Okay, my players have all confirmed that they don't read much about Shadowrun online and they haven't read much non-rules material, so I'm going to post my current campaign outline here to see what people think of it. I'll probably keep it up to date with a log of the campaign as well, assuming that our group actually lasts, this time.

A couple of explanations of why things are falling out this way. Firstly, I started playing with 1st edition. I played through much of 2nd, but 3rd passed me by entirely. While I'm fine with moving on through all the events of these editions, my players weren't there for them and it seems a shame that they missed so much. Also, it can be problematic to hit people with everything that's happened in the Sixth World at once. One of the strengths of early Shadowrun was that it was still close to our world in a lot of ways. Fourth Edition actually does an even better job of making orks and trolls and magic feel real than 1st and 2nd did. Everything is so well thought out. But there's still the baggage of the big events. Chicago, Dunklezahn, Arcology: Shutdown. All put together at once, these risk breaking that fragile believability.

So although the technology is the same and the year is 2070, we're having an unofficial and non-explicit reboot. The second post will be more about my actual campaign plan. This will be more about the previous games.

The initial game was a bit of a milk run to let everyone find their feet and for me to get a feel for the group. Unfortunately, I inherited this group so didn't have any involvement in the creation of the characters. So we got our obligatory Cha 1, Log 1 troll. We're talking restricted cyberware, a troll bow, the works. And a slutty Cha 1, Log 1 troll to boot! A second player was a pure power-trip ork samurai-assasin. You know the sort: two handfuls of dice with a sniper rifle. I didn't even realise the character was an ork until after the session (it was scrawled somewhere on the sheet I didn't notice and I hadn't time to crunch the numbers on all the characters). Certainly it was never mentioned. A third player was much more into Shadowrun. It was him who persuaded me to guest GM and he played the game as a kid and loves it. He has the most developed character by far with a bit of honour. An ork physical adept. He still has Magic 6 and Cha 1, mind you. Fourth player might be the most entertaining, but is also run by someone with the least grasp of the rules. Banjo is the rigger and proto-hacker of the team. He's not actually got much in the way of drones (a few roto-drones and a doberman) but does have a van which is more than most of the others. Did I mention that this group decked out with hundreds of thousands of Nuyen's worth of gear all live in a squat in Redmond with no facilities? Well sorry - I just figured I probably didn't need to. I've named Banjo. The walking wall troll girl is called Da Silva. She does have some backgrond - she used to fight for the Azzies down in the Yucatan which is why she has all the implants. She got out though and washed up in Seattle. Longtooth is the ork adept. Strong silent type, Russian background. Not too shabby in the Stealth department. And SharpEye. SharpEye is the sniper-rifle with the attached ork. Glowing red cybereyes with a mod so that smoke can curl from his skull. Creepy bugger.

Well they all get a call from their Fixer who they share. There's a job - a hostile extraction - that might suit them. A Japanese called Hideo whose been up to no good and is wanted. The background is that a factory has been built in Redmond (yes - it does have some industry, check out Runner Havens) by Shiawase. As part of the deal, Shiawase agreed to refurbish some of the local housing. The Mayor of Redmond is still fighting the good fight to claw her city from the ashes. Shiawase have honoured their agreement but the recently completed apartment block has just been thoroughly torched by Cutters. It's suspected that Shiawase instigated that for some reasons. Who knows? Maybe they don't want the area gentrified or to be stuck with utilities and power obligations toward their worker housing or maybe something else. The players don't know - their reconnaisance consists of driving up to the place and circling the block. All they really know is that this guy Hideo is suspected of having something to do with it and they need to get him out of extraterritoriality.

So the players drive unknowingly into the middle of a stand-off between the Cutters and the Crimson Crush (it was the latter's turf after all) ready to pile into this factory. It's a closed compound and its still receiving the finishing touches inside, not yet operational and staffed, so security is light. So the players, just to make my return to GM'ing after a nearly year long absense smooth and easy, immediately split up.

SharpEye is first. He's got a grappling gun on his equipment list and nothing's going to stop him using it. So he scouts around one side of the building looking for a likely tall structure adjacent. I'm using a Google Maps print out with some tweaks for map, which I've printed out at A3 in colour for the locale, so I think I'm scoring GM points with the players here. Finding a suitable apartment block, SharpEye kicks his way through the Barrens trash and goes in to find his way to the roof. Woo! Action now. A couple of Crushers are stationed here as look outs. Bang, bang. That's two dead Crushers. I think he took a bullet but he shrugged it off - light pistols, meh! So slightly more cautiously, he's on his way up. Silva the troll is by this point loping around the factory after him having scented dice rolling. She might have Cha 1, but she's got long legs and she's half-way around the complex by the time Banjo makes contact with the locals. You see Banjo, not having much in the way of combat skills, is waiting in the van while LongTooth scouts out entrance to the building. Naturally an unmarked, non-burnt out van has got the Cutters' attention (he's parked on their side of the standoff) so over they come. Trouble's over there now - so Silva starts loping her way back round again. I'm thoroughly loving all this as GM.

There's a bit of an exchange between Banjo and the gangers, along the lines of "Who are you?" "No, who are YOU?" "Are you looking for trouble?" "Are YOU looking for trouble." Banjo's player proves more adept at street talking than her GM and the balance tips further when the alarming troll giantess appears puffing and panting in her body armour. The ganger leader is uncertain, and he reaches for his commlink to contact the rest of his group who are hiding in the nearby buildings watching this. Silva pulls out her favourite toy - a directional jammer and cuts him off. The leader makes a terrible mistake and goes for his gun. Oh dear. More dead gangers result from Silva's lethal close-combat skills and Banjo's doberman drone. (Yes, melee and automatic weapons are a bad combination, but no, the players pull it off). Shots and Molitov's rain down on them both from the cover of the nearby buildings. None of the molitovs strike home to the GM's great dissappointment, as the troll was carrying explosive arrow heads. Oh well. Silva's player gets the hint though, and stashes all combustibles in the van. SharpEye is put out by having missed all this bloodshed and so employs an attention getting device - the grapple gun. Zipping across the street five stories up, SharpEye lands delicately on the roof of the complex with every intention of solo-ing the entire mission. He strides confidently through the motion sensors to the spotted roof access door.

But first, let us return to Longtooth who is suffering, as sensible, cautious players are wont to do, through lack of gametime. Despite a bouncing SharpEye player next to me, we now spend a little time with Longtooth who has gotten himself inside with a maglock passkey (iirc) and is now cautiously stalking through the dimly lit offices and hulking, silent machinery.

Okay - action time again.

Silva and Banjo make their way in the van back to the factory entrance, following LongTooth. Meanwhile, the roof door opens and two Japanese security guards appear in cover and pop some shots off at SharpEye. One dies in return, the other is hurt and limps back inside. Meanwhile, deep within the complex, a certain Hideo has heard the alert and has plugged himself into the factory security cameras, watching with some concern. SharpEye pursues the guard into the building and finds to his great delight that the guards in this facility make their way around the rather long corridors on Ares-Segways. He calmly dispatches the remaining guard who clutches up at him and whispers a few last words as he dies. But SharpEye isn't Japanese so understands as little as he cares. Because it's TIME TO RIDE SEGWAYS OFF ROOFS!!!! Down goes the first segway with its ork rider leaping clear. But sadly Segways are electric and don't explode in gasoline fireballs, so it's back inside for, I quote, "Looting" (to be said in a sing-song manner). SharpEye kills a painting and decorating drone (which is a shame as this was a means for the players to get their hands on building layouts from a source that was easily hacked). He then discovers that each of the many offices in this place has its own set of cheap trodes on the desk. There are a hundred offices in this place! If he can rob all of them, then that's going to be... let me see... a hundred sets of trodes! "How much are trodes worth? Give me the book! I think the GM fucked up!" SharpEye is going to be busy for a while, so we'll leave him playing D&D for a bit. Kay?

Silva and Longtooth are now searching office by office through the complex and are realising that this place is actually, like, really, really big. They also realise at this point that SharpEye killing the security guards scuppered them a great opportunity for interrogation. Oops. Oh well, it's not like they had a chance to stop him. LongTooth suggests looking for a security office. He's dejected because he knows neither of them will be able to hack the computers there and Banjo is currently waiting by the van. I point out that this is 4th edition and he can do any hacking he wants via their shared commlink. Hooray for 4th Edition!

Well I've missed out some Troll on Drone action, I'm afraid. Three dobermen are dead despite good tactics on their part and heading off the PCs. That pre-errata troll bow is just too powerful. Still the encounter works very well as everyone gets to grips better with the idea of tactics and the need to co-ordinate and seek cover. Silva's player picks up on things fast, quickly assessing relative advantages of bow rate of fire vs. rifle rate of fire against targets of different toughnesses and at different levels of dice pool penalties (make GM note: this one adapts rapidly).They find the security office and Banjo tries to hack it, but owing to a very poor selection of skills and programs, doesn't succeed. A bit of a shame. How will they find Hideo now?

Well fortunately they don't need to worry. The original intent of their GM was that Shiawase would send out a helicopter to pick up their employee at the first sign of trouble. That would put a nice time-limit on the mission and the gang issue was a possible complication for the players trying to get the target out of the area to meet their Johnson. But I like to play everything logically and Hideo is an intelligent NPC. He's not going to wait around to die. Having access to all the security feeds, he has, by this point, managed to dodge by the PCs' haphazard search and make his way to the exit while they're in the security room.

