Hey guys, I'm running a run based off of the first hook on page 20 of Emergence. Basically, a Mitsuhama black ops team is holding a hacker and electro-torturing him for intel in a safehouse and the PCs need to get him out. I'm having this safehouse be the warded boiler room of a low-rent Mitsuhama apartment building.

What my issue is, is that most of the runs in this campaign haven't really been well-planned attacks on hard targets (mostly a combination of wilderness runs and open mob/gang warfare). So I'm nervous about how to make this safehouse something that's realistically well defended while not giving my players no opportunity at all. I'm assuming they're going to kill the guy if the PCs are completely overt about this.

So, I want your input on this. Basically, I'm thinking the MCT team probably has a mage and a rigger at least, so there'll be drones outside the building watching (or should they be in the hallways?). Our team has two mages, so they could probably get by that with Concealment. Also, the party has a hacker and rigger, so maybe they can hijack the drones or mess with the feeds. What I'm wondering is if there should be a spirit right there, which may pose problems (can other spirits see through Concealment astrally? How does that work? Does it make you astrally invisible? I've seen other threads that seem to have conflicting ideas on this), or whether they would put it outside the boiler room door. It seems like if the spirit was outside it'd expect people to be leaving and entering the building, whereas one could conceivably be ordered to simply stop everybody at the door. What do you guys think about this?

Then, inside the warded room, you've maybe got two gun bunnies holding the guy, that you have to somehow take down before they can kill the hacker. Does this sound like a doable run?

Any commentary or thoughts on this would be more than welcome.

The mage most certainly will have no fewer than two, and possibly three bound spirits. I had an encounter in which three mages with three spirits each nearly party wiped my game, and the mages didn't even take any damage. The reason the mages left was because they didn't want their Fortress of Solitude spelled-out vehicle to get bogged down in a collapsing building.

Do interesting things with the spirits. Like an air, a fire, and an earth spirit. Take a good look at the earth spirit's Bind power. No save to get stuck; the only save is to be able to move again. That's such a good ability. Also, don't forget the other powers, like Accident (to cancel their Guard ability), Fear (self evident), Confusion (to just mess them up further), and Movement (to bog them down).

On Concealment, it only works against physical security, as evident by the keyword phrase "Perception Tests". The capital P and T means a specific skill and a specific test. And, since it is a magical ability, would actually make the person(s)/object(s) under its effects much more visible to Assensing.

A fun tactic to use with drones is to turn off their wireless activity and have them run a Vocal Recognition software, set to only take verbal commands (even better if in a specified language, like Latin) from the rigger or other security guards.

Depending on if other people are living in the building your bad guys will have to keep themselves concealed as to not attracted attention. The bad guys would be hooked into the building, keeping an eye on the built in security cameras. Give the building some kind of bio-metric locks so your runners will have to either hack it or force someone to bring them in.

I kind of figured this was going to be an active-use apartment building nearby, hence them keeping a low profile in the boiler room. I was going to ask about that, the sec cams. Are they likely to be there in a low income apartment building or would it be just up to his drones? Do you think their team would have a hacker monitoring the cams' system?

I like the biometric locks on the front door. Definitely will use that.

I am worried my players are just not tactical enough to deal with voice-protected drones and stuff. They tend to favor a Grand Theft Auto approach to shadowrunning. Which is fine, I'll cater to that, but I do want them to have to actually think this time. So it's a quandary. I may just make the rigger-drone link encrypted or something so it's still a challenge, but they'd never think of the voice thing. I may save that for later, though, for sure. Like a major research lab or something...

You make a good point about the spirit abilities. I haven't looked at those as much as I should have, but they all at least as useful or more than SPIRIT PUNCH. We have a possession mage who usually just summons one huge spirit and goes fusional with it, so the frontal astral assault approach usually works out in the party's favor.

The Concealment ruling I totally needed. This has been a major issue at least once already.

Thanks a bunch you guys! Any other ideas out there?

