I'm running a game where my players have had to be very careful. They've had to make sure they don't make to many waves in the shadow, but still make their nuyen, and get noticed by the right people, etc etc etc. But right now they've got a good bit of karma yen and new toys and the stone cold pro bit is getting a little old and they really just want to blow some drek up and not worry about who they pissed off. The veracity of the chronicle I'm doesn't let me let them just waste a few city blocks even though they have the raw power to do so, but I do believe in giving players what they want. And right now they want to blow off some steam... and some C-4.
So my question to you all what kinds of dungeon crawl interludes can you insert into otherwise gritty and dangerous game of shadow politics? Very specifically I need a scenario where the players can make liberal and cathartic use of grenades and wrack up some kills without worrying about who they are pissing off or how long until the HTRT shows up.
Thanks for any input

The easiest way, imo, is to take them to a place somewhere away from where they have been working as well as away from the matrix. Lots of barren places are available for stuff like that.

You could make it as simple as a seek and destroy op for someone who has run off the grid out to no where. You could set them up to do an op in another major area. Start with lots of footwork before they leave, make them think its legit. Then, in transit, they are shot down and end up out in the middle of no where and fall in between some sort of gang warfare.

Lots of possibilities. Just pull them away from where they have been doing things, give them an outlandish out of hand situation and let the bullets fly!

my personal recommendation is something involving the undead. for some reason, and this is just my opinion, zombies are exceptionally good for destroying in mass to release stress. And no one cares if you kill zombies. heck, you are encouraged to kill zombies.

Bugs Hives are always good, unless they're going to work for those particular Bugs or friends of those particular Bugs.

The second is Renraku Arcology, huge chunks of which are still being patrolled by Deus-loyal death-drones and are booy-trapped up the wazzoo.

Hi,
A suggestion is to start a war.
Both sides can recruit regular troops but also contract private mercenaries. The runners can find quick profit, and lots of missions involving recon, blow up stuff, full scale assault ETC.
I also would have recommended to do it somewhere far, and there are a lot of interesting scenes you can combine with it. It can also provide a change of scenery, as the war can take place in a faraway desert, Jungle ETC.

Send them out into the NAN. Lots of wide open spaces out there. And it can even be at the request of the NAN authorities to deal with some bad corp behaviour or somesuch.

Send them down to LA for some ruined urban areas, with lots of submerged rooms and aquatic monsters.

Invent a AA corp that's got too big for its boots, pissed off a couple of megas and has no allies to protect it. The PCs go in with a mandate to raze it the ground (make it a big industrial complex, so that it's out of town and not wasting value office buildings).

Or there's always Attack of the Bugs! Send them to Chicago to retrieve someone's missing daughter. That's always fun and they can't really make the place more of a mess than it already is, no matter how hard they try. Plus you get to download geiger counter sound effects and play them at different speeds at various points in the game.

I'm feeling the geiger counters...
Thanks for all the ideas. I'm feeling an extended run in a huge industrial complex. I'm think'n cyber-ghouls research/fab. l33tpenguin's right everyone love geeking the undead. Does Umbrella Corp sound the name of an AA getting to big for its britches

I've always liked me a good zombie smash

hell, didnt a whole lot of "dungeons" show up under LA lately?

Geiger counters, Undead... Sprawling under-plex tunnels... Sounds like a delight.

A good way to not fully depart from the current Professional theme of your game would be to incorporate all of those psychotic elements in a setting that is still believable. While going to Chicago is sweet, it will be very much a gun-bunny vacation. If thats the order of the day, woohoo for your group. Unload the ordinance.

If you want to keep the city and theme central, you can work up a situation rather easily that would keep the general methods of swating players (SWAT puns aside) out of reach. This would be a very similar situation to the original Half Life. A corp may be doing research and development on a particular product that is flagrantly illegal - a feat that is nigh on impossible to do in the 2070s. Said corp wants to handle everything "in house", but the trouble is that the more people you send to "fix" the "problem", the greater potential for leaks you incur. So HTRT will show up... just not in Legion.

Examples drawing on earlier subjects: Manatech R&D of melding spirit possession with cyber-zombies.

New and improved methods of Astral Camoflage and Barriers in the form of Astral Scarring - dump enough bad joo joo into the mana of an area (say, methodical murder and sacrifice of children) to taint the mana to deafen, astrally blind or otherwise twist a caster.

R&D with old Aztlan Book of The Dead sources. Reanimation projects culminating in a Lich.

Secret weaponized HMMV (or whatever the piss its called) project using immunosurpressants to produce cures for nearly any disease... and also resulting in a prasitic infection that makes the host's immune system think the body is an intruder...