Interlude: I forgot the moment when the PCs discovered the core of the factory was a small (three story), standard issue Shiwawase manufactured Fusion core. It was lolz. :crazy:

Right - back to Hideo. For some reason, although they received no information to suggest this, they have for some reason assumed he was some boring wageslave. He isn't. He's a Company Man. The probability that he carries out negotiations with street gangs for his employers should have tipped them off that he was not Mr. 2x4 Office Desk. Perhaps it was the trid photo of him that the Johnson gave them showing him in a nice suit that gave them that idea. Or more likely it was the longtime player working on habits from previous games with other GMs. At any rate, Hideo walks out of the building while the three toughest characters are inside and quickly bests Banjo in combat, ending it with a cyberspur against the throat. Now we get to play hostage negotiations.

Everyone kicks into action at this point. Longtooth sprints for the entrance. Silva goes straight to troll speed and though starting from further away is rapidly catching up. And SharpEye returns wih a vengence, his player stubbing an index finger at my map and saying "these split level roofs... they go down one floor at a time?" "Yes," I reply, followed by a display of parkour that David Belle would probably appreciate.

As the factory shakes to the pounding feet of a 500lb (226kg) troll and an ork jumps from roof-top to roof-top, poor Banjo is hustled into her own van and knocked to the floor as Hideo prepares to make his get-away. Simultaneously the troll and the roof-jumper appear to block the escape, closely followed by the ork adept. A stand-off results.

Threats are made and spurned. But Hideo turns out to be a pretty glib character and soon negotiations are begun. Because Hideo has pulled another trick that didn't occur to the PCs. He's called the cops. With Hideo's blade at the rigger's throat, a Lone Star YellowJacket in the sky and the Johnson on the comm, everything, after all those dice and stats, has come down to role-playing.

The players discuss things amongst themselves using their comms. No-one knows who Hideo is talking to, if he's talking at all. A compromise is reached. It turns out that Hideo would prefer to be arrested by the Star and face a few white-collar charges with a Shiawase lawyer by his side to taking his chances with three psychopaths. The Johnson isn't too happy, but he'll still pay just to have Hideo taken into custody. That was the ultimate intention, after all. (Don't forget that the Johnson is ultimately working for local government). The only big faux pas, as it turns out, is when SharpEye offers to double-cross the Johnson for double his fee. They'll drop Hideo off in return for the money and then get him free again once they have the Johnson's money. The problem? Hideo has cybereyes and can record audio on his commlink. This offer later makes its way back to the Johnson because once Hideo is out of physical danger, he can be pretty spiteful.

Still, the team get their money. The City Council has proven it can play hardball and with one of its people interrogated by the police, Shiawase is forced back to the negotiating table to get operating licences etc. (And their man released again as a sweetner, as Hideo knew he would be all along). They've unfortunately made an enemy of the Cutters gang - one of Seattle's largest. And their fixer is mightily pissed off once their betrayal becomes known to him) But on the plus side, they learnt the value of planning and tactics (ish) and that the resale value on cheap office trodes (even a hundred of them) is pretty low.

It wasn't a bad game. I was out of practice running combat since the fight with the gangers took too long. Longtooth's player was pretty put out at Hideo's unexpected capability due to the assumptions he made. He was also (more justifiably) put out at the lack of spotlight which really wasn't fair as he was effectively being punished for having a sensible plan and a less min-maxxed character. I'll have to work on that. I got a bit of negative flack for putting the dampers on some things (like capping the Strength of a troll bow) but I was told later, that it was the best game they'd ever had so I got a good glow from that.

And best of all, the troll player spent his precious karma on getting her Logic up to 2 having realised that yes - he really will have to roll it sometimes.

Okay - that's all I have time for now. Thanks to anyone who actually read through all this. I hope it was interesting. If I get feedback, I'll post some more. The next up will be the outline of my campaign plan.

Khadim.

I've run into the pile of back story problem as well when adding new players to our group. With a majority of players who've been around since first edition it can be a tough call. So what I do is try to introduce alittle bit at a time and have my veteran players help out by playing history teachers. Try and get them access to a timeline as well and encourage them to do some homework. More times then not players who are serious about playing SR enjoy learning about its past and are eager to get involved in current timeline. It helps having long time players constantly playing the "remember when" game.

edit: Enjoyed the post by the way. Great to see players are pretty much the same no matter were they are.

Thanks for the post and please do post more of this!

As a member of the "Owns the books, loves the game but has not steady group and doesn't get to play often" sub-group of SR fans I love session write-ups both for the entertainment value and the insights they offer to players and GMs alike.

Good job of making the most out of a group of min-max power gamers.

It's my biggest pet peeve, and I've gotten to the point where I just won't run a game unless the players are as involved as I am in making the game compelling and nuanced.

I'm sure I sound like a snob here, but like I said, it's my biggest pet peeve.

That´s a status update... impressive.


I do believe you have a starting point here - the group agrees on one style, and from past drone configurations you provided, plus your session report, it is obvious you can challenge that group in combat.



You have two active ways to address your (as opposed to your groups as it seems) concern about minimum social ability (two that I see, that is). The first, demonstrating that "no social skills" is a problem, will just earn you resistance. The second would be to decree +2 (+x) charisma for everyone, because you prefer it that way and you are the GM and you say so and it is free. Now you have a combat-savy group with sufferable social ability, without the resistance part. As for learning to value social skills, the dp´s will still not be something to write home about.


The first social skill to push for such a group is Intimidation. 6 Karma for skill + specialisation(mental) for delivering some cool threats effectivly.


"I don´t care if you loot, but please take something that has value. The office nexus would come to mind. Remember to clear your matrix traces. Also, the fast response team was likely told to have an eye on this facility due to light onsite security."


Harsh, but fair.

rewarding the complete deliberate dumping of charisma doesn't teach them to get charisma (and social skills). it teaches them to dump charisma and wait for a handout.

i would say give them one run where the mr J (or a contact) gives them good, solid intel. show them how much easier things are when you can get information, and they'll start wanting contacts. when they start wanting contacts, they're going to want to improve their social skills to get the most use out of those contacts.

you show them what they could have, then let them work out *why* they don't have it, and what they need to do to get it. you let sharpeye make a negotiation check to sell those trodes to a fence, and watch him realise just how little he's going to get, as the fence will easily beat him at negotiation. assuming he can even persuade mr J to give them a low-connection fence to talk to (after all, they just pretty much failed, and attempted to betray him... and i'm guessing none of them had the foresight to get a good fence contact).

if, after this, you feel like being generous, you could potentially let them shift some BPs into contacts and charisma. but don't just give a handout.

EDIT: I had a long overview on my campaign plan here. I've taken it out on the grounds that it was very long, very boring and not all that necessary.

People knew to this thread would read the first part - a session summary - get to this part and probably never rejoin the run summaries later on. So I've just taken it out. The campaign outline will become apparent through writing up the run summaries anyway and it will be more interesting too.

In brief: I have retconned some of the major history of Shadowrun, namely Insect Spirits, Chicago and Deus, none of which now happened. I will be running a campaign that blends together Harlequin, the appearance of Insects / Chicago and the Ghost Cartel's campaign outline. I have a somewhat darker take on the character of Harlequin than I think many others do and whilst he's not exactly a bad guy, he's certainly not the hero of the story. That role remains vacant and whether or not the PCs are able to step up to the challenge we will see. All I will say is that someone who has endured six-thousand years of wandering this earth, is not someone that the PCs will exactly be relating too.

Now - on with the run summaries...

-K.

Knasser,

It sounds as though your campaign's milkrun went rather well. Your plans are bold, sir, and I await your elaborations. I never got that involved in the metaplot as a GM - I prefer to run my games on the outskirts of major plot lines; taking part in the many events that harmonized just right to make the main events possible. A bit further out on the outskirts than you, I imagine? No matter.

RE: power gamers. 1) Post milkrun I might offer the players a chance to re-roll characters. They can keep their concepts or even just their major roles but I would strongly suggest re-rolling unless they have become entrenched and attached (which it sounds as though they have). I personally never allow players to just show up with sheets but we don't always have the luxury of being involved in the chargen process for a whole host of reasons.

2) Place them in a series of challenges that require social and hacking skills which will have real consequences. IE "we need to hack those autoguns or we DIE" or "If we botch this social roll we won't get the info we need to make sure we don't trip the alarms AND DIE" or the like.

3) Eratta that bow yesterday.

4) Hammer them with anti-metahuman hate. Make policlub goons hound them at every turn until the Star locks them up for murdering policlub guys. Grin sheepishly and say "Hey, thats what you get for shooting javelins through citizens at high noon. Not too many trolls in the 'burbs that do that 'cept you. Roll human? Lots of 'em about."

5) A table rule of "No dump stats. Everything has to be minimum 2 unless we talk about it", which can effectively retcon to produce karma dumps into Logic or Charisma as your one player did, might work.

One of the things that I always have a hard time doing with players, especially hackers, is helping them find ways to engage in the game without just shooting everything that moves. Now, I don't mean to say "resolving problems or encounters" per se, but something close to that. What I mean to say is that it can be VERY hard, especially with players who havent read much or any fiction, to get them to "see" the gameworld enough to even know what kinds of possibilities there are. I just had a talk with a player the other day about his hacker and the Spoof command. It blew his mind. "You can spoof matrix com-calls? You can spoof cyberware scanner readouts" etc. Yes, good sir. Oh yes. And more! Similarly getting all of the players to understand the idea of large wifi networks where any subscribed device can provide a crack or seam to exploit the core of the network was / is / will be difficult.

The other major problem that I have always had with players is convincing them that contacts is something that they need, that in shadowrun who you know is often more important than what you know or how many guys you can kill before the coin you just dropped hits the ground. One of the major ways that I do this is to have whole sections of runs that require large amounts of legwork, straight up. By requires I mean that 1) there are time constraints that put players on a schedule 2) their leads run into roadblocks re: combat - maybe their leads would take them into a LoneStar precinct headquarters, maybe into the Renraku Arcology... Whatever. Their leads bring them into a roadblock where simply shooting first and asking questions later will either a) result in MAD or b) ruin their timeline or c) a little of column a and a little from column b.

