Well my fiancee and I were talking, and bless me she said a fairly funny thing about asking if I was home when the cable was being installed since she wasn't there. As it is just the two of us living there of course the cable would have to be installed in my presence... although it got to thinking what if I wasn't there.

Would they kick down my door, bash a hole in my wall with a sledge hammer, splice in a cable line, blow out my windows with a shotgun, and zipline down the side of the building?

Needless to say I think it would be pretty funny for a group of shadowrunners who went around installing peoples cable. You had better be there or you might come home to find the security guards neck broken and stuffed into a locker, your front door blown off its hinges, a good install job on the cable network, and maybe half of your pets and wall that was facing outside missing, as well as your TV that is now possessed by a force 5 spirit of man.

I just wonder what other mundane tasks you could have shadowrunners do that would just cause way to much havoc and mayhem. Although someone with waaay to much money and time on their hands might just hire shadowrunners to do totally mundane tasks without really telling them how mundane it really is. Maybe the team is hired to install a chip into a comlink in someones office, and all it actually is is a thankyou card or maybe an OS upgrade for their system that they ordered.

Garbage collection. The consequences of mixing your recycling in with your waste don't bear thinking about.

Package delivery. Take this package and deliver it to this address and it has to be there in 24 hours, maybe your team might not take the direct approach and just try to deliver it to the exec on the top floor.

A Johnson giving mundane jobs to runners because he just has waaay to much money and free time on his hands.

Garbage, installation, package handling, fixing a faulty wire in a building, dropping off a crate of soy products to a stuffer shack.

Funny story, my group actually had a run like this. We were hired to steal some new BTLs being developed. The Johnson wanted them ASAP, and we learned that they would be going into production shortly, but wouldn't be distributed for several months while they were being produced.

So, as Shadowrunners, we do all our homework. We find out about the security, we learn how to spoof the watcher spirit, we do all the legwork we needed to . . . except. . .

We ran too early. When we broke into the factory, we learned that things hadn't been set up yet. They hadn't started to make the chips. So, we break in, find this out, and then our ninja breaks out, and comes back with our Tech Expert . . . Who upgrades the system, produces the chips, and we book it.

On the news the next day: "In a baffling turn of events, (Company XYZ) reports that someone broke into their facility the other day to . . . get this. . . complete work on constructing a production line. More on this story, as it develops."

Running a Restaurant - "Excuse me sir but do you really want me to ask the chef for ketchup??

Babysitting... that could get ugly.

Robert DeNiro's character in Brazil would definitely count as a shadowrunner air conditioner repairman...

Pest Control. It's a little obvious, true, but hilarious in results.

Hummm...

"Shadow Inc! When you absolutely, positively need the best black-op trained, Mr. Johnson approved hitsquad to take care of the little task in life. No problem too big, no task to small (as long as you got the Nuyen!). If you're still using IT Ninjas, it's past time for an upgrade! Who wants Ninjas when you can have Shadowrunners! Come down to see our full selection, everything from the pinkest of the pink Mohawks to the blackest of the black Trenchcoats!"

Special finance charges apply. Not responsible for injury, maiming, death, fire, explosion, earthquake, destruction, flood or other side effects of this service. Expect mission deviation due to lack of instruction or changing circumstances. Minimum charge 5,000 plus 5,000 deposit for a standard five Runner team. Expense charges applied. Don't call us, we'll call you.

Back in the SR3 days, I made a contact based on Chip "the Cable Guy" Douglas. Basically he was a nobody with fantastical dreams of becoming a runner who happened to work for a matrix service provider. If befriended by the team he would provide boosted MSP service for free, but then had an uncanny ability to show up at all the wrong times to "help" with a job.

Call them to mow the lawn. Find your lawn replaced with a flexible polymer that approximates grass and occasionally goes stiff and grows four feet to impale people before shrinking again. Doesn't grow naturally, though. Call them to change a lightbulb. Find a Shishi Operational Mechanics POwer Core in the roof of your home powering your entire house. All your lights have been replaced with searchlights. Ask for help moving - wake up in the middle of the night, bound and gagged as you and your family are taken to your new hidden in a Black Mariah, furniture is unloaded and you are placed back in your beds, unbound and hen beaten unconscious.




Where even if you're on holiday, a pack of Shadowrunners will come parachuting out of a low flying t-bird. The t-bird also releases chaff and starts taking on the (hacked) resort defences and metahuman security guards while they run up to you, force you to sign and disappear again, leaving you in an untouched island of calm sand while all around you is blood, gore, smoke and destruction. But damnit, you got that video game you ordered.

I love the idea of Shadowrunners who are too jaded to realise that everything doesn't require stealth and/or destruction, plenty of both.

I'm jaded enough to know that any plans fall apart on encounter with the GM/NPCs, therefor "kick down the door and open fire" is the actual plan.

I like sitting around and discussing alternatives (mostly other player's idiotic suggestions).

I'm also jaded enough to know that I can't sneak worth shit, but smart enough to not waltz in playing a drum (actually wait. I like that idea: everyone dress up in band outfits and march in...).

God, I couldn't tell you how many times I've gotten into a place by disguising myself as some sort of worker grunt. Stole some experimental drugs from a hospital by going in as a janitor two weeks ago.

I find repo man works good. Gives you good reason to be in someone's house why they are gone.

"You mised your last installment on those reaction enhancers, Mister Jones. I'm here to take them back!"

Mission:

"Runners are expcetd to deliver a small package to the top floor of the Hyatt Building in downtown Seattle at 21.30. The table on the seating arraingment is 12."

