Hey everybody! After much time and several requests, I'm continuing my (semi-)popular series of Shadowrun "end-to-end" blogs/threads. Each one of these is the "story" of a complete shadowrun that I thought up, developed, and then ran for my group. In here you will be able to follow my process as I develop a shadowrun (my thought process and research) and then how I actually run it for my group, how the game mechanics are put into practice, and how I adapt to the (inevitable) deviations and curveballs that my group takes. My intention is that these "stories" would be a resource for GM's and players alike as they see how a relatively experienced GM (about 14 years of playing/GM'ing Shadowrun) runs his games. Without further ado, here is Extraction Reaction.

The Big Picture
Just to reiterate what I've already said in the Three-Data Monty write-up (because its still good information), events in a Shadowrun campaign should follow a logical sequence. Sponsoring shadowruns is dangerous and expensive for any corporation to do. Corps do not hire runners to do something just for a whim, they always have a good, profit-driven reason for doing so (for those who work in big companies, can you imagine writing up the ROI proposal on a shadowrun?). Again, the goal is to make the Shadowrun world feel "alive" for the players rather than a video-game-ish world where things sit around and never change unless the player(s) do something. My current campaign is running through the events of Year of the Comet and right now the much publicized "probe race" is the backdrop, and motivating reason, for corporations to sponsor runs against each other.

The Lead Up and Background
The most recent series of runs has focused on Ares attempting to undermine the probe projects of their competitors. With the exception of one run, the runs have targeted the Kepler probe project, which is a joint venture between Seattle-based Federated-Boeing, Shibata Construction and Engineering, and Aztechnology (as detailed in the Year of the Comet sourcebook). The runs have began as much more passive operations, but have slowly been increasing in risk and intensity. This represents an increased determination on the part of Ares to win the "probe race" and score a major public relations coup, and cement themselves as the premier megacorporation for space assets/interests.

To that end, Ares is taking a very "pro-active" approach in winning the probe race, and this includes having a backup plan. As detailed in the YotC sourcebook, Ares launched their primary Gigas probe very early, but the design was not very efficient and the probe is ponderously slow. Their backup plan includes two other much speedier probes: Velox I and Velox II. Ares wants to ensure that the Velox probes have the best possible chance to out-run their compeition and as such, they are looking to grab talent from their competition. Over the past week or so, Ares secretly made contact and opened negotiations with Dr. Darren Cardone, an astrophysicist working for Federated-Boeing. Ares agents were right on the verge of convincing Dr. Cardone to leave F-B when they suddenly lost contact with him. Not wanting to lose their opportunity or the time they have already invested in convincing Dr. Cardone, Ares has ordered him extracted and delivered to them by any means.

Unknown to Ares or Federated-Boeing, Aztechnology is becoming frustrated with F-B's lack of progress and doesn't trust their ability to protect their assets on the Kepler project. Quietly, Aztechnology has dispatched a pair of their top "Shorn One" black operatives, Lobo and Ocelotl, and tasked them with protecting Aztechnology interests in the probe project. Since their assignment, Lobo and Ocelotl have been gathering and deploying their own assets to shore up where they believe F-B security to be vulnerable. Dr. Cardone was one such area that the Shorn Ones identified. Rather than deploying overt physical assets to guard against extraction, the Shorn Ones took a more subtle approach. Two days ago they broke into the home of Dr. Cardone's family and informed him that should he ever be more than 5 minutes late coming home or going to work without informing them, his family (wife, son, and daughter) would be killed. Lobo and Ocelotl then left five of their operatives, disguised as F-B security personnel, to watch his family 24 hours a day. More than ever Cardone wants to leave his job at F-B to protect his family, but he is terrified at what might happen if he tries.

So, all of the above information happens prior to any of my players getting involved. Why come up with all of this stuff? Because that's what makes the Shadowrun world seem alive (as I mentioned earlier). All of this background information is essential stuff if your players ever deviate off of one of your (as a GM) carefully crafted paths. With all of this background information already developed your world will appear to have a lot of consistency. I find the background information especially useful when the players are doing their legwork preparing for the run. Usually, I don't pre-prepare a lot of legwork material because I've found that my players rarely ask about the stuff that I have prepared for anyway. So, I use the background information that I have written along with the opposition that I have designed for the adventure to improvise whatever legwork or research information they are looking for. As a GM, with all of this background information at hand, you can improvise new scenes and information for your players knowing that nothing will be horribly contradictory. I can't emphasize enough how important it is to start with this step, as a GM. As an added bonus, the background information for you current run or for some of previous runs can stir up ideas for future runs with a nice, solid vein of continuity running through them. Players will (hopefully) notice and (should) appreciate it.

The Hook
As I wrote before, I almost always start designing/planning a shadowrun adventure by having a “hook.� This is generally a singular mental image or feeling that I want the run to convey or be a set piece for the run. In the case of Extraction Reaction my hook involves action. Most of the previous runs I’ve ran for this group have focused on stealth and passive activities, without a lot of combat or shooting. The previous have been successful and the group in general has enjoyed them, but I understand some of them (namely the street sam - Primus) are starting to get a little antsy to get their gun off a little more. As a GM I like to be conscious of including all members of the group and ensuring they have adequate opportunity to showcase their primary skills. In addition to the street sam not getting enough “gun time� I have noticed that the group’s rigger hasn’t had much of a chance to shine. He has been very good-natured in ferrying the other members of the group to various locations, but I think its time to design something that highlights him as more of a feature participant. So, what situation would make a rigger and street sam happy? How about a “hot� extraction followed by a high-speed chase escape? My central “hook� for this run is: the group’s SUV racing down a Seattle freeway at top speed, with drones and cars full of security personnel chasing after them, with each side firing streams of bullets at each other. Ahh... if that isn’t classic/cool shadowrun, I don’t know what is. Now, I want that to be the climatic final scene of the adventure, so I work backwards from there and craft a series of events that leads up to that point. I want speed to be a central theme in this adventure, so I want things to happen fast, no time for planning, no time for subtlety, just pedal-to-the-metal guns blazing action. In thinking about incorporating that kind of theme I got the idea for an “extraction with a twist� adventure. Basically, the players extract someone after doing some planning and they think that the run is over there, but then they find out that they need to go somewhere else and do another extraction in an extremely short period of time against hostile forces. That’s where I got the idea of extracting a guy, then being forced to go and extract the guy’s family as well.

Even though I posted by Background section first, I actually started planning the run by focusing on the “hook� that I describe above. I wanted a planned “hot� extraction, followed immediately by another extraction of the target’s family against hostile forces. I want the second extraction to be unexpected, so it couldn’t be part of the original parameters of the assignment, or the group might plan for it. Now, that would mean by a strict reading of their assignment, the players wouldn’t have to do the second extraction, but I wanted them to feel a strong moral obligation to do so. That’s where I got the “evil black ops guys threaten to kill the guy’s family� plot idea. My players have demonstrated a strong sense of morality (one of them is a priest) so I’m fairly confident that they will feel strongly obliged to undertake the second extraction, though they may ask their employer for something extra. If their morality doesn’t push them to take the extra risk, well, they’ll miss out on a bunch of karma and a chance for extra pay, I guess.

After writing my Background for a run, I like to write a short Synopsis which is basically how I want/think the run to go. For this one here’s what I wrote.

Synopsis
The players are hired by “Chrome� for a job. The meet happens on a Wednesday evening, June 2061. The job is an extraction of a Federated-Boeing astrophysicist: Dr. Darren Cardone. Chrome believes the opportunity window for the extraction is rapidly closing (he’s right) so he demands delivery no later than midnight Friday. The players will need to do their own recon and determine the best place and time to do the extraction. Location options are: at the Auburn facility, in transit, and at his home in Everett. Cardone is most vulnerable while he is in transit. After extracting Cardone from the F-B security team, Cardone will know what is happening and immediately inform the players that his family is in danger. He will tell them that their lives are at stake and beg the players to go extract his family as well. The men holding his family are extremely wary, so extraction of the family cannot be delayed and must be done that evening. The players are not obligated by their job to retrieve Cardone’s family, but should feel a moral obligation to do so. The players will need to gain entrance to the “Boeingville� private community in Everett, fight off the Aztechnology operatives holding Cardone’s family, then make their escape with F-B Security and two Aztechnology Shorn Ones in pursuit. F-B Security will attempt to retrieve Cardone but will not take any action that could harm him or his family. The Shorn Ones will pursue with the sole intention of killing everyone.

After I have my Synopsis I break the run down into a series of Scenes. These scenes will form the basis of further detail for the run. For this run, here are the scenes:
1. The Meet
2. Legwork and Recon on Cardone
3. Extracting Cardone
4. Extracting Cardone’s Family and Escaping

Detailing the Scenes

Scene 1 – The Meet
Normally, I wait until the end to detail the meet with Mr. Johnson. This is because I often need to detail everything about the run before I can go back and give the players the information that Mr. Johnson is going to give them. In this case, however, the setup for the run is simple enough that I know what is going to be done. That doesn’t mean there’s a possibility that I won’t go back and change this scene, but I can certainly start here.

The run is going to be sponsored by “Chrome� a Johnson that the team has been working for quite frequently lately. His nick/street name comes from his two obvious cyberarms, which are always polished to a shine. He meets the players in the Redmond Barrens and never seems to have an escort, supremely confident of his own abilities. The meet happens on a Wednesday night. Chrome will tell the players that he needs them for a short timeframe extraction of a heavily guarded target. The base pay is 15,000 per runner, with 20% up front. They have just over 48 hours to complete the extraction: the target must be delivered no later than midnight Friday. I’m putting tight time restrictions on this run because I’m trying to emphasize speed. This run is going to be action-packed so I don’t want to give the players a ton of time to prepare. I’m trying to nudge them more in the direction of running in guns blazing. Also, the tight timeframe will mean there is far less of chance that they will identify Darren Cardone’s family as a potential complication, leaving that portion of the run as a complete surprise. The players will be given an information package about their target (Darren Cardone) upon accepting the run and payment. The package contains a personnel file (which does state that he has a family, if they’re paying attention) as well as the address of the F-B facility in Auburn where he works, and the address of his home in “Boeingville� in Everett. There is no information available on the security around Cardone, the team will need to do their own recon.

This scene should be very quick and to the point. The players should get the feeling that they need to get to work right away if they are to pull this off, and they’re right.

Scene 2 – Observation and Planning
I’m anticipating that my players will want to spend Thursday doing observation of their target as well as assessing the security around him. They have 3 potential locations where the extraction could take place: Federated-Boeing Auburn Facility, in transit, Boeingville in Everett. Although I’m expecting the team to perform the extraction while Cardone is in transit, since he is most vulnerable there, I decide to write out some info about the other locations as well since I don’t want to railroad them into it.

Federated-Boeing Auburn Facility
The first place I go when researching this is New Seattle. The entry on the facility is brief, but provides a good starting point for me. The F-B Auburn facility is where most of F-B’s top secret research happens, and it is one of the most secure F-B facilities in Seattle. It also gives the address which is incredibly helpful.

So, I know the facility is supposed to be ultra-secure so I start to make some notes on how I think the security would be laid out. I note that it has a heavy iron fence, topped with mono-wire, with only 2 gates in or out. Both gates are guarded 24 hours by a team of 4 heavily armed and armored guards. Since F-B is a big manufacturer of aerial drones, the security undoubtedly includes numerous drones buzzing overhead, on patrol and checking id’s. New Seattle states that anyone entering the facility needs an authorized ID badge, so this translates into an RFID chip by SR4 standards. The guards scrutinize the identity of anyone going in or out through the gates (Rating 6 scanner), and the patrolling drones inside the fence randomly re-check those ID’s. Sensors inside the buildings themselves monitor the RFID tags and ensure that only authorized personnel enter their designated areas. Deviating immediately alerts security. Magically, individual labs with particularly sensitive material are warded, and bound spirits patrol the grounds with a projecting magician also making periodic sweeps. The astral patrols have a lot of ground to cover, however, and there are gaps that could be exploited. Looking at the map (more on that later) I see that the facility is probably isolated in a fairly “suburban� area of Auburn, with only one long road in or out. Heavy trees around the facility do provide some cover should anyone want to take an “off road� route. I’m hoping the players feel discouraged from performing the extraction at the Auburn facility, since I really think it’s above their abilities. The team is still earning their reputation, and none of the characters are super optimized or anything. “One of the most secure facilities in Seattle� should beyond their abilities. Fortunately, their target doesn’t spend all his time at work.

Cardone in Transit
I once planned an extraction run where I detailed the security of the office where the target worked and nothing else. My players completely threw me for a loop when they asked where he went after work and how he got home. I didn’t plan my runs quite as well back then so I was caught unprepared. I hand-waved a (bad) excuse that he traveled home from work via private, non-stop monorail to a secure corporate housing complex. My players at the time could sense the meta-game “DON’T GO THERE� signals I was sending out as a GM. They weren’t happy, but played along and extracted the target at his office. Since then I have always prepared for every possible location where an extraction can take place. Always let your players develop their own plans. If they come up with something that throws you for a loop don’t panic, send them out for snacks/pizza/beer and throw together some quick notes that accommodate their plans. I firmly believe that Shadowrun is a system designed to reward players for creativity, whereas other RPGs tend to punish.

Cardone commutes to and from his work every day. Security around him during his transit is not trivial, but it is the weakest of any of the three locations. Cardone arrives at the Auburn facility at 8am and leaves at 5pm. He travels in an armored F-B Security van, with 4 other F-B Security personnel which includes a Rigger (who drives) and a Magician. The van is escorted by two other F-B Security cars, each with 4 guards in it. One car leads the van, the other follows it. Also travelling with the convoy are two aerial combat drones that stay low and close to the fore and aft of the van.