First question you have to ask in this situation is how hard you want to make it for the PC's. If you want a brutal playerwipe potential for the characters? I'd say that the Mage would have a few spirits on tap ready to go. The Security could be beefed up by having the corp sec having their own wireless cameras that work on their own network rather than ones that are in a low-rent apartment building (which probably wouldn't work...even the front lock might be broken since it's a money issue). They would set up choke points down into the boiler room...since almost no tenents would ever go there. So the mage can also have a couple of watcher spirits tasked to watch certain doors and access areas where noone should be. The rigger could also have some of the smaller drones tasked for the same stuff...and wouldn't have to be actively watching them to get a warning from them.
Also, the drones outside would be on the lookout for familiar vehicles...in EVERY game (and i mean every one) my players used a GMC Bulldog as their runner vehicle of choice and I have to admit it has everything you need. But it became such a staple that the corps and cops started looking at them as runner fehicles everywhere and payed a lot of attention to them when they showed up.

Where did you get that from?

People who want a safehouse in which to keep people they kidnap while they torture them, would not want an apartment building with real people. Real people often call the cops when they hear screams from the apartment below or see people being dragged out of car trunks in the parking lot. Not always, but it just takes one curious kid.

You'd want a house with a garage or a commercial building with an enclosed parking lot. Perferably one built out of masonry or with a basement. A fairly high perimeter fence with a gate would be very helpful to keep out the curious kids. Put a laser and proximity sensor on the top of the wall to detect clever people. Install gas sensors in the HVAC air intakes.

Then use wired cameras to cover the outside streets and such, with cameras and motion detectors in the yard. Use a good set of mechanical locks and good maglocks, with the entrances covered by cameras. Better yet, use a metal grate-type security door that needs to be opened to work on the main door, with a pressure pad covering the area where someone would stand. Invisible people opening the security grate will be kind of obvious...

Hook all the cameras and motion detectors up to a computer system (with out wireless access) to spot changes and sound an alarm.

Use a couple of watcher spirits covering the outside and a couple more inside. (Watchers are a lot like guard dogs, but when you take one out the mage knows it)

Have the mage have a summoned spirit ready anytime other than at dawn or dusk, plus a few bound spirits.

Rigger/spider should have a couple of combat drones with automatic weapons, video/IR and radar inside the house ready to react.

Interior where the prisoner is kept should be well warded and probably also solidly built.

To take this down fast would require a fairly large well trained team with magical support and a lot of firepower. It would probably take some careful prep, like a radar analysis of the building, specialty drones to bypass the cameras and sensors, microdrone to infiltrate, etc. Then they explosively breach at multiple points when most the the occupants are asleep, and flood with gas and flashbangs as they very rapidly clear the building with movement and concealment covering them.

They all be in tactical network, probably only R3 (8 channels is kind of hard to come up with). I'd probably have them using alpha's with AV ammo. At least some would have radar to know where the drones are and kill any megarmored ones with gauss rifles, zapper rockets and thermite, while having at least one spirit per team member to deal with magical threats, plus countermagic from some of them.

I'm not sure how the people with the Grand Theft Auto approach would pull this off. A corp special operations team isn't a few street gang bangers, they are typically very experienced pros for whom cost is pretty much no object. Plus, if they have some time and are not running a totally black operation, they can get astral support from other MCT assets in a fairly short time if it's essential.

They will, if not immediately overwhelmed with a well coordinated rapid and violent attack, counter attack very effectively and will both have the ability and will to do things like AV rocket the PCs "armored van" and kill everyone in it. They might just leave the drones and spirits behind while they boogie out under concealment to their escape vehicle a few doors down, after arming the anti-investigation demo charges. If the PCs are still fighting the drones and spirits when the building demo charges go off that will be sad.

With 3 air spirits, 3 fire spirits, and 3 earth spirits, using just their powers (no attacks), I made the shadowrunning team that had previously taken on 45 drones that were TacNetted together (and won) run away screaming like Japanese schoolgirls with skinned knees. All I used was Accident, Confusion, Fear, and Bind on the team, and Guard and Concealment on the spirits.


I'm tired right now, I'll check on it tomorrow.

