I'm getting ready to take over our campaign, and I thought I'd do a bit of research. Tell me about your favorite run.
My favorite involved clearing a gang from a warehouse. There were only two of us against these couple dozen gang members, so we did some snooping. We tagged the bosses car and followed him around; the first place he went was to meet some yaks and discuss a big BTL shipment he was handling for them.
"Ring.....ring.....yes, hello, Triads? Want some BTL's?"
I think the toughest thing we had to fight that mission was a dog. (We kicked it's @$$, too!)
Full Version: What was your favorite run?
I still consider one of my my favorite scenes when I was GMing, and had a bad guy walk up to one runner, trying to lure him in a trap (needed him for a blood sacrifice). The runner, and another PC, interrogated the man with a detect truth spell for 30 minutes, and were told the whole background - "yes, there is a cabal trying to sacrifice you, just as they killed your father, yes, there is another group opposing them, yes there are vampires in both groups, yes, I too am a vampire" - but they never asked the man whose side he was on, and so walked right into the trap.
...as a GM, it had to be the an early scene from first run of RiS. The team had just been through King of the Mountain from the Missions book (the one with the HALO jump into an arctic blizzard). After meeting with "Mr Heath" (the campaign began in London & took place in late December) they were driven to Gatwick where a cargo jet was waiting to take them to Vienna. As they boarded I mentioned that the back was about half filled with drop pallets. The look on the players' faces was priceless. especially when they saw several parachute packs stowed near the rear cargo doors. Nobody said a word throughout the entire flight and all were very relieved to that the plane actually descended to make a landing.
Hmm - my favorite run as a player was the old Supernova adventure in the First Run book.
Being hired to participate in the acquisition asset war of the now defunct Fuchi between Novatech and Renraku... and replace the snitches case without killing her or having her know was a great (re)introduction to SR.
Its either that one or the old DNA/DOA SR1 Adventure.
Being hired to participate in the acquisition asset war of the now defunct Fuchi between Novatech and Renraku... and replace the snitches case without killing her or having her know was a great (re)introduction to SR.
Its either that one or the old DNA/DOA SR1 Adventure.
Hard to say. I'm not sure if it was a 1e run or just something the GM pulled together, but we had a session where we were hired to be ringers in the "farm league" version of Urban Brawl. Total blast.
I enjoyed DNA/DOA, giggled through a lot of Harlequin, and back in 1e when it was still new and scary just about wet my pants during Euphoria/Universal Brotherhood.
I enjoyed DNA/DOA, giggled through a lot of Harlequin, and back in 1e when it was still new and scary just about wet my pants during Euphoria/Universal Brotherhood.
Yeah, Missing Blood because it was the first SR game that I played in. You're never going to recapture that innocence. The best moment came in the second session when my private detective went back by himself to follow up on some clues and ended up getting attacked by a woman with mandibles. Most of the group was new and none of us knew what the hell it was, which made for a great game.
| QUOTE (kigmatzomat) |
| Hard to say. I'm not sure if it was a 1e run or just something the GM pulled together, but we had a session where we were hired to be ringers in the "farm league" version of Urban Brawl. Total blast. |
Closest published adventure that I can think of is A Killing Glare for SR2. But that's for the international Urban Brawl league, and the characters only infiltrate the brawlzone to save Bunch and Judy.
Mine was going up against a cybered up gang called "The Lords of Electric" They were outfitted with a lot of 'ware and toys, from Renraku. The battles were tense. All of the members had shock white hair which was a nice touch. If you mean published adventures, I like DNA/DOA
| QUOTE (Smilin_Jack) | ||
Closest published adventure that I can think of is A Killing Glare for SR2. But that's for the international Urban Brawl league, and the characters only infiltrate the brawlzone to save Bunch and Judy. |
Nope, this was 1e for sure. I was still in high school and my character had some of the newly released biotech from Shadowtech. SR2 came out my freshman year of college.
My favorite run? Well first some campaign background...
Ok with that out of the way, the Runners were hired by an unknown party who would only speak to them through his/her servant. The team's Mystic (Mage) was smart enough not to question why the meet was set up on a Mana boosting Ley-Line Nexus or why their employer had erected the strongest ward he had ever seen.
The job seemed somewhat strange, the team was supposed to break into an Ares underground complex and bring back a certain scientist's data as well as his intact head (They were given a head-sized cyro-unit for the latter so it was clear that the head didn't need to be attached.). But although 'Johnson' wasn't shelling out alot of cred, he was giving them some of the wiz gear they had been drooling over as payment, including a couple of very old and rare texts that the Mystic had been searching for dealing with theories of blood magic. (The nature of the payment set off alarm bells and the team almost walked, but in the end greed overcame their better judgement.)
So they agreed to the job and after going over the up-front payment with a fine-tooth-comb like the good little paranoid Runners they were (All of the gear was clean except for the cryo-unit.) they found the complex to be utterly deserted and shut down, complete with still-hot Soy-Caf in the guard stations.
Now at this point I know that you are wondering why didn't they just cut and run? Surely they had to know that something Very Bad had happened in the base and that they really shouldn't venture into the sub levels. Well the team had that very same discussion and almost did until the Mystic reminded them that in order to give the team exactly what each of them had wanted their new boss had to have been vetting them for some time and that he might not take kindly to the team running off with the new toys he gave them. He then somewhat overstated the threat of Ritual Magic to convince the still dubious team that it was best to continue. (The mystic really wanted the second half of his payment so he could learn the secrets of blood magic.)
Anyways the team finds the scientist's computer and the Decker first has to rig up a battery to power the computer before being able to crack the node and download the paydata. As for the scientist, his notes have him scheduled to supervise an experiment at Site 1A, so the team continues onwards figuring that they are already well pass the point of no return.
