Hey everybody. I just wanted to know what people's favorite moments or favorite adventures or favorite characters were. When Shadowrun is awesome (which it clearly is) how awesome is it?

When our campaign ended and I was killed by an orbital space laser.
(whole story)

Hm, hard to say. I am gm at the moment (for about a year now - 1 day (10hours) a month)... and i haven't got an awesome story. Ma group plays humorless professionals, and my cool & awesome NPC's are getting defeated with little regard on how cool they are... and no one ever cares about their background.

If i think back to when i was a player, i had some cool moments: My first death EVER in an pen & paper game for example:

I was holed up in an apartment, a watcher appeared to call me out. (Group hunted us for entertainment). Since i was slightly magical, i had to fight their FULL MAGICIAN:

I got to the door, drew my twin-browning max powers and made swiss cheese of the door; kicked it out, lost initiative by ONE stinking point. Was hit by a "slaughter human"-spell... didn't know i could use spellpool to defend... had no hits and just died. Funny shit.

Or the one time i gm'ed the run where they had to break into an old nuclear power plant (radioactive AND HAUNTED). Best adventure EVER!!.. i recently modified it for SR4 and ran it with my new crew...: meh...

The game started with all the player characters having amnesia, slowly remembering their lives, and randomly leaning of their abilities, skills, contacts, experiences, and how they came to be associated with one and other… all while trying to survive in the feral city of Lagos (obviously not knowing how they got there). It was an action-packed mystery, where each player’s action/decision drove the story. It was extremely well played out by all the PCs and the GM (yours truly) had spent a great deal of time implanting mementoes, reminders, puzzles, and tokens of their past that linked a mesh of broken narratives. There were lots of misconceptions and slightly wrong conclusions that made it both a challenge and added humorous surprises. The end of the campaign was when all the PCs finally resolved what had happened to them (after regaining their memories), and got the hell out of Lagos to get back home… where a new campaign awaits them.
The best part was that what had actually happened to them was not completely known by the GM and put together by the players.

One of the bestmoments in recent campaigns for me was when we delved in to the backstory of our face. The background given was vague, and with a bit of collaboration, the GM took off from there. She went from being an orphan trained by her mentor (elf) to a bioengineered human made to be for all intents and purposes an elf. Her parents, who she never remembered, were mages of notable stature, and she was slated to be a child prodigy. after all the cyberware, implants, surgery, and upgrades,.. this didnt seem to be so.

The part that did it for me was the family photo, a confidential letter, and documentation we found in a folder that made its way to our IRL table with IRL counterparts that we could hold and look at in person. The finishing touch was the hand written note (special font) with a signature, signed slightly askewed on the page.

She ended up having a completely new past, and a new future,.. her powers awakened (after a bit of adjusting for points)

and we got to be a significant part of her past.

I think more gms should use IRL props like that.

One of my group's more epic games (aside from the Stray Dogs' Tail) was the space opera game that Wasn't ShadowRun Persay (it was the rules set in another setting). GM had so much fun with that, especially when the AI "hivemind" taking over the universe was confronted by one of the players and we learned why it was exterminating sentient races. The player said, "Well, humanity's fucked. I might as well go kill myself now. See ya." And was allowed to leave the AI infested area scott free (the AI figured he would kill himself so it didn't bother spending a single millisecond doing the deed itself).

I was GM-ing a home-game, and all 3 PC's were falling from a height of several hundred meters, the 3 players were all leaning forward around the gaming-table, hanging on my every word. Each had that wonderful 'Is the GM really going to kill us?' look in their eyes. And then, something even better happened.

I was GMing a group who were all playing SR for the first time and I really enjoyed seeing looks on their faces when they realized that yes, they COULD really level that building with a laser guided missile or, on the other side of the emotional spectrum, when they realized it was a very bad idea to double-cross their Johnson who turned out to be and absurdly powerful vampire wizard and vowed to make their lives hell

For me, I think the best moment in any SR game I played in was when we were double-crossed by the face. Her job was to keep us inside the church where we met her, and Lone Star surrounded the place. By the time we, the PC`s realized what was going on, there was a portable-mounted laser pointed at the building, and a loudspeaker telling us to come out with our hands up.

