Do you have any idea how much traffic a telecommunications grid experiences? To extend a metaphor, not only are they a pretty damn small needle in a helluva big haystack, the needle is moving and changing (Physically moving and Spoofing).

Anyway, continuing on, they basically start sowing riots; ork gangers shot "resisting arrest" (the Lone Star officers were interrogating them to find out where Reaper's team is, so they can cash in on the bounties) became spark points; a rumor that they were going to show up at a prominent Yak bar ended up with that place getting leveled, which just fed into more violence, and some runners on ShadowSea (the ones that felt like they had a score to settle either with the Yaks in general or Keiko Shotozumi in particular) pointed out that Reaper had given them the perfect setup for runs against the Yakuza; Reaper posts on the board with the message "Good hunting, fellas."

In the midst of all of this chaos, they get to Hawk's place and empty his arsenal into their van; he comes along as they join up with Galen and Sneak and head back to U Storage. While they're en route, Reaper manages to convince Hawk to talk to his Sepola Ring contacts and see if they're willing to help. Hawk does so and leaves them a message. At this point, it's roughly 2:00 A.M.

A short while later they're in the midst of loading the explosives into the back of the vehicles when they notice that they're getting strong looks from some of the urban predators living in U Storage. Reaper, not one for subtlety, takes out a grenade, pulls the pin and says that he's standing on top of two tons of explosive; if any of them want to try anything, they're welcome to do so. The crowd disperses; knowing that their location has just been blown, and that they have maybe minutes before the hunters arrive, the group works quickly and, with extensive use of the Levitate spell, is gone within another three minutes.

Meanwhile, Slamm-O! and company (about 50-odd hackers) have been having fun; the coup-de-grace was the sowing of a rumor that the reactors in the ACHE were about to go critical. You can just imagine the reaction that had among the general populace of Downtown. Additionally, they did things like seizing control of the exterior displays of several downtown skyscrapers and had them display... decidedly non-standard imagery and other hacker pranks of that nature.

At this point, Hawk hears back from the Sepola Ring that he has contacts with; they offer no manpower, but they can get the team safely out of the city and set up with new identities; additionally, they're good for 50k worth of nuyen, equipment or weaponry.

The team's next move is to finish off a Yakuza higher-up that they tussled with several months earlier. Netcat helps with the infiltration into the community by taking control of the gates and drones that help run the place; she manages to smooth their way into the community and up to his door. They ring the doorbell, telling the man's guard that they're here from the community owners and that they're going door-to-door and checking up on the inhabitants; he asks for the passcode; Netcat gets it for Reaper. A moment later, the door opens a crack... and gets kicked in by Billy and Reaper; Billy proceeds to unload half a clip of EX-EX ammo from two guns into the man's chest. A few moments later, they hear a window shatter upstairs, followed by a splash from the koi pond; their target is running for it. Reaper runs for the backyard and drops the man, wearing only his pyjamas, with a three shot burst into his back. And, just to be certain, he takes the guy's head and sticks it into the cooler (under the beer) next to the other Yakuza's head. And then they take his sports car and leave before Lone Star (which currently has its hands full) shows up.

Now it's the Oyabun's turn. They manage to convince Netcat, after some time, with some difficulty and with her at an altitude of several miles and heading away from Seattle at high speed; a bribe of 30k and the statement from Reaper that it's nights like tonight that make reps, she agrees. They also get Slamm-O! and company to help out; when they're told the target, Slamm-O! and company break contact to confer; a few seconds later, they're back, with only 25-odd avatars standing behind Slamm-O! now. After negotiating pay, Reaper and team sends them after information on the Oyabun.

To be continued later; wrist is hurting.

he's totally doing it all wrong!

hoo, i kill me. anyway, the Matrix rules are undefined enough that a GM can basically have an enemies Matrix assets react however he wants. every enemy decker could have a million agents coming the Matrix for traces, or they could be using more traditional tactics. based on the Yaks' past behavior, i would say that the Yaks have enough information on the runners that tracking their commlinks should be doable, but the runners may have swapped commlinks or something. they do have a pair of TMs on their team, after all; the runners' Matrix security should be reasonably tight.

Hawk, i'd have work with them, but i'd probably have Galen and Sneak sell them out. especially Sneak... nah, nevermind. i'm sure a guy named Sneak is completely trustworthy.

that's assuming i hadn't killed them all off earlier, in keeping with the tactics i posted.

edit: crap, didn't notice the above post. getting the Seattle shadow community to help you works if you assume a high level of loyalty amongst runners. i don't--quite the opposite, really--so things would have gone down quite differently in a game i ran.

