Over the new years holiday, my LARP group broke up, my paper game group ditched our old DnD stuff because our current GM is AWOL, and we got the core SR book, Unwired, Runners Havens, Companion, Street Magic, and Corporate Enclaves from a friend. We have since gone out and purchased a cube of d6s, painted out the 2-4 pips, a 5th Printing BBB, and two new ink cartridges for the printer.

We're running in full swing.

I have the most experience with SR, and have agreed to judge as we move into this new system, and I've had a few fits and starts, but thanks to Aaron and Ryu, I've leapt my first hurdles and am now running the game in full Hot Sim.

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Enter 'Sprite', our resident Decker. With contacts all over the street, numbering from her confirmed login to ShadowSEA, her favorite fixer, a repeated customer Johnson, and a dedicated Fence, this girl knows the right people and has the right software to do her job. A retributively roly-polly girl, she's trying to forget her time spent in a Yak Bunraku parlor, and has managed to get herself addicted to Simsense in a full-blown way. She hot-sims, and as the company's face and hacker, they're constantly a little worried she's going to short-sell them for some new BTLs or little piece of hypertech that won't be a benefit to herself OR the company.

Sprite contacted the Elven Street Sam 'Spriggan' through a ShadowSEA search, picking him up to help her with clearing the 162s out of a taken-over nightclub in the southern part of downtown Seattle. Spriggan's an addict too, and it seems like the theme is pretty strong in the Shadows this 'fairy themed' company runs. His addiction is a bit more insidious though. He's addicted to self-improvement. Specifically really expensive modifications. He's wired up, tweaked out, and armored in, ready to make a mess out of anyone and anything, and carries the gear to harvest anything he might want to try to get installed...

Their third is Pooka. Pooka's definitely the most trustworthy and caring of the group. A pretty, stupid (pretty stupid, really), dog shaman, the human girl is easily the prettiest of the lot, and spends the majority of her combats summoning up spirits, sucking up drain, and taking cover behind a corner. Every once in a while, she pops out, sand-blasts groups of opponents, and handily ends combat from invisibility. She was also picked up through a ShadowSEA search.

Their first run (as mentioned), was against the 162s in a hacked up club in southern downtown, Seattle. They breached the front door's L4 maglock in about three seconds, went in through the side offices, and cleared out several ghouls. The mechanical emplacement couldn't see through the improved invisibility laid down by Pooka, and the guy laying down behind the emplacement, using his smart-link and the Smart-Platform to cover the door was taken out in about two more seconds. Once the gunfire started, the whole place lit up to Pooka's 'Sense Enemy' spell. Suddenly, a lot of people want to kill and eat the company. The building's AR is turned off, and in fact the power is completely cut. A little is being stolen from a direct tap run through the inside of the building to the upstairs offices, and there's a generator hooked up to the three maglocked doors, keeping them on and locked. Other than that, no power in the building. Commlinks still work fine, however, being in the middle of the city. The company takes out several more ghouls, but on clearing out the back office area, they end up rushed from both sides, and Spriggan takes some serious damage. They retreat and rest for five days, getting a bit of gear (162s are intelligent ghouls, and will use cybernetics, armor, and even firearms if they have the right Ware for it), fencing it off while waiting for the fragged sam to recover. A lined coat may not have been the best investment.

Five days after the initial breach, they go back, still hunting these ghouls at a bounty of 100Y a head. This time, Pooka leads off with a fire spirit. They try to go in the side office door again, but find that it's been blocked with debris. They peer inside over the top for a little bit, but see no movement, and Pooka doesn't get a ping on her Detect Enemy spell. They shift the debris instead. A random roll allows an un-wired, laser-guided, Bear-Trap drone to extend from over the top of the lintel, and snap down on the Sam's head. He takes TEN physical damage. That leaves him with 1p before unconciousness. His 'I have a fragging bear-trap on my head!' antics earn him a Karma. (I gave the trap base 8p, with 8 dice to attack, he avoided with Reflex + Dodge (6dice), and then soaked with Body + Impact Armor (9 dice)) They retreat for another five days while he tries to heal up.

