Hey BTW Jimmy's player made his own campaign journal. I'm not going to post it here, but for those particularily interested I can send it if you PM me your email (Already got yours Max). Not for my other players though.

Hi, I'm Trog. From the campaing. Don't worry, I have the GM's permisson to read the log.

Very fun to read this thread, brings back memories from the sessions. Also nice to see you people liked both the campaign and the characters. The characters have much more personality than what shows in the logs, but they're impressively long and detailed as is. Nice going, FOD.

Best moment probably was when we were backstage at the Naboo concert, just because it was such a night of perfect happiness for Trog.
And the perfect DocWagon heist. And kidnapping Euphoria, only to see Uzz steal her away from poor, horny Trog. And "Sure, test your new fancy stun-gun on me, I won't feel a thing!"...

Interesting to see just how much of a reason Uzz had to be unstable after the insect hive debacle. I wonder how Trog would react to finding out. I suspect it would have led to some intra-party violence.


Trog is my first SR character. I didn't know the name was a derogatory term in SR, I just tried to come up with something his go-gang "buddies" could have named a stupid, naive troll - troglodyte - Trog.

That's also part of my excuse for making such a stereotype character, but to be honest I find stereotype characters come to be for a reason. They're fun to play. Trog certainly has been. The stupid brick-wall troll who gets suspicious he actually is stupid, so gets a smart-boosting implant and brags about it. A simple guy with simple needs, who everyone else in the party likes while they mostly hate eachother.

I regret min-maxing so much from the start when we started at low BP. It forced the GM to send too tough baddies at us who stomped all over some of the other characters. On the other hand it enabled me to play Trog brave and stupid without getting him killed, so I believe it has helped me promote fun-ness in the campaign.


Anyway. The campaign has been fun, but to me it's becoming increasingly clear how broken some rules in SR are, especially for fights as the powerlevel goes up. I'm not sure wether or not we should retire the campaign. I like the characters and most of the setting, but it sortof feels like it could be about time.

*raise his glass* If this is the end then thanks for the laughs. It's been a good read

And if you start a new campaign, feel free to post a new log here.

Aight, will do. Now I have to edit all my entries as the new version fucked up my Spoiler blocks.

Ah well. There won't be a new campaign for some time anyway though, as there will be missing one or more players until at least march, and probably during easter as well.

sweet,I haven't read the whole thread but what I have is cool.
Hunter Maddox

It was a pleasure both reading your campaign journal from the DMs perspective and then having the chance to read Jimmys campaign journal to see it from the players perspective. I haven't had the chance to play shadowrun for a few years since my old gaming group of 10 years slowly fell apart but after reading the adventures your group has gone through has inspired me enough to get reacquainted with the world of Shadowrun. I hope you are able to get a group doing again in the near future just in hopes of having the chance to read more journals.

Vol

<Woot first post after 4+ years of reading forums>

Thanks Vol. Hey, this reminds me of the Life of Brian scene where Brian jumps into the hermit hole and after years of silence the hermit starts dancing and singing Hope you will do the same, and start posting.

Hello guys, it's time to raise the dead

I've started a new Shadowrun game with totally different players. Despite it's flaws, Shadowrun has been in my heart ever since I played the SNES game back in 1993.

In any case, this new campaign called "New Dawn/Shadowdawn" is based on a previous game where I was a player, and the GM sent the whole party by a ritual to a special plane of existance - Earthdawn.

I'm not gonna write an AAR for that game even if it was fun and Horrors were... horrible, but I'm just gonna use the old PCs as main NPCs in the story to come.

Anyway, the new story have these old protagonists masterminding the creation of a company called "New Dawn" which is in the process of recruiting young potential runners to form several groups that may one day have to be used in order to thwart the coming of Horrors and magical apocalypses to the 6th world.

Now before I contine, I was wondering If I should make a new thread for this new AAR or continue in the old one - the post here is mainly to give you guys who were following this heads up, but new readers might not want to skim through 9 pages before getting to the new one.