As they continue deeper into complex they come across a series of natural tunnels full of strange and distrubing carvings. By the time the characters stumble onto Site 1A the players are convinced they are walking straight into a Hive.
When they realized that Ares had stumbled onto and managed to unseal a tainted Kaer they wished they had walked into a Hive. Still, they did manage to find the scientist and even decided to bring him back alive, a decision which I have no doubt was prompted by the fact that they had lost the cryo-unit to the results of a critical glitch shortly beforehand.
Suprisingly only one of the characters died from either the Horrors in the Kaer or the Ares Responce team that was investigating why the complex hadn't checked in on time.
[ Spoiler ]
Ok with that out of the way, the Runners were hired by an unknown party who would only speak to them through his/her servant. The team's Mystic (Mage) was smart enough not to question why the meet was set up on a Mana boosting Ley-Line Nexus or why their employer had erected the strongest ward he had ever seen.
The job seemed somewhat strange, the team was supposed to break into an Ares underground complex and bring back a certain scientist's data as well as his intact head (They were given a head-sized cyro-unit for the latter so it was clear that the head didn't need to be attached.). But although 'Johnson' wasn't shelling out alot of cred, he was giving them some of the wiz gear they had been drooling over as payment, including a couple of very old and rare texts that the Mystic had been searching for dealing with theories of blood magic. (The nature of the payment set off alarm bells and the team almost walked, but in the end greed overcame their better judgement.)
So they agreed to the job and after going over the up-front payment with a fine-tooth-comb like the good little paranoid Runners they were (All of the gear was clean except for the cryo-unit.) they found the complex to be utterly deserted and shut down, complete with still-hot Soy-Caf in the guard stations.
Now at this point I know that you are wondering why didn't they just cut and run? Surely they had to know that something Very Bad had happened in the base and that they really shouldn't venture into the sub levels. Well the team had that very same discussion and almost did until the Mystic reminded them that in order to give the team exactly what each of them had wanted their new boss had to have been vetting them for some time and that he might not take kindly to the team running off with the new toys he gave them. He then somewhat overstated the threat of Ritual Magic to convince the still dubious team that it was best to continue. (The mystic really wanted the second half of his payment so he could learn the secrets of blood magic.)
Anyways the team finds the scientist's computer and the Decker first has to rig up a battery to power the computer before being able to crack the node and download the paydata. As for the scientist, his notes have him scheduled to supervise an experiment at Site 1A, so the team continues onwards figuring that they are already well pass the point of no return.
As they continue deeper into complex they come across a series of natural tunnels full of strange and distrubing carvings. By the time the characters stumble onto Site 1A the players are convinced they are walking straight into a Hive.
When they realized that Ares had stumbled onto and managed to unseal a tainted Kaer they wished they had walked into a Hive. Still, they did manage to find the scientist and even decided to bring him back alive, a decision which I have no doubt was prompted by the fact that they had lost the cryo-unit to the results of a critical glitch shortly beforehand.
Suprisingly only one of the characters died from either the Horrors in the Kaer or the Ares Responce team that was investigating why the complex hadn't checked in on time.
...and some thought my messing with the TT would royally screw everything up. 
What can I say? I really like my alternate "what-if" campaigns. Haven't managed to do an Awakening in WWII yet as I remember someone on the board as mentioning, but I did do one set during the Civil War once. (Campaign fell apart though.) 
...I'm actually with you on the "what if" style of campaign.
One of the things I like to do is introduce new and a wider variety of tech options such as vehicles, aircraft and even bioware. For example, in 2e I actually worked up Fuel Cell Electric vehicles (these didn't appear until Rigger 3) as well as concepts like a bioelectric interface for connecting to tech that is not that much different the skinlink in 4e.
[edit]
...this was one of the things that annoyed me about the switch over to 4e. The mechanics had changed so radically that pretty much all that I had written up was unuseable. At least now with Augmented out and Arsenal soon(?) to be released, I can finally rework everything without having to resort to guesswork (just in time for 5e )
One of the things I like to do is introduce new and a wider variety of tech options such as vehicles, aircraft and even bioware. For example, in 2e I actually worked up Fuel Cell Electric vehicles (these didn't appear until Rigger 3) as well as concepts like a bioelectric interface for connecting to tech that is not that much different the skinlink in 4e.
[edit]
...this was one of the things that annoyed me about the switch over to 4e. The mechanics had changed so radically that pretty much all that I had written up was unuseable. At least now with Augmented out and Arsenal soon(?) to be released, I can finally rework everything without having to resort to guesswork (just in time for 5e
)
| QUOTE (Ravor) |
| What can I say? I really like my alternate "what-if" campaigns. Haven't managed to do an Awakening in WWII yet as I remember someone on the board as mentioning, but I did do one set during the Civil War once. (Campaign fell apart though.) |
I did a write-up on my WWIISR game here, the gimmick being that the Awakening had happened in 1911 rather than 2011. And I had thought about doing a series of games going back every hundred years or so, whenever it would be the most interesting.
One of my favorite SR games that I ran came about when I threw a game together on short notice. Since I didn't have anything elaborate planned, I grabbed my copy of the Sprawl Sites and picked three relatively simple, straight forward set-ups, the gimmick being that the runners were getting these jobs all at once.
Job One was to extract a corp guy at a dinner party. The party had to send some fake ID's to a temp company and they'd be put on as staff for the party, and the target of the extraction was willing. (What the runners weren't told was that the corp guy's bodyguard was already doing the actual extraction, and the runners were being hired as a distraction.)
Job Two involved finding an abusive husband that had abducted his son. They were being hired by the mom, a Hooters waitress (or whatever Hooters analogue I'd come up with) and being paid largely in three-mile-island wings.
Job Three, I don't remember. I think it had something to do with a gang, because I remember the group interrogating a lot of gang members, but that could have been from anything.