2 points Sir.
1) If there is a security camera system in this complex, the likely hood of the video being watched by the owners is low. Depending on how cheep the system is, it may be archive only. (the cameras record locally and the videos are stored on chips, no off site at all) Given the Predominance of wireless technology, highjacking the video feed of the cameras directly would not be hard, but they could have just used co-ax cable which is still cheap, but slightly more secure.
2. I dunno if it will come up, but most locks in SR are Maglocks. Magnetic locks that are electromagnets pulling toward the doorframe/plate. Some models use the electromagnet to repell the door when unlocked, meaning that they fail to the locked position. (This happened to me in a dorm once)

You can play off the lack of overwhelming security as a consequence of the covert nature of the safehouse. The site's location is carefully distributed through matrix dead-drops, information compartmentalization, and local cover, so the interrogation team would probably be less protected, then, say.. the primary corporate station office.

Go for an abandoned factory out in Redmond Barrens or something.

I mean after all, in the Barrens, nobody can hear you scream...

- J.

btw, i was thinking about your method of "heightened interrogation techniques" (to coin a phrase ). I think that electrocution would be very old-school and messy and loud. Since he's a hacker and probably has some sort of DNI in him...they could probably have a sim-sense type of torture that they could just plug into a datajack or headware or something...and since it's a BTL-type thing, the cyber he has in him would shut off his voluntary muscle control so he wouldn't be able to scream. Well, he would, but only in his head.

Problem would probably be that his psyche would be a mess afterward, but that could make for some interesting storylines if they know the person they are trying to rescue.

You might as well give the PCs a window of opportunity...maybe one of the interrogators takes a break, or the mage leaves the scene for a short time...something the PCs can use to their advantage.

Assuming no one has tipped these MCT guys off, they could likely not be worried about a rescue attempt. They would be more concerned with being seen by local authorities, although if its on corporate grounds, then they don't have to worry about someone "calling the star" on them, as they have no jurisdiction.

Another reason why a black ops torture room doesn't need to be hidden or in the barrens...it could be in secure enclave where MCT is the law. And if that is the case, you might consider less "ready" black ops, as they could just rely on the standard security of a corporate enclave or corp-sponsored apartment complex.

Torture is useless in the Sixth World.
You've got magic, you've got drugs, you've got Simsense... Sure someone can be trained/equipped/modified to resist them, but it's the same with torture.
Physical intimidation and a few knocks can help to get a gutterpunk to tell you something, but if you've got to bring someone to your hideout to interrogate him, you'll probably get better result with other ways.

As for the safehouse, I think that the best defense for these thing are the secret. They aren't safe because they've got the security of a zero-zone. They're safe because nobody ever goes there. So it'll be a remote place in an unconspicuous place, maybe with a concealed entrance. At best, it'd have a few motion and wireless signal detectors, maybe a camera or two (remember that in 2070 all this tech is small enough to be easily concealed) all this wired to a wired internal network. A ward could be useful, but might also attract attention so it might do without it. Oh, and it's filled with explosive so that the black ops can quickly get rid of evidence if they ever have to leave the place in a hurry.

As soon as the PC come near it, the black ops are warned by the security systems and can get ready to ambush the PC/lure them away/get away (and let the traps/auto-destruction system take care of the PC).

I was kind of figuring it'd have to be an extraterritorial enclave, or else CrashCart would be able to track and possibly bust out the guy without or before the runners can. They have his ritual samples, so it's really only a matter of hours before he can be traced astrally. Right?

Jerusalem, I love your BTL-torture idea. Thanks!

kzt...wow, brilliantly detailed. I'm copying all of this into my notebook right now.

Thanks so much everyone!

Well, if you use the BTL torture idea, then it wouldn't set off his biomonitor, as he's not actually taking any damage. Same thing with using the Agony spell (page 170, Street Magic). That way DocWag/CrashCart wouldn't be called.

A ward is essential due to spirit search powers.


Yes, you need to not get spotted scouting, then roll up on them with an immediate aggressive and effective attack.

Alot of the ease factor for this depends on how alert the black ops team is, ie if they have good reason to be on guard, they are probably see your runners coming, but if they have no reason to believe they are being followed, they might let their guard slip. They might be taking a break from interrogation at the time the runners hit (giving the runners some time to break in before the team geeks him) or they might want to have the prisoner extracted - is the hacker possessed, brain reprogrammed, implanted commlink hacked and backdoored, tracker implanted, cortex grenade hidden away....something fun like that.