The way this has looked in the past is that as players flounder I say things like "well, you have [these keywords (locations, people, gear etc.)]. Who do you know that knows about these things? Have you Googled it? Start calling people." It is a pretty direct way to make them tie into legwork, sure, but from there you have far more options that can be handled with more finesse. Once you have players on the phone with NPCs the NPCs themselves can tell the players "Why the hell would I know about Corporate Finance? Im a decker! CALL A BANKER! *click*". Or what have you.

There are plenty of ways that NPCs can be a mouthpeace (pun intended) for explaining to characters that they are severely lacking in contacts, social skills etc. After your player sells his trode nets and botches his 3 die negotiations rolle (especially if he glitches), have the fixer who set him up with a fence call him and insult him for getting ripped off: "Don't ever waste my fucking time for 50 nuyen ever again. Period."

These things can have consequences immediately. They get ripped off. Their contact loyalty decreases (which later decreases die pools for info / gear / favor checks and the like). They may gain notoriety. All of these mechanical results are all sparked by and backed up by in game sources. God I love RPGs.

I'm a big fan of early plot too and wish we could get an update on past players. I still think -H- deserves another mega adventure to complete a trilogy. Ehran an elf in a suit? IMHO I always believed Ehran the greatest villain of all time. Helping break up the US and form an Elven nation. Were the elves behind vitas or other chaos of the time? I believe partly Ehran and the other IE's plotted for thousands of years for there return and put there plans into motion after the awakening. Then they of course lost it all to some armed hippies who were protesting.....go figure.

We have had a couple of sessions since I last posted, our last one on Friday. And I think the sudden appearance of the dragon convinced them that in the future, they should do legwork.

The last couple of sessions have been a real mix of cock-ups (mostly mine) and satisfaction. The most rewarding quote of the last session was a player's; "Hey - you realise we only killed one person, and that was the person we were supposed to kill?"

Although the most amusing quote had to be from a PC to the escort girl he was using as cover to sneak out from the watchful gaze of the Yakuza to other parts of the club which, if I remember correctly was as follows:
"You know it would be a real turn on for me if we could do it in the Accountancy office. Do you know where that is?"

That even beats (because it was in character) my favourite from the session before: "Whatever you set your commlink ringtone to, the GM has to sing!" Much was the player's dismay when I really did know the words to Aqua's "Barbie Girl" prompting (in-character) cries of "Answer that thing!" from team mates.

So I went into a rambling bit of plot exposition last time - a big mistake as I don't have the time for it all and it's very, very boring. So I'll just give a run-down on the last couple of sessions.

Since the last write-up, Sharpeye - our looting psychopath - has since had a psychological break down, guilt-ridden over the murders he has done, and departed the team. With great serendipity however, the group have made contact with a new runner - an smooth-talking elf with a knack for breaking and entering and a crack pistol shot. Yes - Sharpeye's player has got the message that social skills are important in this game, shelved SharpEye and replaced him with a big bundle of Charisma and Conn skill points. From one extreme to the other. But it could be worse. Charisma 8 (pheremones), Influence Group 4. I can deal with that and it's actually going to prove hugely beneficial to the group. There were a few rough edges: The many boxes of grenades the character wanted to start with, the massively ill-chosen Negative Quality of Simsense Vertigo. At the start of his second mission, there was a certain amount of (friendly) bargaining going on, however. He voluntarily gave up the couple of hundred grenades, dropped Charisma down, anything to get rid of Simsense Vertigo and pad out a few extra skills. I am pleased! We have a fairly well-rounded character.

Banjo has since departed which leaves the team as follows:

LongTooth - Ork Adept. Good with pistols, moderate at unarmed combat (actually quite good, but no powers like Killing Hands or Critical Strike).
Da Silva - Troll tank and MMG & troll-bow wielder.
The Silver Tongue Shadow - Elf face / gunshooter. (I am sticking to calling this one "ST" in character).

It looks like we will have a new player for the next session who will probably go either Magician or Hacker as these are both roles severely lacking in the team's current make up.

So this is the team's first more sophisticated mission. They've been hired by the hacker "Elektra Complex", a hacker that they've only met online, who wants a certain psychiatrist bumped off. The catch, is that he has to be bumped off immediately after he carries out a financial transfer, not a second earlier and as quickly as possible after. The reasons unknown to the players are that the Johnson is his daughter and she is falsifying his will. That alone will net her some money when he dies, but her father - Dr. Mahito - also has a lot of money stored in hidden accounts and she needs the codes for these. Once she knows where they are, then she can expand her inheritence, as it were. Some of these underworld accounts are with the Yakuza so in addition to carrying out the hit, the team must also bug the Yak's Matrix systems to locate the payment). In short, the intended sequence is this:

1. PC's get Elektra access to some Yak financial systems by breaching their security and hooking up a supplied commlink into the accounting system.
2. Pay Dr. Mahito for an illegal service (I'll get to this) causing him to make a transfer to the Yak accounts, enabling Elektra to pinpoint his account with them.
3. Alter his Will and bump him off fast before alerts trigger informing him that something is wrong.

Da Silva has a background fighting the Azzies in South America, the ploy is to pass her off as needing treatment for dealing with her violent past. Mahito's area of specialism is abuse (using SIM techniques to treat) and he moonlights on the side (his regular employer is Renraku) so this actually all fits very well. Mahito commonly uses a Whole New You clinic after hours for such work, which is situated directly below the Yakuza club (see the PDF on my website for all the details of this location), so everything falls into place.

The team begin the evening in their Redmond squat. I play up the problems with Matrix connectivity when Elektra finally gets hold of them having been trying for an hour. The mission is on and they have to get moving. LongTooth calls up his contact Hurtle Harry - a chinese dwarf rigger with a flying taxi service. He charges them an outrageous amount of money (which they don't seem to notice) to fly them down to Auburn.

This is a little annoying as I had some scene-setting I was going to do on the journey (including an unknown encounter with the real Elektra), all of which they just flew over. But they did get a good laugh out of the way their pilot rigged the VTOL with his back to the windscreen so he could talk to the passengers (the occasional Lone Star drone being narrowly missed).

I have to say I wasn't at my best that evening. I managed to cram in some SR2070 scene setting when they stopped off (on Elektra's orders and tab) to get some semi-decent clothes infiltration part of the mission, but I temporarily forgot about them picking up the goods Elektra had left for them hidden in a trash can in an alley behind the shop. I remembered just in time and the team picked up a satchel containing a commlink, some fibreoptic cable with a re-transmitter on it, a ceramic drill and a certified credstick containing a locked 10,000¥.

There was some discussion as to what they would be able to smuggle into the club including a certain amount of sulking from the troll who had already been bullied by the others into leaving behind the precious MMG and gyromount. Eventually, they paired things down to a minimum, concealing some of their weaponry in an alley adjacent to the club / clinic. They were then thrown completely by the presence of MAD scanners at the clinic entrance. In the end, they actually managed to smuggle through a couple of weapons which surprised me. Longtooth got a single pistol through with very lucky rolls and ST did the same with an awesome Cha+Conn roll by handing over one of his weapons as if it were everything he carried and then breezing past in exasperation. The troll unfortunately not only went in sans weaponry, but had the added insult of having her wired reflexes disabled.

The target was met, as was one of the Yaks who got brought down to confiscate weaponry. There had been some discussion earlier about how to get access to the accounting systems. I had planned a fairly role-playing heavy game and it looked for a bit that the team would bypass all of this by trying a straight stealth run. They eventually decided that this would be just too difficult ( hooray! ) and ST made a Etiquette roll and blagged his way up to the club. This was where the adventure particularly started to go off the rails for me as a GM because ST decided that a Cha 1 ork would be a hindrance and went up solo. That left a good portion of the adventure to be done by one PC alone as well as cutting out parts of the role-playing I had planned.

I was aware that having Da Silva stuck on a table in a clinic for most of this was a problem as well, but I had balanced this by (a) this only being a part of the adventure, (b) the last part being dependent on killing people which was where the troll shines and © I had planned to do some useful role-playing with the troll based around her past which the BTL system was now running her through. However, the player rebuffed attempts at role-playing with the occasional "yeah, whatever" so basically, if the player designed the character to be utter crap in social adventures, there are limits to what I can do short of turning everything into boring dungeon crawls?

So meantime, ST is getting the grand tour of the club. I tried to play up the contrast between the gold-fittings, sauna, and general luxury against their normal Squatter lifestyle. Not sure how well it sunk in but we had some fun. He met the head Yakuza (not the head, head yak, just the one that owned the club). He got suspicious of the barmaid (a p-fixed elf with Move-By-Wire) and vaguely nauseated by the head yak who talked about how he'd had her face re-modeled to look like a particular SIM-starlet. He didn't pick up on as many of the cues as I'd have liked, but still - it was non-combat. The problem was that the whole club part of the building was wireless-shielded so none of the others could communicate and were just stuck downstairs. Eventually, after randomly opening a couple of doors (and there's only so often you can do that), he finally accepted he might be over his head, nipped into the loo and drilled a whole in the floor, lowering the cable and retransmitter through the floor and getting back in touch with the team. LongTooth persuaded him to get him up there and after a good Etiquette roll, the ork was brought up to join him. ST tried an abortive plan of getting one of the club escorts and sneaking off hoping she could guide them to the accounting computers, leading to the brilliant line at the start of this post. Unfortunately, whilst obliging in other ways, she didn't know the layout of the top floor (where the target actually was), so wasn't much help in infiltration. They decide they need a distraction so putting the ork amongst the Humanis goons, Longtooth sits down with some off-duty cops he knows are prejudiced and starts talking about racial harmony and brotherhood. It's lovely role-playing and he starts a fight in no time.

