I have a basic premise for a run I need to now put into workable material:


I have a node-chart for the run at this point, all the nodes still need fleshing out. However, I do still need a few pointers:

The flow-chart is here:
k10 run

I think I can pretty much manage up to the point where the actual main antagonist enters the stage, at that point things will get difficult:

- I need to drop clues as to the nature of the spirit, since probably the PCs won't be able to assense past his masking
- I need to get interesting content into the hunt for more clues
- and I need some ideas for a resolution.

(This post has also been cut short by too little time. Duh. Will have to update.)

Well, you could easiliy have him escape from a locked-down room. Spirits have a unique ability close to teleporting as they can jump from one place to another via metaplanes. Just popping in somewhere would also scare the crap out of his minions - somewhat good for morale.
He also won't get drunk or anything like that. It's up to discussion if he would leave fingerprints. He might as well leave a car crash unscratched. Maybe he even was the sole survivor of some nasty chemical accident.
He's probably always good-looking - never tired, suffering migraine...
Those things might stick out after some time.

I'd suggest having them present at a meet when the daughter od's on K-10. This could also be how the KE father decides to use the runners.

Well, I had an idea for introducing the guy to the runners, which involves one of the runner's weaknesses: The Dependents quality, she has a son, the father of which isn't known. Now she is an ex-prostitute, and I would have simply written the guy in as an ex-customer - and the father of her child. She can be half-coerced into cooperation, too, by threatening a child-care suit, if that should become necessary. But what the father really wants is someone he can trust, because he doesn't trust his colleagues, or his underlings.

The daughter went berserk from K10 during some night out, was tasered and subdued and is since held in this state. But he will let the runners see her.

I've forgetten one angle: Whitnesses, and possible surveillance footage of the berserking incident. I'm going to need a node for that, too, unless the father says the cops have done all that already and found nothing.

@ModularMan: Thanks a lot, those are all pretty good. However, I'm going to have to conjure up a situation where those maneuvers would be necessary. You don't get to be an exec by acting weird.

Well the footage might reveal who gave her the drug, some facial id software and the runners can begin working their way up the drug food chain. Or the runners could scour me-feeds for more images of that night.

The nice thing about the runners being there is taht a contact of theirs could become a victim of the K-10 attack. The father could play on their desire for revenge.

Why would he even contact runners if things didn't get personal? And if he did, why would he take his daughter? Changing all that would change the entire focus of the run.

And K10 is still a drug, not a chemical weapon. People would have to ingest it somehow. The whole point is that the daughter was specifically targetted. I'm still figuring this should happen via a spiked drink.

In any given nightclub the glasses will probably contain RFID tags, so theoretically the route each glass takes through the club could be followed individually. Someone could read that info, and spike the right drink as it passes him by.

AFAIK Inhabitation spirits (insects, in this case) don't get to dematerialize at will, since they inhabit a fully physical body. So that's not really an option.


Maybe his underlings could be talking to each other about his peculiar habits/appetites? They might think he's some kind of kinky freak.

Maybe he freaks out pets? Like a cat going all hissy when he gets near?

Maybe he has an obscure allergic reaction to certain food, due to preservatives?

Maybe he gives people odd looks when someone steps on a cockroach?



Anyway, I like the node tree. What'd you make it with?

Did I miss something? I was just thinking about a genuine free spirit, not an insect spirit.
Maybe his odd behaviour doesn't stick out so much for people who deal with him regularly. The spirit power of compulsion may help to disguise it and might as well be a reason why he climbed the ladder so fast.
I had a masked spirit use the movement power while running from the group, one of them was astrally perceiving... it was pretty obvious and an emergency case for the spirit. The player didn't get the whole thing then, though.

Hmm, on second reading I suddenly realized you said realistic form spirit, not insect spirit. I need more sleep coffee.

Well, it's not like your thoughts are far-fetched - my first idea had been an inhabitation spirit, too, until I found that they are actually more limited. While the ideal merger produces something even less detectable, they are now stuck.

Modular Man your ideas continue to be great. Now I just have to find a good way to use them.

The other thing is that I'm trying to write a sort of mystery (low on combat), and I suck at that. Duh.