So the whole session, the group was juggling all three jobs over the course of a couple of days. The legwork was all jumbled together and they were mapping their route through the city, sending characters off to do different things (I think only one pc had a vehicle, everyone else was taking public trans) and whenever someone got a free moment, they'd pick whichever job they hadn't been neglecting and work on that for awhile. As I recall they wrapped up the 3rd job pretty early, got the Hooters waitress's kid back early on the third day, and spent the rest of the time prepping for the extraction. They got their own (armored) service uniforms, were concealing weapons in drink carts, mapping out the building and the escape route, all the stuff you'd expect.
Except they never registered with the temp company. In all the confusion, it had simply slipped their minds (although it had not slipped mine). The pc's all pile in their van and head off to the hotel in downtown and then it dawns on them, its 30 minutes until the scheduled extraction and they never got "hired" by the temp company. The group decides-- after kicking themselves a little-- that getting hired to work the party is a minor detail and that it doesn't change the plan that much. They'll just roll up, look like waiters, and hit the place hard.
Meanwhile the Johnson, who was planning on double-crossing the pcs anyway, figures they must have figured out his plan and bailed. His bodyguard is still planning on getting him out on a rooftop helicopter, they'll just have to do it without a distraction. Then the pc's come in, guns blazing. The Johnson (who I think worked for a greeting card company, which was a recurring theme in the SSG) figures this is what happens when you try to doublecross machine gun wielding psychopaths, they come and kill you.
So the Johnson and his bodyguard take to the stairs and run to the roof. The pc's mow down the party's security and chase after them, thinking they're helping the extraction. They get all the way to the roof and see the terrified Johnson getting into a helicopter and think he's being kidnapped by the bodyguard. So they unload into the chopper.
The wounded chopper begins to lift away, until one character (in this particular player's first session) throws his mono-whip into the tail prop. The tail prop explodes, and the chopper begins go out of control. Another player asks if there's any rope or cables on the roof, and because I want to see what he's going to do, I say sure, there's a window washing rig over to the side. So he grabs the cable from that and takes a flying leap over the side of the building, grabbing hold of the chopper's wheel as the chopper itself starts to go sideways.
Held there suspended for a fraction of a second between an out of control helicopter and some cable from a window-washing rig, the character yells back to the party, "I'VE GOT IT!" which was, for whatever reason, hilarious to us.
The chopper pilot fails his crash test big time. The dwarf sam hooks the window washing cable to the chopper's wheel and let's go, mere phases before the helicopter goes into the building across the street, Matrix-style. The mage in the party races to the building's edge and hits the dwarf with a levitate spell, some three stories above the street. The helicopter explodes and falls, parts of it swinging back into the hotel the pcs are on, before it rips the whole window washing rig down with it. The pcs are all looking down at the carcass of the helicopter burning in the middle of Pine Street in downtown Seattle and decide to quietly beat feet home.
Which was all pretty funny, except I was dying laughing. It was funny, but it was so much funnier in context. The next day the group's fixer calls them, and they figure this is going to be something about how they had screwed up and killed the Johnson and shut down traffic in downtown Seattle, and instead the fixer says, "I don't know how you guys figured out that guy was looking to doublecross you, but I don't think anybody is going to fuck with you guys after the demonstration you put on. We cool, right?"
It was the type of lunacy you could never, ever plan.
Edit: Changed "Sprawl Survival Guide" to "Sprawl Sites".
My favorite published run was Queen Euphoria. It was the first time we fought bugs and the final fight was every bit as creepy and terrifying as Findley planned.
For non-published run, our GM, Bill, would plan out campaigns so that it would start out with a bunch of runs, that seemed pretty disconnected, but as the campaign wore on we'd realize that maybe runs 1,3,6 &7 were actually connected and threads would start to pull together. The best of these was where I realized, when it was far too late to turn back of course, that he had us running a 2060 version of Call of Cthulhu! I realized what was going done as we worked through a swamp in louisiana north of NO and it dawned on me.
The rest of the team didn't get it but I just looked at him and said "You son of a b..."
"Took you long enough" he said looking smug. Since I doubted he get us on a boat in the south Pacific I didn't know how he was going to end it, but IC I was able to tell the team what I had figured out. The character was an expert in the occult so she could be IC and warn them what she knew of the legends, which that SOB GM had planned on me doing anyway. But we were good enough not to take it for granted that what was in the books is what Bill had planned. We had just enough to be nervous but not spoil the surprises.
As players we were ticked at what we were facing but had to admit that it was a masterful set up that we didn't see coming.
(Here's no surprise, the spell check can't handle Cthulhu!)
For non-published run, our GM, Bill, would plan out campaigns so that it would start out with a bunch of runs, that seemed pretty disconnected, but as the campaign wore on we'd realize that maybe runs 1,3,6 &7 were actually connected and threads would start to pull together. The best of these was where I realized, when it was far too late to turn back of course, that he had us running a 2060 version of Call of Cthulhu! I realized what was going done as we worked through a swamp in louisiana north of NO and it dawned on me.
The rest of the team didn't get it but I just looked at him and said "You son of a b..."
"Took you long enough" he said looking smug. Since I doubted he get us on a boat in the south Pacific I didn't know how he was going to end it, but IC I was able to tell the team what I had figured out. The character was an expert in the occult so she could be IC and warn them what she knew of the legends, which that SOB GM had planned on me doing anyway. But we were good enough not to take it for granted that what was in the books is what Bill had planned. We had just enough to be nervous but not spoil the surprises.
As players we were ticked at what we were facing but had to admit that it was a masterful set up that we didn't see coming.
(Here's no surprise, the spell check can't handle Cthulhu!)
You fought Cthulhu?