Now that I have the security of the convoy itself, its time to plan their route as my players will want to have their choice of location to ambush the convoy. I’m not going to make things terribly easy for them, however. The convoy is going to stick to major, public roads (no “short cuts� through the Barrens for them), and travel through high security areas. This means I need to hit the maps. Now, the maps in New Seattle are great to give you a general idea of the layout of the districts, but they’re not detailed enough for the kind of information that my players are going to want. That leads me to one of the best tools a GM has: Google Maps! Since New Seattle kindly gave me an exact address for the F-B Facility in Auburn I start by looking there. Huh, looks like there’s a stadium or something there right now. Now that I have a starting location, I can use the “get directions� feature to plan out his route. So, I click the “From Here� option for directions and enter a destination. Going back to New Seattle I check for the location of the “Boeingville� residential area. New Seattle says that it’s the residential area surrounding Paine Field. So, I enter Paine Field, Everett, WA as the destination and (voila!) I have a route. Now, its time for some tweaking. First, the convoy isn’t going to Paine Field itself, but to a house nearby. I zoom in near the destination (hmmm, that area really isn’t near present-day Everett) and move the “end� marker to a random location in the residential area surrounding the field. This puts the destination in a residential area called “Westmont� (anyone actually live there?), just off “Boeing Freeway� which sounds appropriate to me. Next I zoom out and get a broader look at the route. Currently it heads north on the 405 through Bellevue. I decide that F-B Security wants to be more cautious (and thus I’m being more mean to my players) than that. The 405 is frequently terrorized by the 405 Hellhounds so F-B is probably smarter than to send their valuable employee into such danger. Plus, my players used a gang as backup for the last extraction that they did and I don’t want to make it quite so easy this time. I click and drag the route to head north up the I-5, straight through Downtown Seattle, instead. Now, it’s just a matter of copy the directions on the left into my notes for the run. Also, I have my laptop with my when I run my SR games show I copy the directions link into the document so I can call it up at the session if my players want to look at it. You can look at it here. In general the route is: northwest up 164 (Auburn Enumclaw Rd/Auburn Way S) to 167, north on 167 up the border between Auburn and Tacoma into Downtown, jog west on the 405 then turn north onto I-5, north on the I-5 through Dowtown and Snohomish, exit the I-5 onto 526 (“Boeing Freeway�), turn southwest into Boeingville on Evergreen Way, a couple more unimportant turns until they reach his house. Now I have a detailed route. If anyone on DS actually knows this route (or parts of it) and wants to fill me in with additional details I’d be happy to hear them.

The escort drops Cardone off at his house and waits to ensure he makes it safely inside, then leaves. Google Maps tells me the trip takes 1 hour 14 minutes and up to 1 hour 50 minutes with traffic. I split the difference and say that the trip takes the convoy about 90 minutes. That means he leaves his house at 6:30am to arrive at work on time and arrives at home at 6:30pm. Thus is the life of a wageslave, I guess.

Cardone’s Home in Everett
The final possible location for the extraction to take place is Cardone’s home in Everett. This location also serves double-duty as the players will go here to extract Cardone’s family (if they choose) during the next Scene. Boeingville itself is described as one of the safest, most secure neighbourhoods in Seattle, so it shouldn’t be easy to penetrate, but not impossible. The entire neighbourhood is surrounded by a 5m high wall, topped by razorwire, and watched by regularly spaced cameras and sensors all hardwired into a network built into the wall. There are several different entrances into the district, some larger than others, but not one watched by less than 3 guards. Anyone going in or out has their SIN validated by a Rating 5 scanner. Cardone’s house is about a 5 minute drive from the North gate, and about 10 minutes from the South gate. F-B security drones (I’ll be using Nissan Rotodrone stats) patrol overhead, but are concentrated at the gates and near the walls. They will do random SIN checks on any intruders they spot. There are too many drones to all be directly monitored by Riggers, however, so the drones themselves are running on their Pilot programs, making them vulnerable. Some bound spirits do patrol, but they are (again) concentrated at the gates and wall, with very few inside the neighbourhood proper. F-B Security cars also patrol around the district, but those patrol cars stick to the major roadways and centers. F-B Security is primarily set up to respond to an alarm once it has been raised. Drone and Spirit security will arrive about 2 minutes after an alarm has sounded, with physical security responding within 5 minutes.

The house itself has a “standard� security package. Maglocks on the doors (Rating 4), cameras and motion sensors on the interior of the house (Rating 4), and a CHN (Rating 3) that controls the security system, PANICBUTTON, and everything else in the house. Its network covers the whole house and extends 5m beyond. Matrix access to the house is via underground fiberoptic with a junction box in the basement. There is an above-ground master junction box for the entire neighbourhood. The master junction is protected by an armored casing and has a maglock (Rating 5) with fingerprint reader. I’m envisioning the house as an upper-middle class house in a nice neighbourhood. Something a fairly well-off corporate employee would own.

Now, I know that this house is going to have some pretty intense close quarters combat going on, so I decide that I’m going to need a detailed layout. I could sit down and blueprint the whole thing out myself, but that’s too much work when I can just pinch what I need from the internet. Seriously, the internet has made things easier for lazy GM’s everyone. First, I want an idea of what the homes in that area look like present-day to get an idea of what Cardone’s would look like. The area I picked for his home is in Fairmont, WA. The power of Street View with Google Maps allows me to get an idea of what the area looks like right now. Right now the homes there are mostly bungalows, but I imagine F-B would put in some fancier new ones for their favored employees. I start a Google search for house blueprints, trying to find some of a similar style that I saw on the Street View. Fairly quickly, I find a good site that has a lot of house blueprints to browse. It also has a nice Advanced Search feature allowing me to narrow down what I’m looking for. I do a search on the site for a 2-storey house with 3 bedrooms, since Cardone is going to have a wife and 2 kids. After flipping through a few pages of plans I find a house that looks like a nice fit as a corporate employee’s home in a suburban area. The site gives me a nice exterior view, blueprints for both floors, and a rear view as well. Perfect. I nab the images from the site and stick them into my run notes. I may print them off to hand out to the players if they do something in-game that would get them detail plans of the house, otherwise I’ll just use the blueprints for an in-game description of the place. Sometimes if a battle is really intense I’ll use my vinyl map board with wet-erase markers and we put minis on them. We only do that for the most complicated battles, however, as most fights in SR are over too quickly to be worth the effort (IMO). So, that takes care of the F-B neighbourhood security and the house layout itself, now I need to detail the “surprise� waiting for my players: the AZT “babysit� team.

AZT Operatives
As I mentioned in the background, AZT has been stepping up lately to “assist� F-B in protecting assets around their joint probe project. In this case, the “security assistance� has come in the form of a “babysitter� team at Cardone’s house that is ordered to kill his family if he ever mysteriously disappears. The AZT operatives are disguised as a F-B Security team that is simply providing “extra� security at Cardone’s house. No one has questioned their presence yet. A friend of mine who has the old Aztlan sourcebook let me know that AZT Security teams usually come as a group of 5 and include combat specialists (ranged or melee), a decker (will be a hacker now), a magician, and a paranormal animal specialist. I don’t have to follow this pattern, but I wouldn’t have thought of the paranormal animal handler on my own, so I decide to go with this idea. The team at the house will have 2 “gun guy� combat specialists, a hacker acting as team coordinator, a magician, and a paranormal animal handler with 2 barghests and a hell hound. The Hacker and the Magician stay inside of the house the vast majority of the time. The two “gun guys� do regular patrols watching the front and back of the house, along with the two barghests. The Magician doesn’t do regular astral patrols or have any bound spirits, relying on the barghests and hell hound to detect astral intruders (both creatures are Dual Natured).

Whew, that was a lot of info, but I think I’ve covered everything that my players will want to know when doing their recon/legwork for this run. From here, I start to detail the scenes where the team will be doing the actual extracting. Since I’ve already planned out the security surrounding the target areas in this scene, my focus for the extraction scenes will be how the security responds to the players’ extraction attempt.

I happen to live in Seattle and know a number of Boeing engineers. I've also spent some time on a few of those freeways on your map.

The commute you have planned out seems rather nasty, but I have a friend at Boeing that does half that commute everyday. Even in real life, Boeing has buildings and factories all over the Seattle area, so depending on what project you're on, or what phase of testing, etc, you can end up with some rather nasty commutes no mater where in the Seattle Area you live. Your route as listed is the extreme version of it.

As for the route in general... Consider using Highway 99 instead of i-5. They run parrelel and 99 is closer to his home then I-5. It's also tends to have a lot less traffic on it durring Rush hour in downtown. Although it has plenty of stop lights as it travels through the north end of the Seattle region, it's a much faster path through Seattle itself, and they could hop on the 405 at Burien and then cut over to 167, as listed on your route. That stretch of 405 is a nasty bit of traffic by the way.

More importantly, 99 might have some more fun for a car chase. It cuts through the zoo, races over the 99 bridge (complete with troll), goes into a tunnel near Queen Ann, runs along the industrial waterfront, and crosses a drawbridge in Georgetown. In theory they intend to replace the aging viaduct with a tunnel, but if they just rebuild another raised viaduct that could be fun for a chase too. (Tunnel vs Raised)

If you stick with I-5, be aware of Boeing Field near Georgetown. I-5 runs right along side it. It's a small airport operated by Boeing. It's the kind of thing that could come up in a run on a Boeing guy.

Also, even I-5 goes underground through one part of Downtown Seattle, so those airborn drones in the security detail won't be following through that part. (Do a street view on i-5 at "freeway park" and you'll see what I mean.) If I was trying to grab a guy from a moving convoy, going in where you have cover from his air support would be an idea to look at. Mind you, downtown seattle would have a lot more police action.

Great stuff. I'll do a Google Street View of the route and get some more details. The route on 99 does sound a lot more fun, and it does make sense that F-B Security would want to get the guy off of the roads as quickly as possible.

PS What is that where New Seattle lists the Federated-Boeing Auburn Facility? Is it a baseball field or something?

I think that's the White River Amphitheater. I don't go to Auburn very often, so I'm not a big help there.

As a bit of more interesting note, that amphitheater sits on Muckleshoot Indian Reservation, and it's got a nice clear view of mount rainier. Both of those mean very different things in the Shadowrun time line now.

Let's remember that Auburn is very close to Mt Rainier, and is part of Puyallup which is not a nice place in 2060s.

Scene 3 – Extracing Cardone
As previously stated, there are three possible locations where the extraction can take place. My notes for this section focus on how the security responds when the players start their extraction attempt.

From the Auburn Facility
Officially, extraction from the Auburn facility is a possibly but I'm not really considering it a practical option. F-B's Auburn Facility is described as very secure so it should be considered beyond the player's ability at this point. The identities of everyone entering or leaving the facility are scrutinized heavily. All people entering or leaving must be pre-scheduled to do so or they will be delayed while their clearance is verified with the highest levels of F-B Security. Security at the Auburn facility will respond swiftly to any perceived intrusion on the facility. As soon as an alarm has sounded, the exterior will be locked down with no one let in or out. Once the perimeter is secure, F-B Security will in to the facility, locking down one portion at a time to force the intruders into an area of their choosing. Backup from outside the facility will also be called in to help secure the perimeter while security local to the facility moves in. The security personnel assigned to the Auburn facility are the best that F-B has to offer.

From Boeingville in Everett
The security guarding the perimeter of the Boeingville neighbourhood is quite strong. Once inside the walls, security is much lighter. The biggest challenge to the players will be the AZT Security team guarding Cardone's family. As soon as the team realizes an extraction is being attempted, one of the team will move to kill the family members. Since I know the team will need to hit this location later, I'll detail how the AZT team responds in Scene 4.

In Transit
While the vehicles are moving I'm planning on running this as Chase Combat, so anyone who's looking for an example of running a Chase Combat can watch for an example when I run this for my players. Now, thanks to the additional info that BlackJaw posted, I can add a little more detail to the route that Cardone takes. I’ll be switching his route to go up the #99 through Downtown Seattle instead of the I-5. I skimmed through the route using Google Map’s Street View so I could get a look at the major landmarks and I found some interesting features that the group will probably want to take advantage of. In many places the #99 is not a “raised� highway, but rather a 4-lane street with businesses and houses in close proximity on either side. In places where it is not raised there are traffic lights at major intersections; these would provide good ambush points or at least areas where the convoy would be legitimately stopped. The highway passes right by Sea-Tac airport, with lots of potential for traffic merging onto it at that point, as well as swift security response. After Sea-Tac the #99 becomes more of a “traditional raised highway� and passes through a heavy industrial district. The highway has a drawbridge, passing over the Duwamsh Waterway, then skirting east of the Federated-Boeing Shipyards. The real interesting twist is that #99 passes right through the heart of the Downtown district, skirting right on the edge of Elliot Bay (literally just a railing and the bay to the west of the highway). This also puts the road right on the edge of the Renraku Arcology which is still in shutdown and cordoned off by the UCAS Military with JTFS in the timeline that my campaign is running. Just north of there, still in the Downtown Core, #99 goes through a tunnel which could also provide a potential ambush point; however it could trap the players just as much as the convoy they are attacking. North of the tunnel, in the Queen Anne Hill district, the highway becomes quite elevated and passes over Interbay/Lake Union. From there it heads dead north out of Downtown, but passes through Woodland Park Zoo just south of Green Lake. The street view showed that numerous concrete bridges allow pedestrian traffic over the highway to opposite sides of the zoo, but these could provide good firing positions for the runners.

