When I read the following from Food Fight,
QUOTE
Wendy is a sexy lady of 23, heavily made up, with hair in the latet Nova style and dyed neon blue. She wears an armored duster over a skimpy pair of cutoffs and a halter top.
...I honestly immediately thought,
QUOTE
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
...without even feeling it was necessary to apologize on any level to Percy Bysshe Shelley.
In any case I reflected on the differences between the first edition Food Fight and the later editions of Food Fight. For example, it seems like in the first edition, Wendy's high heels were only a negative, giving her grotesque penalties to all physical actions, whereas in a later edition they also gave her stupidly injurious kicking power.
The more I thought about it the more things about the scenario seemed to not really make sense to me, and the more I thought about how the scenario could be edited in order to make sense, be more realistic, but at the same time be more fun. In my personal experience, I GMed Food Fight once, and seen it as a player twice, if I recall correctly. I seem to remember that Food Fight, when run with new players tends to result in a TPK anyway because the players are usually outnumbered and outgunned and not in defensive positions. So, just a few thoughts...
The Premise
In real life, if I, not being a hardcore 80s uzi mercenary but rather a civilian, entered a convienience store that was being cased by three obvious gang members, I'd like to think that I'd observe them, pick up a vibe, and leave. I believe that in the context of the contemporary United States most anyone who has either lived on the street, or deals with a lot of people from the street (eg. a cop), has developed situational awareness precisely centered around noticing when violent individuals are observing something or someone in preparation to commit a violent crime. Therefore, a tough survivor from the streets such as a Shadowrunner probably would not enter the store and begin obliviously shopping for groceries in the situation presented in Food Fight especially given that two of the Chiller Thrillers casing the store, Slicer Dicer and Static, are extremely distinctive-looking and Static is behaving as though he is a delusional crackhead by talking to inanimate objects.
The whole situation would seem a lot more plausible if different gang members, the more stable ones, were the ones casing the store. Then you could at least play along with the idea that are intelligent and sociopathically coolheaded enough so that they're able to avoid giving off a bad vibe that would make everyone leave the store right away. In other words, I'd replace Slicer Dicer and Static with Catcher, the gang leader, and Spike, the timorous n00b, who perhaps believes at this time they're only going to steal food, which is why he doesn't give off the impending violence vibe.
Then Slicer Dicer and Static could be the ones who burst into the store later while everyone is shopping for groceries.
Escalation to violence
According to the scenario after the whole gang invades the store they walk around harassing and bullying everyone hoping to goad someone to violence. In other words they don't just run the walls like SWAT and headshot everyone, but instead swagger around and wait for a pretext to begin executing people.
IMO this makes the difference between a guaranteed TPK and the chance for the party to kill the gangers or even the chance to get away through the storeroom (which in real life would be the most realistic thing you'd want to do in that kind of situation). But what it means that that the player characters being able to kill the gang members really depends on the player characters choosing the right moment to act, so that they can simultaneously incapacitate as many gang members as possible while the gang members are focused on something else.
I don't really feel the traditional initiative rules work best for this since it's not a straight-up combat situation. A lot of it would boil down to observation, nerves, and sleight of hand. If a player wants to suddenly attack a gang member, I feel that maybe it should be handled by a Stealth roll instead of an immediate initiative roll. Basically, every gang member gets the chance to beat the player's Stealth roll, with their TN modified up or down by which direction they're facing and whether or not they're distracted by something else. If nobody notices the player action, the player gets 1 free attack (2 simple actions or 1 complex action, if we're talking 3rd edition rules), and then everyone rolls initiative and the fight is on. If all of the gangbangers notice the action by beating the stealth roll we roll initiative like normal. If some notice and others don't, the ones who notice roll initiative, and act in the order of the initiative, but only for one attack. Afterwards we roll initiative again and combat proceeds as normal. Maybe the same test should apply to fellow player characters as well to see if the other player characters would have the opportunity to act in coordiation with the player attempting the initial sneak attack.
Likewise if someone wants to slip out the back door and escape, if that's remotely plausible given their position in the store, that can be handled by Stealth as normal. Actually, the only reason I wouldn't see most highly skilled illegal mercenaries attempting to evade in this way would be if they don't want to leave their teammates behind.
Armaments and cyberware
In the first place, the big premise of Food Fight is that the player characters are supposed to be lightly armed. But if I lived in a world where people like the Chiller Thrillers were randomly knocking over convienience stores I'd be a lot more heavily armed than I normally am in real life. In real life I own a variety of rifles and handguns but I don't carry any weapons with me on the street even when I work in "bad" parts of town. But if there were a chance every time I went to the 7-11 that I might be bum rushed by several dudes with shotguns and SMGs I'd probably walk around wearing a level IIIA vest and if at all possible an automatic Glock 18 on the grounds that I'd need as much firepower as possible.
So if I were the GM, who would be I to say that the player characters shouldn't be walking around wearing their Armor Jackets and having concealed submachineguns? In 1st edition rules it seems like a Predator has the same concealability as a Uzi III or HK227 S variant, so why would someone not take the latter? The only way I could see to make the under-armed thing make sense would be if as a GM I specified that whatever a player is carrying to the Stuffer Shack would need to have a certain Concealability rating that was so stringent as to restrict a lot of the most powerful weapons.
On that note, why are the gang members who are supposedly casing out the Stuffer Shack equipped with full-length shotguns? In order for the scenario to make more sense, the gang members who are casing the Stuffer Shack should have Uzi IIIs, since Uzis both fit with the gangbanger image a little better, and are more concealable in terms of the rules.
However, for shock value, I'd have the gangbangers who are hiding in the van outside and who bust into the Stuffer Shack have AK-97s, and maybe one of them has the Defiance T-250.
Possibly Wendy could have dual revolvers of some kind and the Ambidextrious edge in keeping with her Southern persona. I'd take away her silly high heels and give her cowboy boots.
Finally, the scenario states that the gang members impulsively raid stores and commit acts of violence and that they can't get money by doing this since they live in a cashless society but rather rob shoppers and loot food. However, given their relatively high threat level, and the fact they aren't dead already from this sort of impulsive behavior in a heavily-armed society, they must have a certain level of resources. The way I see it the only way they could survive these sorts of actions is if most of them had improved reflexes of some kind. As a GM I'd be willing to give everyone the cheapo chemical treatment Boosted Reflexes at level 2 for the badasses, level 1 for everyone else, and maybe not for the n00b gang member though, since he has to prove himself first. This is just to make the fact they're alive still more plausible.
As an afterthought, I'd boost the skill levels of Slicer Dicer to 6 for all his combat skills and I'd even consider making him a physad. If he impulsively knocks over stores *and* runs around using a katana and shuriken instead of firearms *and* hasn't been killed yet, he must be very good. Considering everyone else has a nice gun I'd also consider dikoting his katana or his shuriken.
Splatter table
IMO the splatter table and Difficult Terrain rules just slow down the firefight. Why use a random generation table to figure out if there's a mess when we can use common sense? Single rounds probably won't spill enough of anything to create a slip hazard. Bursts of automatic fire might in the shampoo or beverage aisle. I think that's about all that should probably happen.