Well, some of you may remember descriptions of a wacky group of runners named Hofnar, Kotori, and Metasigil that I posted a few weeks back. One of you even asked for a session diary. So here it is. Before I get into the details of our first run, I may as well go over just what our hero's are again.

Hofnar - A flamingly gay troll physical adept. Wears an armor jacket covered in fur and shock strips, carries a great big stick and an Are Predator just in case. Shares an apartment with...

Kotori - Tiny asian woman with a great big prosthetic arm and a fairly big machine gun. Former Red Samurai in training, fled the cold embrace of Renraku when she discovered that a Renraku exec. had ordered the death of her parents. Lost her arm in the escape. Hofnar found her and nursed her back to health. He's been intro ducing her to the joys of a like of crime and wearing make-up ever since. Kotori is periodically haunted by the shades of her (rather demanding) parents.

Metasigil - Ork Chaos Magician raised in the Sioux nation by parents that fell somewhere between survivalists and back-to-the-land hippies. Has some very odd ideas about good ork nutrition involving lots of roots and beans. Also has odd ideas about, well, pretty much everything else. Lives in Redmond and raises mildly radiactive roots and beans in his spare time.

Charlie-Foxtrot - Our NPC technomancer elf. Not much is known about him. Hofnar keeps trying to get him into bed. This worries him, to comedic affect.

The night starts on a Wednesday evening in early February with Hofnar preparing Kotori for a night out. As usual, this involves much struggling, shouting, and Kotori's dead parent's egging on the "Fashion Oni" as they call Hofnar. Meanwhile, James,aka Metasigil, is sitting in his hovel, reading "The Invisibles" by Grant Morrison. Hofnar and Kotori are interrupted as their Fixer Callahan calls to inform them that they have an opertunity to meet Mr. Johnson at 9:30 in a seedy bar in Tacoma. A similar call goes out to James and Charlie-Foxtrot. James proceeds to hoof it to the nearest bus stop, about an hour away by foot. Mean while Hofnar, Kotori, and Charlie-Foxtrot, having access to Charlie's van, kill time at a random, kind of sad warehouse rave. While there, Kotori indulges her Zen habit, and is forced to beat a random raver that groped her while she was zoned out. Hofnar brushed up on his Zone dancing, and Charlie-Foxtrot did lord knows what. Such is the fate of the NPC. Eventually, everyone makes it to Yee Old Seedy Bar.

Mr. Johnson turns out to be a nervous little man with a bad hair cut, dyed pink. The skinny is that he wants us to high-jack a van belonging to a company called Emurging Futures. It's coming into Seattle via Redmond and will be guarded, but not excessively so. He gives us the route and when it'll be crossing the border, the rest is up to us. Haggling over the price of our services occurs, and we mannage a respectable 4500 each. We head over to Redmond and everyone crashes at Metasigil's place.

Some basic hacking on the part of Charlie-Foxtrot confirms the Van's route and reveals that the van is supposedly carrying organs, but is infact carrying weapons. We decide on the rather straight forward plan of building a road block out of rubble on the route and then ambushing them. After finding a suitable spot, a blind turn next to a couple mostly intact buildings, Charlie and Kotori go back for supplies while Hofnar and James round up some cheap labor to help with the barrier building. The day passes uneventfully, the barrier gets built, James summons a Spirit of Beasts to keep an eye out for the van. Time passes, the Spirit spot the van and tells James. Everyone gets into position, ready to ambush the damned thing while Charlie get ready to block their radios and block them in with his van, and the damned thing goes and turns into a building 2 slots up the street instead of running into our nice, lovingly crafted, barrier.

We spring into action, ready to burst in and kick ass, when Hofnar reminds James that he can scout ahead astrally (d'oh! James is my first mage). Inside what does he find but a large group of ghouls that had stolen the van. Getting their attention, James explains that they can either surrender the van, or be blown into oblivion. The smartest among them rapidly realises that resistance was futile(being dual natured sucks), and agreed to turn it over once it was reveiled that the van contained no delicious organs like they thought. The surrendering of the van goes without incident, but there's a flat tire to change and a responce team probably on the way (the van had been sending a distress signal since the ghouls had stolen it). Half way through changing the tire, the predicted responce team arrives.