Now that I have some more details on the route itself, I need to plan how the protection team responds when they realize they’re under attack. First, when making up the stats for the F-B Security Magician I had a great brainwave: I gave him the Detect Enemies spell and a Sustaining Focus. While the convoy is in transit, the Magician will have a Force 5 Detect Enemies spell being Sustained the entire time. This will alert him of any hostile intentions within 30 meters of the van. I know there is a lot of “grey area� when interpreting the results of the spell, but I do think that what the players are planning to do would constitute “hostile intentions� towards the Security Mage. Once the convoy is under attack, the first thing the Rigger will do is signal F-B Security HQ that they are under attack and request reinforcements. This could prove very troublesome to the players as the convoy’s route brings it within close proximity of several F-B facilities that could scramble additional forces, especially drones. Hopefully my players will realize this and jam the transmission, but if they don’t I’m not going to go easy on them. After sending a message to F-B Security the Rigger will also notify Lone Star as the attack is probably taking place within their jurisdiction. The route that the convoy takes passes them through nothing lower than an “A� Lone Star security rating, so response will be pretty prompt: a Citymaster full of HTR officers within a minute or so. In general, the convoy knows that it is vulnerable and will attempt to stay moving at all costs. If it becomes clear that they cannot outrun their attackers, they will exit the major roads and attempt to loose their pursuers in side streets by taking frequent turns. The Magician will use his Trid Phantasm spell to alter the van’s appearance in a further effort to throw off pursuit. The escort vehicles will try to form a screen to keep any attacking vehicles blocked while the van makes its escape. The drones will always stay in close support of the van. Both the van and the escort cars are equipped with gun ports that the guards inside will make good use of to fire at attackers from behind the protection of the vehicle armor. The Security Mage will also summon a Spirit to help, either to aid the van in fleeing (Spirit of Air) or to engage the attackers (probably Spirit of Earth). Also, the Magician will make a point of providing Counterspelling to anyone within the van. The van itself has two front doors, and one large sliding door on the passenger side of the vehicle. All windows except the main windshield have one-way glass, so the Magician on the inside can cast spells out, but line of sight is block inside the van.

Scene 4 – Extracing the Cardone Family
The “big twist� in this adventure comes in this scene. This is supposed to be the “reaction� part of Extraction Reaction. The team performs a difficult, but not impossible, pre-planned extraction and now must immediately complete a second one. As I stated earlier, this scene is technically optionally, but I will be leaning fairly heavily on the morality aspect to convince my players to go after the family instead of letting them die, even though its not part of their mission parameters. Most of my player’s characters are fairly morally conscious runners, so I’m confident they’ll voluntarily take up the extra risk, though they may ask Chrome for a bonus afterward.

Getting the Family
Darren Cardone knows that two days ago, two mysterious men broke into his house in the dead of night and delivered a frightening threat: go missing from your job and your family is dead. The first two men didn’t stay long, and left behind 5 others to stay at the house. They are disguised as F-B Security personnel, so no one at F-B has questioned them yet. Cardone tells the players that his family has been very frightened ever since the men came, so getting them to come along with the players will be a delicate operation. He insists on going with the players as that is the only way he believes he can convince his wife and kids to come along. The team watching his house expects him to be home within 5 minutes of his expected arrival, without calling ahead to indicate that he will be late. If the players do want Darren to make that call he’ll need to succeed in a Con check against the AZT Para-animal Handler, who is the team lead, which is not an easy task at all. Cardone has a wife, Aline, and two kids: Ben, who is 6, and Claire, who is 4. Cardone expects all of them to be in there respective rooms (all on the second floor) which is where they have waited for him to come home from work every day since the intruders arrived. Ben is an avid collector of Transmorphing Space Ninja toys (this is kind of a running inside joke in my campaign, I’m trying to work in “cameos� of TSN whenever I can). Ben will be scared but fascinated by the players that sport obvious weapons and cyberware. If one of the players demonstrates knowledge and interest in the TSN show, he will be much more inclined to follow them. He will insist on taking his favourite TSN toy, however, a conglomerate of smaller toys with Transmorphing Missle Action!^TM Claire is hiding in her closet where she fled when she heard noise downstairs (the players’ inevitable noisy entrance). She will not leave the closet until her mother or father comes to get her, and will insist on bringing her cat: Snookerbummer (I’m not making that name up, a friend of mine has a cat actually named that). The toy and the cat I threw into the adventure to provide a comedy element. I also plan on using them as the explanation for any Glitches that the players roll when they are making their escape with the kids (“You get hit in the eye with a Transmorphing Ninja Missle!� “Snookerbummer jumps onto your forearm and digs in with her claws!�), it should be amusing.

The AZT team that is watching Cardone’s family has the expressed mission of killing them before allowing them to be extracted. They are dedicated to their task and will not give up easily. As soon as it becomes clear they are under attack, the AZT Hacker will signal their bosses: Lobo and Ocelotl. The two Shorn Ones are nearby seeing to other security manners and will respond swiftly. Second, the AZT Hacker will alert all members of his team that they are under attack. Their standing orders for when they are under attack are for one of the combat specialists to move to kill the family while the rest of the team fights a delaying action. After killing the family, the team will withdraw and escape. First, the team will use their paranormal animals to delay the attackers: the barghests and the hell hound. The AZT Magician will also send his Bound Guardian Spirit to delay any attackers. He will also use his Ice Sheet spell on the stairway and Mass Confusion to further hinder the runners from rescuing the family. He knows that he need not eliminate the players, but just delay them long enough for the family to be killed. This should make things difficult but not impossible for my players, and will certainly present an interesting tactical challenge. The other AZT Combat Specialist and the Paranimal Handler (after commanding the animals) will user cover and suppressive fire to further delay the runners. As a final complication (just because I’m like that), when Darren’s wife Aline hears the commotion of the battle downstairs she will take the opportunity to activate the house’s PANICBUTTON. Normally, the AZT Hacker would prevent the signal from reaching F-B Security, but with the battle taking up most of his attention, there is a good chance that the call will go through. Once the PANICBUTTON is detected by F-B Security they will dispatch a patrol to the house that will arrive within 2 or 3 minutes. This will not be soon enough to affect the battle one way or another, but it will complicate the runners’ escape if they succeed in rescuing the family. Before that, however, the players will catch a glimpse of Lobo and Ocelotl.

Getting Out
Getting out of “Boeingville� with the Cardone family should be the furious climax of this high speed adventure. In my head, this final half of the final scene is another high-speed, tire-screeching, guns blazing action sequence. First, it is highly likely that the AZT team was able to signal Lobo and Ocelotl about the runners’ extraction of the Cardone family. This will result in them making a very brief “cameo� appearance. Basically, just as the runners have finished loading up the Cardone family and are just about to climb into the vehicle themselves, the Shorn Ones will show up. In a straight-up fight the Shorn Ones will likely clean the runners’ clocks, so I don’t want this to be a straight fight. Combat with the Shorn Ones should last one or maybe two Turns. I want it to last just long enough for the runners to see that they are clearly outmatched by these guys and just take off. Since the Shorn Ones are on foot, they should be left behind, fuming, when the runners take off in their vehicle. This brief appearance by the Shorn Ones will be a foreshadow of things to come in this adventure and (more importantly) further adventures. The players should peel away from the Cardone house and say, “Who were those guys?� The focus will then quickly shift to escaping F-B Security.

Whether by Darren’s with Aline, or possibly a nosy neighbour that hears the noise, F-B Security will be alerted to the house and be on their way when the players leave. What should result is another furious car chase that I will be running as another Chase Combat sequence. F-B Security should be hot on the runners’ heels with more cars joining the pursuit as it continues. F-B Security will make heavy use of aerial drones to track the runners’ vehicle, while any drone is following them the F-B Security forces will get a +2 DP bonus in Opposed Vehicle Test in Chase Combat. I’m mostly going to improvise this scene based on how the players want to make their escape, but I’ve noted some possible encounters, or “mini-scenes� that could come up during the escape:
• Road Spikes: road spikes deployed, make a driving test or tires are blown
• Pedestrians: turning a corner puts the runners’ right in the path of a family crossing the street pushing a baby stroller
• Outmaneuvered: a F-B Patrol car suddenly appears in front of the runners, trying to drive them back towards the pursuers behind them
• Roadblock: the road ahead is blocked by F-B Security vehicles, the players can circumvent it by driving onto the nearby lawns of houses, breaking through fences

Overall, F-B Security will not take any action that puts the Cardone family in overt danger, since they want to recover them alive. This means they will attempt to disable the runners’ vehicle with minimum force (no heavy weapons or explosives). Since the “Boeingville� district is walled on three sides, and they will be unwilling to open the gate for the players, they will have to force their way out. The gate controls can be hacked, but with a Signal 4 they will have to be within 400m before the hack can even be started. At high speed, it’ll be a near thing to get the gate open before they hit it. Alternatively, they can simply ram through the gate or blow it open with grenades. Fun times. After the players escape the Boeingville district, F-B Security will respect their jurisdiction and break off active pursuit, calling Lone Star instead. They will continue to watch the runners’ vehicle with drones, feeding their current location to Lone Star. Eliminating the drones will effectively lose their pursuit from F-B or Lone Star. However, there is another party also pursuing the players.

After making their escape from the house, Lobo and Ocelotl didn’t just give up and go home. They scrambled to their own vehicle and made preparations to intercept the players themselves, assuming that F-B Security would not be up to the task. They are currently tracking the runners from Security RFID tags implanted in all members of the Cardone family that my players will not have time to remove during their escape. Once the runners believe they are clear of pursuit, an ominous jet-black Eurocar Westwind will appear behind them and close rapidly. F-B Security pursued the runners with minimum force with the intention of recovering the Cardone family alive, but the Shorn Ones have no such reservations. They will shoot to kill. This final vehicle-based encounter I’m planning to run as a Tactical Combat, tracking exact speed and position information between the vehicles. As the Westwind closes the distance (which it should have no trouble doing) it will rake the players’ vehicle with a Full Auto burst from its LMG. This may seem like the main thrust of the attack, but it is only a diversion. When the Westwind gets close enough, Ocelotl will leap from the car to the roof of the runners’ vehicle. The noise of the fight should cover his landing, but I’ll let my players roll a Perception check to be fair. The LMG on the Westwind extends out the rear passenger side of the vehicle, in a “sidecar� sort of position. Being sufficiently wary of the LMG, my players should choose to pull along the driver side of the Westwind to be out of the LMG’s line of fire, while allowing themselves to get a good shot at the car with their hand weapons. Lobo will allow the runners to maneuver into such a position, but this is also a trap. The runners’ vehicle has no Gun Port mod so they will need to crack a window or door in order to fire on the Westwind. Lobo and Ocelotl will have a held action for just such an opportunity. The instant a door or window is opened, Ocelotl will throw a Frag Grenade into the vehicle while Lobo lays suppressive fire. Unless the runners can get it out, the grenade will almost certainly kill Darren Cardone and his family. Ocelotl will also use the covering fire provided by Lobo the leap back to the Westwind. At which point, the Shorn Ones will break off. Although prevent Cardone’s extraction is important, the Shorn Ones are veterans. They know that exposing themselves even to a “less skilled� team like the runners is dangerous, and they do not want to risk losing their anonymity. If their attack is unsuccessful, they know they will have more opportunities, especially if the runners fail to remove the tracking tags. If any of Darren’s family has been injured in the escape, he will insist on getting them medical attention before being handed over to Ares.

Payment
The players will receive the rest of the promised 15,000 per runner. Extracting Cardone’s family will receive only a polite “thank you� unless the players ask for more. Chrome is prepared to give a maximum bonus of 5,000 per runner in additional goods or services.

Karma
I’m using the adjusted Karma awards as given in the 20th Anniversary Core Rulebook. I’m sure my two Awakened characters will very much appreciate it.
Surivial: 1
Extracting Darren Cardone: 1
Extracting the rest of the Cardone Family: 2
Overall threat level: 2

Individual awards for outstanding bravery, roleplaying, or usefulness will also be given if earned.

Alright, that's it for the run planning. Not a moment too soon either since I'm going to be running the session tonight! If you would like to see my complete notes for this adventure including NPC stats, you can download the DOC here.

The floor is open for questions and comments!

What if the players go directly for Cardone at home?

Honestly I could easily see the players saying: "Well where he works is way too guarded, and check out all the security on the convoy... plus you know, Lone Star is all through that area... Hey, I know! Let's hack a pizza delivery car and sneak into the Boeing neighborhood and extract him from his less then high security home!"
That of course leads to subtle (low powered) gear being taken to what will be a far more complex firefight, and how does the AZ squad handle an armed force attacking the house when Cardone is home? Will they think it's FB's security coming in? If Cardone isn't expecting/trying to escape will they still exacute his family?

Also, I'd be aware that the players may not bring a vehicle able to handle getting the whole family out at once. I'd put a nice SUV or minivan either in the Cardone family drive way or conveniently in the neighbor's. It's a nice easy hack, and you can fit the whole family in it if the players only brought a pizza delivery car with them.

I just wanted to say I'm definitely a fan. Your "runs" show the level of understanding, adaptability, social engineering, and downright creativity that would rank you a damn fine GM in my book.

If I ever had the chance to actually play rather than run games every other weekend, you'd be someone I'd want to play for.

Kudos to you and this magnificent write up (which was most entertaining at work). I will have to go check some of the others.

On a final note, I enjoyed seeing how you implemented the two prime runners you were discussing in another post.

Mad respect. [with more than a little jealousy]

The AZT "babysitter" team's purpose is to prevent Darren Cardone's extraction. They will attempt to fight off any extraction attempt at the home, but will move to kill Darren and his family if it looks like they have a chance of losing him. However, this may buy the runners the crucial moments they need eliminate the Azzie's. Darren will insist on bringing his family with him.


Could catch on the vehicle. The group's Rigger has a Rover Model 2068 SUV. It would be tight fit with the team and the family, but I would allow them all to squeeze in. Should they want to take two vehicles out I'll certainly let them boost a nearby van, of which there should be plenty.

