Hi,
i am planning on running a run set in the Seattle sewers which involves a rat shaman on the loose who tries to occupy the more remote regions of the sewers as his personal territory, with the runners trying to stop him.

What kind of encounters (not necessarily combat ones), aside from hordes of rats and a sewer ghost or two (are the sewers a city domain?), might the runners run into?

tbd

If the sewers are being occupied (lived in, used extensively, etc. by (meta)humans), then they are hearth. If they aren't, city.

Possibly total darkness and needing a way to find their ways through the tunnels without tripping over every little stick and floater in the way. Hopefully none of them took Eye-Light Systems and Low-Light. Otherwise, that idea dies. =\

If they just have Low-Light, then they are screwed. No light means Low-Light doesn't have the light there to use, so it doesn't work. Mwaha.

Dude, that's why you carry flashlights. And lots of batteries.

And a grappling hook with a 60' line. Don't ask.

-Siege

Heh. Nah, my team came up with something far more resourceful.

Physics Professor with minors in many maths has a gun with a laser sight on it. He also has a nice little rangefinder eye mod. Guess what he does, since none of us have any sort of light?

Shines gun about, watching the ranges for how the walls change in angle and everything. Tells us exactly what direction to move in. That was damned intelligent of the guy.

However, I'm really curious. Why the grappling hook and the 60' line?

Well, there's always the mutant cliche: The toxic alligator shaman...
I've seen cartoon fights (mainly Batman) that take place in sewers with a lot of fast moving water in places and intake/outake pipes. Not to mention detoxification filters and such...
Maybe even a little illegal dumping by a megacorp of Hydrofluoric Acid and Heavy Metals? Extremely good info on Heavy Metal Poisoning: www.leeds.ac.uk/acb/annals/annals_pdf/May99/267.pdf
How about another team of runners?
I'm guessing there's enough of Mother Earth around the pipe to prevent easy escape by astral forms, though they'll breeze right by manhole covers.

I'll give you points for imagination, but that just goes all to hell in a practical scenario -- like, well, fighting.

Just take a flashlight (or several) and a glow stick for good measure. Tape it to your gun, strap it to your head. In a fit of panic, I even yanked our Media's camera off his shoulder pad and taped a flashlight to it for good measure.

Since you ask, I was assembling gear for one of my GM's sewer crawls. The techie asks if we need the baton with 60' of climbing rope and hook. I said (to my everlasting regret) "Are you kidding? It's a sewer."

Naturally, we end up at the end of a sewer tunnel with a horde of zombies at our back and a 45' foot drop in front of us. (Think of the fugitive movie with Harrison Ford/Tommy Lee Jones facing the waterfall, only underground.)

After we got out of the sewer, the techie attached a pain chip to my character's cyberware and the receiver to a baton with 60' of climbing rope and a grappling hook. If it was ever 10 feet or more from my body, my nervous system went into convulsions.

Did I mention he was upset?

-Siege

Depends where in the sewers he is, perhaps he chose his lair well.

Maybe he uses his magics to sneak into his territory as the only access is through a rough patch of the Ork Underground controlled by a ruthless gang? Unless of course you happen to be able to shape change into a rat and crawl through some very small pipes.

In this case the threat would be the gang, but you can easily replace the gang with whatever else tickles your fancy. Ghouls? A Vampires lair? A secret corporate facility that only a sneaky rat shaman bastiche could have found and chosen to build a lair behind? Whatever. Some people in trouble with any of the above can also work if your team are the sort of people who help people.

In terms of possible threats I would say, if I had to throw out a small list.

Gangers (Ork gangs, organ leggers, just plain crazies)
Ghouls
Bugs
Devil Rats (which I gather you were already planning)
Any critter you damn well please, you'd be amazed what you can find under Seattle

Sunday

Sewers could be City, Hearth or even a water domain depending on where you were. Spirits could be many different kinds. Let your imagination run wild...

And if you really want to screw with your players, remember that lizards, snakes and gators don't show up on thermo.

Cold-blooded creatures generally don't. Except lawyers, for some reason.

The merc in our party was insanely glad he saved up for the ultrasound sight and goggles.

-Siege

Hi,
thanks a lot for all the fast replies, maybe it helps if I introduce the group:

Arabian mercenary (cliche: grenades, AK, explosives, good knowledges in chemistry)
Finnish rigger/decker (huge vehicle and drone resources)
American elven spy (high dexterity, stealth, etc.)
Bulgarian elven gunfu-adept (has four Ares Predator with quick draw holsters...)