Nasty cultists and a few really nasty things . may have been horrors, but no we didn't face mr big bad. The plan was to make sure the rituals were NOT completed to raise him up. His wacked out followers were bad enough.
Call of Cthulhu was where the world was first exposed to Lovecraft's creation but it, like Stoker's Dracula, is mainly a series of news items and reports compiled by one reader.
Call of Cthulhu was where the world was first exposed to Lovecraft's creation but it, like Stoker's Dracula, is mainly a series of news items and reports compiled by one reader.
My favorite run was one we failed at miserably and barely escaped alive. We were sent into a remote research facility to retrieve some materials before the place was bombed out of existence due to an outbreak of something. We were unable to break into the secure section of the research lab and had to resort to the escape plan, barely making it outside of the target area.
As far as going through published adventures, I think we had the most fun doing the Super Tuesday stuff.
As far as going through published adventures, I think we had the most fun doing the Super Tuesday stuff.
| QUOTE (Sir_Psycho) |
| You fought Cthulhu? |
She was so cute when she figured it out. You would not think she could get whiter than she already is. I had never read the books so did not know how deep in we were.
My favorite run was my first. We were to extract a rocker queen for another corp. We made the run as she was doing an unplugged show in a smaller venue. I got caught in a running fight with some of her minders in the catwalks over the stage. no firearms, no one wanted the bad press of the audience figuring it out, but lots of cat walks, ropes, lighting poles and hand to hand with athletic skills getting a good work out.
| QUOTE (Ravor) |
| What can I say? I really like my alternate "what-if" campaigns. Haven't managed to do an Awakening in WWII yet as I remember someone on the board as mentioning, but I did do one set during the Civil War once. (Campaign fell apart though.) |
If you ever do an awakened campaign during WWII or such.. and it is online let me know. I have never played SR online (the game screams for face 2 face) but I am willing try for something that sounds that cool)....
dog
...@Mercer. Nice story. I've been on "broken runs" like that & they often ended up to be a heck of a lot of fun.
[Meant to respond yesterday but no hotspots were open and couldn't get a stable connection on the "free" city wide Wi-Fi]
Of the published runs, my fave still has to be Harlequin's Back just for how nutty it was. Also enjoyed Super Tuesday and Brainscan.
Of original scenarios, had a GM back in the 1e - 2e days who's campaign was heavily steeped in the Native American angle (a lot easier back then as it was a larger facet of the setting). Also dealt with Bugs and Toxics. Some really nasty stuff. Best scene for one of my characters was when the Short One (#58) took out a major bad toxic spirit (I think it may have even been a greatform, been some years since) with one all out swing of her newly acquired and bonded force 3 weapon focus. This was a do or die attack as she put everything she could into offence (something like 28 dice total) leaving her with no combat pool if she failed. Ended up with such a godawful number of successes even after the spirit's counterattack attempt it went poof.
[Meant to respond yesterday but no hotspots were open and couldn't get a stable connection on the "free" city wide Wi-Fi]
Of the published runs, my fave still has to be Harlequin's Back just for how nutty it was. Also enjoyed Super Tuesday and Brainscan.
Of original scenarios, had a GM back in the 1e - 2e days who's campaign was heavily steeped in the Native American angle (a lot easier back then as it was a larger facet of the setting). Also dealt with Bugs and Toxics. Some really nasty stuff. Best scene for one of my characters was when the Short One (#58) took out a major bad toxic spirit (I think it may have even been a greatform, been some years since) with one all out swing of her newly acquired and bonded force 3 weapon focus. This was a do or die attack as she put everything she could into offence (something like 28 dice total) leaving her with no combat pool if she failed. Ended up with such a godawful number of successes even after the spirit's counterattack attempt it went poof.
The two runs that stick out in my mind stem from a long-running 2E game from about 10 years ago.
Both were from published adventures. During the first, Paradise Lost, the runners took the flight to Hawaii, sans gear, and nearly hit the roof upon learning their contact there could provide little more than light pistols, leather jackets and two concussion grenades as replacements. So rather than spending the first day doing legwork, they located an old warehouse in a semi-deserted part of town. After first wacking the rent-a-cop guarding the joint (and adding his heavy pistol and taser to their meager arsenal) they phoned in a bogus call to the cops (some Lone Star-equivalent, IIRC).
I don't remember how it went down exactly (lots of stun balls and well-placed grenades), but they managed to ambush and take down first a two-cop patrol unit, then a six-man SWAT team, upgrading their gear as they went. The contact was quite impressed when the slightly-bloodied band strolled back into the hotel with duffle bags full of SMGs, riot gear, APDS ammo and a sniper rifle ...
Later in the same adventure, the group's physad went toe-to-toe with a Hawaiian double-agent NPC (some sort of cybered karate master who was actually supposed to ally with the group). The NPC ended up being thrown off a cliff to the ocean below, amazingly soaking enough damage from the 200 ft. fall to survive (I want to say he passed out, but had a cyber air tank). The group was seriously freaked when the dude crawled into their boat, bloody and soaking wet, as they prepared to make their get-away. He had something like 9 boxes of physical damage at that point, however, and fared less well against a pistol shot in the face.
The next run the group tackled was a Killing Glare. I don't remember how the dragon came into it all, but at the end of the run -- in the middle of an Urban Brawl game -- my brother's samurai one-shotted the flying beast with a full-auto burst from an M-22. He may have been packing APDS, I can't recall, but he threw his entire combat pool into it and burned karma, to boot. The best part was, the rest of the team immediately started bitching him out about drawing so much attention -- several were of the professional, if-they-know-my-name-I'm-not-doing-my-job variety, and here he was wasting a dragon on national trid. Good times.
