Two of the characters had chemical engineering skills at high ranks, and one specialized in explosives. They knew what they were doing... I didn't, but they did.

I know how to make nitro based explosives at home, and fertilizer is not the first step. Two different explosives there. Not that it matters. Fertilizer explosives are pretty powerful in their own right, but hard to set off.

The problem, if you need to look at future player actions like this is: Seattle (2070, certainly) is not an agricultural area by any stretch. Getting that much fertilizer, over a period of a few weeks, is gonna be hard (harder than today, certainly) in the metroplex itself, and is going to raise eyebrows. The police today, without a deeply embedded wireless matrix, catch cells of would be terrorists buying fertilizer for bombs. Not every time, but enough so that the McVeys of the world get noticed.

Now: fertilizer bombs are very difficult to set off. Dynamite (stabilized Nitroglycerine) works as an initializer, but then you have to get dynamite or some other conventional explosive. Again: not an agricultural and/or mining area where dynamite is readily available. Contacts in construction might help here, but then again, the point is to avoid having people know you have the stuff. ANd if you can get dynamite in quantity, why bother brewing fertilizer?

Nitro based explosives can be made at home, certainly (not just glycerine... cellulose and potato starch, for example can be used), but the hard part is getting the quantities of (most certainly controlled and tracked) Nitric Acid and Sulfuric acid required... not killing yourself is where the dice/skills come into play. And you really wouldn't want to just store the stuff endlessly in a storage bin somewhere.

In other words, when players ask to start brewing their own explosives in quantity: Start prepping for it like it was a run. Never take the shortcut of letting them wave it away with a breezy 'we have a plan'. Trust me on this: the PLAYERS are using the old Fast Talk skill... on YOU.


* Note: On being fast talked/using player ideas as 'personal runs' that works just as well for any milspec hardware. Want an Assault Cannon? Its a run. Want missiles for that launcher you swagged last run? Its a run. This shit is not just lying in the street for any runner to just pick up. APDS rounds ruining your campaign? Stop letting players just purchase the stuff, make 'em sweat for it. It is supposed to be rare and hard to get.

** Note: I am not responsible for 100% accuracy on this stuff. Please do not correct errors in brewing homemade explosives. If I were actually planning to do any of this, I'd have my research materials handy, and I don't particularly care to provide a how to guide in this thread.

All I have to say is:


Is there any chance at all your next game will be run online via OpenRPG+ or some kind of similar client?

You can make explosives at home, but high purity sulfuric acid is essential for most of the better ones (you can make nitric acid from the sulfuric acid). Drain cleaner and battery acid are not sufficient, as low purity H2SO4 produces unstable explosives at best. You have to hit up chemical supply houses, and people ordering large amounts of sulfuric acid and/or nitric acid attract attention. I've seen concepts on how to to purify battery acid, but that's nasty at best, and ordering 500 gallons of battery acid tends to fit in the "unusual, strange or out of the ordinary" for most customers. And that just allows you to start the process of creating explosives.

That's why the favorite explosive of Islamic terrorists is TATP, as it bypasses much of the safeguards on people building bombs at home and some bomb detection systems. It's also a classic example of how homemade explosives are very unstable, as it is very sensitive to shock, heat and friction even when made correctly. At least 40 terrorists are known to have blown themselves up trying to make or deploy it.

the Yaks, because a botnet has no social skills. having a badass network of zombies does you no good if you don't know where to send them, and finding that stuff out requires interpersonal communication. assuming that's taken care of, the Yaks still win because they've got more resources to pour into their defensive botnet.

But what if Storm Botnet has his back to the wall and nothing left to lose? The Yakuza can't possibly triumph!

That only works if the Botnet was programed by Bruce Willis.

I've just read through this whole monster....

Some thoughts:
What I inherently don't like about Totori's posts throughout this is that the GM can basically do nothing to hold players accountable. It's the players sandbox... and since they're PC's they're automatically gods... want to put a finger in Dunkelzahns eye... do it.. you're PC's you can get away with it. Want to piss of a large entrenched criminal organization... you can do it and come out better for it!

I'm sorry, that doesn't make sense. IMO the original poster wants them to stay alive, he should look at giving them the option to become a 'captive' running team to a rival syndicate. If you make powerful enemies, you need powerful friends or to simply disappear for a long while. I'd make all their low rating contacts stop answering the phone, maybe one or two of them rat them out. Only way I'd have them actually piss off the bigger fish yak's is if they have a reason to, or the PC's have them by the short and curlies for some reason. Other than that, I can see setting up an epic run in which the PC's main goal is to see who lives the longest as they go out in a blaze of glory.

