We've had our tales of excessive violence, our best and smoothest works, and our skin-of-our-teeth cliffhanger moments, how about the ones at least one of you managed to walk out of there, but without the goods?

Have you or your players ever failed a run? Not necessarily tales of when your whole team ran headlong into a monowire grid and had their character sheets, but when the target was just too tough a nut to crack, or there was just a major FUBAR that precluded any salvaging of the mission.

Failed runs. What happened? How did you deal with it? How many of you got out? What did Mr. J say? and finally, what names did you get called upon your return to your favourite bar?

We've ha few runs that were file via technicality. One we were supposed to steal information and the beta of an experimental set of cybernetic wings that created lift by using a combination of science and enchanted metals that kept it lightweight. We stood right infront of the Johnson as someone came down, knocked the Johnson out, scared off half the room, and handled all four of our runners with ease. He excaped and the base of our campaign is to stop him now.

We had another where we betrayed the Johnson. We were supposed to kidnap someone, simple stuff, but when we found out he wnated to torture, experiment, and eventually killt he guy....well I would have none of that.

Yeah, my old group "failed" to some degree or another, all the time. I mean, a certain number of runs are doomed out of the gate because the Johnson screws you, whether he wants to or not. A lot of SR games have that 2nd Act twist, which hoses the run. Then, there's a certain number of runs where the group screws the Johnson-- particularly true of the back-up characters who were amoral, rabid dog types who weren't about the long haul. Then there are the straight-forward, achievable runs that for whatever reason, we just screw up.

On the character sheet of my user namesake, I kept a record. I didn't have a lot of space, but it was "Johnson/Target, Job".

(Unknown)/(Unknown), Insertion: Successful.
Mary Falls Inc./ 2M, Corporate Sabotage: Partially Successful.
Mary Falls Inc./ Fuchi. Extract. Recovery: Failed. Got our ass kicked by corp sec in an underground parking garage, half the group got nabbed, I crawled out through a destroyed ventilation fan and hauled ass.
(Unknown)/ Universial Omintech, Extraction: Hosed by the Johnson which led to the next one--
UO/ Private Individual. Extract. Recovery: Found the people, but had to call in corporate security after getting brutally shot up.
MFI, Boston, Corporate Security: Hired to be patsies, held it off for a little while, got screwed.
Redmond Barrens Youth Center: Volunteer work, went okay. Successful.
MFI/(Unknown), Corporate Sabotage: There were some screw ups, but the job got done.
Unk/2M, ExRec (Tamari Himsara): Successful.

So that was about a year of playing time (I was running a lot, so I only got to play about half the time, and there were some throw-together runs that weren't jobs so I didn't keep notes), where three runs went the way they were supposed to, one was an outright failure, and five were partially successful.

if i remember correctly, we failed one run where we had to guard someone who did not want a bodyguard and insisted on jogging to and from work every day through half of seattle it seemed.
4 of 5 days went by pretty smooth, we cracked the city grid to actually have him get there faster by not having to wait on the red lights and he decides to do some laps around the office building 'just 'cause', giving us some time to propperly panic before going in.
and of course, on the last day, on the time he usually runs home he exits the building. and does not run straight home, but staggers pretty fast in exact the opposite direction.
of course, in best stampede manner we followed closely and upon seeing him run straight at a black van, waiting with open door and running engine, go ballistic.
we blew it up good and the guy stops and seems to think for a second, before doing a two story jump straight up and running the rest of the 3 stories over a 5 story building so we lose sight of him.
we circle the building, take out a 2nd group of people wanting to snatch him with some trouble and again follow him. the third group consisted of not only 1 but 3 mages with their guard, two did the lower attribute charisma thing and dropped 2 of my teammates into a stupor(charisma lowered to 0) and the third decides to bomb us with an force something stunball.
and the two drop and start snoring on the open street. i managed to roll like a young troll god and ended up with only serious stun damage. so i decide:"ah fuck it, if they want him, let them have him, we can get him back later if it is really important".
i grab my two lumps of runner and start to drag them towards the next ally, where we will be out of sight for the mages. so the mage decides to bomb us with another stun ball, overcasting and botching his drain test.
ok, he dropped me and i was down for good . . but with a successfull willpower roll i got to see mage start to bleed from ears, nose, mouth and eyes before rolling his eyes up far into his skull and falling down head first onto the pavement with a nice little crack-thud.
when i came to, we were not even tied up, laying in the same abandoned warehouse where it all started. our johnson had a smug little grin on his face and basically went on about how much of a failure we are, telling us just then, that the frigging jogger was an adept accountant with initiate grade 4 and a force 3 weapons focus in the form of his gloves.
tells us how he bailed us out by paying a hefty ransom and how he decided we would have to work for him for free to make it up to him.
so we as a group left the GM sitting in the room, went out to discuss and ended up with something pretty cathartic for us.
we went back in, we stunned the jogger guy with Gamma Scopolamine and killed everyone else in that warehouse and sold the bodies later on. we gave the jogger some laes and he forgot all about the whole deal. nobody was the wiser, the only ones we knew about it was us and we frigging kept our mouths shut.
Gods it was such a beautifull thing to see the GM get mad after his failed attempt to show us who's boss . .