Both were from published adventures. During the first, Paradise Lost, the runners took the flight to Hawaii, sans gear, and nearly hit the roof upon learning their contact there could provide little more than light pistols, leather jackets and two concussion grenades as replacements. So rather than spending the first day doing legwork, they located an old warehouse in a semi-deserted part of town. After first wacking the rent-a-cop guarding the joint (and adding his heavy pistol and taser to their meager arsenal) they phoned in a bogus call to the cops (some Lone Star-equivalent, IIRC).
I don't remember how it went down exactly (lots of stun balls and well-placed grenades), but they managed to ambush and take down first a two-cop patrol unit, then a six-man SWAT team, upgrading their gear as they went. The contact was quite impressed when the slightly-bloodied band strolled back into the hotel with duffle bags full of SMGs, riot gear, APDS ammo and a sniper rifle ...
Later in the same adventure, the group's physad went toe-to-toe with a Hawaiian double-agent NPC (some sort of cybered karate master who was actually supposed to ally with the group). The NPC ended up being thrown off a cliff to the ocean below, amazingly soaking enough damage from the 200 ft. fall to survive (I want to say he passed out, but had a cyber air tank). The group was seriously freaked when the dude crawled into their boat, bloody and soaking wet, as they prepared to make their get-away. He had something like 9 boxes of physical damage at that point, however, and fared less well against a pistol shot in the face.
The next run the group tackled was a Killing Glare. I don't remember how the dragon came into it all, but at the end of the run -- in the middle of an Urban Brawl game -- my brother's samurai one-shotted the flying beast with a full-auto burst from an M-22. He may have been packing APDS, I can't recall, but he threw his entire combat pool into it and burned karma, to boot. The best part was, the rest of the team immediately started bitching him out about drawing so much attention -- several were of the professional, if-they-know-my-name-I'm-not-doing-my-job variety, and here he was wasting a dragon on national trid. Good times.
...interesting. I ran Paradise Lost as part of a longer campaign in 2e myself. It actually fit very well into the theme as one of the major NPCs (who hired the runners) was a spiker of Hawai'ian descent (bloodline of the great Iolani) who had lived in Portland since before the TT was founded. She felt she had more title than the "council of dimwits" (as she called them) who moved in on her turf and began telling her how to do things. Locals in the city (mostly non elves) referred to her has the "Prince of Portland" as she had no prejudice against other metas, including humans (since she was once one in her life).
This put her at odds with the council which of course used more devious ways to get at her than a direct assassination. As a final ploy they actually had her placed on the council as a low ranking member & proceeded to go after her business assets under council ownership law.
Very politically oriented campaign. Ran it for about a year until I realised the "new" canon setting in the TT sourcebook just didn't work considering the iron fist such entities as the Jenna NiFerra, the Peace Force, and the Paladins would hold over the local SINless community.
As there was little Megacorp influence in the Tir, other than Lady Dugan (the NPC) I didn't see where runners would get potential jobs from as all the national corps were mid sized at best and TT owned which in turn meant they were also council owned. Only after the rise of the Rinelle years later in the timeline would there have been a decent potential for runners to get jobs, mostly involving sabotage and subtrufuge.
This put her at odds with the council which of course used more devious ways to get at her than a direct assassination. As a final ploy they actually had her placed on the council as a low ranking member & proceeded to go after her business assets under council ownership law.
Very politically oriented campaign. Ran it for about a year until I realised the "new" canon setting in the TT sourcebook just didn't work considering the iron fist such entities as the Jenna NiFerra, the Peace Force, and the Paladins would hold over the local SINless community.
As there was little Megacorp influence in the Tir, other than Lady Dugan (the NPC) I didn't see where runners would get potential jobs from as all the national corps were mid sized at best and TT owned which in turn meant they were also council owned. Only after the rise of the Rinelle years later in the timeline would there have been a decent potential for runners to get jobs, mostly involving sabotage and subtrufuge.
I've been on Paradise Lost three seperate times, each time has been a complete fubar. The first time, in an initial encounter, the GM got frustrated with our characters and had the sec guards break out Panther Cannon, which finally gave me a Light wound. (This was late in the day of SR2, and our characters were pretty sick.) In the second try a couple of years later in SR3, we never got out of the hotel room. One of the othe characters thought I had stolen his APDS and ended up detonating 20 kilos of C4 after I had left, which was sort of weird. The third time, we had three new players and combat was taking fifteen minutes per pass, so interest waned fairly quickly.
@dog: I don't really grok online gaming either (nothing against it, I just can't get excited about it), but here's an old post about WWIISR. It might give you a jumping off point if you wanted to do something similar.
@dog: I don't really grok online gaming either (nothing against it, I just can't get excited about it), but here's an old post about WWIISR. It might give you a jumping off point if you wanted to do something similar.
...that's too bad. I thought it was a fun diversion for the PCs and it worked pretty well. Yeah I had to do some moderate tweaks in the threat level to keep it a challenge (no Panther cannons though) as the team of PCs was, like you mention, rather sick under 2e rules (try running a group that has not one but 3 hermetic mages, really forces you to do your pre-planning homework between sessions).
In my friend's Boston game, I was playing the sam and the other four players were all full magicians. Talk about a sick level of buffing. They would jack me up with Spell Defense, Armor, Enhance Aim, Combat Sense and spirit powers like Concealment and Movement. This was in SR3, and the character I was playing was pretty close to a baseline SR2 sam, so power-wise decent but not crazy. They'd load me up and that character was effectively Superman.
The best moment for me in that game; we interrupted a kidnapping, and my character goes alone (though fully buffed) around the back of the house and runs into the kidnapee, six Yakuza sams with SMG's, and an invisible leader. I miraculously hit a TN 14 perception test to spot the guy, so I'm on held action to shoot the leader and the six Yaks are on held action to shoot me and we stay frozen like that for a good fifteen minutes of game time-- say five combat rounds, while the rest of the group is still trying to get to the house.
