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CanRay
What are the STRANGEST 'Runs your groups have been asked to do?

Mine would have to be when the group was hired to Extract Goofy from DisneyLand.

Well, it was a very specific Goofy, actually. The guy in the costume was actually a robotics expert on his "Day Off" enjoying time with the kids.

It was during this 'Run that the group found out that "The House of Mouse" has it's own SWAT Team and a whole *LOT* of Magicians. (Low powered ones, but even a low-powered magician can summon Watcher Spirits!).

Then the front yard of their safehouse attacked them.
Doc Chase
My team was asked to do a botched jewelry store robbery where we would put down (but not out) a latent Mystic Adept who believed he was a superhero. The Johnson was fairly transparently Horizon after we did the scan, and she said we could actually hit the store as a bonus.

We had a newbie team of players who didn't understand the overpowered wonder of Stick 'n Shock, so we set up a flash mob of folks 'protesting blood diamonds', sleep-gassed the store, cleaned the jewelry out and got accosted by the hero just outside. That's when the LEBD-1 loaded up with SnS opened up, and we vanished like a puff of patchouli smoke.
AStarshipforAnts
QUOTE (Doc Chase @ Jul 23 2010, 12:52 PM) *
My team was asked to do a botched jewelry store robbery where we would put down (but not out) a latent Mystic Adept who believed he was a superhero. The Johnson was fairly transparently Horizon after we did the scan, and she said we could actually hit the store as a bonus.

We had a newbie team of players who didn't understand the overpowered wonder of Stick 'n Shock, so we set up a flash mob of folks 'protesting blood diamonds', sleep-gassed the store, cleaned the jewelry out and got accosted by the hero just outside. That's when the LEBD-1 loaded up with SnS opened up, and we vanished like a puff of patchouli smoke.


You forgot how we hired a bunch of dwarves and orks to tunnel under the store from the Ork underground, sir.
Doc Chase
QUOTE (AStarshipforAnts @ Jul 23 2010, 03:54 PM) *
You forgot how we hired a bunch of dwarves and orks to tunnel under the store from the Ork underground, sir.


Didn't we do that to get the sleep agent in place? I recall taking you and the Pornomancer in under the guise of jewelry shoppers where our 'darling child' fell asleep and set up a backdoor to kill the security while we looked over necklaces.
Synner667
I have images of Rigger controlled Disney animatronic monsters chasing covert operatives around the disneyworld grounds…
CanRay
QUOTE (Synner667 @ Jul 23 2010, 10:56 AM) *
I have images of Rigger controlled Disney animatronic monsters chasing covert operatives around the disneyworld grounds…

Damn... Wish I had thought of that.
Doc Chase
QUOTE (Synner667 @ Jul 23 2010, 03:56 PM) *
I have images of Rigger controlled Disney animatronic monsters chasing covert operatives around the disneyworld grounds…


While singing. Nothing like a giant animatronic Ursula the Sea Witch with a pair of HMG's singing 'Poor Unfortunate Souls' while opening up on a group of runners.
AStarshipforAnts
QUOTE (Doc Chase @ Jul 23 2010, 12:55 PM) *
Didn't we do that to get the sleep agent in place? I recall taking you and the Pornomancer in under the guise of jewelry shoppers where our 'darling child' fell asleep and set up a backdoor to kill the security while we looked over necklaces.

That must have been it.

Also, making note of the Disney animatrons. My players will never see it coming.
DireRadiant
"The Couch" and "The Best Christmas Ever" are two of my favorites.

Normally when a teammate comes to us and says, "Hey guys can you help me with a dead hooker?" we can just point to the nearest organ legger street doc or neighborhood ghouls. We don't expect to spend a week tracking down through the streets the idiots who accessorized the couch our team troll physad was trying to move up the barrens apartment building with the broken elevator for the octogenarian lady on the top floor. We did think the "Good Deed" of moving the couch was too easy... there's always a catch.