EDIT: Thanks for the glowing compliments Wiseman.

Looking good.

Before I post a recap of the first session I just want to post a warning at the top here. I know at least one of players reads the forum, so I’d like to politely ask you not to read this right now. After the run is over, you can go ahead and read but right now it would be kind of a spoiler.

Session 1
Friday, June 12th, 2009
3 hours

The team for this session:
Reaper – sneaky elf gun adept
Primus – ex-UCAS military combat monster
Cruiser/Bruiser – troll tank melee brawler
Padre – Christian Theurgist mage, Catholic priest
Reso – Spanish ork drone rigger

We got this session started late because we had to watch the end of Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals. In Canada, Shadowrun definitely goes on hold for hockey. Once the game wrapped up we got right down to business.

Before the actual session started I had a few people do “between run� type stuff. That includes spending Karma to up skills, buy some new equipment, and such like that. Nothing really significant was done except for Padre grabbing himself some cheap Commlinks and a fake SIN. Padre had done some run-related stuff with his real SIN (oops!), which netted him a visit from Lone Star after one session. LS didn’t have quite enough to prove that he had done anything, but it was still enough to make him take some precautions.

The run started as I usually start them, with the group getting a call from their mutual Fixer, Tiny (an overweight Troll). I’ve decided to try and liven up this initial “meet� scene so I decided to do something different. Instead of Tiny just telling them they have a job and giving them the meet location, I had Tiny invite the team out for supper at You Should Not Eat So Much! I’m not making it up, this is a canon restaurant in Seattle. The place fits great with Tiny’s always overeating character. Cruiser/Bruiser gleefully indulged in the 10 nuyen all-you-can-eat buffet. The rest of the team decided to show a little more restraint, though Tiny had an enormous mound of food on his side of the table. I also had fun RP’ing the conversation, saying each line as if I was chewing a mouth full of food. After each line the team would have to puzzle out what I said. Some of them were a lot better than others. It was a good, light-hearted way to change up the traditional opening scene of Shadowrun. After getting the meet time and location, the team implored Cruiser to finish his food and head out as soon as possible. The team met with “Chrome� the cyberarmed Mr. Johnson who’s been employing them the last few runs. Again the meet happened in a dangerous area of the Redmond Barrens and Chrome seemed unconcerned, having no obvious bodyguards. At the meet Chrome laid out the basics of the run: hot extraction under heavy guard with a tight timeline. Primus was so excited to be doing something that involved shooting that the team had to hold back his enthusiastic volunteering to do the Negotations for the run. Considering Primus has a Charisma of 1, no Social skills, and the Uncouth quality we figured his negotiating would probably be something like, “Hot extraction? We’ll do it for free!� The team accepts the initial payment of 15,000 per runner with 20% up front (3,000). After accepting they receive the details of their target: Dr. Darren Cardone. They are told that he was in negotiation to leave Federated-Boeing but that Ares lost contact with him. He works in F-B’s Auburn facility and lives in their corporate housing in Everett. He must be delivered no later than midnight Friday night. The team cracks open the basic biography that Chrome gives them and takes a read. I tell them that they have his picture, and some basic details of his life, like his education, and work history. I also casually (as much as I can) say that he has a wife and two kids. Immediately (my players are too smart/pessimistic) Reaper says, “Great, we’re going to have to get his family too!� They spoiled the surprise already, oh well.

With basic information in hand the team heads out that evening to start scouting the locations. Their first stop is the Auburn facility where Cardone works. Right away they know it’s going to be trouble. There is only one major road in, and they immediately see a lot of obvious guards. All of them armed with assault rifles and full body armor. The facility is surrounded by a 3 meter fence topped with mono-wire with drones flying all over the place. Padre decides to do a quick astral recon and sees that there are numerous wards in the facility, but they are small and protect specific pockets. He also sees a bunch of spirits flying astral patrol, but sees that they do have a lot of ground to cover, so he could possibly slip in astrally for a closer look. He decides not to risk it at this point. Reso launches is Tower blimp drone and tries to bring it close to the facility to see if he can pick up their wireless network to possibly hack in. After breaking the 1km mark above the facility is drone is given its final warning to leave restricted F-B air space or be shot down. He also decides to back off, though he does leave the Tower in position to do some passive surveillance of the facility. The team decides that the Auburn facility looks like a tough nut (it is) and moves on to scout out his home in Everett.

“Boeingville� in Everett is also a very secure place, as they soon find out. The whole community is surrounded by a 3 meter high brick wall, topped with razor wire (Reaper: “At least its not mono-wire!�), with cameras and sensors spaced approximately every 10 meters along the wall. The two major gates into the community have 3-5 guards on duty at all times. With the guards, again, in full body armor armed with assault rifles (this corp does make military hardware after all). Checking the Astral, Padre notes that one of the guards on duty at the main gate is Awakened. The wall and gates are also patrolled by numerous rotory surveillance drones. Reso has the initial idea to try and “appropriate� one of those drones to do further surveillance but doesn’t think he can get away with it. I check what Knowledge skills Reso has, and he has a moderately appropriate one: Border patrol tactics (former smuggler). I let him roll it with a -2 penalty. He gets 1 hit so I decide to give him a little “GM hint.� There are way too many drones for a Rigger to be monitoring all of them in real-time. If he could take over a drone without raising an alarm, he could easily have it send a signal that it was experiencing “technical difficulties� and is heading back to the garage, at which point he could take it for an unscheduled pass of the Cardone home. Now, the group was missing the regular hacker, Unbeliever, for this session so they had to go with Reso’s “secondary� hacking skills. Wanting to be sure he would raise an alarm, Reso pulls the van well out of sight, moves a Fly-Spy within signal range of the F-B Drone, then begins a slow Probing the Target hack, going for Admin privileges on the drone. If you don’t remember, that’s a Hacking + Exploit (Firewall + 6, 1 hour) Extended Test. While Reso spends a few hours doing the hack, the rest of the team calls some contacts to see if they can dig up some more information about their target. The contacts turn up nothing and a paid Data Search on the target only turns up what they pretty much know already. This is a pretty boring (but typically) corporate employee and family man (further reinforcing to Reaper that they’ll need to extract his family).

After completing the hack on the drone Reso takes it for a some recon on the Cardone house. After initially rolling only 2 hits on the Perception test he decides to spend an Edge to reroll getting him 6 more hits (this is unusually good luck for Reso). With a total of 8 hits on Perception I tell him pretty much everything about the house. There are 7 adults there and 2 kids. That means there are 5 security people in the house with the family. Two of them spend a good deal of time outside patrolling the front and back of the house. There are two really big dog things also in the front and back yards. The glow-in-the-dark saliva tells the team exactly what they are: Barghests. One of the 3 guards in the house comes out every little while to check on the barghests. The other members of the team do a quick Data Search on the capabilities of barghests, which I decide isn’t difficult to find. When the team learns of the paralyzing howl they immediately start working on getting Ear Buds with Selective Sound Filters for all members of the team (smart guys). Further observation also shows that there is one more big, dog-like shape inside of the house. I also tell him that the heat signature is way too hot for a normal dog. They pick up pretty quick on this hint too: Hell Hound. Another quick Data Search on Hell Hounds tells the team that they cause “unnatural fear� (similar to barghests) and that they breathe fire. Already the team is not looking forward to this intrusion. Now I’m glad that I got a tip on the paranormal animal thing, as they definitely make the run much more interesting.

Assuming that they need to move as quickly as possible, the team starts planning for the extraction that same night. The initial plan is to disable some wall sensors so Primus and Reaper can climb the wall, then head to the house to deal with the Security team and retrieve the family. They will then commandeer the family’s vehicle (which is probably in the garage, they don’t know for sure) to make their escape. Reso and Cruiser/Bruiser plan on causing a distraction (a big, noisy one) at one of the other gates to cover the intrusion team’s escape. Padre plans on summoning a spirit to provide backup to the intrusion team. This is the point in the run where I simply sit back and let the team discuss their plans, doing my best not to give them any hints one way or another. That being said, I know that Primus and Reaper will get wasted if they try to go into the house just the two of them. The team talks out variations for a little bit until Reaper decides that they have too little information to go on. He convinces the team to wait at least 24 hours in order to establish the pattern and habits of their target. Smart.

So, Reso recovers his Tower drone from Auburn and sets it up for surveillance on the Cardone house at high altitude. They see the convoy pull up to Cardone’s house to pick him up: a van and two escort cars. Also, two rotory combat drones hover in close support of the van. There are 4 guards in each car and another 4 in the van. Reso has the drone follow the convoy on its route from the house in Everett to the Auburn facility. I describe the route with all of the highlight points I noted in the planning section. Unfortunately, only Reso listened to it. By the time I had told them that there were 12 guards on the convoy the rest of the team had discounted hitting him in transit. After watching the convoy arrive at its destination the team went back to their planned intrusion into Cardone’s house in Everett.

At this point with the real clock passing midnight, I decided to call the game at that point. I knew that any of the combats was going to take awhile and I didn’t want the game to drag on too late. My secondary motivation was to give the team time to think about their plan. During the session they seemed focused on just counting the numbers of guards and using that to make their tactical decisions. I was predicting that the difficulty getting people and equipment into Boeingville would cause them to look elsewhere for their attack point, but they seem convinced that they’ll have to extract Cardone’s family (which is right) simultaneously with extracting Darren Cardone himself (not strictly true). This is the tough part of being a GM: what do you do when your players are developing a plan you know has little chance of success?

After the session on Friday, I was still churning my “GM brain� on the challenges that I gave my players. One thing that came up in the session was the fact that they were having trouble getting equipment for the run in the timeframe that they were given to complete it. Honestly, this wasn’t something that I had thought of ahead of time. I wanted the timeline of the run to be tight in order to not give my players a lot of time to prepare an overly elaborate plan, not to put the crunch on what equipment they could acquire. So, I sent an email out to the team (in character) letting them know that Chrome had sent them a message, via Tiny. In the message he gave the team a link to a Matrix site where they could order a whole buffet of equipment (weapons, armor, vehicles, electronics) and have it delivered anywhere in Seattle in 4 hours. I also made clear that the arrangement was a temporary one. I’m hoping that making it easier to purchase equipment will open up some new planning options for the players. The next session will tell, I suppose.

Session 2
July 20th, 2009
4 hours

Reaper – sneaky elf gun adept
Primus – ex-UCAS military combat monster
Cruiser/Bruiser – troll tank melee brawler
Padre – Christian Theurgist mage, Catholic priest
Rush – slick elven face and sniper
Pallbearer – stealthy elven sammie, ranged and close combat balanced

This session took a big twist for the group from the first one. Primarily, they had to deal with personnel issues. Their ork rigger, Reso, had some unfortunate RL work commitments and couldn’t make it to either of the final two sessions. However, the group did add two new members with Rush (who has run with the group before, but has been absent for the last while), and Pallbearer (a new character, a combat build nicely balanced between toughness, ranged, and melee). In game terms we hastily explained this as Reso coming down with a serious illness preventing him from continuing the run, and the group calling Tiny (their Fixer) for some additional personnel given the unexpectedly high opposition in the run.

Once everyone was settled we quickly went over the parameters of the run up to this point for the new people. I let the other players do most of the recap as I like to see how much they remember for session to session and get their perspective on things. In this case I did learn something new. When the group was going over the possible options on the extraction plan Rush suggested to the group that hitting Cardone in transit might still be easier. Cruiser squashed that plan by stating that the possibility of Cardone’s family being harmed in response to his extraction was enough of a reason for him to insist on the (probably riskier) plan of hitting the family at home so they could all be extracted at once. I had clearly underestimated how moralistic my runners were. After the quick review session, the group finishes up their purchases using the “special offer� that I had made available to them to pick up equipment from the end of the last session. Highlights from the equipment purchases include: one-shot Rating 6 Area Jammers, two LAAW Rockets (Cruiser), some Chameleon suits, and a gryomount harness for an Ingram White Knight loaded with EX-EX rounds with tracers (Primus – he bought the tracers because he thought they would “look cool�).

After grabbing all of their equipment, the team goes over their plan one final time. They are planning to make a stealth intrusion by scaling the wall that surrounds Boeingville at a lightly guarded section, hiking on foot (!) to the Cardone household, extracting the Cardone family, then boosting a nearby vehicle (preferably the Cardone’s) in order to make their escape. Padre will be providing an Astral presence only, as his complete lack of Physical Active skills is more than a little determent to the team in that situation. In order to provide Counterspelling support on the physical plane, Padre summons a Force 6 Guidance Spirit just after sundown on the night they are making the intrusion. His first attempt to Summon the powerful spirit fails entirely (no services), but after popping an Edge to reroll failures he ends up with 5 Services (Edge well spent)! Feeling a distinct lack of technical support with their Hacker and Rigger missing the group decides to secure some help. Cruiser has a Hacker contact named Ace that he calls up to ask for on-call Matrix support. Ace charges a hefty price (almost a full share of the run price) but they know he is a skilled Hacker and they need him to disable security systems. They also call up Tiny to put them in touch with a Rigger wheel-man that can wait for them outside of Boeingville and allow them to switch vehicles to make their escape. The Rigger comes a little cheaper due to the limited role but it still cuts into their profits. The group agrees to use Reso’s share of the run payout in order to cover the costs. The physical intrusion team then moves into position, with Padre a safe distance away (in a motel) ready to join them Astrally, and Ace “riding� in Cruiser’s commlink via the Matrix.