It was a precariously balanced situation. If I hadn't spotted the leader (and was therefore able to threaten him), it would have just gone to a bloodbath. Once the rest of the group got there (elementals started showing up, the mages were wiping up some other Yaks in the house), the Yak leader decided to let the kidnapee go-- which was a little funny because it turned out the kidnapee was actually a willing extraction who had hired us to have someone to blame for the kidnapping. That was probably one of the most tense situations in a game I've ever had, and no one fired a shot.
The best moment for me in that game; we interrupted a kidnapping, and my character goes alone (though fully buffed) around the back of the house and runs into the kidnapee, six Yakuza sams with SMG's, and an invisible leader. I miraculously hit a TN 14 perception test to spot the guy, so I'm on held action to shoot the leader and the six Yaks are on held action to shoot me and we stay frozen like that for a good fifteen minutes of game time-- say five combat rounds, while the rest of the group is still trying to get to the house.
It was a precariously balanced situation. If I hadn't spotted the leader (and was therefore able to threaten him), it would have just gone to a bloodbath. Once the rest of the group got there (elementals started showing up, the mages were wiping up some other Yaks in the house), the Yak leader decided to let the kidnapee go-- which was a little funny because it turned out the kidnapee was actually a willing extraction who had hired us to have someone to blame for the kidnapping. That was probably one of the most tense situations in a game I've ever had, and no one fired a shot.
[ Spoiler ]
Thanks, all. That was even better than I expected it to be.
"Hell, I'll take half pay."
Bee-yoo-tee-full. Love it. I had a (rather amoral) group one time faced with a Johnson who tried to renege on part of the payment on a run gone bad.
The group's shaman had assensed the Johnson earlier and determined he was something of a foci-junkie -- a non-initiated mage, but carrying several hundred thousand nuyen of goodies. A couple perception tests by the party face determined that the Johnson's three bodyguards likewise were little more than trumped-up gangers carrying Ares Alphas and a few other wiz toys.
The group decided to accept payment in goods, rather than credit. Mr. J. and his buds got a one-way ticket to Puget Sound.
Bee-yoo-tee-full. Love it. I had a (rather amoral) group one time faced with a Johnson who tried to renege on part of the payment on a run gone bad.
The group's shaman had assensed the Johnson earlier and determined he was something of a foci-junkie -- a non-initiated mage, but carrying several hundred thousand nuyen of goodies. A couple perception tests by the party face determined that the Johnson's three bodyguards likewise were little more than trumped-up gangers carrying Ares Alphas and a few other wiz toys.
The group decided to accept payment in goods, rather than credit. Mr. J. and his buds got a one-way ticket to Puget Sound.
| QUOTE (Mercer) |
| In my friend's Boston game, I was playing the sam and the other four players were all full magicians. |
...I feel for the GM. in that one.
Running a 2e campaign, I had to deal with 4 full on Hermetic elves (of course all Charisma 8 ) and each of them with a full complement of Elementals. Seemed I was dealing more with a Napoleonic miniatures battle than Shadowrun half the time.
...between all the dice rolling and hand waving, now I know why my wrists ache so much these days.
Is that the run in Hawaii? We only got out of that because a street sam stayed behind to cover the team's retreat then counted on the lush jungle's aura to hide from the dragon.
...if you're inquiring about Paradise Lost, yes it is.
Paradise Lost as I said is the module I have been run though three times, although technically the first two we never got out of the 3rd section and the third the GM just said, "Screw it" and was using the module as a basis for his Hawai'i homebrew, so I don't know how much of what we did was in the text. But that was the game where I got into a boxing match with a feathered serpent.
It was the same character as above, the "Hell, I'll take half pay" guy, and the feathered serpent was in human form. I thought he was a phys ad. In was in some mountaintop fortress on a small island. I was sam, so I had more actions than him. I'd attack him all out and use up all his combat pool on the first action then try to weather his attack (I have no idea why he was humoring us, other than his being a feathered serpent was supposed to be a big secret), and then our phys ad would ping him from 3 meters away with distance strike doing a maybe Light wound. This goes on for three rounds, with me doing no damage to him but keeping him occupied and the phys ad lightly whapping him. Then our phys ad gets lucky, gets a Moderate and puts the guy up to five or six boxes, so the guy takes a running leap for the ledge. We all take whatever attacks we can to stop him, but he breaks free, leaps into the open air, and takes the form of a brilliantly hued feathered serpent. That was a weird moment for my character, when it hit him he had been boxing a dragon.
One of my favorite moments came way back in SR2, when we were getting the group back together after a long break playing other (lesser) systems. I had retired my 400-karma ork private detective (no cyber, bio, magic or anything), and I ended up making a ork street sam with a 16+3d6 Initiative. (No Wired Reflexes, but Reaction Enhancers 6, Synaptic Accelerators, and a lot of the reaction boosting bioware, Muscle Aug, Enhanced Articulation, the thing that boosted all physical stats and so on.)
I think this was my second run with that character, and it was a throw-together because only two players showed up that week. So it was me and a Combat Mage, right out of the book. The combat mage took two deadly wounds on this run in the space of about a week, lost magic on both, and my friend was about pick another archetype when I persuaded him to implant the Wired II we got out of a the second guy who killed him. There was a bit of salesmanship on my part there, but once that character initiated it got pretty sick. That's how we became the Shaman with Wired Reflexes and the Samurai Without'em. But that's here nor there (except to say that those characters, Slagiron and Sandman, are pretty much the reason my GM stopped running SR2).