Anyway, cheers, I've been away from this forum for too long. We're gonna use SR4a rules and a few house rules, and runners are going to be nerfed in magic and equipment in the beginning, although not as much as in the last one. The idea is that these people are mostly law-abiding citizens with fitting backgrounds that wants or has to become Shadpwrunners instead - thus the Troll "sammie" doesen't even have Wired 1 yet =

Welcome back. Just read through the archive; sounds like an awesome campaign you had going. I sympathized with Trog the most as I played a very similar char my first time with SR as well. Looking forward to your new AAR; I'd suggest you start a new thread so as to best separate the two and avoid possible confusion.

I also enjoyed the read-through. I hope your new group can keep as focused as this older LitB one. Whatever personal friction they had never seemed to stall out the game, at least, not from the logs.

Thanks! Yeah it will be a new thread. They've just played a single run so far. These guys are not as good at RPGs in general though, in several ways.

But if anything else it might be fun reading about how they mess up what should be Milk Runs

I would like to know how it turns up.
Where in Norway are you guys playing? If it isn't to far away I might be interested if there is an opening sometime in the future.

We're in Oslo.
Hvis du vil være med kan du sende meg en PM med email, og litt info om deg selv. Vi har bare 3 spillere nå og 1 som blir med når han får tid.

I'm currently working on my first post in word, not gonna do the "delete all" Ctrl+W function in the glorious Microsoft Internet Explorer that I have done in the past (damn Microsoft I'm glad Redmond became a Barren slum)

Anyway, it's going to be a but long and detailed so maybe I can finish it tomorrow.

Not entirely sure how I stumbled into this thread but once I started reading, I just couldn't stop. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it - also enjoyed imagining that if my own SR4A character had been in the mix, he would have been dead a million times over, so its in some ways totally surprising that Trog was someone's first character, which I think goes to show that you helped put on a wonderfully fun time as a GM, IMHO. Its too bad Jimmy's player thought he was not getting his fare share of the spotlight, in many ways I saw that character as the nucleus of these ne'er do wells, the kind of shadowrunner who I would vote most likely to actually survive the shadows by actually staying in them ... unless I am getting Jimmy mixed up with another, who was the awesome pick pocket thief again?

Thanks again for this thread, I'll be lurking for sure now that I have found it.

It was probably my shamless bumping and necroing Thanks for your praise

Yes Jimmy aka. Vanessa was very well played, but wasn't really built for combat. Good stealth skills, decent hacking skills (although limited by low programs at first)... but above all it was the cunning of the player that made Jimmy a successful character for so long. He has long experience in D&D and other systems and thus have learned alot of ways to solve problems and maximise the usefulness of otherwise limited resources. But a single member of the HTR team that was supposed to give Trog and Uzz some challenge was able to easily gun down Jimmy in a single phase - the inevitability of dice pools.

I am assuming you are talking about that last run that went sour, I don't suppose you still remember how the rolls went? Just looked at Jimmy's attributes and skills on the shared sheet post and frankly I am really surprised the Spider even spotted him, especially considering the (IIRC) amazing dropping a live nade in a mark's pocket - twice! Not sure about the hacking the feed part but the initial quick spot, Jimmy has Stealth (Infiltration) 4 + Agility 5, Perception 5 (Visual) + Intuition 5 with the Visual Enhancement 3, knowledge/skill of Electronics 4, Security Procedures 3 (Inside), Construction 2/3, Security Design 6 and that Chamsuit. That stuff had to count for something in noticing the camera and not being seen by it initially or did poor Jimmy just have some bad rolls compared against what read like a jumped in Spider, which would be Perception + Sensor Rating, correct?

And despite all that, if Jimmy wanted to get more into combat, wouldn't that mean jumped in combat drones for a hacker / thief character? Those rigger cocoons offer a bunch of protection and can be hidden in all sorts of vehicles, at least that is what I think I have read in these forums before.