Deciding that the traps these infected have set are too harsh for them to deal with, the runners find a new job, agreeing to stick together and deal with it later. They get a job from a mob contact, who sends them after his car. He wants whatever is in the trunk, sight unseen, and offers them a bonus if they get him the vehicle back without significant damage. He thinks some First Nations goons have taken it for a joyride. Instead, they find a high-way chase, some media coverage, a fight with Lonestar, and some psychotic NAN terrorists, with the lead guy wearing combat armor, weilding two custom Monofilament Tomahawks, and sporting an AR full chieftains head-dress. Spirit of Man does beautifully, putting officers to sleep, even a couple of terrorists, while the runners hack and capture the mobsters car. Even the Troll Adept goes down snoozing. It's a rough fight though, and nearly drops every member of the team. Eventually the troll wakes back up, goes medieval on the LS, and leaps off the side of the overpass, leaving the invisible shaman to clean up the remaining LS officer, who was trying to put the head-webbed decker into the back seat. They get away, get paid, and get a pile of bodies dropped off to the Sam's street-doc contact for harvesting and a bit of medical attention.

FIVE DAYS LATER... they find they're better off cutting the contract with the original johnson for the ghoul bounty, netting a paltry 600Y for the six they managed before fleeing the first time, but decide to go back to clear it up solely on good faith without telling anyone. They're spotted by a LS drone, and tailed to the building. They, however, manage to use fire spirits, frag grenades, and a drek-load of bullets to clear out the entire first floor, including a vampire magician, before the vampire summoner downstairs comes up to clear things up. He banishes the fire-spirit handily, re-summons it as his own, and sends it after it's original summoner. It's taken out in one round by the sam, dealing negligable damage to the group. They retreat. They hole up across the street for a couple hours, while a lonestar cruiser sweeps past, having (Critical Glitch!) completely lost them. They go back in after a couple hours are up, and have to contend with a force 6 earth spirit from the hermetic vampire summoner, and his three advanced ghoul guards with SMGs. The guards go down like larry, moe, and curly, but the vamp gives them a bit of difficulty, relying on sustaining magic to protect himself (enhanced reflexes, body boost, physical barrier). They finally take him down, but not until he damn near kills himself summoning up a Force 8 fire spirit to deal with them... It does in two rounds of combat head to head with the Spriggan. They move upstairs, a bit singed, but still looking for more action. The CyberGhoul upstairs goes down like a punk, but the two grenade wielding Vampire Adepts (the last vamps in the building) manage to repel the intruders. Significant damage from grenades and undead kung-fu force The Motley to retreat one last time. Healing up with the shaman's new heal-spell (Summoned herself an Earth/Healing spirit and learned it in one afternoon!) and their new first aid kits, they bunk down for two days, lining up a serious run that will get them out of town and into the deserts of New Mexico for about a week.. working with Aztechnologies underground in a magic research facility.

Meanwhile, a troll adept signed 'Ogre' lines up a job with a disgruntled Johnson offering a 100Y bounty per head on 162s who have taken up residence in a burned out club in the southern part of downtown... Seattle...

The Motley returns to finish the job, and begins their search with a quick check for traps, and then a jaunt down into the black as pitch basement. The Troll has already made his way through the basement, and into the upstairs area. The group catches him as he's coming down the stairs, with the decker hacking his comm and letting him know to come out easy... they know he's there. They were a bit surprised to find a single troll though. The 162s abandoned the building after they were all almost killed, and the chains that dangle from the ceiling (formerly holding 'lunch, dinner, and midnight snack') and the blood-rotted carpet are all that remain of the infected gangers. The Motley and Ogre agree to split the footage for their 16 kills fifty fifty with the troll Adept, who still has the rights to the job they forwent. He collects, netting himself 800Y for doing nothing, and letting them.. well basically recoup their ammo costs.

He agrees to sign on with them to go to Aztech's facility, and they all hang out in a safehouse for the remaining three days until the Aztech contact Sprite met is ready to take them to Rakuhn, New Mexico. They hop a private flight from the Aztech corporate compound, and make their way to the pyramid that houses the facility they are to clean out. They meet with Lisa, Mr. Cortez' assistant, and are briefed on the situation. They are told repeatedly not to draw pictures, take anything from the compound, or otherwise download, record, or even try real hard to remember anything within the facility. If any of their data, or indeed word of this run is leaked, they will be sought out by strike teams and removed. They are warned of this (repeatedly) up front, and even sign a document that says they agree to be extradited by Aztech should this occur.