Seeing another Emurging Futures van zooming down the road, Kotori, who had been on high watch on to of the first van, opens up with her Ingram White Knight on full-auto, destroying the engine and causing it to crash. The Responce team manages to crawl out with minimal injuries. James gives them the opertunity to surrender or die, they chose die and are obliterated by a Force 10 manaball, thus proving that grunts with no mage are no match for a fast mage that's not afraid of internal bleeding. After that it was smooth sailing. We fix the flat tire, steal their guns and comlinks hoping to steal some security codes and head out. We also told the ghouls about the 6 fresh corpses just waiting for them as we left, because we felt kind of bad for the horrible, diseased bastards.

The hand off went without a hitch, except that Mr. Johnson had been expecting organs instead of guns, just like the ghouls. But that was ok, this was about money, not organs. Then Hofnar, Kotori, James, and Charlie-Foxtrot all went off to celebrate a job well done by getting laid. The end.

Awesome. I'm curious though, does Kotori know why her parents were killed? And where would a gay troll find companionship? Seems like the list of guys willing to catch for him would be very short indeed.

Yay, you give a damn, I'm so happy.

I will now answer Questions in the order they were presented.

1. They all went out as a tail seeking collective, but split up for the actual festivities. Unless Charlie-Foxtrot and Kotori hooked-up. It was all "Yay, we won. Party time. Fade to black".

2. As for why Kotori's parent's were killed, right now it's a very generalized "They knew too much" kind of thing. This may or may not get more deveolped as things go on.

3. And as to Hofnar's search for Love, or at least Lust, there is a Gay Troll Fixer/ Club owner named William Sweet mentioned in the Seattle section of Runner's Havens. I'm at work, so I can't give you the page number. And for the record, Hofnar was created before we'd even seen Runner's Havens.

Have the characters figured out yet that the response team commlinks and weapons can be traced to them (via tags and links to the home base), or has someone taken care of that security risk already?

First thing we did with the Comlinks was manual shut down and remove power source. Also had the technomancer take care of the guns and other such technical concerns. Still waiting on the GM to see if we're getting any useful data off the Comlinks or if we'll just fence them for drug money. We're all addicted to something. On a potentially amusing note, there's now a band of six ghouls with full security armor wandering around Redmond. Take that sunlight allergy!

Yoo-hoo, Hofnar here. First of all I would like do say that the number of times the phase "Hofnar, put some pants on" was said and other such fun goofiness was not thoroughly conveyed by the short retelling of our most splendiferous tale. As for the Hofnar sex question, (we are curious kittens aren't we? ) lests just say he is very accommodating, i.e. manslut, but with standards.I doubt anyone here wants to hear all the messy details so I'll be vague and use all the fun double-entendres: he prefers to pitch, but will catch when its worth it, an orc or troll at least as pretty as he is (nat. 4 charisma with 2 ranks in kinesics). And please do remember there is more to sex than penetration.
-Hugs and kisses

We want more! This really sounds like a great group. Lots of variety in terms of personality and metatypes...I've got a great group of people in the game I run, but it's pretty much all humans, except for two elves.

Yay! Hofnar's here. Now it's a party. Still working on getting Kotori and the GM to sign on, so that'll provide the curious masses with even more details. Unfortunately, this game is only every other week, so you'll just have to be patient. But if you want the real dirt, just keep asking those (oh god I can't believe I'm actually going to type this) probing (yeah I really did just type that... oi...) questions.

And now for... Random Detail Theater!

Metasigil has level 3 gremlins and no computer skill. Pretty much every attempt to use his comlink is rife with potential for humor. Mostly it involves horribly inefficient directions for getting around Seattle and infestations of red imp AV images and frantic shouts of "De-frag! De-frag!" He's also pretty much been forbidden from getting a grenade launcher. It's probably for the best.

Few things get Hofnar grouchier than demands that he put on pants before he's had his soykaf. Especially if he's forced to get up early too.


If you live in Redmond, the key to keeping fallout out of your food is using a pressure cooker. Hope you really like soups, stews, and chili. Keeps out the volcanic ash drifting over from Pullyaup, too. Keeping the fall out out of your home grown veggies is a touch harder. Oh well, a replacement (insert cancerous organ here) is pretty cheap, right?

