OK the History channel is re-runing Ice Road Truckers- a series I didn't bother with when it first ran but this does make me wonder. It's all about the problems or supply runs in the frozen wastes of northern Canada.

I know there are oil and diamond mines in the northern stretches virtually sealed environments like the space mines in "Outland" but I didn't really give a thought to how tough supplies really can be. For those who don't know- there's a two month window in winter when the lakes and rivers are frozen so thick that you can drive a 30 ton load accross it. that's 2 months to get in a year's worth of supplies or the facility in question has to shut down and lose a year's worth of production.

OK there's lots of run potential there but has anyone done any hostile winter conditions runs?

Short answer, No, but I did have high hopes after picking up Target: Wastelands. I did get to run some hostile environment stuff in my SR: Africa game, but it wasn't the cold type. I've always enjoyed getting shadowrun out of the city and into the wilderness.

Just the other week, the runners in my game were sent to a remote mountain in Tibet to explore a mine and find a monastery where a retired runner was spending his days. While they were there, a blizzard hit, making everything harder, colder, wetter, etc. They had to deal with avalanches, the mines being covered up in snow, movement penalties thanks to deep snow, and, of course, strange beasts.

In all, I was impressed with their use of levitate and physical barriers to try keep off the snow and keep the snow off them respectively.

I think it's important to read too many Jack London stories before running SR and then keep making people roll Body to see if their toes fell off yet or not.

...I also have TW and will be bringing it into play soon with regards to highly toxic environments. The runners are just beginning to notice this (particularly the team's mage) as they have been crossing through the Croatian and Serbian countryside.

I had previously run one of the modules from the Mission's book which dealt with heading to an installation located in the arctic. Great fun watching the players "sweat" as their characters had to deal with the issue of wandering about aimlessly in a whietout and possibly freezing to death. The HALO jump in the blizzard was also fun. Were it not for the mages it would have been a real splatfest. The bad thing was the actual "battle finale" at the installation didn't hold a candle to the trek through the frozen tundra.

the serbian and croatian territory are a toxic wasteland? Did you make this up or is it canon? It's kind of important because I have a player whose character is from there and it might come up...

Cheers,

Max

I think he is imagining the war violence. also a few years ago, RL, the Danube was heavily poisoned by an Australian mining firm. So it might be more of that.

Waaaay back before SR started saying anything at all about Russia since the end of the Eurowars, I had a campaign lined up for my players set there that was probably going to involve them going to Siberia (you know, one way or the other), so somewhere I probably have a stack of notes for SR2 house rules on cold conditions. But nothing happened with it until after I think it was Target:Smuggling Havens came out, and the guy in our group that nobody liked would have been all like "But the book says Russia's like THIS" and everyone would have walked away in disgust.

Also, back then I guess none of us realized that the Trans-Polar Aleut nation was, well, transpolar (RUSSIA!!).

But rather than wistfully think about what might have been had Shadowrun not done it's job and released books, I'm just going to say someone with more 4e matix knowledge/interest than I have needs to start a thread called IC Road Truckers and make it full of awesome.

...oh, and speaking of the Russians, they were involved there too. Of course this was prior to the release of SoA and remained so afterwards as I didn't want to go revisionist.

DLN's got a good line there though. the war and death camps and mass exterminations have pretty much scared the spiritual energy there. places of worship blown up and decrated etc.

Add to that bombing by the US and the hate of ethnic clensing. lastly good call on the danube. there have been problems in the past with indutrial waste flowing down the river, no reason to assume that's gotten better, but what she is refering to is that an australian mining firm had a massive cyanide spill that killed a lot of fish for miles.

even if the shooting's stopped that sounds pretty damn toxic

...another part of the reason I chose the area. I did a fair amount of study on the ethnic unrest which dates back a couple centuries.

The mass graves, cities and towns like Osijek, Vocin and Vukovar where some of the worst atrocities occurred all have lingering background counts as do areas in Bosnia Herzogovenia and the Sarajevo Enclave.

The current conflict and power play in Serbia (in the camapign) has not made the situation any better.