I've blantantly ripped off resident evil for this, and part of their return to the surface world will be going back up 13 flights of ladder as the power to the facility dies. They're never intended to be checked for having stolen anything down there.

A plasteel cooridor has been set up, air-tight and contained, in what was the entrance room to the facility. 20 meters of transparent 'glass', that they have to walk down to open the main doors. The glass is jointed in several places by sealant rings with gas-injection systems. What's in the tanks connected to those seals, not even the decker bothered to look into. (Awakened Antibacterial Spray?) They breach the door, which consists of 24 zombies, shuffling angrily towards them, trying to tear them apart. The suckers have 15p, are immune to stun, and a body of 9 (no armor), but only an attack pool of 4. I've made this adventure in the hopes of using the 'mob rules' in melee combat. With a combination of suppressive fire, blowing up their medical drone, and knocking out the troll with stun damage, the group mows down the zombies while slowly backing into the back of the hallway. The last one is actually taken out by the /hacker/ with her Ares Predator IV. Having been given Black-Level access to the facility, she links into all the cameras... and effectively divides up all the spawns by closing every door in the facility except the front one. This lets the Troll (quickly woken back up with first aid and healing spell) take the zombies on two and three at a time, pretty much clearing up the first floor without even having to roll dice. (Blast elemental effect on his killing hands. Zombies don't get but one pass, and getting up ruins their ability to use the complex action to unarmed attack...)

The second floor shows a huge knot of zombies around some kind of movement in a display cage. The group works their way quietly down the hall, and the sam sets up his tripod and machine gun, ready to use his grenade launcher as a secondary weapon. A few grenades and suppressive fire bursts into the combat, the group is attacked from behind. The mage, in the back of it all, is plowed into by something the cameras can't even see!!! The troll struggles to fight blind (-6) but manages to wound the thing. The sam picks up his medium machine gun, and with almost no fire suppression, and a -2 penalty for the extra weight of the tripod dangling from his gun... fires a long wide burst into the critter, killing it dead. He then non-chalantly takes a complex action to set the tripod back up, facing the right way... and resumes suppressive fire to kill zombies. One zombie pulls way out into the lead, and the hacker takes it out with a couple well placed shots from her pistol, then goes into first aid mode, fixing the wounded shaman. When only a few heavily chopped up zombies remain, the troll charges in to mop up.

That leaves the party having basically cleared out the first and second floors, and aware of invisible carnivorous monkey-critters within the halls, and standing in front of a huge glass observation wall at a leonine humanoid sitting in a chair with SimSense gear, whimpering and pacing, swinging his hands as if trying to make the machines work. They've found the fifth member of their group... a Lion Shapeshifter stolen from Africa as a cub, that Aztech covertly smuggled out of Mujaji's control and into their own facility, and have been observing in detail for some two years now.

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I plan to have them deal with a Zero-G live-recreation datastream-tunnel on floor 7, with floating zombies. A nemesis style mega-zombie that gets around behind them and empties the upper facility while they're busy doing the same thing to the lower. A few wild-spirits trapped inside the warded facility that were being experimented on/with. And of course, the obligatory 'lickers' and 'skinless hounds'.

Any further comments or suggestions?

Our new lion friend's first live session turns out to show that while I have made an evocative and interesting setting for them to play in, zombies are worthless as opponents. Unarmored, stupid, and slow, even their significant (re: 9) body isn't able to make them worth fighting for long. Not even having no wound penalties. It's simply too easy to run backward, chattering bullets at them, with the doors closing off any possible issues the team might have with getting over-run. The single resupply area they found more than over-matched the bad guys, and even the few armored zombies I tucked in there were basically worthless. The Zero-G tunnel was an amusing diversion, but since the zombies can't steer, and the Shifter Adept one shotted both lickers in the first round, with an action left to turn and hunt down a zombie, it was pretty much a wash.