Twas the christmas before the team was going to pay a visit to Deus in the Renraku Arcology.... and the team blew all the nuyen we couldn't spend on things to bring into the arcology with us on a party for all the contacts and friends we had and any disadvantaged neighbors kids. Almost half a million nuyen. Then some drive by gangers showed up to party. That's when the fireworks went off.
Johnny B. Good
QUOTE (DireRadiant @ Jul 23 2010, 04:20 PM) *
"The Couch" and "The Best Christmas Ever" are two of my favorites.

Normally when a teammate comes to us and says, "Hey guys can you help me with a dead hooker?" we can just point to the nearest organ legger street doc or neighborhood ghouls. We don't expect to spend a week tracking down through the streets the idiots who accessorized the couch our team troll physad was trying to move up the barrens apartment building with the broken elevator for the octogenarian lady on the top floor. We did think the "Good Deed" of moving the couch was too easy... there's always a catch.


Wait, what?
DireRadiant
QUOTE (Johnny B. Good @ Jul 23 2010, 10:24 AM) *
Wait, what?


Run on sentences are good. The couch the troll was delivering had a dead hooker in it. He got upset.
Doc Chase
Why? Normally you have to pay extra for that.
Johnny B. Good
QUOTE (DireRadiant @ Jul 23 2010, 04:26 PM) *
Run on sentences are good. The couch the troll was delivering had a dead hooker in it. He got upset.


I can only imagine his face when he realized there was something under his 300kg girth when he sat down.
Dr.Rockso
Old ladies need dead hookers, too!
DireRadiant
QUOTE (Johnny B. Good @ Jul 23 2010, 10:29 AM) *
I can only imagine his face when he realized there was something under his 300kg girth when he sat down.


Oh he didn't care about that. He was upset because he realized the old lady upstairs would not have liked the couch.
Caadium
I once sent a team to kidnap a witness to a crime. The team had to hit the armored car to get the witness mid-transit. Once they eventually got through security they found that the witness was a chimpanzee; a chimp that had been a test subject for early Cerebral Booster technology as well as some ware that allowed it to speak.

Not only did they kidnap the chimp, but they had to keep it safe for about 48 hours before the exhange.

Since some of the players are the same, every four or five years the chimp will make a cameo; to which I get a mixture of groans and cheers.
Fauxknight
After noticing a particular teams lack of subtety I had a Johnson send them into a facility to retrieve his coat that he left there. Since he didn't give them a description of it they stole every coat they could fine after making a mess of the place. When the Johnson didn't seem to care about all the coats they grabbed, they realized that they weren't actually hired to get a coat.

The same Johnson later hired them again to go into a restaurant to retrieve his hat. One of the players wasn't there for the other run and was desperately trying to find a hat, while the other runners were merrily filling the place full of much lead and explosives as they could.
IceKatze
hi hi

Some guy's fiance hired us to kill a tree that belonged to said guy.
Cardul
I once had a johnson hire a team to pick up and deliver...the Johnson's lunch, a very good deli sandwich wink.gif
Trevalier
QUOTE (CanRay @ Jul 23 2010, 10:44 AM) *
It was during this 'Run that the group found out that "The House of Mouse" has it's own SWAT Team and a whole *LOT* of Magicians. (Low powered ones, but even a low-powered magician can summon Watcher Spirits!).
The team should have seen the latter coming. It's the Magic Kingdom, after all.
CanRay
One of the best games I ran involved one of the PC's (Vic the Cabbie) having his Mafia Connection call him up and pull in every favour owed in order to...

Steal a cow.
BobChuck
500 lbs of pure, raw beef? I can see that.
CanRay
QUOTE (BobChuck @ Jul 23 2010, 02:31 PM) *
500 lbs of pure, raw beef? I can see that.

Yeah, it was a bit more than that.

It was a very difficult run, due to the cow transmitting "I'M BEING STOLEN!!!" across Snohomish, the fact that the cow was novacoked up to the eyeballs, and a few other factoids.

It was actually a Biocow that the Mafia was experimenting with to try and smuggle the raw ingredients of Novacoke at the start (To get through Customs), and have the finished product coming out the udders at the end.
Dumori
IIRC that cow was a novacoke factory. I recall the thread.

