Kinda reminds me of the mission to extract (switching to assassinate if unable to extract) Santa. Team hired to extract a Druid from a secure location in northern Canada. Team is dropped in about a day away, with snow mobiles and lots of winter gear. They move in and watch the parameter for a few days. All the security they can see are elves, there are some truly giant trees (how this far north?), and a reindeer ranch. They spend a few days scouting it out from a couple miles away, using long range scopes, entering all the data into their tacnet. Snowstorm coming in and it will give them good cover.
They get ambushed by a Windigo (abominable snow monster) when the snow storm they were waiting on shows up. Nothing like fighting a big nasty white furred monster in the middle of a swirling snowstorm without the ability to use guns (will alert target). After that little fight, they hike the two miles in the falling snow and sneak into the site.
Their doing real good, not getting spotted, making their way for the central building. Sniper climbs up one of the trees, well at least about 100 feet up anyway. So their doing frog leaping moves, know the guards general paths, got the snow for cover. Until a reindeer decides to kick the shit out of one of the PCs sneaking through their field. Damn freaking smart awakened reindeer!
So it becomes the battle royal as the team makes a break for the center building. They make it mostly in (sniper still outside) and seal the main door. Thermite welding rods are useful like that. They run into a few nasty elves, plus an older human female spell slinger (Mrs. Clause) that they terminate with extreme firepower. They finally spot the target, an older human male in a long green robe with white fur lining. Hit hits them with some mad crazy Mob Mind spell that makes all the runners go happy happy joy joy, I love puppies, joy to the world, I love you, you love me...
The sniper sees the target exit the building and make a break for the reindeer ranch. He does a lot of WTF guys over the com, tracking the target until everyone starts coming down. They hot foot it back to the ranch, heading for the stables since the sniper watched the target enter there. Just as they get there, the stable doors blow open and the target makes a break for it in a sled pulled by reindeer. Instead of the happy happy magic, this time he is tossing weird indirect fire magic (burning black chunks of rock) and swings a great honking axe at the adept who grabbed the back of the sled.
Sniper pops the front reindeer, which had glowing red eyes with fire coming out of its nose and mouth. Sled swerves all crazy and crashes. One of the players gets it ("Wait wait wait, fat man in green, elves, reindeer, way up north... It's Santa!"), loses his mind, and the other PCs put him down. Mission has gone to hell and the target is just a little harder then they thought, so they resort to plan D. After blowing up the overturned sled and the jolly fat man with lots of high grade bang bang, they try to make their escape.
Full Version: Are there limits to the dystopia?
I think a lot depends on the group. That said from a professional standpoint you want jobs that will improve your reputation to get more the types of jobs you want. If you are willing to take any job then odds are you will not get the plum jobs, but rather the ugliest, dirtiest, lowest jobs possible.
I feel all too often the problem lies that players wait for the GM to provide jobs instead of trying to find their own jobs. Ideally, the players should be looking for the jobs or running jobs that will get them information to pull off their retirement runs. They should be focusing on the prime jobs where the pay is good and the risk is low. If they take an ugly job it is because it pays well not because it is the only one out there.
That said is even if the jobs are coming from a Mr. Johnson then if the pay is not right, the story does not check out, or the information is scant then the players should be doing the background checks to find out what is going on. This is before even accepting the job. You live in a world where knowledge is worth more than all the deltaware or focii a player can have. The reason is because it is the difference between life and death.
At the end of the day players should be working towards the point where a Mr. Johnson pays to meet them. They are turning away jobs because they have more work than they can handle and in some cases they may actually have other shadowrunning groups working for them.
As for the pedophile Johnson. Ok, you completed the run later you find out what he is doing. You take him alive, find out the victims, sell the information to the families and which ones are willing to pay for recovery of their children. Then our pediphile is either turned in for a reward or is left with some nice ork/trolls who have a dim view of sexual predators. The real point is if you are going to be a professional then don't get your hands dirty when someone else is willing to do the job for free.
I feel all too often the problem lies that players wait for the GM to provide jobs instead of trying to find their own jobs. Ideally, the players should be looking for the jobs or running jobs that will get them information to pull off their retirement runs. They should be focusing on the prime jobs where the pay is good and the risk is low. If they take an ugly job it is because it pays well not because it is the only one out there.
That said is even if the jobs are coming from a Mr. Johnson then if the pay is not right, the story does not check out, or the information is scant then the players should be doing the background checks to find out what is going on. This is before even accepting the job. You live in a world where knowledge is worth more than all the deltaware or focii a player can have. The reason is because it is the difference between life and death.
At the end of the day players should be working towards the point where a Mr. Johnson pays to meet them. They are turning away jobs because they have more work than they can handle and in some cases they may actually have other shadowrunning groups working for them.