The party's addictions and levels there of are: Hofnar - Stimulants, Mild; Kotori - Zen, Moderate; Metasigil - Psyche, Mild; and Charlie-Fowtrot - BTLs, Lord knows, I'm hoping Mild.

This has been another instalment (There was one before this? Nah, I'm just messin' with ya.) of Random Detail Theater.

Kotori here. It seems that the guys have covered the story pretty well. You have a basic look at what we are. And if my parents would ever shut up (or accidents, the terriable accidents) then we might get something done. what I am not sure but something. Well I have little to say except Hofnar better stop wrestling me to the ground to put makeup on me. If he hadn't rescued me I would be tempted to cut up all his clothes.... except his pants.

I'm sorry, I stoped reading after "A flamingly gay troll".



Keep up the good work.

Random side note:

Zen? Psyche? Did I miss those in the book, or are they SR3 conversions?

I really need to just sit down and read that puppy cover to cover....

Hey, I'm the one GMing this group and decided to register (using my NPC TM's name, because I couldn't think of anything else, which I'll probably regret later) to point out where those drugs were listed, unfortunatly someone beat me to the punch. Anyway they didn't seem to list prices, which is unfortunate, so we had to lift them from 3rd ed.

You know something? This group sounds like a lot of fun. When did I stop playing like this? Somewhere along the way I think I got a big stick up my butt and decided that everything had to be "professional".
I think my next SR campaign needs just a little bit more "zany" in it.

I really can't imagine SR without at least a bit of zany. I know it proports to be extremely dystopian, but it's really a fun game. I mean, come on - Stuffer Shack adventure any one?

My current character, in the game we're about to start, is Yuri Stanislav "Beatdown" Griginski. He is good Russian Troll. Beatdown like wodka, Beatdown like hit things. Things fall down. Beatdown also like fine UCAS red merlot from time to time, but Beatdown takes what Beatdown gets.

There's an Ork Russian corp mage too. I'm considering calling him "Moose." Just so I can say "Moose and Squirrel" from time to time.

And Charlie/GM: Could you post up prices? I am now completely in love with the drugs....

hah! there aren't any prices for drugs!

Seriously, there aren't, it's GM call.

edit: Atleast in SR4

Ha! Brilliant! Keep posting.

Maybe you ought to record the bloody session - "Hoffnar, put some pants on!"

About drug prices, we've converted them from 3rd ed. but i don't have the sheet with me, I'll make sure they're posted sometime this weekend.

These are the prices from Man and Machine:
Hyper- 180Y
Jazz- 40Y
Kamikaze- 50Y
Long Haul- 500Y
Psyche- 500Y
Bliss- 15Y
Cram- 20Y
Nitro- 100Y
Novocoke- 20Y
Zen- 5Y
Have fun!

Thanks!

I think that drugs are assumed to be worked into the character's Lifestyle costs.

If that's what you like, you're free to do it FanGirl. But then you should decide what drugs, at what usages levels, various lifestyles support. Like which lifestyle supports a burnout grade Longhaul or Psyche addiction? Not Street, Low, Middle, or even really High. That why burnout junkies spend thousands of nuyen on drugs and live like animals. Really, a cost in nuyen is simplier as far as I'm concerned. If you can't budget for your drugs, then you'll just have to scam, steal, whore, and kill for them like a real junkie.

Yeah. The amount of drugs the average shadowrunner is gonna take (Hour long mission? I need two shots of Psyche, one of novacoke, and a dose of Jazz), after getting 30 build points for addictions, is huge compartively.

I see Runners as hardcore bingers. They may only take a shot or two of Zen every couple days normally. But when the Run starts, out come the needles.

ROUND 2!!! ::DING!::

Well true believers two weeks (plus a couple days while I got off my duff and finally decided to get writing) have passed and it's happened again, those loveable but impulsive Runners Hofnar, Kotori, Metasigil, and Charlie-Foxtrot have once again comitted crimes for money. Yay!