But in that first game, before he had taken those deadly wounds (right before he took one, in fact), our characters had stopped at a bar frequented by a particular gang. (We were trying to stop a gang war between them and another gang, with us being hired by a neutral 3rd party who couldn't get her groceries delivered. As I said, throw-together.) So we're having a beer, getting a feel for the place, and two big honkin' toxic spirits manifest and go to town on the poor dumb ganger bastards. Our characters hide under the table. While mass, irradiated chaos is going on around us, we're trying to decide if this is the best time intercede, because hey, gang wars are one thing but toxic spirits are a whole nother. So my character pops his dikote cyberspur and from under the table, starts going through the cinderblock wall of the bar.
It was at that moment, hiding under a table with an SMG in one hand and a cyberspur in the other, while a combat mage was held action to fry the toxics if they noticed us and the rest of the bar was getting torn to pieces that I experienced a mild epiphany, where my love of Shadowrun that had gone dormant blossomed anew. I mean, where else are you going to get into a situation like that?
(We crawled into the parking lot, got hit with Confusion, the mage astrally perceived to fry the spirit and got soul-bombed by the toxic shaman in astral space, which was his first Deadly wound and magic loss of the night. But after that-- and his next deadly wound and magic loss of the night-- we did okay. Over the next few months he initiated-- including a run of mine where he lost his geas'd focus and was reduced to yelling to the other mage in the group, "Phyllis, blow this guy up!"-- and turned out sicker than me.)
It was the same character as above, the "Hell, I'll take half pay" guy, and the feathered serpent was in human form. I thought he was a phys ad. In was in some mountaintop fortress on a small island. I was sam, so I had more actions than him. I'd attack him all out and use up all his combat pool on the first action then try to weather his attack (I have no idea why he was humoring us, other than his being a feathered serpent was supposed to be a big secret), and then our phys ad would ping him from 3 meters away with distance strike doing a maybe Light wound. This goes on for three rounds, with me doing no damage to him but keeping him occupied and the phys ad lightly whapping him. Then our phys ad gets lucky, gets a Moderate and puts the guy up to five or six boxes, so the guy takes a running leap for the ledge. We all take whatever attacks we can to stop him, but he breaks free, leaps into the open air, and takes the form of a brilliantly hued feathered serpent. That was a weird moment for my character, when it hit him he had been boxing a dragon.
One of my favorite moments came way back in SR2, when we were getting the group back together after a long break playing other (lesser) systems. I had retired my 400-karma ork private detective (no cyber, bio, magic or anything), and I ended up making a ork street sam with a 16+3d6 Initiative. (No Wired Reflexes, but Reaction Enhancers 6, Synaptic Accelerators, and a lot of the reaction boosting bioware, Muscle Aug, Enhanced Articulation, the thing that boosted all physical stats and so on.)
I think this was my second run with that character, and it was a throw-together because only two players showed up that week. So it was me and a Combat Mage, right out of the book. The combat mage took two deadly wounds on this run in the space of about a week, lost magic on both, and my friend was about pick another archetype when I persuaded him to implant the Wired II we got out of a the second guy who killed him. There was a bit of salesmanship on my part there, but once that character initiated it got pretty sick. That's how we became the Shaman with Wired Reflexes and the Samurai Without'em. But that's here nor there (except to say that those characters, Slagiron and Sandman, are pretty much the reason my GM stopped running SR2).
But in that first game, before he had taken those deadly wounds (right before he took one, in fact), our characters had stopped at a bar frequented by a particular gang. (We were trying to stop a gang war between them and another gang, with us being hired by a neutral 3rd party who couldn't get her groceries delivered. As I said, throw-together.) So we're having a beer, getting a feel for the place, and two big honkin' toxic spirits manifest and go to town on the poor dumb ganger bastards. Our characters hide under the table. While mass, irradiated chaos is going on around us, we're trying to decide if this is the best time intercede, because hey, gang wars are one thing but toxic spirits are a whole nother. So my character pops his dikote cyberspur and from under the table, starts going through the cinderblock wall of the bar.
It was at that moment, hiding under a table with an SMG in one hand and a cyberspur in the other, while a combat mage was held action to fry the toxics if they noticed us and the rest of the bar was getting torn to pieces that I experienced a mild epiphany, where my love of Shadowrun that had gone dormant blossomed anew. I mean, where else are you going to get into a situation like that?
(We crawled into the parking lot, got hit with Confusion, the mage astrally perceived to fry the spirit and got soul-bombed by the toxic shaman in astral space, which was his first Deadly wound and magic loss of the night. But after that-- and his next deadly wound and magic loss of the night-- we did okay. Over the next few months he initiated-- including a run of mine where he lost his geas'd focus and was reduced to yelling to the other mage in the group, "Phyllis, blow this guy up!"-- and turned out sicker than me.)
sounds like fun. Crazy, but fun 
Cheers,
Max
Cheers,
Max
We were hired by a Johnson for a typical B&E this time the target was something that looked similar to a cheap coffee can with some extra dials and hightech drek. It was stored in the vault. We had time so we took the time to do it right. We staked the place out for a week got the regular shipment patters and found out it was in a vault near the roof. Easy money chummer, or thats what it seamed. The final plan was to hijack the delivery truck a few blocks away and drop the decker off inside. Once he contacted us we would head in through the back door and make our way up to the vault. After that we would head up to the roof and call a rigger the Johnson gave us. It seamed simple but we made the biggest mistake of trusting the Johnson. We made it to the roof but the rigger decided to greet us with a firestorm. We ran back inside and down through the floors in a few moments lone star showed up and the building was surrounded. The building was getting shredded by the cops. The sammi decided if they wanted the coffee can so bad they could have it, and threw it out the 20th story window... It went silent the demolition guy threw some C4 out and hit the electric detonator, nothing happend. We then noticed nothing electrical was working. EMPs aren't they grand, thats what it was a EMP bomb. We hoofed it out under the cover of night that Johnson was going to pay...
