Is it a Corp, magical group, single npc, criminal organization or something entirely different.
A good villan should haunt your runners over there entire carreer. Corps make great foes for the long term and its interesting to see how runners react to the Corps. One of my older teams had deep respect bordering on loyalty for any corp involved with a dragon. Aztec always made an easy Corp to hate. Or current team has become entranced by an Aztec johnson. MCT has become our current boogieman, after pissing them off, not something you want to do with a zero zone Corp.
So who's your greatest foe? Why?
Full Version: Antagonist
Right now for my group it is a Johnson for and R&D section of UO.
The runners were sent to "rescue" a child, turned out to be a kidnapping job. The kid was going to be used for various experiments because he was a "Type-O" kid and very rare and special.
The runners also uncovered a "school" that is really a front for cyber/bio testing on children.
The runners are pissed and basically gave the Johnson the finger and want to go after him. Obviously it will not happen overnight; even if they are successful.
I think they have an ongoing plot to stick it to this Johnson.
The runners were sent to "rescue" a child, turned out to be a kidnapping job. The kid was going to be used for various experiments because he was a "Type-O" kid and very rare and special.
The runners also uncovered a "school" that is really a front for cyber/bio testing on children.
The runners are pissed and basically gave the Johnson the finger and want to go after him. Obviously it will not happen overnight; even if they are successful.
I think they have an ongoing plot to stick it to this Johnson.
My villains are drama queens for the most part. Last year, the villain was a former special forces officer (former CO of one of the characters), now the leader of a mysterious government agency researching extreme ways to engineer and augment better soldiers. He actually did have the characters tied up once, while he taunted them and explained his scheme. (He needed to take the troll's heart for research, because he's apparently immune to HMHVV. He was going to take it by hand.)
It's currently not really obvious who the villain is in my game. I like it that way. There's a great dragon running for governor that has some kind of connection to the old villain's agency (he's dead now and the agency collapsed). There's a triad that has a vendetta against one of the characters. There's a mob war stirring up in Tacoma, which is a less tangible antagonist. And there's a mysterious, murderous, possibly spiritual force that is a rival to the dragon, which may or may not even be real. My antagonists are rarely the target of runs; they're just around, making life difficult.
It's currently not really obvious who the villain is in my game. I like it that way. There's a great dragon running for governor that has some kind of connection to the old villain's agency (he's dead now and the agency collapsed). There's a triad that has a vendetta against one of the characters. There's a mob war stirring up in Tacoma, which is a less tangible antagonist. And there's a mysterious, murderous, possibly spiritual force that is a rival to the dragon, which may or may not even be real. My antagonists are rarely the target of runs; they're just around, making life difficult.
The antagonists I usually glom onto for punishment are largely the ones that get tossed in as directly related to my character.
For example, the last character I got to play had the dependent flaw (SR3), and it was his sister. She was an accountant for a corp that (unbeknownst to her) was strongly tied to the Yakuza. When she decided to play amateur decker and bilk them out of quite a bit of money, she ended up "in debt" to the Yaks. So the Yaks became Character Enemy Number One.
For example, the last character I got to play had the dependent flaw (SR3), and it was his sister. She was an accountant for a corp that (unbeknownst to her) was strongly tied to the Yakuza. When she decided to play amateur decker and bilk them out of quite a bit of money, she ended up "in debt" to the Yaks. So the Yaks became Character Enemy Number One.
The PCs in my game aren't sure yet (it's only a couple months old). They're currently working for a Macao casino which acts as a dummy corporation for a conglomerate of corps (the big name being Ares) interested in a combined power grab. The dummy corp's enemy is Wuxing, who are working towards the same goal using an opposing team of runners (already decimated once by a bad plan and some PC luck). Saeder-Krupp and the Eastern European gnome community are both aware of the power grab and want to stop it, so they're viable enemies too. Not to mention the Hong Kong triads which the power grab has kicked around a little. Hell, the group already stole from the Smoke Circle Society, though I'm not that fact registered on their radar despite the theft making the local papers.