ST realises its game on and runs out of the private room he's been enjoying and races for the lift to the top floor which they've deduced must be their target. I don't like to prompt players too much, but in this instance I do remind the player that ST might want to get dressed first. That dealt with, he's back at the lift. "Why is the escort girl in the lift with me?" "Well, she's finished now. She's leaving the club again." "No! Get out! This is my lift!"

In the meantime, LongTooth is nimbly dancing around with the cops, doing spectacularly well. Realising that even so, he'll eventually get worn down, he starts fighting back and knocks them senseless with minimal effort. A dancer emerges from the dressing room at one point only to find the stage occupied by the brawlers. This is Eden, a minor NPC (and Magic 1 Snake Shaman). LongTooth deliberately sends one of the cops barrelling into her (to get him into trouble) and is slightly freaked by the dancer using magic to confuse the cop. He has Enhanced Smell as an adept power so he asks if he can smell anything unusual. Well part of her act is the transformation into a python so I tell her she has a reptillian scent of some kind about her. Naturally the players all react: "Dragon!". Heh!

I, as GM, am aware that Da Silva is pretty much sitting this out. I also don't want the mission to go too wrong just this once, so I lessen the security on the top floor a little and with a bit of luck ST finds the financial computers, hooks the commlink in and scarpers back down the lift.

Dr. Mahito Aoki is finishing up with Da Silva and the team are itching to bump him off and get out of there, but Eletra is still hacking so the team watch helplessly as the good doctor's car pulls up and, despite desperate small talk from the troll, gets on his way.

Not before ST, however, in either great thinking or mad insanity, gecko-gloves himself out of sight, to the back of the car. Da Silva and LongTooth call in their flying taxi cab once more and are soon airborn tailing the doc way up high keying in on ST's commlink's GPS. I have to say at this point, that the group is really starting to get the knack of the setting and the way technology works.

Belatedly at this point, the group starts doing some legwork, finding out from their Johnson that the good doctor lives at the Renraku Arcology (in my campaign, there has been no Deus as yet). This provokes some worried groans from LongTooth's player who used to play 2nd Edition. But there's nothing that can be done. With some very good rolls, ST also notices that they're not the only ones following Dr, M. There's a plain, grey van in discreet pursuit as well. More consternation from the players and worries that maybe they should have done some more investigation of their target first. There's nothing that can be done now except to call their Johnson and say "hurry up!"

Fortunately, perhaps, their target isn't heading straight home. Instead he drives into an old Oil Refinery - hasn't been used in years - and ST is still stuck on the back. Da Silva and Longtooth land nearby and run to catch up. That grey van has pulled up nearby. The troll scans the van with his radar sensor picking up armoured people inside. These are elven Tir agents (told you the team hadn't done their legwork), but the team don't know any of this, they just realise they're in the middle of something. Meantime, ST is inside the refinery watching Mahito conferring with a tall, mysterious elven woman. She carries a silver attaché case and behind her, in the shadows, something dark and very large furls and unfurls its wings in anticipation.

The signal comes through - the system is hacked, the payment transfers and its time to kill the mark. What do they do?

Well I thought they would hold off. I had - I thought - made it clear that it was the Johnson pressuring them for the instant kill. I expected them to use their own judgement in practice and elect to kill him on the way out. But ST's player felt otherwise, which was my fault as GM probably. Taking a nice, maximum aimed shot, ST did with a bullet to the target's head, what a hammer does to a tomato. And with very similar visuals as it happens. The next thing he knew, a dragon was bearing down on him and the last thing he saw was two burning red eyes in the night.

He burnt his sole Edge point to survive and instantly went to 10P damage. What kept him alive? Well, perhaps there was someone else present that night that neither they, nor the dragon nor the Tir Elves knew of. *GM Chuckle*.

Suspecting double-cross the Tir elves and the dragon have a brief but decisive fight (dragon wins). Da Silva and Longtooth decide to sit this one out. When it all seems to be over, LongTooth heads into the refinery, locates ST's shattered body and retrieves it along with the attaché case. They make their getaway, but not before Da Silva's player wants to loot the elven corpses. I feel a little bad about the way the game has played out, mostly because of failings on my part to prepare the players for this sort of game, and there have been some big players in this game, so I'm generous with what they get from the elves, ripping off a couple of emergency certified credsticks (2,000¥ total) and, to their great delight, some APDS ammo. Hey - it made sense. If the players are going to be punished by their GM's addiction to realism, they ought to be rewarded for it sometimes too and I can't see Tir special forces going around with regular ammo.

So that just leaves some loose ends to tie up. ST is in the hospital with a body that looks strikingly like a an old potato (you know, when they get all those purple and green patches) but he'll be okay with care. Da Silva and Longtooth opened up the case back at their Redmond squat and found some intriguing contents:

These were:
A comical book written for a western audience on the mindset of the Japanese (called Angry White Pyjamas).
A very old, sealed German manuscript, handwritten. (A museam piece - the original "Schlieffen Plan"). The players both glitched their roles to work out which language it was and argued over whether it was Dutch or French.
A trid-snapshot of a man lying in a street with his face surgically removed, just bare muscle and staring, lidless eyes. The timestamp was earlier that night. On the reverse was hand-written the message: "Dear E., I had to replace what you took from me. Don't worry, I will see you soon." It was unsigned.

All these were lost when the Tir paladins arrived to reclaim what was theirs, taking orders direct from Ehran the Scribe. And Longtooth picked up a rather bad headache when he decided it would be a good idea to pit his 3 Willpower with no counterspelling against an initiated Tir Magus. But their GM was happy because the players got their glimpse of what was going on in a seemlingly natural way - picking up the case that was being handed over as loot.

Despite some problems (namely a lack of interest in role-playing from one player clashing with a slightly awkward adventure structure the GM had laid out, and the GM forgetting his own adventure details occasionally), people seemed to have a very good time (Da Silva's player somewhat excepted). I also managed to introduce TEN relevant NPCs (although two are still off-camera) as well as laid all the necessary ground work now for the coming campaign. Future adventures can be a little more conventional in some ways whilst still advancing the metaplot. ST's player (formerly SharpEye's looting psychopath) and Longtooth's player are both very keen to work out how to patch the weaknesses in their team, engage in greater legwork and generally play in a more realistic fashion. It's only Da Silva's player that still seems quite fixated on collecting guns, etc.

Before he left, Longtooth's player who has played before (and is the one that asked me to join this group as GM), mentioned that he was familiar with certain old adventures but assured me that he "would remember nothing." Elves, people called E. and incomprehensible gifts... He thinks he's about to play a fiddled around version of the first "Harlequin" module. He's in for a very, very, big surprise.

I find SR history to be very intriguing. I ran a 2030's campaign that explored the oppression of orks and the rise of cyberware and magic. It was quite fun figuring out when a particular piece of cyberware was released or a magic spell was "discovered."

This is great, and gives me a lot of ideas for ways to improve my GM'ing.

Plus it is fun to read.

Full on agreed, this is great! Thank you Knasser.

Wow! Well then thank you, all. We should be playing again soonish. I'll again write up the notes from the session. I should probably also start noting down some of the quotes. I'm not sure anything will top LongTooth's unintended "I wish I had a big, black Johnson" from the first session.

I appreciate the feedback.

K.

Well I'm not sure what to make of tonight's game. It was certainly fun. Pink Mohawks are on the loose, though and the session ended with the entire team racing across the Puget Sound in a stolen Coast Guard rescue helicopter. Don't worry - they didn't kill all the coastguards. Just two of them. The third one is trussed up with rope and rolling around in the back, 10 Stun and 5 Physical. And the gang are currently racing to what may well be their watery doom. How did we get here? Well lets roll back a few days...

You may or may not recall that the last game ended with Silver Tongue (ST), the charismatic sharp shooting elf, hospitalised after an ill-advised solo confrontation with a dragon (Edge was burned) whilst Da Silva and Long Tooth (troll samurai and ork adept respectively) were counting out their APDS ammo between them (one for you, two for me). Da Silva remains defiantly combat focused, but Long Tooth is getting more deeply into the setting. He recently picked up the Facial Sculpt adept power but realising that his orkish tusks are a bit of a metatype give away, he's paid for a cosmetic dentist to make them unscrewable. So we've taken to calling him Long Detachable Tooth. Deep down, the guy just wants to be human, I reckon.

But we have a new member of the team too. This is the destitute Coyote Shaman called Twist (no relation to a certain cannon shaman). Somewhat stunned to encounter someone with less material wealth than themselves, they've taken him into the team. They met when Twist approached ST in a bar and offered to "show him a magic trick". The classic exchange of dialogue went as follows:

Twist: "Okay, give me your commlink"
"ST: "No."

Twist can also do the 'up the nose, out the ear' cigarette trick with cred sticks. The joke is they go in with money on, and come out with money gone. For Twist's player spent zero BP on resourecs, At all. And he rolled a 1 on his starting cash. And he has the flaw Moderate Adiction: Novacoke. Oh such fun we'll have. I actually quite approve of all this - Twist's player is a pretty engaging role-player and he's already having fun with the group. On almost his first contribution to the team (getting a hacker pal to run a data search for them), he scammed 50Â¥ off Long Tooth by over-charging, leaving Long Tooth's player in a pique, but unable to do anything as he doesn't know in-character. But above and beyond such petty scams, there are things about Twist that even the players don't know. Such as that he didn't bump into ST in his favourite bar by chance. Oh no - he's on the payroll of a mysterious contact that directed him to join the team and report back on their activities. Is Ehran keeping tabs on them in case his mysterious, face-cutting nemesis has further contact with them? Hmmmm, could be!