Of course, we ignored them, and started barracading the place. Once we had it barracaded, we bolted to try to get to the roof, figuring it to be the only possible position of leverage in our situation. On the way up the stairs of the bell tower, I decide to try a diversion (it had been established that there was another room below the base of the stairs, we just didn`t have a good way to get to it.), and dropped a frag grenade to the trap door hatch.

KA-BOOOM. Bad idea. Next thing I know, shockwave headed up the tower, and I`m close enough that it sends me over the railing. Gymnastics and decent reaction saved me from falling to my (likely) death, but I was deafened by the bang.

Of course, there being an explosion now, the Lone Star have pulled out all the guns, and powered that laser mount, which is also a smart firing platform. Yay. We split up, two of us (me and another new player) start heading towards the back, trying to sneak away in the confusion. The High life Hacker and the DJ mage head towards the front, right behind the Troll Techie. They look at the Lone Star forces, and our survival seems to shrink in front of their eyes.

A few seconds later, we hear (well, not me...) a massive roar, and the Troll bounds off the building, getting his arm shot off by the laser emplacement. But, he lands on his mark, and before passing out, manages to rip the laser apart.

In the back, me and the gal are climbing down the building. And suddenly, we are struck by a powerful stream of burning. The powerful firewater spell is blood boiling, and I end up having to burn edge to survive. I wake up a while later, and it seems some Good Samaritan in the Church has supplied me with a new leg, (not much essance cost, even), and also some kind of hearing enhancement to offset the deafness.

I heard about the run, turns out the Troll got a new Cyber arm, and was arrested (but mysteriously disappeared from custody), and he became an overnight Matrix sensation (Seems the DJ Mage was also an LA runner, trideotaping his runs for the matrix to see). The Lone Star looked like the bad guys in the scene, which got the Star to turn face on this case, and try to save their own.

All in all, it was a good learning experience, and showcased some amazing errors, and successes. I loved that session.

My toon Shades was double crossed by Ares, a guy named Fariq was the culprit, who tried to kill me. I ran with Shades for over a year and then BAM, a run comes up, the Johnson is none other than Fariq, I try to take him out right there at the meet but he stuns me down. On the way out after doing the deal with the rest of the team they ask "What do you want us to do with Shades?", he says "Tell Manix (my toons real name) to leave his ghosts in the past." As soon as I'm up they ask "what do you want to do with the job?" BAM I uncork all of my money (which was quite sizable) on the run to take his ass down. We hijack his limo in downtown Seattle right across the street from the Seattle city library using magic and a diversion, in his overturned limo I get sucked in. (Before this stage began I had strapped quite a bit of symtex<high end plastic explosives> to my chest. Inside the oveturned limo is a fight for my life and I drop ALL of my 7 points of edge trying to take him down, no dice. I tell the rest of the team to bounce, some go, some try to stay. Some are outside the limo out due to over-exposure to ballistic weapons. With Shiny white eyes he looks at me menacingly and brandishes his Viper. I pull out the detonator and give him an ugly glare, his reply behind shining white eyes "You don't want to do that Manix." I roll ONE six sider, I tell Foy (the DM) if she lands on one(the number one) I press the button, sure enough a single dot screams at the table. My last words "I'll see you in hell!" (all Shades dialogue I actually said in an English accent, he was an English character.) <click BOOOM> 200+ BP from the plastic strapped to my chest. Downtown Seattle suffered some rather expensive property damages, the whole party did manage to survive, save for Shades, and OOC I found out that Fariq was a Master Shedim, who was went back to the hell that he came from. 20 Karma, and all my assets were dispersed to the party. To this day that is the ONLY character of mine that has EVER died in ANY game, and we all LOVED it! They still celebrate his passing (Even my new toon Livewire), February 12th 2073.

A china-syndrome caused by a screw driver jammed into just the right circuit board. Take that, Shiawase Tokyo!

The last game I GM'd was coming to a close with a big confrontation with a large western dragon.

The party were running down a path snaking around the side of a mountain. The cyber-troll was sprinting ahead when he ran around the corner and ended up face to face with the dragon. He failed his fear check, completely and utterly. He turned around and sprinted past the oncoming party.