Unfortunately, the players haven't really chosen a side yet, nor are they completely aware what's going or all the parties involved. Hopefully in the next two weeks, they'll break off from the dummy corp and start to figure things out as the blocks are falling into place.
Unfortunately, the players haven't really chosen a side yet, nor are they completely aware what's going or all the parties involved. Hopefully in the next two weeks, they'll break off from the dummy corp and start to figure things out as the blocks are falling into place.
I don't really have antagonists. There's no over-arching bad guy that the players are out to kill/stop/reform. I tend to run a game that simply follows characters through a few months of their career. During which time, they certainly run into some antagonists, but I rarely have a true villain or nemesis.
'Course, the exception was last year when the campaign was set up to be specifically opposing a Vampire who was performing research relating to a cure for HMHVV (for obvious reasons). Unfortunately, his only success was with newly infected people. So, in his own specific sociopathic megalomania, he started kidnapping people and infecting them to see if he could cure it.
The PCs get involved and, at the end, they get to kill the Vampire. Good times. Too bad it was somewhat anti-climatic when the mage zapped the Bitey McBitesalot with a F12 Manabolt to get him. 'Course, I think she took some serious drain over it all, but she lived and he didn't. I hate one-shotting villains. Oh well.
'Course, the exception was last year when the campaign was set up to be specifically opposing a Vampire who was performing research relating to a cure for HMHVV (for obvious reasons). Unfortunately, his only success was with newly infected people. So, in his own specific sociopathic megalomania, he started kidnapping people and infecting them to see if he could cure it.
The PCs get involved and, at the end, they get to kill the Vampire. Good times. Too bad it was somewhat anti-climatic when the mage zapped the Bitey McBitesalot with a F12 Manabolt to get him. 'Course, I think she took some serious drain over it all, but she lived and he didn't. I hate one-shotting villains. Oh well.
There are plenty foes in my current ongoing campaigns -three of them- but only a couple characters are evolving to become antagonists. I usually start a campaign with many threads at the same time and let the players make their enemies for themselves....
At this moment only two NPCs are growing into antagonists for their respective runner groups: One is dutch arms dealer whose business has been affected by the runners entrepeneurship; he has already sent a shadowrunner team against them, "helped" them botch a couple of fencing goods situations and God only knows what's coming up next. Runners have just become aware of the identity of their foe and are taking some counter moves, things are escalating...
On another group the new antagonist they are going to enjoy is an overzealous prosecutor, the characters ended up in jail and he has been assigned the case. However, when the runners successfully appeal, helped by their mob contacts his career will be ruined and so...
Cheers,
Max
At this moment only two NPCs are growing into antagonists for their respective runner groups: One is dutch arms dealer whose business has been affected by the runners entrepeneurship; he has already sent a shadowrunner team against them, "helped" them botch a couple of fencing goods situations and God only knows what's coming up next. Runners have just become aware of the identity of their foe and are taking some counter moves, things are escalating...
On another group the new antagonist they are going to enjoy is an overzealous prosecutor, the characters ended up in jail and he has been assigned the case. However, when the runners successfully appeal, helped by their mob contacts his career will be ruined and so...
Cheers,
Max
My foes are the PCs themselves.
There's no one more dangerous.
There's no one more dangerous.
| QUOTE (DireRadiant) |
| My foes are the PCs themselves. There's no one more dangerous. |
There's the Shadowrun I know and love!
It's been a few months, so I'll tell this story again.
One of my players (SR3) took the Hunted flaw. The person hunting him was a twisted mystic adept ninja. About once every run or so, in the middle of something else, I'd just yell "NINJA!", and he'd take a cheap shot at someone in the group with a long-range weapon, or there'd be a booby trap or something, then he would run away, use his ruthenium suit, his invisibility spell, his stealth, spirit concealment, his preplanned escape route, and his 100m head start and vanish. He wouldn't stick around to fight, he'd just hit them with a Serious wound or two and disappear, leaving them to do whatever nasty run they had to do, only now they were going into it wounded, or the mage was drained, or something.
They hated that ninja, and learned to loathe my cries of "NINJA!" That was really the best part, me calmly describing a scene, like, "Alright, so you go over towards the Johnson's car and NINJA!" And the whole group cringing. Hehe. Good times.