Another option... they've got themselves in so much trouble... their only option is to pull up stakes and move... after a few encounters they realize they're not in position to seriously hurt and that this is futile, rival factions won't get involved. Time to stage their deaths and change the setting.... I hear Italy is nice this time of year. Nice oppurtunity for the GM to thin their resources a little as well as they probably can't take it all with them.

The other reason I don't like this mindset is if it was this easy to bring down a criminal syndicate... then you should see them falling all the time. If the local operations really did something to upset the bigger fish. Then maybe it is a good time for the organization to clean house and eliminate their local head.


On the explosives...
These guys are right... getting your hands on or making explosives is no small deal. Furthermore, I'd expect that anything gotten commercially is going to have taggants in it allowing it to be traced. Making it yourself is a bitch and a half, and again the first order ingredients in the quantities necessary will raise flags as these other posters are saying.

You're not talking about sneaking into the local college and stealing some out of the chem storage locker... not with those quantities either. Best bet is stealing from a construction site... which is low explosives at best.

Given the SR fluff... you might get your hands on a large amount of caseless ammunition (since that uses a specially formulated plastic explosive to propel it I think I read). Then do some chemistry hand waving on it to change it from a low explosive to a high explosive. Even there... someone ordering ammo by the truckload is gonna raise eyebrows. You also might be able to get away with a little bit of 'alchemy' transmuting items into better items w/ the help of some magic.

What? I never said that the GM can do nothing to hold the players accountable. What I said was that if the GM was an indifferent and uncaring god who couldn't careless whether the PCs lived or died and simply used or extrapolated the canon NPCs in the book, the PCs had good odds of effecting an adverse change in the yakuza.

But yes, you can piss off a large entrenched criminal organisation and come out better for it. I let the dice fall as they may and do not rig the odds in favor of either side. If the odds are against the runners, then eventually they would fail something. If the odds are against the yakuza, then too bad for them as well.

How does that work? this botnet is defeating the best RL intelligence networks today. The BFI CIA etc can't stop it.

oh and as to finding the Yaks, they use Online data, therefore their movements are trackable. The botnet already finds its own targets online. In SR this translates to a ludicrous number of dice for matrix searches.

And for the full on creepy factor, what is to stop some of those bots getting personality programs and using social skills via the matrix? Realy puts the suit and sneer into agent smith.

You hear that, Mr Yakuza? That is the sound of inevitability.

My first character--a cybered-out giant--took a dikoted shuriken to the side of the head once and took minor damage from it.

well, as far as i'm aware, the CIA isn't trying to stop it. moreover, as far as anyone's aware, it hasn't had any success infiltrating any secure networks. not that it's tried to, really--the purpose of the botnet isn't cracking serious security, it's zombifying millions of unsecured systems and using them to accomplish security-irrelevant activities.


yep! google can find anything. it's magical like that.


also, everything happens in the Matrix!

Well yes you would... if teams of highly-trained people with SAS levels of training, significant contacts and resources who were not only willing to sacrifice their lives for their cause but also the lives of friends and family were common and they furthermore decided to wage a vendetta against a city's criminal organisation.

As that's not very common, however, it's not really an indicator that these groups can't do this when it does occur in PC-land.

i really don't think that would be uncommon in SR. SR, much much moreso than today, is chock-full of people who are highly-trained and -experienced in all sorts of violent occupations, who have made and continue to make their living by those means with far, far less protection than their modern equivalents. there are hundreds of thousands of badasses all over the world working in a field where they run a significant risk of getting badly screwed over. if such small groups had a high chance, or even a not-extremely-low chance of success in the circumstances described, then OC syndicates (and other shadowy organizations) would be getting blowed up all over the world, all the time.

On the entire Yakuza vs Runner thing, and bringing down the Yak I have two points.

One: The Yaks have/employ Shadowrunners too. Any OC syndicate would. Maybe not 'Shadowrunners' per se, but certainly men of that calibre.

Two: On the other hand, this sort of thing is a staple of movies. Raw Deal (Schwartznegger), The Replacement Killers (CYF)...

Of course, what you are really dealing with in OC syndicates is a cell based structure. Sure, if you are willing to die in the attempt, taking out the local yakuza gang isn't really that big a deal. Heck, a decent plan might mean you pull it off gracefully, with panache and style.

The problem is some other gang will move in and take over as soon as the fighting is done. They'll absorb the surviving assets en toto, add them to their existing turf/assets/manpower and grow. Not that this is particularly well presented in Shadowrun, mind you, but its not contradicted either.


The other big issue is the fact that the PC's didn't just call out the local Yakuza, they pretty much bitchslapped as publicly as possible the entire syndicate.


Presumbing this group keeps on, they'll constantly have to keep their eyes open. Having proven to be utter hard asses of the first magnitude, any Yak Gumi that wants a peice of them probably won't risk another embarrassing 'open war'. They'll go all 'Compte de Monte Cristo' or something... You know, set up some false front contacts, make sweet deals with the runners, get 'em complacent and dependent on these new best buddies... then set them up so the shoot themselves in the foot. Hard.