Heh, don't mind me, it is all well in the past now but it all plays out in my mind like some epic anime series or something, I now find myself brain storming what kind of future the characters would go on to. I think Trog would become leader of that gang he liked to help and by some bizarre twist actually make people's lives better in the Barrens (well, at least in comparison to the chaos of before), Uzz I think would go on some sort of quest to get his balls and babe back but fail when IIRC he pisses off a (free?) spirit he was trying to make a deal with, Simon would end up in some major spell research that might kill him or turn him into a ultimate powerhouse, and Jimmy would always be around but you would never know it, like a ghost of some sort.

Well to be honest there were a few misunderstandings. For example, I don't think Jimmy would have gone in alone like that exposing himself, he pictured he could somehow pick the maglock either while away or with the backup of his team. He tried to spoof the camera, sending false images to replace it normal output (I don't think you can do that anymore, without having some access to the node the camera is linked to, in this case the enemy hacker). His spoof check was fairly low though, and the enemy hacker noticed something was wrong.

As for the stealth part, yeah Jimmy is a sneaky bastard but in an empty corridor down to a garage door there is no cover, no concealment, and the camera had thermal on so it was no way he could hide, chamsuit or not. This isn't a computer game where you can enter "stealth mode" and just sneak around people in clear view.

As for drones I don't really know why Jimmy didn't get them loaded for bear, maybe he thought it didn't fit with his concept. Also he could have easily gotten firearms skill or some skillwires a long time ago, getting maybe 7-9 dice at least. But he had the impression that less than 15 dice in shooting meant there was no point in trying. Probably because of Uzz.

I get the empty corridor thing and lack of "stealth mode" in clear view but you would be surprised what a infiltrator can do in full view and get away with. Heh, what if their security responded to any bum on the street looking for shelter in that corridor with full auto at the door, probably how it was a known hideout. For all that Spider knows that could have been some SiNless making a wrong turn or someone trying to find somewhere to smoke for a second out of the wind. If you can't blend in necessarily, appear oblivious, ignorant, harmless, and so on that help someone hide in plain sight, things just don't even notice anymore because its stuff we have gotten used to. I always figured all these details were just abstracted, you know? Heck, maybe its the camera is noticed in the split second the Infiltrator is turning the corner and so all that peaks out of the infiltrator is a split second of tiny profile, quickly (or slowly since eyes tend to be drawn to quick movement) pulled back before anyone/thing notices a change in the feed. And that all depends on how well that camera is setup, even cameras have blind spots in their fields of view. *shrug*

Edit: Oh hey, look, I found out where your SK, Archon, got off to... http://achrongame.com/
A little more seriously however, what was going to happen with the released SK, you mentioned before that one was going to make a repeat appearance at some point.

These were not security, but SpecOps forces (belonging to MCT IIRC). They were quite willing to gun down any wandering SINless fool who got in the way. Especially if said SINless both attempted to jam the camera AND pulled out a Hardware kit to make a break in.

If this had been some sort of open street I'm sure Jimmy could have "pretended" to be some BTL junkie and get away with just observing them.
Also, cameras generally don't have blind spots in corridors. The camera was set above the door, and covered the entire hallway except to the immidiate left and right of the camera. I've seen alot of cameras in my day and I've never seen one of those computer game ones put in a stupid position contiually rotating so you can easily time it and get behind it...

PS check you PMs

I have been reading this thread on and off for a bit now.
I wanted to express my appreciation for the continually entertaining write up.

\(^_^)/

Heh, which is why I was focusing on the initial spotting of Jimmy by the camera. The hardware kit is a tough one to explain to a viewer to be sure ... unless you try to disguise as some sort of maintenance person I suppose.