I'm really wanting to send my my PCs after Dragon seamen. Thats one odd run more so it is has to be for X age Y type dragon. Yeah I'll pull that if my PCs need a cow droped much more fun and if they can get a dragonss seamen then well they desever to avoid the cow. The negative is they are no the dragon spunk guys. Nice rep there.
Draco18s
I think ours was to extract a guy who "had some info" out of some Archology complex (name, location, and building* all made up by the GM).

Target never left the secure locations of the archology, especially recently.
Target was highly paranoid.
Target could not be harmed, mentally or physically (eg. can't show up, drop a bag over his head, knock him unconscious, and carry him out).
Target had to be delivered to a drop point in Seattle (Target was in New York)**

The group spent over half the reward money hiring a coven of mages to implant a suggestion into the guy's head that he wanted to visit the Archology mall's Hat and Mask shop, where we "traded" him for one of the group via impromptu disguise and control emotions (made the target like the face-ish mage). Later when the safehouse was hit the mage said, "Run, they're after us!" playing off the guy's paranoia. We handily beat up the swat team, recovered the target (I forget how this worked, exactly, just that the "run, they're coming for you" was well used), and flew him to Seattle.

When the GM "wrote" this little side mission he had no idea how it would be possible to extract the guy.

*Was a cool building though: all glass and it had arcs of lighning tracing across the surface.
**The point, for us as players, was to get a job that would--as cheaply as possible--get us from Miami to Seattle. We called in a favor to get to NY, then this job offered to pay the flight costs to Seattle.
Apathy
QUOTE (Dr.Rockso @ Jul 23 2010, 11:30 AM) *
Old ladies need dead hookers, too!

There once was a runner named Dave,
who kept a dead whore in a cave.
He said "I admit,
it does smell a bit,
but think of the nuyen I save!"
Inpu
QUOTE (CanRay @ Jul 23 2010, 05:44 PM) *
What are the STRANGEST 'Runs your groups have been asked to do?

Mine would have to be when the group was hired to Extract Goofy from DisneyLand.

Well, it was a very specific Goofy, actually. The guy in the costume was actually a robotics expert on his "Day Off" enjoying time with the kids.

It was during this 'Run that the group found out that "The House of Mouse" has it's own SWAT Team and a whole *LOT* of Magicians. (Low powered ones, but even a low-powered magician can summon Watcher Spirits!).

Then the front yard of their safehouse attacked them.


The most magical place on earth. biggrin.gif
Daylen
A team of trogs got hired to guard some pop stars. here is the timeline.

T 0 - team arrives says hello

T 4 minutes - clients say a comment that leads to the team responding in a bad way and a worse comment being said

T 5 minutes - team leader looks around and says well shit lets see if the yakuza we were supposed to protect them from will pay us the 5k they offered as a bounty for killing them...
Neraph
In addition to GMing myself, I also offer services (free of charge) as a GM Consultant as well. One of my clients needed some ideas, so the following was spawned:

The team was hired to find a mint-condition, unopened.... 0.5 lead mechanical pencil, circa ~2000. The eccentric Johnson, upon receiving the item, opened it and clicked it, and moaned like he was orgasming while doing so.

The next run from the same guy was to find a Pink eraser, never been used.

By the way, he was paying over 200k nuyen.gif per person, IIRC. And he hired multiple teams, so there were gunfights, explosions, and extreme care to protect the items.
Dumori
Wow. Thats one bored J some ones gona get kicked by the mother corp?
MortVent
QUOTE (Dumori @ Jul 24 2010, 12:20 AM) *
Wow. Thats one bored J some ones gona get kicked by the mother corp?



Not if it's his money being paid. Some people spend thousands on a little rat...err dog... damn it if it bounces when it barks it's not a dog! (bonus points if ya know where I got that)

CanRay
Not every Mr. Johnson works for a Corporation. Some work for the Government, some work for "Interest Groups" (Terrorists, Policlubs, Shelters, and so on), some work for themselves.

Some don't even know they're working at all as a Mr. Johnson. And it's those that you have to watch out for.
Martin_DeVries_Institute
I don't remember the actual run we were hired for, but I do remember that our Johnson was a manager at a Starbucks--he actually had us meet in the back office of his store. I think he wanted something to help him move up the ladder. He ended up paying us with a mass of Starbucks gift cards. If one ran out he could have it reloaded with another hundred nuyen or so. Our team ended up having a lot of planning sessions in various Starbucks' after that.
Draco18s
My group once accepted a job to kill our group. We collected too.