On the plus side, the magician refused to risk the drain to crash a spell she couldn't assense, so the Sam walked into it and his ware shorted out and his cyber-eyes exploded in fantastic, phantasmagoric display of pyrotechnic pain, and his whole 'Need-More-Warez' addiction kicked into overdrive. He refused to go on until they could track down a high rating medicine chip in the facility and install some random experimental bioware eyes to at least assuage his Augmentation Addiction.. and now I have a new toy to tease him with.

They had brief contact with a living Pocket Dimension named Xohn, who becomes important later on in the story, before moving down, blowing up a few role playing opportunities with wild abandon, and finally having the hacker, Sprite, DIE in a fit of arrogance against a stacked Black IC trying to pull into the Infra-Red Security Sector for the 13th Floor. She burned off her permanent edge in order to keep her brain from being turned into mashed potato, and was forced to rely on a second hand comm-link until she could get out of the place. Luckily she pretty much only needed edit programs from there on in.

Once they physically reached the thirteenth floor and reached the big scary door, the facility shuddered, alarms went off, and the place threatened to explode. Power was cut across the whole facility, and they were forced to climb ladders up the whole ~300m to escape... only to find that the armored glass cooridor they were supposed to meet the Aztech Security people in was torn apart by what appeared to be /substantial physical force/. Since the Troll couldn't have done that kind of damage bare handed, they were justifiably nervous. Hurrying out, they made their way quickly to the garage and hijacked a security hovercraft, speeding out of the facility just before a nuclear explosion backlit them.

That should have been the end. They were way too slow getting out, and they didn't even try to hack the security on the Banshee on the other side of the facility. The shockwave caught them, and tossed them into a building, which tore up the hovercraft a bit, and snapped several of the drive rotors. Instead of the entire corporate city being vaporized into a sheet of glass, however, Xohn rose like a tiny blue ball of hell up through the center of the just-blossoming mushroom cloud, and swallowed all the energy, causing a sudden snap-winter that blanketed the town in frost and briefly shorted out every non-biologically fueled energy source within a dozen kilometers. He turned the explosion into an /implosion/, and left a few thousand support workers alive to tell of the chaos in Rakuhn. The Runners hoped that whatever it was that caused the carnage at the top of the installation was caught in the blast, but none of them were naive enough to actually expect me to do that...

Dressed in Aztech security armor and bearing identification stolen from the facility, Leo used his knowledge of corporate proceedure to snow a poor terrified tech into fixing the stolen hovercraft, which they then high-tailed up through NAN territory, Tir Tairngire, and finally back to Seattle. Leo was finally able to hunt and kill his first real live animal, turning an Oregon Mule Deer into a splatter of blood and guts, and role-playing his way to an extra Karma Point. Sprite was awarded another 'well prepared' for being the girl with the skills, as she navigated the groups way north, and even talked them out of a few sticky patches with Elven border forces. Of course, they returned home to find that everyone but Ogre's life-style had been confiscated, as their apartments and IDs were all seized, Lonestar having vengefully finally tracked them down in the week they were gone, and impounding everything they owned.

Ogre picked up his stuff from his friend, packed the group into his apartment, and gave them a few days to find their own places to live. Nice guy. While she was in hot water with ShadowSEA when she left, Sprite and her scoop on what happened to the Rahkun facility were greeted with enthusiastic interest and cooled tempers, and her posting buddies had left her some heart-warming mail about how they had her virtual back, even if some of the people were still busy flaming her.

Eventually, the group picks up the 40 G's from their fixer, and starts patching things back up. Serious maintenance is done on the fried Spriggan, and Pooka binds herself a couple of new spirits. Leo buys his first suit of real clothes, and he and Sprite start doing some major work in putting him into the system, calling on all her contacts and friends to get him SINs, gear, and eventually settling on sticking him in her place rather than getting his own.

The group decides to start a company, but neglects to actually do any of the work or agree on anything that actually makes them one beyond a name: The Wyld Hunt.