At 3am it’s time for the group to move in. The first task is to disable the cameras and sensors on the wall surrounding Boeingville so they can move in without being spotted. Cruiser sends a message to Ace and asks him to disable the cameras and sensors. After a short pause Ace informs him that the cameras are not emitting a wireless signal and cannot be hacked remotely. Oops. This was a feature of the security that I had pre-planned but no one in the group had checked it during their legwork/planning. Stumbling out of the gate, the group has to improvise. After thinking for a minute or two someone (I think it was Reaper) comes up with the idea to crash one of the patrolling drones into the cameras to cause a blind spot. It will “probably� look like an accident and give them the blind spot that they need to get in. No problem, Ace tells them. He waits for one of the patrolling drones to come within range of Cruiser’s commlink then hacks it and causes it to crash into the wall, creating a “blind spot� in the cameras on the wall. I did the hacking of the drone and crashing it as pure narration with no die rolls, considering it was an NPC it would be a waste of time to run the dice mechanics. After the drone crash, the team wastes no time in proceeding to the wall. As per plan, Cruiser, being nearly as tall as the wall itself, takes position in order to “hoist� the rest of the group over. Here’s a classic case of where a GM just needs to improvise a rule and keep the game moving. I couldn’t, off the top of my head, think of any rule that would cover boosting someone over a wall in the manner Cruiser was, ensuring that everyone cleared the razorwire at the top, so I made one up. Cruiser had to make Throwing Weapons test and hit a threshold equal to half the body of the person he was boosting. Failure means he could get the person over the wire. The only person he fails to boost over the wire is Primus, who has to resist some damage from the razorwire: 5P (using the code for concertina wire from the book) which he easily stages down to no damage. Now it’s time for Cruiser himself to scale the fence and hop over the wire, which is a Climbing + Agility (3) Test (SR4A p. 260). Cruiser (somewhat surprisingly) fails the test and lands on the wire, having to resist 5P damage and (very surprisingly) takes a couple boxes of damage, which becomes 1 Physical thanks to his Platelet Factories.

Now comes the time for the group to hike the 2 kilometers from the intrusion point at the wall to the Cardone home. The group will be trying to do this as stealthily as possible, so as to avoid being seen by any patrolling security drones. I ask everyone to make Infiltration rolls, but with some penalties considering the equipment they are carrying. The characters carrying large, bulky weapons (sniper rifle, LAAW rockets) get a -4 penalty, and Primus with his LMG with Gyromount harness gets a -6 penalty (I was probably on the “nice� side with that one). Primus and Reaper are the only ones without a Chameleon Suit, as I’m most interested in their hits. Between the two, Primus scores the lowest with 5 hits (he used Edge). Others rolled lower, but with the Chameleon suit’s -4 penalty the patrolling drone’s DP of 6 won’t be able to see anything that rolls 3 hits on the test. So, strangely enough, 5 hits is the number to beat. Now it’s time for me to do some quick calculations. Considering the group is trying to be “sneaky� I figure they won’t be able to move very quickly, so I decide their using their Walking movement rate. A human’s pace (no dwarfs in the group) is 10 meters per turn. They have to go 2,000 meters so that means 200 Combat Turns to get there. At 3 seconds per turn that’s 600 seconds or 10 minutes to get to the house on foot. That’s a long time to remain hidden while travelling on foot (with weapons) through a patrolled corporate neighbourhood. I decide that 6 drones will have the opportunity to see the characters on their travel to the house (about one drone for every 2 minutes of travel seems reasonable). The Dones have a Pilot rating 3 with a Clearsight 3 Autosoft, so I’ll be rolling 6 dice for the test against the lowest hits of the non-Chameleon suit group (Primus).

On the third roll I manage to get 5 hits (out of 6 dice, yes it was a bad break for my players). However, I don’t let them know they’ve been spotted right away, but instead call for a Visual Perception check, giving everyone the -3 penalty for being distracted. Reaper spots the drone that seems to be paying an awful lot of attention to Primus (with his giant gun and all) and orders Ace to hack the drone and take it out. I’m using the Hacker Archetype for Ace so I check his stats quickly. He’s got 16 dice in VR for Hacking on the Fly, which is pretty impressive. I make some quick rolls to see how long it’s going to take him to shut down the drone. All he wants to do is crash the Drone’s Node so he doesn’t need anything beyond a standard User account, so the Threshold for the Hacking on the Fly test is the Node Firewall: 4 (SR4A p.235). Rolling 16 dice he gets it on the first try, with the node rolling Firewall 4 + Analyze 4 and getting 2 hits, not enough to detect Ace with his Stealth of 5. That’s the first IP. Next he wants to perform a Crash Node action which is an Extended Test of Hacking + Exploit with a Threshold of System + Firewall (SR4A p.230). Ace is rolling Hacking (Exploit) 5(+2) + Exploit 5 + 2 Hot-Sim (14 dice) trying to hit a Threshold of 8. Unfortunately (amazingly) it takes him 4 tries to reach the Threshold of 8. In total, crashing the drone will take Ace 5 IP’s. I rolled all of this out in secret, then turned back to the group and said, “You tell Ace to crash the drone then start counting off the seconds: 1… 2… 3…� After I passed 3 Reaper cut in, “I’m shooting it.� He quick-drew his Colt Manhunter (he didn’t figure his unsilenced Warhawk would be a good idea) and put two rounds into the drone which took it out. Ace complained to Reaper that he was just about to crash the drone, to which Reaper snapped, “you took too long.� Fortunately for the group, the drone did not detect the Hack attempt, nor did it have enough time to report that it was under attack. After this quick altercation I made everyone roll their Infiltration checks again. Primus (not using Edge this time) got the lowest number of hits with 3. Two more Drone Perception rolls later (now up to the 5th of 6 drones), Primus is spotted again. I call for another Perception check from the group, with only Pallbearer luckily getting the hits to notice the Drone that had spotted them. Not wanting to waste any time this time, Reaper draws his Manhunter and starts to take out the drone. This time, unfortunately, it takes more than 1 Combat Turn to take out the drone (Reaper has 2 IP’s and it took him 3), so it has enough time to report that it is under attack before being destroyed. Unknown to my players (though suspected), F-B Security is now starting to notice a curious trail of: drone crashing into cameras, drone mysteriously vanishing, drone reporting it’s under attack before vanishing. I make a mental note that F-B Security is already dispatching a patrol to the area to investigate. I make the group make Infiltration checks one more time, but the last Drone fails to spot any of them.

The group has now arrived at the Cardone house, and does a preliminary check. There is a guard and a Barghest in front and behind the house. The group splits into two with Reaper and Pallbearer heading for the back with the plan to head in and secure the family, while Cruiser, Primus, and Rush head for the front to pin down the defenders. Rush plans on heading across the street to set up on the roof of the house facing the Cardone home in order to provide covering sniper fire. Primus plans to provide close fire support for Cruiser’s intrusion. It all sounds good but the best laid plans… As everyone starts to move into position I call for another Infiltration check to see if the Guards or Barghests spot anyone. Rush (despite a fairly sizable pool) gets only 1 hit on his test. Knowing this is crucial and 1 hit likely isn’t good enough he decides to use Edge to reroll. This is significant because Rush as the Bad Luck quality. So, I pick up the “bad luck die� (which has an “explosion� symbol for the 1) and roll: kaboom! Instead of rerolling failures, Rush must now reroll hits: bad luck. The 1 hit becomes no hits, and the Barghest easily makes its Perception check (not subject to the -4 penalty from the Chameleon suite because it is Sonar, and not vision). The Barghest spots Rush, the two lock eyes, and the Barghest uses its Fear power. With 3 net hits, the Barghest sends Rush running away for 3 full Combat Turns as well as barking/howling to sound the alarm. At this point everyone knows the plan is fubar and I call for Initiative to be rolled. Oh what a cluster-frag it turns out to be.

This was a fairly hectic combat with a lot going on. I tried to keep up with my notes but I’m sure I missed some things that happened. If you see a discrepancy somewhere in the recount, it’s probably because I missed writing something down.

First out of the Initiative blocks is Primus (no surprise). He’s not exactly sorry that things are devolving into shooting as he’s been anxious to try out his shiny new LMG with Gyromount harness. He spins, training the weapon on the Barghest to ensure that it doesn’t do any more of that “Fear� stuff and sends out a Full Burst. The White Knight has 5 points of Recoil Compensation and the Gyromount provides another 6, so there’s no recoil from the Full Burst. The LMG’s short range includes anything up to 75 meters, so there’s no range penalties either. That means Primus is firing a full burst from an LMG with no modifiers. Oh dear. He rolls his attack and the Barghest almost dodges it, but the 1 net hit is still enough to do 16P worth of damage after the Body roll. The Barghest is now a bloody smear. The Guard in the front of the house goes next. Seeing a full auto burst of an LMG with its tracer rounds lighting up the night, he decides that inside the house is better place to be, and runs inside. Pallbearer goes next, and fires a burst from his Shotgun, killing it with a net damage of 11P. His second burst turns out to be a Critical Glitch, which he reduces to a regular Glitch with his Edge. His shotgun is now jammed, however, so he discards it. The guard at the back of the house, who just saw the Barghest get pasted (and doesn’t know how close he came to catching a burst himself) also decides to retreat into the house. Cruiser goes next and heads for the front door where he decides to throw a smoke grenade into the house. I have him make a Throwing Weapons test and do a quick check of the Barrier rules to make sure that the grenade made it through. Standard Glass is pretty easy to breach, so no problem. The grenade will activate at the end of the Combat Turn. Inside the house, the Mage calls his on-call Guardian Spirit and orders it to attack the guy with the LMG out front (Primus). Suddenly a being that looks like an ancient Aztec warrior, complete with feathered headdress and bronze axe, appears in front of Primus and takes a swipe at him. The attack strikes but fails to penetrate Primus’ heavy armor, doing 5 Stun. In response Primus tries to shoot the Spirit with a full burst from his LMG, the spirit dodges the attack. Padre, who received a message that the attack had began now Astrally Projects and heads for the house where the battle is taking place. Inside the enemy Mage attempts to summon a Beast Spirit (Force 5) but fails (0 Services). This was an extremely fortunate break for my players. Reaper, knowing time is of the essence, decides to head into the back of the house to try and secure the family as planned. Waiting for him with a Delayed Action is the Sammie who ran from the back of the house. The Sammies have Agility 4 + Firearms Group 4 + 2 from Smartlink and no vision penalties because of Cybereyes. They have Assault Rifles loaded with EX-EX rounds (I backed out on giving them APDS at the last second). The Sammie gets 2 hits on the first attack which is matched by Reaper, and the 4 hits on the second test are also matched by Reaper. This was a foreshadow of things to come. Reaper pulled off some truly impressive Reaction rolls this whole combat. Since the attacks came in the middle of his move, Reaper got to complete the move by diving for cover behind the “breakfast nook� counter in the kitchen. He would later be kissing that breakfast nook. Cruiser, at the front of the house, wants to make sure the guys inside are hindered as much as possible so he throws a grenade into the house full of Nausea Gas. Seeing no other targets, the Mage hurls a Manabolt at Reaper, but it fails to affect him because of poor visibility caused by the breakfast nook. Remember now that a Good Cover modifier (+4) applies on spell resistance, so Reaper got to roll Willpower + 4 to resist. Impressively, Reaper won the test of his 7 dice vs. the Mage’s 10. Inside the Paranimal Handler spots the Nausea Grenade (I rolled a Perception Test with a -3 modifier and Threshold 2) and throws it back out of the house. The Sammie at the back of the house fires two more bursts at Reaper. Again his mystic reflexes combined with the cover of the breakfast nook allow him to escape damage. Cruiser, on the other hand, is standing tall (and a mighty big thermo signature he is) in front of the house and takes a nasty burst from an Assault Rife, taking 5P damage. Very fortunately for him, the Sammie gets 0 hits on the next burst, completely missing Cruiser. The Paranimal handler now sends his Hell Hound into the kitchen to deal with Reaper. The Hell Hound rushes in and turns its magical gaze on Reaper trying to induce Fear. Amazingly, the Hell Hound gets no net hits, so Reaper is safe.

Meanwhile, Primus is still locked in combat with the Guardian spirit which tries to hit him again, but Primus blocks it with a good Unarmed Combat roll. The aggressive spirit is very upset. Since his big machine gun did nothing, Primus tries punching the spirit. Impressively the blow lands, but does no damage to the nearly invulnerable spirit. Cruiser, now fed up with standing around and getting shot decides he’s had enough. He bursts through the doorway and rushes the Sammie with his combat axe. The Sammie’s 8 dice for unarmed combat defense only reduce the attack to 4 net hits, which results in 9P damage and the Sammie (gashed and bleeding) falling back into the living room of the house. A troll with a Combat Axe has 3 Reach and AP -1, that’s disgusting. Now the Hell Hound decides to blast Reaper with its fiery breath. It rolls Agility 4 + Exotic Ranged Weapon 4 and gets 1 net hit against Reaper’s reaction. Despite its appearance, the measly 4P damage is easily negated by Reaper (I found it very anticlimactic that a Hell Hound’s breath has a base damage of only 3P… weeee). Reaper, not wanting to risk taking another fire blast from the Hell Hound, draws his Warhawk and blows away the Hell Hound with one shot. Next the Paranimal handler has a turn and, seeing all his animals now dead, decides to just draw his SMG and fire a burst at the big troll that just burst into the room and axed his teammate. Cruiser takes a little bit of stun damage, since the SMG didn’t penetrate his armor.