The rest of the party saw him coming and stopped, he ran past yelling "it a wagon" complete with the doppler shifted voice. The rest of the group got confused, imagine a table with the GM and player laughing their heads off as the rest of the party decide to carry on. They walk around the corner see the dragon and as one turn to me an say "Oh a DRAGON" ... then it dawns and the group starts running.

The rest of the evening the group spent the time running from the dragon.

I just had a session where I was the DM and in the party we have a mage with zero damage spells and not much of anything else terribly combat effective. In fact he cast invisibility on himself and wasn't able to deal with the drain from it. So he is having all sorts of issues trying to be effective casting his spells and they just aren't working for him at all. While the runners are dealing with some bangers, he (while invisible) walks up to one, pulls out his gun from near point blank range and shoots...and misses. I'm feeling really bad for the guy but the ganger seeing how the battle is going against his crew, just thinks about fleeing. Except the mage with zero unarmed skill successfully intercepts him, bashes him across the bridge of the nose with his Ruger Warhawk and knocks the guy on his ass. The best part was the mage yells "LIGHTNING BOLT BITCH!" Everyone was laughing like crazy. Now he says "I'm casting lightning bolt" which means pistol whipping a motherfucker in the face. Its his trademark and he tries it all the time now.

Its both pretty damn funny and pretty damn cool especially for a character that was having some real trouble trying to find his niche.

Completing the Brainscan campaign. That was seriously epic levels of awesomeness. Great from start to end.

For me actually getting to play- We ended up on this bad ass Astral Quest, to some metaplane that was home tom hive-mind symbiote things. We had a "mage" (Psionics stuff) who tried to link with one of the beds for the hive controlled people. The GM starts telling him how his mind is overwhelmed and he's taken over but the player interrupts with "Don't I get a Willpower resistance or something?" The GM without batting an eye goes "Sure, magic Willpower, and hell even Spell Pool." Player- "What's my TN?" as he scoops up all his dice and begines rattling.

"Oh, lets just round down to 2,000.", and proceeds to go on about how he's turning on us. We beat him down, and drag him along for the rest of the quest. Since he was unconcious the player kept making rolls, and would occasioanlly pipe in with "Oooh, got a 23 that time." and "Ugh, only a 7."

For me running- Gah, where to start. There was my first campaign where one of the PC's was reunited with their father, and his special-special Cyberarm in Bug City. They then blew the shit out of a bunch o' buggies to get out in one piece and saw just how awesome the wayward father was.

Recently there was the big reveal among the group that one of the PC's had rather brutally in cold blood snapped the necks of some knocked out opponents, thinking it for the best. It finally came out, there were literal tears from some of the players of this view betrayal (My group isn't big into cold-blooded stuff, and we have an uber peacenik shaman).

What really made this come out was when a Ghost team was sent to retrieve an item the group had taken. Sort of bringing in some of the Immortal Elven crap, it was a work of art from waaaay back when, and obviously had importance. They proceed to mess up the guys' base of operations, and are sniping fleeing PC's with narcoject before moving in. Well, when they move in for the sculpture, the leader sees a pendant, taken from the murdered NPC's, who also happened to be elves and worked for the Ghost's boss, too. The pendant was snagged before the murder, so that PC didn't know. They took her as well, and then Mind Probed her to, as the Ghost put it "I want you to know why this is about to happen." When it came to the memory of the hit where the others had died, he couldn't find anything about her killing them. Which points to the one who actually did it.

Have yet for that proverbial other shoe to drop on this situation. But soon enough...

Just last night we had a hilarious moment...

The way the campaign is set up is that at the beginning of every run the Johnson meets with the player's fixers (roleplayed by the players) and tells them the gist of the run. The players then get to decide which of their PC's they want to send on the mission. They then meet up with the Johnson, get the details, and the game progresses like "normal." The setup like this is such that the players can try out as many different character concepts they want and not have to worry as much about getting group cohesion together and also that other players can try their hand every now and then at GMing if they want.

Well, last night the group was getting together at the Big Rhino for breakfast, and one of the players is playing the World's Luckiest Man (8 Edge). Two of the others were Magicians. So they sit down at the table together and the mages assense the mundane World's Luckiest Man.... and both of them Critically Fail. They both get absolutely convinced that he's a free spirit with Realistic Form.