As a group, The Wyld Hunt's first action is to find a job. They look... and look... and no one wants to deal with them right now, other than a few desperate souls that they reject working for out of hand. Instead, they Nano-Paste up, and head out to deal with a local gang, the Blood Mountain Boys. Seems the BMBs are having a bit of trouble with the Hellhounds, and while yes, they would like them taken care of, no, they're not going to hire any damn mercenaries to do it. You could join the gang though...? Spriggan, surprisingly, decides to take them up on this offer! While he's never /actually/ ridden a motorbike, and the boss tells them not to come back until he has his own, he slots himself a Pilot: Ground Vehicles chip and drives Ogre's van (which they have now decided is the Company's van, and made him take the bus to go do whatever errands he was busy doing while he missed that session...) to the Brimstone Bar and Tofu-Grill, a place attatched to a mall in Bellvue that the Hellhounds like to hang out at. It's their place, and everyone including the bartender is sporting their colors. They decide to split things up, and use the girls to flaunt their feminine charms, slutting it up to the hellhounds to lure two of the four riders away from the front of the bar, while the other eleven continue to noisily carrouse inside the establishment.

After several minutes of driving the savvy girls around, and quite a lot of inappropriate touching (the -2 distraction of which apparently caused Sprite to fail to be able to hack into the bikes... heheheheh...) they finally pull the two losers into the mall parking garage around the corner for some 'more interesting fun'. Only to get large holes placed in their skulls by Spriggan, who was laying down under the van. The one shot the second ganger got off missed him, and while they were looting the bodies, Leo leapt off of the 20m high mall onto the top of one of the gangers.

I had them both roll to resist 8p.

While everyone else is talking about seeing how he's doing, he proceeds to beat up... THE ENTIRE MOTORCYCLE GANG. Okay, he's a Phys Adept with significant levels of Critical Strike, Penetrating Strike, and Killing Hands. He's also a lion shifter with spec-ops training and a lot of /anger/. He takes a bit of damage, but otherwise, several of the gangers lay dead in the street, and the others scatter in terror. The team steals four bikes, sells two, and keeps two, and giggles about it all the way back to the Blood Mountain Boys clubhouse. Initiation for Spriggan will be to run 3 vehicles off the road. The whole club goes out with him, and he knows he's expected to have to fight Tiny (their resident Troll) in hand to hand when he gets back... Since he's a heavy weapons expert, he has no idea how that's going to go.

We play around with the vehicle combat rules, and there's generally a lot of confusion and eyes crossed as we try to figure out what's goin on, but eventually, he causes some damage (including having a spectacular glitch... all successes and 1's... with his monofilament whip... which I get caught on the axle of the car and popping loose of his finger before it destroys the vehicle..) to the satisfaction of the biker gang, who then gets him back to their club house. Mercifully, they blind-fold Tiny, and the otherwise formiddable Troll stumbles around with a dicepool of 2 trying to swat the Sam who beats him down with a chair, then two chair legs, then a beer bottle, and basically causes about two hundred nuyen worth of damage and makes the whole gang roar with laughter. He gets a Karma.

The team then decides to spend their hard won Karma, with Spriggan buying the gang as a contact, and investing his Karma into Automotive Mechanic, which he learned from them at no tutor cost.

People pay debts and whatnot, and October of 2070 opens up with Sprite picking up what looks to be a high paying job with a Johnson she can't identify. He's offering 90k if they will retrieve the three items he wants. A prototype, a datastore, and a technician. The only catch is that these three goals are in three different corporate enclaves; Federated-Boeing, NeoNet, and Ares Macrotech respectively, while needing to deliver them to an as-yet undisclosed location before halloween. A full dossier on what they're supposed to be retrieving, a tailored worm and a tailored search-engine are included, and the whole payment is deposited in escrow with the fixer that Sprite is occaisionally sleeping with. Looks a little hard, and no one says 'it'll be easy!', so people are expecting a payday off this one.

Sprite again nabs a Karma Point as she goes to the meet with the Johnson, showing up at the appointed time at The Avalon, an incredibly over-priced restaraunt in Downtown that serves real food. The catch... she's expected to meet Mr J in the men's room at 7:14, and she's... well.. a woman. She nano-pastes up again, since they're so scared of being recognized by the cops, and shuffles her PAN details, pulling a fresh SIN for the meet. She greatly impresses the Johnson in the bathroom with her etiquette, and the bought off towel-boy waits outside, blocking the door while they have their meet. Five successes on the etiquette test get her almost any concession she wants from this man with the jade cufflinks, tie clip, and shoe jewelry, but she neglects to ask his name. He does allude to there being more business from him if this goes well though. They don't yet know they're working for Mitsuhama. Negotiation for more money fails, with him out maneuvering her at the 'table' (really the sinks...) since their other runs havn't been exactly stellar. (Their opposed rolls tied.)