So, visibility will not be a problem as the elven will be happy with a flashlight and their lowlight vision, and as far as I remember, at least one of the other characters had infrared vision, aside from that, that can be acquired for ¥ 250 or so with infrared goggles, so visibility is out of debate).

Your ideas are all great, but the thing is we have had most stereotype elements in the previous runs. Three runs ago the players ran into a toxic fox shaman, and just yesterday they had some unpleasant encounters with a rival runner group.

Aside from that, keep the ideas coming.

tbd

I've alwayse made sewers its own domain. Then again, I make alot of things their own domain, because occult knowledge taints my shadowrun playing.

What about methane being ignited by a muzzle flare?

Ohh, underground!

Unstable walls/ceilings are a fun addition (Admittedly not to recent sewers. BTW - sewers are designed for a 150 year life span, at least...which means there might be a few areas not as structually-sound as they should be...)

Undead! - not Ghouls, but the Shedim. God, they're fun.

Various critters, escaped corp experiments and diseases...

Toxic spirits...maybe a free toxic? (Only if you hate your team...)

Traps! Claymores, Monowire...all rather difficult to see and not exactly fun to discover....

Flow rates that change with the day - I mean, there's a higher level of..."fluid"...in the morning, and a little after work ends.

The organlegger part is fun, have the shaman find it convenient to dispose of excess visitors for the ever handy organlegger market... Those guys are about as welcome as Bug Spirits.

Bugs! 'Nuff said!

Wendigo! - ehewwwwwwwww.

Flammable sewer fluids are more likely than gas build-ups, makes firing those incendiry rounds in an enclosed space just that little less fun. Not to mention bringing down the house.

L.

how about the one thing you never expect to encounter in a sewer--maintenance workers.

Treasure hunters (think of the amount of wedding rings and shit that get dropped in the drains)

Bats (maybe some kinda quirky bat shaman aswell, imagine the bat from Fern Gully, on acid and human )

An Eco-Terrorist Cell (where better to hide)

A B&E gang who use the sewers and mini drones to get into peoples houses and unlock doors ( hey... its far fetched but..... )

An Underground Albino Techno Club

IR/thermo won't work underground any better than lowlight.

And like I noted -- cold-blooded creatures don't show up thermo...like vampires.

-Siege

Seige said:

Pirates! There's water there are places to hide, a way out to the ocean, who wouldn't want to be a sewer pirate.


Namer18

How about an ongoing firefight on the surface with munitions, let's say active grenades, that just happen to roll into a couple of storm drains... Could even have a day old battle and your team roll 'Media' or 'Street' to see if they remember it as they pass under the block "Oh yeah, you see the thing on the trid last night? They never found the superweapon/pack with the grenades/body."
Don't forget this is a coastal city.
Anyone have a website link/personal experience with Seattle's/major modern city sewers?
Oh yeah, Pacific Northwest, probably a couple leeches.

Coastal city? Eek. You might some really nasty things wandering into those sewers...

-Siege

vampires are not, as far as i know, cold-blooded in SR. if they were, they'd have some sort of vulnerability to cold, since they're living beings instead of undead freaks.

Two feet deep fast rushing water against you is a definate time to whip out the grapple gun and 60' of line. What else are you going to pull yourself upstream with?

That does beg the question: does a vampire have a heart beat?

Or are they just living things with unusual dietary requirements?

-Siege

Edit: Oooh, evil idea Buzzed. Characters have to make Str or Athletics rolls to stand against the current without bracing against the wall. Which makes it difficult to fire either way, neh?

Here is another evil idea if you hear something downstream.

Evil Downstream Idea Recipe

Ingedients:
1 Nurf football
1 roll of duct tape
1 grenade or commercial explosive

Preparation:
Duct tape the grenade or explosive onto the Nurf football.

Cooking time:
Prime the explosive and toss the football downstream. Takes 10 - to 15 seconds for it to float around the corner in the sewer. Wait until you hear an explosion.

Times may vary. Makes alot of small bloody proportions. Serve when hot.

Another evil idea:

Place the runners in a situation where they get stuck inside a sewer compactor system as it activates. While they try to figure out how to reverse the closing walls before they turn them into more sewer mush, some sort of genetic trash freak of nature lurks about in the water around their feet. And to make it more suspenseful, have this take place inside a big ass military space station.

*cough*Star Wars*cough*

Yeah, I think he was being a little sarcastic.

Call it a hunch.

-Siege

The Ork Underground?

If the runners happon to be driving in a really really long sewer tunnel with a dump truck, tell them they see a small black void at the end of it, quickly getting larger.

