I haven't run it yet.

Still reading and within the first few pages this caught my attention:

Paraphrased, "Kara plants the obsidian knife to cover up her calling card."

Now I get honor counting, at least I think so. But, if you feel that it is so telltale that you must also then plant evidence to make someone not "look under the damned pillow" to find the real evidence.
Then you really have a problem. I mean real mental problems, call it a Compulsive disorder and her teammate should get her treatment or beat sense into her as that will get them all killed.

If I was in a team that one of the guys continually planted evidence that pointed at us as the team there would be serious issues. That is likely true in RL as well. Unless you are doing it for that reason.

ie: The Joker, who plants his Joker card to let everyone know he was there, cause fear and screw with the Batman. Now if for some reason The Joker wanted to do a 'silent' job but felt the need to drop his card, that can hardly be seen as silent can it.


Beyond a clue to get the PCs on the right track I just can not get it.


Side note:
Any pointers about this run? or things that I need to be aware of when I run it?

Compulsions make people do things that they know are not things they should be doing, oftentimes without a payoff. Like the people who keep all the garbage and their ... waste product and store it in their house. I once read about a teenage boy who was so driven by a need to exercise that he almost drowned because one day, at the ocean with his family, he decided to swim against the tide for the exercise.

And these are real life examples; in fantasy and fiction, it can get even more bizarre for unusual reasons, like Mel Gibson's character in Conspiracy Theory who felt compelled to buy a copy of The Catcher in the Rye every time he was in a bookstore. He was extremely paranoid, and didn't even like the book, but never even questioned why he was doing this.

As for the teammates, the Black Cats are extremely close-knit, closer than siblings. Nothing can break their bond, so certainly a little bit of mental illness would be seen as "something we just have to deal with."

If you read the section with the knife and feather fully, you will see that the rest of her team has been trying to get her to stop. Yes, Kyra compulsively puts the leather wrapped feather as each job as a way of counting coup. Her sisters want this behavior to change and so she is slowly doing it. (It was my hope that the Black Cats would be seen in later Missions, but most teams reported killing the group and thus they were eliminated from future Missions.) The feather serves to make Kyra an individual, and gives insight into her mind a little bit-rather than keeping her a set of numbers on a piece of paper.

As for what you need to know with this Mission, I'd say to read through it fully. This Mission has a lot of circles within circles, as betrayal and revenge for activities that took place off-camera come to light. A lot of players told me that they latched on to different things in the Mission and were confused as to what was actually going on.

Note: HammerJack is just as crazy as Kyra, but in a very different way.

Again, I have to admit with this I may very likely be limited in my scope.

I do not have and have not been around many mental illnesses and so find it very difficult to Grok compulsion.

I find it even harder to put myself in a higher level of danger just because my best buddy cant keep his businesscard stashed. I feel I do have some very tight friends and honestly if one of them repeatedly left a calling card putting me and the rest of the team in danger, I wouldn't kill him or beat his ass, I would however, speak to him and then very very shortly after (ie: 1 more time) tell him that I was not going to continue working with him.

Think about it in normal RL business.
Lets say you and your partner meet clients together, selling the business and trying to drum up work. How many times would you take your partner if he had a habit of spoiling the sales pitch and driving off potential customers.

(yeah I read the part where the sisters are trying to get her to change)


Unfortunately that the Black Cats didn't make it into future games, I think they could potentially be a fun group to spar with. My only critique is that speed is king and only 1 of the three has any IP enhancers. Making all but the mage (potentially) fodder.

EDIT: Forget it.

Because you asked...:



People who Shoot Other People In The Face For Money do NOT think like you do. At best they are sociopaths, at worst they are unhinged in other ways. Shadowrunners accept and deal with a certain level of mental disorders from their teammates - comes with the job. If they refuse to work with people who have problems, they will simply never work. If the person's liability-to-asset ratio tips towards the liability range, they shoot them in the back of the head. They do not have polite little conversations about their feelings.



Shadowrunners are NOT car salesmen. If you need someone to do crime with you, you take what you can get. No picking and choosing.


Planned positioning, planned fields of fire and tactics all trump speed. Though in an unorganized fight, yes, the sammies should eat the slower dudes. That's their point in life, after all. If you happen to have a bunch of players, everyone of them sporting Wired 2 and assault rifles, then you are free to adjust the Mission for this. The Missions must, by design, be doable with teams that are combat-lite as well as combat-heavy. The combat challenges are thus geared towards the middle range. You are totally encouraged to tweak as required.

Muchos Gracias



Though I do disagree to a point, I don't think it would be accurate to explain everything away with laying a blanket statement regarding runners and sociopaths and criminals.
Crime is a business just as any automart is, some of the same rules apply.

Fred the sleazy car salesman may be the counterpart to Rainman the faceslasher in their respective areas of business. However, there are some lines that will get either one canned, blackballed or otherwise ousted. I do think there is picking and choosing, else you find yourself on the wrong side of the bars faster than you may have planned.


The other side: sure the ratio of mental issues with non-issued runners is probably extremely high and tolerances are likely relative.

hmmm, I suppose I had no arguement beyond the blanket statement.