They start debating between themselves what type of spirit he is, the whole time the WLM is sitting right across from them confused.

One mage looks at him and goes "So, what Powers do you have? What are your special abilities?"
WLM - "Well, during the day I help people as a stock broker and investment advisor" (Day Job).
The same mage: "Oh! You're a Guidance spirit!"

They both redo the Assensing with a -2 (for Try Again), and one gets no successes so he still believes the guy is a free spirit. The other gets two successes, so then he's left pondering how a free spirit can appear so convincingly to be Mundane.

Epic.

Its been years, since I've been at a table where players fought with each other in-game, so while this may not be a high point to some, it was a high point to me, as the GM, as I had forgotten how some of this stuff can play out (meaning, both of these guys may had just had a crappy day at work and they set each other off while playing a game).

Anyways, the one PC was basically living month to month and is comm was a pay as you use type. The other PCs had been harassing him quite a bit, sending duplicate text messages and stuff just to add cost to his monthly lifestyle. Apparently, this night was the last straw. One PC ended up sending him a message in triplicate and that was it. They were meeting up outside a street doc's shop and most of the group had already arrived. These two ended up arriving last and they were walking down the street toward each other, as they were passing (I think one was actually casing the shop), the PC that had been harassed told me he was going to punch his friend as hard as he could.

That caught me by surprise and after I confirmed that is what he wanted to do, we rolled it. He almost knocked the dude unconscious with one punch. Obviously, the punched PC was not all too happy, so he pulled out a gun and started shooting. They fought for about two rounds, doing some major damage to their rented getaway vehicle (which happened to be rented by the PC with money problems).

For me, I just got to sit back and watch it all play out, as did the other three players. It was quite entertaining.

At the end of the combat, neither PC was really hurt, except for the one with stun damage from the punch. Both of them, nearing the end of combat, were packing up all their stuff and ready to leave for the night (we weren't even halfway through the session). I had to laugh when I asked if they were done with their little fight. That we still had a run to complete. They both calmed down and we finished the run.

Best moment as a player for me has to be from SR3. We had pulled a mission protecting a Mob Boss (He survived, but his mansion got blown up). We ended up getting payed off (After taking the Bosses 5 year old daughter to ensure safe delivery of the cash). Unfortunately, a player meta-gamed his way to get the credstick to his character who hadn't gone on the mission. We spent the next 2 months trying to be nice and ask for the money he owed us. Finally, we got the ok to kill the guy. Well, my character, being a full mage who had just gotten the quickening metamagic technique lured him out to an alleyway telling him I'd quicken Improved Reflexes to him. We started the ritual and as the spell completed he learned that I lied. I quickened Agony to him... He didn't suffer too long as 2 other members of the team walked up to him checked for the credstick, said, "Thanks." and shot him in the head.

As a GM, would be in SR4. New group of players meets their first Johnson, who had 6 or 7 "bodygaurds", with this awesome playboy contact that had been showing them the time of their lives. This contact was acting as the players face (real face couldn't make the session). Well, he pissed the Johnson off after the team accepted the job and was getting the details, so Johnson shot the Face in the face... The look on the players faces was priceless.

Had a game where one of my players fell 14 stories and took 60P -Half impact and soaked it. While the rest of the team was standing in awe the Rigger (who was jumped into their Van driving by [to try and catch him of course]) was hit by a Accident spell from a following Spirit. The Resulting Crash insta-killed the Rigger due to 20+ Bio Feedback, detonated the box of Nitroglycerin in the back seat of the van which sent the entire team flying in all directions. The Pixie Mage soaked the resulting 26P down to 1 Hit box, and the Face got Vaporized in the explosion (his own supply of grenades detonating due to sympathetic vibration). Not to mention the Explosion ALSO killed the spirit following them, and the Invis mage being carried by said spirit.