Also, Deus. When they found out they'd been working for him all that time...priceless.
Deus and NINJA! were probably my two best and most fun antagonists of all time.
One of my players (SR3) took the Hunted flaw. The person hunting him was a twisted mystic adept ninja. About once every run or so, in the middle of something else, I'd just yell "NINJA!", and he'd take a cheap shot at someone in the group with a long-range weapon, or there'd be a booby trap or something, then he would run away, use his ruthenium suit, his invisibility spell, his stealth, spirit concealment, his preplanned escape route, and his 100m head start and vanish. He wouldn't stick around to fight, he'd just hit them with a Serious wound or two and disappear, leaving them to do whatever nasty run they had to do, only now they were going into it wounded, or the mage was drained, or something.
They hated that ninja, and learned to loathe my cries of "NINJA!" That was really the best part, me calmly describing a scene, like, "Alright, so you go over towards the Johnson's car and NINJA!" And the whole group cringing. Hehe. Good times.
Also, Deus. When they found out they'd been working for him all that time...priceless.
Deus and NINJA! were probably my two best and most fun antagonists of all time.
Keyser Söze - they need no other enemies.
A crazy adept. He's already tried to kill one PC, and is close to either raping or killing another. But the player really participates, so I'm not really anxious to kick him out of the group.
...from GM perspective it was the Secretariat General of the Serbian SSID Rita Kovec and her assistants Nadia Kovek and Lili Palmer. There was also the "Ice Lady" Zymanski from a scenario in London.
...from the player perspective it is any GD the GM throws at us. In that case, I ask that all my characters have a coupon redeemable for one free Thor Shot™.
...from the player perspective it is any GD the GM throws at us. In that case, I ask that all my characters have a coupon redeemable for one free Thor Shot™.
My PC's have acquired a number of antagonists. 
The whole party has:
A) A shedim and the Cutters, a band of ghouls he was leading that ran afoul of an Ares Firewatch team--primarily because one of the new "recruits" in the Cutters was a courier for an Ares subsidiary carrying incriminating research between subsidiaries
B) The now deceased Mosquito Shaman and her minions who were working with A. She was killed by
C) A blood spirit she was controlling who had located the two members of the party who weren't fully buttoned up by using ceremonial magic on blood samples from the mosquito cloud she hit the party with. She killed one and on the second attempted hit was hurt enough that the blood spirit turned on her. It's now trying to get the party to take out A, the only other entity with its true name.
D) an Ares Special Investigations Team--trying to find out what took out their Firewatch team--it was A, B and C--and what happened to the courier and his package. Unfortunately for the party, 1) they were hired to retrieve the package for someone else and successfully did so, but their Johnson was terminated by a superior, who took the package and sent video of them (with the package) to Ares and 2) they left evidence at the scene of the fight between the Firewatch team and A, B and C and 3) The Ares SIT investigated the site of the party member's death (and he was a gun/explosives nut who secretly worked primarily for Ares) and tracked him back to the club they'd met with their Johnson at the night before and 4) the Ares SIT team used info from their now dead party member operative to set surveillance drones on a party member's van at said club, but 5) they found and destroyed one of the drones after it compromised the mobile operating unit of their favorite street/cyber doc, then ran afoul of A wearing a dead SWAT officer's body and driving a stolen SWAT van that crashed into and destroyed their van and forced them to cast spells, fire weapons and bug out before they could erase signatures. They did put accelerants in their van and torch it and pick up dropped gear, though.
They are also in Occupation Era SF, so they have MCT, a dragon-kin adept working for Ryumyo/Yakuza, and the Occupation to deal with, too.
Individually, they have
I a twisted Infiltration Adept from the merc company one worked for (the merc company was wiped out by biowarfare agents and the Adept was captured and brainwarped by the corp testing the biowarfare agents)
II an entire order of Tantric practitioners who believe that a PC is the crux of evil for a coming mystic invasion
III the Sons of Sauron (PC is a human-loving troll)
Whew. Luckily for them, at that level, so many antagonists tend to get in each others' way and fight amongst themselves, too. It does keep it interesting, though.