To take a brief diversion on the subject of Twist. it's certainly an unusual character build. Not for want of GM advice, I assure you. He's foregone the Binding skill entirely. Well that's okay. It costs money to keep binding spirits. He can manage without it. He lacks any Direct Combat spells however. Instead he has Fireball (he was passionately desirous of this spell regardless of any mere mechanics of it) and Punch (the touch range Indirect Combat spell that doesn't have any elemental effects), Increase Reflexes and some illusion spells. No Levitate, no Invisibility. I've never seen anything like it! Still, he is very happy with his PC and that's what counts. His mentor spirit is Coyote. Coyote (Trickster) shamans have to make Willpower tests to avoid pulling tricks, etc. I can't see myself ever having to demand such a roll with this player. Within an hour of joining the group, he'd scammed a place to stay out of them, got them to front money for a new commlink (they wont see that again), lied to them about how much his contacts charged for various services, had them pay his taxi fares and spent money they lent him for some basics on novacoke. Nor do I think as GM, I'll have to nudge him about his addiction negative quality. He's quite obliging about getting high and so far,
I've just been asking him whereabouts in his cycle of 'up-down' he is and going with it.

One thing that I was impressed by was the players' response to an offer from Elektra, their Johnson from the previous job. They'd asked for more cash post-run to compensate for the dragon factor. They hadn't really got anywhere, but that Elf has good Charisma and did get hospitalised, so I figured Elektra may feel sorry for him. She had Hideo (that smooth Company Man) calm things down with the Yakuza. After all, the run hadn't actually been against them, just on their turf. The Yak's demanded 1,000Â¥ to compensate for damages - essentially honour money to buy the PCs out of their bad books. And the PCs paid! Why am I pleased? Well, just that it shows a big shift in mentality in the game from "We are tough! We kill anything that boosts our power-trip mentality" to "This is a real world with real consequences." At first ST's player was pissed off because he thought they were each being asked to pay 1k to the Johnson. But when he realised it was a single payment for all of them to the Yaks, he said (and I quote) "Bargain!". I have a team that cares about avoiding making enemies. I am SO proud. *sniff*

But soon, Pink Mohawks started to appear on the horizon (don't actually picture that - it's too surreal).

After the heaviest GM hinting I have ever done, the team clue their fixer in that they now have a magician member of the team. That's good news as it brings them in a new job.

In fact, they basically picked up two jobs this evening. The first is a bounty posting that their fixer charged them 200 up front for, before sending them the link. Some individual calling himself Mr. Green is putting up a fair wad of cash for some find and kill jobs. The members of a Shadowrunnning team from twenty years ago who called themselves "The Self-Preservation Society" are the targets. The bounty is 1,000Â¥ for merely obtaining confirmation that a target is already dead, or 10,000Â¥ for actually killing the target if they're still alive. The former members are as follows:

OMFWOG - troll demolitions expert. Name stands for "Often Mistaken For Wrath Of God". He'll be in his fifties by now if he's still alive.
Biscuits - a hacker, known to law enforcement but never apprehended. He'll be hard to physically locate.
Gift - a German Elf. This one will be the nightmare for the team. She hasn't aged physically and has only grown more deadly in the last twenty years. She lives in Berlin so the team will need to either head over there or entice her back to Seattle.
Sun Eagle - a Sioux shaman and former leader of the team. She's dead now, but the team don't know that.
Blood Tooth - likewise a Sioux, but this time an ork and a samurai. He got old and sloppy and died in a bar fight, likewise, unknown.

The intent with this hit list is that it should be an ongoing, slightly longer term job for the team that can interleave with other missions to add a little more realism. If they're tardy with the job, then other groups out there will tick off some of the targets. The players were pretty pleased with the sums on offer, but not as pleased as the second job that got lined up a little later that evening.

With a magician on board, their Fixer set them up with a meet with Mr. Johnson at a bar called "Howling Dan's" on the Redmond - Snohomish border. I was a bit dissappointed that they treated the meet so casually. They didn't even try to scope out the place or check things out in the astral. If they had even sneaked round the back of the bar they'd have seen Kaz Yakamura's troll-model Harley Skorpian parked discretely out of the way (well, as discretely as a modified troll motorbike can be). Yes, Kaz from Ghost Cartels has made his first appearance as the PCs start to get drawn into the campaign proper. Appearance is probably not the right word as he spent the entire time sitting in a back room using an allied gang member as his mouthpiece for the negotiations. The run was explained and an initial offer of 12,000 was made. A negotiation roll by ST was made gaining one net hit, upping the the offer to 13,000 . "If I'd got two net hits would it have gone up by 2k" quieried ST's player? "Yep," says I to his mixed delight at the sums involved and dissapointment at not getting much of them.

The job spec is as follows: Sometime in the next few days a ship called the "Tampico" will arrive off the Seattle coastline. It will wait in international waters (about 12 miles out) for a couple of days before coming in to dock. The job is to kill the captain before that happens. Behind the scenes? The captain is bringing in a big shipment of novacoke which has been starting to dry up a little in Seattle. Drugs aren't the big business that they used to be - BTLs are the mainstay these days - but such a market as there is, novacoke is one of the main club drugs. The players don't know about the shipment, but with some querying of gang contacts, underworld connections and drug dealers (ooh, I wonder which PC has that contact. ), they've made some connections and think they know what's going on. They're mostly right. The only piece they're missing is the reason why Kaz wants the captain killed and the whole deal to fall through. Kaz is ready to start hitting the clubs with Tempo. With precious little other drugs to sell, it's not going to matter if the Syndicates lean on the petty dealers not to buy from elsewhere, the dealers are going to be buying Tempo and they're going to peddle it. The alternative is not having much to sell and dealers hate that!

I was worried that having discovered Kaz, they'd blow the whole Komun'go connection too early. But in retrospect, I'd have preferred that they got some more clues. However, they did really well in piecing together the drug connection and they'll get karma for that. Can't complain - this has gone about exactly right for the balance of mystery / knowing what's going on that I want at this stage.

Now on the subject of the mission, it's plainly not the intro mission from Ghost Cartels for those that read it. Why not? Well basically, the First Taste section is just too low-key and linear for my group. It's mostly following someone around which would probably play out as "He goes here", "We follow him". "He goes there", "We follow him". "Some gangers show up", "We beat them up." "Good game, thanks for coming." I'm not trashing the framework in Ghost Cartels, it just doesn't fit my group of really hard-hitting, low-legwork combat characters. In general, throughout the first part of Ghost Cartels, I have a problem of the opposition not being tough enough for the group. Rather than make the enemies unrealistically tough, I'm taking the approach of making the environment tough. For example, their current mission involves them going up against a ship that is ready to defend itself against pirates and is moored just a couple of miles down coast from a UCAS carrier group. The Everett docks have a reasonable Lone Star presence (hopelessly corrupt, but there nonetheless). It ties into Ghost Cartels perfectly in all the important ways of involving them in whats going on, but their opposition is not directly the initial Ghost Cartel players (gangers and wageslaves) which in terms of pure combat, they're a bit too tough for.

Anyway, this is all a bit too much background. What happened on the run so far?

Well after a fair bit of legwork and a lot of arguing, they settle on their plan. I was expecting some sort of trick to try to get Captain Torrez ashore (wouldn't work - he's too paranoid, but anyway). Nope - they're all ready to head out to the ship. Hiring a boat is dismissed, they decide they need A Ruse. That's good, but the execution is a little dubious. They locate a coastguard office. None of them know how to pilot a watercraft so they decide to steal the coastguard's rescue helicopter instead of a boat. Da Silva knows how to fly one from her merc days.

After a quick astral fly-by from Twist, they storm the place. Four heavily armed shadowrunners against three mundane, unaugmented coastguards. That's their kind of fight! Twist kicks off the action by casting his first spell of the game: Increase Reflexes. He scores a comfortable 4 hits getting himself 4IP. And then critically glitches the drain roll taking 5P damage! Quote as blood trickles from ears, eyes and nose: "You know, that's supposed to happen."

ST charges into the office surprising one coastguard at his desk and trying out his recently puchased Traq slap-patches; "I can kill people with stickers!" As the guard staggers from the drug, Long Tooth runs up and smacks him unarmed for a further 6S, overflowing into Physical. Long Tooth's player is developing an increasing issue with ST being "better" than him and hates to be outdone.

Twist decides to cast the illusion of a filing cabinet falling over to explain the noise to the remaining two guards in the back room. He manages to avoid hurting himself this time, but it's largely irrelevant because before the guards can notice a filing cabinet on the floor ( "Hey Dave, where did that filing cabinet come from?" ), Da Silva charges in and does 16P with a combat axe to coastguard A. ("I think you should give her back the bow!") followed by a matching 16P on coastguard B from ST with a heavy pistol (in the background, Long Tooth the pistol adept's player seethes). Success - the group has defeated the three unarmed coastguards!

Finding the passkeys to the helicopter, they pile in (with unconscious surviving coastguard) and take off. GM does whoop-whoop-whoop helicopter noises which he thinks are actually quite good but are underappreciated by his players.

It's worth mentioning at this point, that Long Tooth has the negative quality: Spirit Bane (Water). Funnily enough, ST's player thought this was a good one and copied it. On casting about to replace the 20BP negative quality Uneducated during character creation (other players: "No 20BP negative qualities! Ever!"), Twist settled on Spirit Bane. Should he get Fire? No, say other players: Or we'll end up with all spirits hating the group. Pick Water! So, Twist has Spirit Bane: Water also. The only one that doesn't is Da Silva ("You're not one of us!"). Furthermore, Long Tooth has a particular allergy negative quality which led to our quote of the week:

"Don't tell me you're allergic to water?"
"Only seawater."

I guess you had to be there.