To set the scene: It was early on a Friday in mid-February. Hofnar was still consudering what/ who to do for the evening and Kotori was barricaded in her bedroom, prepared for the inevtable assault of fashion. Meanwhile, Metasigil was doing what any good ork lunatic does, lurking in a 10 ft x 10 ft room filled with randomly generated treasure. Well, the 10 ft x 10 ft room part is true, I haven't gotten around to rolling up the treasure yet. It was right about then that our Fixer Callahan called. (How convenient...) We had an appointment Saturday with a Johnson in Belvue... at NOON!!! The bitching and moaning of Hofnar could be heard for miles. So they all went to bed early. Well, not Metasigil, he went to bed right on time. Sometimes being a farmer has it's advantages.

Saturady: Metasigil Wakes at the arse-crack of dawn, as usual, and proceeds to hoof it for the bus stop. True to form, checking His use mapsoft check results in a glitch and a success. Metasigil mannages to catch an irregular express route that gets him to Belvue about 4 hours early, leaving him to kill time in the crappy stripmall where they're meeting the Johnson. Mean while, Hofnar and Kotori get up at a much more reasonable time and just catch a ride with Charlie-Foxtrot. Noon rolls around and the team meets the Johnson, in a place that was described as kind of like Chucky Cheese. Ick... Other than the decidedly odd location, the meet goes fairly well. The assignment is to break into the office of one of the johnson's co-workers and get evidence of infadelity that he can use to ruin the target's chances of moving up in the company. To aid in this, the johnson gives us his pass card for the building and the basics on the security. Seems fairly straight forward, but as this is our first B&E on a real office building, we proceed to plan the crap out of the job. (We're usually not that good at planning, the impulsiveness getting in the way and all)

First we send Charlie out into the Matrix to do as much fact finding as he can manage about the company we're hitting, the building it's in, the Target, and the Johnson. Meanwhile, the PCs debated the odds of tracking down one of the prostitutes that the Target has been sleeping with. We eventually scrap that plan, much to my disapointment, considering that it was my plan in the first place. Eventually, Charlie comes back with what he could gather. (Sometimes I feel almost guilty about how much info out NPC technomancer can scoop up for us. It's so awesome) There alot of ultimately inconsiquential fluff, but we find out that a) The Target has failed the asshole test and uses his comlink account to pay for his hookers and the cheesy hotels he rents and b) the building's Spider is off site and kind of bad at hacking other than rigging. Bad enough that we mannage to locate his lair. Mwahahahaha!!! Enter, a plan.

The Execution: Everything went according to plan, which went something like this. Sunday night, we hunt down the Spider in his lair. Have Charlie Thread a massive Blackout CF, heal the Drain, I mean Fading, have him go and bash the Spider's virtual brains in. Then he and Kotori went on up, bound the poor looser up with zip-ties, ducktaped a rating 6 head jammer (that we borrowed from Callahan, who happened to have one on hand. Handy thing head jammers) on to him and had Charlie-Foxtrot Spider the building in his stead, giving us pretty much total access to the building. We go in through the underground parking, take the elevator up, walk in, and get the goods. As we were getting the goods, Charlie spots another team, headed for a lower floor. This was not in the plan, but we decided to let them have a free pass. Well, mostly free. While they stole pay data, Charlie was hacking their Comlinks and making a copy of what they stole. Metasigil followed them astrally until the dwarf mage finally spotted him and he had to run for it. We retreived Charlie, who did all the fiddly don't get back tracked through the matrix stuff that NPCs get to do automatically for those of you that are wondering. Knock the rigger back into unconciousness, untie him, take back the head jammer, and skedaddle. Back at Hofnar and Kotori's place, we contact the Johnson, only to be told, "Nah, I don't think I'm going to pay you suckers. Bye." By Gorm were we pissed.

Revenge: First, we try to crash the Johnson's online street cred, just incase he plans on ever working in the town again and hoping that the other runners we unwittingly were running cover for would be influenced by the fact that they were working for living trash. Then we proceed to contact the other runners using the info that Charlie had snagged off their comlinks. First was the dwarf mage. Total ass, the less said the better, didn't care that Johnsons that screw over one team will probably screw over any team. Second, human phys adept. We had Hofnar talk to him. Seemed like an ok guy, but had an odd sense of loyalty to the Johnson. Respectable, but ultimately misguided. These two really disappointed us. Who knew that the treat of death by troll sodomy was so easily ignored. Finally, human female gun bunny. This one we hit pay dirt with. She agreed to help us out in exchange for our copy of the data they had stolen. Coughs up time and location and signs off. Kotori loads up gel rounds incase we have to shoot her to make it look good and we head out.