Sprite pings some people and gets the prints for the Federated-Boeing complex, and they decide to get the prototype and destroy the specs on it first. A cursory astral glance tells Pooka that they have patrolling groups, and that she's not going to be able to walk in with her spirits in astral right there with her. Sprite spends (out of character!) fifteen minutes hacking the St. Louis branch of FB and implanting data in their personell files on a bunch of fictitious people to cover their group and their groups abilities. Since data-forging and ID Theft are big biz for the Mob, this information, bio-data, and tailored IDs are provided by a Forger contact from within Spriggan's massive 'The Mob In Seattle' group contact. (His actual last name is O'Malley. An Elf named O'Malley, go figure. That's like 'A Boy Named Sue' right?) Two days to get their id and ducks in a row, and the group (sans Leo) infiltrates the installation claiming to be an Efficiency Expert and her retinue. Their IDs pass multiple inspections, they get a guarded escort tour of the facility, locate their objectives, and generally unsettle everyone with what appears to be (verified even!) a legitimate appraisal of their job effeciency. They break by getting the junior researcher from the facility to invite Pooka (who is posing as Cindy, Miss Vasquez's beaten assistant) back to his place in the FB Enclave for some 'one on one networking'. While he's taking a shower, before anything intimate happens, she summons up a backup Force 7 Spirit of Man, and leaves her bound one there to keep him asleep for a while (Influence... is there anything more powerful?) so they can re-infiltrate the installation with his High Access Key.

We break our session there, and when the next one starts (an impromptu, unscheduled one yesterday!) our Troll can't make the game, so they switch him out for Leo. Since the Nigh-Uncouth phys adept didn't exactly comport himself well with everyone, he drives the getaway van, parking outside the facility just out of view outside the wall while they make with the stealing. Leo goes with them this time, and they go inside again... but Leo is dual natured. He can't get in the front door without a Magic+Charisma vs Force (3)x2 roll.. and he bounces off the mana barrier twice! On the third attempt, the mana barrier critically glitches, and one of the security mages hurries to the front door to find out why their barrier is acting funny. He pulls aside Sprite and asks her if she knows that her companion might be infected with HMHVV? She explains that he's registered high security as an experimental personell, and is a member of her personal staff. She COMPLETELY snows the mage, her multiple leadership rolls just blowing him away, until he's bowing, scraping, and generally yes-ma'aming to this lady who appears to be a special liason inside the company he works for, and thus, about the second highest ranking FB person he's ever talked to. He explains back to her that the barrier is acting funny, likely because he tried to go through it, and they need to crash it, and put it back up. ALL OF THE FB MAGES ARE GOING TO BE BUSY FOR TWO HOURS!!! Once they're all out of the building and discussing how they're going to re-erect the ward, Pooka pulls her briefly summoned F7 Spirit of Man up, and orders it to follow the group once they leave the bathrooms, and to 'Zone Out' (like sleep, only they don't fall down) first the guards in white, and then the technicians in the R&D lab up on the scaffolding. They make a brief detour to the data room and plant the worm, using the stolen passkey to get in. The Spider dutifully fails to notice them in there. The party departs to the bathrooms, and the Spider fails /three/ perception tests to notice anything funny going on, while Pooka turns the whole group, excluding herself, invisible. She then carefully (with a -6 penalty to all actions, pretty much all she can do is cast spells) walks herself back to the front lobby and sits on one of the benches, appearing to sort of zone out.

