I'm starting the Renraku Arcology: Shutdown scenario soon, but I'm not entirely happy with the canon way it's been written so I'm looking for alternate plotlines. I don't want to deviate too much from the main idea, but I'd be willing to hear what changes you guys implemented. If you could help me out with some of your ideas, I'd be in your debt.

I was toying with the idea that Deus' Network survived (in some form or another) after the crash. That's not to say Deus itself survived, but the network itself did. To what purpose and how, I can't say. But I liked the Network as an idea. Who is to say that another AI wouldn't jump in and use the Network as its homenode? The collective processing power would be enough be a very beefy homenode. And under SR4 technically feasible. After all, its just a series of commlinks which all connect to each other via VPN (basically).

- J.

What parts aren't you happy with?

You got me thinking about something...what actually happened to all the nodes? According to System Failure they all went into coma once the compilation was complete, but then what? Did they recover after DEUS died, and what happened with the code in their heads?

pax may still be out there, so who knows what else...

That's just it. I don't think it was ever established.

In my campaign, one of my player's had Mysterious Implant (and Amnesia) which given most of his cyberware package was very similar to the Banded, I thought it would work well if he was one of Deus' Network. The mysterious implant was basically a prototype-style commlink with some extras. All that player's cyberears, eyes, autoinjectors, etc, were slaved to it. He realised something was very wrong when one of the AI player's could slip into his head, make it a home node and then start controlling him like he was wired up with a stirrup interface. When he found out how it got there he freaked out.

- J.

That's the question, we've had hints about remains of Ex Pacis and Overwatch being still active, but is there any intel about Deus and his (in)voluntary loyalists?

i'm pretty sure that at least SOME of them survived. And if I had to guess, Pax would be one of those survivors.

I ran it once MUCH more subtle and it actually cranked up the tension and horror by a factor of 10.

1) Deus took over without all the blood and carnage. It kept up the family getting assimilated here and there.
2) It was nearly impossible to tell who the banded were on sight.
3) Renraku KNEW they lost control of the building, but couldn't do anything about it without casueing to much of a public panic or casueing Deus to escalate.
4) Normal people could go in and out of the public areas with very few problems. And Deus would sometimes lure people in that it wanted. And send them back out.

This lead to what was called "The ShadowWar" in my game. The main battles were fought in the hidden passages and upper floors of the building. You could never know who had been compromised and you were reduced to playing chess against a supercomputer who had better technology than anyone else in the world and an army of slaves.

When/how did Deus die?

In our game owrld we wewre noth thrilled with the whole take over hting either. We had the take over last a month without the blood and horro being so out there, and then Deus seemd to 'collapse' allowing the area to be retaken and of course he slipped out with the rest of the refugees.

Renraku took over the arcology again and it is back as it was but it is certianly tainted and people are always a little lieery of clubbing there, like slummimng, what happens if it happens again, and we're there?

By Canon Deus dies when the ECSE goes down after 'Jack and his daughter get out of dodge while the worm continues cascading (which is what brings down the node). This happens 'off camera' so to speak, although given that Deus had just consolidated his presence from the dispersed network into the ECSE to do his upgrade it's unlikely that he would be expected to survive when the node comes down on his 'head'.

I'm a little surprised the mall is open again too, personally; although I guess it's now been almost decade since it was reclaimed, so today's 13 year olds wouldn't really remember the horror in the sense that today's youth in America don't really remember "9/11".

A few things are a bit nagging, which is why I'm looking for some modifications that, perhaps, I might like better. First off, I'm not so happy with the ultra-lethality of the drones, but they can be scaled down. I'm not happy with the Banded as they exist now, they're too recognisable, but they can be changed so that their eyes don't betray their group and their bands don't betray their ranks. And there are many little things like this that by themselves aren't such a bother and can be easily changed, but overall it leaves me with a feeling that it's not quite the thing I want to run. I'm also not so fond of the scale which the developers have chosen to take. Instead of focussing on one aspect of, say, the resistance, they chose to give a very broad scope and let you run with it. It's cool that they don't micromanage your game for you by detailing every floor and every citizen of the Arcology, but on the other hand, that place is so immense that it's really hard to take it all in, to maintain that helicopter view of what's going on.

All this leads me to look at how others have dealt with the arcology shutdown, and what I could potentially alter to make the campaign a more enjoyable one.

the banded thing would only be a issue of the players are told up front about how the system works, no?

if they run into a banded, and do not inspect him or her closely, and keep notes on things, they may think nothing of the mods at first.

and then, once they figured out the system and start relying on it, you start using false colored/banded oposition and undercover-agents

In my campaign, the shutdown lasted a week, from closing the doors to the last remnants of the AI pawns being mopped up by the military (with Renraku support). The player shadowrunner team at the time used the opportunity to penetrate the Arcology for a data theft while SpecForce teams took control of the power plants - two runners were ex-seals, so they knew how the procedures well enough to slip in.

Pax was no longer working for Deus, in fact her dissonance worm was what finally killed him