On the way Metasigil did a bit of summoning and managed to get a Force 7 Spirit of Beasts, with concealment and natural attack as its bonus powers, that owed him 5 favors (This was our strongest spirit summoned so far, and only the second summoned total). And Metasigil soaked all the drain. This kind of scared the crap out of the GM, becasue we're still very new to 4th Ed. and we'd been reading all sorts of scary things about high, and even middling, Force spirits. So, first thing, have Aroooo, as the spirit was called, use concealment on us and the van. Second, put it on dwarf mage watch with orders to kill on sight. When we arrived at the condemned building where our foes were hiding out, we climbed a fire escape up to the second floor, to find our new temporary friend the Gun Bunny. She tells us that the rest of them are up stairs, and that the only safe, as in not fall through the floor, way is through the elevator shaft, at the top of which are 3 smart tripods guarding the exit. She then has us fire off some rounds to make things believable incase we die and leaves to go drink away stress and a little guilt, while we go forth to slaughter our foes.

Arriving at the elevator shaft, Kotori tosses a couple grenades up to the second floor hoping to destroy or at least knock over the tripods. And then Metasigil got annoyed and sent up Arooo to smash the tripods. After that we all climbed up the elevator shaft and Metasigil decided to just send Arooo on a remote service to kill any awakened dwarves in the building starting with the room where the targets were suposed to be. Arooo disappears and next thing we hear is the squealing of a dwarf being pulled apart like a stewed chicken. It was probably easier than it should of been, but it had been a long session and frankly, we were still kind of freaked out about how powerful spirits are. And then Hofnar kicked down the door, fended off the phys adept, and took a full auto shotgun blast with only minor injuries. Metasigil poped his head in the door and hit the Phys adept with a Force 10 Manabolt, spent edge, got lots of successes, Adept had minimal Willpower, the mage was still suposed to be alive and counter-spelling, and the phys adept's head kind of exploded. Then Kotori came in and shot the Johnson, there was a second pass of Johnson abuse, and he expired. Total blood bath. Grab comlinks, guns, the dwarf's fetish, and when the others had left, Metasigil took the Johnson's cyber eyes. Yeah, kind of excessive and icky, but the money was for a good cause. No, not Metasigil, though that is a good cause. The money was donated to the Plastic Jungle in Redmond. And then we all went and handed off the pay data to the Gun Bunny and went to get a good night's sleep.

Aftermath: All told, we got about 8000 each after hacking bank accounts and selling off swag. There was also a breifcase full of Novacoke, but we let Hofnar have it, it wasn't worth fighing over. Hofnar then had a big old fashioned coke party. Wheee.... Overall we learned that going through the pain of out thinking the GM, is worth about 30,000 bonus dice (this is a very, very rough guesstimate) He never expected us to check into the Spider, and for some reason though that an off sight Spider might make us less likely to go kick him on the fork until incapacitated. It ws our longest session yet and over all, very enlightening to the quirks of the summoning system. Oh yeah, and always ask for half up front.

Well played and well written up. Thanks once again for sharing. You were lucky with getting a Force 7 with 5 services and no drain, though. Tracking down the spider was a very good idea.

But you simply must give us more detail on what Hoffnar is wearing, darling. Enquiring minds, want to know.

And did the Lovable parents of Kotori show up on this run? That is one of my favorite parts.

Thanks for caring folks. As for what Hofnar wears... not enough, definately not enough. Hofnar favors a kimono first thing in the morning. A kimono that will fit on Kotori with enough pinning. And anything that could ever fit Kotori, being the tiny woman that she is, is definately not nearly enough to cover Hofnar to a state of decency. No more crashiing on that couch. I don't care if I have to walk back to Redmond.