The now invisible party makes it's way to the production floor. Their cover is almost blown when someone bumps into Sprite in the semi-crowded hall, and is about to raise a protesting alarm. Leo drops him with a single vicious strike. Splat. People gather around him to find out what's going on, and security is summoned to see what is the matter. Meanwhile, in the chaos, the group skeddadles, and makes their way up onto the catwalk, where almost no one goes because it only leads over the production floor and into the R&D assembly area. Just as they get there, the spirit materializes. The guard is about to say something about it, but the second action phase happens so quickly that he finds himself zoned out, staring helplessly ahead with his gun half-raised. The other guys are facing the wrong direction, and a man playing the violin is a little difficult to hear over the din of thousands of machine parts rattling around and being assembled into drones and whatnot. (Pooka's tradition is a custom Gypsy Shamanic tradition. Just some slightly re-ordered spirits for summoning.) While the spirit puts two people into zone out every turn, the party fiddles around with figuring out how the safe-lock room works, cramming four people into a room designed for one man to don or remove a thin white non-static suit. Not comfy. They eventually get in, and then the hard part goes. Logic+Hardware (10, 1 minute) to remove the prototype comm-booster from this super-sonic drone. Sprite gets to work, and the guys move people around inside the big plastic R&D bubble, while the spirit continues to hold-action for someone to wake up, and then tags another person. Two minutes and 21 seconds into the event, one of the guards RESISTS the Influence! 4d vs 14d and he manages to beat the spirit. He calls in the problem, 'waking up' to realize something wierd is going on with the man with the violin outside the enclosure. Security is alerted, but the group knows it takes about 28 seconds for the security teams to get up to the enclosure, because of their 'Efficiency Monitoring' they did that morning. Two minutes and 51 seconds, the first security team comes up the stairs and begins shooting at the spirit. He knocks them out one by one with his fear or influence powers, simply defending himself while they fire harmless bullets at him. (Force 7 spirits can't be hurt by sub-machineguns...) Nine seconds later, Sprite removes the commbooster and screams "Let's GO!"

The party is still invisible, but there's lots of comm chatter now. The second security team has already been radio'd, and is coming up the far side where Wyld Hunt is fleeing the enclosure from the sleeping group the spirit is holding. Spriggan and Leo hit them /HARD/ and floor the security team in one round, all four guys laying around the scaffolding like rag dolls, while the alarm goes up that there are intruders in the building. The assembly line screeches to a halt and every skill-wired worker hits the ground as their Employee Broadcasted mechanical skills are over-written by the data-transfer specializing Spider, who turns them into a makeshift army. Virtually the entire force, hundreds of workers, gets Blunt Weapon training over the course of three seconds. The company is sprinting like mothers now, and still invisible. Two rounds later, the workers are moving to cover exits, when the fire-door bursts open and Sprite, Leo, and Spriggan race out the back of the building. They encounter one security team out in the dark on a jeep with a mounted machine gun, and take it out summarily as it screeches to a stop, noticing some spectacular failures in infiltration checks on the part of the company. The second group they find is on foot, and they take it out with slightly more difficulty, as one of the heavy guards drops a riot-shield and they take cover behind it, firing blindly and scoring a minor wound on Spriggan. (The only damage taken by the party during the Run.) They then decide 'screw this' and head to the wall. They have several free rounds while security tries to cover the gap in their patrol with two groups missing, and the adept puts a man-sized hole in the wall in seconds, taking minor electrical damage and not caring because his Regen soaks it as fast as he takes it.

The Wyld Hunt escapes into the night, making their rendesvous with Ogre and speeding away.

That poor Junior Tech is still sleeping in his apartment with an old lady Drabarne Spirit blasting him with Sleep Influence. He's going to wake up and his date is going to be gone, and she ran off with his 100Y bottle of wine...

If you want suggestions may I advise that you don't hit us with a wall of text, but give us a summary. If not then this is probably best put up on a different thread. All I know is that story could probably be summed up in a small paragraph or two, and then most of the rest of dumpshockers will probably be willing to give you advice.

It was five game sessions... I just need to update more regularly. *ahem*

I also didn't realize it was such a HUGE wall of text. Sorry...

Actually an enjoyable read though.

I, too, enjoyed the read. Though I've yet to play in my first SR session (my group is still in the learning/familiarizing phase), so I don't have much in the way of suggestions. Was there anything in particular you were asking to be critiqued?

Very enjoyable read
But, like Jonnysan, I am wondering if there was anything in particular you were hoping to get from us. It sounds like you have the game well in hand.

I like the first run your players did. Its a simple story and has a lot of potential for expansion. I like street level runs.

The Resident Evil run sounds a bit over the top for my tastes but it does sound interesting.