Concerning the node sheet: Well, I used a free program to do it called PAPDesigner, a german program designed to visualize programming structures. I probably should have just used a graphics program, but now I started with this. I has the problem that it never allows more than three out-going links, and you are stuck in a square grid pattern.

My group once met a free spirit like that. We first noticed something was off about him because his footsteps didn't quite match up with his rate of travel (since the spirit was 'flying' at ground level). The difference was slight, but the guy who noticed did exceptionally well with his perception roll. The thing that really gave it away was when we saw him in a building across the street, and 10 seconds later he was busting down the door to the room we were at, scared the crap out of our hacker/rigger who had been monitoring the building we were in, there wasn't a camera in the hallway just out the door, and the spirit manifested just behind the surveillance drone he'd planted to watch the area.

Well... a materialized realistic form spirit should actually walk, normally. However, actually monitoring the guy only to find him busting into your place a second later is a pretty disconcerting show-off moment for the spirit. The trouble is: After that it'll be all-out knives and knobkerries, and I'm not sure who would win.

What force would you assign such a spirit? 6, or rather even 7?

Meh, the GM wanted to give us some hints that something was up, and his justification was that the spirit had only recently acquired realistic form. Said spirit was force 6 think. Luckily our face was able to talk the free spirit down, in exchange for our help neutralizing two of the offsite magicians providing security for a facility the spirit's crew was going to be hitting, which we were supposed to be protecting; but since our shaman was down at the time and we had no other way to deal with the force 6 spirit, we took the deal and the notoriety hit. We ended up gaining the spirit as a contact, a very demanding and psychopathic contact who we tried to avoid and had no real way to contact except through his crew.

Well... a smartly played F6 spirit is a daunting opponent. He would not be quite invulnerable to weapons, though, and if he sticks around the group's mage could also hurt him. (We don't have a face who could manage a feat like talking him down...) So I'm always inclined to rather up the numbers a bit more, and make him F7. If he plays out too powerfully, I can always play him not quite optimally. The group has managed to disrupt one toxic F7 spirit already, so they have the basic abilities.

Just as a heads-up in case anyone is interested, I've started GMing this scenario, and so far my preparations have paid off.

I got the intro down with my GFs Sammy/Face in a solo session (and good thing that I did, it took longer than I had thought), and then she introduced the party to the Johnson, who in this case is called Mr. White.

We did a bit of bargaining, during which for some reason they never haggled the price, even though I had deliberately started with a lower offer than my target of 1k/day. Then he gave them some premise and infos, and the PCs had fun posing their mage as a miracle doctor who would examine the berserk daughter of Mr. White, unfortunately not with Mind Probe, but rather with Control Thoughts, which I felt I didn't have sufficient grounds to disallow. I was a bit generous with the time scale of the conversation, she would have broken free after about 30 combat turns, and that actually doesn't translate to a particularly long talk. Well... as it is, they actually managed to get most of the clues in an organic manner simply by asking the right questions.

I was lucky with one thing I hadn't anticipated: I hadn't written out a scene for the Club where the daughter got dosed with the K10. So I was lucky none of them had licenses to enter Manhattan, and I ruled that Manhattan passes are like fake licenses, and luckily it took them three days to get them at a good rating. So that gives me a few days to come with something.

Also, luckily while the mage did ask for the rich kid drug dealer's phone number, which is stored on her commlink, he did not ask under what name it was stored (Aunt Mary ). So they are going to have to interview her friend after all for the number, which gives me another scene they can't really bypass .

I was also given a lucky idea by the playes themselves as to how to finally introduce the big bad guy: Of course there is only a narrow list of suspects - it has to be someone in KE hierarchy who is higher than or at least level with Mr. White, and that nicely gives some handles as to who to check out. For now he hasn't given them these details, because he isn't convinced the runners can pull the job off without arousing attention, and that is something that he is most scared of.

But I think the players liked it so far, it made for a welcome change from the trigger happy run we had last time. Of course we don't ever get anywhere fast, but we're used to that by now.

Since the Manifestation power is purely psychic, drones and cameras wouldn't be able to detect it anyway.

Um, he meant Materialize, since it is impossible knock down a door and bust into a room while Manifested as you are only in Astral Space...

Sorry! Please return to your non-pedantic conversation!