I'm going to regret this; I should wait until the ibuprofen kicks in, but I'm not smart like that...




Sneak's loyalty rating is 5 where Reaper is concerns; things like that tend to happen when a chummer saves you from getting eaten by a wendigo.


But I'm not a hard-ass like you, thankfully.

And I'm going to go, sit, read a book and wait until I can't count my pulse in my left hand anymore. Owww...

I'll admit that it might have changed between editions, and (in fact) that I was never much of an expert on ritual tracking stuff anyhow -- but it seems like driving around in a van with the heads of Yakuza guys you're known to have tortured and killed, while trying to dodge the Yakuza, might not be a super awesome idea. Seems to me it just means instead of looking for you, they can try and look for the heads they're after, and poof. You're fucked.

As a matter of fact I have some idea. We have some 16,000 users. If appropriate and required we can pull up everything they did that exited our AS for the last week and can reconstruct everything they did packet by packet, as it all goes to giant multi-terrabyte ring buffer. I used to support Ameritech Security, which did the warrants and subpoena for telecom records for 5 states. Would the Chicago Outfit have been able to get someone to run a trace for them? For some money, sure. They owned the chief of detectives for CPD, so they can get a legitimate warrant issued that would show minute by minute movement of their cell phones and could tell you who's movement matched them (like they were in the same car). They they can get every call they placed or took for the last 90 days, then they could pull these records and start building some very interesting tables and models from that.

Ok, now make it 16 000 000 users
remove the ability to get warants., or the co-operation of the people who work in the phone company.
Assume the runners changed their phone numbers, and so did their contacts
Then add in Slamm-O! and 2 Technomancers (plus sprites obfuscating the phone trails and tell me how easily you could track it

Alright, fair enough; I'm not going to dispute your expertise, now that you've established it. However, the fact that they were on the move and constantly Spoofing their IDs to prevent traces (and the two TMs both threaded their Spoof CFs up to 9 or 10, IIRC).

As for the question of tracking via ritual magic, I actually had that in mind, but tracking via that takes time, an hour at the very least, and they were constantly on the move. Also, I don't know if I made this clear or not, but everything that I've described so far has happened in less than four hours, in the middle of the night.

Well, canon or not, RAW or not, expertise or not, smart or not, the GM has decided and this is what he had wrought.

The key is not whether we like it but whether his players enjoyed it. If so, then it is Bibliophile that is doing it all right and everyone else that disagrees is getting it all wrong.

Finally got around to reading this. Very interesting, it'll be hard to top as a campaign. You're doing well for your first time. Being able to adapt to monkeywrenches thrown by pcs is something not everyone is able to do so early in their career, or even at all. You seem to have the makings of a great gm.

The most dangerous people in the gameworld are the pcs. As they are the only things a gm can't control or predict. Seriously though if the gm could where's the fun in it?

Thank you. And my players did enjoy it (although there was this one scene that had mass protests at the table).

And AngelOne? Thanks.


Anyway, where was I... Oh, yes. The Oyabun.

indeed. if he and his group are having fun, then i've got nothing to tell him.

at my table, though...

According to the intelligence that the PCs were able to gather, the Oyabun had three residences; a penthouse in Downtown, a mansion in Bellevue, and another mansion in Renton. Through a considerable amount of intel and collation and collaboration with Slamm-O!'s merry band, they determined that the Oyabun was either at the mansion in Bellevue or at the penthouse Downtown. Deciding to go after the penthouse first, they decide to see if they can smoke out their prey and ask Slamm-O! if he can arrange an "accidental" drone or VTOL crash into the penthouse. Reaper tells Slamm-O! "the stage is yours, Maestro." Slamm-O! gets a focused look on his avatar's face for a moment; the next moment, his baseball bat has transformed into a conductor's baton, and he's wearing--over the t-shirt--a conductor's suit, complete with coattails, and he turns to the avatars of the other hackers before breaking contact. (Players' reactions: "He's got style.")

Ten minutes later, they're loitering in their vehicles around the corners of the building, keeping an eye out for the fleeing Oyabun (or his body double), when they get a call from Netcat; she's determined that the Oyabun's in his residence in Bellevue; the one in the penthouse is a double. At that moment, all of the P.A. speakers in the vicinity start blaring the crescendo of the 1812 Overture... and the team spots a few dozen hijacked drones converging on the penthouse. A few moments later, it's all over... and the top few floors of the building have ceased to exist. (I got a standing ovation from my players).