We had a few runs where the target was missed or we did not get the big score but we usually were able to get a little along the way to offset costs.

A few times Johnson tried to rip us off or set us up so he did not have to pay us. The one I remember best was when we were hired to "extract" a pop tart from her contract. We showed for the meet to hand her over to the new corp and found it was a set up. johnson decided he would get more money by calling the old corp and selling her back. Killing us at the trade would make sure no one told the tale.

We escaped the trap, and hunted down Mr. Johnson. He had a few friends who were not pleased when he had his little accident.

...Mentioned this one before. The mission to retreive the crashed probe from Wake of the Comet. None of the PCs had really good social skills or could relate well to the Luddite commune. Of my two characters one was a decker/technobrat, the other an ex-cosmonaut.doctor/sammy. I think the other two were a mage, and another sammy (been a while).

Basically we got nowhere with the Luddites, especially the decker who was still seen as a child in their eyes and who also symbolised everything they (the adults in the commune) hated in the modern world. As I mentioned in another post, she actually got along quite well with the kids. The Cosmonaut, well she was pretty much based off of the Dr Lazarus character from Outland and had about as much charm as the character from the film.

Anyway as it ended out we put more in than we got out, having to pay for a smuggler flight from Edmonton out of our own credsticks after the Johnson stranded us there. During the next job (again from WotC) a couple of the team ended up in the Star lockup (reinforcing my "never fly commercial" rule). On the rescue op the decker was captured by Ares & woke up in an med facility outside Glow City with a little extra "parting gift" in the way of a couple implants courtesy of our former employer.

The last run of the campaign involved extracting a researcher from a heavily fortified and secure Ares installation. The job was basically a suicide mission (particularly for the Decker), which after the characters thought about it for a while, politely told the J to stuff himself. That essentially killed the campaign. Too many losses & literally no "wins" (even small ones) for the PCs.

The only run I can think of were my players absolutely failed was because they screwed themselves. Let me explain.
"Sarcastic Jack" was wanted by the Mafia. "Crazy Legs" had a Mafia contact and wanted in. "Numbers" and "Lotus" are other members of the team.
They were in a van, on the way to a job.
Crazy Legs was negotiating with his Mafia contact for some work. He wanted to look good and eventually join.
Sarcastic Jack was driving and overheard him talking to his Mafia contact, but couldn't make out what they were saying. He assumes that Crazy Legs is turning him in, he's paranoid.
So, when they arrive close to their destination, Numbers and Lotus get out and start casually making their way to the job. However, Sarcastic Jack jumps on Crazy Legs and tries to get a confession out of him. He sticks his gun in his face and threatens to kill him if he doesn't tell him what they were talking about.
Crazy Legs tells Jack what they were talking about, but Jack doesn't believe him.
The other two characters rush back to the van to stop Jack from shooting Crazy Legs. A fight ensues, everyone gets hurt, except Crazy Legs. I know, funny, huh?
Needless to say the job ended when the group decided to fight each other. They eventually made up though.
They lost rep, which I keep track of. And they couldn't find any decent work for two months. They were treated like greens, until they could get their rep out of the gutter.
Crazy Legs was killed later by the Yakuza.

We actually had a pretty epic fail on our last run, actually. We were supposed to sneak into a secret lab that was testing what I assume to be weaponized nanites on SINless, free any test subjects still alive, and then blow the place up. I'm the hacker - I can't get into their system to find any security layouts. Our demolitions/voodoo mage is getting frustrated by the last few sessions' lack of progress, decides to hell with it, he's going in blind. Our summoner and street sam follow.

Ten seconds in, summoner and street sam get splattered, demo guy gets the hell out, we run for it. Unfortunately, street sam has an implanted commlink. And cybereyes. And an internal navigation system he uses to make maps as he goes. Which means that they now know who we are, and where our face/street doc lives. So, being paranoid criminals, we load street doc's stuff into the back of our vans, and then torch the place and try to get lost in downtown.

Six hours later, corp catches up to us. I'm basically going 'Well, fuck, looks like a TPK'. But no. They knock us out as street doc is calling her LoneStar (I think?) buddy, and we wake up a week later in a motel with no memory of the last week or _anything_ to do with the run. We don't know why street doc's place is torched, why her stuff is in the back of our vans, where our other two (late) team members are, or what the hell's happened for the last week.