I think the link is in my sig, still, to the logs from that particular campaign.
Edit: it is not.
Link.

At least, I think that part of the story was logged. Can't figure out which post its in though.
Khyron
A Manhattan team, the Johnson hired us to break into an Aztechnology subsidiary and steal the data on a new chip flavor they were about to unleash on the public after a huge advertising campaign. Not so bad, some food company espionage. The kicker was we also had to taint the first product batch with huge amounts of extremely powerful medical laxatives.

The team pulled it off, stole a few untainted bags and informed their closest contacts not to buy this particular brand and maybe update their stock profiles. The resulting media blitz product release parties went all wrong on world wide live Trid. We never did find out who the Johnson worked for, but the team figured it was Horizon due to the longevity of the TV embarrassment that followed.

Unrelated, but we also picked up a Marxist AI inhabiting the facility breakroom vending machine.
Stingray
(this is pretty lame..)
Stealing Bio-Engineered pig from hidden r&d lab..
Lok1 :)
Well, the "Ready Set Ghogh" mission from Manhattan is pretty weird. (For those of you who don't know you need to steal a bio-art display "A starry Night" but made entirly of live fish).
My team was once hired to transport a large conatainer to a location and deliver it to the people we found there, it was infact the body of a ex-ancients gang member who was part of our team, the Johnson was infact working on the bequest of a corperation that wanted our team out of the way, needless to say the elf gangers wern't exactly pleased when we showed up with one of their old buddy's in a coffin. Thankfully or face was able to gloss it over.
Traul
QUOTE (Martin_DeVries_Institute @ Jul 24 2010, 11:51 PM) *
I don't remember the actual run we were hired for, but I do remember that our Johnson was a manager at a Starbucks--he actually had us meet in the back office of his store. I think he wanted something to help him move up the ladder. He ended up paying us with a mass of Starbucks gift cards. If one ran out he could have it reloaded with another hundred nuyen or so. Our team ended up having a lot of planning sessions in various Starbucks' after that.

You mean you did not drown him in his coffee after that? eek.gif
Draco18s
QUOTE (Traul @ Jul 25 2010, 04:28 AM) *
You mean you did not drown him in his coffee after that? eek.gif


When you're saving 12 nuyen.gif a cup off every 12 nuyen.gif cup and you have it, essentially, for life... You kind of don't care that the prize wasn't in cash.

You just start drinking more coffee. Maybe in 10 years you'll get your 50 grand worth out of it.
Martin_DeVries_Institute
Yeah, exactly. This was a street-level group with no rep, so being paid in "free Starbucks for life" was actually a really good deal.
CanRay
Well, aside from my group thinking I was sending them after a cow (again), they've found out they're getting three "Crates" out of UCAS Customs...

A mystery crate that was mis-sent to the warehouse, and is actually a Korean Diplomatic "Pouch".

A Cargo Container (The big ones that take up a whole Flatbed Truck!) filled with "Farm Tractors" from Russia for export to the SSC.

And a wooden crate of "Chinese Electronics".

I'm really wondering if they're going to open the packages. devil.gif
Simon Kerimov
In my younger GM years, I sent a team to Vatican City to steal the Necronomicon for Aztechnology. When they finally got out of the trap-filled labyrinthine catacomb, they wanted the drop off to be in orbit. This was when I learned that space is bad for magical items.
tete
Steal a coffee maker... It ended up being we were a security test for the mall and the Johnson had his eye on this particular fancy coffee maker. So as he drank a particularly great cup of coffee lone star came in to arrest us for petty theft, murder (stupid phys adept...) and check our SINs.
Hand-E-Food
QUOTE (tete @ Aug 1 2010, 04:37 AM) *
Steal a coffee maker... It ended up being we were a security test for the mall and the Johnson had his eye on this particular fancy coffee maker. So as he drank a particularly great cup of coffee lone star came in to arrest us for petty theft, murder (stupid phys adept...) and check our SINs.