Comments, suggestions, and rules catches, mostly. My whole playerbase is brand spanking new to SR, so I don't get educated feedback from them, and actually getting them to sit down and read a book is actually extremely difficult. So I turn to you educated people, in the hopes of finding new inspirations for the campaign.

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The second part of this serious, 90k run is to infiltrate NeoNet's Transys Neuronet office in Downtown Seattle and steal the Datafile for unregistered communications transmissions used for signal boosting by NeoNet. The party is in and out in record time without a single hitch in the plan, but using a thermite burner to sizzle off the outside edge of the fire-door on the back of the twin-towers that host the Transys Neuronet employee hub, and disarm the fire-alarm and the maglock. Took Sprite about twenty seconds total. The party, invisible, slips in with their non-invisible Seguey (the little two-wheeled man-mover, used to cart their medkit and the mage, who is now sustaining for Improved Invis spells, and can't be trusted not to walk into a wall, much less move quietly around people), and NO ONE NOTICES. A lot of employees notice the door peeling open and the seguey buzzing quietly in, but in a society full of automated drones, and that punishes non-productivity, the NeoNet Customer Service department fails to report the issue, as they don't see anything really /wrong/ with it. Security, and they pass two groups on the way to the elevator, never says boo.

Slipping into the bathroom, they await control of one of the corp-issued commlinks, and sure enough a guy eventually walks in who has to pee. He's KOd in one hit, dragged into a stall, his pants are pulled down, and he's taped to the toilet. They wrecked that poor man's shirt. Using a data-cable to direct link the commlink to her brain and recasting the invisibility spell in the bathroom with the new addition, Sprite now has access to the pathetic Signal 2 of this special link, using it as a sort of slaved device to let her be able to see this buildings AR and upload the special agent they were issued to get the data they want. They head up to computer services, where the corp's hackers and net-security are generally slacking off and wasting time... some of them even play hackysack. The main hub is a static-shielded conjunction of computer equipment in a freezing cold room in the middle of this floor, surrounded by the cubicles that make up this floor's 'work area'. Again, no one questions the seguey left by the elevator, which appears to be there to pick someone up or drop something off? The agent is uploaded by the registered, security linked commlink they stole, and the data is taken in less than a minute. It's uploaded to Sprite's commlink... AND THEY LEAVE THE SAME WAY THEY CAME IN.

Smooth as silk, too easy. She even thought to disable the comm through her DNI before slipping out the fire-door so it didn't appear that anyone was leaving the building with Corp property.

That only leaves them needed to kidnap their techy from Ares...

I'm confused as to why the hackers were slacking off. Seems like they would have had at least a few people probing the net for weaknesses or a crap ton of defenses around some valuable data. Try challenging them more and see what happens. If a drone passes through a security check point scanner does it have the appropriate RFID tags that ID it as a drone that works for the company?

When a system is heavily automated it is also generally extremely predictable. This can be as much good thing as a bad thing. There might be automated built in sensors that recognize when a drone is deviating from its pre-programed route. There might be redundancies in the system that notice that the segway is not following a set path. If it enters a bathroom it might be a major tip off that something is wrong and security might go and investigate it. There might be scanners at the door, or a force 2 astral spirit watching the two key entrances to the facility. The players might need to do a little more probing and legwork next time. I might suggest building a more secure facility and have the runners fail once or twice, or at least make mistakes. In this way it can add dramatic tension to the scene and let the players know the setting better. Then you can tone the security down a bit and let them be more inventive with their plans.

I really like the sound of this run, however I have to say it does seem a little too "cake" to just waltz into NeoNet's HQ and steal some uber-important data like that. You're telling me that the building doesn't have wards on it? Wards are one of the most cost-effective methods of securing your HEADQUARTERS against astral invasion - that alone would've stopped them just waltzing in invisible-like.
Also, the air-head hacking/spider team for, again, NEONET (Matrix badasses that they are) being as lackadasical as they were seems out of character.
Plus, why didn't security come looking when someone shut off their corporate commlink? Also, why did random company guy have access to this privileged information? I know in my company I don't have access to, say, up-and-coming technology specs or security ID specifications, because it's not in my job description and thus not in my security clearance.

Like I said, I like the run, the group, the adventure - it just seems things are being made too easy for the team. Unless of course they literally circumvented all of that with careful planning and some good dice rolling.