Things to find in the sewers:

1) Large ornery sea life that has migrated towards the warmth of the city.
2) Tentacles. Lots of 'em.
3) Really, really, really big tangles of hair blocking sewer tunnels (I just had a strength 1 player attempt to un-foul an old bath-tub drain. The results were not pretty).

Have them find the body of some guy with realy damn obvious cyber and let them roll inteligence to see if they realise that this is the body of "Terry - Mad Bull - Mc Kinnok" the cerial killer from Calfree. whom the UCAS government and CAS both have 500,000 Dead OR Alive bountys out on him.

If they find him... make them roleplay trying to carry out a slightly decomposed, slightly eaten, VERY SMELLY corpse of a very fat ork, willpower tests to avoid yarfing and all.

Hi,
another question comes to my mind when designing this run: How do the runners get into the sewers? Although it surely is not regarded as a high-security area, it does give people easier access to all of Seattle's buildings.
Of course the Orc Underground will have free access, so the runners will not be able to avoid coping with that.
Other entrances?

tbd

there would be entrances from storm water drains.

There might be heavy steel grates over some of the areas, probably titanium ones over the larger entrys near the sea, but they wouldnt be sealed with anything more than a heavy gauge padlock.

There might be cameras on the larger junctions and such, more to keep an eye on flow than to keep an eye out for intruders.

When they finally get the body to a UCAS law enforcement building to collect the bounty, they find out that the sewer they were in was used to discard bodies after the government has no more use for them.

"Sorry kid, but someone already collected the bounty on that corpse yesterday. I am going to have to ask you to get rid of that thing unless you would rather get a fine for violating health code."

The only problem with a sewers run is that 99% of sewers are too small to crawl through, let alone walk around in. So here are some ideas I've come up with for "the underground", any more ideas?

* the waste sewers (stinky)
* the flood sewers (drains rain off the streets, these 2 systems are not connected)
* assorted underground cabling areas (tellco, cable, fiber-optic, etc all run under the city)
* subways (tunnels and stations)
* basements of downtown buildings (and sub-basements, and sub-sub-basements...)
* a natural cave?
* if you can swim reeeeealy well, there are the water distribution pipes
* if you've a respirator and balls of non-conductive metal, there are the natural gas pipes too (oh yea, I'm sure they'll follow him in there)
* at my college there were steam pipes for heating
* what else is right under our feat?


I figure if people are living there, they could have made little tunnels (shape earth!) to connect the various systems, maybe even with a panel to put back on the wall so if they're being chased they can "disappear".

Cheap light sensors with a little radio antenna can give plenty of warning to someone if they're placed down-tunnel from your home. If you broadcast on a low enough frequency they'll even go through the ground around the pipe. If you really want to be a pain, use IR sensors (set for more light than a couple rats give off), so even if they're wandering about with ultrasound vision they'll still set 'em off.

This would make a really great hiding place for a toxic mage, as he can quickly access (through manholes) all the offending corporations, then disappear back into the sewers.

Kagetenshi's excellent piece of horror fiction starts with them trapped in (not just tramping around) the sewers. Heartily recommended.

One thing I never saw mentioned, but which has come up a few times in published adventures taking place in the sewers, is the need for chem suits. I figure being dumb enough to wander around the sewers without one mandates a Body roll, and knockdown/knockback rules should be strictly enforced, with a nastier Body roll for any unfortunate runner who gets a sewage bath without apropriate protection.

Just to break things up a bit, amongst the Devil Rats, Incubi, Ghouls, Hellbenders(who'd love the toxic environment) and what have you, you can toss in a few encounters with harmless critters like Trogolodites, or maybe some nonhostile squatters.

I've run and GM'd DNA-DOA, and it is really good for sewer stuff. Finding a family of squatters down there can be a good thing for the party as well. If the party is friendly to them (give them stuff, like food), they can lead the runners around otherwise dangerous areas.

Also, remember to have everybody make willpower tests not to hurl when they first get into the sewers. I had a run in the LA sewers once, one of the players failed the roll and hurled on the character on the ladder below him.

Sealed doors can be bad for the party too. Careful about using tool lasers, could ignite the gas on the other side....

Oh, and shotguns. If anybody in the party uses one, pretty much the entire party's going deaf for a few hours. Especially if they don't expect it. This goes for grenades too.

You could also have a faultline run through the area, which created a chasm of some sort. Would only work in abandoned/unused sewer areas though.

Grates in the sewer could work too. Cemented into the walls, need either a really good strenght test or cutting torch to get through.

To get into the LA sewers though, we had to get to a access point. This one was inside a pillbox with two guards and automatic machineguns inside. Pizza delivery was helpful.

You might run into a group of DnD players, trying to recreate their environment as they game!

Anyhoo..