What is their exit plan? Do they have multiple ways out of the safehouse, and are some of these ways exploitable by the party? Since you have the Safehouse in the boiler room, perhaps the door is hidden in some of the machinery ie crank furnace number 4 to 1600, and a secret door pops out. Do they have an escape tunnel leading into the sewers? Do those tunnels have Devil Rats and Sewer Crocs? An Air spirit in the steam of the boiler room could be fun, as could a water spirit in the sewer tunnels. Maybe the rigger has a getaway submersible in the sewer tunnel.

Being MCT, you can expect the rigger to be strong, with good drones, Mitsu is renowned for their bots. They also churn out alot of magical gear, so their mage is probably well equipped, but not necessarily experienced.

It is easy to make this into a death trap, but try to give the players a fighting chance, make the black ops team cocky, overconfident, and leave some cracks in the armor for the players to exploit.

Some thoughts,

Lojack

Everybody has to sleep sometime. If you only have 4 guys who are there for a week you will need to have one guy sleeping pretty much all the time, and possibly even 2 or 3 down at once. And nobody lives in their armor 24/7.

The trick to making these things work is having the other side realize that they are under attack when the door blows in. With something clever backing it up, like a large earth spirit waiting engulf people on the other side of their escape hatch. This implies having carefully taken out the surveillance on the perimeter. If the players instead try to John Wayne it they will probably mostly get killed.

The Blackops team is going to be held up in an old decrepid building in the Redmond Barrions? Kinda like the idea of having a crack blackops team that wind-up having to vacate the safehouse asap due to some unforeen problem with the building; crack in boiler system, fire, insect spirit in subbasement.
Just wondering how many gang turfs they might have to wonder through before finding it. That place can be less than friendly to outsiders, well everyone actually. Basically wondering if they might wind up not wanting to wait around outside the building attempting to make long elaborate plans.

I'm just imagining these players as the slow ones described recently, who routinely stood and argued for 45 minutes outside the door of the target about how they were going to break in and what they were going to do when they did. While the black ops guys are inside, with all their guns aimed at the door, drones all zeroed in spirits summoned and hiding everything with concealment as the bad guys watch and listen, accompanying the PC discussion with a laugh track.

At least until they get bored and pump neuro-stun under the threshold at the oblivious PCs.....

Method's Gang Hideout. I´d use a few drones and a spirit outside; the blackOps team would be playing matrix combat games be using virtual instruction programs inside (relaxed), or be on-guard in shifts (alert).

Tomorrow's come and gone. So where did you get that from?

As a magical ability, it will show up when you Assense an area.

EDIT: Also read this section in Astral Signatures:

I'm going to correct a technical matter here as best I can. Corporations even with all their extraterritoriality will stillw ant plausable deniability, both from bad PR, and because in theory the Corporate Court, a higher authority then the individual corps, still honors the basic human rights and other treaties put into place before it's existance.

Basically the rules for corps are: Do what you will, but don't get caught, hence shadowrunners.

So what does that have to do with this?


So where does it say having an astral signature gives the person doing the Assensing more dice on his Assensing test? I agree that having something that produces an astral signature is detectable by Assensing, but I would like to know if having an astral signature actually gives the Assensor more dice - ie making the item/person/etc with the astral signature "more visible to Assensing".

Thought I'd let you all know how it turned out.

The safehouse was set as a townhouse on a lake in the suburbs, in an extraterritorial Mitsuhama gated community still under construction. Ward in the basement, prisoner is wired up to a sim module that's toying with his brain, trying to weaken his will for a third round of mind probing (he's blown Edge twice on it). Three bound spirits at various key points, two MCT flyspy drones circling the building, a Steel Lynx in the basement positioned to attack intruders either on the stairs or coming through the exterior cellar door. Security hub wired to cameras¸ with rigger/hacker just hanging out in the node.