THEN they'll take their heads...

Or it could simply be that OC syndicates (and other shadowy organisations) do not screw such people over, especially when there are millions or billions of other prey to victimise instead.

Security irrelavent? is using stolen passwords security irrelavent? Stolen credit card data?



You are comparing the idea of multitasking a search of every subscribable database in the world to typing a set of keywords in google?

Mfb let me put that scale mismatch in an analogy for you

"My 57 dodge can't fly at Mach 4 and shoot guided missiles, therefore America does not possess such capabilities"



You ARE joking. Let me break it down for you
The Yak soldiers have commlinks, as their IDs and fones. The Oyabun has one too. Using matrix searches just might get the phone numbers for some of the Soldiers' commlinks. Phone directories are a good place to start, along with phone records.


As to the online personalities. Weren't you the one who said we should be true to the setting fluff?
The fluff that includes total immersion online brothels?
That includes matrix games where you feel everything.
Where it was pointed out that canonically you can't tell the difference between a real cyberhooker and an agent coded to be one.
Where the most popular new clubs are the 'link clubs' that let you telepresence and people can see you in AR.
Not everything is done in the matrix, but in 2069 your physical presence is no longer required for 99% of human interaction. All 5 senses can be replicated.

Also there is the Mitsuhama link. A storm botnet, built out of agents, could slowly infiltrate Mitsuhama. This would give you access to the records of Mitsuhama assets such as Yakuza gumi

The problem is that the MIFB(where they keep their data) is canonically one of the hardest to penetrate systems, although if you do manage to get in, it is the also the most comprehensive data bases in the 6th World.

Until the new Matrix book is out(and perhap not even then), we won't know how well protected it is though.

if you go strictly by canon, that's a possibility.


yes, in that the passwords and credit card data being stolen are unsecured. having a really good safe is irrelevant if you're leaving your cash and valuables out on the table where anyone can pick them up. even if you also leave the combination to the safe lying out on the table, that's really only peripherally relevant to the safe; the safe doesn't necessarily have a flaw that can be exploited, in such a case--it's a flaw in the operation and use of the safe. my point is that modern botnets aren't intended to crack secure systems, though it's certainly possible that they might, through user errors such as not securing passwords to the secure system.


stop being deliberately obtuse. not everything online can be found by a given searcher, and not everything is online. you need to have information to find information, and for the type of operation you're talking about, even an infinitely successful search roll won't provide all the necessary data--because not all the data is in a searchable location.


that's kinda my point. given how easy it apparently is to fool the senses in the Matrix, don't you think that maybe a non-retarded criminal syndicate would check in on the meat fairly frequently, just to be sure? moreover, i don't feel like coming up with a whole new set of rules to govern social engineering, because the reality is that it should be a lot more complex than a simple interrogation roll--especially given how easy it is to get a really good interrogation roll.


if Random Dickhead the Hacker has a botnet, you can be sure that Mitsuhama has a better one--probably has better ones, plural. and their better botnet(s) will be sweeping the Matrix for other botnets, subverting portions of those other botnets to determine their intent, and wiping out those botnets whose intent Mitsuhama finds to be incompatible with Mitsuhama's goals. again, the mechanics for all this aren't covered well by the existing rules.

After you throw 5000 agent Smiths at anything it isn't secure. One will get good rolls and the defender crap. Tyranny of large numbers. You can't keep anything matrix connected secure using RAW.

Because, of course, there's no way the corps will have deckers of their own smart enough to have their own agents, or anything. Only Shadowrunners are smart and competent, in many people's games.

It seems to me that everyone is stupid except the characters stems from the same line of thought where in Fourth Edition it's ok for the average professional dicepool to be 6-8 while the average character's dicepool is rather larger.

The first statement is partially true, due to the fact that really competent deckers only start appear as Rating 5 guys. The second is untrue due to the fact that in many people's games there are also (though not necessarily canon) NPCs.

If you use the totally broken RAW it doesn't matter how good they are. You can overwhelm them and you will eventually get very lucky while they get unlucky. And they can't counterattack because you are having lunch off-line while your horde of autonomous agents blows them up, coming in from hacked devices all over hell. They can blow up the hacked stuffer shack cash registers and refrigerators all day long if they want, you can always go get more. As toturi wants to stick to a totally RAW style this seemed worth mentioning.

You could, horrors, change the rules so they work instead. I know it's heresy, but is IS an option.

Don't get into this discussion again, please.

You could, horrors, change the rules because they work. I know it's stupid, but is an option.

To whom were you speaking? (Clarification might save some headaches later--or start new ones. I don't know.)

To everyone willing to start another discussion about chaning rules or if canon might by changed.