Yeah, anyone not preparing to face some sorta nuclear, bio/chemical contamination when they head into a sewer, kinda deserves what happens to them. Especially in the SR 2060+, you'll need that protection, plus hardware to protect versus demon rats, DNA-DOA type mutated critters, etc.

I'd put the sewers into two categories: In use, and not.

In use:
Logs, and not the kind from trees. All sorts of corpses. Unimaginable smells that you will not be able to wash off for at least five showers. Permanent stains on your armor. Strange blue liquids that float over the water. Flooded tubes. Tubes that flood while you are still in them. Grates that catch your boot as you're walking over it. Surprises that fall from feeder pipes above your head. General nastiness. There are monsters that live there, probably nothing metahuman, and certainly nothing you want to tangle with. In fact, ANYTHING you fight, if it gets a melee attack in on you, runs a very strong risk of infecting you with something especially nasty. Ghouls may setup house here, perhaps run into a ghoul society or something. Plenty of magical critters that have escaped may choose to stay here as well. Pretty much anything that doesn't like people will stay in this place that people don't like. The one word you're going for is *GROSS*.

Not in use:
This would include not just sewers, but utility tunnels, subway tunnels (I don't know if Seattle ever had a subway, but whatever), ancient and forgotten basements that have been connected through sewer tunnels into some sort of crazy warren. This'll range from the abandoned to the very abandoned. Dark, smelly, lonely, creepy. Push the loneliness. Push the little bubble of darkness around you, and how it feels like its slowly closing in on you, oppressing you, tightening around you like a vice. Small pipes and crawl spaces. Rats that drop on you when you're most vulnerable. Tiny spiders or bugs that crawl under your armor and bite where you can't reach them. Perhaps you'll find a secret hideout of a gang, ghouls, smugglers or any of the other many 'underground' (haha) groups that prefer to stay out of sight. People begin to imagine things in the darkness. Imagine in an old subway tunnel seeing a point of light in the distance. Maybe through in some ghost stories now that they're vulnerable like this. The word you want is *CREEPY*.

If the runners go in without some sort of protection from all of the waste products, they should have to roll against pathogens, and simply washing really good after they get out is not enough.

Another thing to consider that I didn't notice looking over the thread is the fact that sewers are a confined space. The runners are very likely to run into pockets of either high or low oxygen. If I remember my OSHA training correctly, 22% oxygen is normal, anything under 18% is hazardous. Even worse is anything over 24%. At those levels, a simple spark can ignite your clothing, hair, etc... and incinerate you in the super-fueled flames.

Cities make a distinction between sanitary sewers, which pass the household waste from sinks, toilets, and showers, and storm sewers which pass the rain water that comes off streets, driveways, parking lots, and some roofs.

Sanitary sewers use small pipes, commonly 8 to 18 inches in size. There is no intent on storage, and the period of highest demand is during the Super Bowl, when a commercial comes on. The design lets gravity move the effluent most of the time, but when necessary it uses pumps. The material flows to a waste processing plant.

Here is a link to the Sanitary Sewer layout for the city of Greeley, Colorado. Green lines indicate the sanitary sewers, and if you zoom in you'll be able to read the size of the pipes. Greeley Sewers ( large pdf).

The outflow from storm sewers can go into streams, lakes and oceans after being filtered. The period of highest demand is when you have 4+ inches of rain during a 24 hour period. For several decades in the US, storm sewers were designed to move the water most quickly and directly into streams or other bodies of water. In prior centuries when heavy rain fell across the central states of the USA (an area of perhaps 1000mi x 1000mi) it would take days for it to trickle its way to the Mississippi river, and the river depth would be somewhat higher for days or weeks following the heavy rain. With Storm Sewer Engineering in our cities we managed to get vast quantities of water into the Mississippi in a very short amount of time, creating vast flooding to the cities downstream. Now Storm Sewer systems are designed to hold much of the water that runs off streets, parking lots, roofs, and driveways; and only release it gradually into major rivers. You'll see water retention ponds in many new subdivisions for this purpose, and new storm sewer systems in major cities will often have large underground water storage capability.

Here are diagrams of Storm Sewer layouts:
pipes leading to 72" outfall into stream
pipes leading to 60" outfall to stream

Thus proving once again that no matter WHAT the subject or how esoteric, somebody on Dumpshock will have at least a decent working knowledge of it. Thank OT, very useful

I swear, if I ever get around to writing that techno-thriller I've been considering, I'm going to my background checking here...

All I know is that a half dozen explosive satchel charges going off at once sets off one hell of a pressure wave that travels for a VERY LONG WAY.

Don't ask me how I know this.




-karma