Padre has now arrived in the combat and decides to deal with the Spirit that has kept Primus pinned down for the entire combat up to this point. He fires a Force 6 Manabolt into the Guardian Spirit, who takes 8 boxes of damage, and getting the attention of the Spirit. With the Hell Hound out of consideration, the Mage decides to open up the big magic and hurls a Force 5 Fireball into the kitchen where Reaper is hiding out. Thanks to his Adept reflexes and the cover provided by the breakfast nook (again!), Reaper reduces the damage to 3P. I also decide (probably being too nice) that the damage taken wasn’t enough to detonate the explosive rounds he’s loaded into his Warhawk. The Guardian Spirit, seeing a new Astral threat turns its attention to Padre’s Astral form and takes a swipe with its mystical axe. Padre blocks the attack from the wounded spirit (Padre enjoyed the fact that he could actually do “physical� combat while in Astral form). Two more bursts from the Sammie at the back of the house, aimed at Reaper, connect only with the breakfast nook. Through all of this the Hacker has been monitoring the situation. He sees that his team is losing the battle and orders a Sammie to liquidate the family. The Sammie struggles and stands up, just making the Body + Willpower (2) Test with his wound penalties, and rushes up the stairs. Cruiser sees the Sammie head up the stairs and knows exactly what he is going to do. Thanks to his enormous troll-sized strides, he’s able to run up the stairs and catch up to the enemy Sammie. Knowing he only has one chance at this, he pops an Edge on his attack with is Combat Axe and since he ran on the combat I also give him the +2 bonus from a charging attack. The result is 6 net hits on the attack test, and a final damage of 14P after the Sammie’s body roll (he was at 9 boxes of damage already from the last attack). The enemy Sammie has been cleaved nearly in half. Reaper finally decides that the breakfast nook has become a deathtrap and decides to emerge and take his chances. He emerges and promptly wastes the Sammie that has been shooting at him with one shot from his Warhawk. Primus, finally freed from the Guardian spirit, approaches the front window of the house and lays down suppressive fire throughout the whole room. Everyone in the area takes cover: Reaper, Pallbearer, Mage, and Paranimal Handler. Padre puts another Manabolt into the Guardian Spirit and disrupts it, then he moves into the house to assess the situation. Everyone else inside the house lays low and waits for the saturation of auto-fire to let up.

The enemy Hacker, seeing things go very south in a hurry, decides to retreat and begins running for the back of the house (though he was able to get a message off to his bosses when the combat began). Reaper, however, turns and guns down the retreating Hacker by putting a Warhawk round into his back. The Mage decides to try one last gamble to complete his mission. He runs up the stairs and upon reaching the top, turns and casts Ice Sheet on the stairs behind him, making pursuit difficult. Pallbearer knows he needs to stop the Mage so he runs up the stairs despite the Ice, and the nimble elf makes his Agility + Reaction test, beating the Mage’s hits (3) when he cast the spell. Catching up with the Mage, Pallbearer swipes him with his Handblade, doing a few boxes of Stun damage since it couldn’t penetrate the armor. This actually turned out to be a good thing. The Paranimal handler also tries to head up the stairs to take out the family, but he fails his Agility + Reaction (3) Test and slips and falls. On Padre’s turn, he orders his Guidance Spirit to Engulf the enemy Mage. A Guidance Spirit’s Engulf power does Stun damage, which combined with Pallbearer’s previous attack, was enough to knock him unconscious. Finally, on Primus’ turn he puts a Full Auto burst into the Prone Paranimal Handler and turns him to mulch (I don’t remember the exact damage, but I think it was more than 10 boxes again), destroying most of the staircase in the process.

With the enemy threat eliminated, Cruiser runs into the master bedroom to secure Darren Cardone and his wife. Cruiser bursts into the room and Mrs. Cardone starts screaming. He tries to calm her down, realizes he’s still holding an axe dripping with blood and gore, tosses it away, then tries again (successfully) to convince them he is here to help. Darren Cardone immediately recognizes that this must be an extraction by Ares and tells his wife that he was planning to leave his job. He tells her that she and the kids need to go right now. This is when Mrs. Cardone says, “Oh honey, I’m so sorry. When I heard all the shooting downstairs I hit the house PANICBUTTON!� My players all say “Oh no!� as a chorus. I end the session.

Things I realized afterward that I forgot about while running the session: the smoke grenade – I never added any modifiers for it; the cumulative -1 penalty to Reaction for each attack you defend before your next action. The latter probably would have done in Reaper. Oh well, all I can do is try to correct for next session.

In total the combat involved 5 PC’s, 9 NPC’s opponents (including 3 paranormal animals and 1 spirit), lasted for just over 9 IP’s (3 full Combat Turns), and took just under 2 hours of real time (11:50pm – 1:46am). Again, my Battle Calculator program held its own admirably, though I definitely see some room for improvement. I need to get a way to track Delayed Actions in there, and I need to put in some optimizations so that switches between Ranged and Melee attacks are smoother. When I wrote the program I thought changes between attack modes would be rare, but this combat had a great deal of it.

The end of the session also provided me an opportunity to get on my soapbox a little. After the battle was done Rush was a little upset that he “blew one roll� and ended up missing the whole combat. While I did understand and sympathize with him, my response in the end was “them’s the breaks.� Whenever I see people post builds for “analysis� (especially the “power builds�) I always see something curious: Positive Qualities are always specifically listed and included in any calculations of the character’s DP, Negative Qualities are rarely (if ever) named specifically and are generally listed as “35 BP of Negative Qualities.� What I infer from this is that the creator of the character build assumes that the Negative Qualities will have little if any affect on how the character performs. This is a logical trap. Although some of those Negative Qualities may not be significant all the time, they may be very significant in key situations. This combat being one of those for Rush. When I run RPG’s I fudge some die rolls, most of the time I do this in the player’s favour. However, in SR4 I have been doing this far less, if at all. This is because SR4 already has a built-in mechanic for the players to give themselves a boost in key situations: Edge. So, if a player decides to get the Bad Luck quality, where there is a 1 in 6 chance that things could go horribly wrong for them at a critical situation (one where you want to use Edge), then that’s a result of their choice. Or perhaps it’s not even a Quality, maybe it’s just the fact that you didn’t think Infiltration was important when you built your character. Instead you decided to squeeze a couple extra dice into your chosen combat skill. Well, in this case a blown Infiltration roll lead to having no combat skill dice for 3 Combat Turns (in the case – the entirety of the combat). So, when building a character make sure you look at more than just there one or two chosen skill specialties. In the “real world� of shadowruns, you usually need more than just what your Con or Automatics skill can give you.

I'll be posting the recap of the final session by the end of the week.

Session 3
July 4th, 2009
4 hours

Reaper – sneaky elf gun adept
Primus – ex-UCAS military combat monster
Cruiser/Bruiser – troll tank melee brawler
Padre – Christian Theurgist mage, Catholic priest
Rush – slick elven face and sniper
Pallbearer – stealthy elven sammie, ranged and close combat balanced

This third session, much like the previous run Three-Data Monty, finally captured the “feel� that I had in mind when I was designing the run. The runners’ escape with the Cardone family was harrowing with an incredibly tense and dramatic ending. In fact, I cut the final scene that I had planned for the adventure because the end of the escape from Boeingville was a great place, dramatically, to end the adventure. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed running it. Here is the conclusion of Extraction Reaction.

The group has just secured Darren Cardone and his family, but now they know that Federated-Boeing Security is on their way so they need to move fast. The team scrambles to secure everything they need for their escape. Reaper moves to prepare the family’s mini-van which the group plans to use for their escape. Upstairs, Cruiser and Pallbearer move to secure the Cardone children. Cruiser moves into the boy’s room and sees that he is a big fan of Transmorphing Space Ninjas, just like Cruiser. When the boy insists on bringing his favourite TSN toy Mrs. Cardone starts to protest but Cruiser says that it’s okay. Pallbearer goes into the girl’s room and finds her hiding in the closet. Mrs. Cardone has to come and convince her to leave, but she insists that she’s not leaving without her cat, Snookerbummer (I have a friend who has a cat named that, I didn’t make it up). After a quick Unarmed Combat check, Pallbearer has caught the cat and hands it over to the little girl, insisting that they need to leave quickly. Rush and Primus repeat the need for urgency from their position out on the street, where they are watching for approaching F-B Security. They can’t see any patrol cars yet, but they hear the sirens getting closer. While loading up the family Cruiser makes a comment to Darren Cardone about needing to hurry because F-B Security is coming and, “they already tried to kill you.� At which point Darren informs him that the people at his house were not Federated-Boeing Security. He then quickly relates the story that a few days ago, two mysterious men broke into his house. One of them had a wolf tattoo on his face and the other had feline-like yellow eyes. They told him that if he ever “disappeared� from his job they would kill his family, and then they left leaving behind the five guards that stayed at the house since. The group is a little puzzled, which is what I intended. Reaper contacts Ace and asks if he can sit in the van’s node and protect it from being remotely shut down. Aces lets Reaper know that he may not be able to stop them if they have a legitimate Account on the node. He recommends that they simply activate a Jammer to prevent any signals from getting through. Reaper activates one of their one-shot Rating 6 Area Jammers.

So, the team loads up the Cardone family into the van, Primus and Rush take position at the back of the van to provide fire support out the back, Reaper is driving, Pallbearer is in the passenger seat, and Cruiser plans on being in the middle to protect the Cardone family. Cruiser is the last to pile in and he is just about to do so when someone bursts through the door from the house into the garage. He is wearing an all-black Chameleon suit that obscures his face. I call for everyone to roll initiative. The mysterious attacker goes first, and rushes at Cruiser. Cruiser is far from a slouch in Unarmed Combat, but the attacker moves with blazing speed, straight past his defenses and strikes him in the chest. The blow is hard, harder than Cruiser has ever felt from a human. He only takes a couple boxes of Stun, thanks to his massive Body and Armor, but he knows how hard he got it. Primus goes next, but can’t bring his LMG to bear. So, he quick-draws his Predator and takes a couple shots at the attacker. In a near blur of motion, the attacker easily avoids both shots. On Cruiser’s turn he takes a swing at the attacker with his long arms, but is blocked seemingly effortlessly. Seeing how easily the attacker avoided Primus’ shots and how hard he hit, Cruiser sees this fight is not going to go well. He checks with me, “I’m standing right in front of the van right?� “Yes, you can take one step back and be in it.� “Good, I step back, grab on and tell Reaper to GO!� On Reaper’s turn he starts the engine and is just about to throw the van in gear when WHUMP! Landing on the hood is another attacker, also head-to-toe in a black Chameleon suit. The intruder lands in a squat on the hood and looks Reaper in the eyes, his golden feline eyes nearly glowing. Reaper decides they don’t have time for this, throws the van in reverse and guns the engine. The van suddenly lurches backward, sending the second intruder rolling off of the hood. Pallbearer takes a shot out of the passenger window as the van goes down the driveway but misses. As the van pulls onto the street, Primus and Rush can see the F-B Security vehicles racing up the street to meet them. Reaper throws the van into drive and peels away. Primus, Rush, and Pallbearer all check to see if they can see where the two new attackers went, but they see nothing but the long shadows of the now-dark garage. As the van peels away, all of players express a kind of, “Who were those guys?� feeling. Mission accomplished on my part.

Now, however, the pursuit is on between the runners and the F-B Security vehicles. I knew the team was planning on appropriating the minivan for their escape, so I had time to write up some stats for what I thought a minivan should have. I basically used a Bulldog Step-Van, but gave it less armor. Along with the vehicle stats, I also let the group know that, unless they have Skinlink or a datajack, their Smartlinks will no longer function, since the jammer overwhelms their Signal (Rating 0). Only Rush has a datajack allowing his Smartlink to continue to function.
Handling -1
Acceleration 10/25
Speed 100
Pilot 2
Body 12
Armor 6
Sensor 2
Std Upgrades: Passenger Protection System 3, Gridlink, Enhanced Image Screens

Now at this point, we begin Chase Combat. This was my first try using the SR4 Chase Combat rules, so I was anxious to give them a test drive (no pun intended). I’m using the SR4A rules which include some small but significant modifications to the Chase Combat rolls. The first thing we need to do is make an Opposed Vehicle Roll. Reaper rolls his Reaction + Pilot Ground Craft + vehicles Handling (which is -1). The F-B Security forces also roll Reaction 4 + Pilot Ground Craft 4 + Handling 3 + 1 for Driving via AR + Speed Bonus 8. The Speed Bonus was one of the things that was changed in SR4A. Now, the faster vehicle in Chase Combat gets to add a bonus equal to the difference in maximum Speed / 10. I’m using slightly modified Patrol-1 vehicles for F-B Security:
Handling +3
Acceleration 10/45
Speed 180
Pilot 3
Body 10
Armor 10
Sensor 1
Std Upgrades: Concealed Armor, Gun Ports (3)

So, the F-B Security vehicles’ Speed (180) exceeds the van’s by 80 (180 – 100), so they get a +8 bonus for their Opposed Vehicle Test (80/10 = . This was a fabulous change for Chase Combat as it means that a faster vehicle will (generally) get to choose the Engagement Range, as it should be (all on SR4A p.170). So, back to this run. F-B Security wins the Opposed Vehicle Test (no surprise), so they get to choose the Engagement Range for this round of Chase Combat. Because F-B Security was already on the way to the house when the team pulled away, I decided that the starting range of the vehicles would be Medium. F-B Security, because they won the Opposed Test, can change the Engagement Range by one step, so they choose Short Range (another good change was renamed this to “Short Range� so that it matches with weapon Range categories). Now I have everyone roll Initiative. We will play through 1 Combat Turn, then make a new Opposed Vehicle Test for the next round of Chase Combat.

