetery. Though the players turned down the offer and that’s when the Shangri-la group attacked. At first my players thought that the Shangri-la and JetBlack groups were together though it soon became apparent that they were fighting each other.

They killed Risa but left her body. I gave a clue that she was a vampire to one of the players but he didn't follow up with it so she will regenerate and report back to JetBlack.

My grouped called the Johnson and said they had the disc before they tried to decrypt it. They were really pressed for time to figure out what was on the disc before their planned meet with the Johnson.

They even called the Johnson to ask for more time.

People know that vampires exist. They're not secretive that they exist, they're secretive about who they are and what they do. Word got out that my PCs pissed off a group of vampires, and that they might be a target in the future. If they're a target to a group of vampires, does that mean they're less likely to finish a mission Johnson gives them? You bet.

Without context the word that a bunch of vampires are after the characters is meaningless. It could even be a reason for street cred. Story is this vampire group tried to intimidate the them into giving up this disk, but they stayed loyal to their Johnson. Things got a little messy and the runners taught those bloodsuckers a lesson they won't soon forget. Put in that context it's a positive.

In any event the biggest reason it won't come up is because the questions won't stop with who the runners pissed off.

"Rumor has it there's a group of vampires gunning for them."
"How did that happen?"
"Here in Seattle"
"There's a group of vampires here in Seattle?"
"How'd they piss them off?"
"Apparently they got into a fight over an old recording of Jet Black songs"
"Jet Black? Didn't he disappear several years ago?"
"yep. I wonder what the connection between Jet Black and a group of vampires is?"

Jet Black doesn't want that can of worms opened. He lets the word out that he's gunning for the runners and that word may come back to haunt him as curious folks try to figure out why. Once they find out that there was a vampire in Seattle with an interest in undiscovered Jet Black songs they might start coming up with some interesting theories.

Gaining notoriety requires that the runners do something makes others want to bad mouth them. Betray a Johnson and he bad mouths you to other johnsons. Get seen Killing needlessly and you get bad-mouthed by folks who think you're an out of control killer. But in Risa's case.... you've got the Shangra-La team and the vampire's team. Jet Black doesn't want it known there are vampires in Seattle interested in Jet Black music so he'll make sure Risa's team keeps quiet. The Shadowrunners hired by Shangra-La probably aren't going to make the connection. That only leaves the runner team to spread the word they've tangled with a vampire. And you can be sure the runners would put a postive spin on it.

If you decide JetBlack is at the helm of a vengeful group of Vampires, one whose actions is suspected in some circles of the shadows, sure. Go ahead with one notoriety point.

But it's far from obvious just from the run that he has even a single other vampire acolyte beside Risa. If he had a bunch of them, it's likely there would have been at least one other vampire at the cemetery instead of a bunch of useless flunkie.

This is actually an issue you need to have an answer for when inquisitive players will wonder where all this firepower is suddenly coming from. Two more vampires in the cemetery and there would be no need for revenge because JetBlack's troops would have won. But presumably JetBlack didn't have two more vampire to spare and so presumably he isn't heading a vampire cabal.

If you are creative with the answers to this question it can work. But you probably have to change JetBlacks objectives. You don't gather a significant group of vampire to you for the sole purpose of creating rock music. Even Lestat wouldn't do that!

There is such a thing as a Vampire Conspiracy, btw. Did you know? 'Threats' and 'Prime Runner' contain most info about it. Their objectives don't have much to do with JetBlack's and are instead suitably sinister. Who knows, perhaps JetBlack is a small cog in their machine after all. Perhaps the music he wanted to recover bears striking similarity to stuff he produced after his death in one way or another and it could help ID his current location and organization, which in turn would hinder the plans of 'The Vampire Conspiracy ™' for Seattle. At first it was just Jet Black and his lieutenant but now the Conspiracy is sending back up and Jet Black decides to use some of these assets for personal vendetta and because he worries the PCs might piece things together. Something like that. Or something completely different. Either way, it got to be about far more than music!

Because without creative tinkering with the basic facts, having JetBlack as an enemy is not that a big a deal. It's worth an encore story at some point but I'm sure they'll get far worse in their career than an angsty (un)dead rock star. And then what? You hand out 3 notoriety point a pop when they tangle with the Yakuzas and 5 when they do an ops that slight the honor of a Tir prince with accesss to the Ghosts?