The basic idea is that you can put them down in a vast, secret facility surrounded by dangerous materials, chemicals and other such fun stuff... Loaded with paydata, loot and with tons of badguys all over the place... But when the dust clears, no one can talk about it (who would believe you? would you live to see another day if you spilled the beans about this place). But yeah, there would be no real problem blowing everything the frag up. The corp does not want LoneStar there... they don't even want their own employee's there.

Just some ideas.

- der menkey

"Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter."
~ Ernest Hemmingway

Wow. these are some sweet ideas. I thought for sure that I was going to run a Gun Bunny Vacation in LA cuz I loves me some horror allusions, but I'm feeling a Black mesa angle too. Hell my teams already hiding as well-fair bums in the Arcology so I'd be easy.
*Ponder, Ponder, Ponder*
Thanks all these are all great Ideas

Africa! Southeast Asia! Balkans! War Zones...

When you take a mercenary contract in a conflict zone, you're basically off the hook when it comes to fallout once you leave that country. Noone gives a rat's ass if the Red Claw burned a few villages in Somalia for the Lord's Resistance Army when they take a contract a few months later to prop up a failing pro-Pepsi regime in the Dayak Council. It's old news.

So sure, burn some tanks, throw fuel oil on old women, let your hair down. Just make sure that you're actually on a mercenary contract at the time and that you're in a conflict zone at the time. Sign up with a couple of Xs for your name and take a limited 6 month contract. Then walk away at the end of it.

If you don't make Africa your life, Africa won't make you its. If you fucking well leave when you're supposed to, it's over.

-Frank

An decent way to pull off the 'black mesa' angle, could be something along these lines:

same set up, corp doing some bad stuff in a massive complex underground. Pick out your most technically or magically inclined and talented player. The corp hires them on as a 'consultant' the rest of the team is welcome along to protect their interests. If you can play your players enough, start off indicating that their services aren't necessary, but if you make things sound suspicious enough they will insist that they come along. If the whole team doesn't go, no one goes, right?

Well, they are taken into the facility, searched for any contraband, etc. This could provide some amusing side effects. Any player that pulled BPs by giving themselves some serious addictions could have their much needed stimulates, etc, pulled from them at this time and suffer whatever penalties they inure later during the mission. Of course, when their personal affects are taken, they are assured, illegal or not, everything will be returned to them when they leave.

The players are given the cover story for what is being done and why they are here, then taken further into the compound. Maybe have them meet up with others similar to the 'expert' in the group. Other highly skilled hackers or mages or whatever. Maybe even make up some 'famous' individuals. Have your 'expert' recognize them or have heard of their exploits.

Everyone receives a briefing about an experiment they are about to observe, team and NPCs. They are brought to another room where they are told to disarm and change into 'suits' their personal effects can be kept in the lockers provided. The suits they get are special (their power supplies are unique and will only last the course of the mission) and, like Mr. Freeman's, provide good armor, specialized sensors, etc. Have fun with what you give them, design some really impressive armor the players can enjoy for this mission.

Unarmed (which will really bother your gun-bunnies make it absolute, they will be removed from the facility if they do not follow the order. Like before, assure them that this is only temporary, they can't risk damage to the equipment, and they will be returned shortly. This is only a brief demonstration) and suited up, they are brought to the experimental chamber to 'observe' some of what is being done here.

Naturally, shortly after the experiment begins, something goes terribly wrong. Wipe out the science team and escorts, kill off most of the NPCs. keep a couple, they can be used as 'sacrificial lambs' if need be. Then let the fun begin. Throw them up against a couple creatures before they even get armed. If they don't seem to be able to handle it, you sacrifice one of the NPCs to 'hold off' the creature while they escape further. They come across one or two dead security guards, give em a light pistol or two. For giggles, let them find a dead maintenance person while has, among other things, a crowbar. After a bit of stressful, lightly armed combat, they work their way back to the locker room and gear up.

Then let them have fun trying to get out. Lots of chances for puzzle type traps to get around and avoid. No limit to the amount of destruction they are allowed to cause. Let them find guard rooms with grenades and rockets and all sorts of weapons. a good way to encourage them to spend ammunition is throwing lots of slow, easy to kill baddies at them. Intermingle this with some hard enemies from time to time.

Reveal more of what was going on in the complex as they go. commlinks with information on them, computer terminals with notes and research. NPCs they can talk to that will tell them anything if the team helps them escape. Then, work the team around from 'trying to escape' to 'preventing what is trying to escape from escaping' Make it seem like whatever is happening threatens to destroy all humanity if let loose.