Primus goes first and first a burst apiece at each of the pursuing F-B Security cars. Nimble driving on the drivers’ part allows them to avoid getting hit. One of the F-B Security cars attempts a Cut-Off Stunt to force the runners off of the road. Reaper uses his Edge and wins the Opposed Test. Cruiser decides the Cardone family needs to stay down out of potential harm, so he uses his enormous strength to rip up the central bench in the van, allowing the Cardone family to lay down on the floor with him covering them. He opens the side door and throws the bench out onto the road. However, his action is over and he is left standing in the wide open doorway of the van, having appeared to just throw a bench at the pursuing F-B Security vehicles. The second F-B Driver has a turn and also attempts a Cut-Off action, which Reaper sends his final Edge to avoid (he might have been better off saving it for later, as it happens). Some of the passenger F-B Security guards now have turns, firing from the protected Gun Ports of their vehicles. Since Cruiser is the most obvious target, they being by firing at him. Fortunately, F-B Security has the priority of recovering the Cardone family alive, so they are using Gel Rounds. Two bursts into Cruiser do no damage, with him rolling 12 and 11 hits on his soak roll, respectively. Rush, Pallbearer, and Reaper all take shots at the vehicles but fail to do damage. On Primus’ turn he decides to get serious about taking out the pursuing vehicles and switches to Full-Auto mode. Checking my chart for the modifiers I realize that he actually gets a better bonus (+3) from the Tracer Rounds during a Full Burst then he would have gotten with the Smartlink (and he got those Tracer Rounds initially just to “look cool� while firing his LMG)! The Full Auto burst manages to hit the first pursuit vehicle, causing 12P damage even after I rolled its 20 dice to resist. The vehicle explodes under the onslaught of Explosive rounds. The second pursuit vehicle makes another Cut-Off test. With Reaper out of Edge, he fails the Opposed Test with the F-B Driver getting 2 net hits. Now, Reaper must make a Crash Test with a -2 penalty (the hits the opposed driver got on the Cut-Off Test). Reaper rolls Reaction + Pilot Ground Craft -1 (Handling) – 2 (hits on Cut-Off Test) with a Threshold of 3 (Average Task, +1 from Lightly Restricted terrain). He barely makes the test and manages to keep the van on the road. Rush now decides to take a shot at the remaining F-B Driver, rather than the vehicle. I give him a -4 penalty for the difficult shot, in addition to the normal -3 from firing from a moving vehicle. I also give the F-B Driver a +4 Good Cover bonus to his Reaction roll. Rush hits with the Sniper shot, but good rolling on the Driver’s part (and good armor) reduce the damage to 9P. I make a Crash Test for the Driver, but he succeeds despite the Wound Penalties. An F-B Guard in the second vehicle, seeing the lengthy barrel of the Sniper Rifle sticking out the back of the van, fires a burst a Rush getting a good hit. After his soak roll, Rush ends up with 9 Stun, glitching on the roll. He damage exceeds his Body, so he’s knocked down and I rule that the Glitch results in his Chameleon suit being broken (it still functions as armor, but no longer gives the -4 penalty to Perception Tests). Rush decides to stay lying down for bit. Padre, following along easily in his Astral Form, decides to command his Guidance Spirit to use its Influence power on the Driver to make him crash. I read up on the Influence power for a minute, then decide that “turn over there� is a valid use of the Influence power. The Spirit easily wins the Magic + Charisma test against the driver’s Willpower, and the vehicle crashes.

At this point the runners have lost immediate pursuit, so I run a couple of my “mini-scenes.� Turning a corner, they see a couple of pedestrians out for a late-night walk (or coming home from a night shift, or going to an early morning shift). Reaper makes the Driving Test with a Threshold of 3 (Average Task in Light Terrain again) and avoids the pedestrians. The group speeds on, and after turning another corner they see a roadblock set up by F-B Security at the end of the street. However, they can avoid it by driving onto the lawns that border the street, smashing through the residential fences. I have Reaper make a Driving Test with hits added to the vehicles Body for determining if they have penetrated the Barrier of the Fence (Armor 4, Structure 5). The vehicle easily blasts through the fence, and I have them roll to soak some damage on the vehicle. It takes 1 box of damage from smashing through the fence.

Now its time for some more Chase Combat as another two F-B Security vehicles take up the pursuit. Amazingly, on this Opposed Vehicle Test Reaper actually beats the F-B Drivers, and so the Engagement Range is extended to Long Range. This will make things considerably easier for the runners. Padre is first on Initiative and he commands his Guidance Spirit to cause another pursuit vehicle to crash, which it does. Some F-B Guards go next and fire a bunch of Long Bursts at the minivan (they are attempting to shoot out tires to disable the vehicle) but some nice rolls by Reaper have the van nimbly avoiding the shots from Long Range. Primus is actually out of ammo, so he ducks down and re-does the belt feed on his LMG. I think I can count the number of times on 1 hand that a player has had to reload any weapon during a run, and those were Pistols with small clips. I sure this is the first time any player of mine has had to reload a weapon that had 100 rounds of belt-fed ammunition. I guess it goes fast when you’re firing it 10 or 20 bullets at a time. Rush finally decides to get up off the floor and participate again. He takes steady aim and fires a well-placed Sniper round into the remaining vehicle, which serves off the road and crashes. They have lost their pursuers again.

Turning a final corner, Reaper spots their destination: the East gate. Reaper shouts “GATE!� to the rest of the team. By this time, however, the runners have been speeding through Boeingville shooting up cars for a few minutes now. F-B Security has now put all gates on high alert. This means that the gate is not some pathetic wooden or plastic arm, but instead consists of a massive concrete barrier (which F-B Security can raise or lower as needed). I roll 1d6 x 100 meters to determine how far away the gate is.

400 meters

The van is travelling its maximum Speed of 100 meters per Combat Turn, so they have 4 Combat Turns (12 seconds) until hitting the gate. Manning the gate are 3 F-B Security Guards, set up in covered firing positions. There is another important detail here, so I have everyone make a Perception check with Threshold 3. Only Pallbearer makes it, and he notices what appears to be some sort of weapon turret sitting on top of the wall next to the gate. This is, in fact, a Heavy Machine Gun turret mounted on a rail system atop the wall that F-B can redeploy to gates in order to counter heavily armed threats, like say a runner team with a Light Machine Gun firing Explosive rounds. Pallbearer shouts “TURRET!� and points it out on the wall. Cruiser offers the use of one of his LAAW rockets, which only Primus has the skill to use. He clambers his way awkwardly to the front of the vehicle, which I say takes the whole Combat Turn.

300 meters

Cruiser passes the LAAW rocket to Primus who leans out the window, takes aim, and fires. Primus with the -3 due to firing from a moving vehicle, and the +1 from taking aim has only 6 dice to make the shot. He decides to save his Edge to reroll failures, but he ends up getting 5 hits! The anit-armor rocket screams towards its target and obliterates it, much to the cheering of the runners. I also award Primus a point of Edge for getting a Critical Success in a crucial situation. While Primus waits for the final LAAW rocket, he grabs his LMG and fires a Long Burst at some of the F-B Guards at the gate. He does 9P to one of them, knocking him back behind his cover in the gate booth. Seeing a rocket hit their turret, and seeing another burst of machine gun fire, the F-B Guards decide to take the kid gloves off. The remaining two set their assault rifles and fire Full Auto bursts at the van. Reaper’s nimble driving avoids the first set but not the second. The minivan is shredded with 10 rounds of assault rifle fire, taking 10 boxes of damage (now at 11 of 14 boxes). Reaper must also make a Crash Test, which he fails due to the mounting penalties (-3 from the vehicle damage alone, plus his wounds). The vehicle starts to careen out of control, but I rule it won’t actually crash until the end of the round. I wanted to give the players until then to save themselves.

200 meters

Cruiser finishes readying the final LAAW rocket and passes it up to Primus. Primus shoulders the weapon, and fires at the concrete gate barrier. This is going to be crucial so I pull up the Destroying Barriers rules on page 166 of SR4A. Primus gets 5 hits (using Edge) on his attack test. The vehicle barrier is Heavy Structural Material, Armor 16 Structure 13. I oppose the test with Armor x 2, rolling 32 dice I get 6 hits (ugh). According to the rules the damage of an AV Rocket against a barrier is (weapon DV) x 3. In the case of the LAAW Rocket the base DV is 12P x 3 = 36 + hits (5) = 41. This is reduced by the Barrier’s hits (6), for a net damage of 35 DV. If the DV of the damage (35) exceeds the Structure Rating (13) then they have made a hole 1 meter square for every increment of the Structure Rating. The final damage (35) is more than 2 “increments� of the Structure Rating (13), in fact it is almost three increments, but not quite: 13 x 2 = 26, 13 x 3 = 36. So that means the rocket has made a 2 meter square hole in the barrier. I quickly ask the group how big they think the “front face� of a minivan is. We “guesstimate� that a minivan is about 5 feet high by 5 feet wide. A quick Google conversion (did you know you can type “5 ft in m� into Google?) reveals that the front face of the a minivan is 2.25 meters square. Ok, the whole is just big enough for the bulk of the van to fit through, but it’s going to hurt. However, the van is currently veering out of control and won’t even make it to the hole at this point. I tell Padre that a spirit’s Guard power will allow Reaper to make another test to regain control of the vehicle, so he summons up a Spirit of Earth. Cruiser gets the Cardone family under his enormous bulk, and braces for the coming impact.

100 meters

Padre commands his spirit to use its Guard power on the vehicle. Pallbearer asks if he can help on the test, a very smart action choice for a first-time player. I was impressed. Pallbearer rolls his Reaction + Pilot Ground Craft as part of a Teamwork test. He gets 2 hits so Reaper adds +2 to his pool, which brings it to only 4 (still lots of modifiers for him). Reaper gets 1 hit on the Driving Test, which I say is just enough to get the van pointed in the right direction. It’s still going to crash, but it will crash through the hole in the barrier. That’s good enough. Reaper asks how fast the van is going at impact. Well, 100 meters per turn x 1.2 = 120 kph (74.5 mph for you Americans). Everyone with an action left braces for impact (good idea).

BOOM!

The battered minivan bursts through the heavy concrete barrier, skidding to a twisted, ground-up, hulk in the middle of the street. Since the hole was mostly big enough for the van, I rule that it takes half the normal damage for a collision at that speed. Speed 100 is normally Body x 2 damage, which becomes just Body (12) for the crash. Everyone rolls Body + Impact Armor to resist, adding +3 from the Passenger Protection System, and I give them another +2 for bracing prior to the crash.

It’s a bad scene for the runners. Reaper takes 6P damage from the crash. Combined with previous wounds that he took, that puts him 2 boxes into overflow. Reaper has a severe head concussion from impacting the steering wheel. Primus takes no damage from the crash (he used his extra Edge on the resistance roll). Rush takes 8P from the crash, putting him at 8/9 on his Physical track and 9/10 on his Stun track. They don’t come any closer than that, I think. Pallbearer takes 7P, but with no other wounds he’s still functional. Cruiser also pops an Edge on his soak roll and takes 1P as a result. Since Cruiser was specifically protecting the Cardone family, I use his hits as a bonus to their Body rolls (like a teamwork test). Thanks to Cruiser’s boatload of hits, no one in the Cardone family takes more than 3 boxes of damage. The van’s Passenger Protection System has filled the car with foam, so everyone is stuck for the moment. Padre tells his Spirit of Earth to clear the foam, which it does in an instant. Cruiser sees Reaper unresponsive, slumped over the steering wheel and puts a Trauma Patch on him (just in time)! The team’s hired Rigger, seeing the commotion, pulls up to extract the runners. The LMG turret on her van provides covering fire from the F-B Guards at the gate while everyone loads up into the other van.

At this point, I had one more scene planned but I decided to scrap it. It was getting late in the evening, the team was totally beat up, and most importantly it just seemed like a good place to stop. I paid everyone the 15,000 nuyen for the run, and awarded 5 Karma each, except for Reaper who got 4 Karma because he didn’t get the “survival� Karma.

All in all, I was very happy with this final session. There was lots of (literally) high-speed action, and a good deal of tension right at the end as the runners were blowing a whole in the gate barrier. Plus, when your run ends in a big vehicle crash, you know you’ve done something right. I didn’t get a chance to compare Chase Combat to Tactical Combat for vehicle combats like I wanted, but I did get to give the Chase Combat rules a go. I really think with the two changes in the Anniversary Edition (bonus from Speed, can only change 1 range category) that the biggest inconsistencies with Chase Combat have been corrected. Chase Combat was fast and easy to resolve, while still having cool vehicle maneuvering and such. Maybe if my players don’t have any more LMG’s it’ll actually last more than one round too! All of my players enjoyed the session and are looking forward to the next Shadowrun.

Enjoy the recap!

Comments and questions welcome.

Some things from after the session was done:

Despite Ryu reminding me, I still forgot that Full Auto fire damages passengers as well as the vehicle. That means the FA burst near the end of the adventure but have done enough damage to push more of the players into overflow from the crash. Oh well.

The run was also an example of scaling the opposition to the players. I dialed back on what I could have brought them in the way of F-B Security because of what they were missing. I could have brought more Magical Support to bear in the form of summoned Spirits or a Mage riding in one of the pursuit vehicles. I also didn't bring any combat drones down on them, which I could have done in spades considering that's a big part of what F-B manufactures. However, I felt that the pursuit vehicles would give them enough trouble getting when they were having to steal the family's minivan to make the escape. Had they had their party rigger, with his armed and armored SUV as the escape vehicle, I would have brought down more heat.

I decided to upgrade from merely a lurker, to a commenter on this one.
This definitely seems like another sensational and fun run!
I definitely appreciate the juggling and on the fly changes you made, as well as the small rules you forgot.

It highlights the golden rule; having fun and keeping things moving is often more important than fidelity to the rules.

I think the major element that your games have that I have yet to really implement is the why factor.
Why is this megacorporation in a bind, why call shadowrunners, why call the players specifically?

They are focused on building their names up so I don't see it as a problem yet,
but how do I get the Runners up to a scenario like this?

You are a good GM, but you are also blessed with good players!