The specifics on the camera tells me some interesting things that indicate it would have blind spots unless it was a fish eye lens and that should make the initial spot tougher if that was the case, especially if it was infrared spectrum as well as the visual spectrum. If the camera was pointed towards the entrance to the tunnel, then its blind spots would be directly below/above/beside/behind it but since I know it was able to see him working on the door, that tells me it was pointed down since it was above the door (the door was at the end of the corridor, not to one of the sides, correct?), so then it wouldn't have been covering the entrance to the corridor. And depending on how hidden the camera is, that could also have an effect on the field of view. And items in the background of a camera's view can have an effect on how easily someone approaching it can be initially spotted, if its covering the entrance to the corridor, if the thorough fare outside commonly has anyone walk by it, objects that change with the heat of the day, movement of just about any sort, there would be potential to blend in with the background. And since apparently the camera doesn't change its view because that would be video game silly or something, its one or the other viewpoint or less than ideal wide angle fish eye view (that whole detail enlarged in the center of the viewpoint and compressed near the edges thing).

Once he starts approaching a camera that doesn't have a feed that is jammed or looped or edited, not much to be done then other than have a improved invisibility thing going I suppose, unless that camera is always in the infrared spectrum, then a proper full suit would help make him less visible. Lets see, what was that called again... Hmm, Chameleon suit is full body but it doesn't seem to suggest that it wouldn't help against the various spectrums since it is just a general -4 to Perception Tests to see him. And Thermal damping armor modification, which he didn't have IIRC, could have stacked too.

I wonder if he had other clothes to wear in public, social situations though, I doubt it doesn't look weird to see (or just barely see) a Predator struting throught the Barrens, entering the market to make a few purchases, and having a brew and conversation at the local watering hole in the wall. Time to browse Jimmy's sheet again!

PMs checked and responded to.

Yeah the camera had blind spots, such as the actually downwards sloping tunnel where the other runners waited behind. It covered most of that tunnel including the sides, but at a downwards angle so it couldn't see that many meters in front of it. But there was really no way to pass it without going through the field of vision. Improved Invisibility is the only way I could think of, unless he succeeded in the Spoofing and the enemy hacker failed to notice it. In which case the team probably would have had the drop on the Specops. Also keep in mind 2070 cameras are probably better than what we have today - especially compared to cheap store CCTVs.

As for movable cameras, those exists of course but are generally controlled by a human - or in SR by a control program or jumped in rigger. Hmm in retrospect the SpecOps could have easily placed 2 cameras therefore getting even better coverage... but it was a temporary thing. Thermal Damping would have helped some. Cham suit uses Ruthenium that "copies" and mimics the colors of whatever the runner is moving past - kinda like a RL Chameleon. IR thermal just shows the differences in temperature and builds pictures based on that alone. Thus since the cham suit is heated by the body temperture, it is fairly useless in IR. In any case it is almost too good as it is. Jimmy's player knew he couldn't hide in plain sight with it though.. unless standing perfectly still at least.

You post it, I'll read it. Loved the original AAR series.

This thread was truly unique. I really enjoyed reading it, and even plan add a couple of it's elements to my own game. Out of everything done, I only had issue with one thing:

The cranial bomb.

"Boo-hoo, my character got a bomb put in his head and now I'm being railroaded through an adventure, boo-hoo."

What I have to say about this?

Tough luck, chummer. Life isn't always about what you want or don't want to do. I get up every morning and go to work, don't want to, but the light man forces me to. Drek happens. Plan and simple. Instead of complaining that you were "railroaded" though an adventure, spend that time doing something constructive. Like plotting the demise of the Johnson that did it. "But wait a minute, the AAR said she had cut town with her boy toy in fear of her life!" Oh yeah, and she took EVERYONE she knew and was emotionally tied to with her? Doubt it. Kidnap her mother, shoot her brother, just make it clear to her, that if she doesn't personally make herself accountable that you'll keep killing her associates until she does. Further more, why not just hunt her down? I've had my players respond in just this way to a similar situation. Finally, when I replied: "Look, he doesn't care about these people, he fled for Alanta a long time ago", you know what their response was? "How much is a plane ticket and a fake CAS passport?" Off to Alanta they went. Heck, they basically wrote the run for me telling me how they wanted it to go down. All I had to do was fill in the details.

Sorry to bring up old history, and then be long winded. Just had to get it off my chest. Thanks for the wonderful story!