Now on their way to deal with the Oyabun, they get an alert from Slamm-O! and Co; a heavily armed convoy has just left the Oyabun's mansion, and they're heading for Sea-Tac. The team moves to intercept and sets up a wonderful ambush on the highway; they knock the vans on their sides, kill the rigger in the limo and send the sports cars careening into opposing traffic or the side of the highway.

Unfortunately for the PCs, they've been duped and the convoy that they just ambushed didn't contain the Oyabun or his family... but the two "Special Units" that MCT had lent the Oyabun that they had heard about earlier in the evening.

They realize this when the sides of the heavily reinforced vans get peeled away from the inside. Out of the first van leaps a giant figure in black armor, festooned with guns, that makes the mages in the party all fail their composure tests when they see his aura. and out of the second van... well... as knasser puts it...

Yes, Knasser, I have field tested your Tomino, under the rational of a MCT field test against real Shadowrunners.

More later.

Having fun is the most important part. But there isn't actually any requirement that the target for ritual tracking be stationary as fas as I know. If the PCs haven't warded the hell out of the vehicle (like Force 15) they are in, then things would go badly in not very long. Look at the ritual tracking rules on SM p29. Carrying the head is INSANE and the mage should know it. Assuming the yaks summon a f8 spirit to do this, he rolls 14 dice every hour. On average he needs about an hour to find them. If they are behind a F6 ward he still only needs two hours. If they are behind a f12 he will find then in an average of 7-8 hours.

Ha! Ha! You tease, Bibliophile. Come on - tell me how it went.

And thank you for posting all this account. It's gripping stuff!

-K.

Expressing our opinions about what people post and ask for input on seems to me to be the whole point of this board.

I'll say. There are two people who have literally saved my life who I wouldn't deign to assign Loyalty 1 to if you paid me.

So it's all a matter of perspective.


YEABUWHA!!??!?!!!?

In a city as thoroughly crooked as Seattle? As if.

Cross threading here
If, at your table, I had been part of tis group, and got the hacker, Slamm-O! and the TMs to creat a Ctorm botnet, could it have seriously harmed the Yakuza?

IRL? wow, you have no sense of gratitude... unless there are some SERIOUSmitigating circumstances here. If so please tell us

I have had a few literal life saves in my time, each person got effectively loyalty 6 from me




In four hours, in the middle of the night.
Even in SR seattle you can only bribe the judges between 9 and 5
(they like their rest time and are not amenable to listening at other times)

9 to ... hahaha

Sure. As for the mitigating circumstances, no I don't think I'll share.

say what?

Aye, I imagine that the legal system runs 24/7, especially when the correct bribes fees are paid.

Seattle has a legal system?

Sure Seattle does, one for each major corp, problem is that the only rule that they all follow is "He who has the nuyen makes the rules."

"Nothing's free in this world, Jake. Not even arrest warrants."

Well, it kinda depends on MCT's role in Seattle's communications systems. If they run most or all of the hubs through which com traffic passes, then an order from a high MCT executive gets all the cooperation that a warrant or subpoena would get, and possibly better. (I have worked for a paralegal company and seen people drag their feet on complying with a subpoena. If the order to provide records came from someone who could fire and blacklist the record-keeping flunkies, that would reduce foot-dragging.) In which case, MCT doesn't *need* to find a judge, to get direct access to com traffic logs. On another hand, getting techs to do all the tracking and analysing at 3 AM is still harder, assuming the graveyard shift is rarely as well-resourced as the day shift. On a third hand, the haystack is a lot smaller at 3 AM; there's not so much other traffic going on.

On yet another hand, conflict between MCT and technomancers is a key part of this story, so if all relevant technomancers are working with or for the PCs, and the PCs don't slip up, then that gives the PCs a viable chance at sneaking their traffic through MCT's system without MCT being able to spot and track it.

Certain scenes from "Enemy of the State" come to mind.

As for keeping the severed heads under the beer, I see that as a Chrome move; in a Black story, it's reckless and sloppy. Using the heads as bait would be more my style, eg put one in a (well-sealed) box at a business next to a Draco Foundation office. When the yakuza's searcher spirits show up sniffing for the head, Draco may well notice the searchers and track them back to the summoners, and there's a small chance that conflict will ensue. (A small chance because the yak mages are probably careful for just this sort of thing, and would be ready to back off if they crossed paths with anyone they couldn't handle who was not already involved.) Or if the local Sons of Sauron have mages, sneak a head next to one of their strongholds; they might get feisty about Yaks sniffing around on their turf, assuming that Yaks share the JIS anti-goblin outlook. Or Vory or Mafia, as long as the PCs are hoping for an OC feeding frenzy against the Yaks, rather than all the OC organizations siding against the PCs.