We throw whatever plans the corp had for a loop by calling the police - after street doc's call, they found our cars with blood, and we were considered victims of a kidnapping. They take us to a hospital, remove all the kinks the corp put in us, and then, after much negotiation, mostly let us go - demo guy had 17 kilos of foam explosives in his van, which resulted in having to call in a mafia favor to get him a lawyer and bail. So now he's got a court date in three months.

So, we're out a week of our lives, two team members, the pay for the failed run (and the contact for the failed run, too), street doc's next two months of rent, and a bunch of equipment. And all I could do was laugh, and laugh, and laugh.

(We actually go about 50-50 on runs actually completed versus runs failed, but I think this is the most amusing one. It's just so...epic)

Wow. Now that's what I call a complete frag-up.



Remember folks, if you can't get intel, you Don't Go In. Return the front money for the mission - hell, add some interest. Politely explain to Mr. Johnson that the site is apparently invunerable, and the vauge promise of pay is not worth walking into what is almost certainly your doom. After all, Shadowrunners don't exist to do missions; they exist to get paid. It's hard to get paid if you're dead.

If Mr. Johnson takes issue with that, remind him that like Shadowrunners, Mr. Johnsons exist to get paid. Mr. Johnsons can always find another more talented team to do the mission - or a less cautious one to fuck the mission up, lose his money, and possibly get him caught by the Bad Guys. Mr. Johnsons can't get paid, however, if he's caught, killed, or gets geeked by a Shadowrunner team who politely turned down his offer and returned his money, because he would not accept that they were professional enough to realize that the job was more than they could handle.

If he still takes issue with it, geek him. After all, he's obviously not smart enough to know when to cut and run and get paid another day.

Our group once tracked down an old honest to god pirate treasure from the 17th century. After dealing with competition, a curse, ghosts and hungry critters, they finally find the cargo lost hundreds of years ago - to discover it was exotic spices, at the time when the pirates caught the freighter they were worth their weight in gold, but in the 21st century... Past their expiration date too.

We've done a few runs pro-bono for good causes. OK Before DLN chirps in, I have usually been the one to convince the more mercenary team members to go along for freebies.

For cases of runs going seriously wrong and not getting paid for it. Eye Witness. We laid out a good amount and in the end negoiate a settlement? Set up a meeting between the Johnson and the ghoul businessman. Then he goes for a double cross and we have no leverage minimal payout.

Since we later learned that in getting out our johnson, the Runner Alpha Blue, was infected by the ghouls in the fight we had an additional problem in that she came after us a couple of months ,game time, later looking to return the favor for failing her, her brother, and the pain we inflicted on her new people (ghouls). She wanted us to die, join her or feed her.

Lots of headaches and expenses for very little return.

Why the hell wasen't your team there to provide cover fire?

Also, isen't there a cure for HMHVV if recieved fast enough?

...the other really disappointing scenario for several of my characters was Survival of the Fittest. Basically its runners vs GDs & you know who always wins in that matchup. Kind of a Kobyashi Maru as the characters are totally railroaded into becoming either Lofwyr's or Hestaby's pawns.

The only way out is for the character to put her predator (loaded with EX Explosive rounds) to her head & pull the trigger.

According to SRComp, Krieger-strain HMHVV is treatable for approximately 30 days after infection.

~J

I remember an anecdote a player told me of gamesmastering another hapless chap. This chap was playing the stock SR3 Elven face, and was assigned to a bodyguarding run. The run involved taking the John around town about his business. It all went without a hitch, until he was dropped off at home. The face is sitting in her Westwind, and she can still see the feet of the John, opening his front door. She sees two pairs of boots emerge from within his house. The john goes limp and is dragged inside.

The face, deciding that her contract ended when he stepped out of her car, drives off.

Of course, the party representing the John was not-too-pleased. As such the Face ended up doing some highly stressful pro-bono work for her fixer, who was constantly weathering assassination attempts. These mainly involved high-speed gunfight car chases , which culminated in both vehicles crashing and the occupants emerging into a streetfight. The Troll Mercenary archetype shot at the enemy Weapons Spec archetype, the Weapons Spec insta-killed the troll with a well-placed shot, and then the Face managed to kill the Weapons specialist with a lucky hit with her Fichetti 500a.

The GM made damn sure that Face regretted sitting on her arse.

See, this is where they need to be clear-cut "this is when the job ends, this is when I get paid" clauses. After that, your ass is more-or-less covered. Does the clause specify "dropped off at home", "safely seen into home" or "safely seen into home after home has been thoroughly searched"?

SF is big on pro-bono cases, good causes and nice people needing help. The good deeds etc. In the Eye Witness run we got paid but our expenses pretty much stripped that down.