In fact Mr Johnson the incurable romantic wants to propose to Ms. Right in the top floor restaurant. Hilarity will surely ensure as the runners screw this run up completely or even worse deliver to the wrong table.

A female runner gets a call at an unusual time, The voice on the other side says "come and see my work, the Aztechnology penthouse suite. Come alone." Of course no runner comes alone and finds a high level corp. executive killed in his office. The next day she gets another call "come and see my work, the Deco Art Gallery at 10PM. Come alone." At 10PM the Seattle Savings and Mutual across the street gets robbed. He phones the day after the event "I heard you liked the view, I'll be outside your apartment at 7PM." While the rest of the crew are waiting around the door with their arsenal around them. A bathroom break is interrupted, by the window washer knocking on the window, waving at the woman and rapelling down to the ground.

The team got rickrolled by the window washer who liked showing off his clean windows.

(Idea taken from a G.I. Joe episode)

It's a really old joke, pre GI Joe.

Origin?

"I vant to vash and vipe your vindows"

Clicky for paper talking about that phrase

If you google it then you will find lots of videos and such. I is from a really old joke. The GI Joe use of it was back in the 80s.

"Bevare of the vindow viper" gets mistranslated to "beware of the window viper."

combat pizza delivery is a old standby i guess

Hey, people get hungry in firefights too

Any respectable band at that point would be playing "When the Saints go marching in"

Ah yes, the VIPER.

Heh.

Pizza delivery and Shadowrunning is too Snow Crash for my taste. I do like the idea though, but it just turns into...

"My pizza in 30 minutes or less... or else."

Plumber, sushi delivery I like because you can throw in the Yakusa instead of the mafia, a shelf stocker, a trash man.

Makes you wonder about the stealthy ones, too. Instead of your pizza being transported via a ramraid through your loungeroom wall, you blink and suddenly your pizza is on your lap, steaming hot and the money is gone. Possibly some valuables too. And just maybe a child, or part of your arm, if one of the delivery shadowsneaks was a ghoul.

Couple more IT Ninja bits, since they seem like they would be a bunch of sneaky shadowrunners hired to do IT work.

First Appearance
Talking about their contract
coffee
Speaker Upgrade

I wish I was that good.

Maybe I should spend some karma in the Infiltration skill group.

Relationship/Family Counseling: "You're going to have a fucking breakthrough, Miss Johnson, or I'm gonna start breaking your fucking fingers... one at a time. Can you hear me, you fucking slitch?"

Personal Trainers...

Youre going to do those three hundred pushups, or for each pushup that you miss, im going kick you... hard... for each one.

Or..

"Well, running is hard. That's why we have our friend, Tiny the Troll. Say hello, Tiny!"

An enormous troll, bulging with muscles, walks up in a pink tutu and giggling.

"He's Dermal Deposit Dan's little friend. Now, you're going to run these ten kilometres in fourty minutes flat. Tiny is going to try to catch up to you and have some "fun". He's going to run it in fourty minutes, ten seconds. Well, get going!"

Yeah, something like that.

Lol, Dermal Deposit Dan.

Yes. Not my invention, I prefer "Bubba the Love Sponge". And I think this thread has gone perilously close to troll pornography, thanks to yours truly. I'll abstain.

Kinda reminds me of Ninja Burger.

"You are ninja, the master of the night. Whatever the obstacles, whatever the opposition, you can deliver a burger and fries anywhere. In 30 minutes or less. You will bring honor to your franchise. Failure is not an option."

Except with Shadowrunners there's more gunfire and explosions. Hey, who else is going to deliver to you in the ass end of nowhere, or in the middle of a Z-zone?

Film crew. Quiet on the set - no, really!

Investigative Journalists, which might be too close to shadowrunning you think, I mean breaking into prisons to talk with the falsely accused, wiretapping corrupt officials, force feeding an Ares executive the Insecticide/FABIII mix they dumped in the CZ to see the effects on metahumans...

Mechanics, on-call. No drone is too small, no helicopter too big, no submarine too sunk!

*sets down the comlink on the table and presses the record button before slowly sliding it in front of the bound inmate*

"We only have one hour to get your story on tape before the alarm is raised and backup arives... so you better start talking... who did you work for and what happened to land you in prison, and I suggest you tell us the whole story or we might have to tack a special ending to it."

Runway Models! I'm too cybered for my shirt, too cybered for my shirt, so cybered it hurts. Or like an insane version of the Blue Man Group, where the audience members that can limp away all say they had a really great time...

I am seriously going to have to start throwing some of these in at random to really mess with my groups head.

First time I played that with my local gaming group they took the game seriously and told me to shut up and stop reading the cards.

Which started one person bitching about game balance (his character had the--without question--best special ability: 90% chance of every turn getting a new fortune card) and everyone started hating the game. Duh people, it's all about reading the cards! "Deliver to King Arther's Court, failure means everyone else gains an honor because there are now ninjas in Camalot."

I actually once ran a convention game for 2nd ed where Mr Johnson was sitting at Underworld 93 waiting for the headline band to go on stage and gets hungry for a real deep dish pizza with the works (at 1 am) and offers 5000 to whoever brings it to him first. I had 3 GMs each running a competing team trying to complete the "run". The teams were a go-gang, the opening band, and a small team of bored runners. It played out with the band aquiring the pizza, the go-gang jumping them in the parking lot in an attempt to steal it, and the runner team snagging it in the mids of the ensuing firefight and colecting the bounty.

i am so going to have to work that in somehow...