As For Kotori's parents, they only showed up briefly to shout at Kototri to sleep with the Cha 7 Elf Technomancer, which she did. So it looks like Kotori and Charlie-Foxtrot have definately hooked up. Unfortunately, Hofnar still has hopes of hooking up with Charlie too. This lead to Hofnar barging in on them first thing it the morning, probably hoping to catch Charlie in the buff, or at least when he was unprepared. This lead to Charlie rolling off the bed, and then under the bed, a manuver that it seemed he'd done many a time before. Between his good looks and Bad Luck, it looks like Charlie has had to do more than his fair share of hiding under the bed.

Hopefully Hoffie won't find his transportation careening down the street out of control any time soon....

Has anyone tried buying him a "statuesque" sized Kimono for himself?

Just skimming through. You meant "Moose and Skvirrell".

No, I don't think buying Hofnar an actually troll sized Kimono would fly. He is the Fashion Oni for a reason. We are but hapless fashion victims in the wake of his... his... well damn it, I hate it when a metaphor break down in the middle. Let's just say that anything we get him will either be reuturned or traded for something distressingly revealing most likely. Frankly, my greatest wish is that he would wear something under the kimono without being told. I wish the mystery of the morning wood would stay a mystery...

Perhaps some sort of custom visual filter for your cybereyes or display contacts, that replaces everything below Hofnar's waist with a swirling cloud of smoke?

Two Words, One Number: Gremlins, Rating 3. Such a project could only lead to greater horror. There's a reason Metasigil wears goggles instead of contacts. Gremlinized contacts frying are a good way to loose your eyes. That and goggles keep out the radioactive dust up in Redmond. Mmmmm... Fallout....

Aw, man, that's harsh.

I'm hoping that Hofnar's player isn't a larper....

No, Hofnar doesn't LARP his nudity. I think he enjoys fictional exhibitionism in which he's hung like a troll. To be honest the amount of info i give them from their NPC technomancer is probably less than I'd give to a real hacker/TM. I just use him as a way to give out information, and keep things sane. (a runner team without computing abilities will soon tire of raiding the Amish) I predetermine what he finds out and can do, a PC would at least occasionally surprise me/get lucky. Also, yes spirits frighten me, very much.

We just gotta raid the Amish for their ancient farming secrets. I could quadruple my bean and root vegetable yields, easy. I'm not afraid of their electro-pitchforks and Beard Shamans. Ahh, the mighty Beard Spirit, +2 to Health Spells, +2 to all Social rolls in an Agricultural enviroment, Must grow a big bushy beard and tithe 10% of your income to you beard in the form of beard care products and grooming services. That why the Amish prefer a barter system, doesn't count as income for tithing.

My group has also agreed to leave out the decker as a PC option. We simply have an NPC decker, and the GM makes a couple rolls, then it's his call.

Seems likely to work.

Edit: I'd also think "Hung like a troll" wouldn't be that exciting, relatively speaking.

I mean, either they have to have massive clothing redesigns, or proportionally, it's not that impressive....

Just to drop another drop of useless knowledge, Hofnar (actually Hofnarr) is the german word for court jester.

Well, hung like a troll's probably not that exciting to another troll but to anyone else...

On a disturbingly related note the player took Hofnar from another source. In some country (I can't remember which) it's an acronym for Hard On For No Apparent Reason. But the German jester thing fits too.

The character's full title is Hofnar the Magnificent, inspired by Leonid the Magnificent, from America's Got Talent. If you didn't see it picture a 7 foot tall, crying, Russian, Drag Queen/Acrobat in platform heels and angle wings.

Edit: He was crying because he lost, the way I said it made his act sound even stranger.

It is not so hard to believe that Hofnar character was part taken from watching american's got talent. One person captured his imagination. We could probably LARP these sessions but I really don't want to run around fighting about makeup for the first half of the session or having my parents egg Hofnar on. Anyway in anyones option what are the best grenades to get? I have to get more as I used the others and only have smoke granades left.

Thermal smoke.

Pepper Punch gas grenades, are cheap, perfectly legal, and are pretty dang good based on that. oh, and the damage stays at full all the way to the edge. (avail 4, cost 35 )

Flashbangs are also good if you can't wait for the turn to end and pepper punch to take effect. avail 6R, 30

both of them are good against armor (or at least, in the case of pepper punch, standard armor), cheap, readily available, and in the case of pepper punch, it's completely legal without any license whatsoever.... ("oh, this? this is for devil rats and ghouls officer. i would never dream of using it on people!)