First, our hacker goes in to the node and manages to loop the feeds on the cameras, and because of a few atrocious Matrix Perception rolls, the spider totally doesn't see her. Astral recon sees watcher spirits as well as the main ones, so waits until dawn for the watchers to go away to begin the attack. Our two magicians each summon a hueg spirit at that point, one Norse valkyrie Guardian spirit, and one Hedgewitch possession spirit of a type I don't recall, because for Possession it doesn't matter so much.

Gunbunny sets up breaching charges (a gift from a corporate sponsor they dug up during legwork), blows the back door. People rush in, astral support zergs the first defending spirit down. Another is in the front door near the other entrance and gets bypassed. Gunbunny uses her gyro-stabilized, gas-vented machine gun to destroy the drone at the bottom of the stairs. Pistol using smuggler and face follow down, exchange fire with heavily augmented shooty guy. Shooty guy rolls terribly, despite like 8 agility, 9 reaction and huge skills. Wounds smuggler badly before going unconscious from pistol spam. Mage tries to get off one more Mind Probe, fails again and gets machine gunned. Bout this time our guys are breaking through the wards, and the last spirit is about to start materializing and kicking ass, when the mage dies and it decides it doesn't care anymore.

Master awakened ninja jumps down from the ceiling, stabs the extraction target with a ninjato, really bad, then proceeds to make her escape. Enemy hacker sets the place to blow up, then goes out guns blazing. Face medkits extraction target, magician heals. They get to the top of the stairs with him when the house comes down on them. Fortunately, possession mage is still in Super Fusion Mode and is mostly ok, makes sure no one's bleeding to death, party struggles out to waiting CrashCart.

They needed a bit of advice, and strong hints that they needed to plan, but I think they did a good job. And I owe you guys a debt of thanks for your help in designing the place, and figuring out what the heck I was going to do with it. Thanks, Dumpshock.

Sounds cool!

Hey All,

New poster, long time reader.

I'm running my group through Emergence as well and we just finished the MCT safehouse. My version was a reinforced warehouse in barrens/slums with magical support, nausea gas, and crack MCT SWAT. My party decided to gas the place out first with an innovative use of the smoke screen from our rigger's Hyundai and so they all had gas masks thus nullifying my sweet nausea gas . . .

I digress . . . I'm thinking of running the next adventure seed, the one with the girl in the amusement park, and honestly, the amusement park idea just doesn't seem right to me. I'm wondering what others have done here. What really bothers me is the idea that amusement park rides of the 2070s would be like those of today. I'm wondering if anyone did it as a fully VR amusement park, like a virtual club.

Thanks everyone.

Torture even in the present day is not useful for getting reliable information. Torture is actually designed to demoralize and ultimately eliminate the opposition, and to scare the civilian populations that tacitly know this torture is going on, so they won't emulate the opposition's behavior in the future. The prisoner receives the torture, but the target is his allies and the civilians contemplating joining their cause. I'd recommend The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein for more information about how torture (and specifically electrocution) has been used in recent history... "enhanced interrogation" is really not interrogation at all.

I'd say a team that really wants to get information would have a programmable ASIST machine or a mage running mind probes.

Yeah, for the MCT team trying to extract info from the target, I had them use a hermetic with a lot of detection spells.

love the Naomi Klein recommendation though, I mean to read her work and haven't gotten around to it yet.

I'm reading The Shock Doctrine now and it's pretty jaw-droppingly on point. And, in relation to Shadowrun, it gives you a good idea of the kinds of tactics the megacorps probably routinely use in the sixth world to advance their interests, both in terms of policy, and in terms of torture.

Of course, I am a dyed-in-the-wool leftie, so YMMV.

I definitely did the mind probes. In the end, I decided they'd be torturing him to weaken him mentally for the Mind Probes he'd been resisting by throwing Edge at them.

that's probably a good point. we didn't really get into the details, but I'm imagining they were using drugs on him to weaken his will as well. I also made the hermetic sort of an expert at this sort of thing, higher CHA, social skills, etc. Like we discussed above, you can probably get a lot of info out of a target without pulling out their toenails if you know how to ask the right questions and you've got mind probe spells.

Even with edge though, against a professional hermetic with some spirit back up, the hacker is gonna give up the goods eventually.