As for the pedophile Johnson. Ok, you completed the run later you find out what he is doing. You take him alive, find out the victims, sell the information to the families and which ones are willing to pay for recovery of their children. Then our pediphile is either turned in for a reward or is left with some nice ork/trolls who have a dim view of sexual predators. The real point is if you are going to be a professional then don't get your hands dirty when someone else is willing to do the job for free.
QUOTE (Omenowl @ Dec 31 2010, 11:57 PM) 
The real point is if you are going to be a professional then don't get your hands dirty when someone else is willing to do the job for free.
Also a good point. If you're going to take him down, at least get paid to do it.
(My other idea for how to bait the players into doing something aweful is to do a run that gets the players in the mood for revenge, then just string them along using an anonymous benefactor who wants the same thing they do. Well, and maybe a little more...something dastardly of his own design. Something that maybe getting revenge wasn't worth it for...)
...Glyph good point concerning getting "on board" with the group before the campaign starts to let them know the type of setting they will be in (more in a bit).
...Omenowl, I too think that sometimes the characters need to make their own jobs rather than wait for their fixer to call. Do they watch the trivid? do the read the newsfaxes? Do they surf the Matrix? What are their motives Their dislikes? Their likes? All these and more can be hooks for motivation.
In the campaign I am currently playing in the characters are at the stage where we are acting on our own initiative. We have to as we were forced to relocate from Denver to Seattle after being set up by a "J" to take a nasty fall. Having little in the way of local contacts, we need to be resourceful.
As a couple of the characters were affected by SURGE (yeah we're still in 3rd ed.) we got the idea to make this one focus. Thus we both invested in and secured additional backing to open a club for SURGE changelings. This could become a good source for making new contacts while also being a means to stay on top of what is happening locally. It also makes a good cover.
As to the degree of dystopia, I ran a campaign that was set in the Balkans in before crash 2.0 that placed the characters in a nation occupied by a neighbouring dictatorship. It was very grim. Before we started, I let the players know that their characters were going to find themselves in some very dark settings and dealing with ugly situations. The mission, an extraction of a young celebrity who was abducted for political reasons, needed to be performed as quickly and quietly as possible. Not just for the runners' sake but also the young woman's career and her downtrodden nation. Blindly "shooting the place up" could trigger reprisals against the resistance and citizens by the occupation force to further the dictatorship's campaign of fear. As part of the preparation I studied up on the 90s war using it as a basis for the political situation. Yes indeed, real life can be much worse than fiction.
A dictatorship where information is tightly controlled and people are constantly fed a diet of half truths, monitored, and thus forced to look over their shoulders out of fear and mistrust is the most basic of dystopic settings. Is that fellow you are confiding in at the cafe with the resistance, or is he an informant? Is that young woman who just walked past you on her way to the local precinct house concealing a couple kilos of C6 under her coat and detonator in her hand? Is that nondescript man in the longcoat sitting a few rows behind you on the tram you a secret police social adept?
This was definitely a campaign meant for a mature group of players who could think past the "typical" Shadowrun.
...Omenowl, I too think that sometimes the characters need to make their own jobs rather than wait for their fixer to call. Do they watch the trivid? do the read the newsfaxes? Do they surf the Matrix? What are their motives Their dislikes? Their likes? All these and more can be hooks for motivation.
In the campaign I am currently playing in the characters are at the stage where we are acting on our own initiative. We have to as we were forced to relocate from Denver to Seattle after being set up by a "J" to take a nasty fall. Having little in the way of local contacts, we need to be resourceful.
As a couple of the characters were affected by SURGE (yeah we're still in 3rd ed.) we got the idea to make this one focus. Thus we both invested in and secured additional backing to open a club for SURGE changelings. This could become a good source for making new contacts while also being a means to stay on top of what is happening locally. It also makes a good cover.
As to the degree of dystopia, I ran a campaign that was set in the Balkans in before crash 2.0 that placed the characters in a nation occupied by a neighbouring dictatorship. It was very grim. Before we started, I let the players know that their characters were going to find themselves in some very dark settings and dealing with ugly situations. The mission, an extraction of a young celebrity who was abducted for political reasons, needed to be performed as quickly and quietly as possible. Not just for the runners' sake but also the young woman's career and her downtrodden nation. Blindly "shooting the place up" could trigger reprisals against the resistance and citizens by the occupation force to further the dictatorship's campaign of fear. As part of the preparation I studied up on the 90s war using it as a basis for the political situation. Yes indeed, real life can be much worse than fiction.
A dictatorship where information is tightly controlled and people are constantly fed a diet of half truths, monitored, and thus forced to look over their shoulders out of fear and mistrust is the most basic of dystopic settings. Is that fellow you are confiding in at the cafe with the resistance, or is he an informant? Is that young woman who just walked past you on her way to the local precinct house concealing a couple kilos of C6 under her coat and detonator in her hand? Is that nondescript man in the longcoat sitting a few rows behind you on the tram you a secret police social adept?
This was definitely a campaign meant for a mature group of players who could think past the "typical" Shadowrun.
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