Ooh... I'm using that idea, thank you! smile.gif
CanRay
QUOTE (tete @ Jul 31 2010, 01:37 PM) *
Steal a coffee maker...

You know you're in Seattle when...
Neraph
QUOTE (Simon Kerimov @ Jul 31 2010, 12:18 PM) *
I sent a team to Vatican City to steal the Necronomicon for Aztechnology.

Was Amazon.matrix down or something? The Necronomicon is one of the most prolific occult* texts you can find.

*Occult might not be the best word here, but I'm not entirely sure how to classify that thing. Semi-religious? Spiritual? Something in that field.
Draco18s
QUOTE (Neraph @ Aug 2 2010, 10:47 AM) *
Was Amazon.matrix down or something? The Necronomicon is one of the most prolific occult* texts you can find.


Not to mention which Necronomicon.

We had a book in a D&D game (we were running the World's Largest Dungeon) that contained every evil spell, as a spellbook. Any spellcaster could cast the spells without needing to preprare them at a cost of 1 permanent hp per spell level (if you made the will save against the book). We called it the Necronomicon for good reason. And it totally saved the party on like three occasions.
Neraph
QUOTE (Draco18s @ Aug 2 2010, 10:07 AM) *
Not to mention which Necronomicon.

Very true. Kinda like how many "Book of Shadows" there are. Almost every fledgeling wiccan (or druid... I forget which exactly) makes their own.

QUOTE (Draco18s @ Aug 2 2010, 10:07 AM) *
We had a book in a D&D game (we were running the World's Largest Dungeon) that contained every evil spell, as a spellbook. Any spellcaster could cast the spells without needing to preprare them at a cost of 1 permanent hp per spell level (if you made the will save against the book). We called it the Necronomicon for good reason. And it totally saved the party on like three occasions.

Always wanted to run that dungeon.
Draco18s
QUOTE (Neraph @ Aug 2 2010, 11:58 AM) *
Always wanted to run that dungeon.


Its good. Although unless you want a (very) long term campaign, I suggest picking a single region and using it as its own thing.

The entire thing will run a part of 1st to 3rd level starting characters all the way up through level 18 or so, depending on how many regions they visit. You'll also probably want everyone to have a spare character on hand until they finish Region A; death is almost certainly going to occur for at least one person (the Region A boss is also a dick--it took four simultaneous grapples and a helpless coup de grace or three to even do meaningful damage).

Also a warning: the dungeon has been heavily edited, so be sure to read up on the region before every session just in case room #53 no longer exists on the map. Or if room #16 on the map has no description. Or if that artifact has no stat block. Or if that stated item has no location. Or no use. Or traps that are listed before any description that would allow the characters to be aware of the trap. Or....

Also: the party will want a crafter. There is a singular location to buy anything in the dungeon, so despite having level-appropriate wealth the party* will not have level-appropriate gear, even under the 1/4 cost crafting specialty of a crafter (he simply won't have the time--even if he's a warforged and never sleeps). Also don't worry if your fourth level party crafts an 11 HD clay golem. It might be able to punk anything in the dungeon for a while, but it has good odds to go crazy at some point (cumulative 1% chance to go crazy every continuous round its in combat; our group went 14 rounds once.** Standing orders were that if it did go crazy that everyone just run and hope something else can kill it).

The party will also become increasingly paranoid. It will be fun to watch ("We should spend the 5000 gp to cast Barghest's Feast on the dragon's corpse, we already killed him twice now; cutting off his head clearly didn't work" "But we don't need to! We slew his cleric!").

*Assuming they have a way of hauling it about. We replaced the dog in our "dog-cart" more than once. It was hauling around some million gp worth of "appropriated" paintings and other useless valuables that couldn't be used to craft magic items.

**14 rounds of a cumulative 1% odds works out to about a 33% chance of it having not gone crazy yet (0.99 * 0.98 * 0.97 * ... * 0.86 = 0.331).
Neraph
Yeah, I've looked over the thing, and I am confidant I can solo the dungeon. I am also able to keep OOC information different from IC information, so my preview of the dungeon would not give my character an advantage.
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