Like the topic says, I've got a group of 6 Shadowrun virgins and 1 who's just read 2XS when I twisted his arm (then loved it). He's playing a insect-spirit possessed mole attempting to figure out how much the shadow community knows about the bugs.

Since I want to make this as memorable as possible for my players, I'd like to get your stories. Anyone run Missing Blood or Queen Euphoria or possibly some homebrewed games before the Insects went public after the Cermak Blast? Yes, I will steal your ideas for my game.

I ran a story where the runners were trying to steal data from a facility run by a string of partnered shell companies. The J didnt know who was running the show and all he could produce is a location in a swampy part of New Orleans Louisiana and a grainy picture showing some hybrid of an Alligator and Beetle. The J wanted the R&D data to boost his companies Genesplicing R&D. The players had never run into Insect Spirits before so this was a bit of shock when they broke in and the Queen used the opportunity to try an escape plan. At the end they did find out the company at the top was Aztechnology but kept quiet because of the backlash if the info led back to them.
This was before I had the info of Ares using bug infested guard dogs, so I though I was being original.

A long, long time ago I ran a "wage slaves become shadowrunners" campaign inspired by Twist from the Secrets of Power novel trilogy. The characters started out as corp men that had to go on a three week motivational training event hosted by the Universal Brotherhood. Immediately, individual attendees were singled out for "private counseling". Some never returned, while others (among them a very outspoken sceptic) were suddenly totally pro UB when they came back.
So, the players figuered that they were being held by some weird brainwashing cult and started snooping around...but nothing could have prepared them for what they found in the basement eventually!
When they realized that their own corp must have already been infiltrated as well, escaping from the compound and hiding in the shadows became the only option.

The players enjoyed the story mostly, but the campaign quickly fell apart after the escape because they wanted to play "guys that can actually blow up stuff" again.

I actually just got done running Missing Blood. I couldn't have planned it better than it turned out. Everything just fell into place.

Back when we started a few months ago (all of my players were Shadowrun virgins too), I handed out some packets with the various charts, maps, and other goodies found in the source books. I also sprinkled in some of the full color advertisements found in the old source books. One of which happened to be the UB one from the London Sourcebook. No one thought much of it at the time. Fast forward a few months, and the snake shaman "Scales" is looking to initiate. He joins the UB because it's obviously "a noble and humanitarian organization." He finds some like-minded shamans in the UB and they form a magical group. Mistake # 1.

About two months ago they were doing Harlequin, and I ran Counterstroke. They had to leave Scales behind while they escaped thinking him dead. Mistake # 2 Harlequin wrapped up and they mourned the loss of their healer. The mercenaries had dumped his unconscious and severely tortured body onto a trash pile and left him. The party mage had a dream about Scale's dead body being on a trash pile covered with flies, but didn't tell the party and thought nothing of it. Mistake # 3

The players, while doing legwork at the Redmond UB house, spotted a familiar dwarf through the soup kitchen when the door was opened, but couldn't find him after the door opened again. The adventure goes more or less as expected. Except they didn't expect a very pissed off Fly, formerly Snake, Shaman to be screwing with them the whole time they're raiding the chapter house.

The queen spirit pretty much man-handled them in a very bad way ripping the mage in half. The troll Physad kept her mostly busy with his Rating 3 weapon focus, but even that was barely enough. The players got the hell out of dodge, and now the troll now has a permanent fear of flies.

All in all, it was pretty brutal. They players did manage to get a copy of the UB source book through their legwork and it quickly added to their trepidation. My fiance actually read the whole thing while we were playing, and it scared the crap out of her. The best thing I did, however, was that I gave the normal UB members a sense of humanity. They were just normal people caught up in a lie. This really hit the players hard when they killed a UB guard wearing no armor, only to find a pregnant now-widow cowering under the desk while wearing...an armored jacket. They killed every guard in that place, and when they realized what they did it really tore them up inside. It was awesome.

My roommate (the one who knows about Shadowrun and is going to be my plant) and I ran a quick encounter to try to learn the combat rules. His gunslinger physad (the character he'll be playing AFTER he turns traitor with his troll street sam tank) vs. three corpsec inside a mall. He killed two of them with headshots and the third one bugged out. He was proud of having done it in under two combat turns and bragging about his shot through one guy's eye (9 hits vs. the glitched defense roll of the security guard). Then I brought him down to earth. "Congratulations...you just murdered two minimum-wage rent-a-cops in the middle of the mall who were just trying to do their job. The one you shot point-blank's last words were 'Gloria...I was going to propose tonight...'" Drove home the difference between a Shadowrun game and the D&D game we played previous.

Also, did you happen to convert Missing Blood to 4e? If so, I'd love to get your notes...