And that was all we had time for that session. The group are on their way by stolen helicopter, to an armed ship with no helicopter pads. I guess they'll end up rappelling down. I think the intent is to bluff the captain to come out on deck because they're coastguards, snpie him and then fly away fast. I doubt that will work as they're out in international waters without authority, they know nothing about coastguard procedures and the captain is paranoid anyway. Also, I'm going to have to work out how soon before somebody realises the coast guard helicopter is stolen and what response will be taken when they do. It's funny. It's like playing a game with a bunch of people in black stealth suits and then at the last minute, they all pull off their balaclavas and out pop the mohawks.

We will see what we see, I guess.

My thanks to all those that posted in the Wet Work thread helping me flesh out the ideas for this run, I'll post back there to share the maps when I've polished them up.

Till next time, chummers,

Khadim.

Had a session last night. Didn't quite finish the mission unfortunately as we ran out of time. I'm going to go ahead and write it up though as next session might bleed into a new run.

Highlight quotes from the session were:

"I've just realised that all the people we each hate the most, are our team mates."

"You know, telling someone it's okay, that you wont hurt them, is actually /more/ scary when you're covered in their friend's blood than just threatening them."

"/The problem with APDS rounds, is that they don't make as much mess when you shoot someone in the head.
/Ahhh, what you want, are Ex-Ex"

And our novacoke addicted (and currently high) shaman, eyeing the face's medical supplies: "Can I have some stim patches, please?" I guess you have to know the characters for that one.

So anyway, following straight on from last time, we didn't have that much time this evening, so I was hoping to get right down to some action - partly so that we could reach a proper ending and partly because I knew that Da Silva's player (DS is the min-maxed troll samurai) was frustrated with the lack of combat and all the planning and role-playing taking place. More on this in a bit.

Well they've had a bit of time between sessions to think about their plan of stealing a Coast Guard rescue helicopter and they've realised that their plan might need a slight bit of refining. So Long Tooth lays out his plan to bluff their way onto the ship under the guise of there being some disease control issues with boats from certain ports. It's not the best plan ever, but there have been worse ones and they do, at least, have an official vehicle and identification codes in their favour. So I let them take a shot at it. There's actually a fair bit of argument about all this and some fleshing out of details, but they eventually decide to go with it, so they carry on flying. I show them the map of the area and ask them for their route, specifically to see whether they have the sense to avoid invading Salish-Sidhe air space. Which they do. I think my players are wise to my having statted up some Attack Helicopters. So anyway, they're shortly approaching this cargo ship at midnight. (The actual ship for is on my site, by the way as a PDF).

I think I didn't do a very good job at GM'ing this at all, although much fun was had. I've been out of GMing for a while and I'm finding juggling all the different rules and holding three conversations at once impacting my ability to reason things out on the fly. There are many things wrong with the plan and the details, I half-wish I could just ret-conn the whole thing. Still, what's done is done and I said, they had some things in their favour. The biggest crimp in the players plans was the Elven Face, Silver Tongue, realising that his Tailored Pheremones weren't going to help him in negotiating their way on board. (me: "sorry, you just don't smell as nice over the radio"). Meanwhile our adept Long Tooth, who has Enhanced Smell, finally admitted that the reason he doesn't like ST is because the elf's bio-enhanced scent makes him inappropriately horny.

Conn tests are rolled, permission to come aboard is granted. The captain is suspicious, but I figured that he would think that he and his crew could deal with a couple of metahumans. Da Silva is the only one that can fly the helicopter, so she and Twist remain airbourne whilst Long Tooth and Silver Tongue winch their way down together. I have to say that the pair are turning into a bit of a natural team. ST's player is aware that LT's player was feeling a bit overshadowed by him due to overlapping skill sets, and was going out of his way to emphasize how Long Tooth had saved his life from the dragon.

A couple of armed crew members escort ST and Long Tooth up to see the captain. Da Silva has identified the two main threats to their ride, the ship's light cannon. She moves the helicopter near to one end of the ship and, setting the pilot software to hover, gets near the winch door with her MMG. Well ST and Long Tooth meet the captain and once they've established that he's who they think he is, they draw guns and fire. Both these characters are very fast and even with having to draw their weapons (one has cool, up the sleeve slide mounts for his pistols), they still both managed to get a shot off at the captain before anyone in the room could react. The captain was a very tough hombré so they didn't quite kill him, but the pushed him over the end of his Physical track. The two armed crew members attacked them then, but with Full Defense (and an initiative pass to spare), they weren't overly threatened. Outside, hearing gunfire over their commlink, Da Silva began emptying rounds into one of the main guns. I just improvised a barrier and armour rating for the weapon and let him go to work on it. I'm going to take another look at how I handled that now I have breathing space. Twist, who has an adorable willingness to indulge in risk, cast a Trid Phantasm spell of a rapidly incoming attack helicopter, to draw attention away from their own cumbersome brick. With the Improved Reflexes, that left him with two spells he was sustaining and next round, he briefly decided to cast a second trid phantasm spell for a second helicopter. We'll put that down to the novacoke. Incidentally, did I mention that he got Long Tooth (the guy who disapproves of cyberware), to indulge in a bit of novacoke as well? Well he did.

Being reasonably confident that the nearest gun was disabled, Da Silva (who was very much in charge of the helicopter by this point), found herself pinned. The cannon at the other end had started up and was blasting away at the illusionary copter. Not daring to move out of the narrow arc at the other end of the ship that the second cannon couldn't target, Da Silva was limited to shooting the smattering of crew running for cover on deck, most unsatisfying. So while Long Tooth and ST are dealing with a couple of the crew members up close and personal, Da Silva decides to winch herself down to join them. Now Twist has Spirit Bane: Water. So does Long Tooth. So does Silver Tongue. Long Tooth even has an allergy to seawater. You couldn't get a much worse party for a sea-based adventure. The Shark Shaman captain had three bound water spirits. Now he never got the chance to give them any orders, but with such a concentration of Spirit Bane: Water about, I figured the spirits would take a pro-active approach. So each of them manifest in the sea around the ship. I tried to find a way for them to focus their ire on the characters with spirit bane, but they were only Force 3 spirits and there was basically no way they could go toe to toe with Long Tooth and ST and, until those two reappeared in line of sight, they had no way of targetting them. They could have appeared in the helicopter once Da Silva was down below and targetted Twist, but while I like keeping things realistic, overly so probably, this could well have just meant death for the PC in his second session for the sake of one, tactical error. So instead, they hit Da Silva with the confusion power. I describe this has some sort of mental assault, that she is beset by disorientating sounds as if from deep beneath the ocean surface, that her gaze is obscured by half-glimpsed marine visions. But Da Silva's player is really starting to irritate me. If I had put this group together rather than inheriting it, he would not be in the group. Whenever I try to do any role-playing or setting detail, he starts nodding in a "yeah, get to the point and tell me how many dice I lose" manner. This isn't me being boring and going on at length (other players are fine), as soon as I talk about anything other than numbers, he wants to hurry along. Its only with considerable effort you can get him to talk in character. And unless there's combat going on, he's just a lump on my sofa. Basically, this is my biggest problem with the game. We have a group that are actually starting to engage in role-playing and think about how their characters actually want to achieve things in the game, and you have this one player who is focused purely on "reaching the next level" and whose humour - based on stupidity, e.g. his character wants to wear a ballerina's tutu - jars not only with the role-playing snob GM (*ahem* I'm not actually so bad, but I can make fun of myself for it) but even with the other players. It's a real shame, because Long Tooth's player (who played 1st / 2nd edition) helped him put together a great background involving her past as a mercenary in Aztlan. Given that I'm starting them on Ghost Cartels, I could tie this in wonderfully. But everytime I refer to the character's past, I get the "get on with it" look. I'm usually very strong-minded about who gets invited round to my place and this guy is coasting along on the mercy of others.

Anyway, venting over, Da Silva has found herself for the first time, properly disadvantaged. She starts climbing up the rope again and after a couple of combat phases, takes a shot back at one of the beasts. And misses. The min-maxed combat monster has, for possibly the first time in the campaign, failed to hurt something! Not so with Twist, however! He might have completely failed to answer his team-mate's questions about the spirits (zero knowledge skills to do with spirits and magic), he might have (despite twice being advised by his GM) foregone any Direct Combat spells, or even any ranged non-area spells, but he does have the Fireball spell which he has been desparate to use (the refrain in the team is fast becoming: "No - don't cast Fireball"). So he rolls his dice at Force 5 (same as his Magic), scores high and does 12P damage to the spirit. Yes, I can add up, it's Water Spirit's Severe Allergy to Fire that boosts it. The other two water spirits vanish.

Long Tooth and ST are finishing up on the ship as the two spirits materialise inside the helicopter with Twist and Da Silva. I knew it wasn't going to go well for the spirits but I was out of options for them really. And they really wanted to get at one of the Spirit Bane PCs, at least. Da Silva and Twist yelp at the sudden appearance of the bulbous fish-men creatures with the deep sea eyes. Everyone on the team is convinced that they have zero chance of damaging these "water elementals", based, as usual, on Long Tooth's players misremembered (and inappropriately used) prior knowledge. So instead of shooting them, Da Silva grabs one and throws it about 20 metres onto the deck below where its bursting is offensive to both sight, sound and smell. Twist gets to use his second combat spell "Punch" (indirect, touch range, no elemental effects), causing the poor Force 3 to veritably explode all over him for zero drain. I'll have to remember just how little drain you take for that spell.

ST has recorded the entire mission and captain's death via his AR-glasses so with that as evidence the mission is complete, they're back up onto the helicopter and flying home. Only one survivor is left - an ork that begged for mercy and was consequently cuffed to a pipe with restraints. The only discernible reason for this sudden act of mercy was that ST "thinks Mexicans are funny." ST's player said: "this guy better not put the police on us or anything" which actually I'm not inclined to do (or at least I'm not inclined to make it relevant) as its nice to see the players role-playing even on the proviso that it doesn't get their characters into trouble. This is to be rewarded.