Oh, our game was definitely Chrome, with a hint of Black to it. (Also, while I acknowledge the validity of the point on ritual sorcery, I will say in my defense that I am a newbie GM and keeping all of the options that are available to me in my head while riding herd on five very hard-to-keep-up-with players is something that I'm just learning to do)

Now, as for the point on tracking and the legal system, I am going to point out the following:

The Yaks, at this point, are feeling the effects of a feeding frenzy against them; I haven't been listing it in my report here, but I had been keeping up a running "news ticker" for the players of the effects that their actions had as other runners, bounty hunters, ork gangers, Humanis and Yakuza all clashed against each other, not to mention the chaos that Slamm-O!'s crew of hackers sowed. So I'm going to ask this: In a realistic game, which is what I was going for (which means that the NPCs make mistakes, make inefficient actions, make poor judgment calls and so forth) would you be able to notice that the head is gone from the burned body, get a ritual sample (i.e. drying blood on a piece of pavement or some ashes) from the first dead Yakuza to a magician skilled in the use of ritual magic, and then start an extended ritual that will take hours while the streets are breaking out in chaos against your organization? In the middle of the night, no less.

Anyway, moving on, I believe I had an ambush to describe.

The PCs were about 100 meters away from the Tomino and the cyberzombie. Now, here's the situation with the cyberzombie and the Tomino: they are "on loan" to the Shotozumi-gumi for "field testing". They are not broadcasting and are communicating instead via ultrasound and keeping their telemetry in "black boxes"; they are both under orders to retreat if they become too heavily damaged and are in danger of being destroyed. Additionally, the Oyabun wants the runners alive (my thoughts being that the Yaks could implant them with cranial bombs and then make it abundantly clear to the runners that their continued existence depended solely on Yakuza honor) so both the zombie and the Tomino are equipped with a mix of lethal and non-lethal weaponry.

The runners get one round of free fire at the pair due to the fact that they spent their actions getting out of their totaled rides. Over the next three rounds or so, the action, summed up is more or less as follows:
The cyberzombie keeps on getting his guns ruined or destroyed; he manages to get off a total of 8 shots in this phase of the engagement.
The Tomino fires several gas grenades at the runners, as well as a few flash-bangs, but the runners are either protected against gas or spread out enough that it has minimal effect.
Three of the runners are taken down or out of the fight.
Reaper sends off a call to Slamm-O! to have him crash something, a helicopter, perhaps, into the unholy pair in front of him.
The TMs hijack any and all vehicles on the road and try and ram the pair with them; the sports car misses the cyberzombie and the other Tomino narrowly dodges the other two cars they send careening after it.
Reaper and Billy open up on the pair, Reaper using a Barrett with 4 AV rounds in the mag and an Ares Alpha with HE grenades, Billy using his elephant guns (Merla standing by as a second to reload them for him); using called shots and a shitload of heavy duty ammo, they manage to force the Tomino into a retreat after five rounds.
The cyberzombie, however, is just standing there, taking it (he had 40 dice to soak physical damage; unless the attack did more than 10P, I just bought hits); he's getting P.O.ed, though, because his guns keep on getting destroyed; the last straw was his AK-98 getting reduced to bits and pieces by an HE grenade Levitated and detonated in front of him. He darts for the concrete divider and hops it.

Everyone holds their action, except the PC TM, who manages to hijack an 18-wheeler that had been incoming for the past several rounds; unable to see where the zombie is hiding (ruthenium polymers FTW!) he jackknifes the truck, sending frozen poultry skittering across the pavement and the cyberzombie manages to avoid the oncoming mass of metal by jumping on top of the cab, where he's spotted by Reaper using ultrasound vision. Reaper unloads another grenade at him, which the zombie dodges, leaping off the cab and at them.

Unfortunately, now he's been spotted and Otto, having held his action, manages to grab him with a Levitate spell.

At that point, the cyberzombie starts using lethal ammo, but it's too late, as everyone starts unloading into the cyberzombie, and Otto sends him soaring into the heavens, with the intent of dropping him when he gets high enough. Otto's also spinning and twirling the poor bastard so he can't get off a good shot; he still manages to fire grenades in their direction which do some nice damage and knock down more than a few of the runners.