The whole party has:
A) A shedim and the Cutters, a band of ghouls he was leading that ran afoul of an Ares Firewatch team--primarily because one of the new "recruits" in the Cutters was a courier for an Ares subsidiary carrying incriminating research between subsidiaries
B) The now deceased Mosquito Shaman and her minions who were working with A. She was killed by
C) A blood spirit she was controlling who had located the two members of the party who weren't fully buttoned up by using ceremonial magic on blood samples from the mosquito cloud she hit the party with. She killed one and on the second attempted hit was hurt enough that the blood spirit turned on her. It's now trying to get the party to take out A, the only other entity with its true name.
D) an Ares Special Investigations Team--trying to find out what took out their Firewatch team--it was A, B and C--and what happened to the courier and his package. Unfortunately for the party, 1) they were hired to retrieve the package for someone else and successfully did so, but their Johnson was terminated by a superior, who took the package and sent video of them (with the package) to Ares and 2) they left evidence at the scene of the fight between the Firewatch team and A, B and C and 3) The Ares SIT investigated the site of the party member's death (and he was a gun/explosives nut who secretly worked primarily for Ares) and tracked him back to the club they'd met with their Johnson at the night before and 4) the Ares SIT team used info from their now dead party member operative to set surveillance drones on a party member's van at said club, but 5) they found and destroyed one of the drones after it compromised the mobile operating unit of their favorite street/cyber doc, then ran afoul of A wearing a dead SWAT officer's body and driving a stolen SWAT van that crashed into and destroyed their van and forced them to cast spells, fire weapons and bug out before they could erase signatures. They did put accelerants in their van and torch it and pick up dropped gear, though.
They are also in Occupation Era SF, so they have MCT, a dragon-kin adept working for Ryumyo/Yakuza, and the Occupation to deal with, too.
Individually, they have
I a twisted Infiltration Adept from the merc company one worked for (the merc company was wiped out by biowarfare agents and the Adept was captured and brainwarped by the corp testing the biowarfare agents)
II an entire order of Tantric practitioners who believe that a PC is the crux of evil for a coming mystic invasion
III the Sons of Sauron (PC is a human-loving troll)
Whew. Luckily for them, at that level, so many antagonists tend to get in each others' way and fight amongst themselves, too. It does keep it interesting, though.
Haven't played since I had to move, but in my last campaign my PCs had a few antagonists.
The main tangible enemy was the subordinate of one of the Azzies local higher managers, who they'd done a run against on behalf of a collegue of his to try and foil the promotion he was getting. They failed, got followed back and their Johnson got killed by a hit squad. They barely made it out alive, but it left the guy with a good picture of who they were, including the handles they used. After finding their main safe house and sending in a Leopard team. They survived, and managed to take out the leopard team, which cost the enemy in question a rap on the knuckles and earned them his undying hatred. Along with the drive to try and use his personal resources against them.
the second main antagonist was a powerful free spirit which had taken an interest in them and sought to test them after they managed to liberate a certain item from a campus. The spirit would often visit said item and so endeavored to find out who stole it and where it winded up. After he'd found them, he'd occasionally throw a wrench into their plans, alerting security on runs etc. Or even using proxies and disguises to hire them for odd and often ultimately useless tasks (spraypainting certain specific marks in S-K's local office. Hitting a humanis guy with a paintball during a speech he was giving, with strict orders not to harm anyone, etc). More to amuse itself then out of any desire to harm or kill them.
Other than that there's a small pool of people with grudges/dislikes that will hurt them when they can, but just don't care enough or who have the will but not the means to find them easily.