We had one where the ant shaman who had escaped from Queen Euphoria showed up at the school in Ivy and Chrome and having taken over part of the staff was moving in on the kids. Rich kids whom no one wants making noise and who looks twice when a teen in non-communicative?

We had a call from one of the kids who remembered the team but our contact within the school had already been taken over so of course she was all for putting us off the scent. The less said about what we found in the science labs the better. The adventure was best remembered by us for one sammi saying "Why does the bad guy always put his evil lair under the gym?"

No, actually. I ran it in 2nd edition. I'm pretty familiar with SRII, so when we started up I just used that instead of learning a new system (and getting new books).

Ah...I'm running mostly with a bunch of nWoD people, some of whom have never played anything else...figured 4a would be a lot less jarring to the system than 3rd (which is my favorite edition personally...mostly because I know it best).

Also, while I have this thread up, does anyone have a nice summary of how insect spirit possessions work? Last time I asked, someone had a link to a thread on it but I can't for the life of me find it.

I'm currently playing a middle-aged Ork PI who grew up in Chicago. Things went buggy right around when he started doing PI work, so he now carries at least one clip of capsule rounds filled with KEIV and one dose of Wyrd mantis musk. Also he has an inhuman hate for cockroaches. I've been meaning to write up some fiction about that, actually...

Bug spirit inhabitation isn't quite like other inhabitation. It frequently requires either a Shaman or a Queen to implant a spirit, except for cases of non-hive spirits like Beetle or Cockroach spirits. In that case, it takes a female with a nest. It follows standard inhabitation rules, although I don't think that there are any flesh form bug spirits. Hybridized forms are horrid bug-human combinations, while True Forms are big bugs. When a queen or female implants a bug spirit into the victim, it's similar to that species of bug laying eggs into a host, like a wasp implanting another bug with larvae. Victims are frequently cocooned or injected with a paralyzing substance first, and such victims count as prepared vessels.

Remember that different types of bug spirits may have several specialized members. For instance, ants will have drones, soldiers, scouts, and a queen.

Once you're a bug, there's no going back.

Awesome!



Rules for bug spirits are in Street Magic. What else do you need?

Well if someone else has already converted all the NPCs, there's no reason for me to do the same work. Plus, I just cannot figure out how to work the stats for someone who's been merged in flesh form (yes, insect spirits can do that...it's the premise behind the book 2XS) when I've already got the character statted out. My roommate's going to be playing a flesh form spirit posing as a shadowrunner. They're going to do a run against the UB that will very lightly hint at something wrong but not what, then another unrelated run, then the first run of Harlequin, then either Missing Blood or Queen Euphoria (haven't decided which yet), then they're going the reoccurring NPC villain of the bug arc is going to show up, an insect shaman whose queen summoning they're going to bust up. He's going to die in a didn't-find-the-body sort of way or escape, then come back to terrorize them repeatedly interspaced with the "unrelated runs" which are actually Harlequin (going to be fun when they get to Counterstroke...wonder if they'll piece together the Harlequin runs or if they'll think it's flunkies for the insect shaman). It's going to culminate with the insect shaman and his new queen hitting them right as they're trying to leave TT from the final part of Harlequin.

The rub is that during the Harlequin run, they're going to pick up an NPC gunslinger adept and all through the following game, there's going to be hints that someone's betraying them. This is where I punish metagame thinking and it turns out that the mole is the character my roommate is currently playing. When they get to the shaman summoning the queen, his character attacks the players and he and I switch character sheets, him playing his REAL character of the gunslinger and me taking over the flesh form insect spirit troll street samurai.

Hah, I did the same thing. Most of my players were from my D&D group, and over the years they all heard these terrible things about how dangerous Harlequin was. So for the very first session I ran a mini-module called "Physical." I did one mini-module after every real run.

For the final run and H's big reveal I threw on my leather jacket and drew the diamonds over my eyes & mouth with a sharpie. I set up the game board with a full scene of the rooftop in Tarislar, and even ordered the mini (spent a good week painting it). I played some music (thread here), and set the picture of him with a guitar right in front of them.

It was quite a surprise when they opened their eyes to see the full scene set up. I also bugged the hell out of my girlfriend for a solid month practicing Heath Ledger's joker voice. In the end she gave my voice efforts a 6/10 ( )

It was a riot, and they'll never forget the time the GM completely pulled one over on them.

Ahhh the memories of my UB campaign (though my players would refer to them as nightmares, not memories... )

I ran through the entire storyline with them, over the course of two years worth of gaming sessions, including Queen Euphoria, Missing Blood and Double exposure adventure modules.
I added a few runs on my own, including them participating in the "cleansing" of the town of Gilroy (as mentioned in the UB sourcebook / transcript) as part of an Ares Firewatch mission and I filled in some blanks I noticed in the official storyline - for example how all the UB members including true forms and cocoons were brought to Chicago. In my campaign, the UB owned several local transportation companies using temperature controlled trucks for the transport to Chi-town (good to have a char with heat vision to notice it).
I then brought my players to Chicago right before the bug breakout, the trail of the missing scientist they were hired to find led them to an UB-owned office building, which at that point had already been seized and closed by the UCAs FBI. The runners snuck in and logged onto the company system, only to find the answering machine overflowing with calls. Hundreds of messages, all saying the same words. 'I have come home'.
The look on the players faces was priceless.