At that point, Billy lands the killing shot, using Edge; the cyberzombie has to soak 18P damage... and fails. As they're lowering the body back to the ground, a helicopter slams into it, courtesy of Slamm-O!; both the copter and the zombie are reduced to a buncha of very very tiny flaming bits scattered over an area almost a quarter mile in diameter.

The team sighs in relief and starts packing up and attending to the wounded; Slamm-O! confers with Reaper and tells him that they won't be able to keep the Oyabun contained much longer. The team burns rubber and heads for the Oyabun's gated community, which is currently blacked out and being evacuated. The team looks at the setup and the odds and decides to go for the unsubtle route:
Load two of the cars they've "liberated" in the last few hours with a ton of explosives each, code up a pair of high rating machine sprites to drive and send one into the garage and one through the front door...

One mushroom cloud, one imploded house, multiple secondary and tertiary explosions later, the PCs make contact with the Sepola Ring, get smuggled out of Seattle; they send the footage of the Oyabun's house going up like firework to all of the major news networks based in Seattle, and KSAF gets the frozen heads delivered to them a short while later.

And, with that, my first RPG campaign finished.

Lots of dead civilians (in all those vehicles). Hopefully slamm-o gets nailed by some relative's hired shadowrunner

two tons of explosives?

Seriously, I see all sorts of comments like this on Dumpshock. Is having TWO FRICKIN' TONS! Of explosives ready to hand just... normal?

I mean.. a few hundred kilos/pounds is pretty damn extreme. Having that much ready to hand (never mind that its both rules legal, and by the book... affordable) should make the runners a walking target for every wanna be armsdealer in the entire metroplex, every 'player' (not PLAYER)... and everyone with a grudge against someone else pretty much. I mean, they probably have 90% of all the High Ex available in the entire city just about... right?

Unless they make it at home from fertilizer that is.



That aside, if you hadn't closed with 'that ended my campaign' I would have pointed out the extreme likelihood of the Oyabun surviving. Carbombs, while pretty and reasonably effective, are hardly precision instruments. And I can gaurantee that just about any reasonably secure building (including paranoid oyabun mansions in Bellvue) have some basic precautions in place to mitigate just that sort of tactic..

But hey, sounded like your players had a blast, so its all good.

That's what they did. And they spelled it out, in detail, what they were doing, during the manufacturing process.


Literally.

Your players are monsters.

There. I've said it.

I just called a few of them and told them that you posted this. Their reaction?



They're very much amused.

for those of you watching from home, please note that almost any attempt to acquire that much fertilizer on that short a notice in a game i ran would bring down all sorts of national, corporate, and metroplex anti-terrorist forces down on the runners. which would tip off the Yaks, since they probably have informants in several of those forces listening for reports of just such activities.

Pure poetry. I'd pay to see that adventure in the theater.

Tried that. They spread their purchases out over the course of a week, and didn't buy more than one to two hundred pounds from any one location... and, oh yeah, had the infiltration adept or the hippie Wiccan elf make the purchases, so it wasn't the same face at multiple locations. And they made the purchases with cash/cert. credstick transactions or IDs that they were about to ditch anyway.

Yes indeed. If you trying to order hundreds of pounds and are not buying on an existing account from an agricultural firm and and loading it in a truck from there, there is something totally wrong. Most people who are legitimate buy a small amount (like 1 bag) or huge amounts (tens or hundreds of tons).

And as Joel Henry Hinrichs found, many places that once would have ammonium nitrate don't carry it any longer. Hinricks had to blow himself up with TATP instead.

And people will call the cops.

http://atlanticville.gmnews.com/News/2004/...t_Page/005.html
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/Midwest/08/05/chicago.arrest/

I can't say I'm surprised.

I'm not averse to doing awful things in game, but I'm just... They were about as discrete as a Michael Bay film. That's a giant no-no in my view to the point of appalling.

Wow! Just wow! Bibliophile - that was absolutely great!

And they beat up my Tomino! Again, wow! Please relay my congratulations to them. I'll have to work on a new version now.

It sounds like you and your players had great fun. Newbie GM, my arse! Bibs (if I may call you that), you are a fully fledged GM and let none tell you otherwise.

And again, thank you for taking the time to write all this up and post it. This has been one of the most entertaining threads in ages. The levitating, spinning cyberzombie is a great mental image.

EDIT: And I'm glad it had a happy ending, too.

-Khadim.