And that is where we had to call it a night.

Next session we're going to pick up where they left off and I think I'm going to have some fun with their return journey. They've had it too easy so far, mainly as a result of my slavish addiction to realism. I think I get a fair bit of respect from the players for being neutral and I don't intend to sacrifice that. But I'm thinking I need to take a bit more of a hand in the story-telling side of things to pick up the pacing and tension. Should be fun.

As always, I love to hear comments or suggestions,

Khadim.

We played again last night. I think the most apt-quote of the evening was actually my comment to the players near the end:

"You know that expression that what you don't know can't hurt you? Turns out that's complete bullshit."

We ran out of time again, despite it being a longer than normal session at six and a half hours. However, at the end, we were looking at a potential TPK. Da Silva, who appears to be made out of rocks, might still get away. Even that will be tough, though.

But I get ahead of myself. Last session, we'd ended with the PCs flying back to land in a stolen coast guard rescue helicopter. Now this is a beat-up old brick of a vehicle used solely to winch people out of the sea / off sinking ships and it was nicked from a station at about midnight with the stations crew massacred. I figured about eight minutes before DocWagon show up in response to biomonitor alerts. About five minutes after that before Lone Star are mobilised and within about twenty minutes total before armed response is in the air and after the PCs. That placed it right around the time they were half-way back from their mission and still overwater.

Two things happen simultaneously. The first is that Da Silva picks up something moving toward them from NE at around 300mph (470kmh) (its an attack helicopter). The second is the helicopter radio instructing them they will proceed toward Everett naval base where they will exit unarmed with hands on heads or be shot immediately. The helicopter controls are taken over remotely and it begins taking them NE. There's some daftness involving Long Tooth and ST getting their pistols out and waiting by the winch doors for the naval helicopter to "get in range" whilst Twist considers the difficulties of staring out into the night for a helicopter over 2km away with unaugmented human eyes. Da Silva (and I'm going to retract previous comments about the player because he did more to keep the game together last night than any other in the team) realises that she can't jam the military helicopter or the port authority but in a stroke of brilliance, realises that she can jam their own helicopter breaking the remote control Well the GM has been too indulgent so far, giving the players plenty of delays before they fight firey doom. There's nothing more I can do so the attack helicopter opens fire. ST jumps. Long Tooth is still contemplating how he can take down the helicopter when it "comes in range" of his heavy pistol (how can I spell this out for you any more?). Da Silva takes a shot with her MMG which actually does have the range, just, and with her huge dice pool, a few bullets do clatter off the enemies vehicle armour. Realising its a lost cause, she jumps. Twist screams and goes with her. Long Tooth ties initiative with the enemy helicopter and plummets with bits of rescue helicopter following. They all hit the water okay (they were explicitly very low as Da Silva was trying to avoid radar), except for Twist who takes a bit more stun. Both he and ST are already a bit beaten up from the actual mission earlier.

Twist summons an Air spirit which he commands to Conceal them. Given that the Pacific is large and they are small and because of the spirit, they manage to remain hidden. It helps that they are all underwater for a bit whilst they divest themselves of armour and weaponry.

This was one of the sticking points that I was worried about. Da Silva has always been very fond of her MMG with Gyromount, and to be fair its expensive kit. It will cost twice her share of the mission payment to replace. But her player was very accepting of the circumstances. I think he'd always known their plan was a crazy one. So her equipment along with most of the armour goes sinking to the bottom. Twist is drowning so I improvise some rules for swimming with someone and they strike out for the distant lights of the shore. Most are fine. Twist is on his feet only barely, kept conscious merely by some powerful Stim patches that he took earlier.

ST is nearly dead on his feet by the time they get close to the shore due to his instance on trying to make it back with his Chameleon Suit, but Long Tooth and Da Silva come through the ordeal fine, despite managing Twist between them.

Worth a note on the players at this point. Da Silva's player showed a lot of good thinking in this mission as well as being philosophical about the trials they faced. Thinking to grab an oxygen mask as she ran from the helicopter might have saved Twist's life. ST's player on the other hand was in a foul snit more or less from the start and kept suggesting that he might kill himself and create a better character (note: he has one of the best optimised characters in the game) and suggesting to Twist's player that he would kill him. Twist's player out-matured him and didn't engage in metagame rivalries. ST's player did annoy everyone a bit though.

Near the shore, things start to happen though. First off, they meet Giggles, the psychotic troll, leader of the Scatterbrains. He's out for a night-time row in his little boat, full white face paint masking the scars, horns gaily decorated barber-shop style, Bozo the clown shock of red hair and loudly singing improvised sea-shanties. He rows along with them asking them questions as they go. This is some of the best role-playing we've had as it turns out. The players are reacting to him more realistically than I could have hoped and find him both amusing and slightly scary which is exactly what I wanted. Giggles is actually out to keep an eye out for any unusual night time traffic, knowing full well that the Triads are moving a shipment through his turf. Obviously the PCs peak his interest. When the PCs make it to the jetties, they're greated by an even dozen Scatterbrain gangers. Da Silva gets felt up by a dwarf and the gang hustle the group off the docks quickly and into one of their hangouts. They're all patted down for (soggy) weapons as they enter. Both Long Tooth, Da Silva and ST did manage to make it back with small arms strapped to their personhood. ST's player later retroactively tried to have smuggled his gun in, but I wasn't having that. I'm getting much better at keeping track of things now and avoiding ommissions like this. ST did take a swing at Twist for stupid player-player reasons but Da Silva easily intercepted it and this was quickly followed by a couple of gangers taking swings at ST. "What are they using?" asks the player. "Looks like a sock with bits of brick in it," I reply. That's sufficiently worrying to him to get him to behave. Once inside, Giggles gets a little more forceful in getting information out of them, though no less disturbing. ST challenges him to a riddle game and one fo the Scatterbrains dutifully coughs up a hazily remembered riddle which is guessed. It's now ST's turn, and he can't think of a riddle, prompting some nasty laughter from the gang. It's also discretely mentioned to him that if Giggles can't guess the answer to a riddle, he's likely to shoot the person who asked it. Some jokes are also swapped with Giggles freaking everybody out with the disturbing: "Q. What's harder than nailing a dead baby to a wall? A. My dick while I'm doing it."

Sufficiently intimidated, the players might have ended up negotiating with the Scatterbrains. And that would be a first - the PCs interacting with GANGERS as if they are actually something you didn't want to get on the wrong side of. But one of the Scatterbrains is keeping an ear on the police channels and when they hear what's gone down, they decide that's too much heat for them, and turn the PCs out into the night. It's a good thing for the PCs that this happens, because it's not that long afterwards that the Triads catch up with what's happening and put the bounty on the people responsible. Scatterbrains will be kicking themselves for that one.

I feel it only fair to give the PCs some warning about the water spirit that they've picked up on the way back. Did I mention that? Slink is a free water spirit that haunts the sewers and outlet pipes of Seattle. Given that three of the characters have Spirit Bane: Water, there's no way she's going to let them go when she's spotted them. She's not much of a combatant herself, but I've given her a couple of Wild water spirits to use if she finds an opportunity (I wrote them up a while ago and call them Rain Dogs). Twist spots her when he astrally perceives and he manages to stop just as one of the Rain Dogs goes for this face. Slinks main weapon is that she can follow them around without them being able to stop her however.

The team try to contact Hurtle Harry, their friendly shuttle-pilot, but his comm is off which is unusual. They guessed, correctly, that he might have been arrested in connection with the events earlier. So they set out to walk. Twist's Stim patch has worn off and the extra box of stun knocks him out. Da Silva carries him for a bit.

They dodge a Lone Star roto-drone by breaking into someone's house. The team start to barricade themselves in to get some rest despite some acerbic comments from the GM about how sensible it is to catch some sleep in someone else's house in a patrolled part of town. However, ST explores upstairs looking for things to steal and is jumped by two rain dogs as soon as he's on his own, nearly killing him. He's only saved by Long Tooth charging up to help him and Da Silva attacking one of them from the room below without bothering with the whole heading upstairs thing. This prompts more whining from ST's player that they're trying to kill him. No, it doesn't make any sense. He's just being petty tonight.

Despite the GM twice explaining to Long Tooth's player that Explosive Rounds make a lot of noise, they still decide to sit on their arses trying to rest. Thankfully Da Silva handles their security and realises the panicked neighbours have probably called the police and the team run for it. They get a few blocks and then decide to, again, break into another house for a rest. I'm generous. They get perception rolls and Da Silva picks up that there's a roto-drone heading their way following one of the rain dogs. Again, the players decide to sit there and begin reaching for rubbers to erase stun damage and its only at the last minute that Da Silva twigs that the spirit is leading Lone Star toward them. Finally they start moving again. There's a encounter with the Ancients that they manage to avoid (thankfully), but they're still at a loss about what to do with the spirit on their tail. Eventually they pass out of Everett and into Snohomish which is a lot more agricultural. I ask them whether they want to follow the main roads of cut across country. They opt for the latter so I tailor events to suit them.

At one point, they cross a fence (it's not the first) and Long Tooth picks up a scent with his Improved Senses. It smells canine, but with a hint of sulfer. "A hell hound" they exclaim. Do they carry on or go back. Long Tooth says he'd quite like a Hell Hound and on they go. Not long after, they spot several pairs of coal-red eyes in the long grass ahead of them. "More than one hell hound" they exclaim. And begin to run. ST would certainly have died at this point if Da Silva hadn't charged back to intercept the hell hounds in melee. All I'll say about that is that Da Silva is touhg. It's a shame I didn't get better use out of the Hell Hounds. However, they served their purpose. Their usefulness is that they will sniff out just about any trespasser physical or astral, in a way that normal security guards can't. So when their bio-monitors flag up, site security is alerted. What are the PCs doing by this point? They've decided to break into a nearby biodome to sit on their arses. I don't know why they think they'll have an easier time sneaking back home when the Sun is up. Or why they're not still in danger. You, dear reader, might think this is a case of a GM not making things clear enough to the players. I assure you that the only thing I hadn't done by this point was grab one of them by the throat and carve "You Are Going To Die" into his forehead with the edge of my rulebook.