A helicopter with a 5 man HTRT came around the corner and hovered over, the guys inside preparing to rappel down. The guy who fell made a Called shot for the Fuelsalodge of the Copter, succeeded in detonating it, throwing the HTRT hundreds of feet in the surrounding area. I rolled Scatter for the Helicopter blades with the tiny one neatly bisecting the pixie mage (who rolled a critical fail on the reaction test) and the larger one scything through a nearby crowd killing a number of them (they were trying to kill a mark during a rally speech)

The last guy grabbed what supplies he could and took off, quickly being hunted down by enforcement a block away. The resulting firefight killed 14 Knight Errant Officers, 3 Police Cars, 1 Police Bike, 3-4 LEBD drones, the last two surviving HTRT from the helicopter, 1 homeless man (and his dog), the greater part of a Stuffer Shack, finally ending with his death after getting hit with a Called Shot/Long Shot from a mounted Minigun dealing 27P to his Body stat alone. He burned a Edge to stay alive, as a officer came close to look it triggered his proximity alarm detonating his implanted Frag Grenade (which also set off his last two on his person) killing the examining officer.

This all started when the player (who was on a rooftop with NPC's watching the Rally) pushed a kid out of the way to get a better seat so he would have a clear shot at the target. It all kinda spiraled downhill from there.

Ragewind: Copying your tale to pass out to my players.

It has "Object Lesson" alllllll over it.

Tra-la!
-Tir

And also why you don't let players make called shots on helicopters. My group did that once ("Called shot to the tail rotor...with my pistol") and the GM went "NO! Never again!" as the pistol did enough damage to the rotor for it to be considered non-functional (when the entire heli has 20 boxes and you do 8 to the tail rotor alone...).

I take my called shots at the pilot.

He still gets armor from the barrier (helicopter cabin) to the damage resistance roll.

Unless you're taking that as a penalty.

One shot won't kill him.

Barret w/AV rounds vs 16 armor attack helicopter. A pilot probably would be wearing an armored vest (6/4).

His effective armor is 22. The ammo will reduce that armor to 12. Call shot for +damage. That would leave me with ~12 dice (including modifiers) and a 13P base damage weapon with 4 hits to make the attack successful (enough to be physical). The armor and body would leave the damage at 8P + net hits. If the first shot didn't have enough net hits to KO him. The second shot won't kill him if it goes stun (which is possible given that I lose the +4 called shot damage), but his wound modifiers will start to stack up.

There's a reason I try to keep AV rounds lying around.

Unless it's a rocket propelled grenade

Well, I suppose if all you have is a Barret, everything starts to look like a soft target...

That's really a situation that calls for a Vogeljager II...

Note the slight difference.

I don't use pistols. However I am now contemplating packing a pistol loaded with AV ammo.

Heh.

When it happened in our game, I think it was standard ammo that he used when he shot down the chopper. Very much "What? What do you mean you downed the chopper?"

A group that i had been Gming for almost the better part of 2 years had reached the point were everyone wanted to play something fresh.

A decision was made to go for an all or nothing run each player had around 100k in Nuyen which they used to plan and execute a run against Aztechnology, which ended
up netting them 25 Million Nuyen and the enmity of some very very powerful Aztech execs.

The run involved the hacker breaking into and creating a false employee file for the groups best social\infiltration type.who once inside worked for a few weeks to set up a safe corridor for the team to gain access to a secure lab in the Aztec pyramid in Seattle this included getting blackmail data on a Aztec security commander by setting up a honey trap (poor guy was married to the daughter of a powerful exec known for using wetwork to deal with personal issues. Creating diversions that caused a large number of Aztec security personnel to be temporarily assigned to defend other locations, the Hijacking of a ground base capable of scrambling Aztec satellites to slow down their response and finaly a whole lot of ammo.

The final scene was the runners blasting their way out unto a waiting Vtol which they flew off into the Seattle bay were they were picked up by a small submarine waiting
to take them to freedom.

Our most recent session was one of the most enjoyable of our current campaign. The party had spent the majority of the night planning how to steal an "unknown specimen" that was being transported by van. The only thing they really knew was where the van was going to cross the border into the Sioux Nation. Everyone got involved, they took over a border checkpoint, accepted bribes while posing as guards, escaped with the package and even got to shoot some rockets. The night ended with the five PC's split among three vehicles (two of which were stolen) dashing across the plains with two kidnapped scientists. Next week should be interesting.

DEfinitvely a situation were you could leave behind a crashed VTOL with suitable bodies inside.