I had them trapped in Chicago where they met with some of the Firewatch team and assisted in the 'liberation' of the Wrigley dome from Ghouls and other vermin while the Firewatch team went on their rescue trip during which they released the Cermak nuke.
I dropped some connections to my players' backstories throughout their time in Chicago, too, and it took them a few months to make it out - helping the guy who was in possession of the chat and comm transcripts that eventually became the Bug city sourcebook escape from Chicago and taking him to the Denver nexus.
It wasn't a high powered campaign, but it definitely had an epic feel to it. And some of the characters could boast some epic scars afterwards.

*Sighs* All the things I missed out on...

We had a series of adventures where the runners were hired to do datasteals on various R&D facilities for different megacorps. They were hired by the same Johnson who was always a little "odd" and became more so as time went on. They ran Queen Euphoria and Missing Blood during this time, they began to get suspicious. Finally, at an SK facility they bust into the secure room, and are met by a dwarf in a suit (Brackhaus). He offers them the file they want and tells them to read it. They figure out they've been running for the bugs in various cities, helping them figure out what the corps know about them. Brackhaus offers them a well paying job to go back and have some revenge on their former employers.

I didn't think flesh forms could access the cyberware of the host, I thought only hybrids could do that. I don't think it makes sense, but I think thats the way it runs.

Even if they can't, I'll just say it's a normal non-cybered troll who put on a bunch of fake implants to make it look like he's a street sam and all the enhancements are from the spirit inside boosting his attributes (the build only has stuff like wired reflexes, muscle replacement, bone lacing, etc.).

While you could create a character with similar stats, I don't think anyone would mistake the effect of a bullet hitting and bouncing off(ItNW) for it being caught, by ortho skin or dermal sheathing.

The older editions were indeed a bit sketchy on the subject AFAIK, but 4th ed. is not. See the rules quote above or Street Magic p. 100: Flesh Forms can use all natural and augmented abilities of the host.

What makes you think that's what happens with ITNW?

Because if the flesh of the creature was distended and ruptured by the round, that would allow for things like brains and spines to be hit, which the game is pretty clear about not being able to be regenerated, which is the other possible option.

I do hope you've not finished this run, looks like epic goodtimes:)

May I suggest:
1: If someone's got a phone, and it goes off while you're playing, it goes off "In game". Someone, ages ago, had that rule while his newb players were checking out a coocooned spirit, and the noise woke it up...It's really horrible watching the "Ohshitohshitohshit" fumble to turn the phone off and runners screaming for the hills while the unlucky player is chased...

2: Misdirection and lies. You've already got a betrayal in place (fun, can be disheartening if not done right) why not 3 or 4? Get your people hired, or hint that they might want to find out more on their ownsome and sell the info to various interested parties, like that helpful fellow they know. Burn possible allies while helping the great dark evil...

3: Whispers on the streets and contacts disappearing/reappearing. If your players are White-wolf vets, they should cotton on fast that there's something not quite right.

4: Magic-users getting hints and tastes of something...odd, in the air. Play up weird feelings, then dismiss them as imagination.

5: Don't neglect the 2nd edition stuff, it was seriously well crafted and useable now. Yes, that includes the handouts for the UB.

6: Queen Euphoria is the classic, but don't forget Double Exposure. It's got misdirection galore and can cause TPK if your players don't think before acting. Also, it lays on the "everything is normal, there's nothing to be afraid of..." vibe. And if you do it right, you can simply let the bad guys be Renraku, testing their gear on the less fortunate. "Yep, job's done, those corp fraggers got what was coming to them, nothing else to see here"

7: Frankly, Euphoria would be best run last and then burst Bug City over them. ("You gottas get out of Seattle, it's too hot, too weird. Try the East coast, Boston, DC, wherever...") Mob contacts are good hooks for this sort, as is a interest in the electronic decking side of things. Magic too - their uni there was great pre-bug.

8: Bug City. Nightmare fuel, survivalism, escape. (Make them bleed here. A lot.)

9: Betrayal. Epic, epic betrayal. If you don't try and kill your players here, they won't respect you ever again.

10: Dice shower as your players work out you are an evil SOB. Then screams for more.


-Hope it runs well:) I can't do this thing to my players now, they're too wary. So I sideswipe them with voodoun, possession, evil magical threats and the ever-present horror of the Tax-man.
-Tir.