This, in my mind, is essential to creating a good story in Shadowrun. Otherwise the game kind of devolves into "just another (extraction, datasteal, assassination, escort)." If players aren't used to runs having a reason, the GM may have to drop some obvious hints, like their assassination target ranting about his corp's secret experimentation on children, or something like that. It should be something that really catches the player's curiosity. Eventually players will learn (be "trained") that runs have a reason behind them that it might be good for them to discover. This can be driven home by having a seemingly "simple" run have some very dangerous complications afterward.


I don't know if I fully understand what you're asking? I don't think there's anything particularly special about my runner group. They all have a Street Cred score of 2 right now, approaching 3 but they're not particularly special. In my case, they are getting some more dangerous work because they've impressed their current Mr. Johnson with a series of successful runs. Not only were they successful, but the players had to deal with an unexpected twist in both of them.

i enjoyed reading through both of your runs but i have to points of critisism:

1. i think your runs are too high leveled especially for beginners and resulting from this

2. they are inconsequent

They were fun for you and your group, which is of course most important, but here are a couple of examples, what i mean:

in the first run your hacker hit the F-B Security hacker with 7p damage, with my group, regardless of whos GMing, the run would have been over or at least very hard to complete, because a nearly dead or seriously injured hacker would result in several security hackers monitoring and checking that system, as well as tripled security measures on site until every thing was checked.

in the second run i noticed a few other things: why bringing a team to the scientist house and threaten him and his family?
this would make him highly unproductive, so other measures would be much more convenient and effective (more money, brainwashing).
why didnt the surveillance drones use thermal? why were they flying at low altitude? Paracritters in a high living standard neighbourhood?
why did the cops chasing them acted like super heros instead of normal underpaid beat cops (they were fired upon by a fraggin lmg after all)?
after there was a hell of a firefight, where was F-B SWAT, where was the Star (wasnt it a A Security rating neighbourhood).


i think you get my drift, i would really recommend that you reduce the powerlevel a bit but at the same time be a bit more consequent, when things go south for your group.

other then that it sounded like fun...

Errrrr i can't think of anything in the world that would make most people more productive then threatening to off their family if they failed to perform. THe same guy who is now scared witless about not making his appointments is also going to wonder if his daughter will be killed if he doesn't make quota. Additionally it makes a certain amount of sense as the Azzies are not his direct employer.


Holy Joe, professional paramilitary forces acting like professional paramilitary forces? Who'd have thunk it.


Last I checked, Swat teams don't have teleporters, units that were available gave chase. I'm sure if the Swat team had a way to get out ahead of the problem they would have. Additionally it's a A rating corporate enclave with it's own security force, there's very little reason for them to have a lonestar contract.



Yes i suppose there should have been an in motion aerial strike on the van while they were escaping, that would have been appropriate consequences. Or attack helecopters! Attack helecopters should show up every time an alarm is raised!

Perhaps, yes. Though Unbeliever did do a very thorough job erasing all entries in the Access Log after the altercation. But I maybe should have cranked up the opposition on the pickup.


Remember that the team was Aztechnology, trying to influence a F-B employee. AZT is not known in the shadows for positive reinforcement. They're also doing this without F-B knowledge or cooperation.


All PC Chameleon suits had the thermal dampening modification on them. I don't believe I mentioned that in the writeup. When firing at them, Reaper had a -1 due to range, I believe so they were within 20 meters (50 feet) of the street. One of their primary jobs was verifying SIN information of those in the neighbourhood, so they had to be close enough to catch most people in Signal Range. Paracritters? You bet. I wouldn't call Boeingville "high" necessarily. Solidly Middle class.


I'm not entirely sure what you mean. Why didn't they immediately fall back and call for backup? They were trying to do their job. I didn't really get into it in the writeup because it was over so quickly, but the second set of pursuit vehicles was engaging with some heavier backup. It just turned out to be quick because the Spirit took out one and Rush rolled really well with his Sniper shot on the second car.


F-B SWAT was on their way, and all gates were on alert as evidence by the anti-vehicle barrier and HMG turret. The neighbourhood (at least in my game) is sovereign F-B territory, so they did all the Security enforcement. Pursuit and losing Lone Star was going to be part of the final scene that I ended up cutting out.

I full admit that I scale opposition based on the group and how they are doing. Especially with this run I purposefully held back. I designed it from the outset to be "run and gun" so I wasn't about to bring the GM-hammer down on them for going as designed. There are also consequences for my group that I never got into in any of these writeups. For example, in a previous run Padre used his real SIN as cover when they were doing surveillance on a subject and they ended up having a confrontation with him. It turned out that Padre was knocked unconscious in that fight before he had a chance to really do anything, so Lone Star didn't have much to pin on him, but it did get him a visit from a LS Detective. During that run Reaper was also present acting as Padre's bodyguard, and used a Fake SIN (Rating 6) that he had acquired. After this run, in which Reaper was grievously wounded, he plans to go to the hospital using the same SIN. The player doesn't know this, but use of the SIN here is going to pop up on LS systems and will net him a very serious visit from the same detective.

I do scale my opposition to fit my players abilities, but I don't think my runs are without consequences.

well if it comes to how police officers act, it depends how you define the on site security in that F-B Residential Area, since you say its middle class, i'd say they are like the typical todays police officer, some like their job some dont, the payment sucks and its definitely not worth it getting killed for, therefore i would have them react like this

BTW: just because F-B has jurisdiction there, doesnt mean that they will not call the Star! they probably wouldnt do so on on that hightec research site, but this was a middleclass residential area. thats what i would have done.

i would have had drones following them at high altitude as well. but i assume you scrapped that part because of the time restrictions.


Here are a few points that turned our bloodthirsty maniac group into sensible runners:
Firing a milspec weapon openly in the public (anything but Z) will bring alot of HEAT down on you, the higher the rating the worse it will be.
Killing a person will bring CSI on the scene, which gets pretty ugly over time.
Not masking yourself will spike public awareness and notority (for being a wanted criminal), one of the sourcebooks (unwired or companion) has a good portion of runner paranoia in them, which i found pretty good.
Killing a cop will make you living in a world of pain called your own private hell.

it took some PC deaths but we then adapted very quickly. i was playing a merc and i as well wielded LMGs, grenade launchers in the first runs.

and thats what i meant with reduce the powerlevel (number and toughness of opponents) but be more restrictive and consequent (in terms of Police and SWAT response, when player act extensivly violent).
you can always give your players the option for fireworks in the z zones, wilderness or the CZ.

Still well played Sir.

Mael your basic complaint seems to be he's not running HIS shadowrun to YOUR standards. He stated from page 1 that par tof the purpose of this run was to give his gun bunnies something to do. He wouldn't be a very good GM if he then turned around and punished them for actually "discharging a weapon outside a Z-zone", he's actually got a group of oberly cautious guys.

F-B calling the star depends entirely on them havinga contract with the star. No contract? No call!

Yes, "they run you down, they catch you" might be a very realistic end to EVERY run the deviates from the runners plan even the slightest bit. That doesn't make for too fun a game.

That's why your comments are the worst kind of snide, their troubleshooting a problem that doesn't actually exist.

i never said there was a problem...

the few things i didnt understand, i pointed out and malachi answered to these...

i never attacked him personally (like you just did), i merely provided a perspective.

Just to add an iteration on the "power level" of the run. I would direct eyes to Survival of the Fittest (SR3), a rather High Power printed campaign involving not one but several Great Dragons. When I first got it I did think me..well here's something fairly cool for inspiration and to put in at some higher karma characters.

Never used it.

Till last week.

Picked it up and scanned through the first Run in the book as we had a night to kill and hadnt done SR for a while. Lo and behold it said in the front section of the run "A good run for inexperienced players or characters"...getting into Hestaby's Shasta Lair....

So my starting team is doing just that.

well i think it all depends on the play style, me and my group we liked playin it quite realistic and lethal, so even low power campaings were exciting, even scary and frightening...

the biggest problem i see with high power level campaigns and starting chars is that you have keep it up, so you'll end up in hand to hand combat with lofwyr, while taking over SK, pretty soon...

I think I partially answered my own question.
Most of my group is coming from playing That Game That Causes Cancer and is still focused on a kick in the door, hack/blast style of game play.
They are all fairly new to Shadowrun so I have linked them over to your solid write-up of Three Data Monty as an example of play.

My hope is that I can get them to a point where they can plan an intensive run without unloading their clips unless the situation calls for it.
This past weekend we got a session in and I think they learned a bit from getting mauled by retaliatory violence.
They stopped to case a place out instead of heading straight in. Their plan seems to involve a high firepower assault, but they are progressing.

Do you have any sourcebooks or adventures you would recommend for backdrops? I don't have a lot of books aside from the core books so far.

Excellent run.. it's a nice contrast to Three Data Monte. The "we crash through the final barrier, barely alive" is a totally classic ending to a chase. The sci-fi Final Fantasy movie comes to mind.

Any plans for another run?

Thanks for the feedback everyone. Suffice to say everyone has a different play style. Some groups like to have a real intense, realistic style. Others like to be able to have some fun with the "rung and gun" stuff.


Well, this campaign is running through the events of Year of the Comet which is chock full of good material to base runs off of. So far I have done 4 runs based on the events in the book and we're not even out of the first chapter of the book as far as timeline goes. Year of the Comet is 3rd Edition however, so you might not want to "retro" the rules into the old setting like I'm doing. If you're not afraid to convert SR3 to SR4, Survival of the Fittest is a series of 5 (I believe) fully written-out adventures that could possibly take place in the SR4 timeline. As for pure SR4 stuff, Emergence was a good book full of lots of adventure ideas much like Year of the Comet. Emergence, however, deals with a lot with Technomancers and Matrix stuff, so if you don't think that would interest your group then you might not like it. Also high on my recommendation list is Ghost Cartels, which is an SR4 book that has lots of adventure "hooks" (not full adventures, but an outline of them; though they still have full NPC stats and maps). The only caveat I would put on running Ghost Cartels is that your players have to be pretty heartless buggers that are perfectly okay with killing people so that drug dealers can keep selling to school children.

If none of those really catch your fancy, then try picking up one of the location books: Runner Havens or Corporate Enclaves and using the info on the location to craft some runs from there. I hope that gives you enough to go on. Have fun McCummhail!


Thanks Earlydawn. By the end, the players felt like they had just barely escaped with their lives, which I thought was the perfect feeling to have by the end of the adventure. Absolutely I will be doing another run for the group! The next one is going to require even more planning and crafting on my part as its even more ambitious than my previous ones (maeel probably won't like it, it's kind of over-the-top). I'll give you a teaser to think about: the next run is going to be using material from Target Wastelands.

Thanks for reading everyone!

I want to run in your group Malachi. I have been playing Shadowrun since the beginning and really like the way you craft you runs. I have only learned how to do that in the past 10 years. You would have cringed at the first couple runs I did. Can anyone say railroad? Looking forward to the next write up.

Trevor

I'd just like to say that I grabbed this and am currently running it for my Shadowrun group (third edition). I made a few changes (mostly by having the Aztechknowlogy troops pumped up on drugs in combat, and altering the stats for Lobo and Ocelot) but so far it's working well. I also made a 3D mockup of the guy's house in Sketchup, since my team also decided to go straight for the house (they actually decided that hitting it in transport would be harder).

JaronK

Sounds great! Let me know how it goes.

We just finished (two sessions of planning, one session going in). The 3D house mockup was a lot of work, but the players really enjoyed having it (and it helped a few times so they knew where they were). The runners were really shocked by the behavior of the Aztec troops, as they were expecting guards to protect their charges (not dump Green Ring 3 all over the basement, which is what they actually did... the target nearly died as a result).

Lobo I had as a wolf shapeshifter with Thermal Dampening armor and a dose of Spirit Strength, plus like everyone else he had Jazz and Kamakaze. He was hiding in the trees near the house whenever the target was there, and would have been very nasty if he saw the team first, but the team did a good job of finding him (only because they knew he was there, doing the very smart move of asking a nearby city spirit about anything outside the house). They managed to kill him before the Spirit Strength could kick in (I gave them a round while he ate it), so they handled that nicely. Ocelot I had as a gas crazy guy with a Chem Sealed suit of security armor (all the armored Aztec guys had Chem Seals) who was using smoke grenades, white phosphorous, and Green Ring 3 to make life hell for everyone. This nearly killed the close combat adept who charged down the stairs thinking he was safe due to the invisibility and concealment effect, only to run straight into the gas and barely limp out. Luckily the team had an Anthroform drone to finish the run and get the target out, though even that was awfully close as Ocelot's armor was strong enough to resist a lot of firepower. Ocelot ended up going down but limping away after the team had fled, seriously wounded and unable to help but still conscious.

The team had intended not to extract the family, but when the house was lit on fire (Ocelot was a pyro!) they ended up grabbing them and running.

In the end, I gave them 25k each and 7 karma (one karma for survival, one per person extracted, one per defeated Shorn One). Everyone was happy, and they got the Force 1 Weapon Focus Dikoted Macauitl that Lobo was using. The end for now.

My thoughts after the mission were that using drugs on the enemies was quite nice (I could have fast enemies who weren't full of valuable cyberware, otherwise the medic would have taken it all). Spirit Strength on a shapeshifter is all kinds of nasty... I might use that in the future. Gas is great as a solution to invisibility, and really throwing grenades around works great too. Of course, this only works when security doesn't care about burning down their location (in this case, they didn't). I think the team has learned their lesson about charging straight in and assuming everyone won't react.

JaronK

Hmm... Good stuff...

I tried to download your notes DOC on the first page but it was no bueno, yeah, I know you put it there six months ago, but I was offline for several months. Like I asked in your Three Data Monty thread, do you mind if I convert the pertinent parts of this to text and add it to my adventure library?

No problem, go right ahead. You can also PM me your email and I'll send you the notes from both runs if you want.