As for published adventures I think my favorite concept is Mecurial. There are parts of it that I think need changing but the basic premise is awesome and body guard to a rock star makes a good first run.
As for published adventures I think my favorite concept is Mecurial. There are parts of it that I think need changing but the basic premise is awesome and body guard to a rock star makes a good first run.
Published adventure wise it would have to be Double Exposure... Bug Spirits were new and my players had no exposure to them. They had a great time infiltrating the camps and doing the whole investigation angle. Then they started to get worried, jittery and began asking the wrong people the wrong questions. They thought they were going to get cut up for cyber-implant experiments and when the truth started to emerge (so to speak) it was like all hell breaking loose.
Harlequins Back is another fave, but there are some weak planes in there that probably stop it reaching the top.
Campaign specific stuff involved the end of Deus and the Network, which we ran prior to System Failure coming out after having been through Brainscan. The PCs were tracking Deus and the banded and eventually set up a climatic showdown just before he put himself back together. Surrounded and outnumbered by banded and drones they looked like they were going to go down fighting, but somehow managed to turn the situation around despite the terrible odds. Beaten within an inch of their lives they split into three teams - one group entered the Matrix to try and stop Deus, the second group went for the satellite uplinks whilst the third headed to cut the hardlines in an attempt to strand Deus in the local hosts. All three areas were well protected and with some awesome heroics Deus was cut off from all the hosts he was drawing processing power from and most of the external deckers (Dodger, Cham Lam, Pax, etc.) were removed from the scenario. This just left 2 PCs in the host against a weakened Deus (think of the most brutal SK you can!) They reached up to jack out, looked at each other and decided to take him rather than just blow the servers. They managed to defeat him and the teams got out before the whole place blew around them.
We've also done a couple of huge metaplanar quests which were great fun. We used a mix of alternate systems (including Warhammer, AD&D, SR4, Champions) for each plane and it was great fun.
One of the PCs was responsible for resurrecting Deus at a later date and events are now building towards the conclusion of System Failure which I'm hoping will match up. With the boys globe-trotting in a desperate effort to halt Winternight's plans they might just be blind-sided by Deus.
Harlequins Back is another fave, but there are some weak planes in there that probably stop it reaching the top.
Campaign specific stuff involved the end of Deus and the Network, which we ran prior to System Failure coming out after having been through Brainscan. The PCs were tracking Deus and the banded and eventually set up a climatic showdown just before he put himself back together. Surrounded and outnumbered by banded and drones they looked like they were going to go down fighting, but somehow managed to turn the situation around despite the terrible odds. Beaten within an inch of their lives they split into three teams - one group entered the Matrix to try and stop Deus, the second group went for the satellite uplinks whilst the third headed to cut the hardlines in an attempt to strand Deus in the local hosts. All three areas were well protected and with some awesome heroics Deus was cut off from all the hosts he was drawing processing power from and most of the external deckers (Dodger, Cham Lam, Pax, etc.) were removed from the scenario. This just left 2 PCs in the host against a weakened Deus (think of the most brutal SK you can!) They reached up to jack out, looked at each other and decided to take him rather than just blow the servers. They managed to defeat him and the teams got out before the whole place blew around them.
We've also done a couple of huge metaplanar quests which were great fun. We used a mix of alternate systems (including Warhammer, AD&D, SR4, Champions) for each plane and it was great fun.
One of the PCs was responsible for resurrecting Deus at a later date and events are now building towards the conclusion of System Failure which I'm hoping will match up. With the boys globe-trotting in a desperate effort to halt Winternight's plans they might just be blind-sided by Deus.
I kind of agree with you. I have Gmd several published adventures and the one I remember most fondly is Double Exposure. I was gming two groups at the time and had the two running the same module at the same time. One group was hired by Renraku, the other one by Juarez using the blackmail angle.
They eventually met in the final Camp (hope? faith?... can't remember) and after some cloak and dagger action decided to cooperate. It was good enough because out of a combined pool of 11 runners only three survived the run. Well, five survived, but one got all his cyberware removed in medical experiments before being rescued and the other was killed right after the run.
There were many highlights in that run, for example, well before project Hope's secrets were revealed the runners were witness of a gang attack to the camp. I carefully described the guards' coordinated response to the attack and how they wiped the gangers out. I was in mid-description when one of the players says, IC: "fuck, these guys move like ants" At the moment nobody gave it a second thought, but later...
PC's deaths were quite cinematic too...
The runners who survived became quite important characters. Unfortunately one of them got killed some time later by a japanese vat job samurai. The one who had had his cyber removed eventually got some implanted back and ended his career as a shadowrunner to enter the Mob. The other two? one got to Renraku Arcology on time for the shutdown and the other went for a run in Bug City (we never got to play those runs so I wouldn't know)
Runners don't die in their beds.
Cheers,
Max
They eventually met in the final Camp (hope? faith?... can't remember) and after some cloak and dagger action decided to cooperate. It was good enough because out of a combined pool of 11 runners only three survived the run. Well, five survived, but one got all his cyberware removed in medical experiments before being rescued and the other was killed right after the run.
There were many highlights in that run, for example, well before project Hope's secrets were revealed the runners were witness of a gang attack to the camp. I carefully described the guards' coordinated response to the attack and how they wiped the gangers out. I was in mid-description when one of the players says, IC: "fuck, these guys move like ants" At the moment nobody gave it a second thought, but later...
PC's deaths were quite cinematic too...
The runners who survived became quite important characters. Unfortunately one of them got killed some time later by a japanese vat job samurai. The one who had had his cyber removed eventually got some implanted back and ended his career as a shadowrunner to enter the Mob. The other two? one got to Renraku Arcology on time for the shutdown and the other went for a run in Bug City (we never got to play those runs so I wouldn't know) Runners don't die in their beds.
Cheers,
Max
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