[edited the corp guy's hatred part, made a mistake there]
The main tangible enemy was the subordinate of one of the Azzies local higher managers, who they'd done a run against on behalf of a collegue of his to try and foil the promotion he was getting. They failed, got followed back and their Johnson got killed by a hit squad. They barely made it out alive, but it left the guy with a good picture of who they were, including the handles they used. After finding their main safe house and sending in a Leopard team. They survived, and managed to take out the leopard team, which cost the enemy in question a rap on the knuckles and earned them his undying hatred. Along with the drive to try and use his personal resources against them.
the second main antagonist was a powerful free spirit which had taken an interest in them and sought to test them after they managed to liberate a certain item from a campus. The spirit would often visit said item and so endeavored to find out who stole it and where it winded up. After he'd found them, he'd occasionally throw a wrench into their plans, alerting security on runs etc. Or even using proxies and disguises to hire them for odd and often ultimately useless tasks (spraypainting certain specific marks in S-K's local office. Hitting a humanis guy with a paintball during a speech he was giving, with strict orders not to harm anyone, etc). More to amuse itself then out of any desire to harm or kill them.
Other than that there's a small pool of people with grudges/dislikes that will hurt them when they can, but just don't care enough or who have the will but not the means to find them easily.
[edited the corp guy's hatred part, made a mistake there]
My go-to bad guys, in any Shadowrun campaign, are the Yakuza.
| QUOTE (stormcrow) |
| they left evidence at the scene of the fight between the Firewatch team and A, B and C Luckily for them, at that level, so many antagonists tend to get in each others' way and fight amongst themselves, too. |
What kind of evidence was left by PCs at the fight in the tunnels, other than intercepted signals?
Another handle for the PCs is that those adversaries tend to have enemies. The human-sympathetic troll is trying to make allies with ANYONE who wants to kill off the remaining mosquito spirits and the Shedim. The blood spirit was an adversary and is now an ally, of sorts. If we can sufficiently sabotage the Sons of Sauron attack on the dwarf warren, then maybe the dwarves will do us a favor someday. And so on.
My players have a few antagonists:
1) A mysterious mage that they have "bumped" into on a couple runs. They have fought him a couple times, but they have always escaped. The latest encounter, he kidnapped one of their contacts. The runners rescued the contact and he is now in hiding.
2) One player, a former covert ops agent, had a couple company assassins on his tail...took it as a flaw during chargen to pick up some higher-end gear. This character is actually dead now, but the assassins don't know that for a fact, so they have still targeted the remaining party members and show up from time to time.
3) One player, got "lucky" enough to get caught on camera during a car boost. He was mafia connected, so he occasionally gets some heat from the mob.
4) One job called for a "requisition" at a warehouse. The Johnson demanded no killing, but the players did anyways. Ended up killing the Johnson's brother...he obviously doesn't like the runners...
5) A former player (no longer playing his mage), has been "recruited" by antagonist in 1), and occasionally makes a manifesting appearance to the rest of the team...he hasn't quite become an antagonist yet, but it is only a matter of time...
For my GMing tastes, I focus on the character interaction with people. If I can make my players hate/fear/befriend an NPC, then I feel I have done my job at making a realistic setting.
1) A mysterious mage that they have "bumped" into on a couple runs. They have fought him a couple times, but they have always escaped. The latest encounter, he kidnapped one of their contacts. The runners rescued the contact and he is now in hiding.
2) One player, a former covert ops agent, had a couple company assassins on his tail...took it as a flaw during chargen to pick up some higher-end gear. This character is actually dead now, but the assassins don't know that for a fact, so they have still targeted the remaining party members and show up from time to time.
3) One player, got "lucky" enough to get caught on camera during a car boost. He was mafia connected, so he occasionally gets some heat from the mob.
4) One job called for a "requisition" at a warehouse. The Johnson demanded no killing, but the players did anyways. Ended up killing the Johnson's brother...he obviously doesn't like the runners...
5) A former player (no longer playing his mage), has been "recruited" by antagonist in 1), and occasionally makes a manifesting appearance to the rest of the team...he hasn't quite become an antagonist yet, but it is only a matter of time...
For my GMing tastes, I focus on the character interaction with people. If I can make my players hate/fear/befriend an NPC, then I feel I have done my job at making a realistic setting.
My players never have a shortage of bad guys but the true antagonists of the campaign have to be something that SR4 seems to be ignoring. That is the "Horrors" from 1st and 2nd edition. My players and I have been playing Shadowrun on and off sense its creation so they and I got used to the metaplot bad guys who where out to destroy/rule/change the world.
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