And, naturally, the corp has sent in mercs to clear out everything. More fun

Best yet, somewhere along the way arm them with some really over powered experimental weapons (again, power cell will only last through the duration of the mission) and bring the climax with some massive boss fight (that, of course, would be impossible without these experimental weapons. Possibly even have them have to destroy the weapon(s) to win. An 'overcharge' self destruct resulting in a small thermonuclear explosion would be fun).

They finally clamor to the surface, exhausted, the ruins of the complex behind them. The corp has already done the job of cleaning up on the surface. They have assumed the team and everyone else is KIA. The corp denies anything, no one will believe the stories. So they walk away saviors of the earth and no one else knows it Bitter sweet irony is super fun.

unless you walk into a hive of vampires that is. its their "spiritual" home, no?

Too bad we lost the walking background counts that were adepts with enthralling performance from 3rd.... they made vampires drop to 0 essence and thus go passive via their impressive breakdancing... alas. Now, the countries just need to conquer with some brains in tanks since they don't have to sleep, and good luck to the vampire getting in close enough to essence drain it.

And don't forget infighting!These "counts" probably have egos larger then Damien Knight's.Also, shortage of food- they have to totally drain someone about once a week each, right?Romania has what, 6-9 million people?In 4-6 years they have eaten the whole country bare, and there will be lots of problems due to lack of people long before.

Wow! This is a great idea and fits in with a run idea I had that I never developed. Frank - any objection if something based on this shows up in one of my "complete adventure" downloads? This is just brilliant!

-K.

oh and if anything else fails, sign the group of with a tour of the desert wars. thats what they are there for, right?

the closest SR comes to the SLA concept of contract killers.

its not the blood, its the essence thats important. or in other words the "ghost".

so when a person is dead he is of no value for a vampire imo.

so maybe a stunbolt is in order if one wants to preserve a snack

...hmm...always thought the blood was important.

Yeah, a mega stunball would be better, that way it would still be warm

Turn to Goo and hold a jello party. They'd still be able to extract the Essence, correct?

hmm, if the goo is still alive, yes i would think so...

If someone has burst through your house and broken down the wall to your panic room while under constant spirit attack I think it a fairly reasonable assumption that the people are totally bad ass. As such, any spell which is inherently all-or-nothing (stunball, turn to goo, control thoughts) has too good a chance of being "nothing" when they run into the room and start shooting wooden bullets around.

Indirect Combat Spells are unlikely to preserve any Essence or Blood, but are very likely to kill the interlopers. Remember: Essence Draining is for Children! Not just because it's a child-like thing to do in combat, but because the benefits are just as high when used on little children. So you should never try to extract Essence out of James Bond - shoot him in the fucking face.

Extract Essence from James Bonds' illegitimate heirs. After he has died of inexplcable lead poisoning. In the face.

-Frank

James Bond lies on the floor, head busted open. The Cossak Henchman, Ivan, stares on wildly. Spent shell casings litter the ground and the walls are covered in holes. Everyone has slivers. Apparently wooden bullets explode when fired...

A vampire kneels over Bond's body, lapping up the blood.

"Here we go again," Ivan shouts. "Its not the blood you need, its the essence."

"Look," replied the undead count of Monte Cristo Sandwiches, "I just fried like seventy-zillion people with a lightning ball that probably caused a power outage all over this half medieval eastern european arm pit... I neeeed this."

"Whatever," Ivan mutters, petting a six toed cat that rubs against his leg, "at least you didn't kill the cat." Immediately regretting his words while the sunlight allergic super-killer eyes the feline, Ivan frowns.

"Whenever I cast spells like that, it wracks my immortal husk! I will need to kill a man at some point in the future, or that cat is a snack..."

...

...

...

Oh lord. The antics.

- der menkey

"Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter."
~ Ernest Hemmingway

Now give me the damn Cinnamon Crunch.

Seriously though damn vampires almost did a TPK. Spirit wave attacks while in elevators are no fun and the bastards used nerve gas as well. I had to get carried out of that one. We haven't taken a vamp job since.

Bit late on this thread...but here you go.

Three words: Physical Security Test

make it a giant wargame using fake explosives, S&S ammo, etc.

I did this in one of my games to let my players let off some steam in a safe, fun way

Golden Glory game show isn't that sort of like the running man. Minus of course the whole being a convict thing.

Is there seriously nothing prohibiting vampires from Regenerating away their drain damage? I thought the errata stated that drain couldn't be healed by magical means, and since that critter power is, in fact, magical, it shouldn't be able to heal drain. I mean, if vampires can just heal away the drain of summoning giant spirits, why haven't they taken over the world with spirits yet, or at least several countries?