*snort* I think the Tomino soaked something in the range of 80P damage before it had to retreat, and alot of those shots were APDS or anti-vehicular rounds from a Barrett. And the thing could have killed all of them in the first round of combat if not for the Oyabun's order that they "must be taken alive if practical!" One rocket into the van carrying two tons of things that go boom and... yeah. That would have been it.

And it was my first campaign, and I did make alot of novice mistakes, so I'm still a newbie GM... but one with some promise and some talent, I hope. (and call me Joe if you need a knickname; Bibs sounds like something that gets food dropped on it )

And I'm glad to have entertained you, and the image of this giant figure in pitted, dented, smoking armor, spinning like a psychotic top through the air, is indeed entertaining.

No, their characters are monester, the jury is still out on the players



mfb, If i were to acquire that much fertilizer for one of your games I would proceed to do so IRL wsith you taggintg along first. Then I would turn it over to the feds with a full diary including how they need to toughen up their security systems. Worse it would all e legal and I would be able to make a fortune of the interviews alone

Given their replies, I'm pretty confident that the players are indeed monsters as well.

Or they realize it's a game, and thus don't *need* to care about the actions within it. That's the nice part about role-playing games. You can be someone or something you can't in real life. For instance: I'm not a stuck up, egotistical asshole with a belief I'm one of the Highborn members of my race, but one of my characters is.

man, Kremlin, you are such a complete fruitcake.

Sanity is a delusion shared by the masses

And more seriously. I find it amusing to see how much more effective the police are in RPGs than IRL
As to the fertilizer thing in my home city (which is way smaller than Seattle.) there are about 50 or so stores that sell garden supplies. Buying a pair of 20kg bags of fertilizer is not something that triggers the radar. 40kg x 50 stores = 2 tons of homemade boomex.

I used to work in security, it is easy to see the holes. As to the feds thing.In Australia there is a thing called crimestoppers which works with state and fed cops and gives rewards to people who do things to help police. They would pay for info on how to tighten security on such things.

Oh and MFB, you never did answer myh question. Yakuza vs Storm Botnet, who would win in your campaigns?

Bibliophile, the next time your players make two tons of explosives, mobilize shadowrunners, gangers, and thugs against a major metropolitan syndicate?

Make damn sure something like "Jet City Woman" by Queensryche - or ANY Queensryche - is playing. Because that is so 80s action movie it hurts.

And I mean that in a good way.

Isn't that a requirement to post on message boards?

I don't understand people who play Shadowrun with characters that have no sense of subtlety or discretion, or basically act like they are in a bad action movie. Would you rather I just call their PCs idiots? Maybe the players, too, if this was the best idea they could come up with.


I'd say braggart myself.

Maybe Internet Tough Guy.

Precisely because it is called Shadowrun. If you wanted subtle, it would have been Shadow-walk or Shadowcrawl.

I really do not understand why people use the name of the game to try to negatively comment on other people's playstyles.

You know what they say, "desperate times call for high explosives."

Alright, everyone, I suggest we stop feeding the troll and get back to the topic at hand. (and, yes, martin, you are trolling. You are insulting me, my friends and Kremlin with your attitude and I see no reason to indulge you in it any further and allow this thread to descend into name calling)

I know that I made mistakes with the ritual tracking issue (which is semi-debatable, but I won't deny that keeping the heads was a foolish move, because burning the bodies doesn't get rid of ritual samples).

I know that I could have handled the part where they get the explosives with more finesse, but the thing of it is, I had no problems with them getting a few tons of fertilizer piecemeal from every garden shop in the city, mostly because I knew that they needed alot of the stuff to have any real effectiveness. It was when they said that they were going to refine it into nitro and then stabilize it that alarm bells started going off in my head, but by then it was too late.

An issue that arose from my reporting of events is that I didn't report each and every detail that occured, leading to some misconceptions. For one, as I put it to my players, at one point, judging by the traffic on ShadowSea, roughly a quarter of the city's runners that are active on the boards are either on the team's side or rooting for them, a quarter are out hunting for them to try for the bounties, a small quarter is ambivalent and a largish quarter must be out on runs or at parties tonight, because they're not chiming in. That's a far cry from the presumption that some people had, that all of the runners in the city were rooting for the PC team.

Huh? That's going to require some mighty specialized hardware and skills. I though they were just making an ANFO slurry. While it does take some skill to make an effective ANFO bomb and have it blow up when scheduled and high-order without tests it takes a lot less skill than trying to turn ammonium nitrate into something else.

Sounds like a great game. Good job.

And if they body is burned to ashes, it might be hard for them to even know that the players have a head?