So again, one of the players (ST's) says "we rest for two hours" and makes a grab for the eraser. Nuh-uh. It's not very long at all before the Lone Star enter the biodome they've forced entry to and begin searching it. Now the team are all pretty good at hiding except for Twist who's unconcious again. And we realise, ironically, that Twist is actually better at hiding when he is merely a dice pool penalty to the person carrying him, than when he is concious and trying to hide himself. Anyway, ST is determined to set off a thermal smoke grenade because for some reason he thinks that the sudden emmision of thermal smoke wont give away that they're in there. Thankfully Long Tooth and Da Silva stop him and the group sneak out and dissappear into the night. By all rights, this should have been *a lot* more difficult. But I basically just don't want to see a TPK, so no aerial cover with thermovision jsut this once.

So anyway, there's some discussion on the way and Long Tooth comes up with a plan. I actually nudged him toward this as subtley as I could seeing as they were really starting to flounder. He suggested that they head for territory held by the 162s. Being dual-natured ghouls, there's a chance they might be able to get the spirit off them allowing them to slip away to their squat without being tracked.

So I think I've been pretty lenient on the whole. I've certainly risked what I feel is the realism and impartiality of the game. It's around this point that they reach the outskirts of Redmond. Seeing a few abandoned buildings, they do what I should have guessed they do however, and break in to sit on their arses again. Look people, I appreciate that I am running a bit of a gauntlet, your characters are in danger and you want to find somewhere safe to rest. The point, that has been drummed in again and again, is that you first have to actually find somewhere safe.

Long story short, it's really not that very long before the area is crawling with gangers after the Triad's bounty and led straight to them by their favourite water spirit: Slink. I'm still, against my better instincts throwing them bone after bone. The gangers, I say, are spreading out and trying to circle your building. Okay - so they start throwing up old furniture against the windows. There's easily twenty of them out there. Nope, they're going to sit tight and wait for the gangers to get in position. So they do. Twist is brought round by the medically ill-advised application of further stim patches, which I decide to handle by just knocking off the last box of stun and moving it over to Physical as overspill. He casts a Phantasm spell to create the illusion of Lone Star arriving in force. The gangers start to scatter temporarily. There's a triad mage amongst them who can see the illusion for what it is so he's trying to get them back in order. This is all very much laid out for them. The gangers are scattering, but it wont be long before they regroup because someone is explaining to them that it's a trick. So what do the PCs do? They decide to sit there and wait.

So eventually we go to initiative. Despite wound modifiers and less powerful equipment and weaponry than they're used to, the PCs unsurprisingly manage to down four gangers. I'm seeing nowhere to go but TPK now, and am feeling quite frustrated. Now the gangers go and in come four molotov cocktails. Da Silva gets hit by one and the barricades catch light. And about their is where we stopped, mid-combat round. I wouldn't normally want to stop in the middle of a round, but Twist is next and then after that I have to do the attacks of at least twenty gangers which will take a while. :/

So next session, it's either going to death and destruction, or a lot of Edge burning. But we will see.

Comments welcome,

K.

Player actions sound familiar, you know no matter what you do they'll find a way to screw it up. Given some time between games might give one or two of them a idea. I'm always amazed how quickly players can catch on and catch up given some time to reflect on there actions.

Quick question, how are they meant to escape an enemy that can follow them anywhere without them knowing and in doing so bring trouble with them? They cant risk going home because it would be flagged by whoever is following Slink, they can't risk going to a safe house because once again it will be flagged, it seems the only way they could get away is if they went into the desert and I don't see that happening any time soon.

Thanks for the updates, this is all proving very interesting, my inner SR player gets to live vicariously through your stories.

To be honest, as a new comer to SR, I think my character would be doing something very similar to theirs, trying to find a hidey hole. Why didn't the hell hounds scare off the water spirit too, I wonder? Heck, with the gangers surrounding them, I would be wondering if it would be possible to escape with some parkour by the roof or explore if there is a maintenance tunnel aka sewer/water/electrical to discretely exit the premises through. Is it possible any could call in the help of a Contact? And does the unconcious character not have a Doc Wagon contract ... oh right, he is mad on poor, so probably not.

Hehe, these have been random thoughts from Wolvie. Take care and happy hunting.

I'm not Knasser but I figured I'd chime in with how I'd deal with the situation. First off though, they do know they're being followed. Twist saw her back when he was awake and astrally perceiving.

As for how to deal with it... I guess depending on the force, outright combat wouldn't be much of an option, and they're lacking significantly in the magic department anyhow. That leaves finding someone else to do your dirty work for you.

My first reaction would be to make a beeline for the entrance to the Ork Underground under the warehouses that were torched on the Night of Rage. They're close to the docks and the background count and general bad mojo left over from a couple thousand metahumans burning to death would probably force most spirits to shy away, at least unless she's toxic, in which case you're screwed anyhow. Duck into the underground (which brings up another point that someone on the team should have an OU contact) and you should be able to loose the tail. This plan relies on a pretty thorough understanding of a fairly obscure bit of Shadowrun's backstory. Something that the players don't have.

Plan B would be about the same as the teams. Make for the turf of a dual natured gang (in their case the 162's) and hope they distract each other. Not a bad plan at all.

Plan C is to make use of the "oh shit" fund and hire some outside help. A quick phonecall to a decent fixer should be able to pull in some magical support, even if it does cost you a pretty penny. No shame in that.

You see I was thinking of the background count too but I was talking about this part
"Slinks main weapon is that she can follow them around without them being able to stop her however"
Sounds like even if they know they cant do anything and the players seem to lack the game knowledge to do some of the stuff mentioned. I would think their characters may know, especially if anyone had knowledge spirits to give them a clue but I have a feeling they dont. Its kinda funny, I have made almost nothing but mundane characters and they all had some sort of magic knowledge skill because of situations like these.

Ah, Slink. Slink is currently a Force 3 Water spirit and the Rain Dogs (which I gave her four of), are Force 4 Water spirits. Although as dice-based interaction with them has been minimal so far, I'm going to re-do them both as Wild spirits now that Running Wild has been released. They aren't tough enough to take on the PCs directly. I found it played out exactly how I wanted in game - to illustrate that the biggest threat to them wasn't something with a huge dicepool, but something that could obtain and distribute information. That aspect worked very well.

As to what they can do about her... Well they had a number of options. You (WyldKnight) asked how they were supposed to shake off an enemy that could follow them anywhere without them knowing. Well, I gave them a freebie in letting them know that she was following them. That was very, very, very clear. I drummed it home at every opportunity even when I shouldn't. One of the best options I considered was that they should head for the 162's and use the ghouls to shake her off them, either through manipulation or through bribery.

Para-animals were another opportunity, but I required more planning than simply walking into a field of Hell Hounds. Anyway, if your plan is for the dual-natured critters to take out a spirit, you shouldn't win initative and kill said critters before they can attack.

They've kind of skimped on useful contacts and knowledge skills so they didn't have any ideal contacts for obtaining magical support, but if all else was desperate, I'd have let them take this approach for a hit to their purse. However, they didn't attempt this either.

Ork Underground has been a notable thing in my game so far (Seattle is a big plex and it takes a while to cover everything), so they can't have been reasonably expected to use that, but I think they had options. It was certainly made very clear to them that they were in trouble and sitting in random houses was not a good idea. After repeatedly fudging things so they didn't end up in a siege situation, I've eventually just had to give it to them. Two of the characters are in good condition. They might be able to make a break for it. Parkour is a good idea and what I'm thinking of. If they stim patch Twist awake again (for more physical damage), he could Phantasm an illusion of them downstairs while Da Silva gets them across the roof tops. It's basically their only chance as far as I can see.

I sympathize with you. I have found one of the hardest things to "teach" people playing SR is to actually run away when appropriate.

If you don't want to go the TPK route (and it sounds like you don't), then you could have them be knocked unconscious by the gangers and turned over to the Triads as prisoners. The Triads, wanting to find out who hired these goons to take out their expensive shipment of drugs, now force the players to help them. Remember the Triads have some weirdo mojo going on, so its quite conceivable that your group could end up being bound to some sort of Oath to help the Triad find the true identity of their employer. This would result in the group playing through the rest of the GC campaign, acted as double-agents for the Triad, who should constantly be siphoning off their resources as "compensation" for the ruining of their shipment.

If not a TPK, then there should be drastic consequences.

PS Please check out my latest run story (second link in my sig) and leave some comments.

Ah I see, I must ask though how the Face didn't get useful contacts and why no one had useful knowledge skills? Did they just buy random skills or what? I looked at the concept characters in the books for help with knowledge skills which is why my only mage had knowledge Spirits and Black market(magical). They just seem like good ideas. Did you help them with chargen? I've only been playing SR for a few months but I was able to figure it out so quickly because our GM walked me through the process of making my first Face character and showing me how seemingly bland stuff like knowledge skills may save your ass some day, which it did on several occasions.

Of course after a certain point it falls to the player and I am pretty sure you mentioned a few of them have played SR before so the whole walking them through thing is null and void. You would think they would know some of this stuff already.

If your players dont want to use up to much Bp on contacts, or need every bit they can get like technomancers and mages, have you thought of using Charisma X 2 as free points for contacts? I really appreciated it when I made my mage and so did everyone else in my group.